All Jacked Up: Part 3 – Unjack Your Life: Transcript

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ALL JACKED UP

Unjack Your Life

Bil Cornelius

Hey guys, this is pastor Bil here. I remember growing up singing a song, count your blessings, and name them one by one. And here we are at thanksgiving time. If there was ever a time to be thankful, this is it. So many things we’re thankful for, friends and family and ministry opportunities but I’m thankful for is this station. I’m thankful this network exists to help us take the gospel all over the world. What are you thankful for today? My prayer is sometime today you’ll stop and say thank you God for all you’ve done in my life, all you’ve done in the past and all you’re going to do, and I’m thankful for this year, living in the now and honoring you. Let’s be thankful. Happy thanksgiving.

Have you ever broken a glass like maybe in a kitchen or another room in your house or maybe on the porch or something and you thought you cleaned it all up until several months later you’re walking along and oh, what is that? And you find that little piece of glass you missed earlier. Has this ever happened to you? You experienced what it is to have something that’s fallen and crashed in your life that you thought you cleaned it all up, but many, many times later it comes back to cut you.

We’ve all had the experience where something that happened in our life messed us up later. Something that drug us down once seems to drag us down again and again and again and we like to find ourselves I like to say, all jacked up. A phrase we use on our staff a lot and you probably say that too when something is messed up. I pulled my back up the other day. Where is it? It’s all over the place. It’s all jacked up. Maybe used the phrase with your career. The boss is mad at me. It’s all jacked up. Maybe the family deal.

When we describe situations people are going through trying to counsel them and help them. It’s jacked up. You have a guy that’s divorced and girl is divorced and both have kids and the kids don’t get along and fighting each other. They don’t feel the new stepdad loves them and new step mom loves them like the old mom. It’s all jacked up. Maybe you’re single and been through several relationships and they didn’t honor God and you find yourself emotionally all jacked up. Maybe you have a business. And, you know, things are kind of tight in the economy so you’ve got your stock is much lower because you had your shelves full and sold everything you had and you had to discount everything because of the market and then you don’t have as much money coming in. You had to restock the shelves. You spent all the money you made on paying the bills and can’t restock the shelves and when people come in the store it’s half empty and they don’t buy from you and it’s all jacked up.

Description

ALL JACKED UP

Unjack Your Life

Bil Cornelius

Hey guys, this is pastor Bil here. I remember growing up singing a song, count your blessings, and name them one by one. And here we are at thanksgiving time. If there was ever a time to be thankful, this is it. So many things we’re thankful for, friends and family and ministry opportunities but I’m thankful for is this station. I’m thankful this network exists to help us take the gospel all over the world. What are you thankful for today? My prayer is sometime today you’ll stop and say thank you God for all you’ve done in my life, all you’ve done in the past and all you’re going to do, and I’m thankful for this year, living in the now and honoring you. Let’s be thankful. Happy thanksgiving.

Have you ever broken a glass like maybe in a kitchen or another room in your house or maybe on the porch or something and you thought you cleaned it all up until several months later you’re walking along and oh, what is that? And you find that little piece of glass you missed earlier. Has this ever happened to you? You experienced what it is to have something that’s fallen and crashed in your life that you thought you cleaned it all up, but many, many times later it comes back to cut you.

We’ve all had the experience where something that happened in our life messed us up later. Something that drug us down once seems to drag us down again and again and again and we like to find ourselves I like to say, all jacked up. A phrase we use on our staff a lot and you probably say that too when something is messed up. I pulled my back up the other day. Where is it? It’s all over the place. It’s all jacked up. Maybe used the phrase with your career. The boss is mad at me. It’s all jacked up. Maybe the family deal.

When we describe situations people are going through trying to counsel them and help them. It’s jacked up. You have a guy that’s divorced and girl is divorced and both have kids and the kids don’t get along and fighting each other. They don’t feel the new stepdad loves them and new step mom loves them like the old mom. It’s all jacked up. Maybe you’re single and been through several relationships and they didn’t honor God and you find yourself emotionally all jacked up. Maybe you have a business. And, you know, things are kind of tight in the economy so you’ve got your stock is much lower because you had your shelves full and sold everything you had and you had to discount everything because of the market and then you don’t have as much money coming in. You had to restock the shelves. You spent all the money you made on paying the bills and can’t restock the shelves and when people come in the store it’s half empty and they don’t buy from you and it’s all jacked up.

What do you do when you don’t know where to begin? Maybe you got debt. You got creditors calling you and don’t know how to pay that off and sally needs braces and he breaks his arm and the car breaks down, what do you do when the finances are all jacked up? God has a word for us today on how we can unjack up ourselves. That’s the new term. I’m going to get that in the dictionary. So I’m going to help you in your jacked up indication and help you get unjacked up as we look at God’s word on what we do when things are messed up.

To be jacked up by definition means there’s so many issues so many problems you don’t even know where to begin to fix it. How many can relate to this? Maybe you face something in your life right now, maybe you have a good friend or family member things are jacked up. I can’t begin to tell you what to do. Romans 2:23 is the cornerstone verse of this entire series. Everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

I want you to know right off the bat before we start this series, I’m a jacked up dude talking to jacked up people. I want you to understand. I’m not trying to talk down to anyone as we go into this message series because somehow I have it altogether and you don’t. No. I’m jacked up. I’ll be honest and say this is where I messed up and got myself out of messes and this is what I did. Hang with us for this series.

If you’re jacked you, man the first place it will manifest itself in is your relationships. This is where you can’t fool people in your relationship. Everybody at work may think you’re all that but you go home and your wife hates you, your kids don’t want to be around you. It’s jacked up. I got it back together. Let’s go back to your family reunion and see how much they think you have it together. We can’t fool them. Over time they’ll learn your habits, tendencies and areas you’re jacked up in. So in our relationships, one of the first things we need to attack with our relationships is how to get out of this jacked up situation. But the answer, at least in our culture, tends to be just get out of the marriage. Just leave that work environment. Just get out of there and those are the wrong answers.

If you got a jacked up situation in your ministry, just go to another church. I’m not just talking about church people. I’m talking about pastors. That seems to be the answer. Hack them off and go to the next church and hack them off and go to the next one. The way of the world today instead of fixing the problem, that you got yourself into, just avoid it and go to the next one. Here’s the problem with that. The problem is that you have had to take you with you. If you jacked up that marriage you’ll jack up this one if you didn’t learn from it. If you jacked up living in this town if you move to another zip code you’ll jack up that town too. The problem isn’t everyone is against me and the world is out to get me. No, no, no. Wait a minute. There are patterns here. I need to make some changes.

Genesis 3:10-11. This is Adam and eve and they had jacked up their situation pretty big time. They went for the fruit they weren’t supposed to go to. Look at the results of this. This is where they get all jacked up. He said I heard you walking in the garden and I hid. Adam’s talking to God. I hid because I was naked. Who told you you were naked the Lord asked? Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to?

When God asks a question he knows the answer and he’s asking for you to think about it. We saw you coming in the garden and we didn’t have any clothes on and we’re embarrassed. When was that problem? Earlier it wasn’t a problem. You were walking around before and now you’re concerned about it. Suddenly we want to put clothes on when we have something we’re a shamed of. It got quiet. All of us have areas we don’t like to talk about that. We’ll keep that covered up. I don’t want to see that. All of us have areas we’re jacked up. Adam and eve were jacked up. If you give yourself an excuse. You don’t know how I was raised, the mother and dad. You have no idea the school I went to. I didn’t have the advantages as everyone else. We tend to blame which is blame; blame everyone else, every situation. Maybe something happened to you when you were younger and it’s a horrible thing and no one is saying it’s good but you can’t live your whole life blamed upon this one event. At some point you say do you know what? I got to take responsibility for my own life. If you’re blaming everything.

Adam and Eve didn’t have anyone to blame. They couldn’t say I was just raised in the wrong garden. No the garden was perfect. I don’t feel close to God. God walked with you through the garden directly. What else would he have wanted? He had his wife in perfect shape eating fruits and vegetables. He didn’t have a mother-in-law. This is amazing. What? It was just a joke. Just kidding. I love my mother-in-law and I want you to know that. I do. I actually have a great mother-in-law.

The truth is this; everything was going great in his life so the only one he could blame the sin on was his own decisions and choices. All of us have jacked up in had areas. There are consequences to our sin. I want to show you a few of those in a moment. Before we jump into consequences and learn how to face those and what to do, whenever you’re in the middle of a mess you made yourself, we are jacked up all of us, what do you do? Proverbs says this. Take a hold of my instructions, don’t let them go. Guard them for they’re the key to life. The key to having a really great life is this book. God’s instructions. If you will stick to His word.

Listen, the reason we want you to come to church on a regular basis is not because we think putting church in your schedule is a great thing. You need his word. You need his word. If you have his word you’re good to go. You need to fellowship with other believers and worship and all that. But you need the word of God. As long as I got the word I would be okay. So if you have the word you can turn your jacked up situation around you really can. Fear the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. Wisdom will add years to your life. I love the fear of the Lord thing. I believe people make dumb decisions over and over again because they don’t fear the Lord and believe God will give them a consequence. They think they’re above the consequences. No one is. None of us are above it.

So there are consequences to come into our lives. Look at genesis. Guys I’ll go some places that are hard to talk about. We’ve got to do it. It will help. I promise you. Hang with me, is that cool? Genesis 3:15-19 God said to the woman I’ll sharpen the pain of your pregnancy and in birth it will be painful. Having kids will not be easy. You’ll desire to control your husband but he’ll rule over you. All the husbands in the room will say I knew it. It’s right there in the room. You’re trying to control me. It’s true. Right there in scripture. I can’t deny it. To the man he said since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree I told you not to eat the ground is cursed. You walk out of here and say if I listen to you I’ll get messed up. Don’t do that. The principle is not to not listen to your spouse.

The principle is, don’t listen to anyone even a spouse or a parent if they ask you to do something that will harm yourself, harm others or is unbiblical unethical or immoral. I’ll look a student in the face and say yeah don’t obey that. Your parents should not tell you to go steal. Your parents should not tell you it’s okay and they want you to sleep around. They’re wrong. I’ll tell that to their face if they would like to talk. There are times it’s rare, to say I know I’m supposed to listen to this person but some people you don’t listen to. In your life you’ll struggle. He says to the woman you’ll desire to control your husband and he’ll rule over you. He said to the man since you ate from the tree I commanded you not to eat the ground is cursed because of you. It will grow thorns and thistles for you but you’ll eat its grain. You’ll have food to eat but it will be harder. Life will go on but it won’t be as easy if you hadn’t blown the garden. Not that life is over and there’s no hope.

You have to start your own garden. You had a garden given to you. You’ll have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. I made you. Your life is not your own. I made your life. So many times we live our lives like they’re ours. Their not ours. It’s God’s to give and take away and desire to do what he desires to do in our lives. When we disobey God we’re basically saying, I’m blowing you off. I’m blowing off your words. There’s results.

If you look at this, if you created a diagram of the woman and the man and what the consequences are, the consequence of the woman is, basically she believes that she needs a man and children more than she really does. And the man’s consequences he thinks he needs a job and needs his work to satisfy him more than he really does. So the challenge is we have guys that throw themselves in the work looking for happiness and find out it doesn’t make you happy and a woman throwing themselves in relationships realizing it doesn’t make them happy either. What do you do? Apply wisdom while you’re jacked up. Apply wisdom while you’re jacked up. We say I’ll apply wisdom when I get my life in order. That’s jacked up the whole mentality. I want to go to church but me and my wife are a mess. Let me get my life in order and go to church. No. Church is what gets your life in order. It’s like saying I’ll take a bath the moment I’m clean. No, the bath gets you clean. I’ll join a health club but I’m embarrassed and not in shape. I’ll wait until I’m in shape and then join the health club. Isn’t that why you join a health club? To get in good shape.

We keep waiting to get the results we want before we put in the work. You’ve got to put in the work to get the results you want. I don’t feel close to God and I won’t back to church. That’s how you get close to God. Spending time with him and seeking him out. That’s how you feel close to God. That’s how it works. I could jack up my marriage if I didn’t do the principles from God’s word too just as much as person on marriage number five. It doesn’t change. The same stuff works with everyone. The same principle work with everybody.

So what do you do when it’s all jacked up? When you’re trying to make the family thing work? You’re trying to make work, work. Nights working. It’s all jacked up. Your employee can’t stand you, the boss can’t stand you. There are fights in the break room. Why did God kick him out of the garden? I can’t believe he’s a big mean knee. You big mean person. Is God really just mean? Check it out. The Lord banished them from the Garden of Eden and sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he was made. He put angels to the east of the Garden of Eden the west was water that’s why he said the east. Flaming sword back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. God said we’ll put heavenly bouncers to not let you in and where the other tree is, but another tree called the tree of life or tree of abundant life the tree of eternity and they’ll be these flashing swords in front of it. Don’t let them in. Flashing swords. Some crazy reason the bouncers fall asleep we’ll put the swords in front of it. Why did God kick them out of the garden?

God gave them a consequence of kicking them out of the garden because he loved them. Here’s the deal. Eat one apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Did you ever talk to your son or daughter and realize they know things you didn’t know what it means. You know about that and his? Wow. You know what that is. I’ve had those talks with you. That’s tough. That’s not easy. You’re kidding me. You know about? They know too much it seems like. They’ve been eating some of the fruit. God so loves when we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God won’t let us grab fruit from the tree of abundant life. You bite that the perpetual state of sin will now happen for eternity forever; lovingly God said I will not permanently let you destroy your lives.

So I’ll block you from doing permanent damage to all the human race and not let you back into where you can seal the deal on your sin with one bite of the wrong sin and boom it’s forever. God was already talking about bringing his son to pay the price. He already had a plan.

Listen. You may have to kick a kid out of the garden. And that can be the most loving thing you do. So they don’t permanently mess up their life. There’s a trend I’ve noticed with kids that grow up and still act like kids and permanently mess up their lives. Do you know why? They didn’t have parents that didn’t give them consequences. Not only do I have a drug problem I’ll live in my mom’s basement when I’m 35. When you have a drug problem you jack up your kid and they realize my life is pretty much over if I don’t straighten this out. If my son at 16 comes home. I don’t have a 16 year old but when I do, if he comes home drunk or driving a car. I don’t know if I’ll be more mad that they’re drinking, drunk, or driving a car but he’ll lose the keys immediately and not get them back for a long time. Do you know why? Is it because I’m so mean? Kids will be kids. No, no, no. If I don’t do that he’s just been taught nonverbally. Because kids don’t care how much you scream. They want to know what you’ll do. There’s drama. Give me the keys. I’ll do it again. They tune out the screaming eventually. That won’t do it. They get drunk, drive home, and kill someone and now they permanently damage their life because they’re accomplice to murder.

Isn’t it loving to say give me the keys? Wouldn’t that be the loving thing to do? Is it not loving if my daughter runs out in the street and I say don’t run out in the street. You do it again you’ll go inside. Five minutes later she runs in the street again. You run out in the street again you’re going inside and get a spanking. She does it again. Isn’t it the loving thing for me to do is bring her inside and give her a spanking or is it cruel and mean? How will it feel when she hits her head on the bumper of the car when it hits her and kills her? How will it feel? The loving thing that God gives us is consequences. It’s hard for us to grasp this. It’s a loving thing. Why do I feel so bad? Consequences. It’s God warning you if you keep this up you’re not just going to feel bad.

You’re going to give yourself some diseases that are humanly caused. Not all of them are, I understand that, but they’re all sin caused. Not necessarily your sin. The truth is we live in a world that there are difficulties and all our bodies are decaying at different rates they all are. We get the indigestion. God saying you may not want to eat this anymore. This will hurt you eventually. Big time. Big time.

The reality is God gives us warnings in our physical body and our spirit. Have you ever been dating somebody and date two-or three-something in you says this isn’t right? I really probably shouldn’t proceed any longer? If you ignore that let me ask you something, how did it go? Not good. So you may be in the situation right now. You say I’m married now. Bil, that sounds great. It’s a done deal. We’re married. I know the deal and the covenant God wants know stay married. Yes he does. Proverbs 19:21 says this. You can make many plans but the Lord’s purpose will prevail. God will get his purpose done and if it’s a sealed and done deal, God has a bigger plan for you at that point. Don’t seal the deal hoping it will all go well. If it’s not a sealed deal don’t make it a sealed deal. I can tell you where it goes. Other people have gone down the same path. How do you turn the situation around?

Proverbs 3:27 “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your own power to help them”. My wife is mad at me. Kids mad at me. Lost my job. Everything is wrong in my life. What do I do? Counseling session today it’s free by the way. Here we go. First thing. Get a job. Look at the order of things. Before God ever gave Adam and eve he gave Adam a job. Get a job. Can I just, again you’re about to discover while I’m a bad counselor. I’ve said to someone in a counseling session when I can’t find work anymore I say there is work McDonald’s is always hiring. There’s not the job you want but there is work. And it’s arrogant for us to not have to believe we’ll all have to recalibrate at some point and doing something we don’t want but bringing home money.

I want to challenge you on this one. Ladies if he’s not taking care of his own finances, how in the world will he take care of you? Are you kidding me? I just want to challenge you on this. I’m not trying to be mean. I’m trying to give you wisdom. Because you can’t, I learned, you can’t live on love. You can live on a paycheck. And you want love and that’s a great thing. But love requires responsibility. So I want to challenge you, become responsible for yourself. How do you do this? Tell the guy to get a job. Go home, clean house. Don’t be asked to do it. Just do it. Mow the lawn. Do the dishes. And go to your wife and say I love you. Maybe she doesn’t believe you or thinks you’re drunk now, whatever, just say I love you. Tell the kids your kids and her kids, I love you guys. And mean it. And treat them all the same. It’s not easy, but do it.

The reality is this. The natural human inclination is when you’re treated well you treat others well. I want to talk to the men specifically on this one. About 80 percent of the time the jacked up-edness, not a word, the jacked upedness is men not doing what God says in his word and not leading. I want to challenge you serve. Start doing the simple things right. The simple things. We get too complicated. My back is jacked up. I have high blood pressure. That’s great. Don’t go to the doctors and say give me medicine. That’s not the answer. Go eat a salad and go for a walk. It’s simple. Simple stuff. Because the pill may make you feel better for a moment but that pill is lying to your body when your body knows the truth. You need good sleep. Quit stressing out so much, eat right and exercise. Those are the answers. Simple stuff. Simple things. Say it with me. Simple things. It’s not complicated, is it?

Bow your head with me today. I’m way over my time but I really felt led to give you the business because I think God’s truth can change us in good way and we have to speak it the way it is and know Adam and eve were jacked up but God said go till the soil. Go back and do the right things you know to do.

You can make your own garden. You’re starting with a deficit but you can still do the things you used to do. May be starting with a deficit but you can still be a loving husband and father even if you don’t live with your kids anymore. You can still be a good employee even if you lost a job or two. You can walk with the Lord even if there’s a season you didn’t. God’s principles always work no matter where you are in life.

I want to challenge you, you got something jacked up, begin to follow wisdom, obey his word and see if he does not unjack up you. With your head bowed and your eyes closed if you’ve never received Christ before, God’s already showing us he was going to send his son in genesis three. He was setting it up to send a savior to take care of all our issues, all our jacked up-edness. And so he did not give us jacked up indication he gave you say justification where he paid the price for our sins by dying on the cross. And he rose from the grave proving he’s God and waits for you and I to individually accept him. Pray a hard prayer right now.

I may still be jacked up but I have Jesus and I want you to have Jesus too. With your head bowed and eyes closed you can say Jesus I realize I need you. I need you to come into my heart and change me from within and you died on the cross and rose from the grave. I believe on that right now. I want to make you the coach, the boss, the CEO of my life. I make you my president. I want to follow you from this day forward. Thank you, Jesus, for saving me. In your name we pray. All God’s people said amen. Isn’t God good? His word is so true.