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Welcome to day two of our look through 2nd Corinthians 13, the last chapter of
2nd Corinthians. We're going to look at verses 5 to 7 today as we're walking
through this week some specific ways that you and I can keep our strength going
as a servant. How do you keep going as a servant?

Not just one day or two days or one month or even one year or two years. How do
you live a lifetime of serving Jesus Christ and serving others? Well, yesterday
we talked about one of the things you have to have and that's a healthy respect
for the power of God, a reverence in your life.

Paul talks in a more practical way today about a second thing that you and I
need and that is a regular examination of your life. You have to regularly
examine or test your life. Listen to what he has to say about this in verses 5
to 7.

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Do you not realize that
Christ Jesus is in you unless of course you fail the test? And I trust that you
will discover that we have not failed the test.

Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong. Not that people will see
that we have stood the test, but that you will do what is right even though we
may seem to have failed. Paul goes back and forth about success and failure
here, but the crucial thing he talks about here is a test, an examination.

Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living. " Was he right? Are we
as believers, as followers of Jesus Christ, are we supposed to examine our lives
or test our lives?

Paul says, "Yes, as a believer, as a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm supposed to
examine my life. " In fact, he says it twice in verse 5 just in case you didn't
get it. He says, "Examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith.

" And just in case somebody thinks, "Wait, wait, no, no, I'm not supposed to
examine myself. " Again, test yourselves. It's a good practice in your life, in
my life, to regularly pull aside, to stop long enough, to be still long enough,
to ask yourself the questions, "How am I doing?

Where's my faith? Where am I going? Is my life on track for where I believe God
wants me to go, where God is directing?

" We need these regular times out in our lives, these times where we examine
ourselves. If you look at an auto race like the Indianapolis 500, you watch the
cars going round and round. They are going full throttle all the time.

But even in a race like that, four or five times during the race, those cars are
going to pull in, they're going to come to a complete stop and take a pit stop
for refueling, for re-energizing. Now, they try to do it as fast as possible.
I'm not suggesting that, but I am suggesting that you need the same thing.

You and I need a time in our lives when we pull back from the pace and the speed
of life going around and around that track, and you let God speak to you. You
just be open about what God wants to say to you. And I'll tell you, if you take
time to examine your heart in this way, to be still, to know that he is God and
let God speak to you, one of the things that will always happen is God will
replenish your soul.

He'll fill your tank. But something else will also happen. God will also
pinpoint areas of need in your life, places where you need to change, areas of
sinful habit, areas of stubborn attitude.

Second Corinthians 13. 5, that verse we just looked at in the message paraphrase
says, "Test yourselves to make sure you're solid in the faith. Don't drift along
taking everything for granted.

Give yourselves regular checkups. " Now, I don't know about you, how you're
doing at this. I can easily forget to do this.

I don't always pass the test when it comes to taking the time to test myself. I
get busy doing other things. So it can be days or weeks or months or even a
whole year can go by when I really haven't taken time to just stop and say,
"God, am I on track?

Am I going where you want me to go? Speak to my heart about what you want me to
be doing right now. " Unless you're intentional about this, unless you plan for
it, unless you put it into your schedule, it's not going to happen.

That's why Paul commands us to do this. Examine yourselves. Test yourselves.

Now, when you do a personal test, an examination of how your life is going,
there's a lot of areas that you examine. Paul's not talking about all these
areas here, but you, when you examine yourself, you want to do an inventory on
four specific things. You want to think about your physical life and just ask
the question, "What's my body telling me right now?

" And maybe it's telling you you're overstressed right now. What do you need to
do about that? What is God telling you to do about that?

Maybe it's telling you you're understressed in terms of exercise. You're not
getting enough exercise in that body. What do you need to do about that?

You need to do a physical test. You need to do also an emotional test. You ask
yourself, "What am I feeling right now?

Am I hurting? Am I exhausted? Am I angry?

Do I resent someone? Am I tense or anxious or fearful? What's going on in my
emotions?

" You just sit before the Lord and say, "God, help me to understand this," and
then you tell me what to do about it. You also need to do a relational test,
physical and emotional test. Am I at peace with the people around me?

How are my relationships doing? Am I taking time to spend time with the people
that are closest in my life? And then number four, you need to do a spiritual
test, a test where you think about, am I relying on God?

Moment by moment in my life, am I relying on Him? And that is the particular
kind of evaluation that Paul's talking about here. He's not going through how's
your health doing, although you should do that.

He's talking about the spiritual evaluation. Test yourself to see whether you
are in the faith. In fact, Paul talks about two specific parts of this spiritual
evaluation here.

There are other parts you can find in other places in the New Testament, but
here he brings out two specific parts. And when you get down to that point where
you're doing a spiritual evaluation of your life, these are two great questions
to ask yourself. Question one is, am I in the faith?

Ask yourself, how am I doing? Am I in the faith? And what he's asking there is,
when you talk about being in the faith, that means you're in Christ.

You're living in relationship to Christ. That's the only way to have faith in
daily life. So the test is, do I have a relationship with Jesus?

And am I living in relationship with Jesus right now? First, do I have a
relationship with Jesus? Some people who've gone to church even a long time have
sat down long enough to think clearly enough and realize, I've been coming to
church, but I don't have a relationship with Jesus.

I hear other people talk about Him, but I don't talk to Him. I don't listen to
Him through His word. I just sort of attend church meetings and do church
things.

I did that for a long time in my life. Maybe you're one of those people who's
done that. Test yourself.

Am I in the faith? And if you're not sure, be sure. You can be sure right now.

Start a relationship with Him right now because He's already done all that's
needed to be done. You just say to Him, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross
so I can be forgiven. I accept the gift of your forgiveness because I'm a
sinner.

I need your forgiveness. And Jesus, thank you for being resurrected from the
dead so I can live in your life, in your power in daily life now as I depend on
you. I want to live that kind of life, the depending on Jesus kind of life.

I'm starting a relationship with you right now. Am I in the faith? Do I have a
relationship with Jesus?

Once you've prayed a prayer like that, and for some of you that may have been
many years ago, the question is, am I living in relationship to Jesus? Because
you can have a relationship to someone in a marriage and a parent-child or in a
friendship, but not talk to that person ever, not relate to that person, not
listen to that person. Are you so caught up in the tasks of life that you're not
living in daily relationship to Him?

Test yourself. Am I in the faith? Am I living a faith-filled life in
relationship to Jesus?

But then there's a second thing Paul talks about here. Am I in the faith? And
then he begins to talk about doing right and doing wrong.

And he essentially says to the Corinthians, I'd rather you do right, even if
people think we're doing wrong. I don't care so much about them thinking I'm a
failure. I'm testing myself, and I know I'm all right with Jesus.

What I really care about is, are you doing the right thing because of your
faith? And really the question here is, is my relationship with Jesus showing up
in my actions? Is it changing the way I treat people?

Is it changing the kinds of words that I have? As you think about this, I just
know the word test, it can be a scary word. Many of us, we go back to school and
any time the word test came up in a class, we started sweating because we
thought I'm going to fail the test.

But every one of us, there must have been at least one test somewhere in some
grade of school that you did well on. Just one. Some of you, maybe it was more
than one.

Think about those tests as well. Sometimes a test can be a good thing. It can
show what you know, it can show what's happened in your life.

In fact, Paul says, I trust that you'll see that we've not failed the test. That
you'll see that Christ is in us and that's why we're doing these things. What
I'm saying is, when you do an inventory, don't be all negative.

When you do an inventory, when you do a test like this, you also want to look
for what's good in my life. Satan would love it if you were all negative, but
God wants to show you what's good also. You look at the sins in your life and
you ask for forgiveness and change, but also you look at the victories in your
life and you celebrate those.

You celebrate even the minor victories, no matter how small it may seem. In
fact, this is not a bad thing to do on a daily basis. You look at yourself and
you say, well, I told the truth once today.

I've been struggling with my words. There's a place I didn't want to tell the
truth. I told it.

Thank you, God, for the strength to do that. You look at yourself and you say, I
let my irritation spill over three times, but there were those two times when by
God's strength, I counted to 10 spiritually and I didn't say what I was going to
say. At least once, I was unselfish in a situation today.

You celebrate, no matter how small the progress is, because you celebrate,
you're really celebrating what Jesus is doing in your life, and that's part of
examining your life and taking this test. Now, as we pray together today, let's
just think through very briefly these two questions we talked about. And just in
an attitude of prayer with Jesus, just say, Jesus, am I in the faith?

Do I have a relationship with you? Am I living in relationship to you? Jesus, am
I doing right and not wrong?

Is my relationship showing up in my actions? Am I acting like a follower of you?
Lord, we've taken a brief time to do this now.

Help us to find a longer time, a time to examine ourselves, to test ourselves so
that we can see the good things that you want to bring out of our lives. Make it
a good, healthy time, a time of relating to you and hearing from you, a time
that you refresh our soul, but also a time that you redirect our lives. We ask
this in your name, Jesus.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look at some of Paul's daily encouragements for
how servants act.