Are You A Good Christian? Strive To Be Better

Hello, and welcome to Social Media Ministries. My name is Spencer Coffman. Thank you for being here today. If this is your first time, please take advantage of the description below.

You can subscribe to our channel, you can follow our podcasts, [and you can] follow us on social media. Get connected with us with any prayer requests. You can drop them in the comments below. We would love to pray for you.

If you are returning, hopefully, you know all of that. In addition, use those share icons to bring more people to Social Media Ministries so they can learn and understand the Scriptures in the Bible. Today we have a great message, a little bit of a convicting message so be prepared to make some changes in your life or maybe course correct or keep doing what you are doing.

The question is: do you think you are a good Christian? Are you a good person even? There is a saying that says, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and the answer is they don’t.

Some of you might not get that. Maybe you have heard me say it before, but the reality of that situation is bad things don’t happen to good people. Why? Because none of us are good. That is why bad things happen to us.

We aren’t holy inside. We are not good. We are born into a sinful world. We are born of a sinful nature and the only way to have goodness in us is to have Jesus in us, and then, even us ourselves are not good; it is Jesus in us that is good and makes a part of us good. But innately we are evil.

So do you think you are good? You try to be good every single day. You try hard to be good and that is commendable. It really is. Because in this world, it is so, so difficult, whether it is just thoughts or anger or emotion or really taking action, it is very difficult to be good and to do good.

If you think you are a pretty good Christian, yeah you probably are if you lead a godly life—you pray, that is awesome. God says to do everything with prayer and petition. We need to continually be praying to Him, seeking Him, [and] studying the Bible. That is awesome.

Let’s go to Joshua 1:8 says, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”

Keep the Bible in your mouth, study the Bible, meditate on it day and night, talk about it with other people, engage in it, and then do what it says, and guess what, you will be prosperous and successful. That is pretty encouraging.

If you don’t have your Bible with you and you didn’t follow along with that, don’t worry, all the references will be below. You can come back later. Look them up. Read a little bit more before and after each verse to get a little greater understanding.

Hopefully, you are doing what the Bible says and you are following those instructions that God has put forth. James 1 Verses 22 to 25 is a very powerful section of the Bible. A few verses. Turn with me, otherwise, you know the drill.

James 1:22-25 says, “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this—not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”

Kind of a common theme there: keep the Bible in your heart, meditate on it day and night, learn it, read it, talk about it, and then do what it says. If you do what it says, Joshua says you will be prosperous and successful. In James, it says you will be blessed in what you do. Very common theme. Do what the Bible says and you will be blessed. Pretty cool. Hopefully, you are doing what it says.

We talked about an entire lesson, a whole sermon, right here you can check it out in a card if you are on our YouTube channel. Otherwise, navigate to YouTube and you can see that it is called “Remember Your Face” and it was about those verses in James.

On how if you look at the Bible or you listen to these messages or you go to church and then you go home and you go back to your life and you are not practicing what you just learned, that is a problem. So continue to do those good things. Continually pray and talk to God.

Remember the Bible says [to] pray continually. 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5 Verses 16 to 18, “Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Pray continually, pray continually, that means in everything you do God wants to hear from you, whether it is something small or something great, always be asking God. He is your best friend.

Not only is He your friend but He is your Father. Jesus is your best friend. You should be with Him every day all day long. You want to be with Him. He is the coolest person ever. He has got an awesome sense of humor. He is funny. He loves you. He is so caring and He wants what is best for you.

Your Father, He wants what is best for you too. He is willing to push you harder to get you there. Remember He loves you more than you could ever imagine. Tell Him everything. Ask Him to help you focus on being more like Jesus, more like your best friend, and be a great example for other people.

Remember you have to stay humble even though you are out there and you are a good Christian, you are a great Christian, you are doing all this stuff, you are practicing what the Bible says— you need to stay humble.

James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up. Similar to the Old Testament passage in Proverbs.

It says if you get invited to a banquet, you are not to take the seat of honor. Don’t sit up there right at the head of the table for example, or right to the right hand of whoever is hosting the banquet. Don’t take those high seats. Instead, give yourself a different seat. Why?

Because it is better for the person to say, “Hey, no no, come up here and sit here.” Then guess what? You get exalted. For him to say, “Hey, you can’t sit here, someone else is sitting here. Go sit down over there,” and then in that place, you could be humiliated.

No matter what in life, you are going to be humbled or you are going to be exalted. So humble yourself and then let others exalt you. That would be better than exalting yourself and then having others humble you. There is a little extra lesson right there.

God wants to exalt you. Humble yourself and He will lift you up. When you get invited over to some place, take a lowly seat. Let them move you up. Sit somewhere and have them say, “No come sit in the front of the room.” Get yourself elevated. They will lift you up if you humble yourselves. It is a good little lesson.

But remember you can’t get proud. Remember in Proverbs, pride comes before what? Destruction. Most people think that pride comes before a fall, but it is a haughty spirit before a fall and pride before destruction. If you become proud, you will be destroyed. That is Proverbs 16:18. We can check that out. “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Don’t be proud. Be humble. Remember that you need to strive to do everything in here. Be a good Christian. You are nothing compared to Christ. He was the best Christian there ever was and there ever will be. Humble yourselves and realize that and then think about His disciples, the Apostles. How great of Christians they were.

What makes a good Christian is the question. Now what makes a good Christian? For example, maybe how many people have you led to Christ this last year? One? 50 million? How many times have you shared Jesus with others? Not only leading others to Christ but how many times have you planted seeds, have you sown the Word of God, have you sown this into other people’s lives?

Now I don’t mean to go out there and keep count of everything you are doing. “All right, I shared Jesus with so and so on this day. On this day I clicked a share button on one of Social Media Ministries’ sermons. On this day I shared a verse from my Bible app on my Instagram.”

You don’t need to keep a log of all of that. What I am saying is, do it enough that you don’t have to think about when was the last time you did something like that. Do it enough that you don’t need to think about it. Practice makes perfect.

Remember that other sermon we did about ten thousand hours and how practice makes almost perfect? If you don’t, you can check it out in a card. Otherwise, it is on our YouTube channel or podcast, you can find that, “10,000 hours.”

That is a lot of time. Ten thousand hours of doing something, according to Malcolm Gladwell, makes you an expert at the skill or successful at the skill. You will have achieved the level of knowing what that is.

That means you are gonna stumble a little bit, you might stutter a little bit, you might get timid or afraid a little bit. But as you start going, as you start doing those things in faith. You start sharing the Bible.

You start talking to people, and you simply ask, “Hey, can I pray for you?” and they say, “Yes, okay.” “Great, what for?” Then pretty soon they are pouring out their life story for you, someone they don’t even know, to pray over them.

Whether it is a guy in the drive-through or someone in the coffee line, people all over the place need Jesus. They need prayer. They may not know it and they may not be willing to go seek it, but if you bring it to them a lot of them are going to say yes. Why?

Because they know deep down that they need it. They know deep down that they are in an evil world and that they are evil themselves and that their father is the devil because they live in his world. That they speak lies. They are not filled with truth.

There is a fire inside the human spirit. We are like animals. Animal desires do not satisfy us alone. We need more. There is a fire inside of us, a spirit that longs for more. What do animals want?

Well, they want to make more animals, they want to eat, and they want to sleep. That is pretty much it, and humans, if that is all we wanted to do, we wouldn’t be striving to be better. There is a burning desire inside us to do more.

We know deep down that we can do more, that we are made for more, and, with Jesus, these people could discover it. So be that person to share it with them. Every day, share it with someone anytime you are out and about, bring it up, and even if you don’t bring it up, at least start thinking about it.

Then when you leave that encounter you could say, “Man how would I have brought up Jesus in that situation?” Think about it and through not doing it and thinking about doing it, eventually you will start to do it. Thought becomes deed and action, so keep thinking about it.

Remember you are a good Christian, you are a follower of Christ, you have Him in your heart. You are doing what the Bible says. You are praying. Great job. Keep it up, but remember to stay humble and there is always room for improvement.

Let’s go to Ephesians Chapter 4 Verse 2, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” In love. Jesus loves you. You should love others as well. Do everything in humility like the verse, everything in humility, not in selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility.

Value others above yourself; give them a higher status. You are very valuable but treat others as if they are even more valuable. Humble yourself and they will see that in you and then exalt you, a great lesson there.

Let’s talk about the kind of Christian Jesus was for a little bit. So that if you are sitting there thinking, “Okay, all right, I pray. I read my Bible every day. I attend church. I watch these messages or listen to them when I can.

I am talking about Jesus or talking about the Bible or a story in the Bible or something once in a while with other people.” What can you do more of to be a great Christian? You are a good one, [but] how can you be a great one?

Jesus, He lived 30 years of his life pretty much dormantly. Normal traveling around with His parents, working, He had a normal life, and then when His time came He changed the world in only 3 years.

Fortunately for you, you have like 70 years to try to change the world, maybe 50 years. Maybe you say all right, the first 20 years of your life, you are figuring everything out and then you have from age 20 to age 80 to change the world—60 years. Maybe you don’t want to do much in your last 10 years. The point is you have a lot more than 3 years to make an impact.

What did Jesus do in those 3 years that you could do across 30 years and change the world? Well, Jesus traveled. He went around. Now that doesn’t mean you need to get on a plane and go all over the place, or walk everywhere, or go live in other countries. The point is Jesus was out and about.

That means you need to get out and about. How? Well, maybe you are stuck at home or in an apartment or something. You can get out and about like this. You can get on your phone and you can record things. You could post stuff on social media. You can share things on social media. You can be out in the virtual world impacting people.

You could also be out in your world whether you are out grocery shopping or walking through the mall. Maybe once a week you decide to go someplace without even having a purpose of going there.

You just say, “I am gonna go to the mall today.” Or “Today I am going to go to the sporting goods store” or “Today I am going to go to the dog park” or wherever there are other people so that you can start talking to them and interacting with them in an effort to change their lives, to sow some seed.

That is the other thing Jesus did as He was out there traveling. What did He do? He didn’t just travel around, He traveled around and taught people, talked to them about the Bible, told them stories, parables, and you could do that too. Maybe you don’t want to be a Bible thumper or a person who is shoving the Bible down people’s throats when they are out and about.

You could be the type of person who says, “Let me tell you a story” and then tell them a story from the Bible but you could leave out the names or something like that. You could tell them that story and then they might say, “Is that from the Bible?” and you could say, “Yes it is.” It is from the Bible. This thing is from the Bible. You could say that and then that would give you a great opportunity to continue talking to them about the Bible.

Jesus went out and about and He spoke to people about His father’s business, about the Bible. That is how He was a great Christian. He was given gifts of the Spirit and He healed and He touched people and made them better.

He did all that kind of stuff as well, which you could have that power, you could have that gift of the Spirit. If you ask God for it and if you are ready for it. But take those first steps to get ready. Start sharing Jesus with more people. Be a great Christian and stay humble.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank You so much for this message. It is a very simple message but it is so very important that we remember that we always need to be seeking you every moment of every day 24/7/365. We must be seeking you.

In addition, Lord, keep us humble. Help us to remember that we are nothing in comparison to You, to how great You are, but here on this Earth, we are very very valuable and we can be greater. I ask that they would strive to be greater.

That each person would strive to be greater. That we would long to share You. That we would get out there and be given opportunities to talk about You, to pray, to share You, to sow seed that could grow and bear fruit.

One person that they invite to church has the potential to go out and become a minister or a missionary and bring thousands of people to Christ. There is no insignificant act when it comes to sowing seed for the kingdom of Christ. Lord, help them all realize that and then get out there and do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thanks again for being here this week. If you have any prayer requests, please comment below or if you have any insights or discussion topics, go ahead, comment below. Feel free to share your examples of sowing seed into the ministry or of telling others about Christ or praying for people. Comment with that encouragement below so that others can see that and then go do it themselves. God bless.