instructions by Samuel who anointed him with the holy anointing oil, which was figurative
or representative of the Holy Spirit's power.
And when he poured this oil upon him, he tells him that when he leaves there and goes down
the road, when he comes to a company of prophets, that the Spirit of the Lord will come upon
him and he will prophesy with them and that he will be turned into another man.
He says in verse 7, "And let it be when these signs are come unto thee, that thou do as
occasion serve thee, for God is with thee. And thou shalt go down before me to Gilgal
and behold I will come down unto thee to offer burnt offerings and to sacrifice sacrifices
of peace offerings. Seven days shalt thou tarry till I come to thee and show thee what
thou shalt do." And it was so that when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, God
gave him another heart and all those signs came to pass that day.
Now what I want to preach about, just a short sermon tonight because Brother David has already
passed, but I'm going to preach about becoming another man and I think that we should become
another man in 2011 and that's what I want to preach about tonight. Or if you're a lady
of course it would be become another woman. You see, in the next 12 days before the end
of the year, I think that all of us should do some soul searching and thinking. I think
that God gave us years and months and days for a reason. Those things were instituted
by God in Genesis chapter 1. He divided the time that we have into days, nights, weeks,
months, years. The Bible says that that's why the sun, moon, and stars were put in
place to divide these periods of time. We need to stop at the end of the year and look
at ourselves and see where we've been and see where we're going. What I want to really
emphasize to you tonight is that if the Spirit of the Lord God is upon you, you can become
the person that God wants you to be. In the flesh, just you in your mortal flesh, you
without the Spirit of God resting upon you in mighty power, you have a lot of limitations.
Bible says they that are in the flesh cannot please God. I think a lot of people because
they spent so much time in the flesh, they basically look at themselves and say, "Well,
I think this is about as much as I could ever do for God. I don't think I could really ever
grow to this level or I think I've pretty much maxed out." He over there, he's doing
all kinds of great stuff for God or she's doing all kinds of stuff for God. But really
what I want you to see is that the sky is the limit and the Spirit of God is upon you.
The Bible says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." The Bible
says that if we'll put on the new man, if we'll put on the Lord Jesus Christ, if the
Spirit of the Lord is upon us, we can become another man, we can become another person.
We can become a new creature in Christ. The Bible says, "If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creature." Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. Now at salvation,
God creates that new creature, but we still have the flesh, we're still walking in the
flesh many times. And if we walk in the flesh, we're not going to please God. But what I
want you to do, and what I'm going to be doing in the next 12 days, and what I always do
this time of year, is I stop and look at myself, and I decide not who I am, but who do I want
to be? What do I want to accomplish in 2011? Where do I want to be as a person? What kind
of soul learning do I want to do? What kind of Bible reading and Bible memorization? And
I don't want to have an attitude that says, "Well, that's impossible," or "I can't." I'm
always getting on my children every time they say, "Well, I can't do this." I always tell
them, "He's a great man." We should have an attitude that says, "I can do all things,"
and you need to decide right now to take your personal Christianity, your walk with God,
your soul learning, your Bible reading, and your prayer life to the next level in 2011.
You need to grow. You need to move forward, and you need to decide that with the power
of God's Spirit, you can become another person. You don't have to do the same failures. You
don't have to keep skipping Bible reading or whatever it is that you struggle with, prayer,
soul learning, whatever it is. You say, "Well, I could never go soul learning." Well, right
here is a shy man, King Saul. So shy that when he was chosen to be king, he went and
hid among the stuff. He was embarrassed to even go up there and receive the accolades
of being the king. He was a very shy man, and he went and hid himself among the stuff.
When the Spirit of the Lord began to preach, began to prophesy with the prophets, and
people were shocked because they knew him, and they knew what he was like, and they'd
never seen him do any kind of preaching or prophesy. And when they saw that, they were
shocked and said, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" And then they kind of said, "Well,
you know, who's their father? I mean, you know, I guess nobody's born a prophet, right?"
So basically it became a proverb. Hey, is Saul also among the prophets? Saul preached
and prophesied because it wasn't the old Saul, it was the new Saul. It was the Saul with
the Spirit of God upon him, preached in boldness, that had the power to lead a nation to victory
and to throw off the oppression that the Philistines had put them under because he'd become another
man. And so I want to say to you tonight, become another man in 2011. 2011, decide you're
going to stop playing around with church, and you're going to stop just living half
in and half out, but that you're just going to sell out for God and give it everything
you've got and make 2011 the greatest year of your life and the greatest year of our
church's life. The greatest year of our existence. I like what brother Dave said where he said,
"Hey, this is just the beginning." You know, the past five years of our church. It's not
where we stop and say, "Wow, look at everything that we've done." You know, we're just getting
started. We're just getting warmed up. You know, we're just still living in those early
days and we need to push for more, more, more. We need to increase more and more. And that's
That's going to happen when we each personally make the changes necessary in each of our
lives.
That's how the church grows.
I mean, the church is nothing more than an assembly of people, of individuals.
And when we personally take our lives in the next level, you say, "Boy, I really want Faithful
Word Baptist Church to grow.
You know, I want to see this church really grow."
Well, then you've got to grow.
If the church is going to grow, then you need to grow.
You need to grow.
We need to grow on the inside.
That's what's going to make the church grow, because the church is us.
And so it's based on us.
And it's not going to be done in the flesh.
It's going to be done in the power of the Holy Spirit.
It's going to be done when we are walking in the new man, and when we put on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and when we walk in the Spirit, and we can be who God wants us to be.
There's no limit to what we can do for God.
We can be like the people in the book of Acts.
We can be like King Saul.
We can be like David.
We can be like the great men of the Bible.
There's nothing stopping us but ourselves.
And so we need to decide in 2011 to become another.
Here are just some sample goals and I'm not going to take a lot of time, but I just want
to give you some sample goals that I think you should have for 2011 for yourself.
Number one, first of all, if you've never read your Bible cover to cover, you need to
decide that in 2011 will be the year that you read that Bible cover to cover.
And we've got charts out there on the table that explain to you how to do it, that just
shows you how much you read each day.
And it's really just three or four chapters a day.
It's not a big deal.
You ought to decide that you're going to make 2011 the year that you read it cover to cover.
You say, well I've already read it, read it twice in 2011.
You know, take it to the next level, read it twice, read it again.
Make this a year of Bible reading in 2011, even if it's something that you've failed
at in the past.
You know, start working on it now, start gearing up so that by January 1st you'll be in the
habit of reading that Bible every day.
You know, don't start on January 1st, start now so that you can start warming up and start
getting into the habit so that starting January 1st, you can say in 2011, I'm going to read
my Bible every single day.
I'm going to get through it one time or two times or four times, you know, whatever level
you're at or beyond that, you want to just decide that you're going to do some serious
Bible reading in 2011.
You're going to become another man.
Maybe you're not a big Bible reader right now, but you're going to become one next year.
That's what you have to decide in your heart.
There's another area that you could grow inside that you're going to have a prayer time and
pray every single day in 2011.
Church attendance.
Why not decide?
I'm going to be at church.
You know, maybe you're one who comes to church maybe once a week or twice a week.
Why not just decide that in 2011, make it a goal, I'm going to be at every service in
2011.
I don't want to miss any services.
I'm going to be there Sunday morning, Saturday night, Wednesday.
I'm going to make the church a priority in my life and be there.
Maybe soul winning is where you need to grow.
Maybe you've been a silent partner for a while and you want to start doing the talking.
You say, "Well, I could never do that."
Well, that's what they said about Saul.
You know, maybe is Brother Dave also among the prophets?
Dave's out soul winning?
I bet you a lot of his friends probably were shocked when they found out he's out soul
winning.
Because they had known the old Dave, walking in the Spirit, they knew that Dave was walking
in the flesh, and there are so many people in this room that have dramatically changed
as a result of being in a Bible-believing church, not just Brother Dave, all kinds of
people.
And I'm sure that anybody from their past would be shocked to see them among the prophets,
among the soul-winners, among Bible-believing Christians that are going out serving God
and preaching the Word of God and doing God's work, because it's not them.
It's the new them.
That's a powerful truth, because I used to struggle when I was a younger person wondering
how I could grow and thinking to myself, you know, I could never give up my music, or I
could never give up these movies, or I could never give up this, or I could never do this.
And that attitude is just a failing attitude.
The Bible says I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me.
You could become another man, you could make a goal about soul winning, maybe your goal
is to win somebody to Christ in 2011.
Do it.
Guaranteed thing, he that goeth forth and weepeth, precious seed shall doubtless come
again with rejoicing, bringing his seed with them.
Just do it.
Try.
No, just do it.
2000 is the year where you're going to read your Bible every day, you're going to pray
every day, you're going to be at church three times a week, you're going to win souls to
Christ.
This world needs a church like Faithful Word Baptist Church and Phoenix, Arizona needs
a church like Faithful Word Baptist Church to be going on all four cylinders, to be moving
ahead full speed.
There's so much we can accomplish.
There's so much the Bible says one of you shall chase a thousand and two of you shall
put 10,000 to flight and maybe even those who are not talented or don't have everything
yet he can use people to do marvelous things and powerful things that we can't even imagine.
We'll just surrender ourselves to him if we'll just let him use us if we'll just show up
and be there and do what we're supposed to do and do what God's commanded us to do.
So I want to encourage you not to let this time pass you by and a lot of people make
fun of New Year's resolutions and everything but you know to me I think it's great.
You know usually the goals that I end up setting at the beginning of the year I usually don't
end up fully accomplishing all of those goals because I'm a human being because I'm not
perfect and people make fun of it all you're not going to keep these resolutions too.
But you know what I look back and usually it seems like January's are some of the greatest
months of my life.
It seems like that's a lot of the greatest things that I do because I'm fired up about
a new start, a new chance, a new beginning and that's what January is.
It's a time where we can decide to throw off some of the old baggage and lay aside every
weight and the sin which does so easily beset us and get on that starting block and at the
beginning of the year, January 1st, it's ready to just run full speed ahead.
The next lap fades greater than we've ever been in the year 2011 and that's my challenge
to you tonight and I'm talking about it now because I want you to think about it for the
next 12 days.
I want you to start because it takes time to think it over and decide what your goals
are.
You don't want to set your goals too low.
You don't want some crazy goal that you're never going to do from not reading your Bible
at all.
You know, I'm going to complete the entire Bible once per month, you know, you've never
even read it one time.
You know, it's an achievable goal.
It's a reasonable goal.
You want it to be a challenge.
You know, you want to challenge yourself.
You want to set that goal high enough to where you're going to have to push yourself and
God's going to have to help you move to the next level.
Don't get complacent.
Don't get too comfortable.
I mean, do you really think that you have arrived at just the pinnacle of Christianity
right now?
I mean, who in this room would just tell me, "Pastor Anderson, I'm there."
I mean, I am just, you know, I'm not Jesus, but I'm close, you know what I mean?
Nobody can say that because no one is even close.
We all need to grow.
We all need to do better and we ought not waste this, it only happens once a year that
we have that reset button, that starting point where we can really stop and say, "You know
what?
2011 is going to be the year of this and so on."
And if you don't make any goals, if you don't set any mark for yourself, you're probably
not going to do much.
People who you talk to who have read the Bible through cover to cover, it's because they
decided to do it, they set a goal, marked it off, they checked it off, they had that
calendar out.
These are the people who have memorized huge portions of the Bible.
It's because they set a goal and said, "I'm going to do this many verses per day."
You can accomplish a lot more than you think even if you just do one verse per day.
One verse per day in 2011, crazy goal, right?
One Bible verse a day, but yet if you did it, you'd memorize the whole book of Hebrews
and you'd still have two months to spare.
Now that works.
Hebrews is a pretty long book, right?
Pretty solid book.
One verse a day.
If you just do one verse a day, you could have 90% of the book of Revelation done.
If you're willing to spill a month into 2012, you're pretty much done with the whole book
of Revelation.
One verse a day.
And so we need to decide to use this opportunity of a turn of the year here to really become
another man.
We need to decide that you're going to change.
You know, the purpose of coming to church, to change.
Not to just come here and hear something and walk out the same.
To change.
To do something new.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the great year that you've given us.
The great five years that you've given us.
And thank you for the wonderful people that go to our church, dear God, that make it what
it is.
And Father, I just pray that you'd help every single one of us to grow and move forward
and to love you with more fervency than we ever have in the past, dear God, to help us
to move forward in a powerful way.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.