5 Effective Habits Of Being A Christian

Introduction

It’s always just a pleasure to be up here to stand before you. I appreciate the honor and privilege to come here and preach a portion of God’s word. I really thank the elders for this opportunity to be able to preach. It was quite a discussion about this, and thank you, Mike and Tony, and just I was just kind of kidding around whenever I sit down at dinner one night. But anyways, I always love coming up here preaching and hopefully you get this lesson and take it and run with it because it was a lesson that I told my wife, I said, I really don’t want to do this lesson. And she says, Why? Is it hitting your heart? And I said, Yep, it sure is.

And that’s what I usually try to base a lot of my lessons on are things that have to deal with me and me only, and of course, with everybody out there, I know a lot of preachers do that. They will get their lessons and they’ll try to base some of the things that’s with their heart according to the will of God. And at this time, I hope that you’ll get something out of this. Before I get started, most of you guys know that I teach high school, Air Force Junior RTC at Thine Oak High School over there in spring. I’ve been doing it for about seven years. I really enjoy it. And most of you guys, the ladies and gentlemen out there in the audience tonight who have been educators or are now educators, especially in high school, can pretty much say the same thing that I say.

You hear a lot of stuff from the kids. You hear everything from homeless kids to abusive parents to I mean just all kinds of stuff that I look at and I’m like, wow. I was so thankful that I had the family that I have, continue to have, and now the family that I do have. And last week I heard a couple of stories that just really hit me. our criminal justice department invited a couple of guest speakers over there. They were prisoners. And I’ll tell you what, you could hear a pin drop among a hundred and about fifty kids in a in a small room, smaller than this, and they listened to every word that these prisoners had. And as I sat there, stood there, I didn’t I couldn’t even sit down because there was no seats there.

As I stood there and listened to these gentlemen talk, I mean it brought tears to my eyes. They didn’t have it from the very beginning of their life. But one of them was in there, he was a 30-something year old man, I can’t remember the ages, but they were both in their 30s. He was in prison for seven years, and he was there for involuntary or alcohol-induced manslaughter. And it started from the very beginning of his life. He said he started smoking dope, smoking marijuana, and then it went into his first time of shooting up. He said the first time he put a needle in his arm was he was about 14 years old. And I went, wow, 14 years old, and he’s already shooting up heroin.

And it just went from there, it escalated even more. He got in and out of jail, got hooked on drugs, got hooked on alcohol, of course, and so then finally he spent a little time in jail, about a year and a half, so he kind of went through some rehabilitation, and he thought he had kicked it. So to make the long story short, I don’t want to recap everything that he did, but he one night he went out and bought three bottles of Mad Dog 2020. It’s a very powerful wine. He killed the first bottle and then drank half the bottle, and he started doing some dope and it went through a long weekend of sitting in the hotel room, just pretty much a slobber drinking and drugs.

We got behind his vehicle, and he was from Madisonville, just right up the road, and he hit a lady, an older lady that’s just walked the streets. He said he knew this lady from childhood, and he killed her. And that was the saddest thing you could ever hear. And it was his dad who actually had to come out there and put him in handcuffs because his dad was one of the sheriffs out there. So he spends he’s spending time in jail right now. He’s getting out a couple more years, and he said that he’s educated. I mean, he has an education. He finished college. And so anyways, he’s gonna try to get back and get his life back together with a lot of help and with a lot of support.

But it’s gonna be hard. And the second one that was in there, he started. This just really got me. He started fighting when he was five years old. He was in kidney garden. And the kindergarten teacher said, We can’t handle this one in school. We need to put him in an alternative school. We can’t have him in here. He’s too abusive to the other kids. And I said, Five years old? And it dawned on me. My grandson’s five years old. And that just amazed me how young he started. He didn’t have a hope. And the reason why he said he didn’t have a hope was because he didn’t have a mother and father that were there. His dad left them when he was born.

And his mother grew up or was there with alcohol, drugs, and so forth. So he went on and he kept on fighting. He got in and out of juvenile detention, alternative schools. That’s where he spent the majority of his time in alternative schools. So one night he goes out, he robs somebody and he beat somebody almost to death, aggravated assault. So he got charged 30 years for aggravated assault and aggravated battery for robbery. I said, 30 years? One guy goes in for seven years for alcohol-induced manslaughter, and the other one robs somebody or robs a house, and he’s in for 30 years. So he had the kids raise their hand. How many of you guys are 15, 16 years old? Kids raise their hand, 15 years old.

He goes, I started my jail term when you were born. And that hit home right there. He’d already been in 15 years, and I just sat there and I was like, wow. And he’s a trustee, both these guys were trustees. That’s why they were allowed to go and talk to schools. And try to put something in some of these kids that live a very rough lifestyle, something in their head that’s going to make them make choices that are right. Both of them got up there and said, I’m not lecturing all any of you guys out here. You guys are going to go through the through the run of the mill. You’re going to have choices that you have to make. And those choices are going to be yours and yours only.

And those choices are going to depend on what you do in your life and how you perceive them and what you do about it. You can run from the problems or you can stay from the problems. And as I was sitting there listening to them, I said I sat there and they weren’t, they said, I’m not lecturing you. But the choice is going to be yours. And I agree. The choice is theirs. We’re going to make many choices in our spiritual life. We’re going to make bad choices, we’re going to make good choices in our spiritual life also. And also in our world life that we live among the worldly people. We see it every day, all the time, where we have Christians who have fallen away because of bad choices.

We’ve seen Christians that have sat there at the computers and clicked the wrong website and made the bad choice. We see that they even get on the computer sometimes and they make the wrong choice by going to a dating website, and their wife is in the other room. That’s a bad choice. We see some of the teenagers that come along here and they’re they’re strong into the gospel and they’re they’re studying hard to come to services. Their parents are trying to raise them in the homes that they need to be raised in. And when they turn 18 or 19, they make a bad choice. And that’s the way it sometimes goes in our lives. We make good choices and we make bad choices. The best choice I could have made was, of course, being baptized.

Okay, let me reframe that. Marrying my wife. That was the best choice I could have made because she was a Christian and I wasn’t. I was of the world, and most of you guys know that because I’ve said it many times up here. But marrying her was the best choice I could have made. And then the next choice that I made in that order was, of course, being baptized. Becoming a Christian. We’re going to make many choices in our lives, both worldly and spiritual choices, like those on the day of Pentecost in Acts of the second chapter. Where over three, about 3,000 souls were saved at that day. Whereas the Apostle Peter and the other apostles got up there and they preached the word. And those that made that choice, they made that choice to go forward and press and serve God.

When we look at our choices, are they pleasing for you or are they pleasing to God? That’s a very interesting concept, especially when the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians, second chapter and verse 2, he says, set your mind on things not above, or set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. No matter what circumstances you and only you will make the final decision on whether or not you’re going to go spiritually or dissipate into the realms of the world. No one in this room tonight, as we all know, is immune to the worldly things. We’ve seen it time after time after time. Many as most of us sit here and continue our spiritual lives. That’s why I was reading this book. I was reading this book called Seven Six Habits of a Teen, because I’m trying to learn more about how to help teen teens.

It’s written by Sean Covey. In this book, it also has seven defective habits of being a teenager. So I kind of turned this around a little bit, and I kind of made this into a little lesson of my own to try to help me with my spiritual life and to take some of these habits of being a teen and to being a Christian. And we pretty much do these anyways. Or do we? I sat there and I looked at these things, these effective habits of being a Christian. And I sat there and looked at them. I was like, ugh, man, that kind of hit home right there. Am I really doing this in my life? I don’t know. That’s the question that you’re going to have to ask yourself.

1. Be Proactive: Take Responsibility

Are you doing this in your spiritual life to help others become stronger? So that whenever that time comes, whenever they are being confronted and going trying to go places that they shouldn’t be going to or doing things that they shouldn’t be doing, are you helping them out? We’ve got to remember, brethren, that you know what? We need to be proactive. We need to take responsibility to ourselves. We’re the remote control of our life. We take this little remote control or the remote control of the TV, which my wife never gets, but still, she has her own remote control, and that’s what she, the channel that she’s going to put herself on. She can either make it positive or she can make it negative. Let me give you an example.

Have you ever just stood around someplace like at work or something? You get up early in the morning, and all of a sudden somebody said you get to work and somebody says something to you. You’re in a pretty good mood. But they say one little thing to you that really sets you off. Such as, wow, are you having a bad hair day or what? They don’t say that to me. But you know, that really sets a lot of teenagers off. And it’s something as simple as that, are you having a bad hair day? Because your hair looks kind of cheesy today. Or your clothes. Wow, why don’t you wear a little bit baggier pants in that? Get in with the groove of things. Get in with the groove of the other people.

Or in our spiritual life. Why are you going to services on Friday night? We have a big football game tonight. Well, we’re having a gospel meeting. Of course, we don’t see very many gospel meetings on Friday nights anymore. We need to take responsibility for our actions and what we do. Because when we look at the scriptures, we’ve got to remember that did the apostles take the responsibility? Absolutely. Did the disciples back then take responsibility of their actions? Absolutely. Did Jesus take responsibility? He took responsibility enough that he hung on the cross, that he died on Calvary’s cross, and he shed his precious blood for us that we could have that hope of eternal salvation. So we need to be proactive just like the apostles and Jesus Himself.

Take responsibility. Make that day positive. Make it where you, when you wake up in the morning, we have a bad habit, Terry and I. We wake up in the morning, we watch Fox News. That’s really bad sometimes. Because of the fact, just like Jerry was speaking about political issues. Yeah, it’s kind of frustrating right now. It’s very frustrating. Because we see things on Fox News that just really set us off. It’s like, wow, what happened on this? Or what happened on that? And I get up and I’m in there sharing, trying to get ready for work, and the next thing you know, I get to school, and some kid comes, one of my cadets comes up, good morning, Sergeant. How are you doing? You know, I want to chew their head off.

But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We’re supposed to be an example. In Hebrews chapter verse 25, the Hebrew writer says, be exhort one another. How am I going to exhort those young kids or my peers by always having that bad attitude? The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy, the fourth chapter in verse 12. He says, Don’t despise your youth. Be an example. Be an example. Take responsibility. Turn that bad, that negative attitude into a positive and serve God righteously in this world. That’s a good habit to be in, too. And you know, sometimes for the last few weeks or so, been a little bit down. I’m losing my voice because of all the drilling that we’re doing out there getting ready for Veterans Day and some other parades that’s that’s coming up.

2. Begin With the End in Mind

And so it kind of wears me down. But before that happened, I’ve made it, I made a point about three or four weeks earlier that I’m gonna change, I’ve got to change my attitude. I’ve got to make it that outlook that’s going to be a little bit more positive and take responsibility, be proactive. But the other thing, another good habit of being a Christian is begin with the end in mind. Define what your goals are. You know, we all have goals. What is your goal tonight? What was your goal today? Was your goal today for to worship here, to serve God? You remember in our meeting when Terry. I was gonna say Jerry. When Terry Slack was here, he said the one. Remember that? That we serve God, that we come in here at this worship service.

Do we come here with the right mind and with the right mind that we’re gonna come here and we’re gonna serve God diligently and faithfully? Or do we come here just so that after services we can socialize, that we’re waiting for lunch, or that we’re just gonna, we’re just stuck in a really serve God with all our heart, 110%? What other kind of goals? What was your goal for class today? Did your kids were they prepared for class? Were you prepared for class? Mike did a great job talking about Isaiah. Guilty, I wasn’t done. Not Mike, Scott. They look so much alike. But Scott, prepare for class. I was preparing for my lesson. I got it this morning. I went, -oh, I forgot to do my Isaiah lesson.

So I felt lost. But those are goals that we need to set with the end in mind. What were your goals with your marriage when you married your partner? Was to serve one another, to help one another, stay strong, to support one another. Or how about your kids? Why did you have kids? To raise them up to be good Christian kids? To raise them to make sure that they’re ready for services every Sunday, every Wednesday, prepare for meetings. John could vouch, we never miss meetings. We hardly ever miss meetings. And I’ll get into that in just a little bit. But what’s your goal? What is it that you have in mind? Begin with the end in mind. But you know what? Paul’s goals were obviously to please God, preach Jesus, and the ultimate goal of heaven.

3. Put First Things First: Priorities

We can see in 2 Timothy the 4th chapter and verse 7, Paul writes, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course, finished the race, I have kept the faith. And that’s a great goal that we want to make sure that we do. That we do our, that we’re we’re we’re preparing ourselves for when that day comes that we are going to be found right with God and go to heaven. Well, you know there’s another one. Put things first. Priorities. Do the most, do the most important things first. You know, several years ago, actually a bunch of years ago, Terry and I were sitting around talking, and we were talking about priority. And the number one priority I always said was my wife. Was my wife.

My family. That was my number one priority. No matter what happened, I was going to do. I was going to serve. I was going to be pleasing to my wife. But then my Christianity came in. My number one priority has always been God. And have there been some tough times? Absolutely. Absolutely. My second priority has always been my wife and my children. My family. And it sounds kind of weird that you don’t put your family first. No, actually, I put God first. Because God is who I want to please. I want to please my wife. But you know, that’s just always the way it’s been since I tried to serve God. What are my priorities? My children. They’ve always been my priority. Always. Even to this day with my son over there at 27 years old.

And his wife and his kids. My grandkids. I want to make sure that if I see my son straying away, I’m going to make sure that I go talk to him. I’m going to make sure that I go over there and say, hey, John, you know, you’re missing services. Hey, son, you know what? How are your kids doing in class? If I see something that they may be doing wrong. Because that’s my priority. Just making sure that he’s with me in heaven. And my wife is with me in heaven. And that’s what that’s what we always need to do. What comes first in your life? Is it God? Is it school? We have a lot of teenagers here. We have a lot of us that went through Woody just finished his master’s.

My daughter-in-law’s about to finish hers. My son’s finished his bachelor’s. And I know there are others in school. Is that your priority? I’m not saying don’t do your homework. I’m not saying any of that. But when you put everything of God aside, except for coming here on Wednesday and Sunday nights and don’t go out with your brethren, don’t go to meet with one another, miss beatings. Is that your priority? Or you’re at home doing school work. That’s that was tough. That was the toughest year and a half of my life was finishing my master’s and trying to bring this together. It was really tough prioritizing. Because I know what they tell we teach our kids in high school. You need to get your homework. What’s due first?

Get those in line and get those priorities. What was Joseph’s priority in Genesis? In Genesis 39. When Potiphar’s wife went after him. She liked the way he looked. He was a nice looking guy. She wanted to lie with him. And he goes, I cannot sin against God. That was his priority was God. Today I was discussing with Terry. Did Joseph do anything wrong? I sat there, I looked through Genesis some more. I was like, I don’t know. Because his number one priority was always God. When we look at everything that he did, it was God. And we could look at the Apostle Paul. We can see his priority was God also. He preached all over. He was tormented. He was beaten. He was shipwrecked. We know the story about the Apostle Paul.

4. Synergize: Work Together to Achieve More

His number one priority was God. Put him first. Brethren, we’ve got to take this serious. Because if we don’t prioritize and put him first, this could be real hard in your life. I’m not saying everything’s going to be real easy, even if you do put them first. Because we’ve seen a lot of people go down. Because I put God first in my life. And look at me, I’m laid off work. My wife left me. My kids are unfaithful. But go back to the priority number one, be proactive. Take responsibility. Those people aren’t taking the responsibility of themselves. Next one, if you have problems, synergize. Work together to achieve more. How about those apostles? Do they work together or did they work separately? We could see in Acts the 5th chapter in verse 12.

Acts the fifth chapter in verse 12, the writer says, and though the hands of the apostles, many signs and wonders were done among the people, and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s porch, yet none of the rest dared join them, but the people esteemed them highly, and believers were increasingly added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women, so that they brought the sick out of the into the streets and laid them on the beds and couches, then at least the shadow of Peter passing by, Peter passing by might fall on some of them. Look at their priority. Look what they did. They worked together. They synergized. They worked together whenever they worked. What are we doing, brethren, to synergize ourselves? The example that the book gave me was cross your hands.

Put your hand like this and then put the other one. You’re going to make a seat. And they’re a very strong seat. I know that because I was in the medical field, and that’s how we had to carry some patients. You’re combining together, you’re chaining up, you’re linking up, you’re synergizing together, you’re working together as a team. And that’s what we’ve got to do. When things occur outside this building, we need to be together. We need to work together. We need to have Bible studies. We need to go to Bible studies. The potlets that we have outside the building, we need to be there.

I mean, it’s it’s it’s sometimes things happen, you know, and you need the brethren. You need to link together. Who do I depend on most outside of my family? I depend on you to get keep me going, to synergize me so that I could be stronger in the faith. I can’t do it alone. I’m sorry. It may be a weakness of mine, but you know what? That world is tough. The world is tough out there. When we see people out there saying, hey, Steve, how about a beer tonight? Let’s go have a beer. Or how about let’s go down to the local club? Are we setting that example? Am I going to give in on that? I was jokingly telling my wife last night. She lets you just can’t stand this whenever I do this.

Commercial to come on.

She goes, I’m not even going to address that. But you know what? Those commercials are sitting over there going, Hello. I’m very tantalizing. I’m ice cold. And I’m good. Go buy me a six-pack and have it. And that’s just one commercial. The websites that I talked about earlier. I got on there the other day, checked my check my fantasy football. I got off of there in the big picture of, are you single up there? And had about nine girls up there. You know how easy it is for a even a married man to go click and get hung up on that. That’s why we need each other. That’s why we need to work together in this. It’s so important that we do. It’s the easiest thing to do.

5. Sharpen the Saw: Renew Yourself Regularly

That computer stuff, I hardly get on there now except for at work. Except check my fantasy football. Which I need to stop checking that because I’m not any good. I’m losing all the time. But, anyways, brethren, this is very serious. And we see the apostles time after time after time. We see where Silas and Paul, when they’re in jail, they sang the songs, they worked together. And look at the result, the Philippian jailer. We see where Timothy met up with Paul and Silas so that they can go preach others to others. We see where Peter and the Peter and the other apostles got together. They work together. And do you think that they had it tough? Absolutely. Absolutely. And finally, brethren, sharpen the saw. Renew yourself regularly.

And what I mean by that is you’re here right now. You were here this morning. You’re sharpening your saw. What that’s telling me, brethren, is that you need, you’re listening here to worship God. That you’re here, you want to hear something that’s going to encourage you. That’s going to make you stronger. When you go to those meetings, I hear the elders come up here. I hear Tony come up here. I hear other men come up there and say, wasn’t that a good meeting? Wasn’t that awesome? Didn’t it rejuvenate you? Yes. It sharpened my saw. And you know, whenever we put now since we start these four-day meetings, Sunday through, Sunday through Wednesday, it’s tough. But I still remember those all the way to Friday nights. I kind of miss those five days, those six-day meetings.

Yeah, sometimes I get home, it’s like, well, I’ve got to get ready for that meeting. I’m just, I’m punished right now. I want to go home. I want to get dressed. I just want to in my lounging clothes and get in my refiner. But you know what? It’s only twice or three times a year, and I need to sharpen my saw. That’s what it’s about. You take time and spend it with your brethren. That’s really important. Again, I don’t want to just rehash what I just said. But you know what? It’s so important. It really is. How about taking time to pray? Are you resharpening your saw to pray to God daily? Two or three times a day? Teach in high school. I pray a lot.

I pray a lot. How about taking time to study regularly? Tomorrow night. Are you going to go home after you get off work, get out of school? Are you going to open your Bible up? Are you going to sharpen your saw? Are you going to prioritize that once again? Or are you just going to turn on the TV and watch Monday night football? Or watch some of the sitcoms for four or five hours. It’s your choice. These are the choices that we make. Unfortunately, some of us make the right the wrong choices. I’m guilty of them also. That’s why that’s why, whenever I was writing in this lesson, I was like, whoa, man, this is hitting hard. This is hitting very hard. In 1 Timothy, the fourth chapter, verse 16, Paul writes, Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.

Conclusion

Continue in them for in doing this. You will save both yourself and those who hear you. Brethren, we have five simple, effective habits of being a Christian. Being proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, synergize, and sharpen the saw. And they’re quite simple. Like I said, we do these things pretty much regularly. We do them pretty regularly. But you know what? If we let this go, we’re going to be like some of the other people that I know. They’re sitting at home, they’re going to bars tonight, they fall in the way. They let Satan get a hold of their heart, they pulled them down. And that’s what happens a lot of times. Because they didn’t have any type of habits that they were taught, or maybe that they even put into their life.

And that’s why I did this lesson tonight. Pull out your song books real quick. Let’s get the books out. We’re going to sing song number 104. I asked God to lead this song. Actually, I asked him to lead the other, one of the other songs about being courageous. Brethren, we’ve got to be courageous out there. We’ve got to stand up and say no. It’s a simple word, say no. And just turn around and walk off. The young gentleman who wrote that book on the seven habits of effective teens, Sean Cubby’s, he’s a graduate from Brigham Young University. He said the way he grew up without drinking and smoking and getting all the parties, he just said, I learned how to say no. And that’s what we need to do.

Sometimes when something pops up, we just need to say no. We need to have the hearts of being courageous, and we need to stand up and be courageous and just say no. This song right here, 104, take my hand, precious Lord. When my wave grows your ear, precious Lord, lay your near. When my life is almost gone, hear my cry, hear my call, hold my hand lest I fall. When the shadows appear and the night draweth near, and the day is passed and gone, at the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand. Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on. Let me stand. I am tired. I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm through the night, lead me on to the light.

Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. That last stanza there, that last verse, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. We’ve had many of those days where we just say, I’m tired. I’m worn out. I don’t know how much further I can go. And I’m sure some of you in this audience have said the same thing. You said, I just don’t know how much further I can go. I am just beat. All I want to do is just lay down and go to sleep and never wake up. But in reality, you do want to wake up. But sometimes that’s the way we feel. And a lot of brothers sometimes say, you know what? I’m tired. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fight this anymore.

I’m weak, I’m worn. But that’s when you say, Precious Lord, take my hand and lead me home. Brethren, you have a choice tonight. Somebody in this audience tonight has that choice, to have the opportunity to become a Christian and have that goal of that ultimate goal of heaven. And there’s also one in this audience tonight who may have fallen away. Who have hearts have hardened against God, and they want to make that choice. Don’t walk out of this building without making that choice. Just like those two prisoners. The last thing they told us was, I made bad choices, and it was too late. But the good thing is they’re going to get a second chance. And just like everyone here is going to have a second chance if your heart’s not right.

If you’re subject to the Lord’s invitation, we would invite you to come forward and now sing the song that was chosen.