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This is day four together of our Look Through Hebrews chapter 12. We're going to
look at verses 12 to 17 today. Yesterday we began looking at this concept of
discipline and how God disciplines our lives and one of the reasons God's
discipline of our lives is so important is it helps us to focus our lives.

With no discipline, you have an unfocused life. That's true of a child with
their parents, but that's also true of us with the Lord. With God's discipline,
you have an increasingly focused life and focus is the secret to power.

With great focus comes great power. With great focus comes great power in your
life and without discipline, you will not have focus. Now most of us honestly
don't have the ability to focus much at all without God's discipline.

We just go from here to there and we trip over this and we trip over that and we
try this and we try that. I would say that even the most focused people, most
self-disciplined people tend to focus on the wrong things without God's
discipline. It's not just focusing, remember, it's focusing on the right things.

So in these verses we're going to look at today, 12 to 17, there are five
specific ways to focus your life that bring great power. Now it might surprise
you to see that they have more to do with relationships than with but then you
realize of course they do because life is more about relationships than tasks
because relationships are what's going to last, not tasks, but relationships. So
listen to verses 12 to 17 and then we'll talk about these five ways to focus.

"Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for
your feet so that the lame may not be disabled but rather healed. Make every
effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy.

Without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the
grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless like Esau who for a single
meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.

Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing he was rejected.
You could bring about no change of mind though he sought the blessing with
tears. " And these verses begin, "Therefore" in verse 12 begins by pointing back
to the verses that were before.

Anytime you see the word "therefore" they point back to what was before.
"Therefore" because God disciplines us. "Therefore" in order to run the race
that God has for us.

And then he begins to talk about these practical ways that you and I discipline
our lives. Five of them. You strengthen the weak places.

You make level paths. Third, you make every effort to live in peace and be holy.
Fourth, you see to it that no bitter root grows up.

And fifth, you see to it that no one is sexually immoral or godless. These are
actually five disciplines in our lives. Five specific disciplines are behind
this that result in great power in living the Christian life.

First, you strengthen the weak places. Behind that is the discipline of
humility. Sometimes it says, "Strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.

" Well, the only way to strengthen feeble arms and weak knees is to admit, "I've
got feeble arms and weak knees. " As long as I feel like, "Oh, that verse isn't
about me. That must be about some other Christian who has feeble arms because
I've got strong arms in Jesus.

I'm one of the strongest Christians that I know. " As long as you feel that way,
you're never going to look to God for strength. You're going to keep looking to
yourself for strength.

The discipline of humility is the discipline of admitting, "My arms are feeble
and my knees are weak," of admitting, "I need His strengthening every day of my
life. " Now, it's a discipline because what happens in your life as a follower
of Jesus is He strengthens you and you walk well and you do some great things.
And then all of a sudden, you start thinking, "Look at how I'm doing all on my
own.

" And you start trusting just in yourself. And all of a sudden, you realize how
just in yourself, how weak those knees really are, how feeble those arms really
are. And in that discipline, you have to come back to trusting Him, the
discipline of humility.

Second, He says, "Make level paths. " And that's the discipline of simplicity.
Make level paths.

Don't make the Christian life more complicated than it needs to be. Make level
paths, especially for those who are lame, not just for you but for others. Make
level paths so they can live the life that Jesus has for them.

The goal is not to make the Christian life seem like it's climbing some
spiritual Mount Everest. And oftentimes, we do that. I think so we can be
impressed with ourselves.

Look at how much I did. I climbed a mountain for Jesus. And these verses say,
"No, just make a level path and walk it for Jesus.

" We got to recognize that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. And this is
the discipline of simplicity. Keep doing the simple things right.

Keep praying every day. Keep in His Word every day. Do the right things every
day.

We want to make it so complicated sometimes. When Jesus said, "I've come to give
you an abundant life. I've come to give you a resurrection life.

" And you do that by drawing your life from Me. So instead of making the
Christian life seem more complicated in your mind, realize the simplicity of
what Jesus taught us and trust in that. And that takes great discipline.

It is easy to try to make it feel more and more complicated every day of your
life. Whatever you're doing, the Christian life that you're living, the ministry
that you're doing, the church that maybe you're building, you try to make it
more complicated-seeming because then you're more impressed with yourself.
Instead of realizing, "It's His power, and I got to live in the simplicity of
that power.

" The discipline of simplicity. A third discipline is behind the words, "Make
every effort to live in peace and be holy. " That's the discipline of integrity.

Integrity in your relationships with others. You got to live in peace with
others. You got to have a good relationship with other people.

Integrity in your relationship with God. You got to live in holiness before God,
recognizing He's given you that holiness through His son Jesus, but living in
that place. Now, many people have questions about this, living in peace with
others.

What if they don't want to live in peace with me? Well, notice it says, "Make
every effort to live in peace. " You can't force them to live in peace if they
don't want to.

You just make every effort. Now what if you make every effort and that effort is
rejected? Well, you keep making the effort.

That's the discipline of integrity. Now practically, that does not mean you keep
bugging them, calling them every day, "I want to live in peace. I want to live
in peace.

" Obviously, they're not going to want to live in peace if you do that. If
you've asked and they've rejected, how do you keep making every effort? The way
you keep making every effort then is you keep the door open in your heart.

You let them know, "Hey, anytime you want to call, I'm available. " And when
they call, make yourself available. The temptation is, "Hey, they rejected me.

I'm going to reject them and see how they feel about it. " No, you humble
yourself and you have integrity and you accept them. You make every effort to
live in peace with others.

You make every effort to live a holy life before God. There's the discipline in
our lives of integrity and of simplicity in the life that we live, the
discipline of humility. And then a fourth discipline is behind the words, "See
to it that no bitter root grows up.

" That's the discipline of unity. See to it that no bitter root grows up in our
relationship with each other. Unity between us as followers of Jesus, it doesn't
just automatically happen.

It takes the discipline of watching out for bitter roots, watching out for those
things that get into your heart, bring a bitterness into your heart that ruins,
that sours your relationship with somebody else. So you turn over and over and
over again a phrase that they said that they shouldn't have said to you. And
what was a momentary pain now has become a deep-seated bitterness.

Not because they've said it again and again, but because you've thought it again
and again and again. See to it that no root of bitterness springing up causes
trouble. You deal with this in your own life, these verses say, but see to it
that means you also deal with it in others' lives.

You help other people to deal with it. When you see that they're having
bitterness towards each other, you interject yourself into the situation. You
try to help them solve it.

Now once again, this is a make every effort situation. You can't force them to
solve it, but you can invite them to solve it. Now how do you deal with roots of
bitterness?

The number one way to deal with them is to get people to talk or you go talk to
the person. It may be a difficult talk, it may be a conversation you don't want
to have, but that conversation you don't want to have, the difficulty of that
conversation is light years better than you living with that bitterness the rest
of your life, even the rest of this day, even the rest of this year or month.
See to it that no bitter root grows up.

We have to have the discipline of unity in our relationship with each other in
order to live the power of God in our lives. And then finally there's the
discipline of purity, that phrase, see to it that no one is sexually immoral or
godless. Like Esau, it says here, living out sexual immorality, he married
outside of the family, outside of the faith because he wanted to, he did what he
wanted to do.

He was godless, and it points here to the fact that he gave up the promise of
God in order to get a meal of stew that his brother had cooked. He was hungry in
the moment, so he just, again, took what he wanted in the moment, godless. This
is the idea of acting as if there's no God, acting as if you are God.

And it's easy to point fingers at others about this thing of being godless. I
love the Lord, but the truth is I can still act godless when I depend only on
myself. In fact, I do it every day.

We act godless when we depend on ourselves. We know there's a God, but we're
acting godless. We're acting selfish.

To act selfish is to act godless. Now these disciplines we've just talked about,
humility, simplicity, integrity, unity, purity, these are the secrets to living
with power in your life. Everyone creates focus, and focus creates power.

And when I live with humility, that focuses my life on Jesus. When I live with
simplicity, that focuses my life on Jesus. Integrity, unity, purity, that
focuses my life on Jesus, and that's where the power is.

I invite you to join me in this prayer. Father, I pray that you'd help me to
live with power today. I pray that you would strengthen me through your Spirit,
through your Son, to live with humility, to live with simplicity, to live with
integrity, to live with unity, to live with purity.

I admit, I need your strength to do this, and I don't want to make things too
complicated. I just want to do what you've given me to do today. So help me to
live at peace with others, and help me to have a sense of holiness before you.

Help me to make things right with others, and to instead of looking to the
impure for some momentary excitement, to look to the true excitement of life,
living in purity before you. I'm going to live like there's a God every moment
of this day, because you are a God in heaven who I can trust. I pray this in
Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to see together why Mount Zion is a great place to live.