Disciplines of Distraction - C

Jack Hibbs: I see a lot of Christians, but they won't listen. I try to talk to them, and they just roll their eyes. A lot of Christians suffer horribly, unnecessarily, from the little wiles of the devil. So much stuff is troubling you because you don't have a devotional life.
David J: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I’m David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God’s Word, the Bible.
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David J: On today’s edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues in his series called Disciplines of Life and a message titled The Discipline of Distraction. The Christian walk is full of disciplines—you know, the trials, the setbacks, the hard seasons that God uses to shape our faith from the inside out. One of the most constant attacks we face is simply being pulled in a hundred different directions at once. You see, distraction sounds harmless, but it can quietly drain our walk with the Lord. Just like Martha in the kitchen, we get so busy with the urgency that we miss out on what matters most. But handled the right way, distraction can actually draw us closer to God. Today, Pastor Jack teaches that resisting distraction takes a preoccupation with the things of God. When we seek His kingdom first and stay vigilant, even the good things in our lives won't crowd out our walk with the Lord. Now, with his message called The Discipline of Distraction, here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
Jack Hibbs: Establish a devotional life. You know what happens? You're going to find out that all of a sudden, the drive into work, you're much more calm. And you know it. And then all the crazy people you work with, you're much more patient with them. You're like, "Where's this coming from?" It's real Christianity, I'm telling you now. Guess what? You come home at night, and you'll fall asleep earlier. Why? Because you got up at 5:00, you crazy person. You start getting a new routine. You start getting a new routine and all of a sudden, in about a week, 5:00 ain't so bad after all. I got to tell you, you start nurturing a devotional life and you're going to get hooked on God. You know how people get a minute and go, "I gotta have a drug. I gotta have a drug." The Christian gets up and winds up spending time with God, and it's like, "I gotta have more. I have to have more time with Him." You will get creatively protective of that time with you and God. I got a text this week from Pastor Len, and he goes, "I need to talk to you right away." You can ask him; I texted him back and I said, "From 4:00 to 8:00, I'm with Jesus. I'll call you at 8:01. Unless you're bleeding, call 911." You say, "Man, you didn't really do that." I certainly did. Because that's the only time of the day my house is quiet. I think Satan's even asleep at that hour. You'll get hooked. Nurture a devotional life. Listen to this. Matthew 6:26 says, "Look at the birds of the air," Jesus says, "for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they?" I say yes. Environmentalists would say no. "Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" Won't He take care of you? Look at the hills right now, you guys. In about another two or three weeks, you're going to see the hills covered in two crazy colors, maybe three. There'll be yellow sunflowers all over the place, all down the freeways, all around the hills. You're going to see lupins, those purple, amazing purple flowers that grow everywhere. And you're going to see our state flower, the California poppy. Yellow, orange, purple. You would never paint your house that color. God paints the hills, and you drive around going, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing!" People are pulling over, taking pictures. Why? That's a good thing. Jesus says, when you see that stuff, remember, as cool as all that is, you're more important to God than that stuff. He can make orange, purple, and yellow look fantastic, and He says all that is nothing when it comes to what I think about you. We will go, "Yeah, awesome. Thank you, God." Or if we're prone to worry and be distracted, we'll say, "What? That's ridiculous. Don't lay that old slobbery stuff on me, God. I'm too busy for that." Matthew 5:6 says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." Are you hungry for more of God? That's a great place to be. I'll paraphrase this for time's sake. Exodus 33, you know the story. Moses is commanding the children of Israel. It's awesome. God says, "Moses, come up to the mountain." The mountain's shaking. A cloud descended upon Mount Sinai. God's presence was there. The mountain's rumbling. God says, "Come on up." Moses goes up. Can you imagine? Takes Joshua with him to a point; Joshua has to stay at the base, and Moses goes up and goes into the cloud, up the mountain. He's there 40 days. Clearly, he was not aware or in that place there's no sense of time. Moses is so close to God and he's talking with God. Moses says, "You know what? I gotta see You." How cool is that? If you're busy and distracted, you would say, "Okay, I'm done with the mountain thing now. Let's go. Let's move on to something else. You mentioned something about parting waters? Can we see that now? Let's do it again." Moses says, "I have to see You. This is too much. I love it. I'm hungry and thirsty after righteousness. I gotta see You." It's so cool. God says, "Well, no human, you don't got the right eyeballs at this time. You gotta die and then you'll get some new eyeballs you can see Me with. But you can't see Me and live. You don't have that kind of body yet, so I would fry your brains out if you saw Me. Tell you what I'll do. I'm going to stretch forth My hand. You can't see My face, so I'll put My hand out." God says, "I'm going to put My hand out and you hide in the cleft of this rock right here. So tuck yourself in the cleft of that rock. I'll put My hand over your face, over your body, Moses, when I go by." Can you imagine that, you guys? Here's Moses right here. God goes, "Okay, I don't want to kill you, so here you go. All right. All right. Look at Me!" Because God told him, he goes, "You can't look at My back side. You can look at My back where I've been, but you can't see My face. It'll kill you." This is our God. Our God's not human. He's not human. He had to become a human to die for us. He's spirit. So He covers Moses. Then He takes His hand away and Moses sees what we call the afterglow, the Shekinah, the presence of God passed by in the atmosphere and it distorted somehow, it affected the air where He had been. Just from that moment, the Bible says Moses's face glowed from the presence of God. He was coming down the mountain—can you imagine he's coming down the mountain in a cloud with a face going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa"? His face is like a flashlight. He covered his face when he got down near to the people so that they wouldn't see the glory dissipating. A devotional life. Man, I want to glow like that. You'll never glow like that unless you get a devotional life with God. Don't miss this. You can fall asleep after this. A lot of Christians, I see them but they won't listen. I try to talk to them; they just roll their eyes. A lot of Christians suffer horribly, unnecessarily, from the little wiles of the devil. He's having such a fun time with so many Christians playing with them and tugging on them, throwing little spears at them, and they're all freaky because they don't have a devotional life. So much stuff is troubling you because you don't have a devotional life. Mary sat at Jesus's feet and listened to everything He said. Honestly, I don't think Mary would have cared if she would have had a hot dog or filet mignon; it wouldn't have mattered. Martha in Israel, she could have served up pork to Mary. "I don't care. I'm with Jesus." When you're with Him and somebody says, "You know what?" you won't care. You'll be resilient. You see the world going nuts: earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, nations going against nations, people going crazy. Either you'll panic and be distracted by it or you'll say, "Jesus said there'd be days like this." Which is it?
Jack Hibbs: Conquering distractions means that you'll take aggressive measures regarding your spirituality. You know these books we always encourage you to get? This is a big deal. We just don't pull books off the bookshelf. Those Books of the Month, they're life-changers, man. They're very personal to me. None of these Books of the Month make it to this little stool here and up in front of you until I've read this book and it's affected my life. I want to share that with you. You want to do aggressive measures? Personally, I think it's great. Read the Bible, use the part that you read for your prayer life, and read an awesome Christian book—a real one, not a goofball, make-believe Christian book. There's too many of those out there. There's very few good books. Read it. Aggressive measures. Why? Because the Bible says in 1 Peter, the devil is like a lion roaming about seeking whom he may devour.
David J: You’re listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. And now, let’s get back to today’s message. Once again, here’s Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.
Jack Hibbs: Secondly, the Bible tells us in Isaiah, God says that the heritage of the servant of the Lords is this: that no weapon formed against us will prosper. Yeah, hear how He talks to us? There's weapons formed against you, Jack, but hang out with Me and you'll be okay. You don't want to be wandering out on your own and Satan shoots you in the rear end or something, and you go, "I'm hit! I'm hit!" and God's going, "Get over here! Get over here! That's how you got shot." Be with Him; He'll take care of it. 1 Corinthians 10:13, regarding taking aggressive measures, it says the temptations that come against our lives are normal. But with every temptation that comes against our life, God will make a way of escape. That's a promise. "Oh man, I died. Sorry, man. The devil made me do it. I don't know." Well no, you're wrong. He could only suggest things to you. You got to agree with them. Also this: Conquering distractions means that we take or we maintain a keen focus on the Lord as our target and as our purpose. The Bible says in Psalm 119:15, "I will meditate on Your precepts and contemplate Your ways." Here's a great verse. 1 Corinthians 7:35 says, "And this I say for your own profit," said Paul, "not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, that you may serve the Lord without distraction." Everything's pulling. That's why we get up. We have to get up early before everything starts screaming at us. Because, Christian, I know this feeling; we've all gone through it. It's a horrible way to live to get up in the morning, having not fed your spirit, and the day now happens and you feel like you're a victim all day long. You're a Christian, you're going to heaven, but it's like this: "Oh man!" You're just getting beat up all day by what people say, how you feel, and this thing. You read this and you get depressed. You open the letter and it's like, "Oh no." You know? Resisting the distractions is what we move into next. You resist the distractions this way. This is going to sound interesting to you, but hang on. Resisting requires preoccupation on our part. You say, "Whoa, isn't preoccupation the problem?" No, no, no. Preoccupation with the wrong stuff's the problem. A preoccupation with the stuff of God is the answer. Matthew 6:33 says, "But seek first the kingdom of God." Preoccupied with what? Seeking first the kingdom. Kingdom first. "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Isn't this great? What a great answer that is. To be preoccupied with the things of God. Obedience is next. Resisting distractions requires obedience. Matthew 6:26: "Look at the birds of the air." They don't sow or reap. You've never seen a bird out in the field when no one's looking with its wings and a little rake, a little Fisher-Price kiddie rake. "What are you doing?" "I'm sowing." "What?" "Seeds for the spring." They don't do it. They don't do that stuff. Lisa and I have a little argument, ongoing argument at home. I love to feed the birds. We got birds all over the place. I got blue jays now that are almost ready to take peanuts out of my hands. Here's the stupid thing on my part. I'm thinking now, "Oh man, I got these guys trained now. They need me." They don't need me. God's blessing me with all these birds hanging out, and then I wind up taking the blessing and it becomes a distraction, so now I start worrying about it. "Oh, I can't. Sorry, you guys. I can't go feed the homeless. I gotta go get some bird seed for my birds. Oh no, I can't raise the dead today; I gotta go make sure the blue jays have got enough peanuts." Amazing how we are. Obedience. I gotta read you this story really quick. I know it's late, right? But hey, you know what? This is great. This guy wrote this story; it says how this husband managed worry in his wife's life. It says for several years, a woman had been having trouble getting to sleep at night because she feared burglars would break into their home. That's a phobia; she's terrified. One night her husband heard a noise in the house, so he went downstairs to investigate. When he got there, he did find a burglar in the house and he said, "Good evening," to the burglar. He said, "I'm so pleased to see you. I want you to come upstairs and meet my wife. She's been waiting for you for 10 years now." Isn't that great? "We're going to get robbed tonight. We're going to get robbed tonight." Isn't that great? "Come on up. You gotta meet my wife. This is fantastic. Been waiting forever." No, it's better to just absolutely obey and rest in the Lord. Finally, we end with this: vigilance. Resisting requires vigilance on our part regarding these distractions. There are tons of agents of distractions in our lives. There's no doubt about that. After all I've just said, good things—books, let's be honest, you guys—you can be listening to Christian music, you can be listening to Christian Bible studies, you can be reading a good Christian book, you can have Christian friends, you can have—I don't care, fill in the blank—all great stuff. Have you ever had God tell you, "I want you to get away from all of that stuff"? Have you ever had that happen? "But God, I mean, I'm listening to Christian music." And God says, "Turn it off. I want to talk to you. Put down that good Christian book and pick up the Book." You ever heard Him say that to you? Vigilance requires you and I looking around and being ready. We need to be vigilant. Church, tonight, we're done. You can close your Bible. In fact, you can even stand. You want to stand? You've been sitting a long time. I changed my closing point there right at the end a couple of hours ago before I printed this out because Lisa and I were eating dinner and then I turned on the news to see what's happening, putting my shoes on, blah, blah, blah. With all that's going on, I walked outside and there's the clouds. There's just this moment—you know those moments—this moment the sun's coming through the cloud this evening and I looked at it. It just dawned on me: your Bible says at some moment, the norm is going to be interrupted by the shout, the voice of the Archangel, and the trumpet of God will sound. We're going to be caught up or whoever's alive at that time. I believe it's close. I believe we're going to see it. I'm living to see it. If I don't see it, then I'm going to see Him. But we're living in days we're going to see something big. And it's like, "Lord," and all of a sudden all this stuff that's on the tube just falls away in the realization someday He's going to part the clouds. That's going to be a good moment. I want to make sure tonight that you know that exciting hope. Right where you're standing tonight, you can say, "Jesus, please be my Lord, my Savior, my God, my King. You died on the cross for me. You paid the price for my sins. I give You my life. Jesus, save me." He's so good to do that. Father, bless now as we bless You back in our closing song of praise to You, in Jesus' name. Amen.
David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called The Discipline of Distraction. Thanks for spending part of your day with us today. This message is part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Disciplines of Life. It’s a series on the disciplines that God builds into the Christian life: the trials, the setbacks, and the hard seasons that He uses to shape a believer’s character and to deepen our faith. And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio. As you heard from our broadcast, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. If you’d like to know what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life personally, we would love to help you out with that. Go to jackhibbs.com/knowgod. That’s K-N-O-W God. There you’ll be guided through what a commitment to Christ can mean in your life and the freedom that you’ll find in knowing God. Don’t miss out. That’s the "Know God" tab at jackhibbs.com. Thank you again so much for listening. If you’d like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what’s going on with this ministry. And please, if you’re ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We’d love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That’s jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His Word. We’ll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.