Gut Check Time
About this sermon
Dean Odle calls Fire & Grace Church to examine whether its members still possess the hunger, endurance, and commitment needed for revival. Beginning with Proverbs 26:20 and the image of keeping wood on a fire, he recounts his conversion and ministry journey, contrasts a Spirit-led church with merely institutional Christianity, and stresses the importance of spiritual fathers, sound preaching, prayer, and faithful local-church participation. The sermon challenges believers who appreciate the language of spiritual gifts or revival but remain unwilling to accept correction, responsibility, and the daily work required to sustain a congregation.
Chronological teaching outline
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Worship and Proverbs 26:20 frame the sermon’s question: are believers still hungry enough for God’s presence and revival to keep feeding the spiritual fire? The verse’s parallel statement about removing a talebearer also anticipates his concern that strife and passivity can extinguish a congregation’s life.
Odle recounts his early encounter with Jesus and the long formation that followed, arguing that genuine faith must endure beyond an initial experience. His testimony moves from a youthful profession of faith to the realization that knowing Jesus requires formation, sacrifice, and a continuing call.
He distinguishes the true church of Jesus Christ from religious custom, emphasizing allegiance to Christ rather than cultural or seasonal Christianity. He particularly challenges churches that retain Christian vocabulary while resisting present obedience, supernatural gifts, or costly commitment.
The sermon maintains that a healthy church welcomes biblical gifts and leadership while testing everything under Scripture and the Holy Spirit. His examples include the contested titles of prophet and apostle and the tendency to praise the gifts abstractly while refusing their operation.
Odle recalls the congregation’s beginnings and a recurring fish-tank image to illustrate the difficulty and purpose of building a small local church. The few fish in a confined tank represent the small group he believed God called him to shepherd rather than abandon for easier ministry.
Using Paul’s relationship to churches he planted, he explains the corrective, protective role of genuine spiritual fathers and elders. He applies 1 Corinthians 4 to the difference between countless instructors and the few who accept fatherly responsibility for believers.
He warns against isolated Christianity and urges believers to receive sound doctrine, pastoral correction, and steady instruction. Second Timothy 4 supplies a charge to preach the Word patiently and faithfully even when people prefer teaching that suits their desires.
Odle restates Fire & Grace Church’s calling to preach truth and insists that the congregation must become deeply committed to prayer. He says the stated vision cannot be fulfilled by sermons alone: members must share the burden of intercession and truth-telling.
He acknowledges the discouragements of a small church and asks members to value the work itself rather than attaching faithfulness to one personality. Financial, marital, family, and health struggles are named as real pressures, but not as reasons to surrender the work.
The conclusion calls each member to committed participation, unity, and effort, because a strong church requires every link in the chain to endure. The chain illustration makes the application corporate: individual passivity weakens everyone, while shared labor makes endurance possible.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:00
Hallelujah, let's just keep in the spirit of worship here. I believe the Lord wants us to worship this at least one more song here and let this be the cry of your heart. Listen, if we're not going to be hungry for God's presence and revival, then we won't have it. It's that simple. I'm asking you, are you hungry for more of Him, more of His presence, more of His truth in your life? Yes, Lord. Hallelujah. We praise your name this morning. I say to you, apart from the nations, for I am the Lord your God who called you out of the wilderness. Go forth and proclaim my word, for I am the one who causes the sun to rise on the earth. Go forth, my people, for I am with you always. I am the one who is always with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. Go forth, my people, for I love you with an everlasting love. Amen. In Jesus' name, thank you, Lord. Marlene and the Frick's children, one of them, I don't know which one it was, said they had a fever this morning or had a fever yesterday, I don't know. But Silas wanted to share, they're listening, wanted to share this verse of Scripture with us, Proverbs 2620, it says, where there is no wood, the fire goes out. I'm going to tell you, that's right on with what I want to talk about this morning. You may be seated. If you have a word or something you feel the Lord gave you, feel free to share. Where there is no wood, the fire goes out.
- 0:03:02
Amen. Where there is no wood, the fire goes out. Boy, that's a good Scripture. As a matter of fact, we're going to start there. I want you to turn there, Proverbs 2620, of course the whole verse says this, where no wood is, there the fire goeth out, so where there is no tail-bear, the strife ceases. This is an important verse here, and I just appreciate that God can speak through anyone. He can speak through the young. But I have all my notes in my phone today, so this will let you know that I'm not making this up. Because basically what my message is called this morning is gut check time, gut check time. Now for those of you who weren't in the military, ever in the military, or you never played football, this is a term that actually didn't really come around until the 1970s. I'm going to give you two definitions of what gut check time means in case you don't know what it means or you've never heard that term. But the Webster's, Merriam-Webster's dictionary says, a test or assessment of courage, character, or determination. Now I looked up also what the Urban Dictionary said, because this is kind of a modern term, but it says here, the Urban Dictionary says, a time, a gut check time rather, is a time to test your willpower, your courage, your fortitude. It says, rarely does it involve any physical strength or skill, instead being almost entirely a mental challenge. First heard in the U.S. Army, but has spread through usage among veterans and wrestling announcers and sportscasters and coaches. And they use the example here when two or more wrestlers have been fighting for a long time and are both exhausted, it's gut check time to get back into the fight. Gut check time. All coaches use this a lot when you're down at half time, you've been beaten up in the first part of the game, and half time is a time to sit down and it's time to do a gut check.
- 0:06:02
You're going to give in, you're going to lay down, you're going to lose, or you're going to suck it up, toughen up, and it usually comes first with making up your mind. So there's been studies done, many studies done, that the human being is an interesting make up because we can almost do anything that our bodies, if our bodies can physically do it, we can almost, by sheer making up our minds, get our bodies to accomplish things that seem impossible at that time. Amen. It's amazing, the power of the mind, what you set your mind upon, your thoughts upon, what you make up your mind, you're going to do, become hell or high water, as the saying goes. The problem in Christianity, and I'm going to even say it, the problem even in firing grace church is we've got too much wavering going on. We've got too much up and down, in and out, there's not a set determination about what I am to do, where I am or what I am. Now the reason I bring this up, I'm just going to be painfully blunt. The pastor knows things, even if you don't tell him, right? And I know that the devil's been attacking people and their minds and their hearts, and the Lord's had me kind of working up to this the last few weeks. But I'm just going to say this, for some of you, it's gut check time to decide whether you're going to make a change in your life. You're going to get out of bad habits, whether they be sinful struggles, whether they be the temptation to fall back and to fall away from God and the things of the world. For some of you, it's time to say, you know what, it's gut check time, and it's time for me to decide that I'm going to get on with what God's called me to do, and I'm going to do it right. I'm going to be obedient to God, I'm going to live a holy life, I'm going to break sinful patterns in my life, I'm going to break sinful habits. I'm going to, like Hebrews 12 says, I'm going to lay aside every weight and the sin and run the race that's set before me. There comes a point, listen, there's too many Christians, they're hanging on to bad thoughts, they're hanging on to indecision and discouragement and fear and sinful habits, and they're hanging on to these things and they think they can run the race after Jesus with this baggage, all this baggage on them, and that's why he said, real point, look it up, if you don't believe me, he said, let us run the race, right, laying aside
- 0:09:06
every sin and the weight that does so easily be set up. I say this to Fire and Grace Church, I say this to Christians listening, to those who will hear this on podcasts, when are you going to lay down the sin and the weights and run the race after Jesus with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, so many Christians, listen, so many Christians will not put down the world, and they won't put down the option to go back to some worldly habit or sinful habit. See, let me tell you something, what transformed my life in 1987 was a decision, it was a gut check time. I had been saved when I was 12 years old, 11 years old in a Baptist church, 1979, 11 years old, powerful encounter with Jesus, but of course I didn't learn anything, I didn't know you had to stand strong, I didn't know you had to get in the word and pray, I was just a, you know, a young boy, and nobody taught me the word, nobody taught me what I needed to do, my own parents didn't even teach me because they didn't know. So, because of that, my teenage years hit and I went adrift into sin, you guys know the story, I've shared the testimony, it's in my books, everybody around us, they know the testimony that when I was 19, you know, I had a modeling contract, I had a movie contract, I had screen tests, and all these things, I was about to be rich and famous, but I was doing drugs, and I was drinking, and I was carousing, and it was, you know, all the things that I was doing, but I knew that Jesus was real, see, I never lost my belief that Jesus Christ was the true Lord and Savior, God Almighty in the flesh, that He was the only way to heaven. I mean, that's what was revealed to me when I was 11 years old, plainer than anybody could have made it, I understood fully the gospel, that I was a sinner, that Jesus died on the cross for me, that God in the flesh died on the cross for me, and shed His holy, sinless blood for me, and that if I didn't ask Him to be my Lord and Savior, to forgive my sins, and chose to follow Him, I knew that I would not go to heaven, but I would die and go to hell. That revelation and that reality was made real and clear to me by the Holy Spirit when I was 11 years old. And so even through my years of being a teenager,
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