(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Now, in Joshua chapter 8, we have the story of Ai, and just to give you a little bit of context here, before this, the children of Israel had had a great victory at the battle of Jericho, then they move on to the next battle, the battle of Ai, and they just expect to win, they expect everything to go well, they expect it to be easy because things went so well at Jericho. So they don't even send all the troops, they only send just a partial group of troops just to go fight against Ai, it's an easy city, it's an easy victory, and they get beaten very badly. And, of course, it was because Achan the son of Carmi had sinned, he had stolen something that the children of Israel were not supposed to take from Jericho, remember, he saw, he coveted and he took that wedge of gold and that Babylonish garment and he hid it under his tent. So because he stole that, God's wrath was upon the congregation of Israel because they weren't supposed to touch any of that stuff. So once Achan is executed, then we find ourselves in Joshua chapter 8 where they're going to make the second attempt on Ai, now that they've gotten rid of the problem, you know, they got rid of Achan, now God can bless them again. Look what it says in verse 1 of Joshua 8, and the Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed. Take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai, see I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land. And thou shalt do to Ai and her king, as thou didst unto Jericho and her king, only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves, lay thee in ambush for the city behind it. Now we see here that God is pretty much just guaranteeing victory. He tells them, look, you're going to win the battle, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed, I'm going to be with you now, go fight against the battle. And there's so many things we can learn in this story, I mean, we could talk about the fact that, you know, God wants them to send all the people when they only sent just a few troops in the beginning, showing us that God wants 100% participation, you know, of our church when it comes to serving God, when it comes to winning the loss. So many churches, the vast majority of people do nothing, and it's just a very small percentage of people that do any kind of soul winning, that are doing any kind of service in the church. You know, God wants everybody to be involved. One of the great things about the early church in the book of Acts was that all the people were all with one accord in one place, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, they're all going out and seeing people saved, that's why they had such great success. You know, that's something that you could point out about this story. But the thing that I want to talk about is just the elaborate battle plan that they had in this passage. You know, they already know that they're going to win. God's already guaranteed them the victory. In fact, the city is a small city, if they send all the troops, they're going to win. God already told them they're going to win, yet they have this elaborate plan, and I'm not going to reread it since we already read the whole chapter about how they're going to put liars in wait behind the city, they're going to draw the men out of the city, then they're going to sneak in from behind, and they're going to light the city on fire. You know, when you look throughout the Bible, whenever people go to battle, they have a battle plan. You know, they divide the troops up, maybe, into three companies, like with Gideon, or they divide the troops up when David is leading, and he sends some people with, you know, Etai the Gittite or Barzillai, different troops and different generals, and they have a battle plan, they have a plan of attack, even though, yes, God's going to give the victory, God's going to bless, you know, they still have to do the work and they still have to make a plan and execute that plan in order to win the battle in Ai. Now, I want to go to Luke chapter 14, because I want to preach tonight about having a plan, having a battle plan, having a plan of attack in your life. You know, there's so many areas of our life where we need to accomplish something great for God, or where we need to defeat some enemy, or where we need to do something to change something about our life, and in every area of life, in order to succeed, you must have a plan. You have to have a strategy, and you can't just expect to just accidentally win. Even if in a spiritual endeavor, even when God's saying, you're going to win this battle, fear not, don't be dismayed, they didn't just say, okay, well let's just all run toward the city screaming with our weapons, I mean, they still had to plan out the attack and make a strategy. Now, look at Luke 14 verse 28, it says this, For which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, dideth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him, that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Now, what Jesus is teaching in Luke 14 is about counting the cost of serving God and saying, if you're going to be my disciple, you're going to have to be willing to forsake some things, you better decide now whether you think it's worth it to serve God, whether you're willing to pay the price to be one of my disciples. Again, not about salvation, but just about being his disciple. Many people got saved when Jesus preached, he only had twelve disciples, he only later had seventy apostles, he only had a hundred and twenty that were still in that early church in the book of Acts. There's a big difference between the believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and being saved, and actually being a disciple of Christ, following Christ. To be a disciple, you've got to forsake all you have, you've got to be willing to obey him and follow him and so forth. To be saved you just have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But in this passage we see that whether it comes to building a building or going to war, you must have a plan. You must sit down first and decide, okay, what am I going to need to accomplish this goal? What are the building materials I'm going to need? What's the manpower that I'm going to need? How many troops do I have to work with? How am I going to organize these troops? You're never going to succeed at anything without a plan like that. Look at all the buildings that are built under God's direction throughout the Bible, whether it's the building of the tabernacle, whether it's the building of the temple, whether it's the building that's, the other temple that's described in the book of Ezekiel when they build the second temple, okay? All of these buildings that are built, even the wall, when they're building the wall in the book of Nehemiah, you'll notice that they always have an elaborate plan. And sometimes this might even be a part of the Bible that when you're reading the Bible you kind of zone out and you think, oh man, you know, we have to read every single detail of how they're going to build the tabernacle? We have to read every single detail about how they're going to build the temple? Is this really relevant to me today? Is this really something that's applicable to my life? You know, understand, and when you read through Exodus he describes all about how they're going to build the tabernacle and then you're like, okay, finally got through that. And they're like, okay, then they built it. And then it goes through and repeats all the details. So here's how he told them to do it and then here's how they did it and it's all the same stuff. But that steps in the Bible for a reason. And there are a lot of things we could learn. We could go look at the tabernacle and look at all the symbolic things and there are a lot of great teachings there and I'm sure eventually I will teach and preach that when I preach through chapter by chapter in Exodus. But one of the things that we can just learn that is that God wants things done a certain way and God has a plan and when you build something you've got to have a plan and you need a detailed plan. Now, who's ever worked in construction? You've been on a construction site, plans were laid out, you've done, put up your hand if you've worked on a construction site. What trades have you worked in? Carpentry, carpentry, plumbing, excavation, solar, carpentry, okay, a little girl in the back's got her hands up, but anyway, I don't think she's been on a construction site. You know, I've done electrical and I've done fire alarm systems and there are a lot of plans. There are giant plans this thick to build a building, even a small building. Lots of pages, there are all the electrical plans, the plumbing plans, the mechanical plan, the framing plan, all these plans. You don't just start building like, ah, put a two by four over there, you know, just start building a wall over there, let's just kind of, let's just see how this building evolves. You know, let's just kind of start building and just see where it takes us, you know. I'm really interested to see how this building's going to turn out, you know, what it's going to look like. So, before you even start the building, you already know what it's going to look like. And that's what he's saying here. You know, you're going to build a tower, you sit down first, you decide what the materials are going to be, how you're going to do it. This is how you accomplish things in life. And by the way, sometimes it's not always glamorous and cool, just like those chapters of the Bible that you read might not be the most exciting, fun chapter to read when you're reading all those details, but it was a plan that got the job done that built some amazing buildings that God used for his glory. And when it comes to going to war, again, there's a sitting down and planning that takes place. And we could go to all different battles, we looked at one battle that had an elaborate battle plan, we could look at all different battles, all different buildings throughout the Bible, and you'll find this is consistent about having a plan. Now let me give you some areas in your life where you should have a plan of attack on how to accomplish these various goals. First of all, you need a plan to read your Bible, okay? Go to Deuteronomy chapter 17. You see, I've gone through many periods of my life where my method of reading the Bible was basically just to pick up the Bible and start reading. Oh, I need to read my Bible. I'm supposed to read my Bible. And I just flip open my Bible and just read a little bit. But you know what, if that's your Bible reading plan, you're not doing a lot of reading. And you're never going to read the whole thing cover to cover. I've talked to people who've been saved for decades and I asked them, you know, have you ever read through the Bible cover to cover? And I had somebody tell me this, oh I'm sure I have. I mean I've been in church for 40 years. I've been in church for 40 years, I've opened the Bible at random and just read and you know how many times I went to church and something was read in church or in Sunday school or just sitting down and doing some reading. I'm sure that over the course of that 40 years I must have by now gotten to every chapter and read the whole Bible. I said, no you haven't. Because I said, have you ever made a plan and actually made sure to read the whole thing and checked off the chapters and checked off, no but I'm sure, I said I promise you haven't. I guarantee you. I said you need to read the Bible cover to cover. It only takes a year if you just do it 15 minutes a day. It's not a huge investment, anybody can carve out 15 minutes and read through the Bible cover to cover one year. And by the way, if you read the Bible cover to cover, you will be the less than one percent of Christians who've read the Bible cover to cover. And you know you wonder why so many churches are messed up doctrinally and you wonder why false prophets and false teachers can get up and preach lies and preach fallacy and everybody just nods their head and smiles and says amen because 99% of the people in the audience have never read the Bible cover to cover and they have no clue what the Bible actually says. And that's why people can get up and preach whatever and they don't even know. They can be carried about and tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. Because if you don't know what the Bible says, how can you even test and try what you're hearing against the Bible if you haven't read the whole Bible? And reading part of the Bible is not enough. Now when you go to a typical church, you'll hear a lot of the same passages from the Bible brought up over and over again. And I'm sure that there are passages that I probably turn to more frequently than others. Favorite passages, things that I like to emphasize. I try to give a broad spectrum of the Bible but no church is really going to preach you the entire Bible. You have to do some reading on your own. I mean unless maybe if you just went there for 20 some years and they're systematically by a plan, like we are on Wednesday night going through every chapter of the Bible, yeah then you'll get through it. But let me tell you something, there are chapters that are popular chapters and in the average Baptist church today, you can go there and if they say turn to Malachi, you pretty much know where they're going. Malachi 3.10. You know. And if they say turn to Matthew, you kind of know it's going to be one of a few key passages in Matthew that they're turning. It's not going to be chapter 24. And then they might say hey turn to the book of John and you kind of have an idea. If they say John 3, you kind of know okay it's either going to be Nicodemus or it's going to be John 3.16. Or if they say turn in your Bibles to the book of Jude or turn in your Bible to 1 John. Turn in your Bible and sometimes you can predict because for example my brother-in-law, when he got saved, he got a Bible, and he had this thing that he would do, every time the pastor would preach on a certain verse, he would underline every verse that the pastor preached. So if the pastor in a sermon said turn here, he'd underline that. It got to the point where anywhere the pastor told him to turn, he'd nudge his wife and go he's going here. You know if he said like, if he said you know Romans 4, you know it's just, that's where he's going. Turned out that everything that the pastor would turn to was already underlined. So what I'm, and again, I'm not saying that that's necessarily bad. Obviously I think that we should try to preach as much variety as we can and not just keep turning to the same passages over and over again. But let me say this, certain passages have a tendency to be preached a lot more than others. And so a person who doesn't read their Bible knows those passages really well. And they don't know at all the passages that aren't really, you know, typical fun passages to turn to in church. And usually the positive stuff gets a lot more pulpit time in a lot of churches than the negative stuff. So you can get a real warped view where everything's real positive and then you start hearing some negative preaching. What in the world? I've never heard this before. But it's all there in the Bible. Okay. We need to read our Bibles cover to cover to know the whole counsel of God, to get the big picture of what God's plan is, to understand all the truths that the Bible has to offer. Not just the popular verses that roll off the tongue of the pastor on Sunday morning that make for a good sermon. You know, we need to get to the obscure passages. We need to get all of the teachings of the Bible and get the whole big picture. You will not do that without having a plan to read the Bible. And that person that I said, you've never read the Bible cover to cover. I said, I dare you to make a plan and read through the Bible cover to cover over the next 12 months. And I said, when you're done, I promise you, you will tell me that you have not read it before. And he said, okay. He read through the whole Bible cover to cover and I went back and asked him, had you already read the whole thing? He said, there's no way because he said there were so many things that he read that shocked him. I remember the first time I read the Bible cover to cover when I was 16, 17 over the course of those two years, I finished the Bible cover to cover my first time. And I remember just being shocked by some of the things I read in the Bible. Wow. I never heard this. I've never even heard this story. I never heard this in Sunday school. I've never heard this. Preach is amazing. And there are so many things that surprised this one that he then admitted, yeah, you were right. There's no way that I had read the whole thing, but I guarantee you that's the way it is with everyone who's never set out to read the Bible cover to cover. But to read the Bible cover to cover takes having a plan. You don't just randomly flip open your Bible and eventually because of the law of infinite probability eventually I'm going to read the whole thing. That's just a bad plan. One of the things that I like to do when I'm out soul winning is to give somebody a Bible after I win them to Christ. Give them a Bible. Put a Bible in their hand. Or a New Testament. And what I like about these Bibles that we have in the back there that we give out for free is just on the back of it there's a little section that says, read your Bible through in a year. And so when I win somebody to the Lord I sometimes like to show them this and say, look, here's a little chart, here's a little plan for how to read the Bible. And if you just read what it tells you on the plan, it'll take you about 15 minutes a day, and you'll get through the whole Bible in one year's time. And I tell them, you know, just start today is May 11th. Just jump in and, you know, next year on May 11th you'll be done. And just start reading through it. Start following the plan. Or if you're one who likes to read it in your own order, I personally like to jump around and read it in whatever order, but I still have a plan because I still check it off. I'll use something like this, and even though I won't necessarily read the portion for May 11th, I still read the Bible, cross it off, check it off to make sure that I'm getting through the whole Bible every year, multiple times, to make sure that I'm not just reading certain parts over and over again and then completely neglecting other parts of the Word of God and developing an imbalance spiritually where I'm not getting everything that God wants for me to have. We need to have a plan for reading the Bible. And I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, of course. I would not want to embarrass anyone. But I will say this, if you've been saved for more than a year and you've never read through the Bible cover to cover, you need to get on this plan immediately, okay? If you've been saved for more than a year and you haven't read the Bible cover to cover, now if you got saved five minutes ago, you need to get on a Bible reading plan. But I'm saying especially if you've been saved for a year, two years, three, ten years, twenty years, and you don't know for a fact for sure that you've read through the Bible cover to cover, you need to get on that plan. And you ought to be ashamed if you've been saved for a long time and haven't read it cover to cover because it's something that God commands us to do. He said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, you're not going to read this book every word at random. Now yes it is true, you could just stick a bookmark in it and just read it from left to right. And that's what some people do and that works for some people and that's great if that works for you. I prefer to, you know, jump around a little because I want to read something from the New Testament and the Old Testament at the same time. I don't want to just sit there and just be only in Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and not be getting any New Testament. So that's why I like this plan because it gives you something from the old and the new every day. Okay this is a great plan. But you say I don't like that plan, then make your own plan. But you need a plan and you need to read the word of God. The Bible says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge and lack of Bible reading is a major problem today because people are not reading the Bible, they don't have a plan to do it. Get on a plan, look at Deuteronomy 17 verse 18. It says, and it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God to keep all the words of this law. Is he reading part of the book? The whole book. To keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and that he turn not aside from the commandment to the right end or to the left to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom. He and his children in the midst of Israel. Here is a plan for the king of Israel to read the Bible. Number one, he needs to produce a Bible, make a Bible, he's supposed to write out a copy of the book of the law. This is before the printing press, this is before computers. You had to write out a copy of the book of law in those days. So you write out a copy of the word of God and then I love the phrase at the beginning verse 19, and it shall be with him. That is the number one key to reading your Bible right there, those words. Having the Bible with you and it sounds silly but it's critical, it's important. This is part of having a plan to read the Bible. Here are some ways you can plan to read the Bible. You can put the Bible in your lunchbox and have a plan, hey I read the Bible over lunch. Put the Bible by the bedside, I have a plan to read the Bible when I wake up in the morning or a plan to read the Bible right before I go to bed. Or a plan that says, I'm going to get the New Testament on CD and I'm going to listen to the New Testament on CD in the car on the way to work every day. Look that guarantees that you're in the Bible every day. You have a 15 minute commute, okay, and I think I even have some of these Bibles on CD here. Here we go, the New Testament on CD. Who wants one of these? Come up and get them as fast as you can, seriously. See look, here's a guy with a plan. Here take one to him, he can't get out of his chair fast enough. Give it to brother Gregory. He's like that guy that was by the pool of water in John 5 and he couldn't get in the water fast enough. We don't want you to be that guy so we got you the CD. But look, here's the thing, there are different kinds of people in this world and you know what, the people who get up out of their chair and they get something done, they have a plan. Now here's the thing, having the Bible on CD, even if you don't have it on CD, you can download it for free in places. You can go to LibriVox.org and download a bunch of books of the Bible there, King James Bible. You can download it from YouTube and turn it into an MP3. All different ways, don't buy the one from the Dollar Tree, it's a piece of junk though, it misreads it and everything. But anyway, you can get the Alexander, Scurvy, there are a lot of good places to get the Bible on CD. And here's the thing, if you just have it in your car and you just drive to work every day for 15 minutes, I mean you're reading the equivalent of reading through the Bible in one year, practically just on that drive alone. And that could make a huge difference in your spiritual growth right there. Just getting 15 minutes of the Word of God every day without fail, hearing it, it's getting into your heart, you can meditate on it, you can think about it. And look, you say, well I still want to pick up the book and read it, of course, but here's the thing, it's just more Bible by the time you listen to it, by the time you read it. Have a plan and a strategy to have the Bible with you. And I always tell people, you know, have more than one Bible. You know, I mean I wouldn't just have one and then it's like they leave it somewhere, they leave it at church and then they just don't have the Bible for a week. I mean I would have a Bible in every room of the house because if it's with you, you're more likely to read it. Have one in the car, have one in the travel suitcase. You go out of town a lot, don't rely on that Gideon Bible to be a King James when you get there. Usually it's not a King James. And so having a plan to read the Bible, having a chart that you're signing off on saying okay I read this, I read this, I read this, let's get through the whole Bible in one year. Having an audio Bible and saying I'm going to listen to this every time I drive instead of turning on some stupid, mindless talk radio show. Or these morning shows where they're joking around and making stupid jokes. I mean you could actually get something important done on the drive to work every day. And these practical things will make the difference between being a person who knows the Bible and who doesn't. The guy who carries the New Testament in his pocket is going to do more reading than the guy who doesn't. And so it's important to have a plan for reading the Bible. Not only that, and there are a lot of things that we need a plan for. Go to Isaiah chapter 28. Number one, have a plan to read the Bible. Number two, have a plan to teach your children. Now in Deuteronomy 6.4, you turn to Isaiah 28, I'll read for you from Deuteronomy 6.4. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, and these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. God says, diligently teach the word of God to your children, talk about the Bible with them when you wake up, when you lay down, when you walk by the wayside. He says write it upon the doorposts in your house, put scriptures up on the wall, like we have scriptures up on the wall here, you know, put scriptures up on the wall at home. You can buy little decorative things or even just make, print them out on the computer, put up little decorative verses or write it on the wall yourself with a stencil or whatever, and just put scriptures on the wall so you can teach scriptures to the children. Read it to them, talk to them about it. But here's the thing, you need to have a plan to do that. Look at Isaiah 28 verse 9. When it comes to teaching your children, it says in verse 9 of Isaiah 28, whom shall he teach knowledge and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast. So we're talking about what? A very small child. It says for precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little. So how do children learn? How do you teach a child to read? Do you just say, well you know what, we've set aside a day, you're going to learn to read today. No, because learning to read does not take one day, does it? It takes a long time to learn how to read, it takes many days. So it has to be taught precept upon precept. It has to be taught line upon line, and let me tell you something. When it comes to homeschooling, there has to be a plan. There are a lot of people who just do a freestyle homeschooling or an unschooling where they say like, oh we're homeschooling, but they don't really teach the child anything, and then the kids just don't really end up learning anything. It's important to teach your children both knowledge and doctrine. Knowledge and doctrine are things that need to be taught to the children, but it needs to be done in a planned way. For example, if you're going to teach the children how to read, first you have to teach the alphabet. They need to memorize the alphabet, they need to learn the letters, and often with very small children, you teach them one letter at a time. You don't even just sit there and say, we're going to learn the alphabet today. You learn A for a while. I remember when I was a little kid, learning A, then learning B for a while, learning C, learning D, and understanding each letter, the sound that it makes. Then you start combining them into blends, ba ba ba ba ba ba, ka ka ka, da da da da da, and you learn all these, and it's a slow laborious process where you learn a little here, line upon line, precept upon precept. It's the same way with the Bible. I don't really buy into this thing where you just go to one church service and your whole life is transformed into that one church service. I haven't seen a lot of it in my own life. Now obviously salvation is a major change, but a lot of times there's an emphasis on going to one special service, or one summer camp, or one big service, and everybody comes down the aisle and gets right with God and their life's never the same again. But I've seen a lot of decisions like that just not really result in a real change. Sometimes it's an emotional thing, yeah, rah rah rah, and here's why that's not as life changing as meets the eye. Because the Christian life is so complicated. There's so much in the Bible to learn and put into practice. There are so many doctrines and there are so many things that we need to implement in our lives in order to live a successful Christian life. You can't learn it all in one sermon. I mean you can't just come to one sermon and learn about, you know, salvation, baptism, reading the Bible, soul winning, preaching, getting the sin out of your life, living a clean life, you know, raising your children, how to have a good marriage, it's just all, you know, I'm just going to preach a sermon like that one time. All in 60 minutes, just how to live the Christian life. Everything you need to know about how to live the Christian life in 60 minutes. That wouldn't even be possible. And if you did, you'd bombard people with so much information they'd walk out the door and their head would be spinning, they wouldn't even know what to do. So what do you do when you preach? You pick one thing, right? And on Sunday morning you talk about, you know, honoring your mother, like we talked about this morning. You know, and then on another service you talk about Bible reading. Whole sermon about Bible reading perhaps. Then another sermon you talk all about getting fornication out of your life, fleeing fornication, not giving in to fornication. Then maybe a whole other sermon is about alcohol, everything the Bible says about alcohol, why we need to get alcohol out of our lives. Another sermon is about soul winning, and in fact there are so many different sermons about soul winning. Then there's a how-to sermon about soul winning. Then there's a why sermon about soul winning, okay? And then there are sermons about how to have a great marriage. Multiple sermons are needed to cover that topic. How to raise your children, multiple sermons again. I mean, the list could go on and on and on about things that you need to learn. So in order to grow and be a great Christian, it doesn't happen in one service, it doesn't happen in one night, it happens because you go to church week after week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And you go to 156 services that year, and you learn 156 different things, and you still don't know everything. And then you come back next year and get 156 more, and you get 156 more. And there are 1189 chapters of the Bible, and you learn more and you learn more. It's not just one service that just straightens you out and teaches you everything you need to know and just completely revolutionizes every area of your life. It's just not the way reality works. And it's the same way with teaching your children. You know, you don't just have one talk with your children that just is the revolutionary talk. It's a daily speaking the word, I mean that's what it says in Deuteronomy 6, it's a daily talking to them about the word of God, daily speaking God's words, daily speaking with them about the things of God. Now, how do you have a plan for teaching them the word of God? How about this, a daily Bible time with your family where the word of God is read out loud. Now in our house, this happens usually right before bed. Before bedtime, we read the Bible to them, and then sometimes we'll have another storybook that we're reading to them or just some kind of a book that's just something else, light reading, and we'll read them the Bible every night before bed as just an evening ritual. But then also there's a morning Bible time. But sometimes the morning Bible time doesn't happen, just because things get crazy, people get busy. So then there's the evening Bible time for sure. One of them's going to happen, we make sure that they get the Bible read unto them every day, but it's planned. It's not just when we feel like it, we pull out the Bible and start reading. When we have nothing else going on and we just feel like reading, we pull out the Bible. No, it's planned. It's like, okay, here's the plan, let's read it in the morning, let's read it at night as a family, here's what we're going to read. And by the way, when we do that reading, we know where we're at in each book or chapter and we say, okay, here's where we left off, here's the plan for today, here's a plan to get us through the whole thing, to make sure we read the whole Bible to our children and that we get through it in a year or two years or whatever it's going to take to read it unto the children. When it comes to homeschooling, there has to be a plan for math. There has to be a plan for learning how to read. There has to be a plan for teaching them history and teaching them all the different things that they need to learn. If they're going to learn how to play the piano. And by the way, it'd be great if more people would learn how to play piano and learn how to sing and learn how to lead the singing. Those are skills that can be used in the house of God. But they're things that take day after day, planned practice, a time to practice, a time to study, a time to learn. So we've seen a plan for reading the Bible, a plan for homeschooling. How about a plan to go soul winning? If you just go soul winning whenever the fancy strikes you, you're not going to do a lot of soul winning because we get busy in our lives, we do everything else. You need a plan to go soul winning. Listen to this from Romans chapter 10, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. You flip over to 1 Timothy 3. I'm going to read for you from Romans 10. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? That right there in Romans 10.15, how shall they preach except they be sent? You say, well why would they have to be sent? They could just go out and preach the Gospel. Why can't every Christian in America, in the world, just take their Bible and just go out and preach the Gospel? Why not? Now look, it'd be great if they did. I'd love it if they did. I mean, if people all over the world who maybe heard my sermon on the internet that I'm preaching right now and just said, man, I'm going to go out soul winning. I'm going to take my Bible and I'm going to win somebody to Christ. I'm going to go knock doors by myself. But you know what the reality is? Very few people are going to have that much initiative to just go out and do it on their own. If they do it on their own, great. I'm all for it. I mean, if every person in every corner of the globe who's a born again child of God would just take their Bible and just start going out and talking to people, knocking doors, giving the Gospel, great. But you know the reality and I know the reality that if you're not sent, you're not going to go. Look, I got saved as a six year old boy and I remember as a six year old boy having a burning desire to get people saved. I remember just thinking, man, we need to tell the Gospel to our neighbors. We need to tell the Gospel to everyone we can because there's heaven, there's hell, they need to hear the truth. They don't even know this. And I remember having that burning desire when I was seven, when I was eight, when I was nine, when I was ten, when I was eleven, when I was twelve, when I was thirteen, when I was fourteen, when I was fifteen, when I was sixteen, and how many people did I get saved during that time? Did I want to get people saved? Did I have a desire? Even I tried sometimes to give somebody the Gospel, but I didn't get it done. Then all of a sudden when I was seventeen, I started getting a lot of people saved, seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty, I was getting all kinds of people saved. What changed? I mean, what was the difference? I was already saved. I wanted to win souls that whole time. I mean, if you would have asked me when I was fourteen years old, you know, what do you think the most important thing we could be doing as Christians is, I would have told you, you know, the one thing I think that we should do more than anything else is to go out and get people saved. And I didn't get anybody saved. But I knew that that was what we were supposed to, I mean, I read it in the Bible and it just made sense. Obviously, people are going to hell, we need to preach them the Gospel and get them saved. Why did I not get anyone saved? Because I had no plan and I was not sent. What changed when I turned seventeen? I got in a soul winning church where somebody had a time set that said, okay, Saturday morning, ten o'clock AM, show up at the soul winning time, you know, we got there, we show up, they sang a song, souls for Jesus, that's our battle cry, souls for Jesus, we'll fight until we die, we never will give in, while souls are lost in sin, souls for Jesus, that's our battle cry. You know, that was the song at the church that I learned soul winning. And then, you know, he'd give us a few words from the Bible, give us some kind of a soul winning tip, we'd all go to the donut shop and eat a bunch of junk food at the donut shop and then it was like, okay, we're going to go out soul winning in Rancho Cordova or wherever and we'd get there and somebody had a plan of, okay, these are the streets we're going to do and I was paired up with somebody who knew what they were doing. And I did not know what I was doing. So here I am, a seventeen year old teenage boy, and I'm put with a guy who knew what I was doing, who knew what he was doing and I spent a couple hours just watching him and he had a plan. He had a method. He had certain scriptures he turned to. He'd go to Romans 3-10, he'd go to Romans 3-23, he'd go to Romans 6-18. You know, he had a strategy to go through the word of God with somebody and get them say there was a time, there was a place, there was a method, there was a strategy and I watched him do it for a few hours and then I, you know, I tried it, I didn't really know how to do it, but after a couple hours I said, hey, let me get the next door. You know, I invited the person to church, they didn't want to hear the gospel, but I at least invited them to church and they showed up to church and I was really encouraged by that. It was like, wow, my first time and somebody came to church. But you know, I didn't, I didn't even really know what I was doing, but I just kind of gave it a shot and then over the, and then the next time I went soloing with the pastor, I was just silent partner, just listened, watched, you know, and I did that for a while. Then I started doing the talking and when I started out, I pretty much did it exactly like the people who were teaching me. And then as I got comfortable with that, with doing it the way I was taught, then I started, you know, adding my own scriptures that I wanted to use, you know, because God uses everybody differently and you put your own personal touch on it. You know, everybody's not just a robot giving the exact, you know, same method of getting someone saved. It's the same gospel, it's the same plan of salvation, but there are so many different verses you could use. I might use a little different verses than Brother Romero uses or Scott uses. You know, we're all going to use different verses, but you know what? We all have a plan. We don't just randomly, ah, turn to, let's just, let's find something in Hosea, you know. I mean, you know, you have a plan of like, okay, let's show them they're a sinner and you have certain scriptures about that. Talk about hell, talk about the, you know, heaven. Talk about Jesus dying on the cross, the resurrection. You want to make sure you hit the key points. You got to have a plan to go soul winning. You need to pick a day, not just, yeah, I'd like to do that someday, and then someday never happens. It needs to be, hey, I'm going to show up tomorrow night, you know, Monday night I'm going to, I'm going to go to Brother Richard Miller's house, then I'm going to go to the soul winning time, or you know, I'm going to show up on Wednesday afternoon at 5.15, or I'm going to show up, you know, on Saturday morning with Brother Romero at 10 am, or I'm going to show up, you know, on Sundays at 1.30, or I'm going to just talk to, I know so and so goes soul winning, I'm going to go talk to them and see if they'll go with me and take me out at my convenience. You know, whether that be on a Tuesday, a Thursday, whatever. We have people going out soul winning from our church constantly, all the time. There are many opportunities to go. We have a plan, and then we have a plan in the back of the map of where we shade in, these are the streets we're going to knock. How are we going to knock every door in the Phoenix area? By chance? No, by following a plan. By chipping away at it. It's a project that'll take years, yay, decades, therefore it requires here a little, there a little. A plan. Why do we have a soul winning church? Because we plan to go soul winning. It didn't happen by accident. Sermons were planned that would emphasize soul winning. Times and places were set up where people could go soul winning. Words are developed to effectively and clearly present the gospel to someone in the amount of time they give you at the door, okay? But not only that, not only do we need a plan to read our Bibles, a plan for homeschooling, a plan to teach our children the word of God, a plan to get out soul winning. Look at 1 Timothy 3, how about a plan to become a pastor? Now is becoming a pastor for everyone? No, of course not. Everybody's not going to become a pastor. Obviously we know it's not for ladies. The Bible teaches that men are to be pastors, okay? Not only that, we know that some people just do not have the talents and the abilities that it takes to pastor to be apt to teach, to be able to get up and speak and teach the word of God. Some of those skills can be developed, but some people are just not cut out for it, okay? Some people don't meet the qualifications or whatever the case may be. Some people, God just has a different plan for their life. Everybody's not going to be a pastor. But look what it says in 1 Timothy 3.1, it says, this is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. Now does this say, I will specifically choose and call the pastors, my friend, and you just wait until God tells you? Now that's the way a lot of people put it out there, is God calling you? And then you'll hear these preachers who tell self-glorifying stories about how, oh, I was called to preach on this night and the whole room lit up with the Shekinah glory of God and I was in this service. I heard a guy that talked about his great call to preach when he was filled with the Holy Ghost because he was laying in bed and got a bloody nose. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he got a bloody nose. What in the world? Another guy fell off his horse. Look, you fell off your horse, you got a bloody nose, okay? Get over it. The whole room lit up. A cop car drove by and shined a spotlight in your room. This is not what, you know how they shine their little spotlight around? They were looking for some perpetrator. People get off on this stuff and a lot of it's self-glorifying preachers that want to make themselves out to be like, I'm like a biblical character. You want to know what caliber of a preacher you have today? You want to know what caliber? I am on par with biblical characters. I mean lights shined, noses bled, you know, I've fallen off my horse, I was knocked down by the power of God, you know, what are we, Charismatics? You know, I am Elijah and John the Baptist, it rolled into one, okay. So because of these self-glorifying type of, and you know, if there's any doubt whether you're called, you're not. So what that does is it makes the ordinary guy feel like, okay, I can't really be a preacher, I can't really be, you know what I mean, because it makes it seem like, well I don't have that kind of stuff happening to me. So it kind of makes that attainable, but what the Bible really teaches is that if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. So it's a much more down to earth approach when you actually look at what the Bible says about being a pastor, it's just down to earth and saying, hey, do you want to be a pastor? Do you want to be a pastor? Not did a light shine, did you feel some call in your heart, did you get butterflies in your stomach in that sermon at that summer camp, and on, you know, when I was 11 years old I was called to preach, and all this stuff, look, the Bible just says if you desire the office of a bishop, you desire a good work. That is a good desire. If you have the desire to pastor a church, that is a good desire to have. You're desiring a good work. Here's what you have to do to be a pastor. And then he lays it out, a bishop then, look at verse 2, must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them which are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. These are the qualifications for being a bishop. Does everybody fit this bill? Absolutely not. Not even close. But let me say this, many people could work toward achieving the goal of fitting this bill, being that man that can stand in the gap and make up the hedge and be a pastor. Now look, if you are one today that says, I desire the office of a bishop, I would like to be a pastor someday, and I can honestly say when I was a small child, I desired to be a pastor someday, as a very small child. Later when we started going to liberal churches in my teenage years, that desire went away because I just didn't really have a lot of respect for the pastors that I was seeing, they weren't really good role models, and so I looked at them and it just, I didn't want to be them. So I kind of forgot about it when I was a teenager and just kind of had other plans for my life, but when I got into an independent, fundamental, soul winning, hard preaching church, right around the time I turned 17 years old, and I had a pastor that I could look at, Pastor Nichols at Regency Baptist Church, the church I went to, I look at him and say, okay, here's a guy that is a real man, you know, not one of these little sissified queer little sissy preachers, like so many preachers are just, they think it's godly to be effeminate. Now here's a guy who's a real man, here's a guy who preaches the truth, he's not afraid of anything, he teaches the Bible, he's turning all over to scriptures I've never seen, he's not just preaching the same verse over and over, he's going to all different stories and things, I'm learning things. He's a guy who I could want to be like, and then it kind of rekindled, having that role model rekindled my desire to be a pastor. And I desired the office of a bishop. But think about it, when I was 17, 18, 19 years old, do you think I was even close to being prepared to pastor? No, I wasn't even close. But you know what I did though? I started to make a plan of saying, okay, here's where I am right here at point A, here's point B, being a pastor, okay let's make a plan to get there. Let's make a plan to get from point A to point B. Because you're not just going to accidentally just wake, if you're a young man and you desire the office of a bishop, you're not just going to wake up one day and just, you know, somehow you just accidentally became a pastor. Because being a pastor is a very specialized job and it's something that you have to work toward as a goal. Now in order to become a pastor, first of all, what's the first step according to verse 2 there? A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. Now here's the thing, you're not even ready to even really start thinking seriously about pastoring if you're not married. Because you're not even close to being a pastor if you're not married. Are you listening? You're very far out from being a pastor because once you get married then you have to learn how to be married and the Bible also says that in order to be pastor you have to have children. So you have to get married, you have to learn how to be married, you have to have children, you have to learn how to deal with your children. These are things that take time and that will produce a lot of growth in your life that will help you to be ready to pastor. Now it's funny because today these qualifications are often thrown out, especially the one about having children. Now look, I know there are pastors who don't have any children, I'm not saying that they're bad people or that I don't like them or that they're not doing anything for God or that I hate them, but let me tell you something, they're not scripturally qualified to be a pastor. I'm not going to sit here and change what the Bible says just because it offends somebody. Any man who is not married with children is not qualified to be a pastor and he should not do that job, someone else should do that job who is married with children. Now what's funny, I find it funny that people would throw that out because think about it and I want you to just hear me out if you disagree with me, think about this logically. Yes he says here the husband of one wife in verse 2 and if that's all he said I would still think that he has to be married because that's what it says. But what people will try to argue is they'll say well that just means he can't have multiple wives. So it's not saying he has to be the husband of one wife, it's just saying that if he has a wife he only has one. I've heard that interpretation and they'll say well that just means if he has, but that's not what it says. Again Catholic priests, you need to be the husband of one wife to be a bishop and they have these guys, oh bishop, archbishop, you know a bunch of perverts and they're not even married. That's why they're always getting in trouble for fornication and they're always getting in trouble for being a molester and they work for Satan and the pope is an anti-Christ and all God's people said amen. But let me tell you something, when it comes to the Word of God we should take it literally but even, okay let's just say okay I'll give you that on verse 2, but if that were really true that it's just saying okay if you have a wife, only have one, what about the part where it says in verse 4, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity, for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Let me ask you this, how are you going to know how to rule your own house if you don't have a house? How can you even say well but if he were, if he did have kids, I bet you he'd raise them right. If he were married I bet he'd be a great husband, but you know what, he doesn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to be married until I was married. You know how many people go and sit down in a classroom and learn how to do something? But then doing it is different. Okay let's go out and do it now. Let's take a skill that takes a lot of precision, like how about shooting guns? Shooting guns is a skill that is learned and it can be complicated as far as doing it well. What if I just showed you a book and just told you all the tips, here's how you're going to shoot a gun, but I never put a gun in your hand. I just told you here's how you're going to hold the gun, here's how you're going to aim it, here's how you're going to line up the sights, and let's say I spent hundreds of hours teaching you. All the intricacies of firing a gun. And then I just handed you a gun. You think you're just going to be like bam, bam, bam, you know, just hitting every target. Bam, you know. There's no way. Because the first time you held it you'd be awkward, it doesn't matter how much you've heard about it. And it's the same thing with marriage. You can hear all the preaching on marriage until you're blue in the face. Now get married and you'll realize that it's a little harder than it looks, it's a little more to it than it looks, and you have to learn by doing the job, okay, of being married. Having kids, same thing. I knew all about child rearing, you know, before I had kids, you know, but then you say, okay, this is a little different than I thought. Piece of cake. Just spank them, you know, read them the Bible, everything's going to be perfect. But you have to learn how to rule, okay. So out of the qualifications for a pastor, which go from verse 2 to verse 7, okay, so how many verses is that? Six verses. Out of six verses, two of them, of the qualifications for being a pastor, six verses, two of them are about ruling your house and ruling your children, and then part of another one. So two, and really, I mean, two and a half verses out of six are about your family life, and then somebody's going to turn around and say, you don't have to be married, you don't have to have kids, that's half the qualification it has to do with your family life. It doesn't make any sense, folks. So if you want to become a pastor, here's step one. Get married. And if you're not married, and you're, oh, I'm going to start a church, I'm going to Whoa there, tiger. Can you get one woman to follow you before you're going to have a whole church following you? Before you're going to lead 100 people and 200 people? How about getting one person to follow you? There's a start. And so the first step to becoming a pastor is getting married. Step two, have children, okay? But there are other steps to getting there as well, because many, you know, might already be married or already have child or children and they're on the road toward becoming a pastor, but here's the thing, you have to learn how to preach, because preaching is something that is a lot harder than it looks. It looks easy. Do I make it look easy? No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, you know, it's hard to preach. I mean, I remember when I used to sit in the pew and listen to preaching, I just thought, I could do that. I could get up there and do that. I remember the first time I got up to preach, I mean, in my mind, I was going to get up and just preach the greatest sermon of all time. It was going to be so dynamic. I was going to be yelling and pounding the pulpit and it was going to be great. And you get up there and it just, you know, and you get up there the second time and the third time and the 200 and third time and the 350 first time and I preached 500 sermons before I even started Faithful Word Baptist Church and I still struggled with preaching when I first started the church because it's just a skill. Now some people, it comes faster to them. It comes more natural. I wasn't really a natural. It was something I had to work at. You're sitting there thinking, you're still failing, you know. But anyway, I'm just saying, it's something that I had to work hard at to even develop the skill to preach a coherent sermon, to be able to be dynamic and to preach. It's something that takes practice. If you want to be a pastor someday, you need to start getting those sermons under your belt, as many as you can. Now you might not preach 500 like I did. And I'll say this, the 500 sermons that I preached, none of them was in a church service. It was all in nursing homes and in children's church and on bus routes and stuff like that. You know, I just took what opportunities I could get or I made opportunities to preach. Nobody was putting me behind the pulpit of a church and saying, preach. You know, I mean, the first time I preached a full length sermon in a real church service was when I started the church in Faithful Word Baptist Church. So if you ever have the opportunity to preach a sermon, you got to thank God for that opportunity because it's a great experience. Before I started the church, everybody I preached to was under 7 or over 70, you know, because I'm preaching in the nursing home and I'm preaching on the bus route to kids that we would rally for children's services and so forth. So there are things that you have to learn in order to become a pastor. You need to learn how to preach. You need to learn the Bible. I mean, do you want to be another pastor who doesn't know the right doctrine? We've got enough of those. You need to read the Bible. Not once, not twice. There was a guy recently, I was on some liberal radio, they brought me on some liberal radio show about my sermon that I preached a few weeks ago and this guy called in, I was interviewed on this radio show, and this guy called in from Surprise, Arizona. He's like, I'm a pastor myself and I've read the Bible two times cover to cover and this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And I'm thinking to myself, you're a pastor and you've read the Bible twice? You're not ready to be a pastor. Okay, so one of the things that you need to do as part of your plan toward becoming a pastor, yes, get married, learn how to have a good marriage, yes, have children, learn how to raise your children. You need to be reading your Bible, not two times, but five times, 10 times, 15 times, 20 times. You need to know the Bible well in order to pastor so that you preach the truth. Well, I'll just preach what Pastor Anderson preaches and then I can't go wrong. No, there's enough people just blindly following others. That's why we have such a mess today of just blindly following others. Well, if I blindly follow you, I'll be alright. No, don't blindly follow anybody. You need to read the Bible and preach your own sermons and have your own doctrine that you learned from the Bible. Hopefully you'll line up with me 99% because I'm 99% right, but I'm sure I'm 1% wrong. Maybe you can fix that. Okay? Well, the bottom line is you need to be learning the Bible, you need to be learning how to preach. Hey, you better learn to be a good soul winner. You better learn how to bring people to church. I mean, have you ever won somebody to Christ and brought them to church? Have you ever got somebody baptized that you won to the Lord? These are the things that you could be working on, not just sitting and waiting for something to happen and fall in your lap. That's what you can be doing to prepare yourself to be a pastor. You could start learning the trade and learning the job and taking every opportunity you can and making opportunities to practice your skills of song leading. You know, if you're going to start a church, you've got to be able to lead the singing. I mean, all different things you can learn. I remember when I wanted to pastor, I went to my pastor of my local church and he wanted me to go to Bible college. He wanted me to go to Golden State Baptist College and I said, I don't want to go there. I said, I don't want to go to Bible college. I said, I don't see Bible college in scripture. I said, you know, I want you to train me. I want to be like you, not like them, so I want you to teach me. Okay. He said, yeah, I'll train you. I'll teach you. But you know what? He didn't really have a plan for teaching me because I kind of went there year after year after year and I would kind of talk, you know, I didn't want to bug him, but I'd bring it up to him. Hey, you know, are you going to teach me? Are you going to train me? You know, can I, can I learn the job? And he just kind of never taught me. So finally I just realized I'm never going to be a pastor at this rate because I'm not being trained. I don't have a plan here. I don't have a strategy. I'm not getting anywhere. So finally I did end up break down, breaking down and going to Bible college, not because I wanted to go to Bible college, but because I thought to myself, you know, if I don't go to Bible college, I'm never going to be a pastor because I'm not being trained and I'm never going to get to point B. So I, you know, I didn't go to that cause, but I went to a different cause and I went there for a few years, you know, long story there. But I left there because there was a bunch of weird stuff being preached that I went back to my pastor and then I went to him and just said, just, you know, what, can you just send me out to start a church? You know, I said, well, do I need to go to a different Bible college? I asked him, I said, you know, should I go to a different Bible college and finish? I said, or should I just go start a church in Phoenix and just, you know, have I done enough? And, and he said, well, you could go to another college, isn't that? And I said, well, you know, are you against me just going to Phoenix? He said, sure. And he said, you know, he called me up on the platform the next day and said, you know, we're going to send him out to start a church in Phoenix. We don't really have the money right now, but we're going to try to find a way to support him and blah, blah, blah, you know, and this and that. And I ended up coming here and starting a church, you know, but here's the thing at our church, you will be trained if you want to be a pastor. And there are guys here who do want to be a pastor who have expressed that desire to me. And you know, I try to train them and help them learn as much as they can, give them opportunities to learn and grow. And if I'm not, then come to me and tell me and say, I want, I want to learn more. How can I learn more? Teach me more. What can I do to prepare myself? And I'll be glad to prepare you because we need another generation of pastors. We need men to go out and start churches or pastor churches, but it's going to take a plan to get there. It's not going to happen by accident. I mean, are we Calvinist? Do we think that everything just automatically, I mean, look, these Calvinists, they don't go soul winning, right? Because it's just all going to automatically happen. It's all just ordained. It's all going to happen. You know, everything's just going to happen by osmosis, you know, but here's the thing. It seems like some people, when it comes to other areas of life, they get all Calvinist. For example, when it comes to getting married, they become a Calvinist all of a sudden. All of a sudden they believe in the sovereignty of God. What in the world? I mean, look, do we think that the unsaved are just going to come to us and fall on their knees and say, what must I do to be saved? No, but why, okay, so why do you expect some woman to fall on her knees before you and say, will you marry me? You know, well, it's just going to happen. No, you need to go out and make it happen. You need to have a plan. You need to have a strategy or you know what you're going to be? Single for the rest of your life. You know why I got married when I was young? Because I had a plan to get married because I went out and did the work to get married, to meet people, to find the right woman that I wanted to spend my life with. Why? Because I had a plan to be a pastor and you know, I just wanted to be married for the sake of being married also and I wanted to be married because I wanted to be a pastor and I realized, hey, this is God's plan for my life. I need to get married. I want to have kids. I want to start a church. This is what I'm going to do with my life. None of it happened by accident. It is all planned. It is all done by taking heed there unto and not just having this Calvinistic sovereign grace just, you know, it's all just going to happen for me. The doors are going to swing wide open. No, you need to kick that door open. It's the truth, my friend. You need to desire the office of a bishop. You need to work toward finding a wife, having children, learning how to preach, learning your Bible, learning how to pastor, learning how to start a church, and then go out and do something and have a plan to get it done right. This is how you get things done. Now, different things in the sermon might apply to different people, but I think something in the sermon tonight applied to everyone. Whether it's Bible reading that you need to get a plan and get on track with reading your Bible, whether it's soul winning. You know, are you out soul winning every week or do you just go soul winning every once in a while or do you just go soul winning every year and a half when you just happen to have somebody ask you, so what do you believe it takes to get to heaven? Okay, are you soul winning consistently? Are you reading your Bible consistently? Do you have a plan for prayer? Do you have a plan to get yourself to church? Do you have a plan if you're a parent, especially as a mother? Do you have a plan for homeschooling? Do you have a plan to read the Bible as a family, men that are fathers? Do you have a plan to basically rule over that house and say, hey, we need a Bible time in this house. Let's make this happen. Even if that has to be delegated sometimes to your wife because you're out of town or whatever, delegate that. Make that happen. Be a leader. And if you're one who wants to be a pastor, you need to make a plan to become a pastor and start working toward it now because it's not going to happen overnight. And if you're a single young man, you need to make a plan to get married, okay? And you need to make a plan to find, you say, why do you care if single young guys get married? Because you know what, it's dangerous for single young guys to just be single and living on their own. It's a dangerous way to live your life. You can say whatever you want, you can like that or lump that, but you know what? When you're a young man and you're living at home with your parents, it's less dangerous than when you're just floating around. And you know, I've seen a lot of young men in our church that get out of church and quit the ministry and they quit serving God and they yield unto temptation. And that's why the Bible says to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife. And that's why the Bible says it's better to marry than to burn. And it's not talking about the food in the kitchen, although that applies too, you know. But hey, it's better to marry than to burn, okay? Let every man have his own wife. Now if you're one that's the next apostle Paul and you have no desire for women and you just feel that you can just serve God for the rest of your life and you don't need to be married, you're in the less than one percent, buddy, and I doubt that. You know, you need to get serious about doing something with your life and not just be on a merry-go-round in life. You need to get something done. You need to make something happen. And I'm not saying to marry the first girl that comes along, but you know what, you know, you need to be making the effort. You need to be trying. You know, if you need a few tips, come see me, you know, I'll tell you how it's done. But I'm just saying, you know, any area, you could apply this sermon to any area of life. I mean if you want to be healthier physically, if you want to, you know, get your finances under control, I mean just whatever area of life. It all happens because it's planned. It doesn't happen by accident. By accident, you just keep doing the same thing over and over again and going nowhere and living your life in a hamster wheel. Make something happen in your life, make a plan, count the cost, get it done. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and we thank you for these teachings. Even some of the passages that might be long and boring to us, in our flesh that is, our spirit loves the word of God, but sometimes in the flesh we get to passages that are laborious descriptions of buildings and battles, Lord. Help us to understand that these are plans that had to be laid in order for great things to happen. In order for that magnificent tabernacle to be built, in order for the temple to be built, plans had to be made, Lord. Help us to make plans in our life to get something done, to make something happen, and to do great things for you, not to be mediocre in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.