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Hey everybody. Pastor Jack here and I want to encourage you to get a great book. Listen to this. Living Fearless in Christ. This is Hedy Amirahmadi's story, life story, why I Left Islam to win battles for the kingdom. A former Muslim comes to Christ and her ministry and her testimony is powerful. Get a copy for yourself. Living Fearless in Christ. Living Fearless in Christ by Hediya Miramadi. Available for the month of February for a gift of any amount@jackhibs.com that's jackibs.com

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Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs Podcast. With intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

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Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus said that people get all nervous about the word repent. Repent. Well, what? They get all uppity about it. Oh, just stop. It's an old English word. It means turn around. Isn't that great? You could have, you could say, this way, you're going in one direction, do 180 degree turn, you're going that way. Stop. When you hear this message, the kingdom of God's at hand. Salvation is available to you. God wants to forgive you of your sins. The next question should be from you. What do I do? Answer, repent.

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You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackibbs.com podcast today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

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Romans 14, Romans 15, Romans 16. A great section of the scripture that is speaking directly to the believer about their walk with God, making it real. Because everything about Jesus is real. And in that, the reality, and I think the authentic faith of a true believer cannot be denied. When I say things like that, I think of the man Stephen. Remember Stephen in the Book of Acts? Stephen was a man that was full of the Holy Spirit. You really don't know much about Stephen, but his great moment of the. Of the hall of Faith, I would say, of course, is when he was guilty, loving Jesus, guilty of proclaiming Christ. It's interesting to note that where Stephen was stoned to death for his witness of Christ being full of the Holy Spirit, what did he do? He proclaimed the gospel. And one of the eyewitnesses to that, he was actually the man orchestrating the stoning. And the killing, he's the man responsible was a guy by the name of Saul, a Pharisee from Tarsus, a Jew who no doubt Stephen's stoning to death. Stephen's last words is, I see the Lord standing at the right hand of God the Father. And Stephen uttered those words just as Jesus, father, do not hold this against them. Forgive them. Isn't that amazing? That's big grace, people. You can't do that with human power. And Paul saw that. And I'm convinced that that led to Paul's great conversion on the road to Damascus. That had to be haunting him and preparing him all along the way. A great witness. So church getting real with God and man requires us to know who we are. And it means that we must together love first. And he starts out when he tells us in verse seven, for none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. He's speaking to the fact that the believer, if we're living or if we die, we are the Lord's. Isn't that amazing? When we hear the word die for the believer, we must be clear on this. When we die as believers, we don't die. Jesus said, if you believe in me, though, you die, you're not dead. That kind of freaks some of us out. Say, wait a minute, he's laying right there. The guy is dead. No, the guy is gone. The Bible tells us to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord, and Jesus is the Lord over the living. That's all of us here right now. And those who died in faith, imagine as you sit here this morning, those who have died in faith are standing before him in eternity based on the blood of the everlasting covenant. And based on that fact that, as Paul has been teaching us, who are we to judge another man's servant? And who are we to say this or that about the celebration of any particular day that you might hold sacred to God versus someone else holding some other day. We're not to judge people on that. The bottom line was, whatever you do, if you eat or if you do not eat, if you drink or do not drink, if you pick this day or that day, bottom line, do it unto the Lord. Give God the glory, honor his name. And I love the grace that's involved in that grace to be victorious in Christ. What a great liberating truth. And the fact is that I am not. I cannot live my life to myself. Watch this, everybody. We don't listen. We're not far from Hollywood. It's all about self. Everything is about stardom. Everything is about the idol worshiping of the performer, so to speak. Right? And if that's such a great thing, why are not those people fulfilled and content and happy instead with, so to speak, owning the world? They're drugged out, they're drunk out. They often end their lives in suicide. The Bible makes it very clear right here that for you and I to love one another and even love our enemies is the fact that you and I must realize that none of us live to ourself and we do not die to ourself. You're not an island. No matter what Paul Simon says, you're not an island. No, I'm just going to live my life to myself. You can't do that. Listen, there's a big craze going on in our new world. I was speaking to an expert on this last night in Arizona. And this stuff of AI and now a shocking poll. I don't know who did the poll. You can Google it later, but there's a poll that's out. And young people today are choosing. They want to have a synthetic relationship with AI friends rather than actual humans. And their argument is this. It's too complex to have a relationship with another human. Too much drama. And you can literally go, and you can engineer through AI, you can make. Make your friends. You can create your friend. Listen, this is freakish, this is sick. And it goes in a thousand different directions. But listen, today with AI, your kids are creating friends in their own image. And it's not a joke. You can't tell that these things are not real. On the screen, they look exactly real. And by the way, sad to say it, but it's not just friends that you communicate with. They actually carry on conversations and dialogues. I don't know if you've seen this stuff going on, but you can ask AI all kinds of stuff. And it. If you ask in a rude manner, tone of voice, I don't know about you, but you know, you can say a nice word with a wrong tone. Doesn't sound good. Did you know AI knows this? It has tone. It's very convincing. Problem is, it's not real. It's not real. Or is it the new reality whereby I think demonic powers are going to seize upon such things. Hey, why pray when you can ask AI for the answer? Hey, what should I do about this or that? Think about that. The discipline of prayer is hard, but you're going to get your answer from God. People don't want to deal with that. No, I want an answer in the next 3.5 seconds. And it's been said today that kids don't even know how to learn now. All they know is how to search for the answer. But you can now create a world around you that's synthetic, and it's not even real, and people are choosing that. But there's no love. It's fake. It's false. Ah, but it's convenient. Look, you're in church right now, and I know I'm gonna get mail on this. I always do. If you, ever since COVID have gotten into the habit of not getting together with believers. Cause it's what. It's what? It's convenient. It's convenient to stay home and we do church in our jammies. You're not doing church. You may be listening to a Bible study, but you're not doing church. Church is where you have to fight over seats and dive in for the parking spot. Be nice to let people out of the parking spot. Church is having to bump into people. Church is having to deal with stuff we want. Oh, no. We want a synthetic world. And you'll never be able to love other people in a synthetic world. Maybe I see it differently, or maybe more vividly, or maybe I've thought about this a long time. But my God did not send an angel to reveal who he is. He came himself. He didn't even lean on an angel. He came in human skin to reveal himself to you. Real love that can be experienced. And the Scripture says, if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. We are to be his example. First Corinthians 3, verse 13 says, Then each one's work will become clear, for the day will declare it, because, listen, it will be revealed by fire. This is the judgment of Christ, the judgment of God. And the fire will test each one's work of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on endures. I'll come back to this in a moment. He will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved yet. So through fire. Listen. Talking about loving one another, you and I could perform miracles. That doesn't matter. Do you hear me? Listen up. People are gonna. Jesus said it over and over again. The disciples, the apostles said it in the Last days, there's gonna be times of great deception done by miracles. So that's not the defining point. The defining point is true love, actual love that God puts within your heart to minister to other people. Because let's, let's, let's be honest. Miracles are fantastic. If they're done by God. You say, what do you mean, if they're done by God? Because the Bible makes it clear that when Pharaoh encountered Moses, Moses, remember the serpent. Pharaoh's serpents or Pharaoh's magicians, had their staff, their rods, and that they turned them. Satan turned them into snakes. And then Moses, it's so awesome. Moses all by himself. He's standing there, old man, you gotta see all these young punks. They got their, you know, they're the counselors. They're the priests of all these various Egyptian gods, and they put down their staffs. They're snakes. And you just gotta see Moses standing all alone. It's just like, yeah, I bet everybody else is going, snake. That's amazing. And Moses throws down his staff and his staff turns into a snake and eats up all the other snakes. It's just like, listen, Miracles. Miracles are tied to a message. And there'll be miracles being performed in the last days by religious people who are not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They will deny the fact that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and rose again from the dead. They'll be inspired and empowered by satanic influences. And you got to watch out for that. We live in that kind of an age. But the Bible tells us that we as believers, whatever we do, First Corinthians 13 tells us it's got to be done by love. If you have all the gifts of the Holy Spirit and you operate them, the bottom line is they're junk without them being operated by the love of God. Think of that for a moment. The simplicity of God. And yet it's impossible for us to obtain without his miraculous touch upon our lives. And so we move on in this. We continue on. In verse nine, it says, for to this end, Christ died and rose and lived again, that he might be lord of both the dead and the living. This is the Jesus of the Bible. People are often argue, how is it that you're. You worship God? You say, Jesus is God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. One God manifested in three persons. Explain that. I really can't. And don't talk to me about ice and vapor and the egg and the shell and the yolk and the. It's beyond us. But that very truth is found in the very first verse of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And that word is Elohim singular. Elohim singular. One God in multiple. And the Bible tells us that Christ was the architect, builder, if you want to put it that way, in Colossians and in the book of Hebrews as well. But doesn't the Bible tell us that it was the Spirit of God that hovered over the waters at creation? Just in the very first book of the Bible, the Trinity is there. But Jesus Christ died and rose again. That is the message. Whatever religious pursuit you may be flirting with, if you don't know Christ Jesus, you don't have what we have. What do you have? We have a risen Savior. His resurrection proves everything the Bible says. And on top of it, the Bible said in advance that this is what he would accomplish for us. That he would in fact be resurrected from the dead. Matthew, chapter 3, verse 2 says repent. This is the Gospel. Repent. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus said that. Repent. Change your mind. We all get weird. Or we, I mean we shouldn't, but people get all nervous about the word repent. Repent or what. They get all uppity about it. Oh, just stop. It's an old English word. It means turn around. Isn't that great? You could say this way, you're going in one direction, do 180 degree turn, you're going that way. Stop. When you hear this message. The kingdom of God's at hand. Salvation is available to you. God wants to forgive you of your sins. The next question should be from you. What do I do? Answer. Repent. What does that mean? Turn around. Stop thinking about Jesus the way that you have been and think differently. Stop running from him. Run to him. And please, please think about it. Oh, I. I can't run to him. I'm such a sinner. No, you don't understand. If you are such a sinner, you're the one that can bring him greater glory. God loves sinners, but don't stay that way. God loves us enough. Listen, people will say, I love you just the way you are. Well, of course. Okay, that's nice. God loves us just the way we are. But God loves us so much he won't leave us the way we are. He changes us by his power. And all that requires of us is to repent. That is turn around realizing, knowing that the direction I'm going is the wrong way. You know that inside. Every human knows that inside they're convicted by the Holy Spirit. Believer or not, Jesus said so that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. Why does he do that? To be mean. No. To get you to change your course and to come to him. The scripture goes, on Mark 1:15, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. The gospel? That Christ died for you and he rose again from the dead. And by putting your faith in him, you. He issues to you the free gift of eternal life. And you may be here today, or you're watching right now and you're thinking, yeah, I don't know. I doubt it. You know what? You're just going to stay in that condition unless you taste and see that the Lord is good folks. Can you imagine this? You've become so accustomed to living in some form of mitigating your shame, you think maybe no one's gonna find out about it. Or you've covered all your tracks, and maybe you have. But down deep inside, you know there's this nagging presence that God knows. And do you know what he wants to do? He wants to go to the heart of the matter. He wants to go to the core of it all. And he wants to touch you right there and expose you. Not expose you to the world, expose you to yourself. He already knows everything about you. But what we do as humans, look, we learned this from Adam and Eve, mom and dad, they taught us this. Hide, sew, fig leaves, do whatever it takes. Cover it up. And you could see Jesus come along and just pull one little thread. Hey, what is that? He pulls on the thread and the hole, the whole garden falls off of you, and you're exposed. And you say, jack, that's terrifying. It is terrifying. But that's not all. You're exposed before him, who is mighty to save. And he says to you, you are now naked and open before me. I know everything about you before you were ever born. And I've seen it all. And I'm speaking to you and I'm asking you, you come to me, you bring me your shame, your guilt, your sin. I'll take it away from you. If you've never experienced Christ, you are still living under a cloud of shame. And you need not live like that anymore. Let Jesus take it away. Let him remove it. One of the great, beautiful, liberating strengths about being a follower of Jesus Christ is. Is the stuff that in my memory, my mind, I'm embarrassed of and I'm ashamed of. And some of those things, nobody. Nobody knew about them. And then Jesus knocks on your heart and it's like, oh, my goodness. And instead of him saying, sit down while I beat you up, he says, stand up and I'll make you whole. He does this. Let him do that to you.