Attitude reflects your reality.

Steve Brown:
Attitude reflects your reality. Hey, let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life is a radio program for struggling believers sick of phony religion and pious clichés. Our host and teacher is seminary professor Steve Brown. He teaches that radical freedom leads to infectious joy and surprising faithfulness.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. If you open your Bible, open it to Philippians 2:12 through 13. We’re spending a good deal of time on these two verses because they are really, really important. Well, they’re so short, let me read them to you.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, to will and act according to his good pleasure.

There is so much in there. We took some time to make sure that you etymologically, that you understood the words. I don’t know, I saw that word in a dictionary and I thought, I’ll use it and impress people with it. But we looked at the words that Paul used and what they really meant. Salvation is a once and all experience. And once it’s settled, it’s settled. If you’re justified, you’re justified forever. If you’re not justified, you’re not justified. But there is another side to salvation, and theologians, even if Paul didn’t, call it sanctification, and it’s moving to maturity. It’s learning more about him, it’s working on the things that you know that caused tears to come from him. It, grieving the Holy Spirit. It’s thinking about, I can do better than this, and then working on it and saying, and then we saw that it’s important you get the principle. You take the first step, God takes the second step, and by the time you get to the third step, you’ll know that it was God who took the first step. Now, when we get to the end of this text, I’m going to show you God’s part in this, and it’s 100%. But you’ve got to be involved because we are not quietists, people who sit around and say, I do nothing except sit here and wait for God to do everything. The scriptures are just not that way. Then I mentioned that Philippians 2:12b says something about an attitude, and an attitude reflects your reality. It’s not what you say, sometimes it’s not even what you do, it’s what you think.

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

And so, your attitude to this whole thing of Christian maturity, your attitude is really important because it reflects your reality, Philippians 2:12b.

Continue to work out your own salvation

and here it comes

with fear and trembling.

In other words, the attitude of the believer as he or she works out his or her salvation ought to be one of humility and fear, Godly fear. Not fear that you’re going to be struck down, but fear of not doing what you want to do, and that is to act in a way that is pleasing to God. You know, one of the dangers of being a Christian, and if you’ve been a Christian for a long time, and I’ve been a Christian a lot longer than you have. One of the dangers is that you let intimacy flip over to flippancy and presumption. Sometimes, I’ve been doing this so long that I hardly know when I’m praying and when I’m not. I mean, I can see a pretty girl walk down the street and say, Oh, Father, is she pretty or what? I can have a milkshake and say, Oh, Father, that is, you made this milkshake for me, and it’s great, and I thank you for it. And sometimes when I’m praying, the intimacy is the way you define it. I even criticize God in some of my prayers, but I have to be careful. I have to remember that God is God. He said through Isaiah.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be intimate with God. You should be. Jesus is your brother, and he’s your Father. And prayer is a family conversation inspired by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that conversation is intimate. The Puritan who prayed, Lord, let me tell you a joke that I heard wasn’t telling God a joke that he didn’t know. He was telling a joke to his Father who had heard the joke and loved to hear his son tell the joke. And so, intimacy is an important thing but always remember that this is God. You know how I do that? Sometimes I sit down in my devotional time, and this is sometimes even after I’ve critiqued God. Oh yes, he gives, and I’ve been angry at him. He gives permission for that to happen in Psalms. And then I open up my Bible and start looking at the attributes of an awesome, sovereign God who is in charge of everything, everything I perceive, everything I touch, everything I experience. A God who is sovereign and good all the time, but always a God who is God. Got to be in balance. You think about that. Amen.

Well, it’s Wednesday, and sometimes on Wednesdays, if I have time, we spend, I answer a couple of questions. But as you know, Pete will be in on Friday, and we’ll spend the whole broadcast answering questions. And I say it all the time, and I mean it all the time, we take you and your questions seriously. You can ask your question anytime you want by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, that’s open 24 7, following instructions and recording your question, and sometimes we put your own voice on the air. Or you can send your questions to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

or if you live in Canada

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or if you would rather, you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and if you could include with your question a check for a million dollars, I will rise up and call you blessed, and wash the floors of your house. Actually, I will rise up and call you blessed if you can, and you help us financially, and I promise we’ll be faithful with your gift, as faithful as you were in giving it. And if you can’t give, we understand that, do say a prayer for this ministry. Let’s turn to one or two of these questions. This is an e-mail question. Steve, is gambling wrong. Well, yes and no, and you know, it gets kind of hazy, doesn’t it? The truth is, there isn’t anything in the Bible that specifically says thou shalt not gamble. That’s why people play the stock market. That’s why people risk on ventures all the time. Christians, because the Bible never says you can’t do that. So, the Bible never says thou shalt not gamble. Now, don’t send me letters, because I’ve got more to say on this subject than other things. I one time was asked by a foundation, and this has been years ago in Florida, if I would write a sermon, and they were going to send it to every pastor in Florida, because gambling was one of the issues we were voting on, and they wanted the people in the churches to stand up. And I said, sure, I’ll do that. And I sat down, started looking for text, and I couldn’t find one. I mean, there’s really nothing there. I mean, there are places you can get implications, but there’s no thou shalt not gamble. But I still wrote the sermon, and I was right in what I said in the sermon. I had families that I loved, who were in my church, who had all, the family had almost been destroyed because of the gambling of somebody in the family. There is an attitude in the country where you can get something for nothing, and it’s going to kill us. And where gambling is, you find a lot of dark things and sad things and destructive things. And so, going back to my original answer to your question, is gambling wrong? Well, yes and no. God has a lot of things that he says you should never do, but he never says you should never gamble any place in Scripture. And, but there is wisdom in what I just said. Gambling is wrong. And it’s wrong because it promotes an attitude that’ll go to the very heart of our country. And your country, too, in Canada. And the attitude is, I don’t have to work, I don’t have to be responsible, I don’t have to own up. All I have to do is buy a lottery ticket, or win the poker game, or go to Las Vegas. Man, that attitude, that kind of attitude causes problems you wouldn’t believe. And so, in that sense, gambling is addictive, gambling is destructive, gambling is dangerous. So, just don’t do it, okay? Jesus will still love you, but just don’t do it. Hey, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.