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you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Thou might see the food of life, raise a standard rhyme for the Lord. Purge your own homes in the manor hall, rest your cause for His holy Word. Roused in soldiers, rally round the banner, ready, steady, as the world longs. Onward, forward, shall the Lord stand up, Christ is standing on the mighty throne, strong to be known, marching on to go, while our cause we know must prevail. Shielded and bright, leading in the light, battling for the right, men and men. Roused in soldiers, rally round the banner, ready, steady, as the world longs. Onward, forward, shall the Lord stand up, Christ is standing on the mighty throne, hold out the home, hear us when we're gone, help us find all by Thy grace. When the battle's done, and the victors done, they will pray for Thy face. Roused in soldiers, rally round the banner, ready, steady, as the world longs. Onward, forward, shall the Lord stand up, Christ is standing on the mighty throne. Amen. All right, great singing this evening. It's good to have you all back with us once again. At the right time, I didn't see anyone show up at four expecting service to start, so that's good for our first Sunday at a new time. And at this time, we will be going through our announcements, so if you don't have one of these bulletins, just lift your hand up real quick. We'll make sure we get one out to you. Barely needs one. And if you open up to the first page, you'll see our service times there, Sunday morning at 1030. I highlighted the 5 p.m. start time since that's brand new starting today. 5 p.m. for our evening service, and then Wednesday night at 7 is our Bible study. 7 is our Bible study. I didn't change that. I think we just did Isaiah chapter 60. I think we're in Isaiah 61 this week, so that needs to be updated. But, see, no one's paying attention. If you're coming Wednesday night, you'd be paying attention. No, I'm just kidding. Come on out. We're finishing up, we're wrapping up the book of Isaiah. Lots of great teaching in the book of Isaiah. If you can make it out here, we'd love to have you here on Wednesday evenings. Soul-winning opportunities are listed there, as well as the salvation and baptisms for the month of June, as well as for the year. Let's go ahead. Real quick, did I miss anyone that had salvation to report? Not from today. Just any other day of the week. Did I miss anything? Alright, then how about for today? Salvation to report for today. One, four, five, wow. That's right, you told me about it. There's two groups, right? So two groups had five, two, and two. One, thank you. I think I got everyone there. Well, amen. Hey, fourteen salvations. Fourteen salvations for the day. That's more than we've had in a long time, on a Sunday afternoon soul-winning time. Now, I know I've heard the area's pretty receptive, right? That's great, but hopefully this is the reason why I wanted to extend the soul-winning time in between the church services, gaining that extra hour. I think we're gonna see a lot of great results this year and just continuing on with that extra hour of soul-winning time. That is the reason why we did this. Obviously, I'm thankful that we also didn't just hit a really tough neighborhood or something on the first day we did this. Hey, but you know what? That's going to happen, and you have to expect that as well. There's gonna be days like, but Pastor Burzins, we had an extra hour and we only had like two salvations for the whole day. It's gonna happen. You can't force people to get saved. However, there is, there are statistics behind the amount of people that get saved. There are. I mean, I keep, that's why I keep records. That's why I ask what day do you go soul-winning. That's why I ask all these questions, because it's interesting to look at that and to get a good gauge and get a good feel and kind of get your finger on the pulse of a community, on an area, and understand, hey, I mean, all things considered, all things being equal, relatively speaking, how long, if you go out soul-winning for this much time, how many people can you relatively expect to see saved on average? Obviously, some days will be more than others, but it definitely holds true. You know, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm gonna get into a lot of the numbers and stuff in my sermon tonight, so but that's great. I mean, this is awesome. So, thank you to everybody who puts in your time and effort going out and preaching the gospel, especially in the summer. It's hot outside, so a little uncomfortable, but these 14 people are sure glad that you chose to go outside when it's not very comfortable to do so. Offering totals down there at the bottom of the page through the month of June. Prayer requests. Additions to the prayer requests. Mrs. Henry, Faye Henry is possibly beginning the stages of Alzheimer's, okay? So, obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty there. It could be very you know, that's not good news at all to even think that you might be headed into having something like that happen to your brain, your mind. So, please pray for her. Pray for the family. Pray for wisdom. Pray for direction. You know, hopefully, there's maybe something could be done and maybe it's not Alzheimer's. Maybe it's something else. Pray that God will help them to one, get the knowledge to heal and just to help them with that situation. So, pray for them. Pray for brother Carter and his family and the passing of his father. He's also gonna be traveling this week, so pray for safe travels and that things will go well there. Pray for Mrs. Momtahan who had a car accident. I haven't heard an update yet. I'm gonna have to message brother Mark and see what's going on. A horrible wreck when you look at the picture. Really, really, really a lot of damage to her car if you didn't see it in the group. So, thank God she's alive. Thank God she was able to literally like, you know, be able to walk away from that accident, but pray that things will go well for her and she'll be able to get back to full strength. I feel like there's someone else. Pray for the people who aren't here that are out sick. Brother Peter's not here. Nia's out sick, so pray that she gets well quickly. In my understanding, she's not feeling well at all. She's feeling really, really bad. So, pray that she'll get well quickly. I feel like there's one more person I need to add to the list. Am I missing anything? Has anyone asked me for a prayer that I did not mention? Okay, maybe I'm not forgetting something. Such is my life recently. I have a lot of things going on in my head and it's hard to keep track of them all, so I'm hoping that one of these days soon I'll get everything sorted out in my brain. I don't know. Hopefully, for your sakes, that happens soon. Faith Forward Baptist Church is added this week. Pray for Pastor Anderson. He's going to be traveling a lot, so pray for safe travels for him. Pray for the church so everything goes well while he's out of town and other guest preachers are coming in. And be praying for our event, too. Pray that it's going to be a great opportunity. Obviously, I love Pastor Anderson. We love Pastor Anderson here. I'm sure everyone's going to be edified and blessed by the sermons that he's preparing for you. But also that maybe some people who are in our area that might not still know about our church when they hear about him coming here, maybe they'll be able to join us. Like, wow, I didn't know there was, I mean, even to this day there's people saying, oh, I didn't know that you guys were in Georgia. It's like, where you been? I don't know. But, hey, it happens. So pray that we'll be able to find more people who are like-minded, people who like the doctrine, like the stance, and we'll be able to find us and join us, right? On the next page, happy four-year anniversary. Thank you once again for all your hard work and service. It truly is the group of people, it's a church that really makes everything happen here and it's very much appreciated. Strong Old Baptist Church is an awesome church. I wouldn't want to be in any other church than this church right now and not just saying that because I'm the pastor. I truly mean that. Love you guys and looking forward to the next year of work. Yes. Yes. The title of my sermon is Greater Works tonight, so we're going to be talking to work. You all are glutton for punishment coming here because we like to work and I'm going to put you to work and we're planning on doing more work, so that's what we're doing. Amen. All right, I got you. Thank you. Thank you. Someone agrees. Everyone else is like, I'm out of here. Just kidding. All right, hope you have enjoyed the food. Food is good. Yes? All right. Yeah, we might be using this place more in the future. It's good eating. That was nice. Whatever's left over, I don't know what there is. I haven't really seen anything. You're free to make a plate for yourself. Help yourself after service. Take some food home with you so that we don't have to throw it in the trash can. Or just eat it here or whatever. Just make sure it's gone. That includes desserts, cakes, everything, so help yourself to that stuff. Congratulations, Weatherby family. Asher Solomon was born on Thursday, so 7 pounds, 13 ounces, 21 inches. Looks like a cute little baby there. We got the picture in the bulletin. And by the way, I know we print this stuff and then it's gone by the next week and usually the families who it's for aren't here. Obviously it's for the whole church, but that being said, if you want a reprint of any of the bulletins, let me know. I have all of them saved. Very few exceptions for going back years. I may have lost one here or there, but in general, I have a saved backlog of all the bulletins, so if you had something that was special to you that was in a bulletin, you want a reprint of it, if you got sentimental reasons or whatever, just let me know. I'll be happy to print it out for you. June challenge. Attempt to give the Gospel to at least one person every single day of the month. We're closing out the month. Close it out strong. If you didn't complete this challenge because you messed up on a day or two or a week or whatever, try to push hard. Try to finish out the month. You know what? Every day, the rest of the days of this month, I'm going to try to give the Gospel to someone. Just join us in spirit. Guest preacher, Pastor Anderson is going to be here July 10th. We've got an extra soloing time on July 9th. Brother Jesse and Brother Devin have offered to volunteer and help with the coordination and everything with that event. We'll be having some food served afterwards. We'll have a lunch here at church so everyone can eat a meal before you go your separate ways. Should be a great time. We've got some extra chairs as you can see in the auditorium. I'll probably be going over some instructions. We'll be having some other guest preachers also after that day so I will be out of town. I'll be missing not just that Sunday but also Wednesday and the following Sunday. So, I'm doing preaching there and I'm doing Red Hot also this year so I'm going to be preaching at the Red Hot Conference at Verity and I'm scheduled to come back on Monday so I'm going to be at Red Hot through Sunday. So, we will have other guest preachers from within. Our internal preachers will be preaching for us on that Wednesday night and on the following Sunday so be here to support those guys. Don't stay home or whatever. I don't know why you would anyway. It's like just because I'm not here it's not that big of a deal but come on down and hear what everyone else has to say. Hear what these guys have to say. They read their Bible. I said their Bible a lot. I'm sure you're going to be able to learn a lot. So, come on out and support the rest of our home team preachers here while I'm out of town. Bible memory passage. We're on week two of four to memorize these last seven verses of Hebrews 3 and you will earn a prize if you're able to do that and quote it word perfect without making any errors. And on the back we've got the birthdays and the anniversaries for the month of July. That's about it for announcements. Brother Jesse will you please lead us in the next song. And if you're wondering you know like everyone's been talking about this awesome map right. I'm going to talk about this too during a sermon so don't worry about that. We'll cover that soon. Alright the next song we're singing is a song number 308 I Surrender All. That's 308 308 I Surrender All. Come to Jesus I surrender. Come to Him I freely give. I will never ave a sin in His presence daily live. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to be my blessed Savior. I surrender all. Come to Jesus I surrender only at His feet I bow. Where only pleasures all forsaken take me Jesus take me now. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to be my blessed Savior. I surrender all. All to Jesus I surrender. He made me Savior only mine. Let me feel the Holy Spirit truly know that now are mine. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to be my blessed Savior. I surrender all. All to Jesus I surrender Lord I give myself to Thee fill me with my love and I will bear my blessings all on Thee. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to be my blessed Savior. I surrender all. Amen. Alright at this time we'll have the opera plays being passed around. I'll be asking us to pass it around. And while the opera plays being passed around turn between your Bibles to John chapter 14. Again that's John chapter 14 here at Stronghold Baptist Church. We read the entire chapter. Someone will be reading at the pulpit while you can follow along silently. It's John chapter 14 and brother Devin will be reading. That was John chapter 14. Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mentions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there you may be also. And whither I go ye know and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him Lord we know not whither thou goest and how can we know the way. Jesus saith unto him I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the father but by me. If he had known me he should have known my father also and from henceforth ye know him and have seen him. Philip saith unto him Lord show us the father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the father and how sayest thou then show us the father. Believest thou not that I am in the father and the father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself but the father that dwelleth in me he doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father in me or else believe me for the very works sake. Verily verily I say unto you he that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father and whatsoever ye ask in my name that will I do that the father may be glorified in the son. If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it. If ye love me keep my commandments and I will pray the father and he shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knoweth him. But ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more but ye see me because I live ye shall live also. At that day you shall know that I am in my father and ye in me and I in you. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them he it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father and I will love him and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him not ascariot Lord how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world Jesus answered and said unto him if a man love me he will keep my words and my father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings and the word which ye hear is not mine but the fathers which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you being yet present with you but the comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the father will send in my name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid ye have heard how I said unto you I go away and come again unto you if you loved me you would rejoice because I said I go unto the father for my father is greater than I and now I have told you before it come to pass that when it is come to pass you might believe hereafter I will not talk much with you for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me but that the world may know that I love the father and as the father gave me commandment even so I do arise let us go hence. Brother Chris Logan can you pray for us please? Father God I thank you again for your name and for the light that you have given to us thank you for your precious words and a lot of the other things you have worked on I thank you for the thoughts possible of the brothers and sisters you have just said some of them out of church and some of them from over here I'm here to have some fellowship with you and God pass you over the pieces of words this afternoon with that giving clarity of mind and the words that you have found in heaven to see or found in heaven and in my heart and we will receive both of you throughout the week that we come across and preach the word to them that they will hope to use thank you again Father for today and I hope that you will see in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right so I'm arriving the title of my sermon I mentioned already during announcements my sermon is Greater Works and it's from this passage here with Jesus Christ where he says in verse number 12 verily verily I say unto you he that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father and you know you might be perplexed a little bit about this about this saying that Jesus is like greater works like how could he do greater works than Jesus Christ Jesus was healing people and performing miracles and all that stuff but when he's talking about greater works he doesn't mean like better it doesn't mean like even more astonishing in miracles or something no he's just talking about the works he does greater just meaning more like the total number of works so and the reason why he says is right there he says because I go unto my father so Jesus Christ ministry only lasted between three and four years it's a short ministry we've already as a church now have been joined together for longer than Jesus' ministry on this earth so the reason why he's saying hey you're going to do greater works it's because you have more time and this is one of the things that's actually going to be the first point in my sermon here because I have a lot of goals and a vision for Stronghold Baptist Church to do greater works we've got the example we got the template we saw Jesus Christ sending him out two and two we saw him going out and preaching the gospel we saw all the works that he was doing they were baptizing people they were getting people saved he was discipling people and we're going to try to do we are doing the same thing but we want to do greater works and every year we exist as a church we ought to want to do more we want to push ourselves we do the challenges but I also want to make sure everyone's on the same page as a church because we already have unity of faith but we also need to be working towards a common goal and we're all on the same page and say hey what is the big project what is the big thing that we're working on as a church we have a lot of little things going on and hopefully we'll have a lot of other little things going on too we have the retirement community preaching that we're doing on some Sundays in between the church services we have our regular soul winning times we'll be adding some other things sometimes we do preaching classes sometimes we do other events you know we have the home school we have all these different activities and things going on but what is the big picture what's the big goal well the big picture is right behind me this is the big picture and this is I love this thing because what this is going to do I mean we've been lacking in this area it's my fault we've been lacking in having something like this a visual aid we've been doing this but we need to always get reminded of what we're doing and what the big task really is this is a big task it's a big map but what we're talking about here and look this is Dallas if you can't see in the back here's Dallas Georgia if you're familiar with Dallas Cartersville up in the corner Canton up on top Marietta Atlanta going all the way down Fayetteville Griffin down at the bottom McDonough, Jackson, Conyers Lawrenceville, Flowery Branch coming pretty wide area this is the greater Atlanta metropolitan area I had some help and I appreciate brother Micah and others who have helped get some information together this map represents about five and a half million people there's a little over ten million people according to the last census in the whole state of Georgia so more than half of all the people that live in Georgia live within the boundaries of this map pretty cool isn't it? hey what a great opportunity for a church to reach half of a state in a perimeter like this brother Lindsay how long does it take you to drive to church approximately on a Sunday? one hour you're at the top of the map we are right here you are here here that's an hour drive put that in perspective right so you do like kind of an hour radius obviously getting down here probably looking at two hours not bad it's very aggressive but this isn't what we're going to do this year it's not like well what are we going to do next year this is you know long term thinking this is a very big goal and objective but it's also very doable but you know what we need we need people who can look at this and get excited about this we need people who can look at this challenge not just a challenge look at this map and go five and a half million people now I have to remember because I was just preaching not that long ago at the other ministry we're doing I made a point in my sermon there which is why I'm thinking like I'm going to tie this in oh wait I didn't even say that here we all should have this understanding I was preaching on you know and I went to I preached on Matthew 6 which actually we're going to turn to here as well I'm going to go out of order for my notes it doesn't matter Jesus Christ preaches you know you can't serve God and mammon right the important thing in this life is not our things the accumulation of wealth amassing how much you're working for money and how much can I store up and I'm going to build me storehouses and I'm going to take my ease and that's what that is not what life is all about that is not what life is all about it's not about the things it's not about the houses it's not about the boats it's not about the cars it's not about any of those things and that stuff our existence here is about people people are important I love I love just personally in my flesh I would love to go out and live extremely rural off grid by nobody I would like to have a lot of property animals water source and just go unplug and leave me alone in my flesh in my flesh but the new man the inward man goes who are you going to reach if you unplug and move away from everybody how are you going to follow Christ who came to serve who came to minister when you move away from everybody how are you going to do that well I mean things are getting crazy and the government and this and who are you going to reach why are you here God didn't put you on this earth to go move away from everybody it's an appreciation I've also gained after the ministry of serving in Prescott Valley Arizona great church I loved it I loved the area I loved living there it was great it was a smaller town though knocked all the doors in less than five years and when all the opportunities came up and the various elements not getting into the whole story of what ultimately brought me here one of the things I love about this area is how many people there are here I was trying that out the first time you know first starting a church from scratch great experience great opportunity many people saved praise the Lord work got done for God but I think I've grown in my understanding at least in my heart and my spirit to say you know what everywhere needs a great church everywhere does the small towns need a great church you know what I want to try to reach the most people there's a large amount of people here and I'm not saying it's wrong to start a church in a small town don't get me wrong I don't want to imply that or put that up I don't think Christians should just go isolate themselves and live on a compound somewhere I don't think that's right I think that is wrong I mean if you're already grown up and you're already out there and everything else whatever right but like you have a choice you know you have to make it a priority and if you do live out in the middle of nowhere you know what then it's gonna be a little bit harder you just gotta make it a priority to go out and reach people though because that is your job now I don't know the total number of churches in Georgia that are out there and they have the right gospel and they're preaching a gospel I know they exist I know of at least two for sure that are preaching the right gospel and are actively soul winning but the sizes of the churches aren't even as big as ours and we don't have a very big church so the work is slow I know there are other churches that win souls in this state I've heard testimony of that so great the more the merrier we want to see more people but we can't rest on the work of others we're gonna take on this challenge and everyone else that's helping and working amen but this is our goal this is our burden now many people went out soul winning today think about this every time you go out soul winning is special everyone that went out soul winning today has a story to tell one way or another whether you got someone saved or not everyone that went out soul winning today I hope at least had interactions with at least one person even if you didn't get the chance to give the gospel you had interactions with people you're interacting with people because people are what matters you're spending your time going out to reach people this is what we need this is what our church is about but this is what people need to be getting excited about I hope you're not thinking oh man why are you always wanting us to do this stuff I hope you don't have that attitude and that spirit I hope you enjoy this work and look it's a lot of work it's gonna be a lot of labor but I hope it's not the type of labor you get home and just be like man I wish I don't have to do this stuff anymore ever again I hate this but it's rather a work of oh man am I exhausted what a great day I need some rest but I'm looking forward to doing this again it's a labor of love if it's not a labor of love for you you know search your heart and I'm not gonna just stand up here and criticize you and condemn you but honestly we ought to have a heart for other people if you want to follow Christ closely you have to have the mindset that was in Christ because he came not to be served but to serve not to be ministered unto but to minister he came to help people for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that's a lot of love for a lot of people and a big sacrifice if we're gonna follow that example it's a sacrifice it's a sacrifice we sacrifice our whole day many of us one whole day out of the week Sunday we're dedicating that to serving God and serving man amen and that's what we ought to be thinking about and I know I pushed the time back an hour for this start time you might get upset about that and be like oh well this is gonna screw up my work week I understand that but I want people who love this work and will say alright I'll deal with it yeah it screws up my work week I'm impacted by this too and I chose it there's a lot of things that impact my schedule it's alright I'm not gonna complain and I'm not gonna brag but to share the vision we need the same heart and mind and attitude and say let's roll up our sleeves if I do this I'm probably gonna rip my suit let's roll up our sleeves we got a lot of work to do now I wasn't able to prepare the map fully and shade in the areas that we've already covered we've been knocking doors for four years okay we've done a lot of work just in general as a church but just to give you an idea because I have a rough idea so we've done this area there's a little circle around where the church is we've done up some over here we've done some over here we've done some over here and then at a few various points along the 285 we've kind of branched out a little bit and done some apartment complexes if you were to see it highlighted though it would be a little hard to see given the expanse because it's big because we started from scratch four years ago and have been slowly building over time now the cool thing is is that we're at a stage where we should be able to start seeing some really good growth in the church now that's going to be up to God on how the church grows but there is a life cycle looking at it from a high level among churches looking at history look at statistics I talked to Pastor Anderson, Pastor Jimenez they've had their ministries for much longer I like keeping track of records I talked to Pastor Anderson just recently he was going over some statistics and I was like oh man you're doing that look I'm doing this too and we kind of shared some data and it's interesting because we're looking at patterns that's a whole other state from here but looking at church growth and things like that I think there is a probably a standard but what you can expect to see given people doing work doing preaching the gospel and the way that a church will grow with God's blessing on it and what I feel like we're at a point where we should kind of start to see a more aggressive climb we've been at a very steady linear growth when I look at the attendances and where we've come it's a pretty good year over year linear growth but around the place where we are at now as far as attendances go is around the place that Faithful Word was at when they started to experience more of an exponential growth before flattening out and going to another linear growth does everyone know the difference between linear and like an exponential? Linear is just like a line just think of a line okay so it's going to be at some kind of an angle so linear growth it's the same kind of amount year over year roughly whereas exponential is that curve that just goes up in a much shorter period of time that's what I mean by that in case you're not familiar with the terms what's exciting about that is when we start to get a lot more soul winners because the things that we need to accomplish this we need time right and we need people those are our resources obviously we need the Holy Spirit we need God that's first and foremost but we need time and people to do this that's it I mean it's pretty simple we've got the gospel time and people so the more people and the more time we have the faster we're going to be able to cover ground and reach people and reach new people we should always be wanting to do greater works in church that's why we're here it's to serve others it's to really serve the Lord and to get things accomplished and it's not I don't like the idea of like people just going I don't really know I don't really know what my life's about I don't know what the goals are hey we've got a goal we've got an objective and now we've got a picture where you can see that now this isn't going to stay here permanently this is up just for today for illustration purposes until we can get a final home for this where we will be updating it regularly but I wanted to bring it out for this purpose to understand the goal moving forward you know this wall is going to be coming down Gorbachev so some people get that other people are like Gorbahu look that up later if you don't understand what I'm talking about this wall is going to be coming down so that's why this isn't staying here we're expanding we're growing we're moving so there's going to be another spot where this is going to be more permanently residing so this is the goal this is what we're moving for now how are we going to achieve greater works as a church so there's two ways we're going to be able to achieve this there's church wide initiatives which is what I'm talking about right now we're doing different things at church there's also personal initiatives church is made up of people you have to make decisions for yourself I'm going to be making some initiatives as a church because church wide initiatives a lot more people will generally sign up for things when it's already existing when it's already in place as opposed to you personally saying well I'm going to go and do this right some people have their own personal soul winning times and that's awesome that's great and I encourage that I hope more people do that but the more scheduled soul winning times a church has the more people you'll have showing up for those times that wouldn't have gone out on their own and done them how shall they preach except they be sent there's truth to that right I mean it's in the bible but of course there's truth to that but even what I'm saying here about just having these schedules so you will start to see this year the first one to do the great works time of course the first one was adding an hour church wide initiative to lengthen the soul winning time we saw great results today as a result of that not only did you knock more doors in the extra hour that we had today but there was more people saved well that makes sense doesn't it now the statistics that I'm used to seeing that I've seen generally speaking very rough you spend an hour out soul winning you usually see one salvation when you look at it on a large scale obviously there's some days you go out you might get four people saved hey great in two hours or something awesome cool but then there's other days you go out and nobody gets saved right so when you average that out very good average I've talked to a lot of people about this and everyone kind of sees the same thing it's roughly one hour one salvation some areas are really receptive and you'll end up seeing more people get saved other areas are really cold and no one does you just kind of average all that out adding one hour and that's per group or per team right so we have five teams for example out on a Sunday this extra hour should reap an extra five salvations every week an extra five salvations that's cool five more people get saved well there's 52 weeks in a year you do the math for 250 people right and that's just for five groups going out sometimes we have more than five groups going out I don't think we normally have less than five I don't know setting one small adjustment can do a lot in the long term so we make these adjustments we think about what is this going to do now you need to be able to think about your own personal schedule similarly sometimes you only need to tweak your schedule just a little bit and you can reap great benefits from doing that because for example for example you change one thing in your day one routine one habit give yourself 15 minutes and you can think about this any time of the day I don't care morning evening whatever think about something that you do you gain 15 minutes you can spend that time 15 minutes memorizing the Bible if you haven't been doing that and you know what you'll have all of Hebrews memorized by the time we get done with that as a church if you're doing 15 minutes every single day you will be going at a much faster pace than we go through as a church 15 minutes every if you do it every single day it has to be every day you do it every day you will say but it's only 15 minutes 15 minutes every day can practically depending on your reading speed get you through the Bible an extra time during a year if you just do reading the Bible it sounds like it's very little but this is how you make great accomplishments you could make the small changes you don't have to get all drastic and go oh man well if I'm gonna do anything for God everything's got no look you make the small changes a little bit here and a little bit there why because our Christian life isn't a sprint it's the marathon people who run marathon look I'm not a runner I've never been a runner I'm a swimmer I used to swim not a runner but even so you know you distance you're tweaking you're making but when you start getting good you know you make small changes but those small changes sometimes can make big impact on the long run run this is what we need to be thinking about so as a church not only are we adding one hour between services I'm gonna be planning more marathons just longer stretches of time so we've added one hour consistent every week every week every week every week one more hour in addition to that we'll have some extra times you don't have to go to all of the marathons but some people will be going and you'll probably go to more if there's more offered we'll have more people putting in time throughout the year it's gonna happen obviously everyone just you choose what you want to do but this is how we're going to get this done how are we going to do greater works with the time you have to have the consistency I already mentioned this you know it's a when you start incorporating good habits in your life habitually soul winning every week if you don't habitually go every week you gotta try to form that habit of saying you know what I am going to set a time and I'm going to go soul winning whether it be Sunday whether it be Monday whether it be Saturday whether it be Thursday whether you know whatever the time is set the schedule this is where the great works come in over a lifetime it's the daily the weekly chip away chip away chip away chip away overtime chip away keep chipping keep chipping keep chipping we're going to have we got highlighters we're going to be highlighting well today we covered it's just going to be a little a little flick of the tip of the of the highlighter in some of these areas right that's all we did today we did this street or we did this apartment complex you know okay there's a little line on any one day someone might look at them oh you think you're going to get all this done that's all you did yes because we're not going to look at it and mock it and just give up and throw up our hands and say well we can't do this because we know that over time you'll start to see hey that's pretty cool look we actually got all of Norcross done Norcross isn't huge right but pretty cool that's noticeable that's a spot you can say wow we did that we got Peachtree Corners done Lilburn huh we get Lilburn done and you start chipping away and then it gets even more exciting the momentum builds you come in and you see that and I remember I know this for a fact because I was part of it I did the same exact practice at Faithful Word we had a map on the wall and you go in you mark up the map you get done with your area you mark up your area you get used to doing that you get used to seeing it but every once in a while you go wow you just kind of take a step back and be like you cover a lot of ground and one thing that I've noticed then after leaving Faithful Word and then I come back and visit maybe it's a year maybe it's two years since I've been there then you'd be like whoa last time I saw this you know it looked a certain way and now it's like oh man that's cool it's exciting it's great you see the progress that how is that done though chipping away every single day there's a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more that hour you know I talked about how many roughly how many salvations you know the 52 hours a year just by changing the start time and hopefully hopefully it's worth the investment for you it's worth the extra sacrifice of saying okay instead of getting home at 7 or whatever time you normally get home 8 9 whatever like whatever we're going to get home an hour later but you know what that's 52 hours per year 1040 hours in 20 years that we've gained by changing the time for one person for one person 20 years I mean this is yes 20 years I'm not expecting to reach five and a half million people in five years that's a million people a year we're not we don't have that capacity right not there I don't know how the numbers will change as we gain more people maybe we get some more employees maybe we could have people full-time evangelists soul winners going out and preaching the gospel eight hours a day ten hours a day every single day right amen right we'll see what we could do but that's we're not there now but obviously I you know 20 years that's just that's just a number I don't know when we'll accomplish this but the church will be around longer than 20 years god willing 40 years 50 years 100 years you know whatever whatever 1040 hours in 20 years it's a lot of hours there's no sleeping in that that's that's work hours that's just what you could add you start thinking about the judgment seat of Christ 20 years and that's that's all this is this is extra this is like but if you just had one hour think about that you never do any sewing you do one hour of sewing a week in 20 years you've got a 1040 hours by doing one a week pretty cool I mean you're gonna get rewarded for the 1040 hours that you spent out sewing in 20 years how else would we agree to work? faithfulness we need to keep the focus on the spiritual not the carnal this is what I was talking about with Matthew 6 we need to have the right mindset we need the time right so work on your schedule try to add the time in we need consistency it needs to be a habit and you need faithfulness to serving god faithfulness to the word of god faithfulness to the things of god the right focus Jesus said Matthew 6 19 lay not for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal for where your treasure is there will your heart be also the time change for me hey my heart is on the loss of winning more souls and wanting to have more time knocking doors because I was getting sick and tired of getting out there and feeling like man we just got started now I have to go back for service that's how I felt I wish we just had more time well why can't we because I'm the pastor and I didn't change a time that's why okay for me that's a real easy fix well let's change a time why not by the power invested in me by god hey we have an extra hour no room for complaints and I'm complaining myself going what in the world like I need more time soul winning great let's add more time soul winning but that's because the treasure is on winning a loss it's not on well I'm going to be even more tired on Monday I'm not going to be more tired I'm already tired on Monday I'm not going to be more tired come on it's already exhausting what's an extra hour right I mean come on right you work okay you work in the 11 hour shift what's one more to make it 12 any guys been working I mean you want to go home after 11 but you know what you put in an extra hour okay you don't really feel any different you're still just as tired as you were in 11 hours might as well do the extra hour put in the overtime and who knows maybe god will bless you and give you overtime pay for doing a lot of works for him right time and a half double time I don't know verse 24 no man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other cannot serve god and mammon make the choice what's important is it the money or is it the people therefore I say unto you take no thought for your life what you shall eat or what you shall drink nor yet for your body what you shall put on is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment that's a great promise we don't have to worry if you're worried about work I'm worried oh man what's it gonna do to my work schedule don't worry about it god will provide god will take care of you make the right choices for the right reasons god takes care of the rest verse number 31 therefore take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink wherewithal shall we be closed for all these things after all these things through the gentile seek your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things but seek ye first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you take therefore no thought for the mow worry about monday on sunday worry about sunday on sunday hey we've got church twice today we've got so many in the afternoon just do that and when church is all over then you can start thinking about work tomorrow but today lets focus on what we gotta get done today lets do it the morrow should take thought for the things of itself hey that works always gonna be there on monday it's always there let it be there sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof turn if you go to Hebrews chapter 11 we'll briefly just look through this there's not a whole lot of scripture tonight I just wanna I wanna encourage you I wanna motivate you I see obviously what I mean we're talking about this is scriptural principles of course serving god so winning more doing more doing greater works is very easily fundamentally from scripture but I wanna encourage you and hopefully help see how we could do more why we should do more and here in Hebrews 11 we have a lot of examples of people who had great accomplishments because of their faith and their faithfulness because when times got hard and when things were difficult they didn't back out they didn't quit they didn't stop they didn't say oh this is too much they kept going you know what my vision is at Strong Old Baptist Church we're full of Hebrews 11 people Hebrews 11 is like the hall of faith I mean people mention Hebrews 11 are being recognized very highly for their faith in the Lord and there's no reason why any one of us can't live to the same potential the same degree as what we're reading here no reason at all because they were people we are people it doesn't matter if they live thousands of years ago in fact I think it's probably easier for us in general in many ways some of these people had to face harder times and persecutions and oppositions and obstacles and things like that than we do look at verse number 13 the Bible says these all died in faith not having received the promises but having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth Hebrews 11 people we haven't received God's promises yet we haven't received for the works that we've done we haven't received our new glorified body we haven't received those promises but we see them afar off we know they're coming persuaded of them persuaded of the judgment seat of Christ and the rewards we're just strangers and pilgrims on the earth we should be embracing God's promises as is mentioned here verse 14 for they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country it means they're not mindful of the area the world that they're in right now I don't care about this stuff I don't care about the money I don't care about these other worldly things it's the heavenly and truly if they had been mindful of that country from once they came out they might have had opportunity to have returned but now they desire a better country that is in heavenly wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared for them a city stronghold Baptist church should be filled with people that desire a better heavenly country a better country if our church is filled with that if that is our church if that describes our church you know what God's not ashamed of our church he's not ashamed to be called our God because why because we're not going to be dragging God's name through the mud oh that's a Christian verse 24 by faith Moses when he was come to years refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect under the recompense of the reward that's how he lived that's how he made his decisions big decisions you know what I could enjoy all these pleasures I could have all this luxury I could have all this wealth I could have this comfortability he was in a position to be able to do so being raised in Pharaoh's house being able to be like hey I'm you know I'm like royalty I could live this great lavish lifestyle and he said no no I'm going to do what's right no I'm going to join myself with the people of God instead of unto this heathen king this heathen family nothing to do with them I want to be with the people of God but that means you're not going to have yeah I know but you know what I'm going to have I don't have it now just wait just wait and see we'll see where Moses is sitting at the resurrection we'll see where Moses is and then just it's going to be laughable oh you could have had this in Egypt and here you know no comparison no comparison whatever you could have had in Egypt would be a joke joke Hebrews 11 speaks of many individuals who had faith and did great works for God great list the impact one person can have that is willing to spend their time faithfully and consistently is tremendous tremendous I talked about church wide initiatives right and you could already see how this is going to help to reach five and a half million people but even just one person makes a big big difference and has a lot of influence big map millions of people how do we do it a little bit at a time I'm going to give you one example real world example within our church okay example I'm going to use brother John Carter this is not to put brother Carter on a pedestal but it's an example of the work that he's done he's been a very good worker for our church he's a godly man loves the Lord reads his Bible preaches for us and faithfully goes out soul winning and I asked him to log all that's been done and I've got some data here that I want to share with you and the reason why I'm selecting brother Carter is because he runs a soul winning time for our church on Monday nights okay this is something that he wanted to do I didn't say we're going to have soul winning on Monday nights brother Carter you're going to be in charge of it he asked me great someone chose okay well you're going to have to be responsible for it then your name is going to be in the bulletin people are going to need to contact you right because when we started off I ran Sunday soul winning and led the songs and did the Bible reading and did everything right I did everything and great that's fine and I'll do it all again if I need to whatever I love people being able to serve and help but he came up to me and said okay because I can't do more than what I can do I can't run a Monday night soul winning with everything else that I'm doing it won't work not with my schedule right now but someone else can amen in 2018 shortly after we started the church brother Carter started coming to our church he started a soul winning time on Monday nights now on average brother Carter how many people would you say show or how many groups teams three roughly on a Monday two to three teams two two at the max okay I mean you've had different people coming over time right I joined you more earlier on more frequently than I do now we've got brother Peter brother Brian's real faithful he comes out with you on Monday nights right you've had you know so we've had this and you've had some other people over time have come and gone but let's say two groups okay just so you get an idea because we're going to start looking at some of the numbers of statistics that have been of the accomplishments over time and the reason why I'm doing this is to show you what faithfulness and consistency can do one evening out of your week to say I will go soul winning regularly now so this isn't all just one person but what I say is the impact of one person if brother Carter didn't volunteer to say I'll run a soul winning time there wouldn't be a soul winning time in the bulletin which means the two groups that consistently show up there'd be zero because they weren't there now these are still very rough numbers because I got the list from brother Carter kind of went down and was looking at Google maps and I was trying to I wasn't able to do enough research on this but you know it doesn't matter to get the exact figures the exact numbers this will give you a good idea so since he started August 2018 I have a rough estimate of 232 buildings that were knocked all apartments he's also done some neighborhoods I didn't know which they were I don't know how many houses that were on those Monday nights there's more so but what I'm saying is there's more than what I'm saying right here there's a very conservative estimate just counting some apartment buildings ones that I know for sure that I was able to find and verify 232 buildings now those buildings have anywhere from you know 2 to 8 to 10 doors each most of them have a lot of doors most of the apartment comics were knocked have 4, 8, 10 doors so 232 buildings times x to get like number of doors knocked I counted and again this isn't necessarily all attributed to brother Carter but on Monday nights generally speaking we don't have many other people that get salvations on a Monday night so it's pretty fair to look at my at the records for salvations on Mondays and say yeah you know what the most of these are probably going to be from the Monday night group 350 salvations less than 4 years 350 salvations so how about that like think about how many salvations and maybe you don't keep track or whatever that's fine I don't personally just keep track of everybody I've ever led to the Lord I don't keep those numbers for myself some people may do that but wouldn't it be nice to be able to say hey in the past 4 years I helped get 350 people saved and that's just on Monday nights brother Carter goes out solely on other days of the week only looking at one day the impact one person will have 350 salvations on 142 Mondays 350 people got saved there was 201 total Mondays that he's been out knocking doors 201 Mondays 350 salvations somebody at least one person got saved 142 out of those 201 pretty cool that's a lot now when we look at it on a map see we can look at maps like this this is a zoomed in and it's going to be hard for you to see this this is zoomed in on just a few apartment complexes but there are a lot this takes time this has been 4 years almost 4 years August 2018 I did a sketch here to try to give a little scale a little perspective we are the church right here the area that he's been covering has been up the 85 this is the 316 interchange right here Duluth area that's where this is and he's been hitting this area everything that's shaded in has been done on Monday night if we're going to look at that on here this is still a little bit blown up we are here's that interchange and an inch perspective but when you see I say that when you see an inch on the map we got 350 salvations in an inch on this map now don't forget there's industrial areas there's lakes and rivers and areas where no houses are on this map I mean this is just a big map but in a densely populated area pretty receptive pretty receptive areas it's one of the better areas 350 salvations field is white on the harvest we got a big field in our backyard here labors are few but look look at how much can be done now you normally go for two hours brother Carter on Mondays is that a kind of hour and a half maybe two right somewhere in that range because you're meeting at five five thirty you go to about seven yeah you can do a lot and especially you individually with your life you stand before Christ dedicate an hour an hour and a half a week it may not feel like much any given day you might go out for that hour and a half and get nobody saved you get one person saved you get two people saved you get zero people saved you get you know stay consistent it adds up when it adds up it's like I mean how many how many believers in this world can say they've led 350 people to Christ it's only a few years keep that up over 20 30 40 years 50 years however much time you have left hey we can we can we can do great things and on top of that we start getting more people trained discipled able to preach I mean you start blowing when we start blowing through apartments you know when we first started the church it would take sometimes a while to get through apartment complexes now if we have everyone show up I mean we do these the marathons and stuff everyone shows up we are plowing through large areas I mean we get a lot of maps ready when we when we the last one we did Macon we had a whole bunch of people out there soul winning and we had a lot of maps and we just mowed over all these these large sections of area and we're still small we're four years in it's a great place to be this is the goal this is the vision it requires sacrifice it requires hard work it's worth it this is where the true value is in this life people most valuable commodity and I don't mean to use I'm not saying you know like it's it's to increase the family brothers sisters get them serving Christ you want to see change in the world you know we're happy about some of the things that happen politically you know obviously the wonders if we could stop murdering babies that's a great thing to to to have happened right it's something to celebrate the best way to get big change in a culture is to reach the people reach individuals you can't legislate morality but you could turn people to Christ and have have God work in their hearts and have the truth of God's word shine in that'll help that'll help way more than elect so and so to you know to Congress okay how is that going to solve the problem that we have with people being extremely wicked and you know doing perverse things it's not we could just be the husbandry for God to do the real life-altering life-changing work inside of another person we need to bring that there bring the precious seed that's the goal that's the vision it's what we're all about a lot of other things are going to help us along the way we got to preach the whole council of God right we want our vessels prepared and meet for the master's use so this is why we get a lot of preaching on sin a lot of preaching on on God's law and commandments and what we need to be doing but it's still to help with this end with this goal that's why we're here we are as the Bible says for by grace are you saved through faith in that not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them you're saved your job has just started right you have a new creature and you're born again created unto good works so that you can do good works so that you can serve the Lord so you can serve people by bringing God to them by bringing Christ to them it's your job thank you for being here and being part of this church every single one of you I mean that amen let's work together on serving God and reaching more people and making the sacrifices necessary personally to reach people people matter all lives matter except for pedophile lives they don't matter alright let's borrow a temple word of prayer do heavenly Father Lord we love you God thank you for blessing our church thank you for bringing together all the members of this body Lord I pray that you will please continue to add people I pray that you will please watch over us and protect us from evil dear Lord but also just bless us and help us to be able to learn more to grow to reach people dear Lord help us to take advantage of every opportunity that you've given us to be able to spread the gospel spread the light dear Lord help us to get through and help your word to pierce through to get into the minds and hearts of our community Lord we've got a big task ahead of us but you know we want to see we want to see the people in our area get saved and get right dear Lord and I pray that you please just work with us this is a big task we need we cannot do this in our flesh Lord we need you please help us please work through us and do us with your power dear Lord that your name can be glorified and magnified throughout the world and that the people in this area can just shine your glory dear Lord we love you we thank you it's in Jesus Christ bless the name we pray these things amen all right we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed brother Jesse would you please lead us all right for the final song we're singing number 397 little as much 397 again that's 397 In the honest field I'm right in There's a word for all to do Heart the voice of God is calling To the heart is calling you Little is much for God is giving Labor not for wealth or fame There's a crown and you can win it If you'll go in Jesus name Does the place of all to favor seem so small And ill-known It is great if God is in it And he'll not forget his soul Little is much for God is giving Labor not for wealth or fame There's a crown and you can win it If you'll go in Jesus name If you'll go in Jesus name You can still be in the battle In the sacred place of care Little is much for God is giving Labor not for wealth or fame There's a crown and you can win it If you'll go in Jesus name If you'll go in Jesus name He will say to all the faithful Welcome home my child of God Little is much for God is giving Labor not for wealth or fame There's a crown and you can win it If you'll go in Jesus name You are dismissed