#LoveIs Believing the Best by: Pastor James (video and notes)

Love Is – Believing the Best

Week 4 – Pastor James

• 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV – Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
  • Iniquity- judgement
    • Not rejoicing in judgement
  • Truth- what is true in things appertaining to God in the highest altitude
    • “Truth is”…God loves people the way they are, He just doesn’t want them to stay that way. We should be working on loving people the way they are, and by way of that love…God will get to their heart.
  • Believes all things- to credit and have confidence in all people
    • To believe the best of everyone first
  • Believing the best isn’t just for them, it’s for you
    • My boss story- in Michigan and drumming up work, laid us off
      • One whole year held bitterness in my heart. I had all kinds of things running through my head. “He is getting work from my contacts.” “He is stabbing me in the back.” “He used me.” “He is benefitting while I’m out of work.”
        • It was my one year of silence, kind of like the 400 years between Malachi and Matthew (the gospels)
        • After a year, I finally let go and let God. I finally came around to believing the best of my boss. It was like a release in the Spirit.
          • I met up with my wife over in Michigan right at the right time due to the layoff.
          • I let go of a bad relationship that I knew was doomed to end anyway. We were going two different directions.
          • I got back in church and starting serving God.
          • I graduated LBI and started my graduate work in Theology.
          • My best friend ended up partnering with my boss a year later and is still funded by my boss in his personal business and working together with him. We promised each other that we would get out of the auto industry at 30 years old, Jason called me when he was a month away from turning 30 years old and said, “I did it, I’m moving to Arizona and starting my business.”
            • Without my boss, it would have been impossible.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• Friend loan-
  • I loaned a friend some money on a bad investment. At the time we didn’t know it was a bad investment, but it ended up that way. In the lending process, he guaranteed me the amount of interest and the time frame even of the investment went sour.
  • He lost it all. I lost a little, but he lost it all. I held onto negative emotions toward him for 7 years. It eventually turned into a joke between my friends and I, but there was truth in the jokes and the truth was that I was still harboring bitterness.
  • My non-Christian buddytells me that I need to let go of it. He went on to tell me about the difficulties that John ran into during that season and after. He had to work overtime for the years to follow just to make ends meet. He nearly lost his wife in a divorce and they have 3 kids. He just barely pulled it back together, but it was the most difficult season of his life.
    • I recognized I had to let go and pray.  A non-Christian talked me into it. Crazy how God works sometimes. I forgave and released him and the situation. I found myself praying for him anytime I thought of the situation.
    • I found myself saying more positive things about him, even to my friends. I would stop negative jokes about him and turn them around to positive. “He probably needed it more than me.”
    • About a year later I found an envelope in the mailbox addressed to me from John. It was an apology letter. As I read it, a small sheet of paper fell out and hit the floor. I picked it up, it was a check with 7 years of interest included.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• How do we get there more consistently?
  • At this church, it’s called the fast track (growth track). It’s our way of getting you moving in the direction that you want to go.
    • Growing spiritually is a process.
      • Fast Track walks you through not only what we believe as a church, but how you can grow yourself.
      • We believe that as Believers serve together and grow together that goodness rubs off. Believing the best rubs off.
      • You are who you hang out with. Tell me who you hang out with, and I’ll tell you who you will become.
      • Our serving teams (Dream Teams) is where you’ll find this at the church to grow and equip you for the doors of blessing to be released into your life.
      • This is how we stay small enough to minister to everyone as the church continues to grow.  To grow as imitators of Christ.
• Ephesians 5:1, 2 NKJV – Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
  • God believed that you could carry His Son’s torch. Even while not deserving. He believed the best of you. With all your flaws and concerns, He’s trusting us to carry on what He already did.
  • When we believe the best there is harmony on earth that matches heaven.
  • Believing the Best is natural and normal in heaven
    • If we want the benefits of heaven on earth, we have to act like heaven on earth.
  • There is a heavenly domain and an earthly domain. God is showing us the heavenly way to act through His Word and through His Son. Now, we are to be that example here so that the earth can match the heavens.
    • When we act like Jesus, the earth matches the heavens. When the earth matches the heavens, miracles happen.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• Filling in the blanks – believing the worst
  • Sometimes we think we’re being taken advantage of and we see it before it happens. So, we have it all figured out and we start revealing what we figured out, even though there’s still some gaps in our story, we fill them in with negative instead of positive.
    • “thats the only way it could have gone” so we fill in the blanks and believe the worst.
  • The right blank filler:
    • Romans 2:4 NKJV – Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
      • When we operate in goodness, it leads people to repentance. It says in another translation, “kindness“. How is God kind and good to people? He works miracles, He heals, He gets involved when we need Him.
      • I wonder how many times He had to get involved, because our schedule was too busy to get involved ourselves? He’s calling us to take a stand for good, because that’s His way in.
      • Fill in the blanks with goodness and kindness prior to correction and judgement.
        • Example: Elderly lady (100 years old)
          • What is your key to long life?  I forgive quickly and believe the best in people.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• Matthew 25:40 NKJV – And the King will answer and say to them, Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.
  • Translation: What you do to others and how you think about others is the greatest example of how you think about God.
    • What you believe about God comes out in your interaction with others.
• Faith can be defined as this: believing the best of God
• Practice on each other
  • • If you can’t believe the best of your neighbor, its going to be hard to believe the best of God and see results
    • If you can’t see that God has always given you the benefit of the doubt, you won’t be able to do for others

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• • • This is what believing the best might feel like at first, but it’s producing answers
    • Best- take a picture of any situation and imagine it better. Not just better, but imagine the best outcome that could possibly happen. That very well could be God’s heart for that situation or person.
      • The more you read the Word and understand God, the better you can understand His heart for situations and people. But, you can start here…imagine the best thing, and believe that that is God’s heart for the situation.
      • This breeds the production of the answer. Believing the best is simply “faith” in a great and mighty God. Believing the worst is actually fear, and it breeds negative results. It’s actually faith in the enemy rather than faith in God.

Believing the best is calling those things that be not as though they were.

• Romans 4:17 NKJV – …who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did;
• You’re putting heaven in action on earth. If every good and perfect gift is from above (James 1:17), then why not place your free gift of goodness in the middle of terrible situations. It’s yours. It’s from heaven. You can change situations by just using what is yours. By just believing the best.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life.

• Jesus believed the best in us. Let’s do the same for others.

Believing the best is one of God’s ways into your life

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