"The Dangers of Man's Way" -Johnny Asevedo

Pastor Johnny shares a word on man being led by his own way vs the Lords. Enjoy!

Transcript

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Welcome to the Destiny Church and Throne podcast. We pray this stirs you into a deeper relationship with Jesus and equips you to live a heaven-on-earth lifestyle daily. Enjoy. I love thinking about his goodness. Um man, so good. We're gonna get these lights. Can you get those baby jewels? Baby jewels. Um thank you, Lord. Man. Alright, well, I love you guys. You guys are all amazing. Man, I'm just so thankful for the presence of the Lord. I just I just feel it in my belly right now so strongly. So strongly. Um I just want to share this. It's just been burning in my heart. Um I I'm gonna read from my notes because I was just taking notes with the Holy Spirit, and um usually I just have about like three lines, but today I got some notes that I just sat with the Lord and got. But a lot of it has just been from this place of over this past month and a few, a little longer, uh what God has just kind of really been burning in my heart. And uh when I woke up this morning, it's exactly what the Lord had on my heart to share. Uh and he just said, you know, he put it on my heart. And and and and I believe that this is going to equip so many people in the room. Um, I believe it's gonna be a word that is not just convicting, but a word that's also going to encourage us in our walk with Jesus. The other day, um I was sitting and and I think I don't remember where I was driving to, but I was just talking with the Lord, and and I asked the question to the Lord. I said, Man, why do so many people, especially this day and age, why do so many people like not believe? Why are they unbelievers? Right? Why are there so many people who don't believe in Jesus? And and as I began to talk with the Lord, I heard the Holy Spirit say, one of the reasons why people don't believe is because they see the way Christians live. They see the way Christians live. Did anybody park in that parking lot right there? That driveway? Okay, cool. Sometimes we do, and I was like, are they honking to move the car? Um so anyway, if you're listening online, that's what just happened. Somebody's honking outside. Um but but uh but I sat with the Lord and I thought that. Now I want you to think about that for a second. I want you to really think like one of the reasons why I believe, and you may have been at one point, I can testify. I was an atheist at one point, I didn't believe, and I remember seeing the way believers acted, the things they said, the things they did. I remember going to parties, breaking out lines with people who are like, man, I gotta wake up early for church tomorrow. I'm like, uh, what? Like, like, I'm being serious. Like, I remember going to parties and getting hammered with people who were like, man, I gotta wake up early and go to church tomorrow. And that's great. That's great that they went to church. We could say that. Well, at least they went to church. Come on. And I was like, look at the way they live, look at the way believers, look at the way a Christian lives. They're judging this person, they're gossiping this person. And I started like thinking about all these different things. And so I thought, like, man, like, what if the church turned the tables on that with an understanding of everyday life of what Christ was calling us into and daily living with him, not doing it our own self. Because a lot of times what you have in those moments is you have people who, yes, they love Jesus, yes, they're Christians, but they're choosing to live their life the way they want to. Okay? We are met in life. This is the foundation of free will. We're met in life with choices. I did not have to come here this morning. I could have texted David and been like, I'm gonna stay in bed, drink coffee, and play Madden today. I could have done that. Right? Paula, you could have woke up this morning and been like, you know what? I'm gonna drink coffee on my porch. I'm not going to church. Savannah, you could have been like, you know what I'm doing? I'm going here today. I'm going to go to the mall. We all could have had a choice this morning in our foundation of free will to do whatever we wanted to do this morning. This is true. Amen? We are all, every day of our lives, met with choices. And I believe what we see in the church many times is people that say, Yes, I'm a Christian, but their choices don't reflect that. Their decisions, the things they're in agreement with, don't reflect that. So how do we turn the tide on those things? How do we see that stuff switched around? It's very simple. We just do what God tells us to do daily. You can ask my wife. I am a firm believer in living simple with him. Okay? We don't go around and talk about every night, how can we get Destiny Church bigger? How can we attract more people? How can we get bigger offerings, right? Like, no, no, no, no. It's like, let's be simple, love him, and love the people in front of us. Let's abstain from sin. Let's abstain from all these worldly things. Let's live pure and let's let's be individuals who our children can look at and say, yes, my mother and father were men and women of God. Because they didn't go home and trash church members. And they didn't go home and do this and X, Y, and Z and all these. They didn't make decisions and choices that look contrary to what God calls a Christian to be. You know, atheists and believers don't care about apostles and prophets and evangelists and preachers and teachers. They don't care. They don't care about that stuff. They don't care about how many people are in church services. We have this many people. There's more people at every Taylor Swift concert than there is in any megachurch on Sundays. Atheists don't care about that kind of stuff. But church people do. Church people are more concerned with what they see in front of you. I have talked to pastors who've said their churches were on the brink of closure because they only had 150 people. I was like, what? What does that even mean? All you need is one, all you need is two, right? Like, like church people, like we have this, and so what happens is because we don't know or follow, not that we don't know, but because we don't choose to follow, we don't bear the fruit of it. We've been talking a lot about that this month. And I get I just remember being at those parties being like, how is this person about to go to church? Like, what that doesn't make any sense. Just listen to me on this, guys. I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna go I'm gonna go for something here. I'm gonna tie some things up. God's plan for your life does not always involve the comfortable things and the pleasurable things. Okay, I'm gonna read a statistic to you. I got this statistic because I'm all about looking up some statistics and things. This is from a university, which is like a is a very top university. It's called the University College in London. Found that it takes an average, and I'm gonna go somewhere with this, just follow me, just follow me, just follow me. It takes an average of 66 days for new behavior to become automatic. Most people quit long before that point because behavior feels difficult and unfamiliar. How many times in your life have you gone away from the plan of God because it seemed right for you to do it differently than what he's saying to do? Because what he calls you into is not always comfortable. Proverbs tells us there is a way that seems right to a man, but that way only leads to death. You see, we can say, I love you, Jesus, I'm a believer, but I'm going to keep choosing to do what I think is right. That is not the way we're called to live this life of Christianity. You can live that life, but that's not a life of Christianity. That's a new age doctrine you yourself have made so that you can say, Yes, I believe in Jesus, but I'm going to do everything else that I want to do myself. And it doesn't work like that. It does not work like that. And it says there is a way that seems right to a man, but that way only sees see these these choices, these things that we have, anything outside of God's will for your life is going to be you living in sin. That's right. There's the S word. And it's not just looking at porn, right? Sometimes we think just sin is sexual stuff, right? Oh, sin. Sin can be like the Lord, sin can be the Lord saying, I want you to set your alarm clock for 6 a.m. Wake up, sacrifice sleep, and come be with me. And we say, no, that's sin. For real. It's it's missing the mark. It's anything done outside of the will of God. But sin should always, let me say this as a disclosure. Sin does not make God like, when you mess up, okay? Sin actually, what the reasoning for it as you sit close to him is to push you back to the father. How many had with your kids, when you spanked them, they ran to you. Right? Like, like my kids, like back back with my mom and my dad, like I was very scared of my dad, so that didn't happen a lot. But but I've but with my children, when they get spankings, they would run to the father. They would run to mom. They would run right in there crying. I just want to say that. If you mess up, we have an advocate, his name is Jesus. Don't beat yourself up if you mess up. This is this is a sidebar. That sin that you committed, that mess up, that failure, that thing outside of God's will, there is mercy, there is fresh mercy for you to say, Jesus, forgive me and cleanse me of that way, what I did in that thought process. And you can run back to him. Okay? Can I just say that? That's available, that's there. You don't sin, and he's like, get out of here, never again. Doesn't work like that. Okay? That's why we have Jesus. So just want to lay that down there for each and every one of us. Proverbs 21:30 says, No human wisdom or understanding or plan can stand against the Lord. You ever been going through something and you're like, yes, Jesus, I love you, but you try to figure out all by yourself and you're in a bigger mess than you were at the very beginning. Amen? Man, Savannah? All right, cool. Just us two. You guys gotta help me out then when that when that mess happens. But like human nature. When things get tough, we want to give up or run away. That's just human nature. That's why you oftentimes we'll hear in psychology and everything else, they talk about the fight or flight response, right? They talk about this because when things get hairy, when things are in a situation they're like, oh my goodness, we want to either fight or run. We either want to give up or we want to run away. Like we want to make it easier for ourselves. How many know what I'm talking about? When you're in the toughest of tough situations, you want to try to make it easier for yourself. And the way that you think you can make it easier for yourself is by controlling it. Amen? And we think that when we can control this thing, that we now have made it easier for ourselves. But really, it's the exact opposite, because there's a way that seems right to a man, but that way only leads to death. You see, we must be led by the Spirit of God in all the things that we do. We cannot say I'm led by the Spirit of God and then want to do the things that are making me comfortable, that make me feel good, that make me content, that make it pleasurable. It doesn't work like that. 2 Corinthians says this because we want to give up when things are hard. And we want to bear the fruit of the things of the Spirit, but our lives and our human nature and our flesh tell us a whole different thing. Okay? So just follow me on this. 2 Corinthians says this. I'll praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our merciful Father, and the source of all comfort. Amen. He comforts us in all of our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we'll be able to give them the same exact comfort God has given us. Hmm, where's the writer of Corinthians getting this from? The more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ. And that's absolutely amazing. Watch this. Even when we are weighed down with troubles, it's for your comfort and your salvation. Your troubles could be for my comfort and my salvation, my more understanding of who he is. The stuff you've gone through is not just for you, bro. The stuff you've gone through is for a testimony for those out there for comfort in their salvation. And then it doesn't stop there. He says, For we ourselves are comforted and we will certainly comfort you. We are confident that as you share in our sufferings, we'll also share in the comfort God gives us. Man, that's amazing. Suffering and comfort linked together. No, who would have ever thought that? But when we start suffering, we got to take control. We start to do something that's contrary to the will of God, and we try to mask it with wisdom with, well, God's telling me to do this. No, he's not. That's not even in his scripture. That's not even in his word. That's not even in his nature. He says, We think that you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in a province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought that we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die, but as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God who raises the dead. There's a way that seems right to a man, but that way only leads to death. When you are in a battle, when you are in a trial, where you are in something that is a crushing moment for you, the first thing you want to try to do is control the situation. Right? Oh, the funds are low, or this is low. I can't tell you. We have churches, and I'm not bashing church, but I want to give you a little bit of glimpse sometimes into church culture. Oh, the funds are low, do a fundraiser. Just like that. Did you fast for funds? Right? Like, like, what did you do outside of this immediate thing? And we go back to doing what we know to do. Why? Because we want to try to control a situation. We think that removing ourselves from a trial, we think that running away from a trial is somehow gonna fix it when the scripture tells us the exact opposite. The scripture tells us we actually expected to die with what we're being crushed with. Well, you're telling me that God wasn't going to rescue you? No, no, no. We expected to die. He says, but but but that moment of our lives caused us to stop relying on ourselves and putting trust in Him. Beloved, everything that you will go through is for Him. If you call yourself a believer. And this is where there is a disconnect oftentimes in the church. Believers start to act differently. They don't bear the fruit of the kingdom. They bear the fruit of church, they don't bear the fruit of the kingdom. And in not bearing fruit of the kingdom, you're not able to comfort others. You're not able to bring them into salvation.

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There's nothing that you start to do it yourself, and that way only leads to death. You guys follow me on this. I'm almost done. I feel that a sign that you don't trust or know God's word for you is when anytime it gets hard, you try to run away. But Romans 8 tells us that those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about these things that please the Spirit. It goes on to tell us right after that. Listen to this. Your flesh does not want to do the things God wants to do. You cannot put your flesh together with your spirit and think that you are going to do and do the things and walk in obedience to what God is calling you to do. You will find yourself saying, Well, yes, I love God, but I'm going to do things like this. And that does not work. You're burying yourself deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper because the flesh is always at war with the spirit and with the word of God. Thank you, Lord. The Bible tells us you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. So you're without excuse to have to do things outside of the will of God. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. Beloved, He's calling you to do things the way that He's calling you to do. We can't put ourselves in a position to where we are cherry-picking Christianity to fit our bubble. There's a lot of new age doctrines that are like that, and it's a different gospel. It's a completely different gospel. It's not what he's giving us. I stand here speaking this word to each and every one of you with confidence because I know who I once was and what Jesus did in my heart. He saved me, he set me free, he rescued me from my sinful nature. I can lay my head down at night at peace because I know who he is, and there's nothing hidden that's drawing me away. I can be in peace when the waters get rough, when the when the waves start crashing at the house, when the when the bank accounts are in the negatives, all these different things. I can be at peace, not because I've got it all figured out, but because I choose to walk in his plan. I tried to do things my way, beloved. I need to get this put on a t-shirt. I tried to do it Johnny's way. That way only left me in a ditch covered in my own vomit. That was Johnny's way. Glory to the Lamb. John 12, 49, and I'm gonna close here with this. Jesus says, I don't speak of my own authority, but the Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. We can't do it our own way. Jesus says in John 5, I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. Hear that. Jesus himself, the Son can do nothing by himself. Nothing. Not some things, not a few things, nothing. Meaning, in your nature as a believer, you cannot say, Yes, God, I'll do anything you want me to do, and then do something totally contrary to what he's calling you to do and live a life like that, and then cherry-pick things out of Christianity in the Word of God to fit your lifestyle of sin. It doesn't work like that. Amen? We can't do that. That's a tough word, I know, but it's it's it's something we are held to. We do not choose the standard of Christianity. If you're wanting to choose the standards of Christianity and make the standards of that, you are now creating your own belief system that is contrary to what we read in the gospel. You start to put yourself as your own savior. There's only one that's on the cross that died once and for all. You can't go to the cross and die for yourself. There is only but one. And the moment that you try to make yourself savior, you are now walking in contrary to the gospel that we read about in Scripture. 1 Peter 4 12. Do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange things have happened to you. So when you get into a trial, don't be like, why is this happening, God? It's it's automatic. It's an automatic response. Been there, done that, still there. Why is this happening? But but but don't find it in any way strange that it's happening to you. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is revealed, you might also be glad with exceeding joy. If you're in a trial at the work of your own hands, don't blame God. Okay? If you opened the door and walked through it, and there's 10,000 spiders and everything else, and scorpions and snakes in that room, don't blame God for why you're in that situation of the door that you opened and that you yourself walked into. Hear me. But when you're walking in accordance to the plan and the will of God, and you're met in that room, you have the authority to trample over those things. Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference? If the door is open and I walk through because I made it, that's on me, that's sin. I need to repent, I need the deliverance, the salvation, whatever it may be in that moment for that. I need him to rescue me. But if I'm in those trial moments because I'm being obedient, walking with him, rejoice. Rejoice that you are partaking in the sufferings of Christ when you're walking hand in hand with him. Thank you, Lord. Matthew 26, 38, Jesus said, My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death, and he tells his disciples to stay here and watch with me. And then he goes on right before the crucifixion, and he says, My Father, if it's possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. But nevertheless, let your will be done. James 4 goes on to talk to us about being in a place of walking and living out the scripture. And I'm gonna read this last piece to you as we close out. James 4, he says this. You adulterers, don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy with God? What does the scripture say? It says, we are transformed not to look like the world by the renewing of our mind. Okay, so understand that. He says, if you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God, do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate, that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. And the scriptures say God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So humble yourselves before God, resist the devil, and he will flee. Come close to God and he will come close to you. In this walk, we cannot have God and then have whatever the heck we want to do on a daily basis outside of relationship with Him. That's very tough. That kind of fruit will prove to the world that we are not with Him and that we are not in that sheepfold. Right? Imagine telling someone, I love I love Jesus, Jesus loves you, and then the next breath you're cussing them out because they didn't do what you wanted them to do. Good luck. You know what I'm saying? Good luck. I told you guys my story many years ago, many years ago. The issues I had with customer service. On the phone, and I was like, I would get in arguments and they're not understanding. And then the Lord said, You just stop, you need to repent because what What if that person came through your door? And that was since then, it was like that was it. Repentance, my heart changed and all that. Right? Even though this person, I didn't know them, they didn't know me, God was still in that moment judging the way that I was talking to that person that was nations away on a telephone about my internet. God was still looking at my heart and saying, You need to fix that. Because what if that person who you're getting irate with, angry with, you're not loving with, you're not slow with, you're not being patient with, what if they walked through your door and they were in need of salvation? You were the guy on the phone that was yelling at me because I couldn't get A, B, and C done. Right? This is a big picture stuff, guys. We have you you you have a free will. You can do whatever you want to do. You can do whatever you want to do. This this is truth. Do whatever you want to do. Why not make the choice to partner with the things of the Spirit? It's gonna be more profitable now and forevermore. Bear the fruit of obedience through understanding the plans of God for your life and not running away because things get hard. I know people that have ran from things of God because things were difficult. And when you meet them with the thought of, have you tried everything? Well, no. What did that research say? Most of the time, something new or some new habit takes 66 days before we're able to. There's a process in what you're doing with the Lord. Don't give up so easily. If it gets hard, go to the scripture. Know what he's saying. Are you in a place of suffering with him, or are you living in a place that you yourself open the door for? If so, repent and allow him to cleanse you. Amen? Stand with me. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Um, I just want to bear fruit of what I talk about, guys. I don't want to talk about being a Christian and not look like one, not sound like one, not smell like one, not love like one. I don't want to be in that place. I don't want to be in that position. Smell a Christian, burning flesh. I don't want to just talk about church. I don't want to just come on Sundays and never see him again and never encounter him again. I don't want my bedroom to be the emptiest place or the least anointed place in my life. I don't want to just show up on Sundays, hands raised, and yes, glory to God, hallelujah. Everything's great. When somebody asks me how I'm doing, I don't want to just put on a mask as to feel a certain kind of way when God's like, why are you being so plastic with everybody around you? I want to use my free will to be obedient to Jesus. I want to show that I love him. Jesus says, if you love me, you'll be obedient. You'll follow my commands. I want to walk in accordance with his word and his will. I don't want to say, yes, I love Jesus, and then develop my own lifestyle and do whatever I want to do, and then you say, Yeah, yeah, I love Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His grace is good. I don't want to, I don't want to uh I don't want to hurt or abuse that grace because most of the time the plans of God in our life, they're aborted, they're given up on because things get hard and we try to do it ourselves. It's a dangerous place to be. So let's hold our hands out and receive right now. Thank you, Jesus. As a prophetic act, Lord, we just receive in the name of Jesus. We just receive a fresh understanding of your love, your mercy, and your grace for us. Lord, we receive that understanding that we can come to you. That no matter where we are, how far we ran, the worst of the worst things that we ever did in our entire lives, we can still come to you, Jesus. Lord, that our plans only lead to death. Thank you, Jesus. That you make a way, you have made a way for us to come close every day of our life, that you have made a way for us to walk with you. Thank you, Jesus. We cannot say that we love you and then live contrary to the scripture or contrary to your will and start to just make things up in order to make our flesh feel better. May we never use your name in vain that way. May we never say this is what God is telling me to do, and it's contrary to his word. The plans of God will always line up with the word of God. Thank you, Lord. So we just say thank you. We we receive that fresh revelation, Lord. Keep us in that place, keep us in that place, keep us in that place, and let us bear the fruit for other believers to encounter comfort and that salvation in Jesus' name. I love you guys. You're amazing. Chew on this word, it'll be online. Um Red Bucket back there.