God wants to abide in our attitudes, and to help explain that, I'd like you to open in your Bibles to the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. Okay, Ezekiel. If you don't know where that is, you go right to the middle and open it, where we were in the Psalms, and go to the right, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel. There it is. 48 chapters and you should be able to to find that there to the right. We're gonna be in the 36th chapter because God expects fruit in the life of his children and that fruit comes from a good heart. And that good heart has been made good by God in the process that we call the new birth. Being born again. Being saved. being converted, accepting the Lord. There are a lot of different terms for it. But that is when God gives us a good heart. You see, all of us were born fruit bearers. I mean, I was born bearing fruit in my life. The problem was the fruit that I was producing was bad. That's what God says. We are from the womb. bearing bad fruit. I mean, I didn't have to teach myself to be selfish. That's how I came into this world. And by the way, I didn't have to teach my children how to be selfish. And no one taught you either. You were born that way. All of us want our own way. We all produce bad fruit from the beginning. God wants to change us from being a bad tree bearing bad fruit into being a good tree that produces the fruit that he wants. That process of what God is seeking in your life and mine is the fruit that he wants to bring about in our life of our hearts being changed. That's the greatest work God does. He changes us from the bad to the good heart. How does he do that? Well, 2600 years ago, God explained how we get the good heart that bears the fruit he's looking for in Ezekiel 36. And if you'll look and follow along with me, starting in verse 26 and continuing through verse 27, you're going to see the process. Let me just read this to you and explain between the lines. Okay, look at verse 26. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. Now that's where the good heart comes from. People aren't born with good hearts. God doesn't look around and say, oh, there's one of those good hearted ones, I'm going to work with them, and oh, I see another good hearted one. We all have bad hearts. But God says, this is my offer for those who come to me, those who call out to me, those who seek me will find me, and this is what I'll do. I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. That means anyone can have a good heart. Anyone can have that good heart that bears the fruit God wants. It doesn't stop there. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. That's the process of God removing the hard heart, the crowded heart, the shallow heart. Remember Jesus was talking about that? He said, the ones that won't receive the seed of my word, they have the hard heart, they have the shallow heart, they have the crowded heart. God says, I take care of that. I take the heart of stone. The resistant, impervious, impermeable, hard heart. I take that out of you. And I replace it with, look what it says in verse 26, a heart of flesh. That's a soft, good heart that accepts the Word. Now look at verse 27. How do we get this fruit going in our life? I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes. Then God gives us the power of His Spirit so we can do what He expects. That's why this book is written as it's written. It is filled with imperatives. Imperatives or commands are things you and I are responsible for. But God doesn't leave us all on our own to do it. He moves in. His Spirit lives within us and energizes us to live His life on earth. And that's explained in verse 27. I'll put my Spirit within you. I'll cause you to walk in my statutes. I've given you the power of my Spirit so you can do what I expect you to do. You can produce this good fruit. You can yield your time to me. You can yield your treasures to me. You can have a total personality change by your attitude becoming the attitude of Christ. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. He invites us to allow him to work and commands us to let his spirit bear his fruit in our lives. The end of verse 27 and you will keep my judgments and do them." That's our responsibility, to respond in the fruitfulness that God expects from us. And the fruitfulness encompasses all of our life, our time, our treasures, our attitudes, and our actions. Now, there is no heart that God can't change. It's not a lack of His power to change the heart. It's a lack of our willingness to allow Him to. And so if you think about it, there's no life, there's no past, there's no sin, there's no stain, there are no failures, and there are no habits that God is unable to change, if you'll allow Him to. Do you have some lingering part of your life that you wish wasn't there? Then you want it to be there, because God would change it the instant you truly gave it to Him. See, that's what this life's all about. We have all kinds of reformation institutions around this world where people are trying to be changed and they send them off and they hope that they'll do something with them and they do various therapies and they give them various drugs and they give them various treatments and the people basically come back like they were. Because only God can change the old, hard, crowded, shallow, stony heart out by removal and give us a new heart. The question is, are you letting the Lord change you? Are you responding? Is Jesus Christ controlling you more each day? That's the evidence of salvation. He is conquering and taking over more of our lives. We have all of Him. He doesn't have all of us. The evidence of a believer is we're aware of that constant conflict going on, as we, as Paul gives his testimony in Romans 7, as we don't want to do the things we used to do, and we do want to do the things of God, and yet there's that tension within us, and that awareness that we want to please God, and every time we go our own way, we don't please Him, and we feel His Spirit being grieved. That's one of the greatest evidences, that struggle, that we are saved. Well, I wonder, can God really change any heart? You know, I just said that. I said there's no heart, there's no life, there's no stain, there's no past that God can't change. But you think, oh, that's easy for you to say. You know, you grew up in this and you've always gone to the church and all this stuff. Well, let me just take a page from history because there's one generation of people, 21 years, that is more documented than any other work of God in any generation of people on the planet of the earth and it was recently, that missiologists documented the moving of God in eight tribes of people on this planet. And those people, prior to the incident I'm going to describe to you, were living the way they had lived for generations, for literally hundreds of years. And I mean they were really into it, into bearing bad fruit. They were experts at it. And one single man, and later his wife joined him, came and penetrated those eight tribes, actually built a house among them, and lived in their sight for 21 years. And the whole time documented what happened in that little, little few square miles of this planet. And for those 21 years, the simple proclamation of the truth of God completely changed those people. Now, their testimony actually is written down. If you want to turn your Bibles to Galatians chapter 5 with me, okay? That's the other end of your Bible. You're in Ezekiel. Go to the conclusion, to the right, to Galatians chapter 5, okay? and in just a moment I'm gonna start reading in verse 19 because one of my favorite illustrations of what God wants to do is the documented change that took place in one generation of people. Now this event took place from the years 1910 to 1931. Those are the 21 years that are on record of what happened. To understand what God can do when he changes a heart look at the testimony of these eight tribes of people in Galatians 5 and verse 19 and as I read these verses I want to introduce to you the eight tribes of Belgian Congolese, this is an old country in 1910, the Belgian Congo. So if you just looked at a map of Africa and you just went to the bullseye, the very center of Africa, that was the Belgian Congo in 1910. The colonial era when all the nations of Europe had their colonial interests. And Belgium had conquered, old King Leopold had gotten the very heart of Africa and all the natural resources, and they were basically exporting them. But as one of the ships went up those rivers to get the cargo of goods that the Belgians were exporting out of the Belgian Congo, a young British athlete rode the ship. and jumped off in Mbambi, this little town, their capital at that time, and walked inland to where the eight tribes of the Pygmies, what we would call today Pygmies, short, naked cannibals is what they were. And he actually, I mean he stood almost waist up, taller than many of them. And he moved there and built a hut. And when he got it built, he sent a letter to England and his wife came and moved with him in 1911. Let me read to you. what this man testifies this generation was like. Look at Galatians chapter 5 and verse 19 because this is the biography of these eight tribes written by the Apostle Paul. Now the works of the flesh are evident. This is how we were born. These are the seeds that are in our lives and if we allow them to germinate these are all the different crops our flesh can produce. God says this is what People are born to be, in this world, apart from my intervention, apart from the new heart, apart from me taking out the stony heart, and me changing them from the inside, this is what they'll be. And this is what those people were. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness. Those first four. How are they doing in that department? Well, these headhunting tribes constantly stole women from one another, violated them, and treated them as their own personal livestock, and had done that adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and lewdness for generations. I mean, any female found was fair game to be brought into the barn of these cannibals. And they would, they would keep them for their own use at will. And it was just the most degenerate, lewd, lascivious, you use all the bad words, contumacious, indomitable, just use any bad word you can think of. That is how those people lived. Not just in 1910. They had lived that way as far back as they could in their history of their tribes. They had always been profligate, immoral, getting what they wanted when they wanted it at anyone's expense. They lived for themselves. So they were very skilled in adultery, fornication, uncleanness, and lewdness. The next two in their biography, Paul wrote, he said, this is what those who sow the flesh will be like. They'll be involved in idolatry and sorcery. Well, these cannibals were lovers of the dark. They worshipped demons, they feared the spirits of the forest, and they were total servants of the devil, and had been so as far back as you could look in their history, at least for centuries, if not longer. The next in the list in Galatians says, contentions, jealousies, and outbursts of wrath. When C.T. Studd arrived in the Belgian Congo in 1910, these tribesmen killed people for sport. In fact, when you think of a head-hunting cannibal, what they would do is they would shoot them, not mortally, so that the one that they were going to eat had to crawl and drag along that leg that was inoperable. And then they'd shoot the other one so he'd crawl on his stomach. And then they'd shoot him again. It was a sport, human hunting. And then when they got him, they'd drag him back, cut him up, and either put him on a spit and roast him, or they'd boil him. and eat them. So, hunting people was their sport, and they loved to sit around their fire and eat the flesh of their enemies. And there, taking the blood of their enemies, they would swear oaths of hatred to kill more of their enemies. They had no regard for human life. They were filled with, as it says there, hatred, contentions, jealousies, and outbursts of wrath. Well, the next group, they had selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. These primitive savages in 1910 lived to eat. they drank themselves drunk, they would dance naked around their fires to the worship of their spirit masters, and would sink into revelry until they passed out to sleep on the ground until daylight. And then they'd go out hunting some more enemies and shoot them, drag them back, eat them by the fire, dance around the fire, and be drunken and go into their revelrous debauchery until they passed out and awoke the next morning to either be hunted by someone else or to hunt someone. That's life in 1910. So modern history testifies to what will happen to those who accept the Word of God. Because 74 years ago this month, 74 years ago this month, C.T. Studd was dying. He was having shivers and fever and turned dark colors. He had a gallstone, they said, that was as large as a grapefruit. And it finally, through that and complications, ended his life. And after serving for 21 years in the heart of Africa's vast dark jungles, among these fierce, animalistic, predatory people, He was in his hut, surrounded by pygmies. And I've often recorded for you what his son-in-law wrote. And I'll read again from C.T. Studd's daughter's husband. His name was Norman Grubb. This is what he wrote. He actually came for this moment, for the death of his father-in-law. He said, I looked and once a lean and fit professional athlete, C.T. Studd was now laying on his cot, gaunt and emaciated. He got up, hunched over, halting on each step. in July of that year. Walking out, carried by his beloved pygmies, soon he's surrounded by thousands of glistening black bodies wearing only banana leaves. The pygmies of the heart of Africa's jungles had come to hear their beloved bowana for the last time. He speaks to them only after they had sung for two hours the songs He had lovingly taught them. As He lay in His hut before He spoke, He heard five thousand men singing, Wounded for me, wounded for me, There on the cross He was wounded for me, Gone my transgressions, and now I can sing, All because Jesus. was wounded for me. There in front of his cot, as they carried him out of the hut and propped him up, sat 5,000 former cannibal headhunters. Once those bodies had been the habitation of dark, foul fiends from the pit of hell. Now, those bodies were glistening, radiant temples of the Holy Spirit. Once, they were naked and grossly immoral, lovers of darkness, who lived for, as Galatians 5.19 says, adultery, fornication, uncleanness and lewdness. Now, they were not only clothed in Christ, But they had learned to modestly close their bodies, and they all wore proudly their aprons that they fashioned from the jungle plants. Once they had lived as a continuation of generations of murderers, years of darkness, lives of brutal savagery. Now before their beloved father in the faith, They sit in an immense sea of white tooth smiles as they sing the hymns he taught them. Once, they were all mortal enemies. Once, these eight tribes lived to eat one another or to be eaten. But now, those who are never without the weapons of warfare sit with no weapons of warfare left. Only the bond of love is what they carried. With their faces turned heavenward, these former enemies are sitting shoulder to shoulder singing of the sweet by and by and the beautiful shore where they would someday see their beloved Father in the faith. Now that's what God can do with our hearts. I don't know if anybody in Tulsa has yet descended to these depths that they had, eating the flesh of humans, drinking the blood of their enemies in oaths of hatred and murder and revenge, living like animals, crawling around in debauchery, chasing every female they could find in the jungle and harnessing them into their harem like livestock. That congregation of saints were converted and transformed by the Lord through the simple, passionate preaching of the truth of God's Word. That's what God wants to do. That's what Ezekiel 36 is all about. That's what Jesus said, those who will accept the Word will spring up and bear a crop that pleases God. You know what's amazing is, in America today, the same sins that were plaguing Africa in 1910 have just got newer names, but they're present here, all around us. The same sins abound, we're just calling them something different. We're surrounded by a nation of individuals who seem to try to get their own way all the time. In fact, I could read through Galatians 5.19 again and describe America, not Africa in 1910, America in Adultery and fornication is seen in people's repetitive, loveless cheapening of sex in America. They might not crawl around on their hands and knees through the leaves of the jungle, but the effect is just the same. Uncleanness is seen in America's stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage. It seems like most people are unclean. They just have all this garbage and they don't know how to get rid of it. Ludeness is seen in people's frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness. It seems like we can't be shocked enough times in the papers when we hear what people do to others, to themselves. in this frenzied, joyless, grabbing for a thrill. Idolatry? People worship their trinket gods. You say, really? Yes. You worship whatever you give your utter devotion to. And I don't need to tell you what Americans give their devotion to. because you see them advertised constantly. And that's become our idolatry. We don't have stone images in the jungle we burn incense to. We have something we make time payments to, and we enslave ourselves to possess until it possesses us. I could go through the sorcery, the drugs, the occultic entertainments of all kind in our modern magic show religions that are the sorcery of America. Hatred that makes people have a paranoid loneliness. They hate people and they just isolate themselves. Contentions, the daily cutthroat competition. Jealousies. It's an all-consuming yet never satisfied want that people have. They want everything and they don't want you to have it. There's a jealousy that permeates our society. Outbursts of wrath. We're just awash with brutal tempers. Selfish ambition has left us with an impotence to love or be loved. Dissensions. We have divided homes and divided lives. Heresies. People are obsessed and small-minded and lopsided. Envy. The vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival. Murders! We kill our unborn, we euthanize our aged, we ignore the starving poor that circle our planet while we sip our exotic drinks and complain about the long lines at the mall and at our favorite restaurants. And contribute to the death. There are so many resources America could feed the entire world. We just don't want to. because we don't care about life. Drunkenness, we're a nation of uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions. Revelries, it's gotten to America, the college years have become an orgy, life is a weekly wait for the next party, and mindlessness reigns. What can God do with all that? Well, if we continue in Galatians 5, he wants to thirdly abide in our attitudes. He wants to totally change the way we live on this planet, our whole attitude toward life. And I'd like to go with you through Galatians 5, but to introduce it back up, we have to get a running start. Start in 2nd Corinthians with me, okay? Chapter 10. I want to show you what Christ wants to do starting in 2nd Corinthians 10. We'll get to Galatians last and we'll end there. But let me introduce what God wants to do because Christ, who wants to abide in our time, He wants to have the river of life flowing by us at 60 minutes per hour. He wants us to redeem that time for Him. And He wants to abide in our treasures. He also wants to abide in our attitude. That is the way that we operate with our minds. Remember, you will never do something that you haven't thought about. It all starts in our mind. Before we talk about actions, we have to talk about attitudes, because that's where it all begins. What you think about long enough, you will do or become. What you allow into your mind regularly enough, will slowly shape you and me." So Christ wants to abide in our attitudes. He wants to abide in what we do with our minds. This is how we relate to life and people. And has God said anything about that mind of ours He wants to inhabit? Yes, He has. 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 4, says that God wants to capture our thoughts. And then He wants to turn them above and get them turned on Him. We'll see that in Colossians 3. And then finally He wants to start shaping our attitudes so that they reflect His personality, not the works of the flesh we just read about in Africa, but the life of Christ relived in you and me on a daily basis. Let's start with his work in 2 Corinthians 10. For the weapons, it says in verse 4 of 2 Corinthians 10, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. That means no life, no past, no stain, no habit, no sin that he can't change. He can pull down any stronghold in our life, any place that sin and the flesh and the devil have taken captive in our life. He wants to pull that down. How? Verse 5. casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and here's the key, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. You know what I have written in my Bible right there? He wants to captivate my thoughts. Now think this week. Don't go all the way back in your life. Think just this week. What's captivated your thoughts? What have you not been able to stop thinking about until you read or saw or did? What has captivated you? Is it entertainment? Is it some experience or thrill? Is it amusement, movies, or something you want to see? What captivates you? That's what your master is. You know what it says in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5? Jesus wants to master my thoughts. He wants to captivate my mind. He wants my mind to be captivated by Him so that I just can't keep my mind off Him. I just can't keep from thinking about Him. I can't stop from offering more of myself to Him. That's what Paul's saying. You want to have the mind of God? You want to bear fruit in your attitude? Let Him captivate your thoughts. Let Him corral them. Let Him lasso them. Let Him pen up your thoughts. Let Him become the one who controls what you think about. How do you do that? You have to surrender and offer Him to Him. Did you know God does not move in and take over? He's not an occupationist. He doesn't come in uninvited and just take over. He has come in and redeemed us and moved in and now He's waiting for us to open to Him each area and realm of our life. And that's what this whole thing of bearing fruit is about. This little plot of ground, our minds, won't bear fruit for Him unless we let Him captivate us and take over. Keep going to Colossians 3. Go to the right. It's 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. There we go. Chapter 3. Secondly, He not only wants to captivate my thoughts, He wants to turn those thoughts above and get them tuned into Him. Okay? Colossians 3. That's verses 1 and 2. If then you were raised with Christ. And a better way to translate this would be to say since. This is a second-class condition. It's not if in the sense of potential. It's since. Since you've been born again. Since you and I have been raised with Christ. Since we have come to newness of life through what we read about in Ezekiel, the new heart, the new spirit. Him taking out the stony heart and giving us a new heart. Since all that has happened, what's our response? Seek. Seek. That's a responsibility we have. Is Christ not controlling your attitude these days? then you're not letting Him captivate your thoughts and you are not seeking. Look what it says, seek those things which are above. Look for Him. Seek Him. Want Him. Ask Him. See, that's what he's saying. And he is commanding us. This is an order from him. He says, I live here, I've moved in, I've saved you, and I am telling you, you must, you have to initiate this. You must seek me. Seek the things which are above. Look at verse 2, he continues. Set your mind on things above. not on things on the earth. You know what? I can tell every time someone borrows my car. My car, I'm now in my third week, I guess, of my greatest, I'm just thrilled. I've decided that I'm going to see how long I can go without listening to the weather or the news or the talking heads. And so, at least three weeks I've been going. And I found I can tune into this blank space in the radio and play my Bible through there. It plays right into the radio and it's so neat and it's this frequency that there's no radio station. Just, like that, that's all. If you were on that line, all the time. And so whenever I turn on my little player, it plays through the radio. Well, you know what? Every time I get in the car that someone else has been in, it's back on 740 or 1170 or whatever. And I can always tell because I keep it set on, you know, and most people won't ride in the car with it just making that sound, you know. So they adjust it, because I take my little player with me and they don't know why it's all the time, you know. And so that's, that's what I mean. Look at verse 2. God says, you have to tune yourself, you have to set your mind. Roll to the dial toward me. Focus. Tune. Set. Aim. Whatever word you want to use. Aim your mind on things above. He says it's an intentional choice to set. Now what does it say? Set your mind. The old King James. Set your affections on things above. You know what? Christ wants to draw my affections. You know what my affections are? Things that I internally desire. Those are my affections. Those are what is on my mind that I want. And I'm drawn toward those. You know, you can tell what your heart is like by what you're drawn to. When something goes by and you kind of have a tug toward it, that's where your affections are. I'll have to confess. one of mine, I told, when they were remodeling the building and I got to have my study upstairs, they said, where do you want to be? And I said, I want that room with the window. They said, you want the room with the window? Oh, I said, yeah. I didn't tell them why. You know, I can see every time Bonnie pulls in the parking lot. I see that, just I'm working away and I see a white streak and I look and there's that suburban and there's a back stairway. I'm down there, secretary's go, oh no, there goes his wife by again, you know, they see me running out, and she's dropping the kids off, picking them up from whatever, John 316, and 30 seconds, I'll run down there, give her a big hug, and run back up the back stairway, and back immersed into Colossia, wherever I was. But you know what, why that happens? I don't have a little thing on my desk that says, act excited when you see your wife, or, you know, look out the window for a white suburban, or, you know, it's, an affection I have that I stood in front on a platform like this and declared I was going to have lifelong in the sight of God and these assembled witnesses for the one that is my beloved, my wife. And I don't have to have a card and I don't have to have someone hold me accountable and ask me. It's internal because I've made a choice to set my affections as far as in my relationship and marriage on earth on my wife. You know what the Lord invites us to do in verse 2? He says, I command you Seek the things above and set your desires on Me, not on stuff on this earth. Now I wonder, this morning, you want to have a personality change, you want to have an attitude change, you want to bear fruit in how you respond to things in life and how you respond to the people and the circumstances around you, then he says, I want to draw your affections. He says, I want you to be captivated, your thoughts, 2 Corinthians 10, and I want your affections Put on me. I want you to make a choice. You're going to be drawn to me more than things of the earth. Now, you want a test of that? Here's a test. In the last seven days, has God's Word, in whatever form, tape, CD, printed, has God's Word drawn you more than things of the earth? Do you spend more hours listening to things that do not promote God-likeness, watching things that do not promote Christ-likeness, doing things that if we projected them up on the screen this morning, you'd be embarrassed for your Christian friends to see. Have you spent your time this week, in verse 2 of Colossians 3, on things on the earth that are earthly? that are going to burn up, or worse than that, that are taking away the influence of the Spirit of God in your life. Is that where you're setting your affections? There? Or on things above? You know, this week I hitched a ride with a fellow businessman, and I didn't say anything, but as I was riding in his car, I looked up and I saw this much of this card peeking out over his visor on the driver's side. You know what that told me about that man? It told me that that man is trying to memorize these verses. But this man had that much of it sticking out of his visor. And you know what that meant? That meant he was trying to set his affection on things above. He was trying to, when he had a free moment, when he was sitting in the line with traffic, or an accident, or waiting at the drive-thru with the bank, he's going to pull that down and say, worthy is the Lamb. He's worthy of everything in my life. Or talking about, I'm a living stone built together to worship God. It doesn't matter what form that you make your pursuit of God into. The question is, are you setting your affections? Are you drawn? Do you run down the back stairway of your life toward God? That's the whole Christian life. It's an internal choice to set my mind on things above, to set my affections on things above, and to decreasingly have the things of the earth as what brings pleasure, and brings joy, and brings fulfillment, and brings the pleasures of life to me. Is it the Lord? Or is it the stuff on earth? I'll tell you what, if you don't get that transition made, then that's why getting old gets so hard. I like what Randy Alcorn says, he says, your pile of treasures, if you put them in heaven, then every step, every year that you get older, you are putting your arms out, going toward where your treasures are. If your treasures are on the earth, then you spend your life backing toward heaven, and you just feel this tug toward where your treasures are. And that's what this verse is all about. He says, set your affections with the Lord. Seek the things which are above." Now, how do we do that? Let's conclude in Galatians chapter 5. You might want to jot some of these down because I want to talk through with you exactly how we get this new attitude. Christ wants to abide in my attitude. He wants to start shaping my attitude so that my attitude reflects His personality. He starts by captivating my thoughts. He continues by getting my affections. And you can tell if you have an affection for the radio by whether you can get along without listening to it. Why don't you test that? Could you go a whole week without watching TV and just read the Bible? Those 20 hours or 12 or 15, add up how many hours you spend. Could you spend the whole week listening to God, not music? Could you spend the whole week listening to God and not playing games? Stalking around as a sniper in some, you know, video game. I mean, can you make it a whole week? Can you make it a whole day? without the television on, without the radio on, without the tunes playing. Can you make it? If you can't, your affections are locked on the earth. Try it sometime. Take a fast from one thing at a time in your life and see which ones really tug at you. And then you know what you need to ask God for grace to overcome. And replace that with setting your affections on things above. And then if you do that, He wants to transform our personality. And watch how He does it. Galatians 5 tells us that at any point in time, starting, let me show you, starting in verse 16. We're going to read around this and then get to the center. Verse 16, I say then, and this is where the thought begins, walk in the Spirit. By the way, if you're an imperative marker, that's a command. So you and I are commanded by God and have a responsibility to God to do this. And He's going to someday assess your life and mine as to the extent of our walking under the power of His Spirit. See, that's what produces these right attitudes. It's not me. It's not me making a New Year's resolution and, you know, taking a self-help course and learning some slogans. It's me surrendering my attitude to the Lord. in these areas. There's nine areas we're supposed to walk in the Spirit. And if we'll do that, we'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Now we already saw the bad ones. Those people surrendered to their flesh in Africa. But look at verse 22, but the fruit, singular, of the Spirit. It's not like I'm really good in one and not good in the rest. It's a package. If you're not good in one, that means you haven't yielded. Because they come together. You know, do you ever go to Sam's and it says, this package is not to be broken up and resold in pieces, you know, because it's meant to be sold as together? I meet a lot of Christians, they're breaking up the package and they say, oh, I'm really good on this one, I'm not very good on those. But it doesn't work that way. Either he is, as Hudson Taylor said, Lord of all, or he's not Lord at all. Either you have not submitted your attitude to him, your thoughts and your affections, or you have. Now, there are varying degrees that these things are in our lives. But either they're all operative or they're not. Because it's Christ's personality and he's one person, not divided. Let's look at it. Because at any point in time we're either walking in the flesh or in the spirit. There were 15 manifestations of the flesh. I just read those to you about the cannibals in Africa. Of these, eight deal with interpersonal problems. If you read through all those envies and all that outbursts, you can find out the extent that you've yielded your attitude to the Lord by how you treat people. If there's, you know, and just anger or if you feel jealousy and envy, then you're sowing to the flesh. He says, I don't want that. He says, this is what I want. When you live my way, you yield your life and allow Christ's attitude to live through us. Here's the first one. in this list. But the fruit of the Spirit is, verse 22, love. Now there's nine and I'll just whip through these. The question is, are you allowing Christ's love to abide in you? You have to ask yourself that question every day. Am I yielding to your love to abide in me? And I want it. And I want you to abide in my attitude and have me be loving. like you were today. That's how we begin our day. What is love? Love is the absence of selfishness and the presence of affection for others. It's not just the negative absence of selfishness, it's the presence of affection for others, of me sacrificing, me giving, me going beyond my zone, what benefits me, and going out there and benefiting you, others. That's what love is. It's a product of the Holy Spirit present in our lives, as it says in Romans 5. It remains even in the harshest and most difficult times because we don't produce it. When times get tough and people say, oh, I'm just, I'm stressed out, I'm tired, you know, I'm under a lot of pressure at work, or I'm going through emotional strain because of what's happening in my life or my family, and I'm not as loving as I should be, they just betrayed something. The source of their love is self-generated. Self-generated love does wear out. It does fade out. It does quit. It does end. Divinely prompted love, Romans 5, 5, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, survives even the harshest conditions because it's divine. And he says, I want you to allow my love to abide in you. I want you to not have an emotional affection, not have a mere physical affection, not a mere familial bond, but I want you to respect and devote yourself to sacrifice yourself for others. For God so loved the world that He what? Gave. See, that's the test when it costs me something. And only the Spirit of God prompts me to continuously, even in harsh conditions when I'm not getting, to give and to love. So that's something we ask ourselves. Can others trace my progress in expressing Christ's love? Am I less selfish and self-seeking than I was last month? You've got to ask yourself that. Do I see a measurable decrease in my total preoccupation with myself and I see more of my loving others as Jesus did? Look at the second one. Joy. Are you allowing Christ's joy to abide in you? He's asking us. Joy is the spiritual quality when we are released from our circumstances. Because our happiness when we have the Spirit of God is based on the unchanging divine promises of God. It's based on eternal spiritual reality, not on my circumstances. You know, it's so neat that you can be in right, up right, down right, in right, up right, down right, happy all the time. There's one more. In right, up right, down right, happy all the time. Whatever that little kid's song is. You know how that works? Because I'm detached from circumstances. Things might not be going well at work. My car might not be running. I might not be earning as much as I want to earn. I might not have the nicest house, as nice as everybody else's. I might not have all the new gadgets, but I'm still joyous. You know what joy is all about? It's an exuberance about life through Christ. I have joy no matter what life brings, because it's not produced by my circumstances. Everybody in America is kind of tied to this. That's why the lottery is so exciting to so many people. They think if I can just win, I'll be happy. You ought to do a study of the winners. They all get divorced or commit suicide or someone, you know, I mean, you ought to read what happens. I mean, I wouldn't touch that stuff with a, you know, a long pole because it just brings, it brings despair because they get the money they thought that would make them happy and it doesn't. Money can't buy happiness. It only buys places to look for it. happiness, joy is produced by the Holy Spirit. Christian joy is not a shallow emotion. It's not a thermometer that rises and falls with our changing atmosphere of our home or our job. Rather, Christian joy is a deep experience of adequacy. The confidence that in spite of the most difficult circumstances, I have Christ. What want I more? Sounds crazy, doesn't it? It worked in the jungle in 1910. Those people formally got their kicks out of shooting people in the legs until they crawled, and then they'd eat them. Can you imagine if you couldn't do that anymore? You'd be really sad. Not when you get the joy of the Lord. I mean, they were willing to... What they did is they took in the families of the people they had eaten, and provided for them, because they'd eaten their husbands, and fathers, and brothers. I mean, Christ changed those people completely. It's just a... You ought to read the experiences. So we need to ask ourselves, joy is a gift from God. As such, we aren't manufacturing it, but we delight in the blessing that we possess. Do those who know me and watch my life see me as a joyful person? That means that the joy of the Lord is my strength. Or do they see me as someone who is up and down with the circumstances of life? Because if I'm like this, then I have not allowed Christ to abide, His joy to abide in me. His personality and His response to life, I haven't allowed that in. And I need to. And you need to. Well, the next one is peace. They come in triplets. Love, joy, and peace. Are you allowing Christ's peace to abide in you? Peace is the internal serenity that only God can give. Jesus said not to live tomorrow's challenges today, but to trust what lies ahead to Him. When we are at peace, troubles are not absent. Rather, God is present. See, that's what peace is all about. Where does it come from? Psalm 119, 165. Great peace have they which love thy law. Peace is a product of the Holy Spirit bringing the truths of God to reality in my life. Actually, the word, Hebrew word for peace, shalom, comes from the Hebrew verb, shalom, which literally means to be made complete. It's when I decide that I am complete in Christ, and I'm at peace with how He made me, where He placed me, what He has done in my life up to this time, and that He's in control of the rest to the end. There's a serenity about that. Ask yourself, has peace become more and more a way of life for me? this year? Or are you losing? Are you getting more and more anxious? Here's the next three. Patience is the next one, or long-suffering. Are you allowing Christ's patience to abide in you? It's the absence of personal irritation at the actions of others. It's a willingness to stick with things and not be a quitter. It's the bearing long with people that Paul spoke about in 1 Corinthians 13. Is that in your life? Do you get irritated more and more slowly at people around you and you're seeing a wonderful detachment from from being irritated when people don't do things your way and things don't turn out your way? Are you allowing Christ patience? Am I more patient than I was three months ago or less? If I am not increasing in patience, it's because I'm not yielding and submitting to Christ's patience that abides in me. I'm resisting Him. As Martin Luther said, when the devil comes and wants to make you impatient, say, I don't live here anymore. Jesus doesn't. Let him answer the door and let him respond. And that's what we need to do. The next one, after patience, number five is kindness. Are we allowing Christ's kindness to abide in us? Kindness is a reflection of God in our lives. It's having Christ's compassion in our heart. We can't mistreat people. Jesus never looked on people as less than himself. He was God. He treated them with dignity, with respect, with love, with compassion. His heart moved for sinners. His heart moved, his insides, because he loved them. Am I allowing His kindness? Is my character showing an increasing tendency toward personal kindness the way I treat others? Goodness, number six, is being God-like. It's the opposite of the way we were born. The example of Jesus should be our guide. Everywhere we are we should touch those around us with His goodness. This week, I think it was on Tuesday night, it was so sweet, before Johnny goes to school he wanted to go and eat somewhere and so we went there and we all sat, all ten of us, we were laughing and carrying on and having a good time, and when I went to pay the bill, I was noticing that we were waited on. I said thank you a million times, I think. The waitress came and talked to me and she said, it was right here in town. We weren't even on a trip. We were in Tulsa. She said, it was wonderful to wait on you and your family. She said, I felt love. That interesting? That's not us, because we're fallen humans. That was a little bit of Jesus Christ that snuck out of our lives at that table. Is there goodness coming out of you? That's what Jesus asks. Are you allowing His goodness to abide in you? Faithfulness. Is Christ's faithfulness abiding you? That's the seventh one. A trustworthy, dependable life involved in loyal commitments, keeping their own life in order so you can count on them. Are you making strides in your reliability and dependability, or do people say, oh, if they volunteer, I know they won't show up? If they said, yeah, I'll call you, I know they won't. If they say, yeah, yeah, you can count on me, you know I know I can't. Did you know that's not an imperfection, that is a sin. Because that's denying Christ, who wants to be trustworthy through us. Remember He who said, I will never leave you or forsake you? Do you ever wonder if He will? No. Because He can be trusted, so should we who bear His image. Gentleness, number eight. It's only one more after this. It's better translated meekness. It's the opposite of asserting ourselves. Are you allowing Christ gentleness in, or are you a constant asserter of yourself? Do you have to go through life asserting and getting your way? It's awful, because God resists that. He doesn't like that. We don't have to force our way in life. The Lord said, the meek, the ones who are gentle, are the ultimate winners. They must resist selfish ambition because that reflects Satan, not God. That's what the Bible says. Now remember, our culture is built on cutthroat competition and ambition. And none of those things are godly, okay? We have to be careful that we're motivated by God, not by selfish ambition. And we have to have His gentleness. We have to have Him as the force of our life, not ourselves. And here's the last one. Are we allowing Christ's discipline to abide in you? Discipline or self-control refers to the restraining of our passions and appetites. It's the mastery of our appetites, especially the sensual ones. By the Spirit's power, we're able to direct our energies toward the things that please God. The only power that can control my flesh and yours is the Holy Spirit. And unless we yield and allow Christ's discipline in our lives, we will slowly be mastered by our appetites. And the older you get, the weaker you are, the more those bad appetites will show. I wonder this morning, is Christ abiding in your attitude? In these nine areas, is Christ abiding in your love? Is Christ's joy abiding in you? Is His peace permeating you? If not, all it takes is, right now, this moment, asking Him to, and releasing that part of your life to His control. Now you say, I've done that, and I'm back to back. Well, that's why the Christian life is nothing more and nothing less than a series of new beginnings. Let's have a new beginning as we bow before Christ in prayer. Father in heaven, I thank you for the precious saints of your body. We together say to you, Oh Jesus, Lord and Savior, I want to give my attitude to you. For your atonement, you gave yourself for me so that you could control and transform my attitude. I want my thoughts captivated. I want my affections drawn to you this week more than to the earth. And I want my attitude transformed to be like yours, oh Christ. I pray that would be our prayer. In the name of Jesus, we ask it. And all God's people said, Amen.