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Answered Prayer: Living Confident Through My Trust
February 19, 2025 · 29 min
Watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App or on YouTube.PrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@asignificantlife
Series A Significant Life February 19, 2025 · 29 min · A Significant Life
Watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App or on YouTube.PrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@asignificantlife ...more Show the full description Show less Watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App or on YouTube.PrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@asignificantlife
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Jim Graff is a respected pastor, leader, and author who loves helping people fulfill their unique
potential while finding their significance in Jesus Christ.
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0:00 As children, we often dream about our happily ever after. We envision a lifelong marriage, a home filled with warmth and joy, and friendships that stand the test of time. But what happens0:12 when after isn't as happy as we'd hoped? When life seems to have lost its spark, how do we reconnect with the joy we once imagined? At A Significant Life, we believe experiencing true0:23 happiness in life and lifelong relationships depends upon keeping God at the center. That's why we want to send you Jim Graff's book, Happiness, 10 Choices That Create a Satisfying Life for your gift of any0:35 amount. In this book, we'll discover choices we can make today and ensure lasting joy through every season. We believe your best days are still ahead of you. Give today at0:47 asignificantlife dot com and discover the kind of happily ever after that only God can bring.1:03 Thank you for being with us today. You know, we all know there's so much coming against marriages and families today. And I wanna encourage you as I encourage myself that God's word has the answer.1:15 It can give us the protection, the healing, and the blessing that we're all looking for.1:20 And today's message is gonna be so helpful in this area. We're gonna learn how trusting God can change the trajectory of our lives and our families. It's not enough to hear God's word or to discuss it with each other,1:32 even though both of those are necessary to our obedience in the beginning. But today, we'll learn as people who don't drift from trust to enjoy what God promised to bring about in our lives. This can be all of us.2:03 I remember a day whenever I experienced something that I knew that I couldn't take lightly in my heart. It was the spring of 19 79, and we had just started my junior2:15 college baseball season. And I was sitting talking with a teammate who who also happened to be a fellow freshman at the time, and we started talking about what we wanted to see our team accomplish2:27 that spring. And as I was talking, I could sense that I wasn't gonna be a part of the college experience for long. And it shocked me because I was the second baseman and the lead off hitter, and2:39 my friend was the first baseman, and he was the cleanup hitter. And we had been friends since we were children, and we'd played together for a long time. And I thought, Lord, why am I sensing this2:51 whenever I was still just a young believer? Well, many of you know my story. You roll it forward, and I hurt my shoulder throwing batting practice to the shortstop just a few days later.3:03 And then I'm moving to Arizona to rehabilitate my arm in the warm weather. And here's my point this morning, that that John 16 verse 13, Jesus said this, that the3:15 Holy Spirit is going to tell us the things that are yet to come. And I think all of us this morning would agree that God knows more about our lives than we know. I think most of us3:27 would agree that we need to learn to seek God better. We need to learn how to follow God better in our life. But this morning, what we're gonna learn is why that's a battle and what we can do to follow God3:39 into the blessings he's planned for us better in our life. The the king David wrote about it this way in Psalm 37 3. He said, we need to trust in the Lord and do good, and then we'll3:51 live safely in the land and we'll prosper. Now, do you notice that the Bible says that we don't just have to do good for life to go good, but it says we have to trust in the Lord. And then if we'll trust in4:03 the Lord, we'll do more good, and then we'll have greater safety from the curse of sin. We'll have more of the blessing of God in our life. And so God's leadership demands that we know him better4:14 and that we learn how to trust him. And Jesus spoke about this in a parable. It's in Luke chapter 8, and he's talking about why God's word, why God's wisdom doesn't bring to4:26 pass more of what God promised that that he would bring to pass in our lives. And I'm not gonna read you the whole parable. You can do that in your own time, but I'm gonna read you Jesus' explanation of the4:38 meaning of the parable. He said in verse 11, this is the meaning of the parable that the seed is the word of God. And then the first thing he says that robs us of God4:50 blessing us is he said, those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and he takes away the word from their heart so that they may not believe it and be saved.5:02 So God says that I can't make happen what I wanna make happen in your life if your heart is hard like the soil that's on a path. So we know many people miss heaven because they have a hard5:14 heart, and they hear about the love of God, and they say later. But you know what? You don't always know you're gonna have the luxury of a deathbed, so it's good to to respond to the gospel early in your life. Right?5:25 Then Jesus said there's a second thing that happens, and that is we handle our tests wrong. It says in verse 13 that some are like those on rocky ground who receive the word with joy5:37 when they hear it, but they have no root. And so they believe for a while, but the time of in the time of testing, they fall away. See, some people think that success is so much5:48 easier than what success is, but the truth is you gotta go through a lot of days if you're gonna get to your payday. Can you say amen? And so when we're hearing the word, if we're like all excited about it,6:01 but we're not saying within ourself, I'm gonna mature, I'm gonna persevere, I'm gonna become who this truth is calling me to become, then we're gonna miss out on a lot of blessing that could have6:13 been ours in life. Then Jesus talks about a third type of person when he says this in verse 14. He says, their seed that fell among thorns, and it stands for6:25 those who hear, but as they go on their way, they're choked by life's worries and by riches and pleasures, and so they don't mature. And you know, let's face it. We live in a society where the pleasures6:37 of sin are more abundant, and they're calling people to pleasures more than any time in my lifetime. We also live in a time when anxiety is at an all time6:48 high. Recently, I heard that according to the American Medical Association, the anxiety of this generation is 3 times higher than the anxiety of any generation of Americans7:00 throughout history. And when I heard that, I felt the Holy Spirit inspire something within me, and that is I'm gonna believe this year in our church family that anxiety is7:11 going to decrease exponentially, and Answered Prayer is gonna increase exponentially among us. Right? And so whenever God puts something in my heart like that,7:23 I start watching movies to motivate me. And on Tuesday, Tamara went to see her mother, and I watched a baseball movie while she was gone. And it was a movie called Fear Strikes7:35 Out, and it's about a guy who played 17 years in the major leagues whose name is Jimmy Pearsall. And Jimmy was a 2 time all star, but when he was a rookie, he started7:47 acting out in unhealthy ways. He would lash out at his teammates and lash out at his manager. He would fight with the opponent, fight with the umpires, and it came to the point that7:59 during his rookie year, they literally had to put him in the psychological ward of a hospital, and he missed much of the year for treatment. And the movie shows what happens to him, and that is he8:11 started getting mad at everybody. He got mad at his father, and he began to blame his father for his troubles. Even though he admitted to his psychologist that without the discipline that my father8:22 taught me, I would never be a Major League Baseball player. He had a sweet, wonderful wife who stuck with him the whole 20 years of his major league experience, and8:34 she had 9 kids to him. And whenever he finished playing baseball, he divorced his wife because there was something in his own heart that God needed to deal with. And the truth is8:46 we all fight this drift that I'm talking about this morning. And so in the rest of the message, we're gonna look from the look at the book of Hebrews, and it's gonna teach us how to defeat the drift8:58 that happens in our heart that keeps us from the blessing of God. And the writer of Hebrews starts this way. In Hebrews 2 verse 1, he says, we must pay the most careful attention to what9:10 we've heard so that we don't drift away. So he's saying that even though we're hearing truth, and even though when we pray, we're in touch with the Holy Spirit, it's easy for us to drift away9:21 from the things that God wants to do in our life. Now, know this morning I'm speaking to people who've lived in South Texas for some period of time. Right? And what happens whenever we go to the9:33 beach and we start swimming in the gulf? Pretty soon, we start drifting, don't we? I remember I was down there, and a guy from the north was near us. And he went out to swim, and he9:45 came back. And I heard him say, honey, somebody stole our umbrellas and our towels. And I thought, this poor dude, he just doesn't understand how the golf is gonna cause you to drift if you9:57 don't learn how to deal with the drift that's in the golf. And the truth is there's 2 things that we can't drift from. Number 1 is the truth of God's word that matures us. If you start moving10:09 from the truth of God's word that matures you, pretty soon, you're gonna start doing what you think you should do. You're gonna start doing what you feel like you should do in certain circumstances of your life. And down10:20 the road, you're gonna learn that you gave in to the drift, and you missed God's destiny because you valued what you felt and what you thought more than what God's word was telling you to do.10:32 The second thing we can't drift from is accessing the Holy Spirit in prayer. When we begin to pray in the spirit, what we're doing is we're experiencing what the Holy Spirit wants10:44 to do, the way he wants us to handle certain things in in life. And again, if we're not gonna drift, it's gonna happen because of how we learn to depend on the Holy Spirit. So let me give10:56 you an example. When I'm in my daily Bible reading this year and I get to Leviticus chapter 16, it tells us a story of how once a year, God commanded the the high11:08 priest of Israel to take his hands and to transfer the guilt of the assembly onto this goat. And then he was to take this goat, and he was to hand it to a person11:20 who would take the goat out of the wilderness, and then the goat was supposed to get lost. Well, if I'm not asking God what his lesson is is to me through this particular story, I'm gonna end up11:32 as lost as the goat trying to read the story. Right? But if I understand that God's saying something to us, and that is there are people who they they don't know how to transfer their11:44 guilt. For some people, you don't even think God should love you because of the things that you've done in your life. But can I tell you something? Don't look at your life. Look to the cross. When Jesus11:55 stretched out his hands on that cross, God was telling you, my love isn't based on you. My love is placed on you. Now let me love you and lead you where I know I wanna take you in life. Amen? Other12:07 people, they put blame on other people. They are always talking about what their spouse did wrong, what their mentors did wrong, what the church did wrong. And you know what you're doing? You are transferring blame12:19 instead of learning that blame is to be transferred to Jesus who forgives us, who loves us, and who leads us through the imperfect places of our life. And so we can12:30 all see it. This drifting thing is a big deal that we have to defeat in our society. Right? I wanna encourage you just to Google some songs about drifting. And I had a hard time12:42 choosing which song I was gonna share because so many songs have been written about our tendency to drift as people. I ended up choosing a John Mayer song this morning. He wrote,12:54 I'm drifting, drifting. Time and space, and I'm out of place. Don't recognize a single face. By now, I should have won the race, but not when I'm drifting, drifting. Now if I was13:06 Michael Graff instead of Jim Graff, I would have sung that to you this morning. Instead of reading that song to you, I'd have a lot better hair too. Can you say amen? But anyway, we have to learn to deal with this13:18 challenge that we have called drifting. And that's why the writer of Hebrews, first of all, tells us, he says, we have to pay careful attention so that what we've heard isn't something we just hear13:30 without obeying, and we end up drifting from God's best in our life. But then he says something so important. He said, for since the message spoken through the angels was binding, and every13:42 violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? Now, notice that he's not talking to people who rejected13:53 salvation. He talk he's talking to people who ignored salvation, which means it wasn't a lack it wasn't rejection, it was a lack of respect for God that he's addressing in this text.14:05 And then he reminds us that literally, when God gave Moses the 10 commandments, he assigned angels to take the the the truth to Moses whenever he gave the 1014:16 commandments. Moses spoke of this whenever he was getting ready to die, and among his last words to the Israelites were these because he was concerned that they were gonna drift from14:28 obedience to God. So he said to them, the Lord came from Sinai. He he dawned over them from Seir. He shone forth from Mount Paran, and he came with14:39 myriads of holy angels. You know what Moses was saying? He was saying, don't forget that when God gave us his truth, he assigned angels to deliver that truth. Make sure14:51 you give God's truth the respect that it deserves on the inside of your heart. When Stephen was gonna be stoned as a martyr, and he stood before the Sanhedrin who were supposed to15:03 be the 70 holiest men in all of Israel, Stephen said to them in Acts 7 53, you who have received the law that was given through angels, but you haven't obeyed it. And15:15 they got so mad that they wanted to kill him. But listen, folks, we live in a day in America when they're telling us take the 10 commandments out of schools, and you know what? God's word is archaic. You15:27 know what we need to do? We need to forgive them. We need to outlive them. We need to love them, and we need to show them when you serve God, it pays. Just watch my life. I'm not gonna disrespect God's truth. I'm gonna15:38 respect God's truth. Amen? But still our hearts began to drift. You say, Jim, why do they drift? Well, first of all, they drift because of culture. You know, culture's always going15:50 to be clamoring for your attention, and its message is the same. In every single season of society, here's the message of culture, that I know more about what'll make you happy than16:02 God does. And because I know more about what can make you happy than God does, you can go ahead and enjoy the pleasures of sin because you know what? God's old fashioned, and he doesn't know what's best16:14 for your life. But what worked on Adam and Eve in the garden? It's the same thing. Basically, the enemy came, and he said, did God really say that this is something that you need to pay16:26 attention to? You know, I don't think we understand in our generation how much we have been bombarded with thoughts that have conditioned us to think that our reason should somehow16:37 give us the right to trump the revelation of God. It's called the enlightenment. It's a it's an outlook on life where people believe that reason should be exalted above the revelation16:49 of God. And let me just say this, if you're doing that, then how you think and how you feel starts trumping what God calls you to do in his word. And I just wanna give you a test this morning, and that is give17:01 God a year where you start doing what he asked you to do regardless of what you feel like, regardless of what you think about it, and watch how much more God begins to bless your life. I'm gonna tell you a story.17:13 In 18 31, a young man set sail on a ship called the Beagle. It was filled with naturalists who were invited to study the various parts of the world for 5 years. He had just17:25 finished his studies at Christ College in Cambridge, England, and he had prepared to become an Anglican minister. But during that time, new thought challenged the way that he had been trained.17:37 It was called the enlightenment. And this young man became a naturalist, and a friend who was a barrister noticed the change and wrote him a letter. He asked him,17:49 have you lost your faith in the New Testament? And here is the young man's reply. He said, dear sir, I'm sorry to have to inform you that I don't believe in the Bible as divine revelation18:00 anymore, and therefore, I don't believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God. Now, the young man I'm talking to you about is Charles Darwin, who became the father of18:12 evolutionary thought. That's how much the drift can damage you, can damage your family, can damage your society. How many of y'all don't wanna drift? You wanna depend on Jesus, and you want Jesus18:24 to bring forth his very best in our lives. Amen? But culture is going to challenge you to drift from God's word. Companions challenge us to drift from God's word.18:36 First Corinthians 15 33 says this, don't be misled because bad company is gonna corrupt good character. Listen, some people are like sugar on your teeth as friends.18:47 They're really, really sweet, but what you don't know is they're starting to give you cavities. They're starting to affect the way that you're trusting God. And I know for me, when I was a young believer, I know that God18:59 put me in Billy Joe Dougherty's church because I was supposed to mature there, and God was gonna make me ready for what I'm doing today. But I had people come into my life. Some of them would affirm me.19:11 They would say, hey, why don't you come over to our church and be a youth pastor? If I'd done that, I wouldn't be standing here today because God wouldn't have done enough work on the inside of me. Sometimes people will19:23 take up your offense, and they'll start making you feel better about your offense. But what you don't understand is it's the work of the enemy that's causing you to get defeated in your drift19:34 because the character that should be obeying God better and should be hearing from God better is getting affected in the midst of the drift. So how do we defeat the drift? Well,19:46 we pay attention carefully and don't let culture, and we don't let companions mess with our obedience to God. But here's what we do. Number 1, we fix our thoughts on Jesus. Hebrews 319:58 1 and 2 says, therefore, brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling. Now listen, the only way we get to the heavenly calling is we live the holy life that God calls us to.20:10 That's why he says, fix your thoughts on Jesus whom we acknowledge as our apostle and our high priest. He was faithful to the 1 who called him. Now, a high priest is somebody20:22 who stands between you and God, and they represent you to God. And so what he's saying is Jesus came so that you and God would have a close relationship. An apostle is somebody who20:33 establishes a foundation that something great can be built upon. And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is, you should wanna live holy because you should wanna be loved by God. You20:45 should wanna be led by God, you should want God to do the great things that God wants to do in your life, and the pathway to getting there is to fix your thoughts on Jesus who keeps you holy.20:57 He doesn't make you perfect, you're still gonna mess up, but he causes you to keep doing the right thing in every season of your life. The second thing we have to do is this, we have to welcome the Holy Spirit's work in21:09 our life. Hebrews 3 7 and 8 says this, so as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart. See, if I were to sit and talk with every person in21:21 our congregation today, you would tell me times when the Holy Spirit was speaking to your heart. But if you're missing God's best, it's because there are other times he's speak into your heart and21:32 you're hardening your heart instead of letting God have his way in your heart. So when God says things to you like you need to forgive that person, or when he says things to you like you gotta hold a boundary because21:44 that person's not not treating you the way they should. When God says things like you need to be serving in the church because how's it gonna happen if we all don't do our part? If you start hardening your heart during21:55 those times, what you're doing is you're limiting the power of the Holy Spirit to bless your life. And let me say this this morning. Those who read the Bible without learning to hear from God, you're not gonna22:07 make it through the year. Those who try to pray without having experiences with God like I had that morning in 19 79, you're not gonna keep praying. But if I can get you22:19 to understand this year that when you open the pages of scripture, this isn't like any other book y'all. God wrote a book and he said, I'll heal you. I'll deliver you. I'll22:31 bless you if you honor and respect my book. Amen? If I can get you to understand that prayer is not supposed to be ritual according to Jesus, it's not just supposed to be words we say, but it's supposed to22:43 put our hearts in touch with Almighty God so that we're loved better than we've ever been loved by God, and we're led by God better than we've ever been led by God. See, we fix our eyes on Jesus.22:55 We welcome the amazing presence of the Holy Spirit who loves us like we are, and who can lead us places we could never go without him. And then here's the final thing, connect with godly community.23:07 You can read Hebrews 2 and 3 on your own. I'm teaching you the lesson from it, but this is how he closes chapter 3. He says, see to it, brothers and sisters, that23:19 none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but I want you to encourage each other daily. Now, what he's saying is you can't let everybody minister to your23:31 heart. David said that the person who's pure is the person who's gonna minister to me. I don't want people ministering to me who need God to deal with them, and what they're doing is trying to23:43 get me as messed up as they are inside of their hearts. And not everybody is like that. Sometimes they do it so so innocently. But listen, if you want to have God take you23:55 where he's trying to take you, you have to fix your eyes on Jesus. You have to welcome the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, and you have to watch who you let talk to you because it's gonna have an influence on the24:07 inside of your heart. I'll never forget when Andrea was born, it was such a sobering moment for me because Tamara will tell you, I've never given a prophecy to my wife. I mean, I just, we both just24:19 get up and read our bibles in the morning, we hear from God. But on that Sunday morning, on May twentieth before Andrea was born, I was praying over our service and a prophecy came24:31 into my heart for Tamara. And I told her, I just spoke this over, I said, this baby's gonna come into the world quietly and unannounced, quietly and unannounced. But prepare your heart for though this baby comes24:43 into the world quietly and unannounced, in her latter days, she's gonna do a mighty work for me. And then I came to church, and we were praying for people, and Tamara was praying for a girl named24:54 Sandra Morrow. And as she prayed for Sandra, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, and he said, Sandra should be should be praying for Tamara. Well, we went down to Port Aransas to the beach on25:06 Monday, and when we got back on Tuesday, Tamara said, I have pain in my stomach. So she went to the doctor, and the doctor told her, maybe, you know, there's just something going on. Go home and rest in25:18 your bed. And so I was taking care of Michael, and as I was making Michael hot dogs, bless his heart, alright? But it was hot dogs for dinner with dad in charge, and as I'm making those hot dogs, the25:29 Holy Spirit spoke to me, and he said, prepare your heart for those she comes into the world, you know, like she's gonna come in. And I thought, oh my goodness. And I called25:41 Tamara, took her to the hospital. When we got to Citizens Hospital, she Andrea was in fetal distress. If I'd waited much longer, she would have been brain dead or she would have25:53 died. But thank God I've got a beautiful daughter who's given 3 beautiful grandchildren, and they're working at a church in Tennessee. Man, it made me just want to26:04 give the Holy Spirit his way for the rest of my life. As a matter of fact, I started saying, Michael remember this, but he was little and I said, how many people live in this house? And of course, there were 4 of us at26:16 the time. But when they answered 4, I said, no, 5. And I kept reminding them that it's work. You can drift. You can miss God's will for your life if you're not careful. You can26:28 miss a beautiful marriage he wants you to have with intimacy and grandchildren and good times. You can miss the beautiful blessing he wants you to have in the future,26:40 but how many of you are determined this morning, you're not gonna miss it because you know in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who live called according to his purpose.26:52 Amen?26:59 As children, we often dream about our happily ever after. We envision a lifelong marriage, a home filled with warmth and joy, and friendships that stand the test of time. But what happens when ever27:11 after isn't as happy as we'd hoped? When life seems to have lost its spark, how do we reconnect with the joy we once imagined? At A Significant Life, we believe experiencing true happiness in life27:23 and lifelong relationships depends upon keeping God at the center. That's why we want to send you Jim Graff's book, Happiness, 10 Choices That Create a Satisfying Life for your gift of any amount.27:35 In this book, we'll discover choices we can make today and ensure lasting joy through every season. We believe your best days are still ahead of you. Give today at asignificantlife dot27:47 com and discover the kind of happily ever after that only God can bring. We'd love to have you as a part of our online27:59 community. Simply subscribe to A Significant Life on YouTube and you'll be able to catch up on past teachings as well as watch extra content from the entire team. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram too and on28:11 our website, asignificantlife dot com. You can listen to our latest podcasts, sign up for our weekly Step Into Significance devotionals, browse helpful resources, and let us know how we can28:22 pray with you. God bless you.
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The Bond of Peace: Forbearance: His Way or the Highway Jim Graff
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