We Audit What We Can See. What About a Habit of Grudges?

Sermon outline

Before a new year, audit your life honestly, including the hidden habits of grudges and bad attitude, make Jesus Lord of every area, and prepare for success by spending time with Him and knowing when to let things go.

1. Do an audit on your life

   Ask how you started the year, where you are now, and whether you have gone higher or are worse off. If you have dropped the ball, find where, pick it up and get going again, because a righteous man falls seven times and rises. Even people of faith face fear every day; the point is not to let fear overcome faith, but to feed your faith daily. If you are fighting the same habits you fought in 2015, you have lost your way, because God is a progressive God.

   “Do not allow fear to overcome your faith.”

   • Proverbs 24:16
   • 2 Corinthians 4:16
   • Hebrews 12:2

2. What about a habit of grudges?

   We think of habits as smoking, drinking and drugs, the things we can physically see. But what about a habit of hatred, a habit of grudges, or a bad attitude when people rub us up the wrong way? She is over sixty and still realigning her attitude. Habits are formed by what we practise every day until we are comfortable with them, and believers are a peculiar people who cannot excuse them as normal.

   Illustration: Her own vice is driving fast and losing patience with slow holiday drivers. She never runs a red robot, because that habit could kill people and children, but she admits she still tends to roll through stop streets, sometimes while praying in tongues.

   “I'm over sixty and I'm constantly realigning my attitude.”

   • 1 Timothy 4:2
   • 1 Peter 2:9

3. Who do you say Jesus is?

   On the road to Caesarea Philippi, right after healing a blind man, Jesus asked disciples who had seen all His miracles who they said He was. The question to us is whether He is Lord of our heart, character, business, job, career, aspirations, finances and relationships, or whether we just make decisions without consulting Him. Be the same at home and at work as you are in church, because outside you are the Bible people read.

   Illustration: She calls herself not a good pastor but a good life coach: she does not mind seeing your bad habits in church; it is out in the world that she needs you upright.

   “What's the point of jumping, screaming over here, being filled in church, and I see you on the other end of the road there, you got a cigarette in your mouth?”

   • Mark 8:27-29
   • 2 Corinthians 3:2

4. Peter overreached

   The same Peter who confessed Jesus as the Christ took Him aside and rebuked Him, and was told, get behind Me, Satan. His nature had not yet been reined in; familiar with victories and authority, he trod where he should not. We do the same when we let the boss have it because we think he is wrong. Make Jesus Lord even over your gifting, so He can pull you back.

   “We get so wrapped up in our calling and in our giftings that we seem to think that we have authority to say anything to anybody, but we can't.”

   • Mark 8:31-33

5. Take time with God, and watch your mouth

   You cannot say you are too busy to pray when you take body breaks all day: keep a Bible there and pray in tongues. The Holy Spirit will say hold on when you are angry. The words in your mouth are a sword, so think on what is pure and lovely, because what you think your mouth will eventually speak. If you want promotion, plan it in your heart instead of fearing that someone dislikes you.

   Illustration: A wife waits all day for a late husband, rehearsing and producing the whole argument in her head like a record, and when he walks in with good plans for her she opens fire. She says she has since put down that weapon.

   “The words in your mouth are swords. Use it wisely.”

   • Ephesians 4:26
   • Philippians 4:8

6. Prepare for success, like Joseph

   A three-hour show takes months of preparation, yet we expect to just get up and go to work. Get a journal, set goals and write the vision down. She suggests Joseph was not oblivious in Potiphar's house; Scripture is silent on it, and the heart is deceitful. But years of preparation with his father had made him so focused on his destiny that he let his coat be taken rather than the destiny in his heart.

   Illustration: The coat of many colours, she imagines, took months to make, which shows the time Jacob spent preparing Joseph.

   “He allowed the coat to be taken, but he couldn't let the destiny in his heart be taken away.”

   • Habakkuk 2:2
   • Jeremiah 17:9
   • Genesis 39:11-12

7. Know your season and let some things go

   There is a time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away. Do not hold on to something because of the good it brought you in a previous season. There are no seven secrets to success that fit everyone, but stay focused, determined and resilient, be forgiving, do not hold grudges and leave vengeance to God.

   Illustration: In winter you need a jersey. Don't carry the jersey through summer.

   “Even God says sometimes you have to let some things go in order to embrace the new things He's going to be giving to you.”

   • Ecclesiastes 3:1-6
   • Romans 12:19