Let's find a seat, let's grab a hymnal and turn to song number 405.
Everybody let's open up the service now with a word of prayer.
Lori love you and we thank you again for all the events today, the soul winning, the barbecue,
everything was so great.
Lori we love you and we're just so privileged to be here.
We just ask now that you fill this room with your spirit, bless this church and everything
that it does and help us sing out loudly to you and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Song number 261, turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Song number 261, let's all sing it out together on the first.
Thank you for coming to St. Vaz Baptist Church.
If you did not already get a bulletin,
or you'd like another one,
one of rushers can come by.
If you just lift your hand up real quick,
one of rushers can come by and get you guys
a bulletin on the front.
We have a picture that I took
from the Bahamas Mission Strip I was on this week.
And it's really a great area to go soul winning.
It's also very beautiful.
If anybody can quote the Bible memory passage,
the verse of the week on Wednesday,
they can get ice cream.
And then Matthew 28, the entire chapter, there's a price for that as well.
On the inside is our service and soul winning times.
Also, please make sure you're turning in your church stats for our soul winning.
Our maps, there's a bin out here that you can put done or completed maps in.
That would really help us.
On the right is a list of expecting ladies.
Upcoming events.
We are practicing our kids choir on Sundays
until our Easter services,
and we're gonna be having our kids perform
a couple songs on Easter Sunday,
so that'll be very exciting.
Our spring recital is gonna be this upcoming Saturday at four.
There's not gonna be a reception this year,
but we are still just gonna have the recital,
so if you'd like to just come, it's at four.
Anybody's welcome to attend.
There was the tryouts, make sure you show up
for those tryout times.
We have the Foley wedding that's going to be happening on March 28th. That's a Friday at 6 p.m.
And so we're really looking forward to that
Please make sure to RSVP to brother Sam about that
Also Mansfield so many marathon is April 19th and then a couple other church reminders down below
Just another quick plug or we're still going to have a lot of events upcoming in the future. We have plenty of so many trips
ladies, tea, things like that, but a couple things to plug. In the middle of August, we are going to have our men's conference,
so we're still having our mighty men's conference in the middle of August.
I believe it's like the 14th or 15th, and I have to look on my phone, and then at the end of August the 28th through the 31st,
we're going to have our Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship Conference, and that's going to be a lot of fun.
We have guest preachers that are coming in for that. Yeah, the men's retreat is the 14th and 15th.
and 16th of August.
Then the FBBF is the 28, 29, 30th and 31st.
And then we're gonna have our Bahamas mission strip
October 6th through 11th.
And so we got a lot of big events like that.
Just wanna put on your radar.
And also, today, we got to celebrate.
We had a barbecue bash for lunch for our evangelist,
Duncan Urbanek, who's here.
They're gonna be going back in a week or so
back to the Philippines, so this is your opportunity
to fellowship with them, hang out.
I guess God multiplied our food for lunch,
so we have so many leftovers.
Brother Ryan said we have round two tonight,
so if you want, they're gonna be serving tonight.
a round two for anybody that would like to have that.
I kind of have an anticipation we're going to we shattered our evening record again.
I don't know why we keep breaking our records, but we broke the Wednesday, the morning, and the
evening, so we'll probably have ice cream again. And so if you like ice cream, so you can stick
around with us. I don't know if you're here for the ice cream and the barbecue or the preaching,
but I'm just going to say it's for the preaching, okay? So
Or brother Duncan, you know, it could be a lot of reasons, but
Thank you so much to brother Ryan for doing the barbecue. It's our and in barbecue
And he does such a good job. Let's give him a round of applause for that. This is really good. Yeah
And thanks to everybody for being patient
and having lunch with us.
It was a lot of fun.
Thanks God for a beautiful day.
Because in Texas, in the spring,
you never know what you're gonna get,
but he gave us a great day today.
And so thank the Lord for that.
Hazel soul winning marathon did great 92 soul winners and 43 salvations. That's really epic. And then
down below we have our prayer list. Please keep our church family and your and your prayers. And if
you have an additional prayer request, please email that to us or submit that to us. We'd love to
have that. If you are planning on going to the Bahamas trip,
What you need to do is after you buy your plane tickets,
just email me your itinerary
and we're stashing that away
and we're getting that organized.
So if you are planning on attending,
you just, once you've purchased your tickets,
you can just email us that itinerary.
We're gonna go ahead and sing our new Psalm.
It's a brand new Psalm, Psalm of the Week 58.
It isn't our special binders.
Brother Dustin's gonna come help
and lead it this evening.
Psalm 58.
All right, that was Psalm 58.
For the outro, we're going to go back into the chorus.
Watch me on the timing.
Psalm 58, let's all sing it out together.
of your
Canada
Earth
the way they are
estates
from the moon
they go
first way
as soon as they
get home
Oh, my congregation, ye judge of pride, ye holy sons of man.
Their voice in his light, the voice in our land.
Serpent they are like, the deaf and the deaf.
Stop it for a year.
This will not.
the voice of
Charmers
Charming
Never
so
I feel a voice
of
Charmers
Charming
Never so
wise we
we
speak righteousness
of congregation
Thank you so much.
As blood and pieces, give peace, give righteousness,
O congregation, you ye judge of rightly,
Holy sons of men, as the smell which melted.
Sunny for your past, can't feel good for me.
Shall fade them away as with God.
World in both living, and it is glad.
Give me a means, be preciousness,
the sun's on hand.
The branches shall rejoice when we see it now.
Vengeance we shall watch.
The congregation, you need such a primate holy sons of men.
We're singing, everybody.
Now as the offering plates are being passed around,
go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 27.
That's the book of Proverbs chapter number 27.
Proverbs chapter 27, the Bible says,
Boast not thyself of tomorrow,
for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.
Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth,
a stranger and not thine own lips.
A stone is heavy and the sand weighty,
but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.
Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous,
but who is able to stand before envy?
open rebuke is better than secret love faithful are the wounds of a friend but
the kisses of an enemy are deceitful the full soul loatheth a honeycomb but to
the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet as a bird that wandereth from her
nest so is a man that wandereth from his place ointment and perfume rejoice the
heart so that the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel
Thine own friend, and thy father's friend, forsake not, neither go into thy brother's
house in the day of thy calamity, for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother
far off.
My son be wise, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him that reproacheth me.
A prudent man foreseeeth the evil and hideeth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
Take his garment that is surety for a stranger, and take a pledge of him for a strange woman."
He that blessed his friend with a loud voice rising early in the morning it shall be counted a curse to him a
Continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike
Whosoever hideeth her hide it the wind and the ointment of his right hand which be reeth itself
Iron sharpeneth iron so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend who so keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof
So, he that waiteth on his master shall be honored.
As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man.
Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied.
As the finding pot for silver and the furnace for gold, so is a man to his praise.
Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his
Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.
For riches are not forever, and doth the crown endure to every generation.
The hay up hereeth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered."
The lambs are for thy clothing and the goats are the price of the field and thou shalt have goats milk enough for thy food
For the food of thy household and for the maintenance of thy maidens. Let us pray. Dear heavenly father
I thank you for this great church and the great works that you're doing through this church
Thank you for our pastor pastor Shelley. I ask you to please bless him and help him to lead this church
Please help him now as he preached to your word in Jesus name. Amen
And then I want to look at verse 23 again the Bible says be thou diligent to know the state
of thy flocks and look well to thy herds. Now I believe the next verse actually kind of
gives us a little bit of a kind of connection.
It says, for riches or not forever,
end up the crown endured every generation.
So it's very important to be diligent
in managing the assets or managing the goods
or managing the people that God has given unto us.
And so we should take note here
that it's important to pay attention to what you're doing
and what God has given to you.
And I kind of broke this down
into two different categories.
is number one, I wanna talk about finances,
and number two, I wanna talk about family.
And I believe that these are two different ways
that we could take this verse and apply it
because a flock in the Old Testament,
especially, or that timeline,
your money is wrapped up in your livestock.
It's wrapped up in your cattle, your herd,
your goats, your sheep.
That is often for many people,
their finances. That is the money that they have. And the Bible is telling us that it would be
important to be diligent to know the state of your flock, trying to understand everything about
your flock. Understanding
how many sheep you have, understanding its well-being.
Is it healthy?
Is it sickly?
Is it lean cattle?
Is it fat cattle?
Just basically just everything that's going on
with your situation.
And I wanna talk about that first from a finance perspective
and then I wanna talk about it from a family perspective,
the people that you have to manage or look over.
And it's really important, you know, I think beyond that I'm breaking it down in two points
But then we could take each point and break it down in two points, too
So if we're looking at finances
The two things that I think are important is look at is how much you have and then what is the quality of what you have?
Those are two different things completely
When you try to understand your financial position or the money that you have, it's important to know how much you have,
but it's also important to understand what type of quality of money you have.
because not all money is the same kind of money.
You can have cash, you could have real estate,
you could have investments, you could have Bitcoin, right?
You can have all these different things going on,
and you could have money that's coming in
because you start a business.
And sometimes it's important to understand that business.
It's important to understand that some businesses
have what's called seasonality.
So some businesses do really good
at certain parts of the season, like a Christmas shop.
That does good during Christmas season,
but it doesn't do very good in the summer.
It doesn't do very good in the spring
because it's simply not Christmas.
And so you have to understand, okay,
the money that I'm making from this particular venture
may not necessarily reflect what's gonna happen
for all of its future.
Go if you would to Luke chapter 16,
go to Luke chapter number 16.
We have to understand the Bible teaches a lot of principles
and we have to also be diligent
in the things that God gives us.
Sheep and oxen, flocks, these things,
they also have seasonality.
You have a calving season.
So you have the time when animals actually bring forth
and have their young.
You could have potentially a sheep business
where you're shearing sheep to get their coat
and then you sell their wool.
Well, that's seasonal, that's not gonna always happen.
You have to kind of a lot for that and think about it.
And so we wanna make sure that we're very careful
in thinking about our finances and how the money comes in.
People that are farmers have to think very diligently
about their finances because they often get paid once a year.
Many farmers have one paycheck for the entire year and so then they have to think about that and a lot that money
For their entire year. They can't just spend like they're just bringing in money all the time
I have a kind of a famous example of this in my mind that I may have preached before but
I'll just kind of remind you of this story because I used to work at a bank and we had
a new customer start a brand new frozen yogurt business and they started at the beginning
of summer and their first month so this is the first month brand new they just opened
I mean, just the first month.
The problem is this shop owner then thought,
oh, I'm gonna make $100,000 in profit
every single month for the rest of my life.
Which was not true because since it was brand new,
tons of people coming out of the woodwork,
people just wanna try it.
It was just kind of a unique phenomenon in that area.
But he wanted the bank to loan him a bunch of money
to start two more businesses
in the second month of operation.
So operation day one.
He brought in $100,000 profit, it cost him not even that much money to start a new business.
Cost him maybe $150,000 or $200,000 to start a new one.
So he's just like, I want $400,000, I want to start two more of these.
We're doing way better than I thought.
Us at the bank, we were like, I was a credit analyst.
So we like, you know, look at the numbers
and we were just like, no, it doesn't make sense.
You don't have money, this is bad.
And we basically tell him no,
and then he goes and cries to some upper management
and they're like, okay, we'll do it.
So they override us.
So we give him two more businesses.
So this guy starts a frozen yogurt business,
makes $100,000 first month,
then opens two more locations like almost immediately.
So he has three frozen yogurt businesses in the same town and he does pretty good in the summer now
He doesn't have a hundred thousand dollar net profit the first month the second month
There's you know tapers off, but he's still doing good
Once he but he basically opens the next two by about the end of the summer
So throughout the summer. He's just killing it doing good at this one location
Then at the end of the summer he now pops up and he has three frozen yogurt places
Now, he's taking about a $20,000 loss at each location every single month and he just happened
to sign two and three year leases at these really expensive places where he's leasing
property and the guy, this is what's interesting about the guy, the guy before any of this
used to own a lawn care business.
He owned a lawn care business and he made probably $150,000, $200,000 a year, worked
pretty hard.
He ended up selling his business for $200,000 and invested all in this rose and yogurt.
So he had a business of 10 to 20 years doing lawn care, very successful, sold it all, started
this rose and yogurt business.
By the end of the year, those two that he'd opened were already closed down and he ended
eventually. So basically just lost all the money all the assets he had lost his
entire business because everything all money is not the same kind of money you
have to think about it and I mean it shouldn't take a genius to realize that
people like frozen yogurt in the summer a lot more than they like it in the
winter.
And yet this person just kind of got a little hasty,
hasty to be rich, had an evil eye,
and wanted to just make it big,
and instead of just taking the time,
hey, let's go a whole year,
figure out what your numbers look like
before we open round number two.
Or maybe pay off your debt
before you just start opening new businesses.
And yet, you know, this guy wasn't really being diligent
to know the state of his flock, in my mind.
He wasn't really thinking about what's really happening,
what's coming in, let's be patient here.
And so, you know, sometimes we have to think about it like,
the money that you have or the money that's coming in,
is that sustainable?
Is that gonna keep coming in?
Is this investment gonna go up?
Is it gonna go down?
These are things that we need to think about.
Look at Luke chapter 16, look at verse number nine.
The Bible says in I see in you make yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness that when you fail, they may receive
you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful not
which is least is faithful also and much and he that is
unjust in the least is unjust also and much. The Bible says
if therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous
mammon who will commit to your trust the true riches. So the
Bible says a few things here. First of all,
The principle that if you're faithful in that which is least,
you're gonna be faithful in that which is much as well.
And if, you know, one month of business
is not really been showing yourself faithful.
You know, there was a guy that started a church,
his name was Tyler Doca,
and he ordained an evangelist one week
after starting his church.
And in the bio of his evangelist, he said,
this guy has been faithful to our church since the opening.
And I'm thinking like, you're kind of misusing the word
faithful here.
You know, like, it's not faithful that you just showed up
one time last week.
And if you think like, hey, I came to Steadfast last week,
can I be the evangelist now?
The answer's no.
Okay.
Evangelist or bannock was faithful at church for years
and did all kinds of things for our church.
He was faithful.
Okay.
So, you know, we need to make sure that we're faithful
God may give you just a little bit but he wants to see how are you going to do with this for a month?
Six months a year
Years maybe even a decade in some cases and then he might give you much if you've been faithful in that which is least
Of course, there's a lot of spiritual connections here
But think about the unrighteous mammon is being brought up in the previous verse
It says make yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness
It's kind of saying, like, make some rich friends.
I'm just telling you what the Bible says.
The Bible says make rich friends.
Why?
Because things cost money.
And it's nice to have people that have money
because things cost money, even serving God costs money.
And when you make to yourselves friends
of the unrighteous man, they can help pay for things.
You know, praise God, we get to have a building today.
Praise God, we had lunch today.
Praise God, we have opportunities to go on missions trips
and have all these events that are free.
You know, someone paid for that.
And it's nice to have people that have money
and work hard and then use that money
for the things of God.
And whatever God gives us, we should be very good stewards of.
We should be faithful with so that God can give us much.
And then of course, when we have much,
then we can use that for the service of God,
for the things of God, for blessing our family,
for blessing our friends, for blessing other people,
and being that individual that can help others.
You know, the Bible says, he that is rich,
Like he's talking about charge them that are rich
in this world, that they'd be ready to distribute,
willing to communicate.
Saying, hey, if you work hard,
if you're faithful, now which is least,
and you do right for a long time
and then God ends up blessing you,
well there's kind of an obligation
that then if someone comes along
and needs something that you're willing to help that person.
Like you're kind of ready to help,
you're kind of ready to use those assets
that God's given you.
And what I've noticed is when people help others,
God ends up blessing that person even more.
It doesn't really make sense, but it works.
And I've seen that with myself.
I've seen that with other people when you bless people
and then other blessings come out of nowhere.
Also, the Bible talks about leaving an inheritance.
Go back to Proverbs chapter number 13.
But, you know, as a man...
or the leader of the house,
you need to make sure that you know
where your money's coming from.
You know how much money you have,
that you budget, that you forecast,
that you do all of these things.
Now, if your wife is better at accounting than you
or has skill in that area,
and you want to allow her to help, no problem.
But you better be reviewing it.
And you better know you don't have to physically do the labor if you don't want to but you better be aware of it and
Managing it and thinking about it and and taking you know some leadership on that role
You know, as a man, you need to know how much money you're
bringing in, you need to know how much money's going out.
You need to know where you're headed.
You should know what your net worth is and you should be
working on increasing your overall net worth,
increasing your goods, paying attention.
I mean, the Bible is saying, be thou diligent to know the
state of thy flocks.
Jacob was a great manager of the flock and he increased
Laban's flock greatly.
And he was faithful in that which was leased.
And then what did God do?
He gave him the whole flock.
He gave him all the assets and he gave him all the money
because he's such a good manager.
Look at Joseph.
Joseph is a great money manager
and a great steward of the blessing
that was given unto him.
He was given seven years of plenty
and he was able to weather seven years of famine.
Not only that, he literally took
the entire wealth of the world.
He was such a good money manager and such a good steward that he was able to basically
preserve life in the entire world and made his boss the richest man in the entire world and accumulated all the wealth of the
world for Pharaoh. Now, I don't agree with the fact that he then
basically put everybody in debt on top of that.
But there was nothing wrong with preserving the race and even making money for his boss.
He was doing what was was right and he acquired all the wealth. You know as
the stewards of God, we've been given assets, we've been given that God has given us money,
God has given us jobs, God has given us finances, and we should be good stewards of the finances
that God gives us. We should not be bad stewards, and I think personally it's just a bad stewardship
to just say like, I don't really know, I don't really pay attention to money,
I just spend money, that's a bad attitude.
We should not be apathetic to these things.
We should be diligent, we should pay attention,
we should think about them, we should budget for things,
we should be thinking about the money that we're spending.
Now look, I'm not saying don't spend money.
You can spend as, this is what my dad said.
And I like this principle.
This is not the Bible, this is my dad.
Okay, this is my dad's opinion.
He said there's nothing wrong with spending the money you have.
Just don't spend the money you don't have.
And most people, their financial problems
are because they spend money they don't have,
not that they're spending the money that they do have.
And how do you spend money they don't have?
It's called credit cards, it's called loans,
payday, cash, advances, all kinds of things like that.
That's when you get yourself into worlds of hurt.
And so it's really important to really think about
the money that you have and being realistic
about those things, paying attention to those things.
I personally, I have a spreadsheet.
Like it's just an Excel spreadsheet, I use Google Sheets, it's free.
If you have a Gmail account, Google Sheets is completely free.
I have a sheet and I have on it every single transaction that I make.
All the transactions and I know exactly how much money is coming in
I can tell you what my finances are gonna look like three months from now
I can do it as far as I want
But I'm just I have it about three months in advance so I kind of have an idea how much money I have how much money
I will have what kind of big expenditures I may have thinking about things
You know sometimes you pay insurance like every six months or every year or you have all kinds of different bills and things
It's important to know those things so you don't think in your mind. Oh, I've got
$2,000 in the bank and forget you have to pay insurance
and like the next month or something
and you go spend all that money
and then now you have this bill and you can't pay it.
You know, realizing, hey, we're pregnant.
That's gonna cost an arm and a leg and 10 fingers, okay?
And think like, hey, I might need to budget for that.
I might need to plan a little bit for that.
Hey, my car is...
On its last leg, I might need a new car, planning for that.
You want to get a house, planning for that, budgeting for that.
I think unfortunately our society is taking advantage of a lot of young people
and instead of them saving money and investing in a house or property,
they're just spending all that extra money on just random things.
Just buying an extra watch or car or eating out or doing whatever instead of actually like maybe taking that money and
Making a wiser good investment
And you know we should be careful to think about the money that we have and how we're spending it and of course
Then the guy that's lazy and waste all of his money and is a bad steward then gets mad at other people who are not bad stewards
He's like oh this guy is rich because he didn't waste all his money on lottery tickets
It's like well. No lottery tickets are bad investment
You know just because someone invests or saves or works hard doesn't make them a bad person
In fact that actually makes them a good person
The good person is the one that's diligent to know the state of their flocks is one that's faithful now
Which is least is actually investing in the right kind of things the bad person is the one that's lazy
Apathetic and just waste the money that God gives them and I'll tell you you know rich people
Whatever you think about them
They're not lazy
There is some exceptions you could have like a you could have this example of like a trust fund kid or something
We're basically just inherit wealth
But the people that have money they had to work very hard to get it and they usually had to put a lot of
Diligence into it and they often don't spend a lot of money people that are just spending money like crazy will become poor very soon
I mean even celebrities you look at rich rich rich celebrities
They're making twenty seven million dollars a year thirty million dollars a year and then you look at them. They're they're in debt
They literally have no money, they have no net worth,
because they just spend everything that's coming in,
they're just a bad money manager.
It doesn't matter how much money is coming in,
it matters how you manage the money that's coming in.
Okay, and there are plenty of people
that don't even make very much money,
but they're just good with their money,
and over a long period of time,
they'll have acquired a lot of wealth.
Well, what does the Bible say in Proverbs 13?
Look at verse number 22.
A good man leaveeth an inheritance
to his children's children.
And the wealth of the sinner is laid out for the just.
So, you know, sometimes you inherit windfalls
just because you're a righteous person.
The sinner gets his money taken from him
and just gives it to a just person.
But, you know, the Bible says a good man
leaveeth an inheritance not unto his children,
unto his children's children.
That's what the Bible says.
And I think it's important for us to think about that
and to play.
Now, I believe that
Go to Psalm 37 go to Psalm 37. I think that we might be in a period of plenty
You know Joseph went through a seven-year period of plenty and he was coming up against the seven years of famine
I'm not forecasting seven of anything. I have no idea what I am saying is this with Trump in office
It's it's likely that this could be a good time economically for us
And what we should do is we should be diligent
with that opportunity and we should take advantage
of that opportunity and be good stewards of that opportunity.
We don't want to be like Joseph,
where we're just not paying attention
to the seven years of plenty
and not doing anything good with it.
You know, we should take that opportunity
to make the money, to make the stuff that's out there,
take advantage of those opportunities
and then invest them in good things
so that we could weather a future storm.
Because if you look at any real estate market,
any finance market, anything, they always go up and down.
There's always ebbs and flows.
And what's good, hey, take advantage of the good times.
But don't just waste all of it.
You know, make some good investments.
Be diligent to know the state of the flocks, okay?
And we should know the state of our flocks,
know what's going on, and be very careful
with what God has blessed us with.
Now Psalm 37, I want to look at verse number 25.
I have been young, and now I'm old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread?"
I mean, the Bible is basically saying like, poor people that are begging bread are not righteous.
I mean, if you read the opposite of this, he's saying the righteous have never been like this.
So then if I see someone in this case, it must mean there's some kind of issue with their righteousness.
What is righteousness doing right?
What's one of those things?
Often it's because of a result of being lazy,
maybe making bad decisions,
getting involved in bad crowds,
just basically just not taking ownership,
just being apathetic, not caring,
making bad decisions, being lazy.
You know, it's really easy to be poor
because all you have to do is nothing.
I mean, he's like, what's the credentials
of being a homeless person?
Just do nothing.
I mean, many high school kids and college kids
have already got that locked down.
They just go hide in their basement,
play video games, do nothing, and they don't work hard,
they don't study, they don't try to get a job,
and it's really, really easy to do nothing and be poor.
What's hard is to accumulate wealth.
It's very hard, it takes a lot of diligence,
it takes a lot of hard work,
and you know, I empathize with people
that are starting out with nothing.
I mean, it's hard.
It's often easy to make money with money.
It's very hard to make money with nothing.
And it's very hard if you don't have someone help you with getting education or getting
a job, if you have to kind of start from scratch.
In many cases, it takes a lot, a lot of effort, a lot, a lot of energy, and I don't envy that
position because it's very difficult.
And I've been there where I haven't had much money
and I've had to work very hard, and we all have to.
But here's the thing, if you're righteous,
you know, blessed is the man that walketh not
in the council dealing godly.
You know, the Bible talks about when you do that,
which is right, you work hard, you're diligent,
God will bless you, and I've noticed a pattern
that people that serve God and do right,
he takes care of their needs.
And when we take care of our needs,
we need to be careful of that.
Go to Luke chapter 14, go to Luke chapter 14.
So I'm just kind of hopping around a lot of verses here.
You know what I'm saying is not the most important thing.
Money is not the most important thing.
You could be the poorest person on the earth
and still have great riches in heaven and serve God.
You know, a man's life is not based on the abundance
of the things that he possesses, okay?
It's not a man's value.
But at the same time, we can't just like run with that
and say like, okay, then God expects me to do nothing.
No, the Bible says if you forsake your own like if you provide not for your own you're worse than an infidel
So, you know, if God gives me the opportunity to be in America,
which is the most prosperous nation in the world,
if God's given me parents that educated me,
if God's given me an opportunity to have jobs,
if God's given me a really smart brain or good verbal communication
or hands that work or legs that move,
and I'm not using that to work hard and do what I can,
well, to me, I'm just neglecting all the talents and all the gifts that God's given me.
You know, if God gave me 10 talents, I'd better use 10 talents.
If God's given me five, I'd better use five.
Hey, if God's given me one talent, I'd better put that to use.
You know what?
There's no special credit in heaven that you just buried your talent in the ground
and claimed that you're spiritual.
The spiritual person works.
And let me tell you, you find people in the Bible that you like,
they work and they work hard.
And they're good stewards of what they've been given.
and they're good managers of what they've been given,
and they're not just going around making a bunch of excuses,
they actually change their lives by working.
They say, I don't like my situation, I'll fix it.
And you know, we need a bunch of people that are willing to fix their problems
instead of complaining about their problems all the time.
And what's wrong with America?
People complain about their situation instead of just fixing it.
It's called mansplaining.
You know what, we need some more men around here.
Okay, they just fix things, and they just know how things work,
and they just actually work hard.
You know, I wish that I had people explaining this to me when I was younger because I didn't always have a good work ethic
And I still even need a good reminder every once in a while
We all need to work hard and be diligent to know the state of our flocks
You know, it's hard work to go out and check the cheap and check the ox and check the flocks, but we need to do that
Now look chapter 14 look at verse 28
For which of you intending to build a tower sit it's not down first and count of the cost whether you have sufficient to finish it
Let's happily after you've laid the foundation and is not able to finish it all that behold it begin to mock him saying this man begin
To build it was not able to finish
Bible saying hey if you're gonna make a building if you're gonna build something you have to first figure out how much
Doesn't even cost and if you don't raise the finances if you haven't procured the money
Well, you're gonna look kind of silly when you fail
You're gonna look weird when you start three frozen yogurt places
And then they all closed down because you didn't actually count the cost you didn't actually think about what it takes
You didn't actually have the finances to get it done and then people are gonna kind of use you as a proverb and a byword
And you're gonna make fun of you
You know, you're gonna look bad when you start a house,
start building it, and then now you can't use it.
You know, you can't actually put, you know,
the flooring in, you can't put all the stuff.
You're kind of just stuck.
You're stuck with an empty building.
And there's sometimes you'll go down the road
and you'll find a construction project that's on halt
and just never gets done, just days, months, years,
and you're kind of thinking like, what's going on?
They ran out of money.
They weren't diligent, they didn't count the cost,
they didn't think about it, and we shouldn't be like that.
Now of course we can apply this all spiritually,
can't we?
Right.
That whatever God's given us,
that we need to make sure that we're counting the cost,
and we're thinking about it,
and we're willing to go out
and make that spiritual sacrifice.
You know when it comes to the things of God,
it's not salvation's free, but serving God is not free.
Being saved, free.
Being a disciple costs you everything.
Amen.
It costs you your mother, your brother, your wife, even your own life is what the Bible says.
If you want to be at a site, we have to count the cost and we have to think about that.
And sometimes you have to be even thinking about, hey, am I willing to make that sacrifice?
Am I willing to give these things up if push comes to shove?
Would I be willing? Because you know, you're going to look really silly when you're serving God
and then all of a sudden it's like, well, my brother's offended, now I'm going to leave church.
Well, hey, I'm all in it.
I'm gonna go soul-winning.
I'm gonna do this.
Well, but you know what?
To go soul-winning, you gotta show up.
You gotta actually come early.
You gotta spend time on Sundays.
Well, I don't have that time.
Well, then you're not gonna be able to do it.
Hey, I want to go to Stifast Baptist Church.
Have you looked online to see how our reputation looks?
Because then they might be friends, family, even your work.
Hey, you go to this church.
Never heard of the man, you know, I know not the man right you're kind of afraid to say hey
I don't I don't believe that I don't know about that
You know sometimes you have to think like am I willing to count the cost because then you look kind of silly
When you fail when you aren't willing to really count the cost when you aren't really willing to go all the way and
You know especially as a pastor you don't want to be that kind of guy
That's like hey, I'm here to serve God and then well not that hard
Well, not that much.
Well, I'm not willing to pay that much.
You know, that is a shame and an approach to the cause of Christ.
We need to be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice
if we truly want to be a disciple.
Go over to 1 Timothy 4, go to 1 Timothy 4.
I need to speed up for a second time, but point one is this.
We should be diligent and know the state of our flocks,
and we should think about the cost financially here,
and hey, we need to think about the cost and our spiritual life.
Hey, if you want to have a family,
you've got to think about how that's going to be expensive.
You know it'd be kind of silly to think like hey, I want to have a wife and ten kids and
I'm gonna work at Subway for ten hours a week
So you didn't really count the cost buddy
Okay, that's not very realistic. You know you want to have a wife. You want to have a nice house
You want to have kids? Well think about how much that cost and then go find a job that can pay that
Okay, think about a career that's gonna get you there.
You know, you need to count that cost.
Hey, you wanna serve God with your life.
You wanna be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You gotta think about some of the costs
that you might have to take.
And you know, this is one that's kind of funny to me.
It just doesn't even make sense,
but it happens all the time.
People will sell all that they have,
move across the country to come to a church like ours,
because they think that that's gonna spiritually help them.
Then they make friends with someone here that they've never met before in their life
They didn't even move you over that person. They didn't even know that person existed
They come to a church like ours and then they make a friend and then the friend leaves the church and they're like
Oh, I'm gonna leave the church
But but you didn't even you didn't even show up for that person
Like how does it make sense to sell everything to move across the country to come to a church?
You move for the church then you make a friend which is a total bonus cherry on top
And then if that friend leaves, you say,
well, now I'm going to leave too.
That doesn't even make, you didn't even count the cost.
You didn't even really think about it.
It's like, that doesn't even make logical sense,
but people do this kind of stuff, don't they?
Or they sell all they have and they get plugged in
for the cause of Christ, but then it's like,
you know, it's not what they thought.
How about evangelists are banning,
selling all that he has, moving to the Philippines.
He may not have understood all the cold showers he was going to take.
Now, he's visited, so he probably did.
But I'm just saying, like, what if he hadn't?
What if he didn't? What if he just moved?
You just say, hey, Pastor, I sold everything, I moved in the Philippines.
And it's like, you show up for the first bathroom visit,
and you're kind of like, oh, like, where's the shower?
Where's the bed? You know, where's where's the steak? Where's the in-and-out burger on every corner?
You know like they're just they're just kind of used to a certain custom of living in America and
Maybe it doesn't really exist over there the way they perceived it and they didn't really count the cost and then they get burnt out
Or they they think well, that's not really a lot. I was wanting or they hear about you know
Missions trips or these kind of things like hey, I can't wait to go on one
How do I sign up? We'll buy a ticket
And they're like, why didn't, what do you mean, buy a ticket?
It's like, go online and buy yourself a ticket to this place,
and they're like, well, that costs money.
Exactly, right, you have to actually count the cost.
You know, and so we have to think about our spiritual life
and think about how things might cost.
Here's the second one that I wanna talk about,
I wanna talk about this a little bit more,
is the families, the people that God's given us.
So number one, when God gives us money,
we need to be careful with that.
When we need to think about that,
we need to be diligent with it.
Secondly, though, God will give us people, or family, and not just physical family, even
our spiritual family.
And we need to be diligent to know the state of our family, of the people that God has
entrusted us and the people that God has given to us.
You know, you need to be thinking about the state of your wife, thinking about the state
of your kids, thinking about the state of your employees.
If you're a boss, you need to be thinking about the state of your employees, and thinking
about their will-being.
They say man, I keep hiring all these people and it doesn't work out. They have to constantly fire people
But I'm trying to help this person say like yeah, but do you have realistic expectations for this person because if you hire these people and
You're expecting them to do a certain job that costs a lot of money and you don't pay them a lot of money
It may not really be a good fit, right? They might get burnt out. They may get frustrated or you promise them all this money
And then they show up and they do all this hard work
and they don't get that kind of money.
This happens a lot in sales jobs.
They'll tell you, hey, we got this sales job for you.
They'll be like, if you work really hard,
you can make $200,000 a year.
And then you're making like a hundred bucks a week.
And you're just thinking like, it's commission, buddy.
And, you know, there's a lot of false expectations out there.
Well, as an employer, you can only be mad at yourself if you're advertising something and
it's not really reality.
And you got to think about the state of your employees, of your servants, of your wife,
of your children.
You know, maybe your wife thought, as a husband, you'd actually be nice to her.
You'd actually take her on dates.
You'd actually help around the house.
You'd actually pay the bills.
Why submit why is it it's just like yeah, but is that a realistic expectation when you're putting her through the ringer when you're
Not actually doing your part, you know, we need to be diligent to know the state of our flocks
We need to take care of them think about them and you know as a pastor or a leader
It's important for me to to know the state of this flock
Spiritually look what it says in verse number 12. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example
the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and
purity. So the Bible says that a man of God is to be an example unto the
believers, an example unto the flock. One thing that is really important is that I
go out and preach the gospel to motivate you to preach the gospel, that I go on
missions, trips,
to motivate you to go on missions trips,
that I love my wife so that you will love your wife,
that I love my children so that you'll love your children,
so that I work super hard, so that you'll work super hard.
I mean, you're not gonna be as motivated
to work hard at your job if I'm lazy and derelict
and have no skills, you know, it'd be more motivating
is if I'm hardworking and skilled and leading by example.
leading by example in every way.
That is what we want.
We want pastors that are an example.
You know, what you want as a pastor
is you want them to be like a copy and paste job.
And this is how you can tell if it's a good pastor
and family, if you say like,
hey, it would be nice if we just copied
and pasted this family, you know?
Whereas if you look at a pastor and his family
and you wouldn't want to copy and paste,
well, that's a bad,
because they're supposed to be an example.
And you think whether you're a pastor or not,
You're still held to the same standards as the pastor in a sense that you're supposed to be a loving husband
You're supposed to provide for your family. You're supposed to be diligent sober a soul winner doing the work that God has given you
I mean the qualifications of a bishop are not like only pastors do this
It's just saying this is what everybody should be doing
The pastor is just doing it, right?
I mean the pastor is just doing what the Bible says and we want pastors that are good examples unto the flock
Why so that the flock can also follow in like step?
Why? Verse 13, let's keep reading.
Till I come, give attendance to reading,
to agitation, to doctrine.
Neglect not the gift that is in thee,
which is given thee by prophecy,
with the laying on in the hands of the presidency.
Meditate upon these things, give thyself holy to them,
that thy profiting may appear
to all you know one aspect of
pastoring is that I should be
public about what I'm doing and
what I'm like to profit other
people like the things that I'm
doing should be a little bit
public living in a glass house
so that other people can profit
from that example.
It says in verse 16,
take heed of thyself and of the
doctrine, continuing you in them
for in doing this thou shalt
will save thyself
and them that hear thee.
Being a good example helps other people.
You kind of lead the flock, take care of the flock,
and then the flock can follow in like step.
Go over to 1 Peter chapter five,
1 Peter chapter number five.
So when you think about this,
when we talk about being diligent
and know the state of their flocks in finance,
we know how much money we have.
And then we've got to think about what kind of money we have.
Is this money going to keep coming in?
Is this sustainable?
What kind of quality is it?
We talk about people.
We need to know how many people we have,
and we need to know what kind of well-being.
What's their quality?
What's their state of mind?
Where are they at?
Because it's one thing to have a church of 200.
That's the number.
But that doesn't mean it's positive or negative.
Think about it.
What if you have 200, but two weeks ago you had 500?
That might not be in a good well-being or maybe at a hundred and now you have two hundred, right?
Those are two completely different scenarios even though you're at the exact same number or let's say you have two hundred people in the room and
Half of them have the NIV in hand the other half have the NASB in hand
Half of them believe in you can lose your salvation the other half believe in speaking in tongues
One little group believes in oneness. Well, it doesn't matter. They have 200 people there
Or maybe you go to an old IVB church
and you have 1,000 people in the room,
but you have 10 people that go soul-winning, right?
I mean, it doesn't matter the number as much
as the well-being in many cases too.
We need to know both, don't we?
And you know what I love about this church
is thinking about the well-being of our church
because not only we have a lot of people in this room,
but we have a lot of people that want to go soul-winning.
We have, everybody in here has a King Day's Bible.
Everybody in here believes salvation by faith.
And if they don't they would still give you the right answer. They're just a Judas, okay?
But even Judas will tell you that salvation is by faith, right? Even he will give the right answers.
You know, I like that we have so much doctrinal unity in this church, and that we have the
same spirit, and that we have the same attitude.
You know, that's what makes a healthy church.
Not that you have 200 sheep, but that you have 200 healthy sheep and strong sheep and
sheep that want to serve God.
That's what's really, really important, is knowing both of these and knowing the state
of thy flocks.
Verse 2, Feed the flock of God, which is among you,
taking the oversight there of not by constraint,
but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of already mine,
neither is being lords over God's heritage,
but being in samples to the flock.
So it's important to know the state,
and you know, constantly through the Old Testament,
or through the New Testament,
we're constantly being alerted to the state of the flock.
You think at 1 Corinthians, chapter number three,
and the Apostle Paul says, hey, you guys are carnal.
He's saying hey this church is just carnal just point blank you guys are carnal and Hebrews chapter number five
The author is telling the audience. Hey you guys have become babes
You become such a babe that your need that people just only feed you milk because you
can't handle the word.
So he's saying you're immature, you haven't grown.
If you think about the seven churches which are in Asia that God writes to in the book
of Revelation, he's telling them they're all kinds of different states.
Some are in really good states, some are in a lukewarm state, some are dead.
But you know what he's doing?
He's saying this is what you guys are like.
This is the state that you're in this is the qualities of the well-being that you're in
in Titus chapter 2
The author is giving instructions the aged men aged women young men servants and he's trying to help them
Understand what they're supposed to be like and you know to me. It's really really important
not just to think about the number of people that come to our church or what the number is but to know what the people are like and
When I think about Steadfast Baptist Church,
I kind of want to just take a second,
just think about what it was like in 2019,
January 6th, January 19th,
I'm here Sunday morning, or Sunday evening actually,
I think it was the first service, Sunday evening,
I'm here, what was the church like
from a well-being perspective and what is it like now?
Okay, well, and I'll be honest,
back then I didn't want to necessarily
just come out and say some things, okay?
But we've had six years to heal.
But when I came here, when I first came to St. Vass Baptist Church,
it was obvious that church discipline had been neglected as a church.
And that there were some people that were just ready for church discipline,
and they had not been church discipline.
And so there was a lot of church discipline
at the very beginning days of St. Vass Baptist Church,
but it was because it had been neglected for so long.
St. Vass Baptist Church had a lot of insincere people among the ranks.
And, you know, today, I feel like most of the people here are very sincere.
I'm sure there's at least one insincere person, because I've noticed that of all the insincere
people that we catch, they always overlap each other to where there's always insincere
people with us, okay?
So there's always going to be insincere and fake people with us, and if you would just
It is what it is in many ways, you know, and I'm also thinking about some of our church plants
There was a lot of carnality in the church and especially in Jacksonville
I'm just gonna be honest was a very carnal church. You say why do you say that? That's the mean
Yeah, but the church was constantly fighting with itself and here's the thing when there's fighting
It's just you just check the box carnal
Like, it doesn't matter why they're fighting
or what the argument's about,
just arguing and fighting in a church is fact carnal.
And there was a lot of fighting, a lot of arguing.
There was a lot of immaturity in the church.
The soul winning skill of the church
was just not very well refined.
I feel like there was a lot of improvement
that needed to be made in the soul winning.
The zeal for soul winning was kinda off
when I first came, and in fact, I don't know exactly,
but I think we only had like
And I'm not trying to contrast everything yet,
but, I mean, now we have one every single day.
So that's definitely a major change,
but the cleanliness of the church was off.
And I'm just saying, like, the physical cleanliness
of the church, there was just issues.
Gossip was rampant in our church.
It was just, like, people didn't even understand
what the word gossip means, apparently, or something.
Marriages were off.
Now, I don't know why that's a shock,
but there was a lot of marriages that were off.
Attitude issues.
The church was filled with so much conspiracy,
it was... it made everyone uncomfortable,
and everybody was paranoid.
Like, it was... it was paranoid to the point,
like, someone would just come in,
and they would just be, like, grilled
about, like, why they were there
and what their motives were
and are you a reprobate.
And it's like, it's a first-time visitor.
And one of these people that visited
was Pastor Anderson's niece.
He said she said like she visited the church and they're just like grilling her wondering she's an infiltrator like all this crazy
And then finally she's like I'm Pastor Anderson's niece and they're like okay, and they just like back off
But it was just like really unfriendly
Very unwelcome and look there's obviously gonna be infiltrators and bad people every once in a while
We should not have that attitude towards first-time visitors. Okay, unless they look weird. All right, okay?
But I do have a policy that if they're really sus that we can ask them to leave, but that's
because they're exhibiting weird behavior, not because they just showed up.
The church was a very needy church, it was very neglected, there was doctrinal issues,
like flat earth.
And I mean, I'll just be honest with you, I didn't even think flat earthers existed.
I thought they were all fake, like I thought they were just lying about it and just kind
of being like a troll, but I preached the sermon against flat earth and like 13 people
And I was just thinking like, what in the world?
You know, I couldn't even believe it that there was one,
let alone like over a dozen.
It was bizarre.
A lot of women's roles were off
and marriage teachings that were kind of off.
A lot of authority issues, accountability issues,
transparency issues, there was confusion in the church,
there was some rotten people and troublemakers.
Wow.
And just leadership issues.
In fact, all the leadership was bad.
It's all of it.
A lot of loyalty issues too.
But here's the thing.
Since then, I've thought about this a lot.
And I thought about, okay, what would I say today?
What does our church really look like?
And has our church improved?
Has our well-being of the flock changed at all since 2019?
And I would say absolutely, number one,
the soul winning has improved greatly.
I mean, the attitude, the amount of soul winning
that we're doing, the skill of the soul winning
that we're doing, it's not even close.
And this is important because maybe some people might think like oh, that's obvious it's not obvious
I could take you to a ton of churches right now
Where they're an old IP church and the soul winning six years ago was better
The soul winning six years ago is more people more times more zealous and now they're going less
Not as enthusiastic not as sharp and you know, we want to always measure ourselves and say hey
Where were we where were we six years ago? I hope that God willing six years from now
We're not like we've got one and a half times a month
We just put a door hanger. We don't confront people
You know, that would be sad, wouldn't it?
If we could look back and say,
man, we had a soul winning time every single week,
or every single day, we had all these missions, trips,
we were emphasizing soul winning,
now it's just a visitation every once in a while,
nobody goes, and the winner, we shut it down.
And look, there's plenty of churches
where they shut it down at daylight savings time.
There's plenty of churches today
where they're not going as much.
They're not confronting people.
They have weird gospel presentations.
I went soul-inning with a guy from an old IB church
and he said this.
He said he will not pray with anybody at the door.
He said they have to come to church
and walk the aisle before because otherwise
it seems that they haven't really repented of their sins.
And I'm thinking like, what's wrong with you?
You know, I mean, just if that's the case,
no one's getting saved.
I mean, think about how sad of a heaven you have
if that's the requirements to get in.
How are you, how could you even do foreign missions?
Like how does that even work?
All right guys, I know I just preached to you
here in the Bahamas, and I know that you changed your mind,
you put your faith in Jesus,
but you're gonna have to come to my church.
You don't have to get on a boat or a plane
and fly to my church and walk the aisle
for me to make sure that you get saved.
I mean, that doesn't even make sense.
It's not even logical.
There's a major difference in the facilities of our church.
Hey, the facilities are way better than Sandsome Park.
I'm just gonna say it.
It's way better.
There's more transparency.
We actually put out financial records and stats
and statistics and all kinds of stuff.
The spirit in our church is way different.
The joy in our church is way different.
And here's the big one,
the friendliness of our church is way different.
Boy, it's a lot friendlier here
than it was six years ago.
The music has improved greatly.
The quality of people has changed astronomically I mean we're just we're just so much better
And and here's the thing that's important about this point when you have high-quality people in your church
You know you attract
More high-quality people and when your church is full of trashy people and weirdos, you know you attract
More trashy people more weirdos because at the end of the day, you know
I remember somebody, I'm not gonna say names,
but I'm just like, there was somebody
that wanted to visit St. Vast, and when they did early,
they were kind of thinking like, it's rough.
And I'm kind of surprised that this person
actually stuck with our church.
But at the end of the day, they came for the soul winning
and they were able to stick a lot of stuff out.
But there's some people that they're just gonna not
be able to stick it out or they're not gonna give it
a chance just because it's just too rough or too weird.
And we don't wanna have those obstacles
We want to be high quality people and attract other high quality people and we want to be friendly
The documentaries are way better
You say what document there was other documentaries before I ever became the pastor of this church and
Look the documentaries are way better the conferences. I don't know if there was a conference before but our conferences are great
The knowledge of our church is is awesome
the life quality
many people in this room is just way better than it was six years ago. And the
job that many people have from six years ago, way better. The podcasts, in the past
they were gently led, now they have a Baptist bias, all right? It used to be
before women were gently leading you, now we have a compilation of husbands
doing stuff through wives. All right, I'm gonna talk about them all.
But, you know, let me make it clear that let me give all the credit, though, to the
King James Bible, folks, because let me tell you something, when I came to be the pastor
of this church, I don't know how to run a church.
I don't know how to build a church.
I don't know how to fix a church.
I don't know how to do any of those things.
But you know what I do know?
This does.
This knows how to run a church.
This knows how to fix a church.
This knows how to do everything for church
because you know what, Jesus Christ is the one
that purges this church with his own blood.
And this Bible, you know what, I believe is true.
And because it's true, I have faith
that the Word of God works.
And so when I go to this book and I say,
all right, I don't know what to do in this situation.
What do I do? I just believe it.
And here's the thing, the reason why we have been successful
is one thing, we put our faith in what this says
and we decided to just do what this says.
When this says, hey, throw out railers,
you know what I did?
I threw out the railers.
There's so many people that say,
oh, that's not the right thing to do
or you're just making up definitions of railers
or blah, blah, blah.
I don't care what you said,
I'm gonna throw you out if you're a railer.
And I just believe it.
And you know what?
It's wisdom is justified of her children, you know how many people I regret throwing out for being a railer zero and
Our church is greatly improved, you know cast out the scorn and the strife cell ceases with the Bible says
Hey, you know the Bible says to scream and to cry loud and I do it
The Bible says, let no man despise thee and I do it.
You know what, you're not gonna just trash the pastor
and come to this church.
And it's not because it's me, it's because it's the pastor.
You just don't trash the pastor,
you don't despise the pastor,
you don't despise the things of God.
And you know what, that's not my opinion,
that's God's opinion.
Let no man despise thee.
Bible.
Hey, the Bible says to approve, rebuke and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine,
and that's what I do because that's what the Bible says.
The Bible says to do the work on evangelists, and let me tell you something, I'm going
out there in the highways and the hedges and compelling them to come in.
I'm going on the mission's trips.
Yeah, I've been to all kinds of foreign countries.
I've been to Mexico multiple times.
I've been to Jamaica.
I've been to the Bahamas.
I've been to Fiji.
I've been to Australia.
I've been to the Philippines.
Hey, I am going to do the work of an evangelist.
Oh, Pastor Charlie, this one's going on personal adventures.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
I'm going to go out there and preach the gospel
to all kinds of different people,
and I'm going to do the work of an evangelist.
Hey, I'm going to pray for wisdom because the Bible says it.
I'm going to pray for grace.
I'm going to pray for miracles.
I'm going to pray for labors.
Hey, you know what?
I prayed for my wife.
And there's been times where in my past there's ebbs and flows in our relationship,
but there's been times where I've wanted something to change in our relationship.
And you know what? I just prayed that God would be the one to change our relationship
or change the problems that we have.
And you say, why would you pray for that? Because I believe that the Bible works.
I believe that God can go under the heart of man and he can change it.
And I believe when you're a good example and you're seeking God
and you're doing what's right and you're praying God can perform miracles in your life.
There's been many people in my life where I thought they wouldn't change or
the situation wouldn't change. What I did is I said hey I'm gonna be diligent,
I'm gonna be faithful, I know the state of my flock and I'm gonna pray that God will change it.
The Bible says every word of God is pure, I believe it.
The Bible says that women should not wear that which pertain to the man and guess what let me tell you something
I believe it
And I say it and I see oh, you're not gonna build a church doing that you're gonna offend people. I don't care I
Don't know how to build a church. I'm just gonna do whatever this says
And if you like it or lump it whatever it doesn't it doesn't bother me
I mean, I can't get enough people out of this church. We just keep growing
God says that he punishes people and
I believe it
Boy I would not want the disease that's cleaving fast onto one of our haters that's happening and look you think that's one example
I know all kinds of examples
I've seen so many people that have just hated on us attacked us and boy
Let me tell you something the quality of their life is gone down into the toilet and
Their skin's gone down in the toilet and their face has gone down in the toilet and they've died and
All kinds of horrible evil things are happening to them and you know I leave I see a lot of people in this room and their lives get better
and the quality of life.
And look, it's not because of me or this building
or this sign, it's because of this, this works.
I believe it.
And we should be diligent to know the state of our flocks.
Hey, you should be paying attention to your wife.
You should be paying attention to your children.
And you should be thinking,
are they headed in the right spiritual direction?
And you should know the state of them.
And you should be praying for them
and encouraging them and be an example of them.
You know what God punishes people that reject the gospel by making them gay and I believe it
When I after I get someone saved I say now some people hate the gospel and they reject it
And then God punishes them by making them gay and they just laugh and then I say watch the movie
Hey, brother
Brother Jordan L's my witness that I'm talking to this girl. She can't she can't close the door fast enough
I tell her that and then she's like no, I'm gonna wait a second. I need to turn off the stuff in the kitchen
I'm gonna come back. I want to see this in the Bible right now
And it was just like here's Romans one, okay?
She's like I've never heard that she was laughing the whole time, but then you know she took the ticket
She's like I'm gonna watch this
Hey, I believe that the Jews are the synagogue of Satan
Because the Bible says so and all of reality, okay?
Hey, I believe when the Bible says yay that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution
I believe it. I
Don't think that we're doing something wrong. I think we're doing something right and let me tell you something boy
I would not want to serve God for 20 years of my life and not suffer persecution
Yay and oh
that we live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution if you're godly
show me your persecution if you don't have persecution here's my question
where's your godliness and many people want to question those that are
suffering the greatest persecution say these people aren't godly these people
aren't righteous and I'm thinking like they seem like the most righteous people
on the planet look at all the persecution
Hey, if you're being persecuted hard, just just check that box godly. That's what the Bible says
You know, I'm not really worried about
all the different
Things of church because like I said, I don't know how to run a church. I don't know how to be successful in running a church. I
You could even argue. Hey when Pastor Shelley took over this church. He was kind of a novice
and wasn't well prepared and didn't have the skills.
I didn't, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
But I had one thing, I believe the Bible.
And here's the second thing, I had a Bible.
And let me tell you something, we need to believe this thing.
There's nothing more real than this
There's nothing more trustworthy than this and you know any position and leadership that you have right now
You need to be diligent to know that it's the state of your flocks
If you're a mother in here, you need to know what's going on with your kids
If you are a husband in here, you need to know what's going on with your wife and with your kids
If you have employees, hey, if you're a soul-winning captain, you better know what's going on with your soul-winning group
Hey, you're not sure you should be paying attention to what's going on in the church building
Hey, you're in the music ministry or as a leader. You need to be making sure you understand what's going on with your musicians
Hey, you're a cleaner or you're a manager of cleaners. You'd be making sure what's going on with the cleaning
Whatever, you're an evangelist, you're a deacon,
you're a pastor, you're whatever,
you need to make sure you know what's going on
with what God has entrusted you with.
And many people, they care about one thing,
they care about growing, they care about the number.
We should know the number,
but we should be really, really careful to know the state.
We should think about the state.
And this is what I think.
Why would God want to give us more
if we're not being successful with what we already have?
And so we should always be thinking like,
am I doing a great job with what I have?
Because when you're doing a great job with what you have,
I believe God will in due time bless you with more.
But if you're not taking advantage of what you have,
well, many times it'll take that away.
I think for a lot of you young guys,
a lot of you young people,
instead of being focused on what could happen in the future
or what you would like to see in the future,
focus in right now on what you have.
Focus in on what you have whatever opportunities you have to minister right now do excellent at that
Whatever so many opportunities you have do excellent with that if you just have a wife just focus in on your wife
You have one kid focus in on that one kid
Don't don't try to get ahead of yourself and try to worry about all the things that you don't have worry about the things
You do have hey, you're young lady. You get married focus on your husband
Focus in on what you have you have one kid focus on that one kid
Focus in on what you have now and what you're going to change now
and be a good steward of what you have right now.
And then God will bless you with more or make those things better in the future.
But we don't want to get just so hyper-focused in on things that we don't have
or the future.
You know, I think as a pastor there's this temptation for a lot of us to
wish that we had a bigger church,
or you could want to compare yourself to other people,
or those kind of things.
But you know, it's a really bad move.
You should just never, ever do that.
This is what you should just always think of,
like, am I doing a good job with the people that showed up?
And I remember praying to God a long time ago,
because when I was gonna start a church,
I had no idea what to expect.
I always tried to have low expectations.
I had no expectations.
But I did pray and I asked God this, I said this is the one thing I want.
I just want one guy in my church that really wants to serve God.
I just want one person that just like really cares,
just wants to just get plugged in, dedicated,
that wants to grow, that wants to learn the Bible.
I said, because as long as I have one person there
that's just really zealous, then it'll motivate me
to preach really great sermons for that person.
And to be a good example for that person.
And you know, I think that we have lots of people like that,
but at the end of the day, that's all I wanted
was just the one.
I wasn't focused in on trying to get a bunch of people
I don't want 200 people that don't care.
I'd rather have one that cares.
And I'll preach for that one person.
And you know, I'll preach for my family,
I'll preach for everybody.
And I'm not only caring about that,
but I'm just saying, that's what I pray and ask God for.
And, you know, for a lot of us,
we need to just be focused in on what we do have
and paying attention to what God has blessed us with
and be good, good stewards of that flock
of whatever He has entrusted us with.
So, let us be good stewards because God will continue to bless us, let us take advantage
of the opportunities we have, and, you know, praise God for the well-being of our church
because it's dramatically, dramatically changed.
But let us, hopefully, six years from now, say, it's gotten even better.
Let's go to some prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for our church.
Thank you so much for the work that you've given us to do.
Thank you for the money and the finances that you've blessed us with.
I pray that we would be good stewards of that.
I pray that we would be good managers,
that we would take account of what you've given us.
And I pray that we would also take account of the spiritual things you've given us.
The Gospel and the King James Bible,
I pray that we would be diligent with the Gospel you've given us,
that we go out and preach.
I pray that we would count the cost of being a disciple.
Thank you so much for all the people you've given us in our lives, our wives, and our children,
our servants.
I pray that you would help us to be good managers and stewards and examples under them.
And I pray that you would just help our church to continue to grow and to serve you
and that we would make sure that whatever you entrust us with, that we be faithful with,
so you could bless us with more.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
All right in closing let's go to song number 15
Song number 15 lead me to Calvary song number 15
Song number 15
present