How to live a godly life daily starts with bringing church home.

James Greer: 00:02 Satan is what we're talking about. We're learning days how to do life together. But the main thing we want you to learn, is we want you to come to church, but learn how to be the church. We want you to come to church, but we want you to leave being the church. And that's what that's all about. If you got one of these, you know it's blue, blue shirt and blue tennis shoes. I'm color coordinated, not really. The tennis shoes are in honor of raising the bar. Man we're so glad to have Pat and Christy here from Thailand. Amen. That's our missionaries. And Mike's not with her today, we thank you for that. Then we got our youth missionaries were fixing to sendoff.

James Greer: 00:44 I'm not near as excited as I was. Hey, let's do this first, so let's stop and have a quick prayer for a Jason [inaudible], his brother Steven is in his early twenties and he just had brain surgery, and they found that it was cancer. And Cecil Zito, who usually sits right there, his mother is probably going to be as Lord as we speak. So let's pray for God's comfort for them, and we shall get started. Father, we pray for those that are going through these tough times right now. God, you are the comfort of all comfort. I pray that you'd give them comfort and peace. God, I just thank you that Jesus is our redeemer, and I thank you that Satan has been defeated. This in
Christs' name we pray, amen.

James Greer: 01:25 Hey listen, on the band, you'll see it says come to church. Hebrews 10:25. It says, "Don't forsake assembling yourselves together." Be The church. Acts 1:8 "And you shall receive power when the Holy Ghost comes upon you, you shall be my witnesses." See, when you find God's purpose for your life, listen it'll decrease your stress. It doesn't matter if it's in your home, your job, your hobby, whatever. When you began to find your purpose, it'll increase the power and presence of God. Shane did such a great job. He was talking about I'd come to work, and it would just seem like I was having an employee problems and stress problems. He said that I knew there was a dimension missing from my job. He'd come to church, he'd come a church, say "Amen, man I feel good." And then the rest of the week it just seems like it doesn't go together. We go to our job and we start thinking, our job is our purpose, we start going to school and we think that's our purpose, and our hobbies, our purpose so therefore this level of stress raises. But when we give a spiritual component to whatever we're going through we are still going to have problems, but during the problem we get to experience God's presence, and that's what I want for you today. I want you to know that you find that that purpose by doing life together God's way. Your allowed to experience the power and presence of God even in the midst of problems. See the goal today is challenging the very culture of your thinking, and the challenge is hey the church is not just coming to church on Sunday, though I want you to come because I like to preach to people, amen. But it's also leaving and being the church and we do that by doing life together.

James Greer: 02:59 The several ways we're going to teach you to do that today. You can do it with your hobbies, you can do it at school, you can do it at work, you can do it anywhere and everywhere, but we want you to be intentional about being the church. Here's one way at the end of the service, anybody that wants to, you can come and get free books. And say, "Hey, I want to get five books because there's some people in my office. I'm going to read and share 15 minutes a week." Or if you got our church app, which if you don't have our church app, you need to get our church app. It's JC Pineville, it's this one right here, you need to get that. But let's look at the top right hand corner, it says a two minute recap, bingo you can do that in two and a half minutes. Yeah, you have what it took me eight hours to prepare, and you're probably a lot more interesting because just two and half minutes. But we have somebody [inaudible] told me the other day what they're going to do is they're going to have a group together, they to play the two and a half minute video, and ask the people to God speak to you. That's doing life together. That's one way. In the middle there [inaudible] God's outline, I mean the outline, for the message and you can push that and you'll be up to date. Raising the bar on relationships last week, today is how to find your purpose. And so you can do that and you'll say, hey, you can print that out and share it with the group. Say hey man, let's share the outline, Brother James did an outline but he never preaches the outline, so you all can do that. You can go over the outline. There is a place that says help for hurts there, it's really important, if you don't know it you can go there and you can click on it. You type in discouraged, depressed, worried, and it comes up and it gives you biblical helps to talk about. You could do that one week. At the very bottom of the app, on the bottom right hand of the app, it says how to reach 100,000. Go ahead put it back up there, and it gives you a place to fill in your name and the people your with. And you push and it comes up and says we already have 504, listen we only have 900 and what 50,000 people to go. Amen. And your to be a part of that. You help us reach our new vision of having 100,000 people doing life together within 10 years.

James Greer: 05:02 But what happens is Satan tries to blind us to what our real purpose in life is. The only power Satan really has over us is for us to believe his lies. Satan wants the believers to believe his lies. If he can get the leaders believe the lie, they said the blind leading the blind, they both fall off in the ditch. It says a teacher it's not a service, not above the teacher. It says you smite the shepherd and the sheep scatter. So one of things you can do, if you're not careful as a pastor, you can be blinded that hey just Sunday morning is not church. Now listen, Sunday morning is a super bowl for me. I think Sunday morning is a highlight for me. Sunday morning is time we come out and celebrate together. But Sunday morning is the time that we come and learn how to be the church, and go out and do the church. So he blinds the leaders. Satan blinds us to our own desires. He blinds us to how selfish we really are. He blinds us that if you're careful, we become consumers instead of producers.

James Greer: 06:02 See in the beginning, in Genesis, when God created Adam and Eve he said, be fruitful and multiply and so do the earth. You're to be a producer, reproducing fruit, reproducing children, a reproducer. But see Satan lied to Eve and her wimpy husband was standing there and did nothing about it. And he went to Eve and he said, see how good that fruit is it's Satan trying to say, look what God's holding out on you. They had the whole garden, they had anything they wanted, but yet see Eve gave into the lie and she thought she had to consume the fruit. And she did. And so when she did that sin came into our lives. And if you're not careful now, Satan will think you're a consumer instead of a producer.

James Greer: 06:44 Then like girls, you don't want to ever marry some guy that's not a producer, he's just a consumer. Because what happens? You get married and he'll just think you're supposed to get everything he needs from you. And same thing with men, you're not supposed to be just a consumer, you're supposed to be a producer. Ladies, you're supposed to be producing. You want to produce better homes, better families, better jobs. Everybody we're supposed to be taking what we have here in reproducing it in the world, but Satan has made us think that hey I want you just to be a consumer. You've come to church just to consume, you go to work just to consume. But see Christians you're not consumers, you're are producers, amen. And he'll blind us to that.

James Greer: 07:26 Second Peter chapter 1 it tells us how to find God's purpose. It says, "But to obtain these gifts." The gifts that he's talking about is that I want you to obtain everything you need pertaining to life, and this is how you do it. You need more than faith. You come to church, you need to get saved, amen. If you're here today and you've never put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, that's first step one. But then you must also work hard to be good. So we need to get saved, we need to be good. But you know none of us are good enough, because we all mess up. So we get faith, we try to be good, but even that's not enough. For then you must learn to know God better, and discover what he wants you to do. You got to learn to know, in other words, I want you to learn God's purpose.

James Greer: 08:08 Next, learn to put aside your own desires, that's selfishness. Step one to finding your purpose is to quit being so selfish, life's not all about you. So that you'll become patient and godly, gladly letting God have his way with you. This will make possible the next step. We all got next steps, I got next steps, you've got next steps. Some of you all's next step is to come and accept Christ as your savior. Some of you all's next step, you've been visiting, you need to come and join the church. Some of you all's next step is to come and bring your problems to Jesus Christ. Some of you all's next step is to break up with somebody you know you shouldn't be with. Some of you all's next step....see what I mean? Everybody has a next step which is for you to enjoy other people. That's not a bad next step. Learn to enjoy other people and to like them. Now the like them is tough. There's a lot of people I love, I just don't like them, amen. But I said one of your next step is to enjoy other people and to like them, listen, and finally you will grow to love them deeply. God says one of your purposes is this, it's to get saved, try to be good, but listen, learn to enjoy people, loved them deeply. And do you know what I'm saying? You can't love people deeply without doing life with them. And let me tell you what, and it's not just doing life with them, it is doing life with them God's way. You bring a spiritual dimension in the people that are with you, the people you're doing life with. Hey man, you're working with people, so you're going to say, "Hey man, fifteen minutes a day, can we do that?" Kelly just went to her boss and said, "Hey, can we do live together? Can we have a devotion?" They said yes. I could tell you were having numerous people that are saying, yeah, you all can do life together. You all can do life together. When school starts again, you all need to do life together. Amen. So we begin to do life together.

James Greer: 10:00 But Satan lies to us about some things. I'm going to just give you a two out of the four, because I don't have time. One of Satan's main lies is wanting our preference rather than God's presence. Wanting our way, instead of God's way. Our preference all of the sudden causes us to miss God's presence. Just like familiarity often causes us to miss receptivity. You get familiar coming to church, and man we got a wonderful praise team and people were getting saved, and we're preaching. And at first you say, man, praise God this is so wonderful. Man, then you start saying you know, just four people got saved, that's great. Four people got saved, lives are changed for a eternity. amen. But you get too familiar so you're not receptive anymore. So you came to church and the first time, and you said, "Man, God was just speaking to me." Now you get so familiar with it, that you just go out just like you came. And see the problem with becoming too familiar, and not receptive, that leads to criticism. So now you start criticizing what you used to love. And criticism. robs not only your present, but it robs being receptive to God. Be very careful, because that also happens in your family, man. You get so familiar, man. You first got married, oh I'm so excited. Then you get so familiar. Oh, it's the same old thing. Don't allow your preference to rob God's presence.

James Greer: 11:28 Jeremiah 1 puts it this way 17:9 puts it this way, "Your heart is deceitfully wicked above all things." Your heart, my heart is deceitful. It deceives ourselves, so if you try to live life on emotions, you're going to be deceived. And when you wake up one day, you're going to be destroyed. It's desperately wicked. Who can know it, not you. The Lord searches the heart, he tries it, even gives every man according to his way and according to the what? The fruit of his doing. How do you know your heart? Not by what you feel, not by where you go. There's only one way, two ways you really know your heart. By your fruit. The fruit in your life was love, joy and peace. The fruit of other Christian. If you don't have love and joy and peace, and you don't see lives being changed, you're deceiving yourself. So how can you change lives? I'll begin to do life together, I'll bring a spiritual dimension on every place I go.

James Greer: 12:15 Let me give you some ideas or examples of how our preference, rob's God's presence. Music is a great one. Right? Some people like modern music, some people like praise music, some people like hymn music, some of our crazy youth, they like rap Christian music. Now me, I thought there is no way, no way, no way. I had some of the kids in the car the other day and I said, "Now none of you all don't really like any of that rap Christian music?"

James Greer: 12:15 They said, "Yeah we do."

James Greer: 12:44 So I knew they were wrong, so I got to Andrew, I said, Andrew let's get together with some of the more mature Christian youth. When we had about five or six I said, "You all don't really liked that rap stuff do you?" And five out of six said they did. Now I do not like that, that is not my preference. Amen. But can I tell you if I go to a worship service, and they have rap Christian music, and there's unbelievable young people and they're getting their lives changed. I'm going to praise God and enjoy rap. Just like you can praise God and do everything. Some of you come to church and it's too bright. it's too dark, it's too hot, it's too cold. Holy Moses, it's too loud, it's too soft. Get a life. Life is not all about you. Don't allow your preference, to rob God's presence.

James Greer: 13:37 It can be about lessons. You know we got the new Journey group lessons, we've got youth lessons, we've got adult lessons. If you're not careful, that particular lesson might not be just for you. Big Deal. Everything here is not just for you, but it might be for somebody else. Don't allow your preference to rob God's presence. How about when the Pastor challenges you? Like today we want everybody to come, we want you to come to church, we want you to learn to be in the church. Some of you are going to say, "I wish he hadn't done that." Don't get mad with me, that was God's plan and God's purpose for your life. So you see what I'm saying? If you're not careful, you'll do in every area of your life. You'll do it in your family. Now I prefer to eat at 5:00 every day, doesn't happen. Debbie says you eat when you want or go get it yourself. Now I can allow that to rob our presence or I can have my preference. You see what I'm saying? You got to be very careful, even in the house, in your family. Your preference will rob the presence of God. So first of all we've got to be careful.

James Greer: 14:51 Second of all would be come to church. Listen, we've got come to church. That's a little seed Journey Church, I want you to come to church. Amen. I want you to come to Journey Church, but if you're not careful the devil will blind you that this is the church. Just when you come on Sunday morning, that's the church. But we really come to the little church, which is Journey Church, where we going leave and we can help enlarge the big church. The universal church, which is Christians everywhere. And if we come to a little church, and we learn to enlarge the big C which is universal church. We'll enjoy the ultimate church which is Christ, amen. So that's our goal, is to change everything.

James Greer: 15:23 I could tell you about we've been blinded to God answering our prayers that just had our preference and our needs, instead of what he would have us to do. I can tell you that we're blinded to who are the real enemy is. That we wrestle not against flesh and blood. It's not me and you, it's not our kids, it's not our grandkids, it's not our wife, but there's principalities and power and that all battles mostly are spiritual battles.
James Greer: 15:42 So how can we find our purpose? Well, God designed it when he sent his son. He sent his son and his son walked into the scene, started his ministry. And in Matthew 4:19 he says, "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men." Now, see really what Jesus did. He said, hey guys, let's do life together. You know we're going to go through some storms together, we're going to have some miracles together, but we're going to do life together. And as we do life together on a day to day basis, it'll be a natural outcome of people wanting what we have. And so number one, you've got to know that God called you to do life together with people. He makes it real clear. He says, "Here's what I want you to do, and then here's how you do it." He commissions us in Matthew 28, in 28:18, he says this. He says, "And Jesus came and he spoke to them, us, me and you. And he said, all authority means power has been given to me in heaven and earth." Jesus said, listen, I ascended now I have descended. Jesus is back in the flesh, and he's telling them what to do, "Go Ye therefore and make disciples." Now Jesus said, you saw what we did, now you go and do it. "Go therefore and teach people what you're learning. Come to church and learn and then go out and teach other people in all nations, baptize them and name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things which I commanded you." In other words you come in, you learn, you go out and you teach. You teach them to practice this different lifestyle because I'm learning it. "All things as I have commanded you, and Lo, I am with you even to the ends of the world." Jesus is trying to teach us how he can become active and powerful and present in our lives in every area of our life. Here's another translation, let me let me read it to you in the message. He says, "Go out, train everyone you meet. Noah, come to church and go out, far and near. Teach them in this way of life, making them all baptized threefold. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in practicing of all these thing. I've commanded you. If you'll do it." He said, "Listen I'll be with you as you do it this day, day after day after day, right till the end of ages." He says, what I'm trying to teach is how to have Jesus in your presence day after day after day after Sunday. So he came back and he appeared in the resurrection. He said, hey, I want you to go out, I want you to learn what I'm teaching, and I want you to go share it with people. But how am I going to do that, because I'm kind of fearful? He says, well listen, I'll step in, there's a new way. I will ascend the Holy Spirit's going to descend. In Acts 1:8 He says, "Listen, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samara, and the outermost parts of the world."

James Greer: 18:36 Both Matthew 28 and Acts 1:8 were written in the context. Listen, as you go, you get to experience the power and presence of God, as you do what he said I'll be with you. When you go on your job, you're still going to have problems, but if you're bringing the spiritual dimension in it, you get to experience God's presence and power even during the problem. But when you have a problem without the presence and power of God, the problem looks bigger than you are. So he says, "You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit." So things are changing in the church, and Jesus was with the disciples and they went through life together and they saw the resurrection. He came back physically, the resurrected body, and he appeared to them in Matthew Twenty eight and it gave us our commission to go Ye therefore and teach all the nations.

James Greer: 19:21 No, it's just let's do life together. Then the disciples, they're all huddled up and Jesus came back in the resurrection and he tells him, you still hadn't got it yet, so I'm going to. I'm going to tell you what's happening. It says, in verse 6, "Therefore when they had come together, the disciples, they asked Jesus saying, Lord, will you at this time, restore the Kingdom of Israel?" You know what they were saying. Hey Jesus, man, you're with us, man. We've been one of you, we've been traveling with you for three years, you've come back. What are we, I mean, what positions are we going to get, you know, what priorities are we going to take, what's our reward? I mean, here it is, they were wanting the kingdom to be established on earth. They were wanting their prayers answered the way they wanted them to be. They wanted possessions and things, and Jesus said to them, "It's not for you to know the time of seeing the father has put into his own authority." He wasn't saying, you shouldn't look and understand when he's coming back. What he was saying is the time, in history, has changed. You continue to look for physical things, I'm trying to give you spiritual things. You came looking for earthly possessions and power, I came to give you heavenly possessions, and power and purpose, which better than anything you can get on this earth. And that's what God's wanting to do for me, and that's what God's wanting to do to you. Because then he said, you shall receive my power. You're not going to receive necessarily earthly possessions and positions, but if you ever get this, you'll experience heavenly power, possessions and purpose like you've never had.

James Greer: 21:04 Okay, before they were afraid, now things are changing. Man, they finally found out how they are supposed to be doing life. Everywhere I go, I'm supposed to be talking about what I'm learning and what I'm doing. Acts 1 chapter 4:2, "So they gladly received the word and that day. 3000 souls were added to the church." That's not too bad, amen. Preach the service, 3,000. I will take three today.

James Greer: 21:23 You see what happened? They began to change. They weren't worried about what they were going to get in their earthly possessions, they wanted to experience a new power that was greater than anything on this earth could come. So 3000 got saved that day, but then there started being some problems. In Acts chapter 43 you see this, "And they laid hands on them and they put them in cuffs." What they meant was, because they were preaching, they were doing what God said. And they'd experienced this power and the presence of the Holy Spirit, They put their butt in jail, for doing what was right, until the next day.

James Greer: 22:03 Now, what you're going to learn is this. They had a new power, even in their problems. Before there were afraid, now they were saying, man, they got this new boldness now, they've got this new purpose now. And they said in Acts 4:13, they saw the boldness of Peter and John. They perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men. They marveled, that they realized, that they had been with Jesus." See, so now listen, they went from what you would call a burden, what you would call a problem, thrown in prison. That's kind of a problem, amen. Especially when you're thrown in prison for doing what's right. But see, they actually, because they knew they were doing God's purpose, their problem actually turned into a blessing.

James Greer: 22:43 Matter of fact, it's so great, that next you're going to find out they were threatened. And even during their threats, because it is spiritually their purpose, it turned into being a triumph. See in Matthew 4:17, the religious leader said, "So that it spreads no further." What's spreads no further? The Gospel. So see, listen. the devil's lie to me and to you is it's okay now you all come to church, but then shut up. Don't talk about it anymore. Come to church, but religious leaders said that it should not spread any further among the people. Let us severely threaten them. Don't you get threatened sometimes? See, aren't you scared sometimes to go outside of the church and talk about the church. Aren't you scared sometimes to come to the church, and then go about talking about what you learned? But see that's the devil, that from now on, they speak to no man in his name. See, what the devil wants you to do, is first of all, he can't get your soul. So hey, I'll get you to come to church, and not talk about church. I'll get you come and learn, but not spread what you're learning. I don't want you to talk about Jesus when you leave the church, only do it while you're at church. So they call them and they commanded them don't speak at all, nor teach, in the name of Jesus.

James Greer: 24:00 You see how Satan would blind us. You see how easy it is to come and church and talk about Jesus and how hard it is to get outside. Do you realize how easy we're trying to make it for you to do what God called you to do? I never understood it can be so easy. Hey, at the end of the service, you can just come over here and check out as many books as you want, they're free. You can say, hey, when I go to school, I'm going to share with ten people, when I go to my office, when I work out, wherever I'm at, I'm going to start doing life with them. Because Peter and John they answered and said whether it be right in the sight of God to listen to you, or more to God, you judge for yourself. But for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

James Greer: 24:41 Man, you ought to come to church. You all leave so fired up. You said, I can't help but to speak when I'm learning, I can't help to speak, not because of what I'm saying but because what God's word says. How it will change your life, and how it will changed their life. See, you should be is so excited about what God's doing, even when they threaten you, you let the threats turned into triumph. That's what they did because, they knew what Jesus was doing for their life. In fact, if you'd read the whole thing, when they heard that had further threatened them, they had to let them go. Finding, no way to punish them, because the people says we're all glorifying God for all that he had done. They throw them in jail, they threatened them, they said, hey, don't talk about it. And they said, we're gonna do it anyway, and they said, hey, we got to let them go. And actually said, hey, they glorified God, because they'd been threatened in what God was doing.

James Greer: 25:35 So how can we do that? How can we go from threats to triumphs, from burdens to blessings? How can we stop looking for earthly possessions, and look for heavenly purpose in our life? First of all, you got to commit to God's purpose for your life. In just a moment we're going to give an invitation to God's purpose. First of all, is for you to get saved. Second, God's purpose is for you to be baptized. Second, God's purpose for you to start doing life together. Ask God right now, who could I start doing life together? Who can I come to church and go back and share with? Who can I give a book to and say, hey, let's take 15 minutes a week and just talk about what we're learning. How can I do church? How can I just not come to church, but how can I be the church? How can I add a spiritual dimension to any and every part of my life? Do you understand when you began to add a spiritual dimension to life, do you know what he said? He said, Lo, I will be with you always.

James Greer: 26:27 He said from day to day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, not just Sunday. I want to be with you at work. I want to be with you in your home. Some of you all need to come and say, hey, what I need to do is have a devotion in my home. I'll come get this book, it's only one page, one chapter a week. We can do one chapter, we can do five minutes, and then we can about what we're learning. Maybe young people? Some of the people like Trey, where is Trey, Trey and the praise team, they're doing life together. They're coming, they're seeing, they're practicing, amen. But then they go out and they share, they're doing life together. What did they learn? Next week they'll do the next chapter, so see you can be volunteer organizations, but maybe you can't get to a journey crew because you're doing it. Say, hey, I'll take my group, let's do life together. We had one group over at the other places that said, hey, we're going to do life together before service. But what I want you to do is learn to do life outside the church, and we're making it so simple for you. Get a book, do a two minute service, do an outline, go to help for hurts. But the choice is this, you can just come to church, and not be the church. And you'll miss out on the additional power and presence of God even during your problems. Because he says, I'll be with you day to day. It's like I can be just the closest you'll ever have to Jesus in a personal way, is when you're doing what he's called you to do.

James Greer: 27:51 Some of you just need to come today and just accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Some of you are not sure if you died today that you'd go to heaven, and man, I wouldn't put it off longer. When I give the invitation in just a minute, I'm going to pray, and you just come to the front and say man, I need to make sure I go to heaven if something happens to me. Some of you need to come and join the church. You've been coming to church for months, maybe a year, and today's the day you're going to make it. Hey, today's the day I want to make it my church. I'm going to join today. Some of you have never been biblically, publicly baptized. The death, the burial, and the resurrection. Some of you like me, you're a baptized when you're young, but you know you weren't saved because you've got worse, not better, And you say, hey, now I need to wash away the old. I need to become new. Some of you need to come and say, man, I've been trying to find my purpose on my job, my school and my finances, even my family, but I hadn't been adding the spiritual dimension and God, today I want to repent. I want to find your purpose. I want to begin to add a spiritual dimension to any and everything in my life.

James Greer: 28:59 Because then God says, Hey, you can still have problems, the disciples had problems. But man, their burdens turned into blessings, their threats turned into triumphs. Because he added a new spiritual dimension in every area of their lives.


James Greer: 29:18 Would you stand and let me pray for you? You're a great, great God. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for giving us a clear, clear, a commission on what to do. God, help us not only come to church, but help us to come and learn at church. Where we can leave, and be the church. Guide those need to accept Christ. Follow up with baptism. Join the church. I pray they'd step out right now. Those that want to take books, and go ahead and sign them out. Get as many as you want, and become doing the church outside the church. You just come right now. It's in Christs' name we pray. Amen.



Recorded in Pineville, Louisiana.