God's part and our part. What role does God play in our day-to-day, the day-to-day details of our lives, and what role do we play? Is there... Is there a balance? Is God doing most of the work and we're doing some? Are we doing most of the work and God's doing some? I know some people who just take action without any regard to God, checking in with God, asking God for help. I know some people who throw off a prayer, but then take action without any regard to God or checking with Him. And then there are some who just pray and don't take any action. But there must be a balance between God's role in our day-to-day lives and our role, our responsibility to act as responsible human beings, as responsible adults. And what does God do in the middle of that? That's what we're going to talk about today. I think you'll find this interesting. I think you'll find it helpful. And we are going to jump on this whole idea of God's part and our part. Hi, I'm Sam Hunter, this is 721 Live, the video arm of 721 Ministries. I'm glad that you're with us. Thank you for joining us. In our last video, we started this look at God's part and our part. And that's just a reminder, if you'll hit subscribe right now, hit that subscribe button, then you'll get these as soon as they come out, because we're gonna look at this this summer about God's part and our part, and the genesis of this. is back in the late spring, I was reading Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, not books that I read often. But of course, as I was reading all three of them, I was learning new things and seeing things that I had forgotten. At the same time, I was teaching a lesson down in Charleston on Acts 1, the book of Acts, chapter 1. And as I noticed a passage in Nehemiah and then prepared for the teaching in Acts chapter 1, I realized that these really coalesce under this idea of God's part and our part. In Nehemiah, for instance, Nehemiah has come back from, you know, the Jews were exiled off and they're in Babylon, and he comes back to help rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. Ezra has come back previously, and they've gotten the temple put back together somewhat. Now Nehemiah comes back, and he's going to be in charge of building the wall back. You've got to have a wall around Jerusalem to have a city, to have any safety, to have any economy. You have to have a wall. So he's building the wall. The people that have been living in that area the past several decades they don't want that wall being built they don't want Jerusalem fortified so they get ready to stir up trouble Nehemiah gets wind of it and here's what he says in chapter 4 he's telling us a story he says when we heard about their plans we prayed to our God Now let's pause. What could come next? What could Nehemiah tell us next? We prayed to our God and we went back to work trusting him to take care of us. We could very easily read that, couldn't we? That could be, that's theologically sound. We prayed to our God and we went back to work. That's not what Nehemiah said. Nehemiah said we prayed to our God and we posted a guard and went back to work. We posted a guard. We prayed to our God, asking Him, in essence, to do His part, but then we posted a guard, because we were going to do our part. And as you read through Nehemiah 4, we see that as the men went back to work, They carried their swords and their spears with them in one hand, and they worked with the other hand. I just thought that was a keen insight, and it struck me when I read it. And at the same time, I'm reading Acts, and I hope that you will pick up Acts and read through it and read it like a novel. not like a newspaper report, or not like you're reading just some dry, one-dimensional story in the Bible. No, it is rich with action and intrigue, and what these men, these disciples, went through as they tried to understand how to live with Jesus no longer with them. With what seemed like he had left them alone, left them behind, But then they come to realize the holy spirit Is there for them just as jesus had promised what role then are the disciples to play and what role does the holy spirit play? And that's what we're going to continue to tease out. I'm going to start today by talking a little bit about effort versus our earning and then we'll go to the book of Acts so we're going to turn to 2nd Peter chapter 1 Peter's second letter and we'll start with verse 3 I'm just gonna read a little bit to you and we'll talk about it as we go what we see Peter outlining at the very beginning in verse 3 is God's part And then we see our part. It's a great example and captures it very succinctly. So, verse 3, 2 Peter 1, verse 3, God's part. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him, through our knowing of Him, who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature. Just think about that for a moment. You may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. He's telling us what God, our Heavenly Father, has done for us. He's given us everything we need. Now, if he's given us everything we need, why don't we just sit back and not do anything else? Just just relax and float in a sea of grace and there are times for that But listen to what Peter says next For this very reason the things he's already done for us for this very reason make every effort Make every effort Look what he's done for us now. Let's do our part make every effort Now whenever I'm talking to men and certainly Americans, when you hear, when they hear, make every effort, they pull out their pen and say, give me a checklist. I'm on to the performance. You tell me what to do and I'll perform. I'll make the effort. I'll run through that brick wall. If that's what will get me good with God, I'll do it. Just give me the list. That's not the list that Peter gives us, the Holy Spirit through Peter. Make every effort to add to your faith goodness. Goodness should typically be translated as generosity. Make every effort to add to your faith, your trust, generosity, and to your generosity, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness. These are all matters of the heart. We get our hearts right before we can then act right. to Godliness mutual affection and to mutual affection love now listen to what he says next the Holy Spirit tells us for your for if you possess these qualities in increasing measure That's good news if you possess these qualities in increasing measure no one expects you to champion and master all of these things by next week. No, that's not the issue. The issue is that we are increasing. We are growing in our godliness. We're growing in our patience. We're growing in our self-control. We're growing in our generosity. We are in an increasing measure, but we are making the effort. Don't you just love that passage? Make every effort. Here's what God has done. He's given you everything you need. Now, you take everything that he gave you and you start building on it. You make every effort. Is there anything wrong with effort on our part? Clearly not. But we do as humans, as men, as Americans especially, we do get into the earning part of it. So I want to show you Dallas Willard's take on this. God is not opposed to effort. He is opposed to earning. God is not opposed to effort. He is opposed to earning. Now, what's the difference between effort and earning? God's not opposed to effort, clearly. We see it throughout the scripture. But He is opposed to earning. And that's where we have to check ourselves. Yes, we're gonna make an effort. We're gonna do our part. But we're not earning anything by doing that. See, effort is an action. Earning is an attitude. Effort is what we do in response to what our Heavenly Father has done for us. Earning is the wrong approach. It's saying we're trying to put God back where He owes us something. We owe Him everything for what He's done, so we're compelled, we're motivated to make every effort. But if we start thinking in terms of earning, then we're trying to put Him back in owing us things for the effort that we're going to make. I have been praying over the last few years because I feel so blessed by my Heavenly Father and Jesus and living with the power of the Holy Spirit. And when I pray, you may recall that we've talked in the past about the first 60 seconds. The first 60 seconds before I open my eyes, pretty much every morning, I spend a minute, sometimes two or three, thanking my Heavenly Father for the gifts in my life and the blessings in my life. And sometimes I just start with, I have a garage now. Sometimes I start with what a comfortable bed it is. Sometimes I start with the fact that I woke up this morning, that I have my health right now, or that my loved ones have their health the first 60 seconds. And as I am finishing that, or if I'm doing that throughout the day, which I do seek to do that throughout the day, Get this thought, you know, I cannot and I did not and I cannot earn it But I can return it. I Didn't earn it father, but I can return it. I Didn't earn it, but I can return it How do we return it? See I'm so grateful of what he's done in my life. I Just wanted I just want to return it to him. How do we do that? well By the way, we think we make every effort. We make every effort to grow inwardly so that then we can act outwardly. We make every effort for our hearts to be transformed. We do our part. Something else that goes through my mind whenever I'm thinking about returning it, you know, I do men's ministry, and everyone you know has issues in their lives. Everyone you know. You just turn, pull that curtain back, and you'll see it. And so I'm in that situation. I'm called on by men to meet with them, and oftentimes, their life's upside down. Oftentimes, they just need to have someone to spend some time with. Oftentimes, I just want to spend time with them. So if it's on a Saturday morning, or if it's on a Wednesday night, or if it's some time that's inconvenient to me, oftentimes I'll say, yeah, but this is the way of returning it. I cannot earn it, but I can return it. Peter gives us this great picture of make every effort. Paul gives us another picture. Now, Peter and Paul were can-do kind of men. They were get-it-done kind of men. They were, you know, Peter, both of them, before Jesus came into their lives, Where if I don't it won't kind of man if this to be is up to me kind of man we can see that in Peter's actions We'll refer to that in just a moment, but let's look at this passage that Paul writes and gives us again a great picture into what he how he approached this first Corinthians 15 10 and but by the grace of god i am what i am and his grace to me was not without effect that sounds like what how peter set it up what he's done for us god's part paul goes on and i'm adding our part no i worked harder than all of them paul says yes his grace to me was just unbelievable but it was not without effect no i worked harder than all of them i did my part Then he realizes, so did God. God's part. Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. I've worked hard, Paul said. Peter would say the same thing. But I realized it wasn't really me. Yes, I was working hard. I was doing my part. But through the Holy Spirit, my Heavenly Father was doing his part. Dallas Willard has another saying about living with the power of the Holy Spirit. It's within our actions, beyond our powers. Within our actions, way beyond our powers. This is what living with the Holy Spirit power looks like, and this is what Paul and Peter are both referring to. Paul says, I worked harder than anybody else. I did not take for granted anything that Jesus had done for me. But I realized it wasn't really me, or it certainly wasn't just me. It was the Holy Spirit working through me. That takes us to Acts. Now last, in our last video, we looked at Acts chapter one. What happens with a brief review on chapter one, Jesus has been with them since the resurrection for 40 days, appearing on and off, and the last time he's with them in Acts chapter one, he says to them as he gets ready to ascend to heaven, Leave behind his earthly ministry. So then the Holy Spirit is going to come for his ministry within us Jesus says to Peter and the disciples wait Go back into Jerusalem and wait until the Holy Spirit comes don't do anything You don't know what to do until you have the Holy Spirit So they go back in They go to the upper room. There's 120 of them there plus or minus. They're praying and I can just picture Peter after a few days saying whoa whoa whoa no praying enough praying we got to do something So he decides and pulls out Old Testament scripture that if you read it It seems like a stretch that it really applies that we must replace Judas and so they roll the dice and And they pick this guy named Matthias. They actually give God two choices out of the 120. They select down to the two and then hand it to God. It's kind of what I've done at various times in my life, and I bet you have too. God, I've done, here's what I have chosen, now you bless it. You're having father doesn't work that way and the Holy Spirit doesn't work that way So they make the mistake because they don't wait for the Holy Spirit that brings us to acts chapter 2 Because now it's Pentecost Pentecost is the Greek word for the Hebrew festival called Shavuot and Shavuot was a celebration first of the of the first harvest and Like even right now, we're eating corn, we're eating tomatoes, cucumbers, and that sort of thing. So it was a celebration of the harvest, but it was even more a celebration of the giving of the law back on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments. So it was this dual celebration. So here, picture, see this is why I want you to read Acts with some imagination like you're reading a novel. Picture Peter and the rest of the disciples, John, James, Matthew, Thomas, the rest of them. They're at the temple where they went every day. Luke tells us that. They're in Solomon's Colonnade, Solomon's Port sometimes it's called. It's Pentecost. It's a festival. Of course they're at the temple. And here's what we pick up in Acts chapter 2, verse 1. When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. Now, just pause for a moment. If you think back to the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, think about how that's described in the scripture. Wind blowing, thunder, lightning, fire, smoke. That's the same type of description we're getting here. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, in other languages, not the tongues that we hear about later in the scripture. Paul addresses that in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14. But speaking in the languages the people who have come to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival they've come from all over the Diaspora the this the spreading of the Jews all over that part of the world and So we read about how there were all those who were at the temple who came from these other places who spoke Hebrew, of course, but they also spoke these other languages. They rush over to see what's happening. They hear all of the disciples speaking in their own languages, and they are amazed. They're shocked. How can this be? Verse 12, amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, what does this mean? Some, however, made fun of them and said, they've had too much wine. I mean, 9 o'clock in the morning, that's a stretch. Peter stands up and starts to again give us God's part. Peter stood up with the 11, raised his voice and addressed the crowd. Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain to you. Listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only 9 in the morning. No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel. The Older Testament prophet, Joel, who spoke exactly about what was happening in his own chapter two, we're in Acts chapter two, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. So Joel has prophesied this, others have prophesied, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. And then he concludes, Joel's conclusion, verse 21, and this sea is our part. He's given us God's part. What he's done, he's poured out his spirit. Verse 21, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now, just pause for a moment. Will be saved. If someone says to you, do this and you are guaranteed to be saved. I want I suspect you'd want to know that you want you'd want to understand what that means I'm seeing a promise here and I want to understand exactly what it means and we're gonna come to back to that and we're gonna Explain that more in just a moment. That'll be the way we actually tease this whole thing out What does it mean to call on the name of the Lord? To therefore be saved But I'm going to keep reading, and then we'll come back to that. Verse 22. Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. Now, just as a little sidebar here. As you yourselves know. You all saw it. In chapter 4 of Acts, Peter and John have been drugged before the Sanhedrin. They're mad because they've healed this lame man, and they're giving all the credit to Jesus. And they tell him not to do it anymore. And Peter and John said, well, we're going to keep talking about Jesus. We're not going to stop. And so they kick him out of the room. They gather together. And here's what they say to each other. What are we going to do? Everyone knows about this outstanding miracle. And we cannot hide it. We cannot deny it. You see, I take this pause because if you're a Christian, if you're following Jesus, You're living a fact-based relationship, not a faith-based, and certainly not a feelings-based, a fact-based. I was at a conference with search ministries before we started 721 ministries and they had Gary Habermas who is a famous apologetics professor up at Liberty's written several books. He's the guru on apologetics and he spoke about a lot of things and he spoke about some of these passages and afterwards when I was at the airport getting ready to leave I saw him there and I walked over I said professor Habermas I have a question When you say that the Jews were recorded, the Sanhedrin is saying, we cannot deny that they've done this. Everybody's seen it. Did the Jews ever write anything, the Jews of that time, did they ever write anything refuting that? Saying, no, we never said that, that never happened, none of this happened, and we certainly never said that. Did they write anything to refute that? And he said, no. No writings ever from the authorities at that time denying the things that we read in the New Testament. We follow a fact-based religion, a fact-based relationship, not faith, not feelings. Our faith is built on facts. We push our feelings to allow them to be servants, but not masters. But we base our faith and our trust on the facts. So I'm gonna keep reading and Peter's gonna continue to give us God's part this man was handed over to you that be Jesus by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge and you With the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross If I'm in the crowd, I'm starting to feel the pressure on this but God raised him from the dead freeing him from the agony of death Verse 32 God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses of it by the way And Andy Stanley pointed this out years and years and years ago. The disciples were not willing to die for what they believed in. They were willing to die for what they saw. And they tell us this over and over in the scriptures. We saw him dead. We saw him alive. That's what he says. And we are eyewitnesses of this. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has been poured out what you now see in here. Continue with God's part therefore let all Israel be assured of this God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Messiah and Here comes our part G Peter Holy Spirit through Peter has just laid out exactly what God has done through Jesus and listen to the reaction of the crowd Verse 37 of Acts 2 when the people heard this they were cut to the heart and Cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other disciples brothers. What shall we do? They heard this momentous news this gospel this Unbelievable news it it quickened their hearts it cut them to the core and their their natural response was what? Can we do? Have you had that experience? Have you had that experience where your heart is quickened, your heart is cut to the core, you're convicted, and you respond with, I got to do something about this. In June of 1995, when I was born again, in that moment when the light came on, I remember vividly back then thinking two things. I have to change my life. I didn't even know to use the term born again. I just knew that everything had changed inside of me, a plate tectonic shift. I didn't fall out. I wasn't crying. I just knew it had happened. It was that obvious. And I said, I have to change the way I'm living. That was number one. Number two, I have to know, I have to start reading everything about Jesus. I was raised in the church, in the Presbyterian Church. I memorized both catechisms. I knew all about the information. But I didn't know him and I said I'm going back and I'm gonna read every every bit of red ink First and then the rest of it so I can I knew I had to do something it called on a response Called for a response on my part. Have you had that experience brothers? What shall we do? We've heard this news. We realize what sinners we are. What shall we do and In Peter says repent change the way you're living and and seek out the Holy Spirit I want to show you this next slide. Visceral and then desperate and surrender. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. That's visceral. Do you know what visceral means? It comes from, I don't know if it's the Latin or the Greek word, that describes your guts. And so it's a gut-felt response. It's a physical response. When you say, I've responded viscerally to that, you responded from the heart, from the gut, and you responded emotionally to that. And that takes us back to the end of Joel, Peter quoting Joel, saying, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Calling on the name of the Lord viscerally, not saying, hey, God, I need some help here. Hey God, I need this situation fixed. Hey God, I got a bad habit. Could you help me with my habit? Hey God, I've gotten myself into a fix in my marriage. Or could you fix my spouse? This is not what calling on the name of the Lord looks like. It's a visceral call. It's a call that says I need help. It's a call that says I'm forgive my vernacular. I'm screwed without you I got nothing if you don't help me jesus if you don't come into my life if you don't take over I have nothing That is what it looks like to call on the name of the lord and be saved. Have you done that? Have you done that? Have you called out help? Help me. I don't have anything without you I don't bring anything to the table You know, perhaps you think, yeah, you know, it was a good day when God got me on his team because I do bring a lot to the table. My friend, if you think, still think that way, you're deluded. You bring nothing to the table. Now he gives you things and then we start working together and that's back to our part and God's part. But it's all Him. It's all the Holy Spirit working in us. And that's what Peter and James and John and Matthew and Thomas and Nathanael and the rest of them came to learn how to live with the power of the Holy Spirit. They asked for help. I need your help. Calling on the name of the Lord and you will be saved as a visceral and you do it when you're desperate and therefore you surrender You're desperate Not necessarily in the gutter of life. You don't know how you don't have to be in jail or have lost everything Oftentimes it takes that for the hard-headed ones But just the fact that I realize inside I'm desperate. I got I don't have Jesus. I don't have him I don't have what he has to offer me. I wanted I got to have it and therefore I'm gonna surrender my life to him Not commit to him, surrender my life to him. One last thing. Years ago, my wife and I went to a conference, a weekend conference with one of our daughters. And at the very end of this conference, it was a therapy-oriented conference. And at the very end, they did this exercise where they took us into, they made us leave this big room we'd been in all weekend, imagine a big room that you would eat and have Gatherings down in a camp type setting we all had to leave the room, but we'd been in it for two and a half days And unbeknownst to us they had strung ropes all around this room and Then they blindfolded us and they took us back in and they put our hands each of us on a different spot on a rope And here's what they said There are there is there are there's two way. There's one way out of here now I had already seen that there were at least two doors I knew where the doors were in my mind when I went in I had an orientation to where those doors were They said there's one way out of here and it's and when you find it We will tell everyone that you have found the way out. I There's one way out. And when you find it, we'll all clap and we'll say your name and then you go sit down and the rest will keep doing what they're doing. So they started, and of course, you're moving along this rope and immediately you get disoriented because the rope comes to another rope and you have to go in a different direction. Then you bump into somebody and you've got to go around them or go underneath them. It's a very disorienting process. But I still had in my mind where those two exits were. And within a few minutes, they say, Lori has found the way out. And everybody goes, yay. And then a few minutes later, Bill has found the way out. And 30 minutes later, Sam has not found the way out. And I'm getting frustrated. And so I just stop. And they tell you to raise your hand. So one of the counselors comes over and he says, What do you need from me? And I said I need for you to go ahead and admit that this is no way out of this See, I was getting frustrated. This was the can-do Sam. This is the type-a personality Sam I want you to go ahead admit there's no way out of this This is all something to teach you some lesson so that I can be finished with it. He said no That's what you want. What do you need? I said I need for you to either tell me where the way out is or stop this Ridiculous exercise. That's what you need. I got frustrated. I went back By the time an hour had gone by I was the last one Cuz Sam doesn't give up Finally in frustration I yanked the blindfold off mad as a hornet And do you know what the way out was and that everyone else found it before me? asking for help When I call for the counselor to come over, when he asks me, what do I need? If I would have said, I need help, that would have been it. But Sam doesn't ask for help. Sam says, no, no. This is a sham. I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to figure this out. All I had to do to save myself an hour of frustration walking around blindfolded was to ask for help. But we won't do it. And that's what surrender looks like. when I become so desperate that I surrender and I say, I need your help, Jesus. That's what calling on the name of the Lord looks like. God's part, our part. What I hope you can start to see is that God has given you the Holy Spirit, if you've been born again, and you learn to live with the power of the Holy Spirit. That's God's part and our part, working together We make the effort. We do our part. We are responsible adults. We do our part, but we slow down and we ask the Holy Spirit to move out ahead of us, to give us the energy and the clarity and the creativity to accomplish things the way He wants them accomplished, not the way we want them accomplished. That's God's part and our part wrapped up together. I hope this helps. I hope you'll start slowing down and asking the Holy Spirit to be a part of everything you do throughout the day. Business, family, relationships, whatever it is. Ask for Him to be with you as you both do your part. Because there's more. You may not know that there's more. So come and find it.