Every week, we get together as the people of God to focus on his concerns in the world. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't focus on what's happening in Burma right now. I read today that if relief doesn't get in there, as many as one million people could die. Governments are meeting right now about the possibility of illegal air drops, because the Burmese government has not invited in any of the other countries. Just traveling in places like Darfur, I know how inaccessible some of these places are - how it can take days - and already it's been more than a week. So let's pray silently right now and as you pray, picture mothers, fathers and children. These are not statistics; these are real people. God is not willing that any should perish, but all come to life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. "Father, we don't understand all of the tragedy that comes in a moment in the world, but we do know that You loved the world so much that You gave Yourself for it. We pray against the powers that be that seek to destroy life and deny life, and we pray for mercy and aid to reach these people. We pray it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen." Continue to pray all week. It should be a priority in our lives.

The Beijing Olympics are coming soon and the governments are concerned about the high pollution effects on their athletes. I didn't know this until I read it this week, but Beijing is one of the most polluted places in the world and that it is affecting the environment all over the globe. When you talk about reducing carbons, what do you do with China and India where most of the carbon excess is coming from? The Olympic runners run for two weeks in a country before the event, so runners are exerting themselves there for up to four weeks, you can imagine the effects of second-hand pollutants. You and I know this. We talk about the effects of second-hand smoke. You can live all your life as healthy as you know how to be, and you still are subject to the effects of second-hand pollution. Not only does this work physically, but it also works on us in the same way spiritually. We really work hard to be people of integrity, but we are subject to the effects of second-hand pollutants. Physically, second-hand pollutants affect us through our lungs; spiritually, second-hand pollutants affect us through our minds.

Open your Bibles. We are going to finish the first chapter of James. Turn to James 1:27. "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I don't have time to play church; you don't have time to play church. Let's get down to what matters to God - practical acts of service to the distressed, to the most vulnerable, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. I love that word polluted.

Moral integrity is a matter of soul truth. Another word that the Bible uses for integrity is purity. Purity is "freedom from adulteration and contamination, without duplicity, 100% pure, to be the same from the inside out." Remember what Jesus said, "It's not the things we put in our body that pollute us but the things that come from our heart." Integrity, unlike many other parts of who you are and what you do, is a fruit of the Spirit.

All of us are wired a little differently. Sometimes you talk about people having A-type personalities. I've taken Pastor Sue's Ministry by Strengths course and if you've taken that course, you know your top five strengths. How many of you have taken that course? I really recommend it. My top two strengths are "maximizer" and "achiever." Then I'm a "learner," I'm "futuristic," but that's just the way I am wired in my mind, how I am as, you could say, a psychological person. But, integrity goes deeper than that. Integrity is about soul truth. It's connected to your spirit. It is a fruit of the Spirit. You cannot be a person of Christ-like integrity apart from the Spirit. The spirit part of me is that part that is eternal. My A-type personality, I don't know if that's going to live on into eternity, but the soul, the spirit of you, is either going to become Christ-like and live in eternity with God or experience eternal death. Sometime we'll get into this, some of you believe differently, but I believe there's a judgment and second death. I don't think it's hell, like burning in fire, I think it's eternal death. Some will live forever because they're Christ/God. I can't see God burning people in hell for eternity like a little child torturing a fly or whatever. Come the Day of Judgment when all of us will be resurrected and stand before God, there will be those in Christ with Christ-like integrity who will live forth in eternity and those who didn't want Christ or Christ-like integrity, and that will be the end of your existence. I could be wrong on that one, but in my study of scripture, I keep reading about eternal death and eternal destruction when I study about judgment. And when Christ and his angels return, they will reward each person for what they do, not for what they believe. And "do" is a fruit of the Spirit. Heaven is going to be a pretty stinky place if it's stunk up with adulterers and all of that kind of stuff. I want to use two theological terms: justify, in Christ we are justified, which means just as if I didn't sin, forgiven. And sanctify, which is to make you a 100% person of integrity. While we are here on earth, part of the process of what God is doing on earth is not just to "justify" you, but to "sanctify" you - Christ-like integrity, from the inside out.

The more I nurture the root of the spirit - that's what's so important, not just what I accomplish with my life. There are a lot of reprobates that accomplish a lot with their life. I don't have to name names of famous people, but they make a lot of money and do a lot of things. What I want to do is to spend my days nurturing the root of the spirit. You have to nurture the root to get the fruit. It's a process of maturity. Once you are born of the Spirit, you have everything necessary to become a person of purity and Christ-like integrity. I don't think there's a person in this room that doesn't want to be a pure person. A lot of us are sitting here with a lot of stuff going on that we don't want anyone else to know. That's called a lie. That's called duplicity. Let's call that stuff for what it is. Just like sometimes you get frustrated with yourself because you respond and get angry, and you realize that that's of the flesh and not the Spirit. It's like four years ago, Carolyn and I did this little landscaping job in our backyard with a fish pond, and we put some different trees around it. One type of tree I really like is a redbud. So my son and I planted this redbud tree, and for the first three years, it never had a red bud on it, just green leaves. Carolyn kept saying, after the first year, "You know, I don't think you got a redbud."  Second year, third year. Last year, I started doubting myself. Guess what it did this year? Red buds! You see, it's the same thing. Once you have the Spirit of Christ in your life, you have everything you need, but you have to be patient, and you have to keep nurturing the roots to achieve the fruit.

Here I am at age 56, this has been a 30-some-year journey in Christ. The more that I really nurture the fruit of the Spirit, realizing that that's the root of integrity, the more I begin to think like Jesus Christ about different situations in my life. And here's the biggie: I begin to respond like Jesus, and I begin to give like Jesus, and I begin to serve like Jesus. This is really important because apart from the Holy Spirit, you can't understand this kind of integrity. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, "The person without the Spirit doesn't accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolish, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit." Most people don't understand that integrity is really a matter of spirit. They think integrity is a matter of behavior and knowing the right behavior, and try to produce the fruit, without cultivating the root. Instead you have this artificial substitute for the spirit and it's called religion.

A lot of you know that Carolyn and I have had a dream for 30-some years to build a cabin in the mountains, so a year ago April we finished our cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. We're going to head there for a little bit on Monday. This year we went there for a few days after Thanksgiving, and we were going to go right after Christmas for New Year's, so we wanted to decorate the place for Christmas. We didn't want to leave a live Christmas tree there, because we were going to be gone for a month and with a live tree, we'd come back and it would be all over the floor - plus, it could catch on fire. So we went shopping and found the best looking artificial tree that we could find. What's so nice about artificial trees is that you don't have to do anything with them. You don't have to take care of it. With live trees, you have to keep watering them. We always cut them fresh. That's been a family tradition. The day after Thanksgiving, we go to a tree farm and cut fresh trees. They drink a lot of water every day and you have to get under the tree and dump the water in. When you start putting packages around it, it's a real pain to pull the packages out and then put them back. It seems really great to have something great looking that you don't have to take care of. They're getting so good with this artificial stuff - it has pine cones and everything on them now. They're even making some of the little needles brown, so you can hardly tell the difference. What I love is that you can leave it and know that's it's not ever going to catch on fire. Just like a whole lot of Christians I know - they're never going to catch on fire. The whole problem is that it looks real. A lot of them even feel real, but they're fake! They're phony! There is no fruit!

I'm going to ask for an honest confession right now. Are there any in the house who have trouble growing live plants in your home? We do, too. We were sitting around with Pastor Bowie having confessions about what we do. We only have one live plant in our house that someone important gave to us several years ago, someone meaningful to us, that we want to keep alive. Everything else is artificial. Pastor Bowie said, "There's nothing that I think is worse than artificial plants. No wait, here's the worst worse: a church that has artificial plants or flowers. If there's any church with fake flowers or plants, it reveals volumes or speaks volumes about the people, and what's worse they get dusty." That's like a lot of Christians that I know.

All of us, at times, try to use religion to try to focus on the fruit without cultivating the root of the spirit in our life. Here's how we do it. I've done this sometimes. Since it's Mother's Day, we won't pick on moms. Men, have you ever gone through a season when you're critical of your wife and kind of short in your responses and so forth? And then you feel bad about it, and you say, "Honey, I'm sorry I've been so critical and so short. Forgive me." Then you walk away and you don't change. Has that ever happened? And you go through the pattern again and again and again, and there's not a lasting change. That's because we're focused on the fruit instead of the root. We've got to keep cultivating and nurturing the root of the spirit.

This is Pentecost Sunday. It's no accident that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. He spent three years with the disciples. If teaching would work, if knowing how to do what is right, don't you think the disciples sitting under Jesus' teaching for three years would've been enough? They knew everything they needed to know. But, when he left, he said, "Don't leave Jerusalem until you're clothed with power from on high." Knowledge in itself will not produce the fruit. Fifty days after Easter, he sent the Holy Spirit for each of us to receive and be empowered by, and so we have to cultivate the root that will produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

When we think about moral pollution, second-hand pollutants, not only does it affect me, it affects my family. Mother's Day is a good day to worry about family. Physical pollutants enter through the lungs, moral pollutants enter through the mind and it infects our life perspective. I want to name some of these moral pollutants, these mind pollutants. Here's one: when our life perspective is me-centered rather than God-centered. Hear that word "centered" because a lot of people are me-centered. They have God in their life, but it's not a God-centered life. Me-centered is humanistic and the premise of humanism is that life is about personal happiness. I deserve this! I had a pastor tell me this one time. God had used this pastor in a powerful way. After 30-some years of marriage and a large, powerful ministry, he had an affair. I sat down and talked with that pastor and he said, "Mike, I've worked hard. I've given God everything for the last 30 years. We have two sons and they're out of college. Now, I deserve to be happy." That's a me-centered kind of life. In humanism, everything is about personal happiness and individual freedom.

Here is the diseased premise: I am going to find meaning and happiness without God. There are some people in this room right now who believe in God and think that they're going to find happiness, meaning and life outside of God's will. There are some students sitting here who can't wait to graduate from high school and get to Ohio State next year because they're going to have a little fun without God. It will never happen! That's a mind pollutant, to think you can find meaning or happiness that's me-centered, not God-centered. I want to repeat that verse that I shared with you last week from Acts 13, "David served God's purpose in his generation; then he died, they buried him, and he decayed." I love that! It reminds us about why we're on Planet Earth. It's not about me being happy. I wouldn't work every Saturday night if it was about me being happy. It's about me serving God's purpose in my generation. Then I'm going to die and you're going to bury me. You're going to say a few things and then you're going to go on and forget me. That's okay. We're here to serve God's purpose in our generation.

Here is the second mind pollutant: when our thinking is shaped by partisan politics rather than biblical truth. I want you to get this, it's an election year, write this one down. Here come the emails. I'm going to blog on this one this week. Next week, I'm going to talk about the difference between partisan politics and biblical truth. There are some of you who, every time you go to the polling place, vote a slate. You go right down the slate. Either it's Republican or Democrat because you've been taught that. That's the values. Your parents did it, so you do it. You don't even know what the person stands for. Any time we try to mix partisan ideology with biblical truth, we mingle two different ideas. Partisan politics is not one and the same as biblical truth. We have to gauge every position against the word of God. And when we mingle ideas, we dilute and pollute the truth.

Another moral pollutant is when we begin to make our life decisions from a problem focus instead of a promise focus. We're in a scary time right now in the world, a very scary time. Oil this week hit almost $130 a barrel. This time last year they were wondering if it would ever hit a hundred dollars. I read yesterday we could be paying $5 a gallon for gasoline by the end of the summer. I just paid $4.30 for a loaf of bread at the grocery store. It reminds me of that old song "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" where you could "buy a loaf of bread for a bag of gold." Any of you remember that song? I never thought we'd be seeing this kind of scary situation in my lifetime. There is some scary stuff coming down. America is not in the top ten in about twenty-some categories right now in the world - we're being outpaced by China. When President Bush went to Saudi Arabia and asked them to give us a break on oil, they said that America doesn't have anything to give back because the Euro is stronger than the dollar. I make a decent living, but I calculated how long it takes me to make $62 - that's to fill up my car and sometimes I have to do that twice a week. We can get panicky and begin making life decisions out of fear rather than the promise of God. We've got to remember what the promise of God is all about. It's that he is leading us to a place of promise. You never get to the place of promise until you go through the wilderness. It's in the wilderness that you learn to trust not in the power of your own country or the wisdom of your own productivity, but you learn to depend totally on God. How are we going to make ends meet? God can make water come from a rock. Followers of Jesus don't do fear. It's when we begin to make our life decisions out of the basis of fear that we, like the children of Israel, settle down in the wilderness because we're not trusting the promise. We spend our whole life in the wilderness without ever realizing the abundance promised by the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a mind pollutant.  

Here is another diseased life premise: when we begin to act as if all of life is about today, from a today perspective, rather than in the perspective of eternity. I want you to hear this, I say this on almost every college campus I go to: we live in an age that's called post-modernity or post-Christian age. We operate out of what's called expressive individualism. It's a big word meaning it's true if it works for me. It's centered in today. We live and make decisions as if the present is the only thing that matters. I see this all the time. People come forward, make a commitment to Jesus, get baptized, baptize or dedicate their children, and then when an opportunity for a new relationship comes along… Some of you folks, I see you, you're doing well, and you meet somebody, for sexual experience or for advancement, and you bail on your Christian commitment. That's called expressive individualism. Most people bring Jesus into their worldview without ever being transformed into his. Things are true because they're true! And when it's true, that means it's going to happen. It may not happen in my lifetime, but because it's true, it might even cost me my life, but I'm willing to give my life for it. So I'm living my life from an eternal perspective. I'm not here to find happiness. I'm here to serve God's purpose in my lifetime. The fruit of that is much deeper than what's called happiness; it's called joy. I'm not always happy, but I have a joy and peace that surpasses understanding.

What are some preventative measures we can take to avoid these second-hand pollutants?   Here's one: sobriety. I love this word sobriety. If we're playing the game right with God, we're all in sobriety. Some of you don't realize it, but we're all in sobriety. The Bible tells us to be sober and stay alert. Sobriety on a daily basis is connected to your understanding of your baptism. Sacrament. What is a sacrament? We witnessed a sacrament today. Catholics say there are seven sacraments; Protestants say there are two sacraments. I can go with the Catholics and say there are seven - they've been around longer. Baptism is one of the sacraments. It wasn't a religious word. It was a Latin word called sacramentum and the first Christians stole the word. It was a Latin word used when a civilian would cease being a civilian and accept being in the military of Rome. When that ceremony took place, where you cease being a civilian and you passed through this sacred rite into the military of Rome, you took a life-changing oath, a sacramentum, in which that person forfeited all of their allegiances and loyalties. His emperor and empire would be his reason for living from that moment forward. So when a Christian is baptized, they take a life-changing oath in which they forfeit all other allegiances and loyalties and the kingdom of God is your reason for living from that moment forward. Every day, you need to remember your baptism. I'm pro-Catholic, I hope you all see this. I believe there is one church. One of the things I love about the Catholic church is when you go in the church every week, you remember your baptism, your sacramentum, which means all other loyalties in your life are past and there's only one surpassing loyalty in your life. It is the Lord Jesus Christ and the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second preventative measure is feeding the mind. What are you feeding your mind with on a continual basis? You've heard that expression, "You are what you eat." I figured that out about eight years ago when my body fat was 38%. I was very much becoming what I ate. Here's an even deeper truth: you become what you think. The Bible says, "As a person thinks within themselves, so they become." I have second-hand pollutants coming at me all over the place. Like I've never watched that show "Sex and the City." I've never watched "Desperate Housewives." I'm not telling you what you can watch or not watch. When I'm in the gym, I'm listening to Kirk Franklin and a lot of that stuff, because sometimes strippers work out at that gym. You have to watch how you are feeding your mind? Who are you reading? What podcast are you listening to? There are some great preachers around this country. Some of the young staff here makes fun of me because I watch some of the shows on the pink-haired lady channel. I love Joyce Meyer. Hey, it's manly to say that, right? I want to feed my mind with the word. Sometimes Carolyn will come in and ask, "Why are you watching that?" Because some of this stuff's pretty Christian-trashy, you know what I mean, they start talking about their jet planes and all that. You have to choose. I'm finding that there is a lot of the word of God that I need to put in my mind. If you are what you eat, then you become what you put in your mind, what you think. One of my buddies is doing this. He said, "Mike, I go on 40-day fasts from negative thinking. So for 40 days I can't think anything negative about anyone." That's a pretty good deal!

Here's a third preventive measure: who are your mentors, models and friends? I try to model my life after people who are faithful and fruitful. The Bible is clear on this. Proverbs 1:10 & 15, "Avoid the enticements of sinful men . . . do not set foot on their paths." So if there's a person that I'm not seeing moral purity or integrity in - I don't care if they're financially successful, there are other things that I want for my life. I'm not going to walk that path. Don't make compromises


A fourth preventive measure is called discipline. Faithful life-fruitfulness is hard work. There's no other way. It's why the Bible compares it to running a race. Hebrews 12:1 says you're surrounded by a cloud of faithful witnesses. There are a lot of people counting on you. You have children counting on you. We've got to get this one down. Mother's Day is the third highest attendance day in the church year, next to Easter and Christmas. Father's Day is the lowest attended day in the church year because they ask dad, "What do you want to do?" It's not "go to church" - it's, "take off and go fishing." We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and you don't want second-hand pollutants getting into your children. I thank God that my dad, who wasn't even a believer, took me to church every single week because, even though he didn't believe it, he wanted biblical morality to come into my life. "We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, so lay aside every sin that would encumber you and run the race with endurance."

This is the discipline I use in my life. I call it SERVE and WORD. Please hear this because some are going to think I'm talking about salvation by works and I'm not. From the moment that I accepted Jesus Christ, someone got me involved in working in youth group. I had 60 hours worth of work before I got to this weekend. So the weekend is my volunteer duty. What I do on the weekend is called "this is what I'm giving back." I've done this since I was 19 years old and I'm now 56 years old. If I weren't doing this, I know myself - I'd be wandering someplace else. So I'm always making sure I'm serving God's purpose. If my mind starts wandering, then I'll pick a bigger project like the Sudan or Ft. McKinley, but I'm going to find a way to serve because my life, my morality depends upon it. Some of you are thinking, "I don't know where to serve." Well, just go into the kitchen on Wednesday night and peel potatoes. Anything that you're doing to serve God, he'll reveal to you the next step.

Here's a word I learned from Billy Graham. I'm dropping a lot of names of people that I've stolen stuff from. In college, you begin to be tempted about all kinds of things. Billy Graham came to the University of Cincinnati, and I heard him say, when he was 16 years old, he went out into the woods and was wrestling with some moral decisions about what he was going to do in his life. Even at 16, he had been a student of the Bible and had a lot of questions about the Bible and the things he didn't understand. I still have some hard questions about some stuff in the Bible. But he said that day in the woods, "I settled it with God. From this day forward, Jesus' Bible is going to be the guideline, the boundaries of everything I do in my life." And I made that same decision. Even when I don't understand it, if it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. Jesus' word is going to be the light unto my path and the light on my family's path.

Moms and dads, we have to decide that for our own families. First to model it, it doesn't work when we say, "Do as I say, not do as I do." Biblically, it is as the Apostle Paul said, "Do as I do, not as I say." So I stand with Joshua. You've got to "choose this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord."  

Bow your head with me. "Lord Jesus, sometimes we forget and we're overcome by second-hand smoke. It has fogged our senses, our mind, our spirit. Lord, we thank You for Your word of truth that makes all things clear. Lord, create in us a clean heart, that I might present to You a life of integrity. We pray this in Your name, the incredible name of Jesus. Amen."