The issue, the question Jesus will be doing is this; when He judges you, He is not judging you to condemn. He's saying: I want to look at your life and see how you lived your life, and is there anything that would be fair and right to reward and acknowledge in how you've served me? I really have got rewards. You've been doing your internship, so we're evaluating your internship for eternity. You've now just graduated, and so how have you been running your life? What have you been doing? What kind of love has been in your life? What did you do about your character? What did you do about the people I brought into your life? In what ways did you represent Me well, so people saw Me? I am looking to reward you. I'm so looking forward to this, now can we talk over your life? He zips the button, and the whole video screen plays, and there it is, everything, what you did and why you did it. So the first thing is: take responsibility. Stop blaming anyone else. Don't blame your past.
We have a tendency to blame others because we feel treated unjustly. You've got to realise God sorts out the justice thing, you just do what He wants you to do, stop blaming, take ownership, and say: my life is mine, I'm with the Lord. Now I'm going to do all that I need to do, going to own my life. I'm not going to blame anyone, ever again, for anything. It's about me being responsible for my choices. Isn't that good? That's good. Tell someone you need to hear that. Stop being a victim. So you know there's heaps of people around like that.
Okay, here's the third thing you can do. Here's the third we can do. Third thing we can do would be become accountable. Oh, I don't like that word - but there it is. We need to become accountable. We need to become accountable to someone else with our life. That's why we have small groups, so you have a group, within which you can grow and deepen your Christian life. Why do we need to be accountable? Because you grow better when you are sharing what God is speaking to you in front of others, who can then call you to come and to hold you to what you've actually said you're going to do. Everyone needs that.
We all grow best when someone else speaks into our life, and the Bible in Hebrews 13:17 says to submit, or to yield, or to yield under those who have leadership over your life, whoever that is, so that you can let them speak into your life, and help you adjust and grow and mature. Many Christians can't stand that. In fact the moment you try and speak into their life about something that's immature, or something that's lacking, they react. So here's the question: do you have anyone in your life that gives you feedback honestly out of love for you, and concern for you? Secondly, how do you respond to that? So you have to be in a group. You know, if two people form a group, you get three, four, it starts to get a bigger group. Now you get more people in a group; that's a place you can grow. I've observed that people in groups grow better. They grow better because they're interacting and sharing life, and there's an accountability comes. It's not a legal thing. No one can hold you accountable easily. You actually have to decide, I want to share what God is doing in my life with you, so you'll help keep me on course if I look like I'm going off it.
There's nothing like at the end of a week, you know, someone in your small group saying how did your prayer life go this week? You said: I'm going to pray every day, but you lasted two days. Someone asks you: how did you get on? You say well I didn't do too good this week, so why don't we pray with you, and stand with you and believe. We'll believe that God will help you just to grow to three days next week, then just make it more steady. See, it's that kind of encouragement and nurture, that's part of the kingdom and it's just part of the whole nature of the kingdom. So here's the next thing we could do. That's a good one - it got real quiet. No one's getting excited about this. I'm excited about it, but no one else. [Laughs] Here's another thing we can do, don't judge by appearances. Learn to listen to God, and ask a lot of questions. Don't judge by appearance. If we judge, we'll be judged; so our tendency is as believers is, we tend to judge by what we see. We tend to quickly come to conclusions and assumptions, without actually asking the questions and listening.