The Absolute Best Workout

Well, here we are at the beginning of a new year, which is often a time that many of us do a bit of reflection. We think back to this past year and analyze the highs and lows that we went through, maybe we begin to look at the new year and make some decisions, maybe about ourselves, about our lives, some things that we want to change, some things that we want different. Maybe you set some goals for your life; maybe you’ve made some resolutions. Some of you are very adamant about doing those things, some of you have given that up a long time ago, but the new year seems to be a new start. It’s often the time that we begin to reflect on our lives, and the direction that we’re going, and maybe decide to make some of those changes and set some goals for ourselves. Maybe you’ve done that already. Maybe some of you have already looked to this new year and said, “You know what? I’m going to do some things differently financially. I want to spend less, I want to save more, I want to get out of debt.”

Maybe some of you made some career goals. Maybe this is the year that you want to get that degree or somehow get certified so that you will be first in line for that next promotion. Maybe some of you were making decisions about your time management that you realize you’re spending way too much time on the internet or too much time in front of the television, you need to spend more time with your family. Then, there’s always the physical goal of, “You know what? I’ve put on a few pounds this past year, I need to lose some weight; so I need to start exercising, I need to eat healthier.” We always seem to make that a goal at the beginning of the new year, especially after the holidays.

I want to ask you this, how many of you, maybe this year you did or maybe you’ve never done this before, have set spiritual goals for yourself where you have made some decisions about your walk with the Lord and how you want certain things to be different, to be better in this upcoming year. Oftentimes I think that we think about what we want God to do for us rather than thinking about what we want God to do in us. Tonight, we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe some spiritual goals that we can set for ourselves. Maybe you’ve made the decision that you’re going to begin to work out physically this year to get in better shape. But tonight I want to share with you, and this is the title of my message, “The Absolute Best Workout.” This is not a physical workout, it is a spiritual workout. We find it talked about here in Philippians 2, as the Apostle Paul is reaching out to this church that in many ways were doing well, but he obviously saw areas in their lives that they could do even better.

If you’ll join me in Philippians 2:12, and we’ll read down to verse 16. It says, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. 14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.”

When I talk about working out, there are some of you that get excited because you are all about working out—you love to work out. There are others of you that break out into a sweat just at the mention of it—it’s not something that is part of your makeup, it’s not something that you are really interested in doing. Starting out tonight, I understand that in a congregation this size we have some of you that are gym rats and some of you that are couch potatoes. I want you to know from the get go that, “Hey, whatever floats your boat. Live it out!” If you love working out, by all means, enjoy it; if you love sitting on the couch, God gives us rest as well. I do want you to understand this: If you are a follower of Christ, there is a workout that is not an option for you.

Here in verse 12, the very end of the verse, we read the words of the Apostle Paul where he says, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” You don’t have to go to Gold’s Gym, but you cannot help but be in God’s gym, if you are a follower of Christ. You are in God’s gym, and He is your trainer. He has a work that He wants to do in your life, and this passage is going to talk to us a bit about that. Later, Paul had written to Timothy and said these words, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things.” So, if you want to work on your body, that is fine; but as followers of Christ, every single one of us must realize our obligation to work on our spiritual life, that that is what God wants us to do. In verse 12, we read those words again, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

Before we really dive deep into this passage, I think I need to start off by clearing up a few things and making sure that we understand that what these words are telling us is not that we are to work for our salvation. I know many of you here on Wednesday nights, you understand that already, but there may be some of us that have this sense that if I am going to be right with God, that somehow I’ve gotta work my way towards that, I’ve got to impress Him, I’ve got to live a life that is acceptable to Him because only then will I make it to heaven. Well, I want to tell you right now that there is no way in the world that you, or I, or anybody in this room, can work for their salvation. In fact, the Bible tells us just the opposite, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” We are saved not by anything we have done but completely by what Jesus has done for us. Jesus did it all, all to Him we owe.

That being said, Paul is writing what he is writing not to nonbelievers telling them, “You need to work harder if you want to be saved,” he is writing to those that are already believers, they are the Philippian church, they are followers of Christ already, so he is writing to those that are already saved. He is not talking about working for your salvation.

Another thing that we need to notice is that he tells us to work out our own salvation. Our tendency oftentimes is that we want to work on somebody else. We think God needs to do a work on our spouse. We think God needs to do a work on our kids. We think God needs to do a work on our neighbor or our friend. Our focus here is not on anybody else other than ourselves, and that’s what Paul is directing them to. They were not to point out to the other members of the church in Philippi and say, “Hey, you need to pay attention to this. Paul’s talking to you.” No. He is saying it to each one of us, that we are to internalize this, “…work out your own.” You are not the Holy Spirit in your spouse’s life or in anybody else’s life, that God is going to use you to change them. That is between them and God. What God is doing in your life, that is what your attention should be on as it is in my own life. I need to pay attention to what God is wanting to say and do in me. It’s not about working for your salvation, and it’s not about working in somebody else’s life, it’s about a work that is to be done in your own life.

So then, what does it actually mean, “…work out your own salvation.” We will get to that, but first I want you to understand that what this passage is really getting across to us is this: God is not done with you yet. There is still work that He is wanting to do. Whether you have been saved for four minutes or you have been saved for forty years, you have not yet arrived. Something that we need to notice, and even the way that Paul addresses this Philippian church, if you reread verse 12, you’ll notice that Paul is actually commending them for how far they have come already, but they had not arrived. No matter how long you have been walking with the Lord or how much change has been brought about in your life up to this point, you are not yet “there” because the goal is the likeness of Christ molded in you. That actually is what Scripture tells us, is that God’s desire is that you be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus Christ, and there’s not a single one of us that has arrived yet to that goal.

You’ll notice, though, that this passage begins with the word, “Therefore,” and that obviously means that what he is telling us, and what we’re studying tonight, is connected to what he had just told these Philippian believers earlier in Philippians 2, so how does what we are reading now relate to what he had already said? Let me point out to you a few things that he has said. In Philippians 2:3-4, he said, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. 4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”

How many of you have that nailed down already? I hope you don’t raise your hand because none of us do. He’s basically telling us, “Don’t be selfish. You need to be considering others above yourself,” and every single one of us falls short in that. Then, he tells us what our real goal is in verse 5, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Let me tell you this, you will never lose that selfishness within your heart until you have the mind of Christ. You will never be able to esteem others above yourself until you have the mind of Christ. Then, Paul goes on to describe what the mind of Christ is like from the actual life of Christ. He describes how Jesus lived, verse 6, “who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”

Jesus, Paul is telling us, has really set the bar pretty high, that we need to be selfless not selfish as Jesus demonstrated by humbling Himself, by becoming a servant, and being obedient to His Father, even to the point of death. If we look at that example for us, there’s not a single one of us that says, “Yeah, I kind of do that. I’m pretty much ‘there.’” No, you’re not, and neither am I. But that is God’s desire, is that our lives from the day that we got saved until the day that He takes us home would be a constant progression of becoming more and more like Christ, which means day after day, year after year, we become more humble, over a period of time that we become more service oriented towards those that are around us, and we become more obedient to the Word of God. God is at work in us to accomplish that purpose. If that’s what God wants for us, then that is what God is working in us. That’s what he tells us in verse 13.

You’ll notice I’m actually skipping over the, “…work out your own salvation,” part, but we’re going to get to that next. First, I want you to see what God’s work is. In verse 13 it says, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Do you realize that God is doing a work in you? Many of you do because you see the change that is being brought about in your life since the time that you gave your life to the Lord. For some of us, those changes have been more drastic than for others, but I will tell you this, that God is at work in you to bring about that change. Why? Because from the moment that you gave your life to Christ, your body became the temple of the Holy Spirit. The living God now dwells within you, and He’s going to do some cleaning, right? The Spirit’s job is to teach us, the Spirit’s job is to lead us, the Spirit’s job is to convict us, and so He goes about doing His job. God is at work in you, and in me.

I remember back many years ago now that Chuck Smith used to tell the story about his grandson who on one occasion was thinking about some things, so he turned to his mom and said, “Mom, you know, I hear you talking about the fact that God speaks to you, and I hear dad say the same thing, that God spoke to his heart, I don’t think that God has ever spoken to me.” Mom, in her wisdom, said, “Do you remember last week when you were in the garage, and you grabbed one of dad’s golf clubs and starting swinging it around in the garage and at one point that club slipped out of your hands, flew across, and smashed my vase? During all of that, was there any time that there was a voice in your head that said, ‘You really shouldn’t be swinging this club around,’” and he said, “Yes.” “That was the voice of God.” He paused for a minute and thought and said, “You know, mom, I think God speaks to me a lot.”

There may be some of you right now that are beginning to realize that God does speak to you a lot. It is that still, small voice of the Holy Spirit within you that at times is saying, “You need to stop doing what you’re doing,” or “You need to start doing this, that, or the other.” God is at work in us, but Paul tells us some specific ways that He is at work in us. One of those ways is this: He is at work, “…in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

Let’s take a look at these statements and analyze what exactly they mean. The first one is this: He is at work in you, “…to will,” that is, God working to create in you a desire to walk in His ways. Before you knew the Lord, chances are you had no desire to walk in God’s ways, you had the desire to walk in your own ways, and that’s essentially what we do as none believers. The Old Testament talked to us about that through the prophet Isaiah when he said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way,” so before Christ, that’s exactly how we are living our lives. We are living our lives our own way—we’re doing what pleases us, we’re not really caring about what pleases God.

What is being described here is that once you are a believer, God begins a work in you, and part of that work is He is changing your desires where you will begin more and more to will the things that God wills and less to walk in the ways that are just simply your own desires. In fact, we can see even in what Paul says about these Philippians back in verse 12, that that actually was happening in their lives already. Notice what it says again. It says, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence.”

What is he saying? He’s saying that there was a time in these Philippian believers that when Paul was there, they really toed the line. They were watching themselves. They were watching their words. They were watching their actions. They were making sure that they weren’t going to do anything in the presence of the Apostle Paul that was going to upset him or cause him to have to reprimand them or bring them embarrassment. But, as it goes on, he says, “…but now much more in my absence,” they are walking in obedience.

Now that Paul is not even there, they’re continuing to walk in obedience to the Word of God because something has changed within them. Before they were doing it out of somewhat of an obligation, “Paul’s watching. I gotta make sure that I’m careful.” But, that’s different than when nobody is watching and you still choose to do the right thing. You see, you can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, but what God is wanting to work in us is that we would do the right thing for the right reasons. God works in us to remove us living for our own desires so that we can begin to live for His desires—doing the right thing for the right reason. Why? Because the Lord is really not interested in outward conformity, He’s interested in inward transforming, so He’s at work to do that.

Remember when you were young and your parents set down rules for you to follow? You would follow them when mom and dad were present, but when mom and dad were not there, you would bend those rules. If mom made the rule that you cannot ride your skateboard in the house, if mom was in the house, you did not ride the skateboard in the house. But if mom was at work or she was grocery shopping, you’d grab the skateboard and you’d ride in the house. That is outward conformity. That is doing the right thing only when someone is present that could reprimand you for it. Now, you would think that we would outgrow that as we got older, and some of those things we do, but a lot of them we don’t. There are things that we do simply as an outward conforming because the inward transformation hasn’t yet happened.

A lot of times we weigh the risk and the reward of our disobedience: What is the chance I’m going to get caught vs the chance that I am not going to get caught and actually be able to enjoy what it is that I want to do? I can almost guarantee you, you’ve played this out on your drive to church tonight because when we are on the road, we always seem to be in a hurry. We want to get to where we want to get to as fast as we possibly can. If you have to use your GPS to program it in, and it tells you that it’s going to take 24 minutes to get there, many of us set it as a personal goal, “I’m going to beat that. I’m going to get there in 21 minutes instead of 24 minutes.” There’s always a risk. There is the risk that you’re going to get caught, that there’s going to be a motorcycle cop that’s just off the road that you’re on, just around a corner where you can’t really see, and as you go flying by, he’s going to pull you over. But, we weigh the risk and the reward.

Now, I live off of Clinton Keith in Murrieta. I’ve lived there for a long time, and my commute to the church is on Clinton Keith. One thing that I have learned is that on a regular basis there are two motorcycle cops, and I know exactly where they station themselves, so let me tell you that I conform because the risk is higher. But if I’m in a place where I’ve never really seen a motorcycle cop, I may not think that the risk is so high, and I might get a little bit more lenient in my acceleration. You understand what I’m talking about.

My point being is this, when we are in Christ, there may be things that we do as an outward conforming—we conform when we are around other believers, we conform when we are at church, we conform when we are in the presence of those that we don’t want to disappoint, we don’t want to embarrass ourselves. The question is, what do we do when none of those obstacles are in the way? You know what God is wanting to do? He’s wanting to bring such a change in your heart, and in mine, that it doesn’t matter whether somebody is watching or not, that it is our will to do His will, it is no longer our will to do our will. So, God is at work to change our will so that we desire what He desires. Following that, it’s not just that He changes our desires, He changes our ability, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” In other words, God’s not just going to give you the desire to do His pleasure, He is going to give you the ability to do His pleasure.

The Greek word for “to do” in this passage gives us our English word energy, power. It’s interesting because the same word that is translated, “to do,” in verse 13 is also the Greek word which is translated “works” in the same verse attributed to God. In other words, God is using His power to give you the will and the power to do His good pleasure. So, God is using His power to give you the power to do what He wants you to do. Not only that, He’s giving you the desire to do it exactly like that, and guys, we need both. We don’t just need the will to do it, we need the ability to do it as well because one without the other is going to give us problems. If you had the will to do the right thing but you don’t have the ability, then you can’t do it. If you have the ability to do it but not the desire, then you won’t do it. But God is working in you and me to do both, both to have the desire to do things His way as well as the ability to do things His way.

Many of you can relate to this in a very personal way because there may be things that were part of your past before you knew Christ, things that you were entrenched in in your life, things about yourself that you did not like at all. Maybe at one time it was something that was valuable to you but it wore you down and you got to the point where you didn’t want it to be a part of your life anymore, but it had such a grip on you, you couldn’t let it go. Maybe you drank too much. At one time, that’s what you wanted, but you reached the point where you saw the toll that it was taking upon you and your family and you wanted to let it go but you didn’t have the ability. Maybe it was drugs. Maybe it was an anger issue. Maybe it was something else. For many of us, we had something in our lives that we would’ve loved to have gotten rid of but we could not let it go. Then you came to Christ, and God began to do a work in you to set you free from that very thing, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” He’s giving you the desire to do it His way, and He’s giving you the ability to do it His way.

If that is God’s work, what is our work? That’s where the end of verse 12 comes in, “Therefore…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Guys, we cannot do it without God, but God is not going to do it for you. He can give you the will, He can give you the ability, but we must work it out, we must carry it out. So, what does that mean? What does it mean to “work out” these things that God is working in us? Well, there’s some things that we need to start doing, and there’s other things that we need to stop doing.

You know, earlier in this chapter we referred to a few of those things. Going back to verse 3, Paul actually is telling them one of the things that they needed to start doing and one of the things that they needed to stop doing. Look at verse 3 again. He said, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit,” that was something that they needed to stop doing. If they were going to work it out in their lives, they would begin to work diligently to stop being selfish and stop being proud. But, he didn’t stop there, he went on, “but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” Now, that was something that they needed to begin to do.

Some things God is working in you to get you to stop doing, other things He is working in you to get you to start doing, and this passage that we are in gives us an example of both. Now, let me tell you, this is not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination, but it is some things that Paul is laying out for us of the work that God wants to do in us that we need to workout, and the first one is what we need to stop doing, verse 14. He says, “Do all things without complaining and disputing.” For many of us, that hits pretty close to home because that’s exactly what we’re good at—we’re good at complaining, we’re good at arguing, we’re good at disputing.

I remember hearing the story about a woman whose husband had a tendency to complain and grumble about everything that she did. He always found something wrong in anything that she did, even at breakfast. One day she would make him scrambled eggs, and he would complain, “Today I kinda really wanted fried eggs.” The next day she would fry the eggs, and he would get up and frown at his plate and say, “You know, today I was kinda feeling the scrambled eggs instead.” One day she decided that she was going to make him two eggs, and she was going to scramble one and fry the other. She put it on his plate. When he came to the table, he looked down and with a frown on his face said, “You fried the wrong one.”

Many of us know people like that. Some of us are people like that, where we can find a fault in anything and in anybody and so we grumble about it and we complain about it. Let me tell you that God is at work in you to change that, but you have to work it out. He can give you the desire to change, He can give you the ability to change, but your workout is to make it happen. God’s not going to do it for you. Some things, and the Bible is full of these examples, God is wanting you to stop doing, but then he goes on and talks about some things that he wants us to start doing. Look at verse 16, “holding fast the word of life.”

This past Sunday Pastor John Stewart did a teaching out of Psalm 119 where he shared about the importance of the Word of God in the believer’s life and how we need to make sure that we are keeping His Word close, “…holding fast the word of life.” Scripture often tells us how important that is, is that we would have a grip on the Word of God, that we would hold it close, that it would be something we spend a lot of time in.

But I do want you to know that “holding fast” is probably not the best translation of what Paul is getting across. If you happen to be reading out of the regular King James Version, the old King James Version, I’m actually reading out of the New King James and my version says, “holding fast the word of life,” but the old King James says it a little bit differently. It says, “Holding forth the word of life.” The word would be better translated holding it out, holding it forth, as if Paul is telling them that what they needed to do was to hold it out for others, that there are others that need it. You possess it, you need to begin to hold it out to them. You need to hold it out to them with the way that you live. You need to hold it out to them in the way that you speak, but you need to be holding it out to those that are around you.

Yes, it is important that we keep the Word of God for ourselves, but what Paul is getting across is that we are holding it out for others because others need it. There are things that we need to stop doing, but there are things that we also need to start doing. In this instance, what he is talking about is the importance that we are needing to hold out the Word of God to those that are around us. There may be many of us at this point we are okay with keeping it to ourselves, it is important to us and we love it, but we are not holding it out to those that are around us. There are things that we are to stop doing, there are things that we are to start doing if we are going to, “…work out your own salvation.” The benefit in doing so is that we will have an impact upon our world.

Look at what it says in verse 15, “that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” To live as a Christian in this day and age is getting more and more difficult all the time. Because of the way that our society is going, we’re living in a society that is becoming more and more hostile to the Christian faith, more and more resistant to our message. Our world is losing its grip on what is good and what is true and what is right. Because of that, they have become a culture that accepts what God disapproves of, and they disapprove of what God accepts. For us to live out our Christianity in a culture like today, we will more and more be feeling like we are swimming against the tide. It’s going to get harder and harder, most likely. I want you to know that Paul was writing to people in similar circumstances, and he describes it here in verse 15 because he described their culture, at that time in the first century, here in verse 15 as, “…a crooked and perverse generation.”

That word “crooked” in the Greek language is skolios which gives us our English word scoliosis. Some of us are acquainted with that word because maybe you have a degree of scoliosis in your own body, but it is a curvature, an unnatural curvature of your spine. Your spine should be in alignment, but if you have scoliosis, it means it’s deviating from that alignment. That word “perverse” goes along with the same idea. That word “perverse” is talking about that which has gone its own way, so Paul is describing his culture, much like we would probably describe our culture, saying that it is “crooked and perverse.” It is no longer in alignment with God’s original intent, it has gone its own way, and it is in that generation that both Paul and the Philippians had to live and that we need to live in today.

If we are doing exactly what this passage is telling us, that God is working in us and we are hearing the voice of God, listening to the Spirit of God, and we’re making the changes, we are working it out in our lives, do you know what’s going to happen? It tells us at the end of verse 15, “…among whom you shine as lights in the world.”

You see, our world is getting darker and darker, and the more you are cooperating with the work that God is doing in you, the more your life is going to stand in stark contrast to the culture around you—they will be dark, you will shine as a bright light—and there are going to be some that are going to be drawn to that light. They’re going to be attracted to what is different in you, and, Lord willing, you’ve already had this experience where you’ve had individuals that maybe you work with or a neighbor or somebody else in your family that is now looking at your life and saying, “You know what? There’s something different about you. You’re not like everybody else I know. The way that you talk, the way that you conduct yourself, the way that you treat the people that are around you. What is it about you that makes you so different?” That’s what it means to be working out what God is working in you is that suddenly the world begins to take notice because you are no longer like the world, you are now different. We are to be a light to our world and stand out in stark contrast.

Jesus said to His own disciples, “You are the light of the world.” He said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Let me tell you this: God is working in you, and if you’re working out what He is working in, you’re going to shine. What’s going to happen when you shine is the world will take notice. Some are going to scurry away, they don’t want to have anything to do with it. Jesus said, “…light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil,” and if that’s the case, they’re going to run away from it. But there are going to be others that are going to be drawn to it. They’re going to be attracted by it.

I think one of the biggest problems, and I’ll start to wrap this up here in the next few minutes, that we have in our world today is not just that the world is getting darker and darker, but the church seems to be getting dimmer and dimmer because many believers are not working out what God is trying to work in them. The Spirit of God is convicting them, but they are resisting that conviction. The Spirit of God is calling them out from the world’s values, but they’ve become somewhat attached to the things that the world values. As the world gets darker and darker, the church remains in kind of that dim state because too many are content to be saved instead of being actually transformed.

We are in the month of January right now which means the gyms are packed. If you go to a gym, you hate January because of all the people that make those New Year’s resolutions. They have shown up, they’re there right now. You pull into the parking lot, you can’t find a parking space. You go into the gym, and there’s no available treadmills—you’ve gotta take a number in the month of January. Just hold out till March and everything’s going to be okay. Why? Because many of those are going to fall to the wayside. They’re not going to carry it out. They’ll last for a little while, but then they stop showing up. Why? Why do they stop? Well, some will be because they just get to the point where they say, “It’s just not worth it anymore. I’m putting in all of this effort and I’m not seeing enough change, so why even try.” Others see a little bit of change, and then they get satisfied with that little bit of change, “Ha! I dropped five pounds,” “I dropped ten pounds! I can see my feet again. I’m good now,” and so they stop showing up to the gym.

Unfortunately, there are believers that are like that. They see a little bit of change in their life, “Ha! I am a Christian,” and they get satisfied with where they have progressed not realizing that the Lord is never done in their life. There are more things that He wants to do because you are not yet like Jesus.

Let me ask you, have you reached one of those places where you just say, “Okay, you know what? There’s been some change in my life, and I guess that’s good.” Let me remind you that God is still at work in you. There’s change that He wants to bring about, and so there is a workout for you this year to, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” cooperating with what God wants to do in you and through you. Why? Because it pleases Him, that’s what verse 13 says, “for it is…His good pleasure.” But not only that, it’s so that you can be a light to a dark world, that when your co-worker, your neighbor, your friend says, “What is going on with you? You’re not who you used to be.” You can hold forth the Word of God and say, “This is why, because God has been working in my life.” Amen? Let’s pray.