I’m so sick and tired of being in a position where I just go to church. I’m so ready to bust out and be a WorldChanger Christian.
This chapter designated is to show Job how much bigger than everything God is.
Tonight, God wants us to take a look at some of these characteristics that a World Changer possesses. God is trying to show us the mightiest beast in the entire earth, and although He is bigger than it is, there is one significant principle to take from this:
The largest well-oiled machine in the earth, that changes lives and that literally scares the gates of hell should be you.
We’re going to be taking a look quickly at nine characteristics of a World Changer Christian. If you want to be a World Changer Christian God wants to show you something tonight.
Job 41
The LORDs Challenge Continues
1"Can you catch a crocodile[1] with a hook or put a noose around its jaw? 2Can you tie it with a rope through the nose or pierce its jaw with a spike? 3Will it beg you for mercy or implore you for pity? 4Will it agree to work for you? Can you make it be your slave for life? 5Can you make it a pet like a bird, or give it to your little girls to play with? 6Will merchants try to buy it? Will they sell it in their shops? 7Will its hide be hurt by darts, or its head by a harpoon? 8If you lay a hand on it, you will never forget the battle that follows, and you will never try it again!
9"No, it is useless to try to capture it. The hunter who attempts it will be thrown down. 10And since no one dares to disturb the crocodile, who would dare to stand up to me? 11Who will confront me and remain safe[2] ? Everything under heaven is mine.
12"I want to emphasize the tremendous strength in the crocodile’s limbs and throughout its enormous frame. 13Who can strip off its hide, and who can penetrate its double layer of armor[3] ? 14Who could pry open its jaws? For its teeth are terrible! 15The overlapping scales on its back make a shield. 16They are close together so no air can get between them. 17They lock together so nothing can penetrate them.
18"When it sneezes, it flashes light! Its eyes are like the red of dawn. 19Fire and sparks leap from its mouth. 20Smoke streams from its nostrils like steam from a boiling pot on a fire of dry rushes. 21Yes, its breath would kindle coals, for flames shoot from its mouth.
22"The tremendous strength in its neck strikes terror wherever it goes. 23Its flesh is hard and firm, not soft and fat. 24Its heart is as hard as rock, as hard as a millstone. 25When it rises, the mighty are afraid, gripped by terror. 26No sword can stop it, nor spear nor dart nor pointed shaft. 27To the crocodile, iron is nothing but straw, and bronze is rotten wood. 28Arrows cannot make it flee. Stones shot from a sling are as ineffective as straw. 29Clubs do no good, and it laughs at the swish of the javelins. 30Its belly is covered with scales as sharp as glass. They tear up the ground as it drags through the mud.
31"The crocodile makes the water boil with its commotion. It churns the depths. 32The water glistens in its wake. One would think the sea had turned white. 33There is nothing else so fearless anywhere on earth. 34Of all the creatures, it is the proudest. It is the king of beasts."
1. Fierce
1. Having a savage and violent nature; ferocious.
2. Extremely intense or ardent: fierce loyalty.
The Kingdom of God is violent and the violent take it by force.
It’s time to stop being namby-pamby Christians, to stop being pushed around by some of the stupidest things and to stand our ground.
Fierce Christians, people who are fierce, just like this beast, are not weak. They’re not people who sit around and allow themselves to be taken down by people weaker than they are.
The Bible says that if God can be for us, who can be against us?
It’s quite the crazy thing to think about. We need to be extremely intense in our faith. Intense meaning Involving or showing strain or extreme effort.
It’s time that we start showing some extreme effort in our faith. We all sit and complain about how church is boring, or how the sermons or the music don’t speak to us, or about how we think things should be, when it’s US that needs to start being intense with our faith in Jesus Christ.
God’s challenging YOU tonight to be a Christian who is VIOLENT, and FIERCE – and intense in your faith.
2. Tough
Able to withstand great strain without tearing or breaking; strong and resilient
This beast was a tough beast. It was a beast that was able to withstand great things and great oppositions coming up against it.
My Grandfather for years worked at the KU Printing Press. His hands were hands of steel. His fingers had such huge calluses to show for on them. His hands were unbreakable, unyielding, vigorous, withstanding.
Why? Because he worked hard for his hands to be tough like they were. It showed on the outside, and the more he was able to deal with pain, and the more he was able to withstand pain in his hands, the stronger his hands got, and the more they were able to withstand.
Our faith is the exact same way.
James 1 gives us a clear picture of what trials and tribulations do to us.
Faith Under Pressure
2Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. 3You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. 4So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.
5If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. 6Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who "worry their prayers" are like wind-whipped waves. 7Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, 8adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.
9When down-and-outers get a break, cheer! 10And when the arrogant rich are brought down to size, cheer! Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it. 11You know that as soon as the sun rises, pouring down its scorching heat, the flower withers. Its petals wilt and, before you know it, that beautiful face is a barren stem. Well, that’s a picture of the "prosperous life." At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing.
12Anyone who meets a testing challenge head-on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. For such persons loyally in love with God, the reward is life and more life.
13Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, "God is trying to trip me up." God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. 14The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. 15Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
16So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. 17Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. 18He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.
They produce perseverance. They make us TOUGHER. Anyone ever ran before? I mean, we used to run in Basketball. I used to need an oxygen tank, but I found myself getting in better and better shape each and every day.
The more we train, and the more we endure – that’s why James tells us to utilize opportunity as a way to get better.
John Gardner said that “we are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems”
In other words, you and I are faced daily with an opportunity to grow and learn, however, it is only disguised as a problem that seems impossible.
It’s why God reminds us time and time again in the word that NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD!!!
3. Protected
To cover or shield from danger or injury; to defend; to guard; to preserve in safety; as, a father protects his children.
Some of us in the room do not protect our faith, or the things that God has told us to do. Some of us choose to leave our faith out in the open by putting ourselves in compromising positions, or by listening to music that we shouldn’t or by doing things that we know are wrong.
If you want to be a Christian that is a beast, a force to be reckoned with, you must protect your faith.
Defend your faith, guard your faith, preserve in safety.
I can remember one time seeing people at work, I work in Risk Management with the City of Lawrence. How we are always taking preventative steps and measure to protect our employees at work. You’re not even supposed to change the heater while you’re driving in a truck, you’re by the City ordinances, supposed to PULL OVER and change the dial on your heater.
It’s a preventative measure, because you and I need to protect our faith. If we hold our faith out in the open for others to take, they’ll take it, and beat it down until there’s nothing left. We need to let our lights shine before all men, but protect our flame.
Pastor Ron said on Sunday, and the truth of the matter is this – there are so many other people, Christians and Non-Christians alike that are so ready to blow out your flame. They huff and puff and toot their own horns, but they have absolutely no regard for anything whatsoever.
If you want to be a stand-out Christian, you have to protect your faith. You have to protect the desire, and the dreams that God has given you. There are so many people, see, God was telling about this massive beast, and how many protective measures that he has.
It’s been talked about before how if we’re not careful, the enemy will steal from us our very faith on which we profess.
The fact is, we have to guard ourselves against schemes from the Enemy.
It’s something that is vital in our Christian walks, we HAVE to do it.
If we’re not careful to guard, we’re going to lose what we have.
GUARD YOUR FAITH, GUARD YOUR LIGHT, GUARD YOUR DREAMS.
Make your faith impenetrable. Make it so that your faith is incapable of being penetrated or pierced; not admitting the passage of other bodies; not to be entered; impervious; as, an impenetrable shield.
4. Enemy never forgets the battle
You should strike terror in the enemy himself. Why do you say? The Bible says something in verse 8 that literally gives me goosebumps every single time I read it. IF YOU LAY A HAND ON IT, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THE BATTLE THAT FOLLOWS, AND YOU WILL NEVER TRY IT AGAIN.
Satan is fighting for you. He’s trying to give you everything under the sun to tempt you into going for it.
There’s Buddhism, there’s NEW AGE religion where you can be your own God and make up your own laws and regulations, there’s agnosticism and atheism.
The enemy is causing confusion by making you doubt what you believe. If you don’t know why you believe what you believe, or if you don’t even know what you believe, wouldn’t that cause your curiosity or something to stir inside of you to find out?
Me, I’m petrified. I’m running out of time, and so are you. We are fighting a battle that is consistently and constantly getting worse each and every single day.
You and I, I feel like sometimes, we’re fighting the battle like the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We’re fighting the battle asleep, because we think there’s going to be more time, or we think that things aren’t as bad as they really seem.
Some of you in this room need to start fighting. The enemy likes to battle with some of us, you want to know why? Because he knows he can win. What a shame when our enemy can toy with us to the point where he does not go away, because he just keeps on winning.
We cannot continue or even start to give into temptations, or anything of the like. We have to stand firm in our faith, and we have to make it so that our enemy never forgets the battle that follows, and he never tries again. If he does, the same principles follow.
How, you ask can we make the battles that winnable?
See, in order to beat your enemy, you have to know the plans of your enemy. You have to know what kind of schemes the enemy runs, because when the enemy finds something that works, he will continue to punch it in, until you continue to give in to it.
The enemy is not stupid. He can not know your thoughts, but he can put thoughts in your mind. If you know how to allow God to transform your mind.
Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the ways of this world, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
The enemy can implant thoughts into your mind, but if you don’t act on those thoughts, and you and I trust in God, our weakness will not be exposed. If we do allow our weakness to be exposed, our whole entire life will change.
The enemy is NOT stupid. Everyone understand that. He knows your weaknesses, and he knows what temptations will make you literally question whether or not you want to forget your Christianity for a little while and do them.
See, the reality of the situation is this: WE NEED TO MAKE THE ENEMY WALK AWAY FROM BATTLE, WAIT, WE NEED TO MAKE HIM RUN AWAY WITH HIS TAIL IN BETWEEN HIS LEGS CRYING FOR MERCY BECAUSE GOD IS ON OUR SIDE.
WE NEED TO MAKE THE ENEMY RUN AWAY AND NEVER FORGET THE BATTLE THAT ENSUES WHEN HE MESSES WITH ONE OF GODS CHILDREN.
That’s the kind of warriors we need to be.
A Warrior is someone who is engaged in warfare.
This is a war. Like it or not, it’s a war. Your enemy could be your friend that needs Christ. Them never forgetting the battle could be getting saved, and never forget the fight that you fought for them.
God is wanting us to be warriors tonight. Warriors who fight to the very end, at all costs.
5. Intelligent
-Showing sound judgment and rationality
-Possessed of intelligence, education, or judgment; knowing; sensible; skilled; marked by intelligence
See, there’s two types of intelligence.
The first is, knowledge.
The second is wisdom.
Knowledge is how much you choose to ingest of the Word and of God. Knowledge is how much you know and choose to know.
If you want to be an intelligent Christian and you really want power to defeat the enemy and further your walk with Christ, you HAVE TO READ AND STUDY THE BIBLE.
Don’t let your study of the Bible be so superficial. Anyone can read the Bible, but it takes someone who is truly dedicated and committed to actually UNDERSTAND the Bible.
You will only get out of the Bible what you put into it. If you and I don’t want to learn, God’s not going to show us such awesome stuff. I can’t emphasize this enough, there is so much cool stuff in the Bible, if we would only study, and try to understand.
Some of you in this room don’t even believe in this book. This Bible is the inspired, infallible, Word of the Living God that gives you instructions on how to live your very lives. You can ask anyone who lives according to this book.
With Christianity you have nothing to lose. If Atheism is right, and if agnosticism is correct, then when I die, I’ll just die. But if Christianity is right, and don’t know Jesus Christ, you’re losing out. We need to understand the Bible, not just read it on the surface. There is so much to know.
The second type of intelligence is wisdom. Using what you’ve learned.
I said it long ago, and I’ll say it again. My face lights up when I see commercials on TV, win a million dollars, or lose 100 pounds. I’ve always wanted to just be like oh man, there it is.
But they NEVER STINKIN TELL YOU HOW TO DO IT.
File your taxes and get a huge money return back.
Get all A’s in school and never do homework.
THEY NEVER TELL YOU HOW TO DO IT!!!!!!!! It makes me so mad and frustrated.
But see, the fact is, we’ve been given instructions on how to live and how to act. You and I have been called to a life of holiness and righteousness.
There are some of us who are just being plain old dumb. Just to be straight up and honest with you tonight. We know the truth, yet we CHOOSE to disobey it.
We know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, and we choose to disobey that truth.
Your future is summed up many times in the Bible where it talks about choosing the things of the world over the things of God.
That will be all the reward you will get
Ecclesiastes 10
1 Dead flies will cause even a bottle of perfume to stink! Yes, an ounce of foolishness can outweigh a pound of wisdom and honor.
2The hearts of the wise lead them to do right, and the hearts of the foolish lead them to do evil.
Has a purpose and will not stop until it’s finished
Another word for this is resolve.
Shame on any one of us that sits in this room tonight and says that we don’t have a reason to live. Your soul purpose in this life, whatever you end up doing is to win people to Jesus Christ.
Like we talked about last week, it is easier done by setting an example for them and to them, but the fact is…we have to understand straight up right now that we have a purpose.
You and I have a purpose for winning people to Jesus Christ, and we can’t let up, we can’t let down, and we CANNOT stop until this task is completely accomplished.
Esther 4:14 “For we’ve come here for such a time as this.”
You’re where you’re at FOR A REASON.
Once we realize that, our whole perspective on everything changes. God wanted you HERE NOW for HIS WORK!!
Jesus was a man with a purpose.
I’m sure you could see purpose and resolve in his eyes, even in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was a man with a plan and he was going to keep with that plan until it was fulfilled.
6. Brave
Showing courage under difficult or dangerous conditions. Listen tonight teenagers, we have to be brave, and be bold. We have to show courage when it’s not easy to show courage. We have to show courage in our faith, just as many men in the Bible did.
We have to understand and recognize tonight that timidity will get us nowhere. Being someone who is shy and afraid will get us nowhere. Think where you’d be if there wasn’t that person that was brave and shared their faith with you.
Understand tonight that this is a CALL for you to be bold. This is a CALL and a CRY for you to be brave and courageous.
Is it easy to be courageous to a bunch of people where talking about God makes them mad? Absolutely not.
They’ll understand though, and they’ll come to respect you. Just as has been said many times, when people are literally enthralled by the fact that you have something and you stick to it.
If you’re fake, don’t expect to be respected. If you call yourself a Christian, and you drink, smoke, go to parties, or listen to music that doesn’t edify your faith in Christ, don’t expect to be respected, because there is part of you that you haven’t given away to God yet.
INFLUENCE – INFLUENCE IS HUGE
7. Leaves something behind
Notice verses 31-32: The crocodile makes the water boil with its commotion. It churns the depths. The water glistens in its wake. One would think the sea had turned white.
WorldChangers leave a legacy behind. They leave something behind that people will remember for years to come. They leave something behind for those younger than them in school and in their youth group. Years from now, I want people at Clinton Parkway Assembly of God to be able to say, remember that kid, Jeremy Farmer, he was so on fire for God. At Lawrence High School, I want teachers to be able to remember my name as someone who was genuinely real with their faith.
They leave something behind that lasts and that is noticeable. They leave something behind that PEOPLE CAN SEE…
That’s the way I want my life to be. To be having left something behind that people can see for years and years to come, and you should too. WorldChangers leave a legacy when they walk out of school everyday. They leave a legacy that if today was their last day on earth, they’d be remembered as a God-fearing, on fire, Christian. They leave no doubt in anyone’s minds.
Are you leaving doubt in anyone’s minds about your faith, or about your convictions?
Tonight, I know in my heart that God is calling you to do some radical things. For some, it may be to break some music that shouldn’t be there, or rip up some T-Shirts and clothes. For others of you, it may be to get rid of some cards, some magazines or some books.
If you want to be a worldchanger, you have to give EVERYTHING COMPLETELY OVER TO GOD. It’s not your life, it’s not your ministry, it’s not your ANYTHING, it’s *POINT UP REALLY HARD* HIS.
Shame on us for the times when we’ve thought that our Christianity is ours, even when the very thing that we should be practicing bears the name above all other names, and that’s of Jesus Christ.
See tonight was entitled Houston We Have a Problem, and we saw a video clip of the Apollo 13 incident. They knew something was wrong, and they knew that their chance of making it home alive was very slim.
Tonight, we need to shake the gates of hell. Satan needs to be screaming after tonight to all of his demons and cohorts, HELL, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…some people from Pomona, KS are making a decision to be Worldchanger.
We need to scare hell tonight.
