What Kind of Pipe Are We?

Hope you all are doing well. I came in this morning, had a good chuckle. So you may remember yesterday, or actually, if you take that back further, there was discussions about how there was a curtain behind and all the drama trying to get the blue ones. Well, when we packed up last time, the blue ones disappeared into some wonderful point that will be resolved. But they're about trying to bring in the brown ones. And last night I was thinking, well, I should probably wear something that matches with a brown backdrop. So I did! Well, so if I blend in the wall and you don't know who's speaking up here, it's all right.

There is somebody up here actually speaking. He's just transparent. So, seriously, it's always a very... and an honor to speak before you. After all, all of you are giving up 50 minutes of a holy day to listen to me. I'm here to represent God, to try to convey information that helps with your spiritual growth, that helps with your journey becoming children of God. And so with that in mind, I would like to give you my word that I will not try to do my best job today. In fact, I will specifically refrain from doing my best job. You're welcome. Please turn to Proverbs 14 and verse 12. You see, my best job isn't good enough.

There are many Bible scholars who are far more educated than I am, and there are many people who are far more eloquent than I am. Proverbs 14 and verse 12 says, The way that is the best a man can do. There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

The result of my best is death. So if our best isn't good enough, then what? On this feast of Pentecost, what analogy would you use to show what God wants us to become? Today, I will show you that what God wants us to become is a pretty good piece of pipe. A conduit of pipe. That's pretty demeaning, isn't it? Turn to 2 Timothy 1 and verse 2. In one item for the sound man, I'm getting feedback from the speaker down below me.

I don't know if that's intended. I don't know if you can hear it out there, but it's constantly giving me feedback. So what is a pipe? One definition is a conduit or a channel that lets water or gas or steam flow from one place to another. So what are the characteristics of a good pipe? A pipe doesn't bring its own anything. The test of a pipe is if what you put in one end comes out the other.

Right? As people who fear God, we should ask ourselves, are we trying to rely on our best? Or are we allowing God to work through us as a good piece of pipe?

Second Timothy 2, starting in verse 1. You therefore, my son, Paul is talking to Timothy, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So Christ shared with Paul, Paul shared with Timothy, Timothy shared with faithful men who then passed it on to others. That's what God wants us to do as well. We're to be a channel through which the Holy Spirit can send the message of the Gospel to people who need it. I hope today's analogy of being a pipe will expand your understanding of ways that we can all better serve God.

Would you be surprised to know that the Bible is filled of examples of people being pretty good pieces of pipe? If you look at it that way, you'll see it everywhere. Let's start by looking at Jesus Christ's example. So, Christ, he was the creator of the universe. He was the Logos.

He became the Son of God. He's the Earth's ultimate ruler, the Prince of Peace. Surely, Jesus could rely on his own strength and his own best effort, right? John 5, verse 30, says, By myself I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me. So, Christ worked as a good piece of pipe to the will of his Father. In John 7, verse 16, Jesus stated, My teaching is not my own, but his who sent me.

Have you ever thought of your role in that way as being a good piece of pipe? Turn next to Acts 7, verse 22-30. And next look at Moses' example. Acts 7 is summarizing the life of Moses. We'll start in Acts 7, verse 22. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in word and deeds. So, for that time, Moses' best would have been really, really good.

Now, when he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brother and the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffering wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed and struck down the Egyptians. For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hands, but they did not understand.

So he thought his own interpretation of what was best would be understood by all. And the next day, he appeared to two of them as they were fighting and tried to reconcile them, saying, Men, you are brethren. Why do you wrong one another? But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you did the Egyptian yesterday?

Then, at this saying, Moses fled and became a dweller in the land of Midian, where he had two sons. And when forty years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. Now, you know this story, but it took Moses eighty years before he stopped trying to rely on his personal best. And when he did, the results were incredible. Let's now consider Paul's example. Turn to Galatians 2, verse 20. If we look at those who serve God as good pieces of pipe, then Saul would have been a stopper.

Saul's whole purpose was basically stopping up the pipe. That was his goal. And he thought he was serving God and doing so. Saul spent the first chapters of the book of Acts trying to do just that. He oversaw the death of Stephen. And in Acts 9, God finally knocked Paul down, made him blind, and humbled him. Ultimately, Paul went through amazing things. Paul ultimately would suffer being beaten, being stoned, being drowned, suffering, some kind of a serious physical ailment for life.

And yet he did this all willingly and joyfully because God had shown him how much greater he could be if he would let God be in control. How did you enter the church? Well, first of all, read Galatians 2, 20. It says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. That's what he came to understand.

So now I'll ask that question again. How did you come in the church? Did you come because you were inspired by the profound wisdom of a man? Because I can assure you, any person in the ministry will quickly vouch that it's not them. That it's the Holy Spirit working through them that God uses.

Again, I ask, what kind of a pipe are you? So how does all of this fit into the Feast of Pentecost? Please turn to Acts 2, and we'll start in verse 4. Acts 2 and verse 4. Now, you all know this story very, very well, and so I'm not going to read through the whole thing entirely. But the point to connect is it was not about Peter, and it was not about the disciples.

And that showed itself up immediately. Acts 2, starting in verse 4. The aliens are not smart enough to pull this one off. Then they made the funny connection, which still makes no sense to me. Because they thought they weren't intelligent enough to do this, they said, so they must be drunk. As if being drunk would make you do something even more intelligent. But anyway. Peter in verse 16 then gave a Bible lesson on what was prophesied to happen when the Holy Spirit flowed to him in verse 16.

But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, when days says God, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. And as a result of the spirit flowing through them, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions. And on my men servants and on my maid servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days.

And as a result, they shall prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath. Blood and fire and vapor of smoke, the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood before the coming of earth. And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. So why weren't all these people, who obviously had devotion, they were there on a holy day, why weren't they already filled with the Holy Spirit?

It was because they all had...they were blocking off their ability for God to use them.

They were stopping God's Spirit from flowing through them. Now you don't need to turn there, but you can write down Isaiah 59.2, because it clarifies how humans get clogged up. Isaiah 59.2 says, But your iniquities have separated you from God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Our iniquities, our sins, are what separate us from God. And Peter goes on to teach a very similar lesson, starting in verse 36 now. He says, Acts 2, 36, Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said to them, Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, for the unclogging of the pipe, so you can be useful. And you shall then, after repentance, after baptism, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. Society spends a lot of time recognizing those who achieve great things by relying on their own skills. We just had those who were inducted in this year's National Basketball Association Hall of Fame. Amazing athletes. Now, I think we can miss the big picture, though, by celebrating those great achievements, and we can lose sight of how much more we can do by being a pipe that God can work through. You know, what gave Samson the strength to overcome the Philistines?

Think of all Christ's miracles. Yet he freely gave credit to God the Father and the Holy Spirit working through him. And he went on to say that if he went to the Father and gave us the Spirit, we could do even greater works than if he had stayed. So that was speaking to the power God intended to be flowing through us.

So how do we initiate the Holy Spirit flowing through us?

We're all used to being able to go to a faucet and turn a handle or raise a handle, depending on what kind of faucet you have. And now in the New World, you put your hands under it and it just gives you water miraculously. Woo-hoo! It's great! Well, what happens by analogy is we can expect God's Spirit to flow through us without our cooperation.

In the old days, it was very common for people to draw water from wells.

And many of those wells had a hand pump that was attached. Now, the water didn't automatically start flowing until you first got some water and primed the pump.

Literally, to prime a pump means to pour liquid into it in order to expel the air from it and prepare it for action. So to prime it in this context means to prepare it or make it ready for a particular purpose. You needed to start with some water to get more water flowing through. In the spiritual context that we're examining, to prime the pump starts with Christ's sacrifice, with repenting and being baptized, unclogging.

We then have God fill us with His Spirit priming the pump, which is what Peter explained on Pentecost.

We're talking about the basics, right? Nothing flows from us unless something first flows into us. It's pretty basic, right? And it doesn't flow into us unless we first prime the pump. It takes more than turning on a faucet. The pipe has to be clean. The corrosion has to be taken out. Then it must be primed. Another interesting thing about pipes is you can't judge them from the outside. I mean, they're pretty ugly, frankly. They don't...well, they can be extremely unimpressive and work amazingly well, and vice versa. They can look beautiful on the outside. I could put gold around this and have something on the inside, and it would not work, right? One thing pipes and conduits all have in common is that they can get clogged up. They can get choked up or stopped up. And when this happens, they're no longer able to allow a substance to flow through well, if at all.

Does that sound in any way what...like what Christ taught about the Pharisees being whitewashed tombs? Pretty on the outside. Dead on the inside. After baptism, we must continue to live by the Spirit. We must take the Spirit we have been given and put it into practice in our lives, right? Just as it takes water to get water from a pump, it takes using the Holy Spirit, in other words, God working through us, to get more of the Spirit. Turn to Galatians 5 and verse 25. The Word of God is living. It's active. It's sharp. And God penetrates our heart through it, because the Holy Spirit makes it that way.

The Holy Spirit is what illuminates the Word of God within us, so that we can understand, that reveals those areas in our lives that need God's changing power. Galatians 5 and verse 25. And I'm going to read this in the New Living Translation. It says, Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.

Living on clog is a lifestyle. It's not a Sabbath-only thing. And the Holy Spirit must be nurtured. It must be developed. It must be encouraged. The pump must be primed daily.

We need to have this wholehearted devotion, this hunger for God, where we are studying, where we're praying, where we're interacting with each other in a way that pleases God, in a way that shows the Holy Spirit is flowing, where we live reconciled, like we heard yesterday. That is what primes the pump, that keeps the pump unclogged and keeps the Spirit flowing. And that has to happen daily. So what are some of the things that spiritually clog us up, then?

One of them, one of the key things, is the Spirit of the world.

When Jesus told the parable of the sowers, he talked about, right, seed that was spread in different ground. And it being scattered, and it's easy to look at that and think of the context of the seed, right? And we can easily apply that to say, oh, that's spread among the unbelievers, as they initially receive God's word.

Remember, when you plant something, you don't even know the seed is there until you start seeing something popping up. Suddenly you realize there's a seed there. If you were to look at the people being described during the various points where the seeds are flourishing, they would look like us, converted Christians, the pipe. And they strangle the life that God intends for us. Those are Satan's tools. And the challenge that we can easily fall prey to is that we can want to go and view what God promises and view what the world promises as being equal.

And when we see that there will only be a failed attempt to serve both God and Mammon, both God and the world. Because what we're doing is it'll come down to the best we can do with our self-focused best, which will always clog up what God's Spirit can do through us.

We can't have allegiance. That's what God is wanting to teach us. We can't have things that compete for our time or for our attention. Seek ye first, the kingdom of God. And there will always be an impediment or a clog tempting us, right? Something that still will. Not a very good example because there's nothing fancy about it, but we could call it either way. Things that seem relevant to us as physical beings but really don't matter. 2 Corinthians 16.9 is a powerful summary verse. So if you'll turn... I'm sorry, 2 Chronicles 16.9. The second commandment we all know refers to idols. And a lot of times I think it's natural to not connect with that commandment. Because the concept can seem foreign initially, but it really shouldn't.

We all face pressures from a pantheon of false values. It can be materialism, levels of leisure that we desire, sensuality, worship of self, security, so many things. We're about to jump into the story of once-righteous King Asa. And the key word being once. He was righteous until he looked to the world for strength, until he looked to the world for peace. 2 Chronicles 16.9 says, So sadly, so much of King Asa's life was serving God, was righteous. Somewhere along the way he allowed his spiritual conduit to get blocked. He's like, ooh, that's not enough to have God working through me. I need help from another nation. I need help from something else.

Anything that captures our attention, that consumes our time and our money apart from God, can become a clog in the same way. That's the lesson we're being taught. It doesn't mean it's not okay, like was mentioned in the sermon. For God to call a billionaire, but the lesson's the same, whether you have the widow's might or will you have a billion dollars? What is the object of our affection or our attention? And where does the majority of our time and focus go to?

In contrast, God is looking for those who are fully committed to him. And it has to start with us living unclogged. Right? It has to start. Each of us has to have... has to take on the responsibility to keep the pipeline open for God.

We have to keep the lifeblood of God's relationship and his connection with us flowing through us through all of our spiritual arteries. And when we do that, we can achieve amazing things. God can achieve far more than we can even imagine in our lives. But we can't do this alone. We can't do it without the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. And that's the lesson. Yet we have a personal responsibility to cooperate with God and resist sin. That's our part. And if we do, God will allow his Spirit to flow through us in ways that benefit others, that benefit his body.

Anything that can spiritually... or I should say, let me go to another point. Another point that can spiritually clog us along the way that we don't think of as often, especially when it applies to us, is twisted truths and expectations. Twisted truths and expectations. Unfortunately, this is what too many Christians do to other people, to other unbelievers or believers that detour people's faith. If you'll turn to 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 3. 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 3. We can insist that those God calls must look like us, must think like us, and must act like us. And you know what we forget along the way? We forget that when God called us, we didn't look like this, we didn't think like this, and we certainly didn't act like this. Right?

In doing this, what we do is we make roadblocks to Christ that makes it difficult for people to come to the face in Christ. 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 3. It says, Do we ever overcomplicate God's calling for others? Remember, Satan tempted Eve along the way and said, You will not surely die, but you'll have your eyes open in this secret way that God doesn't want you to know about as soon as you eat this fruit. And he clogged up the perfect first human by that.

Turn now to Acts 15 and verse 1. We're going to see a classic example of this throughout history. As you turn there, I want you to reflect on how many times, it just breaks my heart, how many times have we seen disputes over calendars, over names of God, over original language technicalities used to divide and confuse the sheep of God?

Missing what we have had in the last few sermons is that it's forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation, those are the hard things. So let's argue over technicalities along the way. In Acts 15, we see one of those potential divisive moments in the early Testament church over what should be required for a Gentile to become a convert. Acts 15.1. And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. So the claim was that all Gentiles who were being converted, their salvation was conditional on them following the law of Moses entirely, with a specific focus on the most painful part as an adult, and that would be circumcision.

And this has often been the cry of false teachers, this concept of, you will lose your salvation if you do not accept our or my special teaching, my special understanding. And what they were doing is they were causing detours to faith. So again, I want you to put context as I bring this up, because please understand that clogging up a pipe that God is working through is a very, very serious thing to God. Let me read to you and remind you what Jesus said in Mark 9, verse 22. I'm in 942. He says, We are all on this journey trying our best to be useful to God, to have His Spirit flow through us.

Jesus called us to be fishers of people, and along the way we can think that we are expected to catch clean fish.

I read a great phrase. It said, just cast out your net and let Jesus clean the fish. There's a lot of truth to that. And that's what Peter started in verse 7 when he started speaking in what's now referred to as the Council of Jerusalem. It says, And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them, Men, and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. So God, who knows the hearts, acknowledged them by giving them this Holy Spirit, just as He did to us, and made no distinction between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.

So Peter was reflected back on his example of being used reluctantly with the Gentile Cornelius. In Acts 10, he used them. Peter then goes on to say in verse 10, But the law could never do. God did to be saved. Right? No religious intellectual or moral human activity could go and earn our salvation. It has to come from God. It's the only way. And the journey is that we have to acknowledge that we can't save ourselves. Right? We have to realize how inferior we are, natural blocking agents of the Holy Spirit. We then have to ask for forgiveness, seek God, and let Him flow through us, and trust in Christ, and obey. Right? That's all of our journeys along the way. Who are we to say who can come and who cannot? It's a challenge for me, but I mean, if the Holy Spirit brings a drug addict in here, who are we to question it? If the Holy Spirit brings a prostitute in here, who are we to question it? The point is we should not make it difficult. That does not mean compromise. It does not mean condoning sin. It does mean accepting people where they are. Right? It means loving people, even if we disagree with what they are doing. It means being patient, as God was with us. As the Holy Spirit works with them, and as they grow into Christian maturity, like we are. That's part of our calling, and that's what was being pointed out in verse 19. Therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we... Who are... Notice the key words... Who are turning to God? But that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood. It's important that we find a way to remove as many obstacles as possible so that people can come to Christ.

And then allow the Holy Spirit to do what it does best without getting in the way, by being useful to it. To help other people, to bring more to the family of Christ. And we see that beautifully stated in verse 28. It says, So you may say, okay, Dan, I'm not perfect, but I do strive to be a clean pipe for God to work through. You may say, I don't detour people's faith by twisting the truth. I strive to rely on God. You might say, I don't usually get swayed by the spirit of the world. And if so, that's great. That's what we're supposed to be striving toward. It's the way it's supposed to be. Because we owe that to Christ for giving his life for us when we didn't deserve it. Christ's sacrifice deserves us giving everything we have, and not just a few cursory moments. Not just these moments of spirituality, and then we can go back to serving ourselves. The kind of sacrifice that God wants demands our utter obedience, our total worship. Turn to Matthew 16 and verse 24. Matthew 16 and verse 24. We all know store exchange policies, right? It's something that's become traditional. I actually don't know if I remember it nearly as much when I was born in the early years, but now it's, boy, it's as common as it can be. This concept of you take something back to the store, and you either get your money back, you get a replacement, or you get something you want instead. Well, God has an exchange policy. You give him something, and he exchanges it for something that's going to be of greater value. We may not always get the value at first, because we look through physical eyes, but that's the policy. And God really doesn't need what we offer to him, right? But God wants us to be willing to participate in our own blessings and give things up in response. Matthew 16 and verse 24. Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Look at that word, if anyone. That means every person who claims the mantle of Christianity and being a disciple must fully deny themselves. Now, I think we sometimes exempt ourselves from moments like this in Scripture. And that knee-jerk reaction is, yeah, he's talking about you. You hear it. But he means us. He means me. He means you. Every person who has ever existed, if any person wants to be a disciple, then there is work to do. Disciple comes from the same root word as discipline. And at the core, the words are really synonymous. Christ's disciples have to do something in order to be a follower, and the thing we must do is live disciplined. And surrender ourselves to God. Turn now to Philippians 3 verses 8 through 11. Philippians 3, 8 through 11.

What we are before we start isn't what we are going to be at the end.

It's not where we're intended to stay. We're to be molded into something greater than we are now.

Sure, I hope we all grew since we've been baptized. But it's a process. Philippians 3 and verse 8.

We naturally think that way. We don't know what this phrase refers to. Some of us are not aware of what we're doing. We're not aware of what we're doing. We're not aware of what we're doing. We're not aware of what we're doing. We don't know what this phrase refers to. Suffering the loss of all things, we don't understand what that means when we're kids. And I would argue, even if back then we were told all the different things that we would have to live through in our lives, we might say, oh, it's not worth it. When Jesus said that we have to deny ourselves, He's telling us that we need to make sacrifices of our time, of our energy, in order to be considered His followers. And we will learn over time how much more we can do if we get ourselves out of the way. And we're useful to Him. So what are you not willing to give up?

Is there anything too much for you to give up to inherit the Kingdom of God? Ask it a third way. If you were to ask Christ what one thing you needed to change, what would He say?

Tough questions.

If we knew Christ Jesus, or we know Him only in name, we really have never altered our life. We are not being useful to Him. Sometimes we forget and we act as if we're not called to change. And that is at the end the core of our calling. And one day, Christ may ask us to choose to give up that one thing we really don't want to give up. To find out what matters most. We have to deny ourselves and be willing to sacrifice if we expect to follow and if we expect to lead, to have the pump primed so He can work through us. Think about Abraham being told to sacrifice His Son. I didn't do that justice. Think of Abraham being told to take His only Son. The Son He waited 25 years on. The Son that was promised through His descendants to spread out like the sands of the sea.

We all replace Jesus with something in our lives at points. It might change what we put in front of it day by day. But whatever you have replaced Him with will not bring life.

It will only bring spiritual death. And when we take our eyes off Christ, when we start thinking and focusing on Myself, on ourselves, are we willing to sacrifice to God so that our obedience can be made clear to Him? And as you look at the example like Abraham, we need to be willing to sacrifice the most coveted thing to God and be content with His plan, His provisions. But like Isaac, we may not have to give it up. Realize that. We may not have to give it up. But we must be willing to give it up. Then God will reward us with something greater. Remember, in the analogy of Abraham, there was a ram that was hidden. That was hidden in the thickets that sacrificed His Son.

God is there in the thickets of our lives. We may not see Him. We don't understand all that He can do through us if we get rid of what's clogging us. But we have to focus and let Him take care of us. Because God says, I will be just amazingly blessed. But we have to choose to remove parts of ourselves. Ourselfish parts. I think Christianity today has been very, very duped into thinking that God's blessings are only about them. And what happens is when we take in all that God blesses us with, but then we stop up the analogy I would give you there is the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is this fascinating body of water. It's replenished by the Jordan. It's replenished by other rivers with water flowing down from the mountains. It is one of the most mineral-rich places on earth. The problem is that it is always absorbing and bringing in these minerals, and there is no natural outlet. So it cannot support life. Nothing lives in it. Animals won't come over to drink of the water of it. God will not pour into a person so that they can only be self-focused. One of the things I was reflecting on yesterday is I fear for all of us that what COVID has done to us as believers is God is comfortable when we started attending church all the time at home in our whatever you were wearing in your slippers, in your casual relaxed area, and doing and serving in the way that was comfortable to you.

Because at the end of the day, God's blessings are not about us, but about Him blessing us so that we can become His hands that touch other people, that bless other people, that can be used as instruments of His grace to other people. That requires constantly realizing we need this removed and we need to be together in serving others. We need to be used by God. So we have spent time, we've been talking about what we should not do as conduits because it clogs us. What should we do if we're a conduit open to God to use? One area that's simple in concept, but it takes being open to God is to be an example. We so often like to say, rather than to, don't we? It's human nature. Unclog servants of God and inspire others by their lifestyles. Living that way should be effective, not only in the church, but in the world around us. Look at Christ's example. Christ set the stage by meeting with people and being a blessing to those who He knew were not being called in that lifetime. We, if we're living like a clear pipe to God, may be the only Bible some people ever read. And they will not be called in this lifetime. But we are helping in being an example to where they will ultimately be. Another thing unclog people do is to encourage and identify others with the hope that lies within them. You've heard that phrase many times. But link it to this concept of why you're encouraging people. Get that out. Be a useful tool. We should edify others around us to live unclogged by pointing to God's promises, by pointing to being part of God's spiritual family. The Bible refers to God as love. Well, as a pipe, if we're letting Him work through us, we should exemplify love and how we are interacting with everybody around us. God says that people in need will be placed in our path so that God can glorify them through us. That's what will happen if we are truly being useful to God. How much do we allow God to work through us? Because we exhibit God by living the commandments, which goes to what we heard yesterday. That's being reconciled. Loving God, loving neighbor, being reconciled to others. Are we reconciled with all those around us? Proverbs tells us that the person who gives to those in need will not lack, but those who withhold will be cursed. If you only worry about number one, we're neglecting God's purpose for us. Proverbs also says the person who gives lends to the Lord and he will repay. When we start getting that life and the purpose that we have here in existence is not about us, it's easier to let go of all those things that clog us.

We realize that it doesn't matter if we miss out in this life because it's far greater what's coming. I should readily clarify that putting our trust in God, having Him flow through us, doesn't mean that our strengths don't matter. To use the conduit analogy, we're all going to be different as far as the thickness about the abilities. When we surrender ourselves to God, our abilities are even more powerful to be used in their own special unique ways. But when we're like the Dead Sea, then we're a dead end to God. We're just absorbing, I'll detrich my way, I'll believe my way, I'll do things according to my terms. God will be okay with it. It's missing the whole point of what God calls us to. Ultimately, as a spiritual family of God, we'll be teachers, we'll be rulers in the kingdom of God for eternity, right? Will we then finally get the chance to teach our own things? No.

The government of God will be this huge pipe system with God's Spirit flowing through and filling everybody with love and outgoing concern. Most likely, you remember an old commercial that you heard years ago that showed a person telling two friends, who then told two friends. And so on, and so on, and so on, and all these boxes started appearing on the TV. If we allow ourselves to truly be used by God, God will be able to use us as an effective pipe to influence two people. And so on, and so on, and so on. So the question I leave you with is, what kind of a pipe are you? Are you living unclocked?