Good evening. We're in Luke chapter 9. Luke chapter 9 the Bible reads
Then he called his 12 disciples together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases
And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick and he said unto them take nothing for your journey
Neither staves nor script neither bread neither money
Neither have two coats of peace and whatsoever house you enter into their abide and thence depart
And whosoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust
from your feet for a testimony against them, and they departed and went through the towns
preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.
Now, Herod the Tetrarch heard of all that was done by him, and he was perplexed because
that it was said of Psalm that John was risen from the dead and of Psalm that Elias had appeared
and of others that one of the old prophets was risen again.
And Herod said, John, have I beheaded, but who is this of whom I hear such things?
And he desired to see him.
And the apostles, when they returned, told him all that they had done and he took them
and went aside privately into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida.
And the people, when they knew it, followed him and he received them and spake unto them
the kingdom of God and healed them that had need of healing.
And when the day began to wear away, they came the twelve and said unto him,
Send the multitude away, that they may go into the towns and country round about,
And lodge and get vitals, for we are here in a desert place.
But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat.
And they said, We have no more but five loaves and two fishes,
Except we would go and buy meat for all this people.
And they were about 5,000 men, and he said unto his disciples,
May them sit down by fifties in a company.
And they did so, and made them all sit down.
And he took the five loaves and the two fishes,
and looking up to heaven, he blessed them and break,
and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.
And they did eat, and were all filled,
and there was taken up of fragments
that remained of them 12 baskets.
And it came to pass, as he was alone praying,
his disciples were with them,
and he asked them, saying,
Whom say the people that I am?
They answering said, John the Baptist, but some say Elias, and others say that one of
the old prophets is risen again.
And he said unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
Peter answering said, The Christ of God, and he straightly charged them and commanded
them to tell no man that thing, saying, The son of man must suffer many things and be
rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain and be raised the third
day.
And he said to them all, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
For what is a man's advantage if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be cast away?
For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words of him shall the son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory and in his fathers and of the holy angels.
But I tell you of a truth. There be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God
And it came to pass about an 80 about in eight days after the saints
He took Peter and John and James and went up into a mountain to pray and as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered
And his raiment was white and glistering
And behold there talked with him to men which were Moses and Elias who appeared in glory and spake of his decease
Which should which he should accomplish at Jerusalem
But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep and when they were awake
They saw his glory and the two men that stood with him and it came to pass as they departed from him Peter said unto Jesus
Master it is good for us to be here and let us make the three tabernacles
One for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias not knowing what he said
While he thus spake there came a cloud and overshadowed them and they feared as they entered into the cloud
And there came a voice out of the cloud saying this is my beloved son hear him and when the voice was passed
Jesus was found alone and they kept it close and told no man in those days any of those things with which they had seen
And it came to pass that on the next day
When they were come down from the hill, much people met him.
And behold, a man of the company cried out, saying,
Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son, for he is my only child.
And lo, a spirit taketh him, and he sonnily cryeth out,
and it teareth him, and he fometh again,
and bruising him, hardly departeth from him.
And I besought thy disciples to cast them out, but they could not.
And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation,
how long shall they be with you and suffer you?
Bring thy son hither.
And as he was yet a coming, the devil threw him down and tear him, and Jesus rebuked the
unclean spirit and healed the child and delivered him again to his father.
They were all amazed at the mighty power of God, but while they wondered everyone after
all things which Jesus did, he said unto his disciples, Let these saints sink down into
your ears, for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men.
But they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them that they perceived it not,
Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest.
And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set him by him, and
said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name, receiveth me, and whosoever
shall receive me, receiveth him that sent me.
For he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.
And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we
Not with us and Jesus said unto him forbid him not for he that is not against us is for us
And it came to pass when the time was come that he should be received up
He said fastly set his face to go to Jerusalem and send mentioned
Messengers before his face that they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him
And they did not receive him because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem
When his disciples saw James James and John saw this they said Lord
Well thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias did
But he turned and rebuked them saying you know not what man or spirit you're of but the Son of man has not come to destroy men's lives
But to save them and they went to another village and it came to pass that as they went in the way a certain man
Said unto them Lord, I will follow thee wither. So ever thou goest and Jesus said unto him
Foxes have holes and birds the air have nests birds of the air have nests
But the Son of man hath not where to lay his head and he said unto another follow me and he said Lord
Suffer me first to go and bury my father
Jesus said unto him, let the dead bury their dead, but thou go thou and preach the kingdom
of God.
And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell,
which are at my home, at my house.
And Jesus said unto him, no man have ye put his hand to the plow, and looking back is
fit for the kingdom of God.
Let's pray to the Lord God.
Just thank you for this time we have to hear the preaching of the word, Lord.
Just please bless this service, Lord.
Please fill the past from here with your spirit, Lord, and give him boldness as he preaches
your word unto us, Lord.
And we pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. All right. We are in Luke chapter number nine and the time I started this evening is out of shape
out of shape the Bible says in verse 62 and Jesus said into him no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back
Is fit for the kingdom of God?
Tonight I want to talk about the subject of being spiritually out of shape
And I'm not planning to preach that long tonight this morning was really long
You know I preach for like an hour and 20 so I'm actually gonna preach like an old IFB length sermon
You know a long old IFB, which is about 50 minutes long, right?
but no promises.
Alright, Luke chapter number nine here, out of shape.
Now what am I referring to here?
Or should we say, what is the Bible referring to here?
Well, when the Bible talks about
a man putting his hand to the plow,
looking back is not fit for the kingdom of God.
This actually has nothing to do with salvation, right?
A lot of false prophets would try to use passages like this
to try to teach you how to do works
in order to merit the kingdom of God.
That you have to be fit for the Kingdom of God, you have to deserve the Kingdom of God,
but this is actually referring to deserving working for the Kingdom of God, right?
In order for you to be a meat for the Master's use,
in order for you to labor properly and be an effective servant of God,
you've got to be spiritually fit to do so.
in order to labor for that kingdom.
And this is what Jesus is saying.
You know, the person who is plowing with his hands,
but is constantly looking back, isn't ready,
they're not fit, they're not meat for the master's use,
they're not gonna accomplish your work for God.
Why?
Because they're constantly looking back.
They're constantly looking back to their past,
they're not looking forward to the future,
they're not gonna be effective laborers for the harvest.
Now look at verse 57 here, by way of introduction,
First and foremost, in order to be fit for the kingdom of God,
we got to count the cost, right?
It says in verse 57, it came to pass
that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him,
Lord, I will follow thee with us or ever thou goest.
Now that is a pretty, you know, heavy commitment right there.
He said, I'll go with you anywhere you go, right?
Verse 58, Jesus said to him,
Foxes have holes in the birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
He says, all right, animals have a place to sleep.
Foxes have holes where they can sleep.
Birds have a home in their nests.
I don't even know where I'm gonna sleep.
Basically saying, if you come with me,
you better count the cost that
So we're gonna get pretty wild, right?
You're not necessarily gonna be provided a home to sleep in.
What does he tell him?
Count the cost.
And obviously when it comes to the Christian life,
we need to make sure that we count the cost
and not just realize, well,
I'm gonna be in this thing for the long haul.
You know, I hope that you are.
I wanna be in this thing for the long haul,
but we need to make sure that we count the cost first.
And realize that the Christian life is not easy.
It's not easy, there's gonna be difficult times,
there's gonna be trials and tribulations,
it's not a bed of roses, make sure that you count the cost.
Not only that, but he wants them to have the right priorities.
It says in verse 59,
and he said into another, follow me,
and he said, Lord, suffer me first to go
and bury my father.
Seems pretty reasonable.
His father just died,
and he's like, I wanna go perform this funeral.
Jesus said in verse 60, Jesus said unto him,
let the dead bury their dead,
but go down, preach the kingdom of God.
Now don't misunderstand this passage because this seems kind of harsh
But you do what you have to understand is that you know the ministry of Jesus Christ on this earth was only for about three and a half years
So, he didn't have time for disciples who were dilly-dallying and not just having this
half-hazard commitment.
He needed people who were serious about this stuff because they were going to make a massive
impact for the New Testament.
So, this is why he's telling them this, but the application that we can gather from this
is that we need to make sure that when we're serving God, we have the right priorities,
right?
In order to be effective for the kingdom of God, we need to seek first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and then these things, referring to the earthly necessities
shall be added unto you.
As Christians, our priorities should be souls,
spiritual matters, pleasing the Lord Jesus Christ.
Those things come first,
we ought to set our affections on things above,
not on the things of this earth.
That's what it means to have the right priorities.
But the point that I want to make tonight
is the last verse talks about being fit
for the kingdom of God.
And I want to relate this to exercising,
dieting, powerlifting, right?
I'm gonna give you five points tonight and
some I'm gonna give you five points tonight that relate to that and
Kind of give a spiritual application to it. So we're gonna talk about this evening. Why Christians? Why pastors?
Why churches are out of shape?
Okay, very important
Now go with me if you would to John chapter 4 go to John chapter 4
Now, why are Christians, pastors, churches out of shape?
I'll tell you why.
Number one, they're not active enough.
You know, one thing that people need to realize when they're trying to, you know, start exercising,
they want to lose weight, they, you know, just, they want to become more athletic or
just get involved in more activity, just be more active, even just taking walks around
And in fact, believe it or not,
you actually burn more calories
just taking walks around the block sometimes, right?
Taking hikes, you know, going with brother Jose
and looking for rattlesnakes, that, you know,
will help you cut some calories.
I mean, you might lose your life too, but hey, you know.
Being more active is important, and in fact they'll often tell you you know going to the gym and exercising is actually really important
Dieting is really important, but something that is just as important is just your daily activity
And obviously we know that like people nowadays have desk jobs are not necessarily very active
They live very sedentary lifestyles
And so we kind of have to go out of our way to become physically active, right?
And when you're not physically active, you're not burning calories
Therefore, you're just kind of accumulating a lot of fat
and you get out of shape.
You get these, what I like to call,
unconditional love handles, okay?
And you know, that's how churches are.
They got a lot of love,
but they got unconditional love handles.
They're a little out of shape
and I'll tell you why they're out of shape.
I'll tell you why pastors are out of shape spiritually,
why Christians get out of shape spiritually
because they're not active enough.
They're not actually participating in the work of God.
You have a lot of churches out there that are filled with members, high steeple, lot
of people, and it seems as though there's a lot of activity, but quite frankly, not
enough evangelism is taking place in those churches.
Not enough laboring in the Word of God and in doctrine is taking place in those churches.
Luke 9 says this, no man having put his hand to the plow.
What is that implying?
Activity.
Right?
The Bible says in 2 Timothy 4-5,
but watch now on all things, endure afflictions,
do the work of an evangelist,
make full proof of thy ministry.
The Bible tells us in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10,
that we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus
unto good works,
which God had before ordained that we should walk in them.
We ought to maintain good works, right?
The Bible constantly emphasizes this subject
working, what does this mean?
Be active in the Christian life.
The Bible also says, look at John chapter four,
if you would.
It says in verse 34, Jesus saith unto him,
my meat is to do the will of him that sent me,
and to finish his work.
This is after they came to him,
and he's like, did anybody bring him anything to eat?
And he's like, I got meat that you know not of, right?
And obviously the meat that he's referring to
is the work of God.
Essentially saying that what satiates his soul,
what satiates him is doing the work of God.
He goes on to say in verse 35,
Say not ye, there are yet four months,
and then come and harvest.
Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes,
look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.
Essentially what he's saying here is,
hey, don't wait till the conditions are right
to start working.
A lot of times, people are like, well, I'm
going to start exercising once I find the right gym, the right
program, the right this, the right motivation, the right
that.
No, you just got to start.
Oh, well, I'm not going to really,
I'm not really interested in lifting yet
until I know how to perfectly deadlift,
until I know how to perfectly squat,
until I know how to perfectly bench,
until I know how to perfectly execute this movement,
then I'll start.
You're never going to start.
You just got to do it.
Go do it, get injured, and then rehab yourself.
But at least you're doing some work.
And let me just say this.
Most people who are just physically inactive
are just more prone to injury.
That's just it.
And you talk to anybody who's just physically active,
they're always working out, or doing
some sort of form of activity, they
have a tendency to actually recover faster
than those who just are inactive all the time.
Because when they're active, they
That blood circulation actually causes a lot of healing okay, and so you know just as a person is just physically inactive
There's just a couch potato and they're not doing anything and a lot of churches are the same way
They may think themselves to be spiritual athletes
They may think to themselves to be strong in the Lord and the power of his might
But when you look at their activity level when you look at their their their eye watch and see how many steps they took
It's just very minimal. Okay
You know, I don't track my steps or probably should,
but I don't want to get discouraged.
But Brother Ulysses though.
You know, correct me if I'm wrong, Brother Hernandez,
I think he takes like 20,000 steps a day, right?
Where's he at?
Is he in the PA room?
Can I get a hey man?
All right.
Yeah, it's about 20,000 steps.
Because the guy is just like, I mean, he's not doing anything.
But as long as he's, when he works, he's not really doing
anything, but at least he's walking though, you know?
But just on a regular day
The guy is like taking like 20 steps and on a really like Easter by the way like when we were prepping for Easter
It was like close to like 50,000 steps
You know and given he's shorter. She has to take more steps to get to from point A to point B
But the point remains hey man the man is active now brother Ulysses
He's always on he's or not always but he's trying to bulk you know what I mean?
So he has to eat a lot, but the problem is he's almost too active
So when he's eating all these calories to gain weight he ends up burning them off because he's always just walking back and forth
The point that I'm making here is that obviously the man is very active
And you know what God wants us as God's people at a church to be active
Track your steps, right?
Track the work that you're doing make sure that you're doing something for the Lord and obviously in the work of God
There's a lot to be done
And sometimes people can get the paralysis of the analysis
and kind of wonder like, where am I going to start?
Well, here's a good active thing for you to do.
So, go and preach the gospel.
You know, not only will you get physical steps in,
you'll get spiritual steps in as well.
That's one of the best things you could do.
And even if you're not ready to go and preach the gospel,
you're not, you know, you didn't memorize the verses yet.
You don't know all the introductions
and the points and the steps.
It's okay, you going with someone as a silent partner
with the seasoned soul when you're still doing the work.
And in fact, look what it says in verse 36,
and he that reapeth receiveeth wages,
and gathereth fruit unto life eternal,
that both he that soweth, and he that reapeth
may rejoice together.
And hearing is that saying true,
one soweth and another reapeth.
I sent you to reap that wherein ye bestowed no labor,
other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors.
What's the point?
Be active.
If you want to be a spiritually fit person, at least get your steps in by going out and preaching to the gospel, right?
And obviously, soul-winning is not the only thing that we will do in order to be active.
The Bible talks about being prepared unto every good work.
The Bible talks about, you know, exercising yourself rather unto godliness,
making sure that you're laboring in the Word, in doctrine, in prayer, and being a blessing to others.
This is important.
And you may think to yourself, I'm not ready for the weights though.
Okay, then just start off by at least walking around the block two or three times.
I'm not ready to actually go and preach the gospel.
Then start off by just going with someone who does preach the gospel.
And here's the thing.
Once you start walking a couple of times and get the blood flowing, you feel good.
You actually start feeling good.
And you start tracking your steps, you're walking, and then someone invites you to the
and you go, you actually feel good.
And you know what, it's the same thing
when you go and preach the gospel
or when you go soul-winning with someone.
You may not know how to do it
and you may even be a little intimidated to do it
but then you end up going and after a while you're like,
you know what, I'm gonna try that.
Let me try.
Let me give an introduction.
Let me quote some verses
because you're gonna see people leading other people
to the Lord, it's gonna motivate you
to start putting some weight on that barbell
to lift that weight as well, spiritually speaking.
Point that I'm making here is that the reason churches pastors and Christians are out of shape
It's because they're not physically active at all and you know
There's obviously it's not this church, but there's members of other churches
Maybe they have you know, they don't they don't necessarily go to an active church, right?
They have a church that can be likened unto a sedentary church
The pastor doesn't have a soul any time.
He doesn't have a time when they go on a priest to gospel.
OK, then you need to make time for that.
Just as, for example, as a pastor,
I guess it would be considered a sedentary job.
I have to compensate for that by actually being purposely
active, because if not, I'm just going
to gain all kinds of weight.
and just be out of shape.
Well, you know, Christians who go to a church
that don't have soul winning times,
you need to compensate for that
and go soul winning anyways.
Go find people that know how to preach the gospel,
get some people in your church
that go and preach the gospel,
and get physically active.
Go to 1 Corinthians chapter one,
1 Corinthians chapter one if you would.
So we're talking about Christians,
pastors, and churches who are out of shape.
Tell you why they're not active enough.
They don't move around enough.
They're not walking around.
They're not preaching the gospel.
They're not putting their hand to the plow.
But here's another reason, in my experience,
why people are out of shape,
and that's because they don't program.
They don't program.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Here's a way that you can understand.
They don't keep track of numbers.
See, what is programming?
Programming is intentional growth.
Right, you're tracking what you are doing
Now why track what you are doing? I'll tell you why because you want to see if you're progressing or not
That's important
Well, you know, I'm not really into that. I
Just feel good when I go to the gym. Okay good
But what if you're regressing though?
Because you know tracking numbers not only helps you to see if you're progressing
But it also is an indicator to help warn you if you are regressing though
Okay, and so a lot of times people get out of shape because they think they're progressing
But they're actually not because they're not keeping track of their numbers. How about this? They're not keeping track of calories
Now I know what I'm talking about when it comes to this, okay, and
I can talk now about this because you know just being on a cut I was extreme about my calorie intake
Okay, you know for whatever however long eternity that it was you know it was like
I would do about 1,800 calories every single day and it was like to the
calorie like I told my wife you know you got to measure this it needs to be on a
scale and you know God help you if you go above that number you know
Because I get a little too radical when it comes to that,
and it's just like it needs to be no more than 1800.
And if it's 1801, oh, woman, you know, you're in trouble.
I'm exaggerating, but it's almost true, though.
But you know what, you know, for weeks and every day.
And people would say, well, don't you have a cheat day?
And I would say, no.
Why am I going to cheat?
I'm an honest Christian, you know, I'm not gonna cheat.
It's just like, I'm trying to reach a specific goal,
a specific destination, and you know what?
I'm not, I can't waver on this.
This is gonna remain this way.
And so, what I did was actually had like a cheat,
like somewhat of a cheat meal or a cheat snack every day.
But it would fit into my calories though.
So, you know, I would get my little Reese's,
zero peanut butter cups, and I'll have three every day.
And then at the end of the day, when I finished my calories,
I would have about 200 to 250 calories left,
and I had a specific ice cream that literally had
200 to 250 calories left.
And once I finished that, I was just like, it's done.
And then I just cry myself to sleep.
Just what you do.
You're just like, why?
Because I can't eat anymore.
But there's a reason why I lost a lot of weight though.
It's because of that programming.
You understand?
And you're like, well, I just kind of eat whatever I want
or whatever.
OK, then you're not going to reach any specific goal then.
Because sometimes people are like, well,
I just think if I just eat this and I just have this,
yeah, you might lose about 10 pounds of water weight.
And anybody can lose 10 pounds of water weight.
Let me just tell you right now.
Sorry to break it to you, but it's a fact.
You can lose 10 pounds of water weight.
And that's great if you do if that's what you want.
But if you're trying to go beyond the 10 pounds,
and go beyond that, because water weight is water.
I just gained 10 pounds of water weight
just within the last week or so, okay?
Not maybe 10, but you know,
water weight comes and goes very fast.
Point that I'm making here is that
if you're gonna succeed just in like losing weight,
you have to count calories.
It's not like, well, I think this is healthy,
so I'm just gonna have this, and you know, I'll be fine.
Not gonna work that way, you're gonna be discouraged
in four weeks, because you're gonna be like,
man, the scale went up so high, why?
I'm eating such nutritious food.
Yeah, but it's not necessary about the nutrition,
though that's important.
It's how much of it are you having?
Calories in, calories out.
And I can hear a pin drop in this building right now.
Okay, the point that I'm making here is that all right
Let's get to the spiritual application because you guys are mad about the real application of this, you know
And then look I'm not tracking calories right now per se because I got off the cut and I'm gonna go through like a little
Phase like about two month phase where I'm just kind of enjoying food, but then I'm getting back on again
Okay, I'm kind of maintaining right now
But here's the thing is that if you want to succeed if you're like well I want to get to this specific way
Okay, but do you have a program though?
Do you have a plan to do so?
Or he's just kind of flying by the seat of your pants,
or you're not gonna succeed if you are.
And the same goes for lifting.
You know, it's just like, why just go in
and I just max out.
Yeah, you can do that like maybe once,
but not twice, not thrice, and definitely not four times.
And in fact, if you continue to do that,
you will eventually regress in your strength.
because you need to have progressive overload
in order for you to get better.
But how do you know you're getting stronger
if you're not keeping track of the reps,
you're not keeping track of the volume,
you're not keeping track of the weight that you're lifting?
And look, I'm all for, I got spreadsheets.
I keep track of the weight.
I keep track of how hard it was from a scale of one to 10.
And I'm just like, well, you know, it was at an RPE7.
I got, you know, my daughter was up last night.
And again, I got three, four hours, five hours of sleep.
I track all that.
I track all of it.
Like my spreadsheets are very detailed
because I need to be able to look at it
and say, this week went really well.
Oh, it's because I had a pizza right before
and all the sodium put it into my muscles
and that's why I was able to lift this much or something.
Or I got great sleep.
Or I was like, why am I failing right here?
Oh, it's because I got three hours of sleep
because my daughter was up all night or something.
You know or I was traveling or something so it's good to keep track of those things and you know
People are not gonna succeed if you don't and I know this is this is going over like a screen door in a submarine
Okay, people hate hearing preaching about health and being disciplined in these areas and I'll get to the spiritual aspect of it
But you see how important this is though
calories making sure you're programming in order for you to get stronger
Okay, and even look look I don't know anything about like because you know people are like there's guys who they want to bulk
They want to gain weight because they have a hard time gaining weight, and I'm like, how do you have a hard time?
What how's that hard?
Excuse me like yeah, I just got to eat all this food. I'm just like all this and that's hard for you
Like I have to restrain myself from not from not eating everything that's in sight. You know what I mean?
And they're just like, it's just so hard to put all this food.
I'm just like, brother, that's easy.
That's very easy.
Bulking is not hard at all.
But let me say this is that when it comes to programming
also and nutrition, that when people bulk,
meaning they start gaining weight,
they can actually gain bad weight.
Because the goal is to gain good weight.
Which is muscle weight, because sometimes the bulk can go so far,
meaning that you're just accumulating a bunch of fat from junk food and stuff.
And the same thing when it comes to the Christian life, right?
If you're not keeping track of the protein,
you're not consuming 200 grams of protein every single day,
but you're just eating a bunch of junk food,
you're not necessarily accumulating good weight,
it's actually bad weight that you're accumulating.
And then you're like, why do I got a big back?
How come I got love handles and a big back?
Because you eat a lot of junk food, that's why.
Point that I'm making is that you need to keep track of numbers and when it comes to a church. We need to keep track of numbers
Attendances soul winning soul winning people who get saved
Salvation
Baptisms
Salvation and yes, even people who start going out soul winning as well. We keep track of that
Why?
Because I want to know if our church is progressing
in spiritual growth.
You know, an indicator that a church is healthy
is our soul's being saved in that church.
Brother, that's carnal.
We shouldn't be counting.
We should just be doing it because we love God.
Well, I do love God.
Which is why I'm tracking the numbers.
So that I'm making sure, look,
if I track the numbers this year
and compare it to last year, okay?
around this time and it was like the numbers were cut in half
That's an indicator to me that something needs to change
You know if the so many numbers were like cut in half from last year this time it would be an indicator to me
Okay, you know, maybe we need to preach on so many more
We need to train more people have more soul winning times. There's a deficiency in here
We need to adjust something in our program because we are regressing as a church
There's a what I'm saying
But if you're not keeping track of numbers, you could be regressing and not even know it
No, I'm just doing it because I love God. It's just yeah, I'm doing it because I love God too
And and we get to win more souls to Christ
And look, I want to keep track of attendance numbers
because it's an indicator that people love the word of God.
How is that an indicator?
Because they're coming to listen to me scream at them
for an entire hour about the Bible.
And that shows me that people are esteeming,
not yours truly, but they're esteeming the word of God.
They're esteeming the preaching of God's word.
It's important to them.
This is why we track Sunday morning numbers.
We attract Sunday night numbers
and we keep track of Thursday night numbers.
Why?
Because I wanna see how many of our new people
are coming back Sunday night
and how many of those people are coming Thursday night.
It's a good measure of spiritual growth, okay?
Well, I just don't see that in the Bible brother show me a verse in the Bible where the Apostles kept track of
Salvation's
Baptisms, you know, okay look at verse 10
Now I beseech your brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
That he all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you
But they'd be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment
For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them, which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.
Now, this I say that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ.
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
I thank God that I have baptized none of you, but Christmas and Gaius. How do you know that, Paul?
Bro, let's keep in track, or what?
Less than he should say that I baptize in my own name and I baptize also the house of Stefanus. How do you know that Paul?
Besides, I know not whether I baptize any other so obviously Paul is keeping track of his baptisms
He's keeping track of his conversions and his baptisms
How do you know because he's naming them?
And you know what there's people in our church that keep track of the people they lead to the Lord and the people that get baptized
Believe it or not, I not only have a spreadsheet for my lifting numbers, I have a spreadsheet
for my soul winning too.
I have a spreadsheet for every week of every month and the names of the people that I get
saved.
And once a week, I go into my spreadsheet and I log the numbers of salvation that I've
gotten and right next to it I put the name of the people so I can pray for them.
You know there's people do that and they don't you know some people don't use spreadsheets
Some people just use Apple notes or whatever and they keep track of it that in that way
But you know what that's a good way to show you as an individual Christian am I winning people to Christ?
Well brother, I don't really like keeping track of that. Let me tell you why you don't keep a track of it
It's because probably you don't do any soul
You know why churches don't keep a track don't don't keep track of numbers
I'll tell you why because they're probably not doing any or they're not getting people saved
That's not in the Bible acts 241 3000 were saved
Yeah, but the disciples count that you know, I don't know but God did though
He put it in the Bible
He could have just said a bunch of people got saved or
People got saved, but he went out of his way to actually have it pinned down
The three thousand of them were saved
You know, it's written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come
The Bible goes on to say, even in Acts chapter 6, it talks about the word of God increasing,
the number of the disciples increasing.
Obviously, keeping track of numbers is a healthy thing to do.
You say, well, what if you guys say you got 1,000 people saved and only 500 of them got saved or something?
How do you know for a fact that they got saved?
Well, the reason we know they got saved is because we believe the Bible that states that if they call upon the name of the Lord, they're saved.
Now, is it possible that there's a small percentage that didn't get saved?
Absolutely, of course.
But that does not impede us from counting those numbers because we still need a measure by which we can indicate and monitor
Whether we're succeeding or failing. Okay, and look, you know, I messaged there's a missionary an old IP missionary and
You know, he was promoting
Some some missionaries and he said that they're gonna do some soul winning and I was like, oh wow
You know I want to support some missionaries. I said, hey, does this ministry keep track of their soul any numbers?
And this is what he said.
He said, yes, we do, but we're not really big on numbers.
And the guy I was asking, he's not necessarily
the most conservative fundamental Baptist.
And he thinks it's really dumb to keep track of numbers.
But the ministry he's under thinks
it's very important to keep track of numbers.
And the ministry he's under is actually booming as a ministry.
in this part of the country.
Like they have a ton of churches started,
they have a lot of missionaries,
and I'm telling you right now,
the leader of that ministry keeps track of the numbers,
which is why it's succeeding.
But even this guy that I'm messaging,
he would be considered in our eyes like a liberal,
but even he said, yes, we keep track of numbers.
Numbers aren't important,
but yes, we keep track of numbers.
Why? Because you can't have success
without keeping track of numbers, okay?
You know if we keep track of the numbers throughout the year regarding baptisms, and we only saw two baptisms
That's a problem
You know why because if we're seeing let's say let's say we see a thousand bath excuse me a thousand salvations
But we don't have two baptisms
It's not an indicator that we're doing bad in our soul winning. It's an indicator that we're not doing well in the follow-up for baptism
It's an indicator that I'm not preaching enough about baptism
It's an indicator that I need to train the church
to approach people about baptism.
Now thankfully our church does really well
when it comes to baptisms.
You know, like I think last year we had
over 50 baptisms or something like that.
You know, and I think that's a great thing.
And we keep track of people who actually go out
and preach the gospel.
I keep track through the leaders.
You know, we have, you're on a roll.
Like a literal, a spreadsheet roll.
And in that spreadsheet role, it tells us,
do you go to church?
Do you go soul-winning?
Do you pay your taxes?
No, you know, do you tot?
No, we keep track of the basic things
that we want to expect from a church member,
which is church attendance, soul-winning,
things of that nature.
You know, why?
Because we want to see success.
And if things aren't being monitored,
you're not gonna be able to manage success.
And you can start regressing in the Christian life,
regressing as a church,
and then you're gonna have a church
of like five people in the middle of nowhere,
preaching like weird doctrine and stuff,
trying to make excuses why you're not growing.
You know what I'm saying?
You know you're gonna start saying weird stuff and being all hypergrace and you know in order to grow the church
Because you got like four or five people in your church and look if people have four or five people in their church
And they're trying their best. That's that's another situation obviously, you know
I'm not down on people like that, but what I am saying is turn the camera around
You'll catch that later
What I am saying is that you know, you know most of these pastors who are like that are just lazy
And it's not like, oh, we don't care about the numbers.
Of course you don't care, because you ain't got no numbers.
It's easy to count the tendencies in a church of five.
One, two, three, four, five.
And it's easy to keep track of soul winning numbers
if you don't got soul winning numbers.
But folks, when Brother Ulysses and the team goes
to Mexico, I wanna know how many people are getting saved.
Why, because we're paying for that.
We're paying for people to go to Mexico and you know if people go to Mexico and they only get one salvation for three hours of
Soul winning not a best investment of our time
We're thankful for that one soul that got saved, but it's not necessarily worth it now. Thankfully. That's not the case
You know in Mexico in general we get about 17 or 15 to 20 people saved on a really good trip
Well yesterday we got 11 saved that's worth it
So that's a gauge to me and I tell him like how many people got saved and he's just like 11s
All right, that means we keep going and it's an indicator should we go back to that same area or not
So we're not spitting our wheels
Point that I'm making is don't ever have this attitude. Why are we counting the numbers full?
Why do you put the numbers on the bulletin so that you can see where your investment is going?
That's that's why because we want to know that we're a church that is healthy because we're getting people saved
We're getting people back. That's carnal
Yeah, that sounds like some of the lazy pastor would say for sure
Go to Hebrew chapter 12 if you would Hebrew chapter 12
Look, let me just tell you I I have yet to meet a church
That is extremely successful in the ministry that did not count
First Baptist Church of Hammond counted
You know my sit not my sending church. Oh my sending church counts, too. Yeah, you know the church that I got saved in counts
Any huge church that does a lot of soul winning
and successful in soul winning and baptizing counts.
They're not like, well we'll just let success happen.
We'll just do this planet fitness type of thing
and you know, just go into the gym
and just whatever you feel like doing,
you wanna get on the treadmill, get on the treadmill?
You wanna get on the sus machine, get on the sus machine?
No one's gonna judge you.
You wanna do Pilates or something, go for it?
You wanna do yoga?
You know
Whatever you want to do. I'm sorry if you guys go to Planet Fitness or whatever, but you understood the illustration
We want to be intentional about our growth look you want to read through the Bible you got to keep track of Bible reading
It's not like you know
This is what I'm gonna read and the next day is like
Have a Bible reading schedule keep track of the chapters that you're reading
So you can measure your success in your Bible reading
And this is why you know our Bible reading calendar not only has a section for you to check off for your Bible reading
But even for your prayer life
It's a good way to measure success even in your prayer life. Am I praying every day? Am I reading the Bible every day? Okay?
Yeah, but that's why your church produces soul winning sanctified
Zealous Christians you got it right
Point that I'm making here is that if you want to succeed in the Christian life
You got to keep track of numbers if you want to lose weight got to keep track of those calories
You want to get stronger? You better program
You know and look also programming helps us to know when we have to adjust certain things
You know sometimes when if I'm programming for a particular lift and I feel like I'm regressing
It's like all right time to adjust something because I'm getting weaker
I was stronger last year that I am this year. You know something happened. I need to change something here
But if you're just kind of going by the seat of your pants, you're not really going to succeed. You're not going to progress
That's just how it works. Okay
Here's another reason why Christians churches pastors are not fit. We said number one
They're not active enough meaning they're not soul winning. They're not doing the work of the Lord number two
They don't program. They don't keep track of their numbers number three. They don't build stamina
Okay, now I'm not talking about running
Okay, but if that's your thing, you know more power to a to you, I guess
But I will say this, you know, you need to build stamina in the area that you're working on and
Here's the best way I can describe it because I'm not against running. I am against running actually sorry
Let me let me correct that I am personally, but I'm not against you running, okay?
Well, you know for example, you know, we got a lot of jiu-jitsu guys in our church
And they'll tell you, if you want to increase your stamina in jiu-jitsu, you don't go run 10 miles.
It doesn't transfer over.
So I got to get better at jiu-jitsu, so I'm going to go run 10 to 15 miles and that will help me to have more stamina in jiu-jitsu.
That's actually completely false.
The way you get better at jiu-jitsu is by doing jiu-jitsu.
So if you want to build stamina and last in jiu-jitsu, you have to be actually participating in that particular activity.
And the same thing goes with powerlifting.
If you want to become really good at powerlifting,
frequency is what it is.
You need frequency.
You know, for example, myself, in order for me
to squat a good amount of weight,
I need to add more frequency, meaning that I have to squat
more than once a week.
Squat twice a week.
And high volume, okay?
Building stamina in that area where I can do
a really hard workout, rack the bar,
and I still got more in the tank.
That's what it means to build stamina right look at the Hebrews 12 verse 1
It says wherefore seen we are also compassed about so with so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us lay aside every way and the sin which does so easily beset us. Let us run with patience
The race that is set before us. What does it mean to run with patience? Another word for patience is endurance
Run with endurance, meaning that you can last for long periods of time without quitting.
Now when it comes to the Christian life, one thing that'll give you endurance in the Christian life is just doing the Christian life.
Now I had a conversation with the family in our church earlier this morning.
And I won't say their names or anything like that,
but it was a great conversation.
It was very encouraging.
And, you know, the wife said this.
I'm always sharing illustrations for people
without asking permission.
You know, the wife was like, man,
when I first came to church,
like the preaching was so hard,
it was just like, I don't know how much more
of this I can take.
She's just like, every time, it was like a sermon
like about me and I just had to like get right
and it was just like, oh, it's so hard.
But now she's been here for so long
and now it's just like, it's easy.
Like she enjoys it.
And this is how the Bible puts it.
She's able to endure sound doctrine.
And let me just say this, you know,
this morning sermon I preached for an hour and 20 minutes.
That would not fly in old IFB church.
Not even close.
A long sermon in old IAP churches like maybe 45 minutes.
And even then people are like looking at the clock
like you guys would be at the hour
and 30 minute mark or something.
But I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say this
that a lot of people even this morning
they didn't know it was an hour and 20 minute sermon.
You know, some people were saying,
I thought it was like 50 minute long or something like that.
But I'm gonna tell you why,
because they built endurance.
They're able to endure sound doctrine.
And obviously it helps that I'm not giving a TED talk up here too.
You know what I mean?
Like it helps that I'm not preaching a lame sermon because obviously if someone is preaching
for an hour long and their sermon sucks, you know what I mean?
Then I don't expect you to endure that.
But if it's a sermon that's saturated with scripture, biblical concepts, it's enjoyable,
you should be able to endure that.
And I feel like our church has done well with that.
Sermon is long
But for like the old I be like a 50 to an hour
Sermon is long, but for us. That's like another day. And yeah, it's like another day in the office
Me preaching for an hour is just nothing new and you know what new Christians come to our church and they build
Endurance they build an appetite for hard long preaching
I mean how many times have you've heard whore since you've been in this church?
You've heard that many times
You've heard whore you I mean I don't you know you for a faggot. I don't think it's like I
Mean how many times have you heard you you know and you're not like huh?
You're your sides hurting because you can't handle it. You're cramping up. You don't cramp up when I preach
You see the goal is to be able to endure preaching to the point where you're not cramping up
because you have salt in yourselves, right?
You got those spiritual electrolytes in your body
because you've been doing it for so long,
you go, you're three to thrive.
You're three to thrive,
and you know, you're not starting to beat me up
or something because you're three to thrive or something.
You're three to thrive, you read your Bible,
you win souls to Christ,
you're in taking the spiritual electrolytes.
You know and you are enduring sound doctrine. You're able to handle the meat of the word
I'm not giving you marshmallows a TED talk and liberal preaching
You're hearing hard preaching. So it's just like I'm used to the ribeye
This kind of preaching is like ribeye preaching
Right it's that good meat and so your body can handle it, you know, I'm really proud of my daughter by my youngest daughter charity
She's a protein girl
In the morning, she just eats, she asks for eggs and bacon.
She's like, bakken.
She wants bakken.
And my wife will give her toast,
and she just puts the toast aside,
she wants the eggs and bacon, bakken.
And then if we have ground beef, she wants the ground beef.
You know, she can endure that.
But you know those adults that can't even endure that.
Spiritually speaking too.
You know, I guarantee you there's teenagers in our church
that can handle, you know, faggot and whore
and hard preaching and preaching against immodesty
and preaching against false prophets,
more than the adults who have been in church
for a long period of time in other churches.
Most adults that know the church would just fall over dead.
They would cramp up.
They have to be taken out on the stretcher.
They need an IV.
From all the fire from the pulpit.
But the teenagers are just like, they're like, I was good.
I've had, you know, I preached sermons that were just super
hard, and then on the right home, my son was like, dad,
that was awesome.
I love that sermon, dad.
That was good, dad.
I like this one part, dad.
Well, you like that?
Yeah, that was good.
It's not like, dad, why would you say something like that?
You know?
I'm training my kids to endure sound doctrine.
Oh, you know, endure sounds like it's just so hard.
Yeah, because it is, it's called hard preaching.
And you know what, you need to endure sound doctrine
so you're not being carried away with fables and lies.
You know all this nonsense is out there
So when you hear Lane preaching even if you're mad at me for preaching against you
You can't really hear any other preaching because all the old preaching out there sucks anyways
He's I could never go to a liberal church. I
Rather just listen to pastor me here yell at me for an entire hour. At least I know I'll get fed
Because I'll be I've never been to a liberal church, but I'm sure Cody's told me
You know, it's just I'm I'm not afraid to lose members to liberal churches. I'm just not
It's not a fear of mine. I don't have a phobia of that at all
You know because I know that our people have built an appetite for this type of preaching for saturated biblical preaching
built stamina, right
Be able to endure the sound doctrine.
Why are people, why are Christians, pastors,
and churches out of shape?
Because they can endure the preaching.
It's too hard for them.
It's too much, you know?
They're lactose intolerant.
They're like vegans.
You know, like vegetarian vegans
that just cannot handle the meat of the word.
And you know, we've had people, like, visitors come,
and they're, you know, I'll preach.
You know, you guys bring visitors, like,
sometimes on the worst sermons, you know?
And then, you know, I'm preaching a hard sermon,
and our regular members are like, amen.
You know, they're just like, that was good, you know?
And then the other person's like,
ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,
they're just like, die, you know, they're like,
how much, that's only the third point, you know?
Go back to go to 2nd Timothy chapter 2 again
2nd Timothy chapter 2. I'm trying not to preach long tonight. I got a couple minutes left and two more points
Well, the Bible says 2nd Timothy 2 3 says thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ
You know, God expects us to endure the hard truths.
And you know, let me just say this,
is that, you know, when you listen to hard preaching,
you know, saturated biblical preaching,
you're actually able to enjoy the exhortations
that much the more.
So, like the nice preaching that I have,
you're actually like, wow, that was really nice.
Like, I really, you actually appreciate that more.
But what if you only had exhortations?
Right?
You know, there's times when my preaching is sweet,
you know, it's always like, you know, bitter,
and sometimes it's sweet,
but when it's sweet, you appreciate it more.
You're like, wow, that was really lovely, right?
But what if you only had lovely?
You know, it's important for us,
in order to enjoy the dessert,
we have to finish our meal.
We gotta get the meat of the word, okay?
All right, why are Christians out of shape?
Why are pastors out of shape?
Why are churches out of shape?
I'll tell you why.
They're too overweight.
And that's definitely true for pastors,
like in the most literal sense.
If you visit the South,
there's a lot of overweight preachers, okay?
But look, look, and if you are overweight,
I'm in your group, okay?
Because, you know, I may be thin right now,
but I'm a fat boy in here, though.
The inner man is a fat boy, okay?
Don't let the small way confuse you.
I love to eat just like you, OK?
So don't be offended at this because I
know what I'm talking about, OK?
But it's true.
Some people are just overweight, which
is why they're out of shape.
It minimizes their mobility.
You break a sweat, tying your shoes.
You just can't live a normal life.
Got to buy new clothes and stuff every time.
I know what I'm talking about because I'm talking about myself
And obviously, that's why I got to work on it, all right?
You know, people are like, what's your sin, Patrick?
Gluttony, what do you mean what you know what my sin is?
I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke,
I don't roam with those that do, I'd like to eat.
But you know, this is true spiritually speaking too.
Sometimes people are spiritually overweight
and that's why they're not fit in the Lord.
You know why?
Because their heart is as fat as grease.
That's what the Bible says.
They're filling their hearts with a bunch of junk food.
They're not filling their hearts with the right types
of things, with the word of God, with preaching.
Therefore, they're spiritually overweight.
And what does the Bible say?
Let us lay aside every weight!
And the sandwich does so easily but set us.
Look at 2 Timothy 2.4.
It says, no man that wore it and tangled it themselves with the affairs of this life that he may please him with chosen him to be a
Soldier the Bible tells us, you know and as I mentioned you got to put on the right kind of weight if you're gonna lift
Weights and be healthy. You actually got to put on the right type of weight
You know sometimes, you know people fill themselves up with podcast and shows and things that are just not beneficial to the Christian life
You know they fill themselves up with the Republican Party politicians, you know sports and all this stuff
And then this is like there's no room left for the protein
There's no room left for the preaching for your walk with God for prayer for so many
You know if you're gonna increase your calories make sure a large portion of that is protein
Then a lot of it comes from protein, you know the 1800 calories that I would consume
I would always make sure that the 200 grams of that was protein
And, you know, that, I mean, I would kind of fluctuate
on the 1800 calorie thing, but I would never,
ever compromise on the 200 mark.
Now, tell my wife, 200, and she's like, you got 195,
and I'm like, what are you trying to do to me?
You trying to mess up my squats or my deadly, like, 200?
I need 200.
Why? Because that's like the most important thing.
And you know what, if you're gonna go over a little
on the things that you put in your heart,
go over by putting more preaching into your heart.
You know, you got your 200 grams of protein
by three to thrive.
You know, go 210 and go listen to some sermons
by my friends when you go home, right?
Go increase more protein.
Instead of going home and, you know,
listening to how the world's gonna end
because of the tariffs or whatever.
You know go and actually listen to preaching go listen to the system preaching go listen to some godly music
Go participate in activities that will increase your protein intake spiritually speaking
Okay, point that I'm making is that some people are just too overweight
Which is why spiritually speaking they are not affected for the service of God
They're filling their hearts with things that are not going to benefit them in the long run. All right two more minutes. I'm done
I'm trying to hit this mark here.
Last point, go to Matthew chapter 11.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
I'm just kidding.
All right, here's the last reason why people
are spiritually out of shape.
And that is because they don't take rest days.
Believe it or not, rest days.
You know, one thing they teach you,
who's they?
You know, they, okay?
One thing they teach you is that when you're lifting weights,
you have to make sure you take a rest day
for that particular body part or whatever, okay?
And you gotta make sure you get your eight hours
of sleeping, you're taking your rest day.
Why? Because you don't necessarily build muscle,
no, you don't build muscle at all
when you're in the gym, by the way.
Get a good little pump for sure.
You know, the blood flows and you get that pump.
But muscle isn't actually built in the gym at all.
It's actually built in the kitchen
and while you're sleeping.
You actually tear your muscle.
You're tearing down your muscle when you're in the gym.
And then when you go to sleep, then, you know,
your body begins to work on and rebuilding that tissue.
So that muscle you tore, if you consumed enough protein,
they'll take that protein and make the muscle stronger.
Okay?
That's when it's important to get good rest.
And so, you know, runners know this,
people with power lift know this.
You know, I know this personally just because
if there's nights that I don't get a good night's sleep.
My lifts don't go well the very next day.
I'm really tired, my body feels weak,
because I don't get enough rest.
And in fact, you can actually begin to regress substantially
if you don't take enough rest days.
And obviously, I'm not saying that you have to rest for long periods of time,
but there has to be a time when you rest that particular muscle group.
Squatting on Monday and then squatting on Tuesday is not a good idea.
You shouldn't do that.
Okay, there needs to be a couple days in between
that particular exercise in order for you to recover.
So rest is good for recovery, right?
That's what I'm saying.
Now, how do we apply this spiritually?
I'm not talking about resting from church.
Stay three to thrive, amen.
No, I think you should take a break
from coming to church.
You know, yeah, you do take breaks.
It's called Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
And then you come back Thursday.
Then you take another break from Friday to Saturday for Sunday.
And then when he comes Sunday morning,
you take a break in between services.
Those are the good breaks, amen.
But this is what I mean by resting,
because spiritually speaking, the way we rest
is actually by reading the Word of God
and walking with God every single day.
Look what it says in Matthew 11, 28,
coming to me, are you that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn to me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest into your souls
You know if you want to succeed in the Christian life in the service of God
You have to work you got a program you got a keep track of numbers
Let me say this if you're not doing this you will actually begin to regress as a Christian if you're not walking with God
Let and let me just remind you as your pastor. You better make sure that you're reading your Bible
every single day you better make sure you're taking your rest days by when
you go home you wake up in the morning before you do anything else open the
Bible and you walk with the Lord sit at the feet of Jesus and hear his word
right that's a rest because that's how you rejuvenate yourself that's how you
recover that's how you get yourself spirits the money you got to feed the
inner man so that the inner man is fit to do the work of the Lord
Okay, and you know don't undermine this. This is the most important part of the sermon here
Okay, the most important part of the sermon is that you walk with God
Do you believe it or not? Yes, do you have a personal relationship with the Lord?
Okay, and people who'd say that don't even know what that means
You know the reason we know what it means is because we we know what it entails
It's opening the word of God
worshiping God
Praying unto the Lord reading God's word consuming the content of the Bible
Examining your heart. We need that
Okay, you know every single day we need that and so that's the rest day
You know in order for you to be fit for the kingdom of God
You need these elements in order to do so and so you know if you want to be just an out of shape
Fat Christian, who's not strong in the Lord
and the power of his might.
You're lazy, you're sedentary.
Yeah, stop counting numbers.
Yeah, yeah, don't program.
Yeah, you know, don't intake whatever's going into your heart,
the word of God.
You know, don't worry about any of that
because that's a recipe for disaster there.
But if you actually want to progress in the Christian life, you need to do these things in order to be fit for the Kingdom of God.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word, and Lord, help us as your people to meet for the master's use.
Help us to be fit.
in the Lord for your work, Lord.
And I pray that you'd help us to walk with you
this coming week as we wake up in the morning
and read the word of God and meditate upon
the things of the word of God.
And I pray that you'd help us to esteem spiritual matters
far more than anything else that we're consumed with.
Lord, life is filled with different activities
that don't necessarily entail the work of Christ.
And some of those activities are just necessary things
that we just have to do.
But I pray that you'd help us as your people to seek first the kingdom of God and never put the work of God on the backburner, never put our walk with God on the backburner.
Help us to always make sure that we're striving to be productive in the work of the Lord by winning people to Christ, by being a blessing to our brothers and sisters in Christ, by being a blessing in our church.
And Lord, may you bless us as we go on our way.
Give us a great week.
We love you.
We thank you.
Pray the scenes in Jesus' name.
Amen.