You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Matthew 7:16 (NLT) You can’t fake what’s in your heart. Most behaviour comes from heart beliefs. The Bible says you’ll know someone’s heart by their fruits, their behaviour. Now, you’re not supposed to be judging other people’s hearts; you’re supposed to use that test on yourself. So, how can you know what’s in your heart? Check your behaviour. If the behaviour isn’t coming from something you believe deep down in your heart, it’ll be easy to change. But if you keep going back to the same old behaviour you’ve been trying to change, you’ll know that you need to work on your heart. Changing heart beliefs can be difficult. I’m not …

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. Ephesians 4:14–15 (NLT) When you were a baby, your parents looked a er your needs and took responsibility for your actions. As you grew, you entered a different season and started taking more responsibility for your own actions. In the Christian world, there are also different seasons of growth. The first season is when you get saved. …

[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight. Philippians 2:13 (AMPC) Over the past few days we’ve been talking about how we need to work out our own salvation. We are made right with God the moment we give our lives to Christ, and there’s nothing we need to do to add to that fact. We are instantaneously delivered from things like sickness and poverty, but we need to renew our minds and believe in order to experience those promises. But it can’t come from our own strength, as today’s verse …

Work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). Philippians 2:12 (AMPC) Have you ever started a project that you didn’t fully complete? Let’s say a man wants to repaint his car. He gets it primed and all the rust spots covered with reddish paint, but then he stops there and drives it around like that for the next few years. He’s so close to being finished, but he just doesn’t take that one extra step! Well, the Bible is saying that a lot of Christians haven’t fully completed their salvation. …

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Matthew 7:24 (NIV) We o en think that God sends us the storms of life—pain, tragedy and heartache—to make us stronger. But is it true? In Matthew 7, Jesus told a parable about two houses: one built on the rock and one on the sand. When a storm hit, the one on the sand was destroyed, but the one on the rock remained. Let me ask you a question. What built strength into that house on the rock to cause it to stand? Did the storm strengthen the house? Did the sky rain down concrete to secure the foundation? Did …