Contend for the Faith

First off, we want to welcome everybody. If you’re watching this online, obviously we have gotten hit with the snowpocalypse for Virginia Beach. I guess the last one, the last one I think hit what, 2017. I think the last one hit. So a couple, couple things of business that we want to kind of tend to first.

First of all, if you’re new to SALT Church and you’re tuning in, this is not what we normally do. We meet at 961 South Burden at 10 Sunday mornings for our general Sunday morning service. One announcement is on Thursdays. Every Thursday from here on out, we are going to be meeting at 7 o’ clock at that facility. We meet for prayer.

Prayer includes healing, deliverance, breakthroughs. If you need prayer, we don’t care if you belong to a church. If you don’t belong to a church, we don’t care what you do. Stop on in. We would love to pray for you.

Love to meet with you and just to have that happen. We have a lot of things that are coming up in the next several weeks. Unfortunately, you know, we can’t talk about it right now. We’ve got some meetings and some things happening. But stay tuned.

February is going to be a huge month. We’re going to be able to make some announcements on some things. We’ve got some outreaches we’re going to be doing. We’ve got some expansion we’re going to be doing. So it’s going to be a good, good time outside of.

But I decided that I wanted to do something a little different and we are continuing our series on this year. I will now, if you were part of the first sermon Pastor Hans spoke about, I will devour my Bible. If you want to listen to that, then I would encourage you to go back and pull that up on YouTube or on Fountain of Life. Go to Fountain of Life’s website, pull that up. Go to prior or previous sermons and you can pull that up and listen to it.

Excellent, excellent. Delivery from Pastor Hans. We actually love our Pastor Hans. He is great. What an apostolic, apostolic butchered.

That one apostolic man of God really is. It’s a big word. Big word for me. But anyway, we love him and we love Brad, who is kind of our overseer, as well as Leon Dunning. Love those guys.

Last week I brought the word on. This year I will contend to value communion again. If you want to listen to the details of that, we encourage you to go back and discuss and take a look at that sermon and just view it at your leisure. This, I believe is the last in the series that we’re doing this year. I will contend to.

Yeah, I know. And then we will be entering into, I believe Pastor Hans says he’s going to be starting a new series in February, so stay tuned for that. But today I have asked my fellow brothers, Pastor Alex Rubio. He is basically, he’s my assistant. We do this together.

And then I’ve pulled in my other brother, mother T.J. ledts. He is our worship pastor. Ideally, what I wanted to do is just kind of have a conversation.

We’re going to be talking about this year. I will contend for the faith. Our base scripture comes out of Jude, and it’s Jude 1 3. I’m going to be reading out of the new King James Version. And it says, behold, while I was very diligent to write you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write you, extorting you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all, delivered to the saints.

Now, just a little bit of a contextual background in the book of Jude. It was in fact written by Jude, written between 65 and 80 A.D. it’s a short New Testament letter by Jude himself he identifies as a servant of Jesus Christ. In Jude 1:1, he is said to be the half brother of Jesus, the brother of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem.

You can find that in Acts 15, it is believed that Jude intended to write the letter as a celebration about salvation. However, we find that it appears to be a divine interruption, from encouragement to warning to the early church about false teachers who have infiltrate the Christian communities, promoting immorality and distorting grace. Where does that sound familiar? So Jude is compelling believers to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered, using details from the Old Testament as examples of God’s judgment to highlight the damage of these apostates and building themselves up in truth and love. In essence, Jude serves as a fiery call to spiritual vigilance, urging Christians to actively defend the core doctrine of holy living for their faith against internal corruption.

Now, mind you listen to what I said. Not external corruption, internal corruption. You know, when I grew up, I’ve grown up in the church. Golly, 40 years, 50 years in the church. My mother was the pastor secretary.

And one phrase that I commonly heard was that Christians will kill their own. Wounded, they’ll eat their own. In 40 years, 45 years in the ministry, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen people deal with church hurt. I’ve seen people deal with egos, unkept promises, all kind of things.

So we’re going to get into a little bit of that. But here’s where it kind of gets interesting. In Jude 1:4, it says we see the reasoning behind what Jude has observed as the problem. And it says for certain people have crept in unnoticed, ungodly people who perverted the grace of our God into sensuality and denying our master, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jude found that the issue was not persecution from outside, but corruption from inside the church.

These core problems were found. Number one was an infiltration of ungodly people in Jude 1:4 obviously says, I said this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into the church saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives. The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only master and Savior, Jesus Christ. These were false teachers per Jude that had crept in unnoticed and began to secretly corrupting the community of believers. We find that there was a perversion of grace.

And a lot of these things that I’m reading off and I’m going to get these guys to comment a little bit, but really you would think you could look at this and go, well, this is all Jude and this is the New Testament church. But we’re not far from it. No, you know, we’re not far from it. So, okay, so number two, it says there was a perversion of grace. They distorted God’s grace to justify sensuality, thus saying that salvation justifies sinful living.

Okay, that’s one. Three is the denial of Jesus authority. There was a rejection of the lordship of Jesus Christ, allowing for selfish living and disregard for his authority. Number four was a moral decay. There was an engagement of the lust, greed and rebellion.

This gives. And I’m going to name a couple things, but this gives us some prophetic relevance for today’s church. Number one being salvation of grace without true transformation, that is cheap grace or it is reduced to fire insurance. What are your thoughts on that? Do you believe that there’s some relevance to this?

And we’re going to go through a couple more, but what are kind of your thoughts on it? So for one, I think contextually it’s interesting because we see a lot in Pauline literature. So Apostle Paul is teaching and he’s speaking a lot to Judaizers, which where they’re taking the law in the food laws and they’re thinking, well, if we have Jesus, we’re going to actually we’re going to be even more holy if we continue the Jewish food law. So you have a lot of writings to the Judaizers, these that Jude’s talking to. He’s talking a lot of scholars from what I’ve read.

He’s talking to the Gnostics. And so they’re taking secret knowledge, they’re contorting prophecy, and you’ll see for centuries on end. I’d even say we’re seeing Gnosticism still today and secret knowledge up is down and down is up. We’re seeing that a ton. So those will continue to be a problem centuries later.

So you’re kind of seeing these. These two bad guys, you know, the, the extremes on both ends that are both. Oh, we have to be super legalistic. And then those that are like laissez faire, anything’s cool. So I think very much so that is prevalent today.

You know, using. We use hear about cheap grace a lot with, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you guys haven’t read the Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I think every Christian should read it. I just read it all the way through recently. I’m like, oh my gosh, why didn’t.

Why did I wait so long to read it? And he speaks on this term cheap grace a lot. Do you want to expound on cheap grace at all? I’ll let get. Alex, what do you think?

Well, first of all, I think that Haribo gummy bears are the best of them. My go. Question. So I had to answer with no. As per a conversation that we were having earlier.

What gummy bears are the best? So that brand is not the cheap grace. Not equivalent to just saying no, but not 711 brand. Yeah, well, 711 brand is 711 brand, like best value from Walmart. But we’re not gonna.

It’ll drew in a pinch. There’s an equivalence here, but it’s not the same. All right, anyways, yeah, I’ll get serious for a minute here. Yeah. You know, as you were reading that, I was thinking about cheap grace.

And TJ and I, we about that a lot, don’t we, about cheap grace and, and where we’ve seen iterations of it just even here locally in churches in the Hampton Roads area. But when I look at it deeper and obviously God gives us revelation because that’s how he is. You know, he has mysterious things that we’re not supposed to know, but he gives us everything we need to know to live a holy and righteous life unto him. And when, when we’re gonna, like Paul wrote, he said, you know, should we sin more so that grace may abound? No, may it never Be.

And then stepping off from that as you New age witchcraft and that brand of a belief system because it’s a mixture of Eastern thought and mysticism along with witchcraft and bits and pieces of Christianity. No matter what denomination, you can dumb that down and reduce it to tea Grace as well. And really just lies and falsehoods. Because that’s what happened here in the narrative is these people came into the church under the guise of, hey, brother and sister, I’m this, I’m that. Praise the Lord.

And literally they were the wolves and sheep’s clothing that were fleeting. The flock and literally consuming the flock with evil. And so that. That’s initially for their own selfish desires. Yeah.

You know, it’s false, Holy Spirit. Yeah, it really was. You know, just like, you know, that’s. That’s not the grace from the Lord at all, man. It puts on a front like it’s grace, but it truly is nothing but a lie and it leads straight to the pit of hell.

Yep. So there. There’s. There was no redemption in that, even though they would put on the gu. Mask of Jesus.

Yeah. Like, yeah, you know, glory to God. Jesus is our Savior. But, you know, it’s okay to have. Have carnal relations with your, you know, your dad’s stepmother or stepwife, whatever.

And that’s just one. And that’s in the Bible, by the way. So don’t. Don’t come at us. But it’s biblical.

Yeah. So that. Yeah. Get off the crackpipe and crack your Bible. So.

But yeah. So for all of that, you know, the reality is, is that, you know, if you’re not anchored in the word of God, your relationship sucks. With J. No judgment. It’s just facts.

Hard, cold, hard facts. And the more that you walk, the more that you consume the scroll, that bread of life, you’re not going to be prone to being easily deceived or. And. Or even turn away from the truth as Jesus referenced in Matthew 24. So with all that being said.

Yeah. Cheap Grayson, man. This is a real thing. Yeah. So one number.

Number two that I put in here is we see Jesus as savior, but not Lord. So he’s master, ruler or one with supreme authority. Represent God is Yahweh. Jesus in the New Testament is considered as Lord or Kairos, affirming his divine authority and lordship overall. This one.

Number three, obviously two. I want to talk about that. But number three, Number three and number four, I think kind of coincide with each other. Number three is tolerance is elevated above truth. And then we allow subtle infiltration rather than open opposition.

Okay. This is, and I know I’m probably going to step on some toes, but this is one of my biggest, my biggest angst with seeker friendly churches is that we tolerate, we’re okay with tolerance, we’re okay with let’s bend the scriptures a little bit or let’s bend this a little bit or let’s not. I remember, you know, we don’t want to go when it comes to like, you know, prophecy or speaking in tongues or different things like that. We don’t want to go too deep into that because we’re afraid we’re going to scare people away. You know, this is the one thing I love about Pastor Hans and Fountain of Life is we’re presence driven and we want to see people.

The Holy Spirit is the hinge pin that just drives us. How people can live a life of salvation without the Holy Spirit and being fully vested in the Holy Spirit, you know, and so, you know, my key for this is the key for the church during our time is it must decide whether it will flow with the culture or contend for the covenant. Wow. Come on, tell me what you think about that. So.

Well, I love God being the Lord. There is the sovereignty of God and he the the definition of Lord or a definition of Lord is supreme authority, decision maker or coach. He’s the boss. He’s in charge. And I think when we simply.

When he is only Savior and he is there, he is our means by which we get out of jail. So he’s. If he’s just simply our get out of jail free card and if that’s all we’ve reduced salvation down to, we’ve done an over reduction of what salvation actually is and what Jesus did on the cross and his death and resurrection. So him being Lord is an ongoing present progressive reality that we live in as Christians and as those that walk with Jesus. So again, kind of also back to cheap grace.

What cheap grace is, is living in such a way that it cheapen our saltiness as Christians. It cheapens what salvation is. It reduces it too far down. So Jesus being Lord of my life, supreme authority, decision maker and coach of my life, like if you’ve been coached in sports or whatnot, you know, you get to have an opinion, but you’re not in charge. And sometimes you don’t even get the opinion.

But thankfully we have a wonderful master in Jesus. He is not lording over you way that maybe that word can have the connotation, but he is in charge. Yeah. Yep. What do you think, Alex?

You know I’m looking something up. I’m sorry, but I’m going to respond here in a moment. Kind of Charles Schwertzer popped up in my head because he gave. You know, you might have read this already, T.J.

maybe you have to. Carl, the down. He taught about this downgrade controversy towards the end of his ministry. And I believe it was tied to grace and how the church itself was on a downward, literally downgrading grace and who the Lord is and his sovereignty. Because.

And I, you know, I’m in agreement with obviously what Pastor Carl’s putting out. And also what Pastor TJ Is putting out is like, we. I feel about it this way. It’s like, man, we cannot. We don’t have the right, much less power and authority to tell God, well, you know, God, that’s cool that you give me this, but this is what I’m gonna.

Because that’s literally what we’re doing. It’s open rebellion. I hate to put the we on it, but that’s really the actual. That happens when someone says, you know, that’s great that you give me this grace, but I’m gonna make it so much easier because I still love to hang on to this particular sin or that. And that is not living a life holy unto the Lord, pleasing unto him, where he.

He dispenses his grace freely. And if you’re not. If we’re not living life, we’re not going to be able to give that grace freely back. Why? Because we got sin in the camp.

We got sin inside the temple. Tolerance. You know, Paul, when he wrote to Timothy in Ephesus about the temple orgies that were going on. Timothy, man. Not poor Timothy, but he was going through it, dude.

I mean, he was a young pastor at the time that Paul had commissioned, and he was called and all that equipped, and there are some heinous things still going on. They were following Jesus, but they weren’t. I guess for me, my impression is just perception of this is, you know, it’s. It’s a spiritual poser, man. You know, I.

I was talking to Pastor Mark Thomas up in Richmond, Virginia, this afternoon, talking about evangelism. We’re just kind of collaborating with him to get ideas and forming up our formal, you know, evangelism team for Salt Church, you know, and. And we’re just talking about, you know, different ideas, you know, and obviously the resounding theme is like, you know, you know, he and any believer, truly, when you come to Jesus, number one, you should be transformed by the renewing of your Mind your heart, your will, your sum total of your being. And that’s good. The indicators are going to be you’re going to stop sleeping around, you’re going to stop doing drugs, you’re going to stop doing this, that and the other thing.

And in your person and your character, you should observe a transformation. And it’s not just you that’s going to observe it. The people in your life are going to observe that. Okay? So for me it’s just like, yeah man, we, we don’t have the right to do.

And conveying that to brother Mark today was just wonderful that we have the same blood, we all have Jesus blood flowing through us, we have the same Holy Spirit, we have the same bread of life, the word of life, and that’s Jesus. And you know there’s, it’s throughout the world, front to back covered, you know, either you’re going to rightly divide it and interpret it or you’re going to twist it like Satan does to your own devices. And we’re not, we don’t get, we don’t, we’ve never been given permission to do that. We don’t, we don’t have. That’s not grace at all.

Yeah. So as I, as I continued on in the study, in putting this sermon together, I found that there is a bridge from Jude 1 3, 4 over to a sermon that we did a couple weeks ago in Ezekiel 47. And you remember what, remember what that title of that sermon was? Jump in the river. In the river.

Healing waters. Healing. Oh yeah. Yes. I was so close.

Was it was the wine term for it? I forget. Anyway, so the faith that it talks about faith wants delivered is the same life giving river Ezekiel saw. It was delivered from heaven, flowing through Christ by the Spirit entrusted to the believer. The bridge in Jude 1:3 to Ezekiel we find.

This is what I found in this insight. Number one. It protecting the purity of flow. Okay? The responsibility of preservation is that of the whole church as the whole church.

Number two, calling the believer into greater depth. In other words, contending in this aspect requires depth, not distance. As we see In Ezekiel 47, 3:5, we see the believer being called from ankle depth to eventually a depth that will require the believer to swim. When we find in today’s church is that many within the church want the benefits of the river. Okay?

Without the depth of complete surrender, contending for the faith means that we as the church are called to refuse a shallow gospel and submit ourselves to mature, surrendered faith. Remember what I said last week Milk to me, okay, we need to declare, I will not contend from the shoreline. I will contend. I will contend from the river. Okay.

This also releases life into dead places. We bear fruit that testifies to the new covenant. In essence, what we find in that. Jude is guarding the faith once delivered. And Ezekiel 47 reveals the life once released.

Okay, any thoughts on that? And then we’re going to get into what does actively contending for the faith look like. So what’s your thought on those, Alex? You want to go first this time? We seem to have like a flow where I go and then you go.

There we go. Wow. You know, I just. Not to interrupt you, but I just. I like that contending in this fat.

It requires depth, not distance. Yeah. It is about a journey. You know, we’re going for the distance, but gosh, you know, we have a lot of surfers that go to go to salt. Like, are we going to be okay with making sandcastles, like, you know, in the high tide?

Or are we going to. Are we going to paddle out? Like, there’s swell. Like, what are we doing? And I just feel like the Lord, he has invited us and is inviting us into holiness.

And he’s invited, but it’s not just for the sake of holiness. It’s into himself that he’s asked us to come in. You know, you preached on communion this past Sunday and you know that’s he’s invited to take himself and enter into himself. So in this river that we’re in and in him, there there is an invitation. And it’s such a better invitation than what the world has to offer, you know, in him being the Lord, supreme authority, decision maker and coach.

You know, there is fear of the Lord with within that. You know, it’s a healthy fear. You know, the way that maybe I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with, you know, an operator in Seal Team 6. I just wouldn’t you. There’s a healthy fear there, you know, you just kind of know the boundaries of the relationship.

Like, I know that he is God and I am man. And I like the way that is. I don’t want his job. I don’t want to be in charge, in control. I actually want him to have his way.

And there’s something that happens in the Christian walk, I think, when we’re. As we walk down this road of righteousness, that we actually. Our desires start to be his. Like in the season of fasting. Absolutely.

Gosh. I would, you know, talking about milk to meat over you, you know, I would love to have meat gummy bears. Let me tell. Or gummy. I would.

I would love a gummy bear. Oh, that’s. That’s the word. But. But what I would rather have is him.

Yeah. I would rather be hungry for the things of God. Yes. Than to have all of the. Of the treasures of this world.

That’s what we’re after. And that’ it means to be deep in this river. Yeah. Yeah. Alex, man.

Wow. I. I agree 100%. Gummy bears to glue the gummy bears. Now, you know, depth is, is where it’s at.

You know, not just being a surfer, but being Hawaiian. My DNA is such. Where I cannot be away from the ocean, specifically for long periods of time. It just doesn’t do my body good. And, you know, you don’t know where you are.

Yeah. And, you know, when I. When I’m near it or I’m in it, I recognize that somebody had to create that. And when I look at God and being the creator of all things, he created the universe and everything contained therein. He made us in his image.

What an honor and privilege that is that a creator would do that, you know, but going deeper and you know you’re never going to go deep if you’re on the shoreline, that’s for sure. From a surfing perspective, you know, waves don’t break. Well, they do break on the shoreline. That’s. That’s not the place to surf.

You have to go further out depending on what break it is. But also. From a certain perspective, you’re not going to be able to get decent waves in the shallows. It just. It’s not going to happen.

It’s a very dangerous place to be if you’re a fisherman, you know, and that’s part of my background, obviously, in the Hawaiian culture, you know, you have to go deep. And Jesus references to his disciples in the Sea of Galilee. They’re fishing all night and caught not nothing. And he tells them, cash net into the deep water on the other side of your boat. And the net was breaking because they had too many fish.

So there are many more examples, I guess. You know, I don’t get. I know in the word that gives us the significance of going deeper. And really, like what TJ was talking about is like, when we go deeper in with Jesus and his own Holy Spirit and God the Father, through fellowship, prayer, word, what we find, that’s where we find the true treasures. That’s where we find that in the midst of whatever we’re going through, the difficulties.

Yes. And even the suffering and the painful things that that’s where we find the treasure. Treasure of like Paul wrote in Philippians, for, you know, he found a way to rejoice. And that way was Jesus in every situation or circumstance. And so that.

That right there, I know that not just resonates as an encouragement to me when I encounter difficulties in life. And that’s. You know, we all go through hard things, man. You know, I’m not talking first world problems either. So, anyway.

Well, cool. Well, cool. Well. So, yeah, so, like, one of the things I noticed is, like, it bears fruit that testifies to the covenant, the covenant that we’re involved in. But the new covenant doesn’t remove.

It doesn’t. It does not remove purity or holiness. It internalizes. It’s not something that we’re simply experiencing. It’s something we are encountering.

So we’re gonna roll through these. What does active contending for the faith look like? Number one, it’s not passive. It’s a good fight that finds its origin and eternal purpose. First Timothy 6:12 says, Fight the good, fight the faith.

Lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed to good confession in the presence of many witnesses. This conduct through spiritual preparation, not just believing by actively or purposefully, meaning immersing yourself into God’s word. As Pastor Hans had laid out on his first sermon in this series, the way we understand and recognize truth versus lies. Okay, you know Secret Services. You know, when Secret Service teaches you to recognize a counterfeit, what do you do?

You study the real thing. Because if you study the real thing long enough to know that you know when a lie is popping up, pray always. Ephesians 6:18 says, Pray in the Spirit at all times, on every occasion. Pray in the spirit, utilizing your spiritual language. Stay alert, be persistent in your prayers for all beliefs calls for a compassionate response with a strenuous effort, meaning to fight earnestly for something.

Okay? We have to fight earnestly and contend for the faith. Number two. It includes unity, perseverance within the body of believers. Philippians 1:27.

Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of good news about Christ. Then whether I come and seek you again to only hear about you, you will know. I will know that you are standing together with one spirit, one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the good news. Number three. It produces an outcome.

It preserves faith and is not. Produces faith that is not compromised. Okay, as we see in Second Timothy four, seven, I fought the good fight. I finished. Finished the race.

And I’ve Kept the faith. Number four. It requires the full armor of God, not fleshly effort. We’ve got to have the full armor of God. Where do you learn about the full armor of God In God’s word?

Okay. Number five. It accomplishes accomplished with truth, clarity and Christlike posture. First Peter 3:15 always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asked you for a reason for the hope that is in you. So this is what contending for the faith is.

Let me get your thoughts on these things that I read off and then I want to read off a declaration. So tell me what are your thoughts on that? There was a lot going on. There was a lot going on. I threw a lot at you so yeah, I was throwing a lot at you.

So pick one or tell me what you think you know, what do you. In contending for faith? I think so. This day and age is very weird. It’s very strange times we live in and it’s only we’re getting weirder and it’s only probably going to get weirder in this day and age like any other generation.

But it’s. I feel like there’s a, there’s a build up in time in kairos time towards the return of Jesus eventually. That is a legit return. We need to be sober minded in this hour we have. The erosion of faith has really been taking place.

You know maybe we as Americans are brand new to this erosion. But even not to interrupt you but even what we’ve seen over the past past week where there’s been an erosion of even the respect of the church of houses. Yeah, you didn’t you. We’re entering into a completely different time frame where yeah. I may not believe like you, I may not understand why you do what you do but you know what?

I have a healthy respect for it. I respect you. You live your life, you do what you want to do, that’s fine. Okay. But now we’re entering into a time where it’s like they.

That side doesn’t care. Yeah. And to be fair that side. I don’t want to demonize people. Absolutely.

But we demonize the demonic. Absolutely. And so the demonic are the enemy, you know but things are getting weird, you know so we have to be sober minded in this era, in this time we have to put on the farmer of God. You know I really, I personally a TJ makes it a thing every day when I’m in the car going to somewhere, church included, almost especially church is to legitimately out loud activate and pray the armor. And I really Think through like, and I do it like, you know, I’m in the car by myself.

So people don’t necessarily think I’m crazy because of that reason. But you know, it’s something where like, Lord, I put on the full armor of God, the helmet of salvation, observation, the breastplate of righteousness, the sandals of the gospel of peace, the belt of truth, the shield of faith and the sword of spirit, which is the word of God. We need to be kitted up. Amen. We need to be kitted up in this.

Amen. In this hour. A lot of. For those in the back. Yeah, a lot of those.

Kit up, dude. Put your plates in. What do we always say? Time to get tactical. Time to get tactical.

We have to be strategic and tactical about our prayers in this hour. We have to content. Yes. Because it’s not a give me no faith like to walk when we say faith. And what Jude is also talking about in the faith is the Christian discipleship, the Christian walk.

It is not an easy walk. Jesus said it is narrow. What we are doing as Christians is very difficult. Yeah. And we’ve maybe we’ve fallen under the guise every once in a while that this thing is easy or that it’s a give me or that, you know, fill in the blank.

We have to be sober minded in this time. We have to put on the kit. And what does that look like? It’s abiding in Jesus. It’s knowing Jesus, you know, and one of the primary means by which we know who God is is of course through scripture.

But guys, you know, and I’m preaching to myself, I’m preaching to literally the choir, don’t stop. You know, hey, we have to know God. You have to be with him. You are made for him. You were made to be with him.

You were made by him. We sang it this past week. I was made by you and I am made for you. And without, without him, we are not in the full communion with him because we are made for intimacy with Jesus. And so whatever that looks like for you.

And scripture needs to be part of that for sure. But there’s many ways to hang out with Jesus. Maybe it’s surfing. You know, my, my spiritual life is a lot better surrounding hunting seasons because I get to go to the tree stand with them and, and he speaks there. So I just really encourage us as a body and whoever’s listening and just us in this room, you know, to like really like plug into him, be connected to the vine.

Things are getting weird out there. But hey, guess what? They always have been weird and they’re just going to get weirder for us. But the way that we stay sober minded is knowing God so that when you see the weird stuff, hey, amen. It ain’t it.

Amen. Alex, what do you got? Yeah, man. Boy, that one slaps, doesn’t it? Everybody.

But, but it is true. And you know, like what TJ was talking about with the armor of God, I do the same thing, you know, I wake up and I pray that over myself, you know, because I realized that, you know, when I came To Jesus, over 22 years, rededicated my life back to Him 22 years ago, I wouldn’t be here today without him. Just straight up, because I’ve heard, I’ve heard the voice of, of Satan to tell me to do things that would, you know, no longer let me live. I don’t know how else to candy coat that one. But without God’s armor and without my faith and trust and belief in him and obedience, because it’s better than sacrifice.

Really, really. He’s carried me. And then part of the caring is being kept in the holiness and righteousness and the purity that has been a part of this discussion and this message. We do live in times as you know, anyone who is awake, not woke, but awakened to what’s going on around us, evil is putting on a facade that they’re going to win. But we as believers, that’s why I referenced earlier, crack your Bible open and eat that word, consume.

Devour, as Pastor Han said, devour the Bible, devour the word of God now more than ever. Because Jesus is coming, coming back. I don’t know when, but you know, prophecies and near death experiences. People have seen Jesus within the last year when they have physically died. And the message is unanimously and universally the same.

My church is not ready for my return. Tell them. Make, make, make preparations. Oil, right? Yeah, oil for the lamps, trim your wigs.

Don’t be like the five foolish versions you got locked out when the bridegroom finally arrived at the house for the wedding feast. You know, so that’s part our contending for the faith. And I, I equate that also because the military part of me and being Hawaiian, we, we are a warrior type of people. And then the Irish. Irish are good at a few things and Mario’s not one of them.

But, but you know, really, you know what? And I didn’t realize this until, you know, during the pandemic when I left salt and I was a part of a deliverance ministry, being Trained and. And our. Our leader at the time. She.

She was a Navy army veteran, excuse me, Vietnam warrior veteran. That woman was. She was a true soldier. And she told us, she goes, y’ all might not realize it, but, you know, we’re all soldiers in the army of the Lord. Amen.

And she referenced Ephesians 6 with the armor of God. She goes, otherwise, why would God assign this armor to us? You know, so the arm is important for the content, contending of the faith and defending it. And we are living in times where it’s challenging. And when you read the Bible, you find that things are supposed to get worse before they become the best ever.

And that’s Jesus in his return. Amen. When he comes back, he will destroy the enemy with his breath, just his breath alone. He won’t unsheathe his sword. That’s how much power and authority he’s coming back with.

But we need to be prepared and part of our contending for the faith and for whatever God has for us. That’s going to play a huge on the daily. It should be on our minds and our hearts to ask God for help with that and through his own Holy Spirit, to give us the power that we need to live through today, not just survive. And I don’t want to go on that rant, but just to live boldly for him. As Mark and I prayed this afternoon about man in our DNA, he and I are bold for the gospel.

We’re both for Jesus. But, you know, and our prayer honestly this afternoon was that whoever’s going to evangelize and every believer should be you doing that you don’t have. There’s myriad of ways to do it, but the reality is you’re not going to be able to give a good defense of the faith. You’re not going to contend for it if you don’t know what Pastor TJ Was talking about. Knowing Jesus, adhering and clinging to the cross, and knowing his word because he is a living word.

And it is part of our weaponry, part of our armor. That sword of the Spirit, dear brother, told me a long time ago in a Bible study, we cut ourselves up with that the most. We use it on ourselves the most to minister to us. And we also use it in a. In a.

In an apologetic and apologia of our faith in Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Well, you know, to kind of final things up a little bit here, I’ve got this. I got a declaration that I put together, and it says, I will contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.

I will guard the source and go deeper into the river. Release life where death has ruled and bear fruit that heals the nations. I am not under the old covenant of striving, but the new covenant of living water. Where the river flows, everything lives. So I want to encourage you that as we round out this series on I will live this year out, I will this year get into your word.

That right there alone. It’s not just getting into the word, it’s getting the word in. You get into a good Bible reading plan, get into your word every single day. Take some time out and spend time with the Lord. Even if you’ve got to take start out with two minutes a day, three minutes a day, four minutes a day.

I can tell you this and it right now that to me now just through fasting, an hour doesn’t seem enough. It’s just, I just, I want to spend that time with him. I want to sit in his presence. I want to be in his presence. I no longer want a sugar coated candy coated with sprinkles, whatever.

Gummy bears. Yeah, Gummy bears type of faith. Thank you dj. I want to live. When I walk into church, I want to walk into the presence of God.

Amen. I want to see God’s presence and his glory be dripping off the wall. And I know that with, when I talk about, even with Salt Church as being an active five fold ministry of church, we’re not just talking that, we are living it right here, right now. I mean you only see half of our staff right now and obviously Matt’s behind the camera telling us all what to do. But the fact of the matter is, The pure fact is, is that we live this, we live the fivefold ministry because we realize this is not about just one person, one entity, one ego.

We do this battle together. You know the thing never being in the military, but being around this guy and my son and other people and my son in law, you know, Special Forces. There’s a reason why they travel in teams because they each have different specialties, but they each have different things that they bring bring to the table. Alex brings something to the table. TJ brings something to the table.

Michaela, Matt, you know, George, Lydia, they bring something to the table that makes Salt Church what it is. You guys bring something to the table. Absolutely. We’re all on the band. Yeah, we, we just, the idea is, is that we want to come into this, into his presence, but we want to take his presence out into the world and where we walk.

So contending for the faith is getting into the Word. As Pastor Han said, devour it, get into it. Just tear through the Scriptures and commune with him. Value communion, understand what communion is. But then getting in to contend for the faith.

Because I can tell you now, just by being in this life 57 years, there’s no time such as I’ve seen now, where we have to. To contend, we need to know what we believe. We have to know what we believe. There is no Luke. There cannot be room for lukewarm Christians.

There cannot. It absolutely cannot. So I’m going to give these guys. That’s my rant. I’m going to give these guys about 10 seconds, and we can kind of finish this up.

I’ve had a blast. It’s been fun. Take. Take 10 seconds and just give your final thoughts and 10 seconds. 1.

We’re kind of. I. We just cannot afford to have mixture anymore in the church. You know, it’s. I think it’s you.

Jesus said, follow me, and I want to. I want to follow Jesus. I hope you guys want to follow Jesus. You know, I think sometimes we bring our own. Like, well, can I, like, keep my pocket secret sin or not so secret?

Secret sin. And this is not just a message about sin. This is actually like, well, what you’re leaving behind is nothing compared to what you’re running towards. Amen. So let’s contend together.

Y’ all really excited that we get to contend together. I’m excited, Alex. Amen. Pastor Mark and I were talking this afternoon, and I conveyed to him, and the Lord’s been telling us this. He’s coming back soon.

Playing Church is done, people. Amen. You need to be bona fide in Jesus. And how does that look? Open your Bible and you will see what it looks like from front to back.

Cover. And even in some of the harder parts of the narrative throughout that whole time. You’re not going to know until you touch the. The page and you consume the scroll. Get real with Jesus.

He’s the only answer. Amen. Amen. Thanks for your time, everybody. Amen.

I want to take this time real quick. If you don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, the Bible says that if you. If you believe in your heart, confess with your mouth that he is Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that you. You will be welcomed into the kingdom of Heaven. And we want to take this time right now and just a little bit of time, and we want to pray with you.

And if you’re on the other side of this and you’ve been listening to us. And if you say, man, these guys are nuts. Yeah, we are. We’re absolutely nuts for the Lord. We are.

We are validly nuts for the Lord. We love the Lord. He’s brought us through a lot. Amen and amen. But I want to pray for you.

And then we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to pray out. But right now, Heavenly Father, just say this with us. Heavenly Father, Father God, I turn my life over to you. I believe in my heart and I confess with my mouth that you are Lord and savior of my life. I ask that you would come into my life and forgive me of my sins.

Father God, I pray that you would reveal unto me everything that you have for me of this new life. Help me to contend for the faith through you. Be with me, Lord God, I pray in Jesus name. Amen and amen. If you said that prayer, what I’d like you to do is go to Salt Church’s website and just kind of send us a message and say, hey, listen to you guys podcast and just listen to this.

And I gave my heart to the Lord. And we would like to just pray with you, introduce ourselves to you, get to know you. But yeah. And again, we are at 961 South Burden Neck Road on Sundays at 10:10. Every Sunday morning.

Tomorrow, tomorrow night, we’re going to try to hit it before the storm comes in. And we will be prayer at 7 o’ clock to 8 o’. Clock. Come join us. Come join us on Thursdays.

Would love to have you. Love to have you. Let me pray for you as we leave. Heavenly Father, I just pray right now. Lord God, we pray, Father God, that this message would go out and it would not fall on deaf ears.

Father, we pray that you would prepare the soil. We throw the seed out there, Lord Jesus, we pray that there would be be healing. We pray there would be deliverance. Lord God, we thank you for what you’re gonna do. I praise you for this opportunity, Lord Jesus, that you’ve given us.

In your name, I pray. Amen and amen. Tj thank you for doing this, Alex. Stoked to be here. Appreciate it, buddy.

Love you guys. Have a great rest of your week. We’ll see you soon. Y’ all come back now, you hear? Aloha.