For many, Christianity is an exercise in behavior modification. God gives us a list of “To Dos” and “To Don’ts”, and it’s our job to do and don’t them as best we can—right? Wrong! Actually, being a follower of Jesus isn’t about a change in behavior…it’s about a change in identity! Christians are people under new management. We’re not who we used to be. So why do so many of us struggle with our new identity? Why is it hard to believe God when He says we’re loved, chosen, and blameless? It’s time to address the gap between who we think we are and who God says we are, and see what it really means to be under new management.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his classic work, Mere Christianity, “Jesus came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call ‘good infection.’ Every Christian is to become a little Christ.” That is exactly what God has in mind for each of us—to become like Jesus. So how do we know if we’re catching the good infection?

Today we're in the finale of this series under new management. Today, I want to talk to you about something that might sound like an oxymoron at first, but just follow me. All right. We're talking today about the good infection, the good infection. And I want to start us off by talking about COVID-19. Because we haven't talked about that enough, right? Like, there's one topic that hasn't been talked about enough. It's the pandemic, right. I want to talk about this because we are seeing some cases rise recently, right? If you've been following the news at all, you've seen the cases have been on the rise. But here's, here's the thing that I want to point out. Okay.

So currently, Ohio, I think like our, our new data as of yesterday, is like 2409 new cases. So it's like, going back up. But here's where the difference is. Early in the pandemic early with all this stuff going on, you were seeing the cases go like this. And the deaths from those cases go like this. You know, what you're seeing now, you're seeing the cases go like this, but guess what the deaths are doing? They're staying down here. People aren't dying at the rate that they were before. That's good news, right? Like, that's good news.

For example, Ohio has 2409 new cases. That's the average guess what the average death is? And obviously, one death isn't good, like any death. But the average is eight. Eight. Like a couple of months ago, that was hundreds. Like, that's good. That's good news. Because what that means is that at this point, people are getting infected, but people aren't dying. That's good.

In all honesty, I mean, we do we don't keep track of how many people get infected with a cold virus every year, right? What we care about is if people die from it, that's what like, we're like, okay, we need to, then we need to maybe take some mitigation efforts and try to do something here. But the fact is, people aren't dying, even remotely at the rate they were, they're getting infected, but they're not dying.

Now, the good infection, the good infection that we're talking about today. This is the description where we get this title from the good infections from CS Lewis, he's a Christian theologian and author. This is what he says, as he defines the good infection, Jesus came into this world and became the man to spread to every other man, the kind of life that he has, by what I call the good infection. Every Christian is to become a little Christ, the whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else. That's it. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is as you become a little Christ, through the good infection, the good infection. And so as I think about this idea of the good infection, and I think about the infection that the world has been dealing with, I'm like, man, we have the opposite problem.

So when COVID people are getting infected, but they're not dying, I'm worried. And I worry about this for myself, I worry about this. For us as a church, I worry about this as the general church, I worry that we'll get infected with the good infection, but that we won't live.

Check-in with me. So in COVID, we're getting infected and we're not dying, I'm worried we're going to get infected and not truly live will get infected, but not truly live the life live the purpose that Jesus called us to live in our life. We just talked about it last week that if we have casual contact with Jesus, we don't change. Right? That's what we saw happen with people throughout Jesus's ministry, people who would come into casual contact with Jesus because He was popular because he was like a magician, right? They came into casual contact with Jesus. But that didn't result in change. And a lot of us see that happen in our own lives, we casually come to church, we casually pray once every, like three weeks, right? Only whenever something bad is happening. We come into casual contact with Jesus. And then we get frustrated. Whenever we don't see any change in our lives. But casual contact isn't what does it we have to actually with intention approach Jesus, and that's when we see change happen in our lives. Otherwise, what ends up happening is we become infected, but were asymptomatic. Right? We see that happen a lot with COVID-19 right now, people catch it. But you don't know that they caught it. Because they're asymptomatic. There's no fever. There are no chills, there's no loss of taste or smell there. There's none of that stuff. There's nothing so they're infected, but you would never notice, and we cannot have this happen as Christians. We cannot become infected, and no one knows about it.

No One, no one has any idea that we've ever encountered Jesus because if they look at our lives, they couldn't tell. Like while you're asymptomatic, I don't see anything in your life that would say that you've been infected with a good infection. I don't see, any sign that you're encountering the reason, Jesus, in your life. So I can't speak for you. But I know for me in my life, I want people to be able to tell I've encountered Jesus. I want people to know that I've been in fact, I want people to see me sneezing. I want to be coughing. I want to be gross for the glory of God. Like, I want people to be able to see in my life. Yeah, there are all the telltale signs that this dude is infected. This dude has encountered Jesus, he has a good infection in his life. If that's you, you want the same thing.

I'm going to pray for you as we start today's sermon. All right, Let's bow our heads. And let's pray together. Father, God, thank you for sending your son Jesus, thank you for offering us this new life where we don't have to live the old way that we used to live that we can, we can do something better, we can follow you in your ways for our life. God, please be with us today. Help us to see our need for you, for us to be able to see our life and see the need to be infected with the good infection so that we could become more like Jesus, that we could become little Christ in each one of our situations. And each one of our relationships that we would look at and sound like Jesus because that is the whole point of being a Christian. So help us with that Father, and we'll be sure to give you all the honor, all the glory, and all the praise and it's in your name that we pray. Amen.

So, me and my wife, Jessica, we have had COVID-19. We caught it at the end of last year starting at the beginning of this year. So, so much for the whole of 2021 is going to be my year. Like we started the year off with COVID. It wasn't crazy for us. Honestly, the biggest thing was the loss of taste and smell. That was that was weird. Like that was weird that we felt that. But how we caught it, my mother-in-law. She got it from work, and we were with her on Christmas. About two days after Christmas, she started showing signs. And some and Jessica, we got tested, kind of expecting like, well, maybe we'll have it but I don't know, it's we're not showing anything yet.

But one night, just after the start of the new year, I and Jess are like, hey, let's like let's watch one of our shows. And it was cold out and it's January. So we got a fire going and everything like that turn off lights, they're watching our show. And as we do, we're watching it and all of a sudden the fire alarm starts going off in our house or our smoke alarm or whatever. It starts blaring like crazy. The kids come for some reason our kids think that a fire alarm creates a fire like they don't realize it alerts you to the visor. gonna die they come run out there as they're freaking outright? No calm down calm now. Jessica is like did I put something in the oven? So she goes over checks the oven. And as she does I go over and I flip on our light switch. And then we look around the room. Guys, I kid you not our room was like billowing smoke. Not kind of hazy. Not like, oh yeah, it looks like there's, no, I'm talking like smoke. We're in the clouds right now. It was that bad. You could see tons of smoke around all the lights and stuff like this is crazy. So we have to we turn that off. We open up doors and everything kind of let it air out a little bit. And at that moment, Jessica and I looked at each other and realized, yeah, we don't need to wait on the test results. We have COVID because we were just sitting in a smoke-filled room. I mean, smoke-filled room. And we were just casually watching television like this is a good one you want you to have for one more after this one's over. Like we had no idea

Normally, you smell that stuff. Normally like, what is that something burning? We had no clue. But it was so abundantly obvious that we couldn't smell it. Right there was no fun. I wonder if we're infected with this thing. We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we had COVID it was tangible, this big telltale sign was yes for our loss of taste and smell. Absolutely. That was us. And what I want to let you know as we study today and as we look at scripture is the good infection, the good infection that if anyone is a Christian you should want to have in your life this infection that you've encountered Jesus and it affects every aspect of your life. That infection has telltale signs as well. It has signs that show okay I am infected Okay, Jesus is changing my life. So if you're a person if you grew up in church as I did, and you've been saved 100 times because every time you sin you're like God, I'm sorry please Jesus, forgive me don't do put me to hell if that's what you say every time you ever do anything wrong. If that's you, and you're a How do I know Christian? Like how do I know that Jesus is actively working in my life?

So we're closing this series under new management and we're seeing how we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we're actually under new management. So if you have a Bible and you want to follow along, we're going to be in Galatians chapter five. Now what Galatians is Galatians is a letter that an early follower of Jesus, honestly one of the most influential followers of Jesus wrote, The man named Paul wrote this letter to a church in Galicia, and essentially the entire book, the entire book that Paul writes this whole letter, all of it focuses on what freedom in Christ looks like. Paul's letting them know, hey, look, you used to be a slave to the law, a slave to the list of do's and don'ts. But now because of Jesus, you have freedom, you have Christian Liberty, and things should look a lot different for you, your life should look a lot different. And by the time we get to chapter five, Paul starts listing out what that difference looks like Paul's like, hey, look, your life should look different. And this is how it should look different.

So he lists this out. Galatians chapter five. We're going to start in verse 13. This is what Paul writes. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh that is your sinful nature. Rather serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command. Love your neighbor as yourself. If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires, what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit, what is contrary to the flesh, they conflict with each other so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

And then Paul gets ready. He's like, I'm gonna list this out for you. If you feel like you're well what are the sinful desires? What are you talking about? Paul just decides No, I'm just gonna list this out for you. The acts of the flesh are obvious. sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy. Sounds like a party right? fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

What Paul is saying he's not talking about works-based salvation that Oh, okay, that means I have to work for my salvation, I have to not do all these things. And that's how I'm saved. what Paul is saying is no, if you're known by these things, then you're not finding your identity in Christ. And then if you are seeking these things first, that's where your identity is found. And in that case, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. And then Paul decides he's like, okay, now I'm going to give you the other side. So I've told you what not to do. I've told you what it looks like when Jesus has not changed your life. Let me lay out what it looks like when he does change, like verse 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And against such things, there is no law.

You see, this set of verses that we just read, what it's going to be that's going to be our spiritual well check for today is our This is our spiritual Web MD, that we're going to be looking at this list of what it's supposed to look like in our lives if the spirit is at work. And so what I want to do in this remaining time we have together as I studied this set versus God, it just felt like pointing different things out, I just kind of want to share with you what I got during my study of this. And hopefully, it affects you and impacts you the same way that it did me this week. So we're going to start, I just want to point one thing out in verse 19. And in verse 22, of Galatians, five. So in verse 19, Paul starts to list out the acts of the flesh, plural, the acts, and then in verse 22, Paul talks about the fruit, singular, of the Spirit. You notice that one is plural, all these different acts, one is singular, the fruit of the Spirit that is on purpose. This isn't just semantics, Paul's not making this, this difference just for the heck of it. It is very purposeful. We don't as Christians as believers, we don't produce fruits, we produce fruit, singular, we produce fruit, and that's because this is what I want to let you know, selective symptoms are a sign of deception, not infection. If you are selectively just choosing the symptoms from this list.

You're not infected. You're deceiving yourself. I'm deceiving myself. This is what that looks like. Let's see what's Paul says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, peace. Oh, patience, patience. That's a good one. I'll be patient. I'll selectively Be patient, with the people I like. I'll be patient with the person I want to impress kindness. That's a good one. You know who I'll be kind to my boss because my boss has power over me. And if I'm kind to him, maybe it's a little bit I scratch his back. He scratches my back. Maybe I get that promotion I wanted.

See that? That's not how it works. Selective symptoms, selectively choosing these things and going Oh, yeah, I've got the good infection because I do that one. And I do that one. That's deception. That's not an infection. We are deceiving ourselves. That's why policy No, no, no, we can't pick and choose. We can't be Ferris Bueller. Right. Just trying to pick the symptoms that work best for us. who's seen Ferris Bueller? Who knows what I'm talking about? Thank you. Chi-Chi just timeout from the server real quick. Thank you. I'd said that in the first service. There were so many young people I got looks like who's Ferris Bueller? I about cast and rebuked everybody out of the auditorium. Get out of here in the name of God. I don't know who Ferris Bueller is unbelievable.

But Ferris Bueller. If you've seen the movie, you know, he's trying to get a day off school. And in doing so he selectively chooses symptoms that he knows will get his mom to call him off. Here's his quote, right. He breaks the fourth wall. He's talking to the camera. He says this. The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good nonspecific symptom. I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a deadlock. But you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor's office, that's worse than school. So what you do is you fake a stomach cramp. And when you're bent over moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. Granted, it's a little childish and stupid. But then again, so is high school. Right?

And so what Ferris is doing, he's like, I'm selective. I know what symptoms will get me out of school. I know what symptoms will get me in a doctor's office. So I'm going to carefully pick and choose what symptoms will get me what results in I want. That is not how it works with us though. If you are a believer in Jesus, we don't get to selectively pick what symptoms we want to have at any given moment. Well, I want to be nice to you. So now I'm infected with kindness. Well, I want to I want to get something good from you. So now God's love is abiding through my heart. That is how it works. We can't pick and choose we either produce fruit, or we don't. As I am truly infected by the love of Christ, all the fruit comes at once singular all of it, we do not pick and choose. And here is a big reason why we don't pick and choose as that list like Well, I'm going to be joyful, I'm going to have peace, I'm gonna have patience or kindness today. We can't pick that.

And here's why. If the fruit or if the spirit is at work in us, the fruit that he produces is love. That is the fruit. I've heard other theologians put it whenever Paul lists this out, essentially what Paul is saying is no, the fruit of the Spirit is this one thing. It's love. And this is what love looks like joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So essentially, what Paul is saying is there is one fruit of the Spirit, and it is love and what love looks like in action are these things. That's why Jesus can say, in multiple places that his ministry that all of the law is fulfilled in that one command to love others as he has loved us that if we do that, everything else gets fulfilled, through that one command of loving other people. So if you're someone who is asking yourself, Am I infected? Like, is God really at work in me? Is he doing something in me? If you're asking that question, am I infected? It's the wrong question. You need to ask yourself, do I love? That's the question that will let you know am I being transformed by the Spirit is do I love people? And does my love look like joy? peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control? If it does, I'm infected. And I'm not saying you get it all perfect all at once.

Please hear me on that. That's what we talked about in week two of this series. It doesn't come all at once. So don't feel like well, man, I still blow up and people now and then. And man, I still I'm struggling with that the fact that you're struggling is a good sign. That means the spirits still talking to you. The spirit is convicting you that's a good thing. If you struggle from time to time, the goal is to struggle less and less so that you're not 10 years down the road still doing the same stuff. You were 10 years ago, right? But it's a good sign if you still struggle because that means the spirit is still talking to you. So we ask ourselves do I love?

Here's the other thing that I felt God kind of pointed out to me as I was reading this set of verses is that our infection if we are infected by the good infection, we're going to know by action, not information, right? Like if we are infected by the good infection, it will be the actions that we see in our lives, the actions that take place that will tell us that not information, not how we feel, or what we think at a given moment. That's not going to be what does it. Paul says in verse 19, that the acts of the flesh are obvious. And so are the fruit of the Spirit. These are obvious things that we can see take place. These are actual things. They're actual things. Let me ask you a question real quick. Whenever you go to a doctor to get checked out, or do you get tacked on? Do you think the doctor cares what you think is wrong with you? Like for real? Has anyone ever gone in and doctors like that so expound on that more? Please tell me, what do you think is wrong? I've never had it. Honestly, there's probably no group of people that hate the invention of the internet as much as doctors because all of us come in. And we're like that before you go. Let me tell you what my Web MD surfing on the web has told me, let me tell you what I think is wrong with me first, right? That's, that's what we all do.

My brother-in-law, Aaron, he's been sick. The second thing went wrong. I guarantee you, if you were to look at a Google report for like his illness, you would have seen a gigantic surge for Google searches in the Akron, Ohio area because all of us suddenly became doctors in this thing. We're like, Oh, yeah, let's look it up. Well, this is what my research has told me, right, like, all of us, are looking into this thing. And we're all feeling like we know, we know what's going on. But man doctors, they don't care what you know, or what you think about your situation, they may ask you what your like family history is, or things like that.

But man in general, they, they couldn't care less what you think is wrong with you. They're just going to check on you. They're gonna check your pulse, they're gonna check your temperature, they're gonna check your breathing, they're going to check all of those things, check your scans, they're going to check things because they know if you have an infection if something's wrong with you, that it is going to manifest itself in actual real ways. You don't need to tell them what you think is wrong with you, they're going to be able to see what is wrong with you. They're going to be able to tangibly see because it will manifest itself in material ways.

And in the same way, if we have the good infection, it is going to manifest itself in real tangible ways. What that means that means this, our faith is expressed, not by our doctrine, and what we believe, but by our demeanor, and how we act, and how we treat people. I've and I will let you know, I love doctrine, the whole idea of studying what Scripture says and who God says he is. I love that stuff. Me, me, and Pastor Donny man, we can spend hours talking about this stuff about the minutiae of, of Scripture and all these doctrinal points. It's fun, I love it. That sounds super interesting to me. But the fact of the matter is, my faith is not going to be best expressed through doctrine. It's going to be my demeanor, how I treat people, how I engage with people and talk to people.

Why do you think Jesus time and time and time again says throughout Scripture, you will know my followers by how they love, he explicitly tells his disciples in John 13, moments before he's going to be arrested? He lets them know, Hey, I'm giving you one command. One, one, this sums everything up. You are to love other people as I have loved you. And by this not held Well, you stuck by that belief, not how well you defended that position, know by how you love. That is how the world will know that you're my disciple. That's it. There's no Yeah, but no, that's it. There's a period at the end of that sentence, you will know, you will be known by your love how well you love people. I mean, think about Jesus's disciples, the early days, Jesus's Oji followers, these dudes had no doctrine. None.

Think about that whenever they were following Jesus. I mean, we see in the early church, they had to develop songs like hymns. Creed's to be able to remember certain doctrinal beliefs, because, I mean, they're not writing tons of stuff down in the early days, because they're all still like in the middle of what's going on in this new Jesus movement that's just started. And these guys didn't have doctrine. The book of Acts specifically goes out of its way to let us know, these were ordinary men. These weren't schooled, men.

We see in the book of Acts that says, whenever the disciples were brought before the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, it makes a point of saying the same he's noticed that these were ordinary men. And that word ordinary best translates from the original Greek to our word for idiot. What it means is unschooled. These were unskilled men. These were ordinary men, these dudes, they were not sophisticated. They weren't able to talk eloquently. They didn't have any training or background. But they were with Jesus. They were with Jesus. And because they were with Jesus, everything about their life had changed. They were infected, they were infected, and his disciples changed the world. And in this little group that should have fizzled out under the mighty hand of Rome. Instead, they spread all over the place, and it wasn't because they had great doctrine. It was because they loved it so well. So as the spirit moves in you, love should move out of you, as the spirit affects you and affects who you are. Love should be moving out of you.

It's different points in Scripture we read about God hardening someone. If you ever heard of that phrase, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, if you ever watched the old 10 commandments, with Charlton Heston talks about God hardening Pharaoh's heart, and we think, Wow, how cruel of God. Like the hardened Pharaoh's heart. He made him hard. He made them calloused, and he made Pharaoh do this doesn't does that mean God when against his free will? That's not what that word means. When it says that God hardened someone's heart. What it means is that God drew out what was already there. So he didn't make Pharaoh do anything. He just drew out the hatred and the pride that was already in Pharaoh's heart. It's like a sponge, right? He just squeezed it and what was in there already came out. That's what we should be as Christians, we should be so infected with the love of God, that whenever we are squeezed, it's what comes pouring out of us. I mean, think about it. Whenever you're going through trials and tribulations, whenever the world puts the squeeze on you, and the pressure under you, you should be better under pressure. You should be better under duress, you should be better under stress in your life. Because when you are squeezed out, have you ever seen those people in your life, people who the world just throws them the biggest curveball you could imagine? Things are not going their way. They lose finances, they lose their health, they lose their faith, something crazy happens. And instead of falling apart and wilting. When the world puts the vise grip on, they get better.

And you wonder how in the world does that happens? It's because they're infected. They're infected. And when the world put the squeeze on what was in just came overflowing out the love of God, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the gentleness, the self-control, it just comes pouring out of them. That's how it is supposed to be for us. How Oh, my gosh, how different our world would be if Christians would be that way. What if our world whenever they saw us, Christians, the people in your work, whenever they saw you go under duress and stress and pain, they saw nothing but the love of God come out of you. That is a bigger witness than anything you would ever say to them. If they could just see the peace and the joy in your life and the self-control and the trust in God that would do more than any word you could ever say. And that's how it's supposed to be. That's how it was for the disciples. That's how they changed the world and ignited a movement. That's not why we're here today. That's why we're here today. This stuff is supposed to flow out of us in ways that honestly, we can't even help it. My grandpa James Mason, such an incredible man, he had walked so closely with God His whole life that whenever he got towards the end of his life, had lost my grandma lost his oldest daughter. All these things happening, he had to be in a nursing home because his health had fallen to a place where his family couldn't care for him anymore. And he couldn't care for himself. So he needed to be in a nursing home, in the middle of this in the middle of life putting that grip on him, rather than turning sour. And rather than turning depressed and bitter and angry, why did this happen? And what I like before I go to heaven, my daughter goes to have like, how does all this work out instead of that happening? He got better and sweeter and kinder and more selfless. All of that happened. It's because he's infected.

He was just he was infected with the love of God. And it was so evident. And it was made so apparent to everybody. Because as soon as life, put the squeeze on him, that's all that came out. And it was natural. Only because he had been walking with God for so long. That's the only way and this is a little side point. If you want to be able to handle those moments,

In life, well start following God now. Because that doesn't develop in a moment. You don't start following God on day one and day two, you lose a close family member and you handle it so well. And wow, this is just incredible. You need to build up that trust muscle, you need to build up that, that just complete faith in God. And that only comes through walking with God walking with Him. But it's crazy as you do that, as you walk with him, You will be shocked at what comes out of you. You'll be shocked. Because the things that you thought you never could have done on your own and you couldn't, they will be produced in your life. And because you've been walking with the spirit, and to be honest, you can't help it. You can't help but be this person because it's what God has produced in your life. And that's one thing we realized, as we follow God in everything we read about the love of God and the fruit of the Spirit and what it is, you know, you do nothing to produce that in your life.

You're not that good. Sorry. Like you're not I'm not either. So don't, don't feel offended. I'm not that good of a person either. I'm not all those that like, love. Like, is there anyone in this room is like, yep, on my own this, this would define me. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. You want us to follow you around with a camera all day and be like, does this line up with what we see? Right? There is none of us that we are the reason for this in our life. That's why it's called the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of me. It's not, it's not the fruit of Mario, it's not the fruit of Jacob. It's not the fruit of April, it's the fruit of the Spirit. Because I do jack squat to make it happen. I do nothing. So that means the fruit is produced not by my work, but by my walk. That is what produces the spirit. I don't, I don't see anything happen because I'm such a good person.

I don't, I see it happen because I follow a good God, and He does it on my behalf. That's how this entire thing works. Faith isn't produced through our work. It's produced through our walks. Scripture says time and time again, Paul says so I say to you walk by the Spirit, and you will not satisfy the desires of the flesh. We walk by the Spirit. Now, let me explain that a little bit. Because it's such a Christian thing to say like, oh, I'm walking in the Spirit, like What in the world? What does that mean? Don't walk in the Spirit, right? walking in the Spirit. Essentially, what that means is when you start whenever you make that commitment to Jesus saying, Hey, I'm going to start following you. Like, I'm not just asking you to be a savior, right? Just go to you for forgiveness all the time, I want you to be my king. Like, I want you to rule my life and tell me what to do. So whenever you do that, and you start following Jesus as King, he's a God of his word. He fulfills that for you. He's like, okay, you want me to be your king, I'll start to tell you what to do. And so you start feeling little nudges that stuff you used to do that you never felt anything bad about before. You suddenly feel that thumb in your back, like, dude, that's not how we talk. Maybe in that kingdom, but not mine. But we don't talk that way, like the kingdom. And so you feel it, you're like, ooh, and whenever you feel that, if you listen, and you go, Okay, all right, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna work on that I'm gonna try to talk different, the spirit will help you. And that's what it means to walk in the Spirit as he guides you. And as he puts his thumb in your back, you listen to him, and he changes you, he changes you. And that's what it means to walk in the Spirit. And that's how we see fruit produced in our life because we're under his management, right? We're not under our management anymore. We're not under the enemy's management anymore. We're under the management of the Holy Spirit. And he guides us and he transforms us and he produces those things. He produces things I could never produce. It's like my paycheck. So my paycheck, I can produce that. Like I can produce that I put in a certain time of work. And at the end of the workweek, I get a paycheck that lines up with the work that I put in, right. That's how paychecks work, right? You, you get your pay for the work that you do. But there's something that we do me my wife we do every single month. That hurts, man, it hurts. We take money out, we put it into a retirement account, it hurts because I don't like seeing all that money just going somewhere and just sitting. Like I want to do something with that. I'm like me, you know how much we could do with that. And it's not even a lot of money. But still, you're like, oh, man, if we just had that money, the things we could do with it, it would be so much better. And we could do this and that monthly payment would just be gone, when that'd be great. But still, just every month we put that little bit in. And it's so funny. Every time that I do go into check it. I look at the amount invested. So what we've put in, it's like down here. As I said, it's not a lot. It's not like oh yeah, you know, half of our income goes towards new. It's not like it's down here. But you know what's crazy is here's how much we put in

Whenever I looked the column over where it says like how much is actually in your account, it's like up here. And so I see this dichotomy between the two. And I'm like, but I didn't do this. Like I didn't do any of that. It's the magic of compound interest, which is way over, I'm not smart enough. If there's like a financial advisor in here, we can talk after service, you've explained it to me, I'm not smart enough to understand it. But there is a magic behind interest. So that even though I've only put in this much, it's up here. The same is true of our relationship with God, the same is true in our life of our walk, you can never put in enough to equal this, you just can't. You can try all you want to be a patient person, you're never going to get there. You may be more patient for a day for a couple of days, but on your power through your own will and ain't gonna happen. Why do you think we see people fail time and time again, and New Year's resolutions, because God is not even remotely a part of the quotient. And so it's just all my willpower. And by the end, by mid-January, I'm done. I'm tapped out. I can't do it anymore. Right. But there is magic. And the same way. There's a magic behind that compound interest. There is magic that happens. When we make these little, seemingly insignificant deposits to God. God deposits something in us, he deposits His Spirit in us and it does things that our work could never do on its own. We can't duplicate it, we can't replicate it is only God. It's only God, he does that he puts his Spirit in us. And as His Spirit works in our life, we can spread the infection, it spreads, it manifests itself differently. And suddenly, our life starts looking a whole lot more like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And when you see that happen, when you see those things being the identifier of your life, you know, okay,

I am under management. I am different. I'm, I am not perfect. I'm not perfect, but I know that I'm working towards being better. I know that I'm walking with Christ. By the way, did you know perfection is not the goal?

Can I say some that might sound a little bit heretical even? And don't throw anything at me? Anything sharp? Did you know The goal of the Christian life isn't to sin?

If you think the goal of the Christian life is to avoid sin, chances are it manifests in your life in certain ways. The goal of the Christian life isn't avoiding sin. It's being like Jesus. And yes, there's a gigantic difference. It's being like Jesus. And as you become infected, you will see yourself becoming more like Jesus, you'll see yourself becoming kinder, and more loving, and gentler with people, and more gracious. And yeah, you'll tell people the truth, and you will do it with such love. It's crazy.

That will be how your life is defined as you get infected with a good infection.

As we close out, I'm gonna ask the worship team if they would come back up. As they do, I just want to let you guys know, this is true for me too. You were made to be infected. sounds silly, sounds kind of funny. But you and I man we were made to be infected, our every part of our body was designed to be infected by the good infection, you were made to be under the management of Jesus Christ, every single one of us. Our goal in life, the goal that God has for you as we talked about last week, is the will for God for your life. It's not a one. It's a who it's who he wants you to become. He wants you to become a little Christ, He wants you to become like Jesus. And let me tell you, that's the only way that you'll find fulfillment, that is the only way that you truly find lasting fulfillment, not temporary joy that comes and goes with whatever life throws your way. But something that stands the test of time where your health can go or your finances can go or you can lose a loved one. And you still have that underlying foundation of joy. That is not dependent on your circumstances that only come from Jesus. That is it comes from no other place. We're supposed to find our identity in him. And you will never be fulfilled if you try to find it anywhere else if you try to be managed by anything else. So the goal for all of us is to become more like Him. Right? We talked about it in week one, I'm never more myself than when I'm more like God. That's why when I exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, all those things. I feel so good about myself. It's because I am operating the way I was designed to operate. That's why it feels so incredible. Last thing I'll say and we talked about this a few weeks ago

In the middle of that, in the middle of where you are now, and becoming more like Christ, it can be so easy to feel discouraged. Because you see that gigantic gap between who you are and who Jesus is. Do not be discouraged by that disconnect, don't. That's where the enemy wants you to be. He wants you to be discouraged and to feel bad about yourself and feel like you'll never mess her up. So why even bother? Don't be discouraged by the disconnect. I said earlier, the disconnect is realizing that it's there that lets you know that the Spirit is still talking to you, and he is still walking with you and guiding you towards where you're supposed to be. So don't be discouraged by it. Just continue walking, continue walking with the Spirit. And I promise you to keep doing that day after day, you will be shocked at who you've become. You'll start handling things so much differently. You will have bad reactions the way you used to. You'll still mess up here and there. But man, it will be a fraction of where it used to be. Yeah, you may still circle the same problems, but it will be at a different height than you used to. And you can get there we all can get there. It's just realizing who our manager is and submitting to his management. I want to pray for you about that today. Let's bow our heads and let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, there is no one like you.

You are love.

You are joy, you are peace. You are patients you are kind, you are good, you are gentleness, you are faithfulness, you are self-control. You are the actual embodiment of all of those things. And God we know apart from you. We can't even remotely come close to touching those things. Our work isn't enough. So God help us to walk with you,cto walk with you to walk with your spirit. So that as we do, we can start to see your attributes become our attributes, that we can start to see your love become the love that we showed other people, that your joy is the joy that we have, even in the hardest of circumstances. That you're self-control that your patients that your kindness that your goodness that we would exemplify those things in such incredible ways that the world around us would stop and take notice and go, man, there is something different about you.

Help us to be infected with the good infection gods that we can become little Christ's in every situation we find ourselves in because we know that is how we change the world. That is how we make a difference for the kingdom. That is how we see ourselves live the life that we had in mind for us.

We know that you're a God who's good on your word. And so as we ask you these things that God we know that you will see it through. Thank you for being such an amazing Father, thank you for being you.

We love you so much, father. We pray all this in your name. Amen.