I Will Praise My Savior Forever

I will praise my Savior forever. Will I really praise my Savior forever? Do I live my life with respect for Him and honor Him and live my life according to His will? We sing the praises well, but is Jesus really my Savior, my master, my groom, and my Father? Is He really the One with whom I cannot live without? We say yes, but is He really the one thing that you are not willing to let go of? Many people say that this is true, but the moment they experience discomfort they runaway from Him. They must overcome the discomfort to stand right before God. For example, when I counsel people, they think that if they no longer come to see me then they do not have to change. Is God different somewhere else? People think that if they hide from me then there will be no problem. This is not true. No matter where you go, God is the same. For example, let us say that you dislike the teaching here because you find it difficult, then if you go somewhere else, is the Jesus that you worship there one who is different? Jesus does not change. Are you really willing to live only for your true Savior and forsake all the world? The number of saved is few. I must humble myself before the Sovereign God, put all my trust in Him, live according to His will. I must humble myself surrender my pride, and give Him everything. To live as a Christian I must make the teachings of the beatitudes my life in Matthew 5. Unless we live by His teachings we will not see God. Do not mistake His grace for your self righteousness. His blessings for you are a sign of His presence. The beatitudes must become my life. It is about abandoning my life. How much of your life have you abandoned? You refuse to let go of your pride which is nothing. It does nothing for you in this life. How can you praise and worship the Savior when you refuse to let go of your pride? Are you truly a Christian? Are you truly a devout follower of Christ? To follow Christ you must devote your entire life to Him. That is the only way. If you are not going to follow Him properly then don’t waste your time pretending to do so. You are bing tricked by the devil thinking that you can partially commit to Jesus. The children of God hear God’s voice, the children of the devil listen to his voice. You will not go to heaven because you sit in church. If you listen and follow the voice of the devil then you are the child of the devil. If your children do not listen to you but rather listen to someone else, can you say that the children are yours? No and neither will God. What use is it to sit in church not doing the things God desires but doing the things that the devil desires? We have been teaching you so many things here but what use is it if you do not change? What purpose is there? What happens to a disobedient child? What happens when you disobey God? We are only offering lip service to God. We need to worship God in truth. It must be real inside of me. When we sing the hymn “I could not do without Thee” we must really live this life no matter how difficult our circumstance or how terrible our health. If I forget the love of Christ then I will suffer the pain of this world and suffer pain for all eternity. That is foolish. Why not suffer a little pain here? The bible reminds us that our time here on earth is temporary. If for this little time I am tricked by the devil and refuse to let go of my pride and suffer for all eternity what will we do? God keeps revealing many things to me and they are being put up on our internet cafe site. All churches put up information according to how God is working through them, and we are also sharing our information. Right now we are learning about how God desires for us to be clean in order that we may be used by Him. He cannot use us if we are not holy. God is not concerned with the number of people, although He does want many to be holy and live righteously, but what is important is that we are holy and we pray for His will. God told Moses that He would wipe everyone out and start over. We think that God cannot do this. We think that God cannot do His work without us. God does not need us for His will to be done. God has people that do His will in places where we do not know and His work is being done. We may think that the world is evil and headed in the wrong direction, but God is directing everything His way. You fail to believe this. You fail to see how great is the gift of Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross. You don’t believe it therefore there is no power in it. You don’t see the power of the atonement and the sacrifice that was made on the cross and it means very little to you. You say that He died for everyone, but it is not real to you. That is why you refuse to let down your life and sacrifice anything for Him. He is not your personal Savior, your groom, nor your God, nor your Father. A parent can discipline their own child but not someone else’s child as much as their own. A child will not listen to someone else’s parent as much as they will listen to their own parents. If God is truly your Father then you would listen, but because you don’t believe He is you are disobedient. Jesus is not your groom, you think he belongs to someone else. Would you listen to someone else’s spouse? Jesus is not looking for someone to have a date with, He is looking for His bride. You refuse to be His bride because you just want to date him and get everything that you want from Him. When you date you are willing to do anything and everything for your other, but the moment you get married you go to war. This is not what God desires. God desires someone to walk with Him together, one who is willing to sacrifice, one who desires to live a life that reflects God’s glory. But I refuse to sacrifice myself. I refuse to be his bride. Because He is not your groom, because you do not make Him your Savior, there is no power in His blood to cleanse me. You choose to not make Him your Father. This is why you do not truly believe in Jesus. You cannot praise Him as your eternal Savior. You give Him lip service when you sing hymns. You sing that He has saved you but do you believe? When you date someone you want to please the other person, but why is it that you don’t want to please Jesus your groom? Why? You think that you are doing Jesus a favor by being His bride. Rather than being grateful that God chose us to be His bride, we think that He owes us now that we are His. We demand everything from Him. We ask for diamonds, name brand bags, clothes, watches we demand that He satisfy all our desires. We should grateful that we have been cleansed by His blood and chosen to be His bride. We should be offering everything we have to Him, but instead we make demands of Him. How sad we must make Jesus. He came to earth as a man, was beaten, and bore the burden of the cross. Was He a sinner? He had no sin. He died for my sins. He was naked and persecuted, died and resurrected for me. He cleanses us with His blood and calls us His bride, yet we are proud and refuse. We act as if we are doing Him a favor by following Him. If it were not so, then we could not be behaving this way. Why are we so confident? It is our pride. We claim that we have done Him a favor. We say that it is not He who came to me, but I who went to Him and we boast. Do you truly want to praise the one who has saved you? Really? What do you feel in your heart? Truly, truly do you want Him to be your Father? Can you give up everything to follow Him? God won’t steal anything from you, but if He asks for something can you give it up? You have difficulty with small things like your pride, how much more difficult would it be for you to give up some of your material possessions. You would rather denounce Jesus than give up your possessions. It is because you think that your life belongs to you. You think that your body belongs to you. You don’t think that it is something that you offer to God. You say “How can God ask me for this?” You say “How dare He ask me for this?” You refute Him and argue that He has given it to you, that He has given you life, He has blessed with possessions, He has given you health, He has given you wisdom, He has blessed you with beauty, He has blessed you with many gifts, so you say “why does God want to steal all this from me?” In Korea I met a person who was completely tone deaf. Any hymn she sang was in the same pitch. But with God’s anointing when she performed for God the sound was beautiful. After many performances, one day she was filled with pride and she could no longer sing beautifully. This is God’s power. Do not be proud because you sing well. Do not be proud because you speak well. After her fall she repented for a number of years before God used her again. We think that we are the ones who make ourselves sing. I may have a terrible singing voice now, but in the past I sang really well. When I moved to Los Angeles I lost my voice due to the dry weather. A specialist told me that if I wanted to use my voice to even speak I must leave Los Angeles immediately. I was told that if I stayed I would be a mute. But I still speak. Even though I sing this way I am still very joyful. You may think you life on your own terms but it is not so. Even to this day I am grateful for having the ability to speak. I have been in Los Angeles for over twenty years. When I first arrived, within a few short months I lost my voice and was told to leave Los Angeles immediately. My husband is my witness and the doctor has probably passed. Though I am not able to sing with a beautiful voice, I am still grateful that I can sing and very joyful. God will use even the mute for His will. This is my testimony. There is nothing God cannot or is unable to do. Did God not know what would happen when He sent me here. I was unable to speak for nearly six months, I could not speak on the phone because people could not hear me. When I humbled myself before God my voice was given back to me. We think too highly of ourselves. We are proud and we have no humility. We lack gentleness. We lack holiness. We are commanded to be holy so we must be holy everyday in our lives. We must not sin, and use all our strength to keep ourselves from sinning. Rather than repenting, keeping ourselves from sin and not sinning we prefer to sit in the midst of sin and live for our satisfaction and that has become the focus of our lives. This is why we do not repent. That is why we do not change. We enjoy sin because we do not recognize God for who He is. If I were frustrated then I would repent. I would seek forgiveness from God and the ones I have wronged. But even though I sin, life doesn’t seem so bad so I don’t repent. You believe because that there is no major tragedy in your life, or because you have not been stricken with a grave sickness that God is letting you live in your sin. You think that because you have gone a day or a year that He will continue to let you be. You look at someone else and think that God has let them be for so long that you also will be allowed to be as well. How long will you keep living this way? We are currently doing a relay fast in our church, but why do you think that He asks this of us? Is it to punish us? It is because He loves us. He wants us to be free from sin and no longer living in it. He tells us to repent, to honor and respect Him and then He will be with us but we keep telling Him to wait a bit until we have lived how we wanted. We tell Him that to live according to the bible that there are too many restrictions. The truth is there are not many things that God tells us not to do. When I am free from sin, I do not see the things that the bible tells me not to do. I see the bible telling me to do this and go do that. Why do you see it differently? I see the bible allowing us to do many things. The bible tells us to be joyful, be one with God, dance, sing and to celebrate with Him. I see the bible telling us to do many things. I don’t see it telling us not to do much. The reason you see it telling you do not do this or do not do that, is because you are living in that sin. I am not saying that I am without sin. If my heart is closed today, then I see the bible telling me don’t do this or that. If I stay this way I am the one who will suffer. You must experience for yourself the joy of walking with the Lord. You must know for yourself how precious and priceless He is that you would be willing to let go of everything so that you may only have Him. Then you will be able to sing “I could not do without Thee”. The problem is that you don’t want to meet Him. You refuse to listen to him. You only hear what you want. You do not listen to all that He says to you. This is the problem. You cannot filter what He is saying to you. If you take out any one word then the loss is yours. Think about how you must live your life so that you will be only satisfied in Him. Sermon by Pastor Joy Young Sook Lee Translation by Miguel Park