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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This morning at this time, we're gonna go through our announcements. If you do not have one of these bulletins and slip your hand up real high, we'll make sure that we get one out to you. And if you open up to the first page, you'll see there our service times listed Sunday morning at 1030, Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. and Wednesday night at 7 is our Bible study. Hopefully we'll be able to get to the Bible study this week. I was out sick on Wednesday. I'm doing much better right now. And man, I was pumped for Isaiah 43 this week. I was like, if there was any way for me to be here, I would have wanted to be here because I was prepped, I was ready to go, and I'm still ready to go. So come on out for that. Isaiah 43 is an awesome chapter, and just a little, you know, the title of my Isaiah 43, because I tend to give a little bit extra title sometimes in Wednesday night Bible study, is Isaiah 43 destroys Jehovah's Witnesses. So, and I actually was still able to pick up a couple of nuggets over the weekend, like I think on Friday or Saturday, I thought of something else to add, so it wasn't all lost by not preaching on Wednesday, so I thought it was something else to add to it. I'm excited for it. Hopefully you can make it out to our Bible study. Lots of things to go over in that, but soul winning opportunities are listed there, salvations and baptisms, for the month of February as well as for the year, and then the offering totals through the month of February are listed down there at the bottom of the page. Prayer requests, we added Patty Hamilton, so this is Ms. Emily's grandmother, and she lives in assisted living facility, and she has deteriorating health, and she's also not saved, so the prayer is that you would please pray, obviously one for her health, but then also that she'll be able to have an opportunity to be able to hear the gospel, whether it's from Emily, or for Ms. Emily. One of God's messengers to be able to preach the gospel unto her before she did passes, so that she could get saved, and then we do have Rain's wisdom teeth extraction went well as planned, as expected, and she's doing about as you would expect after having five teeth yanked out of your face. She's still in pain and recovering, so please continue to pray for her recovery, but everything is as it should be, and seems to be healing up okay. She's just swollen, and yeah, that happens. Your face tends to swell up when you start pulling out all these teeth that are in your skull, so pray for her, and then brother Devin, he's going to share an update for his grandfather, Leon. Last update, I think it was, you know, he went to rehab. He still had pneumonia, but they sent him back to rehab, but they sent him back to the hospital. He had pneumonia, and he tested positive for COVID, and he was unresponsive, you know, unconscious. We were able to wake him up, and he's still just having a really hard time, and he's in the same hospital he was in, with pneumonia still bad, dementia problems still bad, and now it's a positive test performed, so those are basically the updates for that. Okay, now is he eating, because I know one of the updates that was, okay, so is he just IV, if he's even getting solids, just drinks, yeah, because of all the COVID restrictions and everything, but he does get a like a visitor. Well, that's amazing. Thank God for that, I guess, I mean, it's, you know, obviously it's, he's on a ventilator, okay, okay, so that's not a good situation, I mean, it is what it is, you know, you know, the statistics on when people go on ventilators, it's not good news, so it's not a, you know, it's not a, nothing's definite, but it's just, it tells you the seriousness of the situation, and we definitely need to just make sure you're praying hard for him. Obviously, we're praying for everyone on our list, especially if you're participating in our prayer challenge, hopefully you are, but he's not in good shape, so he's just really struggling, he's in the hospital, tested positive for COVID, I don't even know, with everything else, I don't even know if that matters very much, but it's just one more thing to add on top of it, right, so just continue to pray for him, pray for his strength, pray for God to heal him, and for the whole family, obviously, it's, you know, a lot of people are gonna be concerned and cared about, you know, trying to help and make sure he's getting the proper care, because with dementia, you also have to have people that'll advocate for you, and make sure you're getting the care that you should be getting, unfortunately, you know, and this is just a little side note for everyone, if you don't know this already, you know, you have loved ones, watch out for their well-being, unfortunately, there's many times where people are not receiving care that they should be getting, and especially if they feel like, you know, if there's staff, you know, there's bad employees everywhere, there's bad employees in hospitals, there's bad employees in care facilities, and you just have to watch out for that to make sure your loved ones are being cared for, because if you don't watch, you may end up having a loved one not being treated the way they should be, I mean, there's bad things going on, it's just, I mean, it's really sad and unfortunate, but knowing that, you just at least be able to kind of pay attention to those things. You know, we witnessed that firsthand in my family with, I had two grandparents that both had Alzheimer's, and ended up going into these 24-7 care facilities, and you know, they were, even in some of the nicer places, right, where they're more expensive, or whatever, people are people, and employees, you know, it's not your family, it's not their loved one, it's not, you know, and people get a bad attitude, and don't end up taking care of people as well as they should, so you gotta be on that. But anyhow, enough rambling. Pray for him, pray for everyone on this list, is there any other updates for anyone that has someone on this list, anything that needs to be updated? How's Dor, how's your grandmother doing, I mean, she's... Yeah, just in limbo. But it's still, who knows, you're at the top of the list, but... All right, and then, so we've added First Works Baptist Church, as the churches we're praying for this week, so nothing in particular that I'm aware of going on there, just pray for their well-being, pray that God bless them, use them to continue doing the work that they're doing. Next page, month of February, which is already prayer challenge, so the goal is to pray every single day, minimum 20 minutes, so that means you're really thinking about all the different needs that go along with these, you know, one-sentence phrases, or whatever, few-word phrases on this list, for the people who are on this list, think about their condition, think about their situation, pray for as many things you could think of for God to help them in their situation, and then pray for everything else going on in your life, your family's lives, your loved ones, everything else that you want to pray for, so spend at least 20 minutes of prayer, and pray for everyone on this prayer list, every single day. Bible memory, and before I get off that, just challenges in general, prizes, is there anyone here that has not received a prize, that should have received a prize, you did your Bible reading, maybe for January, you did something, and I owe you prizes, I owe you prizes. Okay, is that for the Bible reading? Well, come on up here, Bible reading, you either get one of these edibles, or you could get two of anything over here, so this is like camping stuff. That's right, no mixing and matching, though, you could get two over here, you could mix and match over here, but this is just, you either get the salted caramels, or you get two of those things. Yes, I sold someone on the salted caramels. It's always a good, I mean, the Thin Mint pretzels, or the caramels, I mean, that's great. Alright, good job. Anyone else that did not receive their prizes? Very good. I'm glad I mentioned that, because I kind of felt like maybe we got everyone, but man, it feels so good being caught up on prizes. I'm always going, oh good, I'll get it soon, I'm working on it. We got extra prizes. Bible memory passage, I'm only two weeks away from having to have prizes for this one, but hopefully you're working on this. Hebrews chapter one, great passage, strongly encourage you to memorize this passage. If you haven't started on it, hey, this is, get going on it now, if you haven't already, you've had six weeks, or five weeks at least to be working on this. I think you could do it in two weeks, I mean, it's not that hard, but I know people have a harder time with Bible memory, some more than others, but everyone's capable of doing this. If you get this done, quote award perfect, you get a prize for that. Upcoming events are all listed there. We added another homeschool field trip in March, so that's going to the zoo in Atlanta, and that one has masks required inside of buildings, so when you're outside, you don't need a mask, but if you're going in buildings, they're requiring masks. So we're trying to let you know about this, because everybody feels differently about this as far as whether or not you even want to go to these places. I understand that, I don't like being forced to wear masks, just in general, so if that's going to influence your decision, then we're trying to provide you with that information beforehand. Obviously, we don't know what it's like, like some places will post in those states and say, we require masks, but then when you go there, people don't wear them anyways, and great, whatever, right? So I don't know what it's actually like at the zoo, but we're going to let you know at least what their policy is and what they say. I know at the Delta Air Museum in January, Leslie was telling me that they had a mask policy, but when everyone was there, no one said anything, and then when it was finishing and people were going their separate ways, they came to my family and said, you've got to wear your mask. It's like, we've been here the whole time, like this, and no one said anything, and whatever, but it's just one of those things. We're going to try to let you know about this, just so you can make those decisions, but we do need to know if you're coming to this, and really all of them, but especially the zoo one, we're buying tickets in advance, so they're going to be prepaid tickets. I've got the sign-up sheet for both of the upcoming homeschool field trips, so one is on February 21st, a week from tomorrow, going to SeaQuest, and then the other one is going to the zoo, so I've got both of these right here. I'm going to put this over by the dead flowers over there, by the mother baby room, and then I also have sign-up sheets for the camping trip. Now, I have one sign-up sheet, it's really two pages, but this is for activities, and remember I mentioned before, I want to do a lot of different things. These are some ideas, some of these will happen, some of these may not happen, and that's fine. I'm not putting this out saying everything here needs to be filled out. We need to just get all this stuff done. I have ideas for activities I think will be fun, but obviously I can't just run everything at the camp and just be this camp counselor that's all over the place and just running every single possible activity. If you think something is fun and you want to do it, you'd like to take charge and step up and say, hey, I wouldn't mind leading this for everybody. We could have a schedule and say, you know what, on this day, at this time, we're going to go and take a hike, we're going to go and do this kind of a hike. We're going to go and do, I have here like Frisbee golf, do a scavenger hunt, have a corn hole tournament, I've got a whole list of things that I thought of. And then a bunch of blank spots for anyone to write in your own activity that you think would be fun, that you'd like to do, or you could sign up for one of these. And then I've got a column here for the ages or gender if that's appropriate, like whatever you plan on doing, if it's for kids, if it's for all ages, if it's for adults, whatever you're kind of gearing that activity for. Like I put scavenger hunt, it's all ages but it's broken up into age groups I think is probably most appropriate, so you have like little toddlers can find a pine cone and a leaf and a stick and a rock or something. And then like the older kids can get a little bit more advanced. But the person leading, if you're signing up for leading this, I want you to organize it. So you come up with the scavenger hunt, don't rely on me and be like, well Pastor Burzins, what's the scavenger list? What are we doing? You've signed up for that, you own it. You sign up for one of these things, you're owning it. We'll make sure that everybody at camp gets the schedule of everything that's going on. And they'll have the person who's running it and then you could recruit people for it too, like hey, you know we're doing this on this day or whatever, if you want to come, whatever. And then the preferred day that you'd like to have it. I put preferred on here just so that way we could just coordinate if we do get a lot of people who want to run activities, that we can have them all spread out. Preferred day, preferred time and then a location, like a meetup location, that's all on here. So anyone who wants to participate in this, love to have volunteers. And then other volunteers, this is more important. This is going to help get things done at the camp. So every evening, the pastors that are going to be in town, we're feeding dinner to because, you know, it's camping. So they're not like flying across the country and bringing a cooler with them and everything else. So we are providing food for the pastors and any other, because we've invited their families, not everyone's bringing families, some are bringing some children, some are bringing whatever. Like there's going to be different people there in the pastors that are coming and visiting with us. So I'm asking for help in the food preparation. Now we have that group, if you were there last year, we have the group shelter rented for the whole week. So it's got a very nice kitchen, it's got ovens, it's got big refrigerators, you know, everything that we need to prepare food. It's going to be there, it'll be available, it'll be ready, we'll have access to that thing all day, night, whatever. And it's got tables and chairs and everything's ready to go. So anyone that wants to help out on any of the days, we appreciate your help in being able to serve. And then obviously anyone who helps serve will also partake of and be able to eat the food that we're providing for the pastor. So you don't have to worry about like, well I'm going to help them and then I have to go and like feed my family back at the tent or something. No, you know, anyone that is helping in this will be able to then obviously eat with the group. There's also that same group shelter is going to need to be cleaned up every evening or morning, whatever. At some point it's going to need to be cleaned up before the next service, activity. So anyone who's willing to help just straighten things up, pick up some trash, make sure it's nice. It's not that big of a job but it needs to be done, right. So we need to just make sure people are responsible. So we've got that. I want to be doing, like Pastor Thompson last year did sword drills before the preaching for the kids. I thought that was great, that was fun. So instead of him doing that, I'm going to, you know, we're going to take the responsibility over for that. Now he may want to run it and that's fine. He's going to be here all week. I'll talk to him about that. But if anyone wants to help with that, I'm going to get prizes for the kids and we'll have it a little bit more organized this year. So I was thinking trivia, sword drills, anything that you think of will be good for that short period of time. But, you know, maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes to have fun and get everyone engaged. I want to do that every day so I've got a sign up sheet for every day for that. And then song leading. I don't know who all is planning on going but some of you men that want to, you know, even if you don't normally do the song leading but you're going to be there and you want to do some song leading during the camping trip, during the services, you can sign up for that as well. Obviously I'm always available to do song leading the whole time and I don't care about that. And most of this stuff too, you know, I'm going to be doing a lot but the more people we have helping, the better the whole trip will be for everybody. So this is why we have this. I'm going to put all of these lists over here. And anybody that helps is obviously very appreciated. So let's get back to the announcements. I'm spending way too much time on this but that was important. I need to make sure everyone knows about that, everyone's aware about that. Upcoming events, like I said, you can see everything there and then the birthdays. So today, there she is. Today is Evangelia's birthday. I know she celebrated a little bit yesterday but today is her birthday so we're going to sing a happy birthday to Lena. How old are you, Lena? Can you show me your fingers? Is it this many? Are you three? All right. Keep guessing. Two, four, seven, three, all right. So we're going to sing a happy birthday to Lena. And Lena, that means you get to have an ice cream that's in our freezer after church today. As long as your parents say it's okay, you get to have any one of those you want. So that's special. Since today is Lena's birthday, we're going to sing happy birthday to Lena. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Lena, happy birthday to you. All right. And it looks like we've got a few more birthdays this week. So that is about it for our announcements. I'm going to ask Brother Jesse to come up and lead us in our next song. All right, for the third song, we're singing a song number 301, sweet hour of prayer. The song number 301, sweet hour of prayer. Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, That calls me from the world of care, And bids me at my father's throne, Make of my bonds and wishes come, In seasons of distress and pain, My soul has gone, in bound relief, And on his name, the temp'r's name, By thy return, sweet hour of prayer, Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, Thy name shall my petition bear, To him whose fruit had faithfulness, Had gained the weight in soul to bless, And since he bids, beseech his faith, Believe his word and trust his grace, I'll cast on him my every dare, And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer, Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, May I thy consolations share, Till from now this God's law be hight, I do my own and take my flight, This throne of flesh shall drop and rise, To seize the everlasting Christ, And shout the passing through the air, Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer. First Corinthians chapter twelve. First Corinthians chapter twelve. First Corinthians chapter twelve. Alrighty, once again, there's First Corinthians. First Corinthians chapter twelve. Beginning at the first verse, the Bible says, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I will not have you ignorant. Ye know that ye were Gentiles carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. Wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord, and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit with all. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members, every one of them, in the body, as they have pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary, and those members of the body, which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor, and our uncumbly parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need, but God had tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked. That there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care, one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular, and God has set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governance, diversities of tongues, are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet show I unto you a more excellent way. Let's have a word of prayer. Lord God, we thank you for this hour of preaching. Lord, we ask, Lord, that we would learn and grow in your word. Father, we ask that you would bless the pastor right now and let your spirit be upon him. In Jesus' name we ask, amen. Amen. Amen. Alright, we started off here in 1 Corinthians 12, and sometimes I like making disclaimers because I always, as a pastor, as a preacher, the attempt is to convey a teaching, a message, try to stir up your spirit to do more, to serve God, to teach you, you know, all these different things. And I always want to make sure that I'm being understood and not just taken the wrong way because sometimes when you preach it's easy to take someone the wrong way and I'm going to be preaching on how to serve in church this morning. Now, a lot of the things that I say may come across harsh, okay? And I want to make sure it's clear that everybody who helps and anyone who does anything here, it's very much appreciated. But at the same time I'm going to be preaching on excellence within the church because I don't know about you, but I'm devoted completely to this church. I love this church. I not only want this church, I want this church to be the best church that I've ever been a part of and I want this church to be the best church you've ever been a part of. I hope that as we continue to grow as a church and this body continues to grow that we can make this the best church that's ever been. Maybe we can't achieve that, but that's what I want to be working for. And when I'm looking for people to help, this is never just going to be a one-man show, a one-person job. There are way too many things that's going to have to make this church successful that any one person can accomplish. And the church shouldn't be Pastor David Berzins. Because if the church is just me, that's going to be a lame church. I'm sorry, but it is. If it's just me, that's it. I have a role. I have a job. I am a member of this church. It's an important job, but I am one of a body. Obviously, Christ is the head. Now, we started off here in 1 Corinthians 12 where it talks about spiritual gifts being given out to different people and everybody has different gifts and not only having spiritual gifts, but also then, which I'm going to focus more on, is just the different members, the parts of the body, because the local church is a body. Christ is the head of the church and we are all members of this body. And just like a body has different members, a member being a part. So you've got fingers, hands, toes, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, all your various body parts all serve different functions to make that one body be very effective at whatever the mind is telling the body to do. Now, the mind that we have is supposed to be Christ for this church. So we're looking to the Word of God. We're looking to the Bible for our direction. Hey, what should we be doing? Just as your mind controls the body saying, Hey, I need you to pick this up because this other part of the body needs a little bit of liquid there to cool down the throat because there's another problem there so we need to give more attention to that. Great! This member helped this other member out so that as a whole now, the body can perform what needs to be done. This is how the church is supposed to be operating. We are all members. We don't come to church with the mindset of just going, Well, what are you going to do for me? And I preached this before many times, but it needs to be repeated not because I think that people here don't necessarily have that mindset, but just to remind ourselves, right? Because I think in general a lot of people even across America think of church as the place that you go just to get fed. Is it a place to get fed spiritually? Absolutely. That's true. But that's not the only thing that church is for. We are here as a group, as a body, as a collective, as a member of a larger body to do a work. And that's one of the reasons why this church isn't for everybody. We don't say, you know, this church is for everybody because it's for people who want to do something. Because honestly, people who don't want to do anything spiritually in their life, they can come in, but you're probably going to get very uncomfortable and want to leave because you're not going to like what you hear being preached. Because I'm trying to exhort and push and challenge challenges every month, try to get you to do more, but to get us to do more. Now, I'm not going to reread this chapter. We started off reading the whole thing and I kind of spent a little bit more time in announcements than I was planning on. But the whole gist of 1 Corinthians 12, we started off there, is just to get that point that says, look, you're the body of Christ. Verse 27, you guys look down real quick there. It says, now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular. And God has set some in the church and He lists out these different roles in the church. Apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversity of tongues. And it's all about spiritual gifts. And then He says, well, look, are you all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles, have all the gifts of healing, do all the gifts of tongues? The answer is no. Not everyone does all these things, right? And today we have people that don't even do, I mean, we don't have the gifts of healing. No one in here has a gift of healing that I'm aware of. Is anyone here able to lay hands on someone and heal them of their disease? Now, look, people and the disciples of Jesus Christ were able to do that. There were some people that God was able to use to do that. And I also don't, you know, I don't want to get too down the spiritual gift side of things. I do think it's possible even today for God to use someone and for the Holy Spirit to, you know, for that gift to be given. But we generally don't see that today. It was given a lot back then to confirm the words of Jesus and His testimony and everything else that was going on and the changes that were made from the Levitical priesthood unto the order of Melchizedek. But that's a whole other sermon of itself. I want to focus on that. I want to focus on other things. And honestly, what I'm going to be preaching on this morning is not even spiritual things necessarily. To make things operate and function here, yes, obviously, the spiritual is the most important and we're going to need people doing spiritual things. So, like, the first thing that comes to mind is just people being active in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the most important thing of this church and that is what I'm going to strive for the most and we're going to put the priority on that. But everything else underneath that, while it's not as important as winning souls of Christ, is important for the ultimate goal of reaching people and winning them to Christ and discipling them. The mundane tasks, the little things, the little details, when everything is being performed and working, it's going to help us perform to our maximum potential. So, a way to illustrate this, let me put it this way and I'll give you another concept that I personally believe. Because I've had people talk to me over the years and ask my advice on certain things, especially like young men. People just want to go off. They're excited. Maybe they get excited about serving the Lord and they want to go off and just win souls of Christ and say, you know what, I can just go off and I just want to go to another country and just start preaching the gospel day in, day out, every single day, just be preaching the gospel and say, but there's no good church there. Yeah, but the people there are so ready to get saved, I could get so many people saved. If you don't have a place to go at all and you are not in the position to be ordained and sent out to maybe start a church and have that spiritual maturity to be in a position to plant churches and actually see them grow, it's not a good idea to just go off and not have your own support that you need of going to church and learning and growing and make sure you don't just get off into some weird direction because you're novice, because you're new at this, because you haven't been around that long and you may have a great desire to want to do what's right, but it's not necessarily the best method. You could think, yeah, but there's nothing more important than souls getting saved. But in order to maximize your potential, hold off, get trained, get solid, get sent out to evangelize and start churches, you will accomplish much more doing things the right way, building that foundation, building that knowledge base, getting the experience, getting some time under your belt to be prepared and the best equipped to do that job instead of running off and just saying, well, I mean, this is important, so this is just all I'm going to do. I'm going to drop everything and just start doing this. That's not always the best idea, right? Does that make sense? So similarly, we're not just going to drop everything here and just say, well, look, we already gave this time today. Let's just stop right now. I'm going to stop preaching. Let's just go out and preach the gospel and just let's just do this all the time as a church. No, we need more than just that. We need to be well equipped and well prepared. In a similar fashion, then a lot of the little things that happen here also will all help play a part in building and growing this church to reach more people. I mean, the more people that we can reach, it's more than just even getting people saved because a great commission involves also baptizing and discipling. So yes, the most important thing is that a soul goes to heaven instead of hell. But won't it be more effective if yes, we can still go out, get people saved, and also as many as we can try to get baptized and teach and train to also win people to Christ? Because when you start creating new disciples, new soul winners, the amount of people you can reach as a collective starts growing exponentially. It's going to grow tremendously more. So instead of just saying, well, I don't need to worry about anybody being discipled or anything else. I'm just going to get people saved. You're going to limit yourself to just what you can do by yourself, right? As opposed to trying to also, yes, do what you can do, but in addition, you're going to have to take some of your time and try to invest that in discipling, in other ways to maximize what you're doing. It makes sense, right? So this is why a lot of the menial tasks and some of the other things that need to be done are still important. And I'm getting way ahead of myself. We'll get into a lot more practical examples. But before we get into practical examples, turn if you would to Philippians 2. We read 1 Corinthians 12. Now, we don't have membership roles here. We don't have you sign off on any piece of paper saying that you're promising to agree to be this member of our church or anything like that. The reason why we don't do that, and some churches do it, we don't do that because I don't see that in Scripture anywhere. What I see constitutes a church that is born again, baptized believers, congregating together, becoming a body. I don't see any form of paperwork having to be filled out to do that. And I also don't see that you have to be baptized into the church if you are already baptized somewhere else. The people who are being baptized enjoying the church just got saved and got baptized that we see in the Book of Acts, for example. So if you come to this church regularly, and loosely regularly, whatever that means, whether it be once a month, I consider you a member of this church. If you're saved and baptized and you come with regularity to this church, I consider you a member. And you know what? That doesn't really grant you anything special other than I think that's just a Biblical terminology that I'm going to use. You know, some churches, they have all this difference and you can't do anything unless you become a member and becoming a member has all this other stuff. We don't do that here. Okay, I'm just making sure that's clear for everyone because different churches do different things. We don't do that here. And I encourage people to get involved in serving, in ministering, as soon as you can. Right? Now, we do have certain steps that we take with getting people involved depending on what the service is. For example, even just with preaching the gospel and someone's brand new, you start off as the silent partner. And you're going to start off seeing the way that we do things and then allow that, you know, a new person to start doing that, the same thing, or you know, doing the preaching of the gospel, let them do the talking with someone else with them. Okay? And when we do that, we're going to be doing the same thing, whether it be in assisted living, you know, like a nursing home ministry or any other ministries that we do here. You know, people will be brought in to make sure you're familiar with the way that we do things just so we don't get some random person coming in that's, you know, not of us, that's just trying to cause problems. They come in, they're bringing in damnable heresies and stuff like that. Obviously, we don't want that running rampant. It's sort of having people paired up just to make sure, okay, everything seems good, everything you're saying is fine. There's going to be people who are going to slip through, we're not going to identify, they'll come out, they'll be exposed later, and it is what it is, and it's going to happen. Right? So we need to be prepared for that. We'll try to prevent that from happening, but I don't want our efforts to prevent that from happening to be so strict that we are not allowing people to just start serving. Right? Because we want people to serve and to do their best to serve Christ and do whatever it is they can do. So we're trying, we're going to be very open with this and put in some measures just to make sure, okay, people aren't just coming in and starting to teach people you have to turn from all of your sins and if you don't turn from your drinking and you can't be saying, look, we're not going to have that under the name of Stronghold Baptist Church as much as we can help that. But I also, like I said, we're not going to restrict people either. We want you to give what you're willing to give. And I'll just bring that up right now. Everything is voluntary here. Everything. Now the Bible teaches certain things. For example, Paul said, you know, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. So I'm going to preach, hey, look, this is what the Bible teaches, what God's word says, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. But you know what? It's still up to you if you're going to do that. So if there's a burden, that doesn't sound like it's really up to me. It sounds like you're telling me I have to preach to God. Look, I'm preaching the word of God the way it's written. We don't have a rule that says you have to go soul winning. We don't. I don't have a rule that says you have to clean up. I don't have a rule that says you have to do anything here. You are free to come and go as you please. And you know what? I will treat you well just for showing up and being here. Okay? I'm not going to treat you as a second class person if you don't come out soul winning with us on Sundays. And no one else should either. Okay? We're not creating different cliques of people. But just understand that I am going to be pushing you to get involved and do more. Why? Because church isn't just a social club. Church isn't just a place that you go to to check off a box that says I went to church today. Church is something that you invest your soul and your life into because it's not just even about an organization. It's about Christ. It's about God. It's about doing what's right with your life. We mean this. I didn't move my family across the country to a place I've never been to before to plant down here to serve Christ just because, well, it'll be a job. It'll be something like, no. I'm fully invested in this. There is nothing else really for me. Anything else that I do is a means to do this. And hopefully this permeates your life and isn't just a show on Sunday. That's what this church is about. Now, this church is imperfect. We will never be perfect. We are all sinful human beings, but you know what? We don't just throw our hands up and go, oh, well, we're not perfect, so whatever. We ought to strive in everything we do, everything we do, but especially if we're going to give service to God, man, put in your best. First Corinthians 12 that we just read talks about members of this body. Are you a member of this body? Just ask yourself, are you a member of this body? I hope you feel like you are because when I look out at everybody, I see members of a body. That's what I see. We're all one body here, and I'm seeing different members, but you ask yourself, well, what is my function? Fingers know what their function is in the body. It's to grab things, right? It's touch. You get feel. There's lots of different things. The nose knows what its function is. You smell. You can spit things out. What is your function in this body, in this church? You may not know that, and honestly, I think probably most people may be sitting here thinking, going, I don't really know what my function is. That's OK, but I want you thinking about it and really thinking about what can I do to add? What can I do to serve? What can I do to help this church do more? And everyone's going to have their own limitations on what you can do. Everybody's in a different point. Some people have physical limitations. Physically, they're not going to be able to do things, whether it be due to age, due to disabilities, due to other things. Some people mentally may not be able to do everything for various reasons. Some people, you know, there's all different types of situations that you are in, but that's fine. We have a whole group of people here. So where one person may be lacking in an area, another person could be strong in that area. Not everyone here is gifted with the ability to just play beautiful music, for example, but God has given that ability to some people, and very much so. We have very talented people, thank God, for the people who are able to play music. There's just one example that is able to help in our church service. Now, how does that help? Well, think about people coming in and visiting. Well, one, without even thinking about that, just think about giving more praise and glory to God by playing on instruments and making a much more beautiful sound as a church. That alone is a good reason to have people playing music, but then also, don't you want to have a church where people can come in and be like, wow, what a great church. I've been to churches before, and just talking about music for a minute, where nobody is really singing, except for the song leader. Everyone's kind of like, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, you know, and just letting any music that's playing the piano drown out their voice. I don't like that, because then it's weird, when I go visit churches like that, I sing, but then I just feel like I'm the only one singing, and then I quiet my voice down a lot more, because then people are like, who's this guy? Because I'm just visiting, you know, just like, man. And I don't want to come off as some hyper-spiritual person, either, right, and just, well, I'll show these guys. So you want to be able to fit into the church, but at the same time, I feel like it's being restrictive. Look, I want this church to be the best church in all areas, so you know what? I think it's great that everybody just raises up their voice and sings praises to the Lord. Not to show both for anyone else, but because we want to glorify God with our voices. And you know, that's an entire sermon in and of itself. There's so many different aspects here that we can be better and improve on, and even if it's just you lifting your voice and say, you know what, I can do this. Amen. That's a great function. Even if you're not the one that's here leading everybody, maybe you can help being where you are with your voice, because when people start singing louder, everybody will sing louder, even those that don't really want to sing louder, they will end up finding themselves kind of reaching, they may be at the low end of the spectrum, right? So some people are always going to be at the low end of the singing spectrum, but if you have more people singing a little bit louder and just with a little bit more vigor, that low end kind of raises up a little bit, right? Because it's easier to still drown out, but everything raises. What's one example? There's many examples like that. Now, every member performs a service for the body. Think about what service are you providing to the body of Christ. Now, this starts with the right mindset, and at the end of 1 Corinthians 12, we read the whole chapter there. You're in Philippians chapter 2. Just stay there for a minute. He talks about the spiritual gifts, and then it closes with, but covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet show unto a more excellent way, and then continues into chapter 13. Chapter 13 is all about charity. Charity is that selfless love. Charity is that sacrificial I'm going to give of myself for someone else, and Philippians 2 is going to talk about this same type of mindset. This is the Christ-like mindset that every church member has to have for this church to succeed. This is a unifying spirit of this church is the church that serves. It's a church that ministers. It's a church that's going to follow Christ. If we're going to be Christ-like, what did Christ do? His entire ministry on this earth was serve. His entire ministry was in service. The entire thing all the way through. He helped other people. He healed. He taught. He preached. He did all these things not for his own benefit, for everybody else's benefit all the way up to and climaxing with his crucifixion and resurrection from the dead. Look at verse number 3 in Philippians chapter 2. The Bible says, Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory. And that's the way things ought to be here. When we do things here, it's not out of strife. It's not for the wrong reasons. And it's not through vainglory, like, oh, everybody look at me. But in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves. Mindset. Every day. Day in, day out. The vast majority of time you have problems with people. The vast majority of times could be a pride problem. It doesn't mean people don't do you wrong. But when there's real problems between people, usually it's going to boil down to pride. If you esteem other people better than yourself, what that means is you want what's best for them more than you want what's best for you. You're esteeming them better. So if there's something sitting here, you've got 20 bucks sitting here. Man, I could really use that 20 bucks. And there's another person, there's two of us, laying on the ground, whatever. It's a silly example. But it's seeming something about yourselves to be like, here, you have this. You need this. And maybe you personally have a need. You're going to say, you know what, I'm going to give, I'm going to be self-sacrificial, and it's just that general mindset, esteeming other people better than yourself. Verse four says, look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. So obviously we need to take care of ourselves. Look not every man on his own things. The way this is phrased, you have to read the whole sentence. Because it's not just saying, well, don't look on your own things. It says, but every man also. So what it's saying is don't just be focused on what you need on your own things, but also be focused on the things of others. So you're not just saying, well, I'm just going to take care of myself and no one else. Nuts to everyone else. Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm just going to make sure that me and my family are OK. That's not a Christian mindset. The Christian mindset is saying, OK, I am going to take care of me and my family, but I'm also going to see where I can help other people else also along the way. Verse five, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. So even though Jesus Christ being in the form of God, and was equal with God, by the way, God the Father because he is God, he still made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. If God our Savior can humble himself to this degree, to this lowliness of being a man, being clothed in human flesh, and making himself of no real reputation, just growing up humbly in some blue-collared worker family, which, by the way, we know Joseph and Mary were not really wealthy, and we know this by the offering that was given at Jesus' birth. The law stated that for the male child that's born, you're supposed to give a sacrifice, and I forget the actual animal if it's a lamb or if it's a... Whatever the actual animal was, it says, or you give, like, two turtle doves or two pigeons because it was allowing for that for people who can't afford the primary sacrifice that you would give, and that's what was given at Jesus' birth, just demonstrating, because we know that Joseph was a just man. We knew that Mary was a just woman. They both followed the law to the best that they could, and if they could, I believe, if they could have afforded the beggar's sacrifice they would have given it, Jesus took upon him the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men. It says here in verse 8, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient on death even the death of the cross. Jesus is our example. With that in mind, turn to John chapter 13. John chapter 13. If Jesus Christ is our example and he humbled himself, I think we can humble ourselves. This wasn't in my notes. I'm just going to bring it up right now too. Think about, when you think about serving or being a servant, you have to be humble in order to do that because you're trying to meet the needs of someone else. Now, a lot of people who are in a position just in this world to serve end up complaining that they have to serve other people. Right? I mean, you could think of a million different positions that people could have where you're serving someone else and they end up complaining about their job, about their service, about what they're doing. Right? Jesus took the form of a servant and humbled himself. Do we ever read about Jesus complaining? Ever in Scripture? No, we don't. We're not perfect. Okay? But let that sink in. Jesus never complained about his job and his serving. How good of a servant is it if they're serving with bitterness? Right? Think about this. We are servants for Christ. Right? We're servants for our Heavenly Father. A servant should be there to please. Ultimately, we are pleasing our master, our boss in heaven. Let's take it down to an earthly example. You go to a restaurant, you have people bringing you your food. What are they called? Servers. Right? Waiters, waitresses. They're called servers. Have you ever gone into a restaurant? You're paying them. Right? You're paying extra money, in fact, for staff to come and bring you your food. You're being waited on. You're being served. You're in a position in a sense of being the master in biblical terms and the servant. Again, same big deal. They're serving or they're there to serve you. They're there to please you. They're there to make your day, your experience there, a good one. But how many of you have ever been to a restaurant and the person who's serving you, everything, it's like, oh, well, I mean, I don't think we could do that. That's going to be, and just complaining about requests that you make of the person that's there to serve you and just has a bad attitude the whole time. Is that really pleasant for you? To go and be in it? Of course not, right? Of course not. That's easy for us to identify with. Well, we are servants for Christ and for God. How pleased is God going to be if while you're doing stuff going, well, I mean, you know, this is really just eating into my time. This is really just, so think about this, and this is a practical example right here in church. Okay? Now, if you choose to offer up your time and you choose to serve, I understand what it's like when other people could be obnoxious and belligerent towards the service that you do and are disrespectful to the work that you do here, because some people just don't get it. Some people don't think about others, and some people don't have the mindset of esteeming others better themselves, and some people, when you're trying to do work, just completely ignore what you're trying to do. That's going to happen. That's going to happen. But in humility, a servant is going to have to swallow their own pride and deal with it and not just complain and get all upset and just take the role of the servant. It doesn't justify or make it right for the other person who's causing extra problems and is just being a jerk, maybe. It doesn't make that right. But I'm talking about what's the right attitude to have as a servant? Put it this way. It's funny. I don't even know how this video came on my thing. When you watch things on YouTube, the YouTube hole, and my wife, she came in the room yesterday, and I was doing some other work, and I just had this on, and I'm doing my work, and then she's like, I turn it off, and then she's like, why are you even listening to that? And what it was, these people who were at an airport, and they were being really rude and belligerent to the staff, and the staff was doing their best to just be very professional, very kind, very helpful. They missed their flight because they were screwing around. They went and got food. They went and left and came back. Oh, well, the planes go, oh, it's turning right here. Where'd you get this food from? Whatever. All these different things. So these people were totally in the wrong, and then they're taking it out on these servants who are just trying to do their job, but they're acting with professionalism. They're taking it, and you know what? That's not always fun to be at the brunt and just take what other people are just dumping on you. Right? But instead of forgetting their job and just saying, you know what? Forget this. And I quit. No one can treat me like that. Whatever. They stick with it and do their job as they're supposed to, the best that they can in these difficult situations. We have to remember that and keep that humble mindset because there are going to be those people who, for whatever reason, are going to do things that are going to get us upset or irritated. We want to make sure, and when you serve, and the more people that can start serving, you start to see things from the other perspective, and then you start to learn. I brought up a week or two ago how I would intrude on Pastor Anderson's personal life by what I was doing as a single young man. Do you remember that? Well, when I was able to be on the other side of things is when it really, you know, oh, I get it now. Okay, so that was one example. When you start, when you become a servant, that will help all of us to not be the jerk on the other side. And I said this a long time ago not to have anything to do with church or anything. I had a job where I was serving people, right, in the service industry. And that was a good job to have because it lets you see the other side of things. You deal with people who are jerks. I deal with people who, you know, it's like I had one guy, I cooked food for him and got everything for him and did all this stuff and did this really good job and he's like, can't believe I'm going, oh, man, this is like the best sandwich. This is great. Hey, thank you so much. You did a great job. All these compliments, right, everything and everything. And then the bill comes and, you know, just all right, here you go. He lays out his money and then when he leaves, there's like I think 12 cents left for the tip. It's like, okay, you said a lot but you didn't really do a lot and it's, you know, from that side of things, maybe that person doesn't know what it's like to make very little money and rely on what you get and especially where I worked, it was like we didn't have some high turnover and it wasn't like this great place for making money at all. But when you start to see things from the other side, the other perspective, but you know what I had to do? Like, you know what, that was insulting, but you just have to take it and just say, well, you know, it is what it is and then you keep going. Don't let it get you down. Look at Jesus, our example here in John chapter 13. It's all about Jesus humbling himself. Verse number three, the Bible reads, Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things to his hands and that he has come from God and went to God, he rises from supper and laid aside his garments and took a towel and, excuse me, girded himself. After that, he pours water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel wherewith he was girded. So they just have dinner and Jesus puts on this towel like as his clothing, as his garment and he gets a basin full of water, brings his disciples' feet and he literally just gets down on his hands and knees and starts washing his disciples' feet. He brings it from person to person and he's drying off their feet with a towel that he's wearing. It's not even like this extra separate hand towel. This is like what he has on. And then he gets to Peter and says, Then cometh you Simon Peter and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and saith unto him, What I do, thou knowest, not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith unto him, He that is washed needeth not, save to wash his feet, but is clean every width, and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who should betray him, therefore he said, Ye are not all clean. So after he had washed their feet and had taken his garments and was set down again, he said unto them, Now he's going to explain what he just done. Right? He says, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. He said, You call me Master, you call me Lord, and he's like, You got that right. I am your Master, I am your Lord. What do you just get done doing? The most humbling thing, job that you can do for somebody. I mean, they're walking around all day, working earlier. This is dinner time. And they sit down at dinner. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I've been working all day and I kick off my shoes, it's not always a pretty sight. And you know, I work in an office. These guys are walking the streets, you know, preaching the gospel. You go out soloing, I go out and come home on Sunday, my feet are way nastier than they are during the week. Okay, but that's enough about my feet. Jesus is washing their feet. I mean, He's down there scrubbing them clean and drying them with a towel that He's wearing. That's a humbling job. And He's saying here, verse 14, If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. He's saying, If I've done this for you, then you better believe you ought to be able to do it for one another. Right, He gave us that example saying, You are not better than, you're definitely not better than me. And if I did this for you, then you better be able to do this for everybody else. Right? I mean, isn't that what He's trying to teach them here? Very, very I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord, saying you're not better than me, neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him, if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. Serving will bring you joy. He says you're happy. If you know these things, hey, you're happy if you do them. The service shouldn't be a drag. It shouldn't be a drain. It should be a joy. And we can look to Jesus, our example, and just like the Bible said, just like Jesus said, It's more blessed to give than to receive. You give of yourself. You sacrifice. You serve. Hey, try it. Try changing your attitude to going me, me, me, hey, what can I get? What can I do? Turn to Colossians chapter 3. Jesus became a servant, it would do us well to understand by way of experience at least some of the things that Jesus went through. Right? Isn't that going to get you closer to him when you could kind of understand and go through anything somewhat similar? I mean, whether that be people lying about you, people calling you evil, people, you know, having it out for you. Jesus had all those things being done to him. You start to understand what that's like to experience that or also, you know, going out serving other people, giving of yourself to other people, all these different things, you start to understand a little bit more what Jesus went through. And having that understanding will increase your appreciation and also help build your wisdom and your knowledge. And as I mentioned before, you know, the people who have gone through things, you understand more and it's going to make you a better person than on the other side of things. Right? So the person who's been the server before is going to be a better customer. They are. They always are. Because they understand what the other person is going through and at least if you're a decent person, you're going to not want to have, you know, make their time any harder. You know, we ought to have that mindset in general. I mean, you go places, you ought to be doing your best to try to not make anyone else's job harder than it needs to be, if possible, right? I mean, I hire people to work for me. If I need something done in my house, I'm always trying to do what I can to make their job easier. Oh, hey, I've got this. This might help you. Do you want that? Or even just something as simple as a drink, right? Just to help them. Now, again, as much as is possible or capable. Colossians chapter three, we're going to go into the mindset again. Look at verse number 12. The Bible says, God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. You know what that means? Putting up with each other. Bottom line, what it means. Now, we're still a small church, so there's not, like, a lot of problems or anything within our church. There's always going to be personality conflicts. There's always going to be somebody doing someone else wrong and, you know, whatever. The way we're going to continue to the best of our ability as a body, where the body is caring about the other members and everything else, and being able to function fully together, is by forbearing one another and forgiving one another and having meekness and humility in our hearts to not let petty things cause a problem within the body. Right? Get over it. Get over it. Get over it. Being a, you can't be a snowflake and be a Christian, an effective Christian. Put it that way. If everything's going to offend you and upset you and bother you and, you know, start serving more. Start reading about what the disciples went through, about what Christ went through, because whatever your afflictions are and whatever you think, you know, perceived people doing against you is, is nothing compared to what these people did. So, put things in perspective. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, and above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Verse 15, And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you are called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord, whatsoever ye do, in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. It says, whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. What we do ought to be done knowing that we are calling Christ our Savior and we're, we're naming the name of Christ and that we're doing things in his name. Jump down to verse number 22 because this is going to say how servants should serve, and it goes into wives and husbands and kids and everything else, but I want to focus on the servants part, okay? Because this is what the sermon's about, it's about serving. Verse 22, Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart fearing God. Now, I'm applying this to serving in the church so you don't really have a master in church other than Christ, right? So, when I'm talking about serving in church and doing jobs here, you don't have the master over you the way the Bible's talking about here, but the heart and the attitude should still be the same as what this is saying, in singleness of heart fearing God, and whatsoever you do, verse 23, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ. Practical things, because I think we should strive for excellence here because everything that we should do should be in the mindset that we're serving Christ, right? We should be striving for excellence even in the little things. When I first came here and started this church, or when I started a church in Arizona, before I was able to do any of that, I had to serve, and I learned through service, and I learned, thankfully, from someone else who just as much, at least just as much, wants to serve the Lord with all of His heart, and wants to do things right, and cares about doing things excellent, and doing things in a good way. So, here's a small bit of practicality, and this will be good for everyone here that's going to serve in this capacity. I believe when people walk in this church, every service, there should be nothing on the floor, everything should be picked up, everything should look clean, and decent, and in order, and should look organized, and just well set up. Now look, is it the most important thing, grass and roses? No, it's not. We can have church, and not have chairs, right, it's not about the chairs, it's not about the carpet, but you know what, it's about, how about just respecting the area, and the service, and showing that we can do things, as the Bible says, decently and in order, and I think that not only is applying to the speaking with other tongues, like it says in 1 Corinthians 14, but just with everything that we do should be done decently, and in order, and while we don't need to make this so ornate with stained glass windows and everything else, and make more about the building than is necessary, we still ought to present our place that we gather together as something that can be clean, as something that can be a place that's going to look decent and in order. So in order to accomplish that, and I think about things, hey, when it's my job to clean, one of the things that I do is I make sure that all of the chairs are in line and in order, and all of the song books are spaced across and all facing the same way. Why? Because I think, you know, you may say, why does that matter? It doesn't really matter. You know what, it gives off a very much, a better impression for people walking in, and you see, wow, everything's in order here, because you may not even notice when it's in order, but you always notice when it's out of order. You always notice. And even in the small things, even in the petty things, look, I want to, if my job is to make sure everything just looks like it's in order, well, it's to serve Christ. It's not to satisfy, you know, if you're doing it, it's not to satisfy just passoversons. It's not just to satisfy some other man. It's, you know what, what is God going to be happy with? Hey, we're going to gather here, we're going to meet here to serve the Lord. What's he going to be pleased with? Oh, there's just trash all over the place. You know, the Bible says, and this is a little bit more extreme, but when the children of Israel were in the camp, they had to go outside of the camp to do their business, you know, their physical bodily business, because the Lord didn't want to walk, he said, I don't want to walk around the camp. Now, what about cleaning our commodes? Right? I mean, we have a place for it, but, but let's keep that clean. Let's keep it all clean. The whole, the whole facility that we have here. Let's get the mindset, and I'm not saying there's some major problem here at all. What I'm, what I'm trying to express is when you take a job, do your best. Don't just overlook, you're doing the vacuuming, it's like, well, there's some crumbs over there, but then I got to like plug it in over there and do it, you know, and it's fine, whatever. Is that your best? We should be doing our best. Think about your favorite business out in the world, just whoever you're, whoever you like to do business with, purchasing, whatever. Why do you like it so much? What would make you a loyal customer? Well, they probably stand out because they're unusually good at doing something, right? Whether it be a restaurant, whatever. What I think of is, is Amazon, and the reason why I think of Amazon, you know, obviously a lot of people know about Amazon now. My business in the past, doing online sales, you know, e-commerce, all this stuff, I was in the business before, before Amazon was really anything, and then they just started selling books, and then, you know, like before they became what they are now, but they really changed the way business was done, and what customers have come to expect. They really were game changers and trailblazers in business, and which is why they accumulated so many people and so many customers, because they outperformed everyone else. It used to be when you would buy something on the internet, maybe they'll ship in about five days. You're paying shipping and handling, right, it's cheaper for you to go out to the store and just pick it up, but, you know, Amazon comes along and they're shipping things next day, or within two days, like they really started ratcheting it down to where it's like same day delivery. Everyone else has to, all the competitors have to scramble to compete. I mean, I was working for a business that was a competitor in general, not as massive as Amazon, but just going like, we need to step up our game. We needed to figure out what we need to do to make it so that we can get all the orders processed and get this stuff out the door, because, honestly, we weren't doing our best. But someone else comes along and points it out going like, hey, you better step up your game a little bit, right? And look, Amazon just one example, whatever it is, people who do that, it's like they're going to stand out. That's what I want our church to be. Let's step up our game, right? Let's make this excellent. Let's make everything that we do, let's make not just, oh, it's good enough, okay, whatever, who cares, right? That mindset is going to make us be mediocre. It's like the lukewarm, right? What did God say about the church of Laodicea? He says, you're not cold. You're not hot. You're just lukewarm, right? They're kind of wishy-washy. They're kind of half in, half out. They're kind of like, well, I mean, we want to serve God, and we've got these programs and activities, but you know what? We really like just enjoying the world and watching TV and going to movies and listening, you know, so we're going to like kind of do both. And God says, you know what? You are just lukewarm, and I want to spew you out of my mouth. It's like that, just get it, get on, or get out. And that's kind of the way our church is going to be. If you want to serve here, I want our church to be known for its service, for its ministry, just in general. When people come to our church, or join our church, or visit our church, Strong Old Baptist Church, that is a church that serves. That is a church that you are going to come in, and it's going to be top notch. It's going to be first class. It's going to be like no other. People are going to come in, and they're going to be greeted, and they're going to feel welcome. They're going to have someone talking to them, okay? They're going to know, wow, the music's great. Wow, everything's in order. Hey, everybody starts on time. People are in their places doing what they're supposed to be doing. If you're serving, you're there early, and you're making sure everything is going to go well, and you've prepared during the week, and you've prepared everything so that every time we have a service, things are going off well. And if there is a hiccup, if there is someone that can't make something, we can adapt and overcome right away. And just keep moving forward, because we're ready, because we're prepared, because everybody has a heart and a mind to serve, and they're doing everything that they can do to make things work here. In order for that to be the case, we need to have more people ready to serve. It's a bottom line. And maybe that's not your vision for church, that's my vision for this church. And that's what I'm going to push to achieve here, and push people to do more to give of yourself. While on one hand, at the end of the day, everything is going to fall on me for my responsibility. I took that on when I took this position. If nobody cleans, if nobody leads a singing, if no one does anything, I am going to do everything. We'll all suffer, because I will not be able to do everything that great if I have to focus on everything. But it'll get done, and I'll make sure it'll happen. The more people can help unload in that area and focus on certain areas, the better everything is going to be. Right? If one member of the body has to take over functions for all these other members, it's going to suffer. But when every member can be doing its function, we're going to do great. I want our church to stand out being far more excellent than any church out there. We need to convey what we value here and convey that with excellence. If the church, what we are, who we are, what we stand for, we need to convey those ideals, those goals, and convey it with excellence. So let me break this down practically, and I'm almost done. I'm going to finish up here. I'm wrapping up with all the practical applications. For example, preaching. I want the preaching here to be excellent. I try to improve myself, whether you know that or not. I want to improve my own preaching. I want preachers here to improve their preaching. What do we value here? We value the word of God. So if I want to convey that value of how much we think the word of God is important, then I need to make sure that I am including a lot of scripture to prove what I'm teaching from scripture. Right? That's one thing that I think should be setting apart our church from many other churches is hey, we're actually, we care. It's going to be evident when you come in here and you hear preaching, you're going to hear a lot of the word of God. Because that's where the power is, and that's what we care about, that's what we value, so that's going to be coming forth. Lots of scripture, literal interpretation, it says what it says, not beating around the bush, none of that stuff. Right? Singing, music, we value old paths, we value old fashioned, we value separated, sanctified, holy music unto the Lord, not music that's patterned after the world, not something that just sounds like some rock band created it, but something that is going to be unique and different, a sound, a new song unto the Lord that is clearly something that is appropriate for singing unto God. That's what we care about here, this is why we have, and also we're teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, which means that the songs themselves are packed with good doctrine. So another reason why we use the hymns that we sing and the hymns that we do, because they have doctrine in them, they're teaching, they're great. That should be coming across along with the dedication to the service of singing and praising the Lord with all of our hearts, I mentioned that earlier, you know, everyone's singing out, people playing, if you're going to play an instrument, you don't have to play, but I would expect you to be giving your best. And when we're filling needs, hey, we are very thankful and I am always very thankful for anyone who's willing to step in and fill a role. I am. What I'm asking you to do is to take the role seriously, very seriously, and to work to improve at what you're doing. And not only in the mindset, well, they should just be happy that I'm doing this at all. You know what? You don't have to do it with that attitude. Well, I am thankful for everybody at setting in, but, you know, if you're going to have a bad attitude about it, then don't do it. I don't want people, look, I don't want, I don't want people who are going to volunteer and serve with a bad heart, a bad attitude, and you're just not willing to give of yourself just to say, well, listen, if you're going to do, if you're going to come in and volunteer and serve to do something and just give, like, ten percent, don't bother because I don't want that service. I don't. I'd rather it not be done at all. I'd rather you just say, I'm going to give and give right and give, you know, because you're serving the Lord. Don't be wishy washy. Don't be lukewarm. Do it yourself and do it. Our service times. Biblical mindset of, you know, we need church so much the more as we see the day approaching, right? We need to gather together. That's why we have three service times. We have respect for the time of others. So our service times ought to be starting on time every single time. Starting at scheduled times. Sanctuary. We value cleanliness. Everything decent in order. I already brought that up. Right? And so on the one hand, because we value that, it's great when people volunteer to help clean, which by the way we have a sign up, a calendar in my office, for anyone that wants to volunteer their time after service on Sundays and Wednesdays to make sure that this place is back in order for the next service. There's a sign up sheet for that. And, but not only for the people who want to dedicate their time to doing the overall cleaning and making sure everything is done right, how about individually we could think about the job that other people do and make sure when you leave here, you're not leaving behind a big stinking mess for the people who signed up for the job. Well, someone's going to do that anyway. Man, that drives me, that's driven me nuts my whole life. You go, I mean, even just out in the world, out at events, you know, I've had, I've been with friends and other people and, you know, whether it be sporting men or whatever, they just leave their trash all over the place. Well, someone's going to come and sweep that up anyways. Well, you know what? They wouldn't have to sweep that up if you just threw it in a garbage can right there. Like, why don't you think about the other person and what they're doing? And how about you think about that here? We keep, we got to tidy up this place every day instead of leaving your half-drank waters and food wrappers and candy wrappers and everything else around your area. Why don't you just pick it up and throw it away so that one person doesn't have to pick up 50 things, 50 people could pick up one thing, and then it's done. And just clean it up after yourself. You know, as I was thinking about this, I'm like, you know, a lot of these things, they should have just been taught at home. Because they're common sense things. But unfortunately, look, not everyone gets to teaching at home. And it's sad, you know, and you can't fault the person who just didn't have the right upbringing. So you know where you're going to get that is church. So this is appropriate. The things that people didn't, might not have received growing up at home, or they should have, ought to also be taught here. Good character, good values, being a servant, serving Christ, talking about other people. Our soul winning. The great commission, right? Being thorough. Not just doing the one, two, three, repeat after me. All of these things are for excellence, right? We want to be the best. We want to do the best job. We want to be the best prepared. You know, we've got these maps, so that's why we're always making modifications and changing the way we do things. Because we want to improve and do it better. We want to make the best use of our time. We want to do everything, you know, as best as we possibly can. That's why I started doing the changing partners so we could learn from each other and make sure people are building better relationships and bonds by going out. All of these things, there's a purpose for it. We have needs right now in this church. We have needs for cleaning crews. We have needs for ushers. Brother Lindsay is the only one that is in the job of being an usher. And he's doing an awesome job, but you know what? He's not here all the time, one. And two, we need another one anyways. And we need another one to be able to fill in also so that we're always ready so that we can always have people being greeted. We can always have people find their seats. We can always have people doing the job. You might not even know, like what does Brother Lindsay even do? You don't know. You might not even know, but he knows what he does. You know what my problem is? And with all these jobs, I'm looking for people and what this church needs. We need faithful church members that can show up to church not two minutes past 1030 or whatever the service time is, not rolling in at the last minute, that can show up and make sure they're here early, consistently, ready to help. They're in order. Their family is in order. They're not leaving some big mess, but they're going to stick around and help. That's what we need more of. I'm looking for people to fill jobs, but you know what? I need to see that you can even do these things before I'm going to ask you to do a job. If you don't want to serve, that's fine. You can serve. I mean, you're welcome here. I love you, and I want you to keep coming here, and I want you to grow, and I want you to learn, and we will serve you. Absolutely, and I'll serve you as much as I serve anybody else, and I will give of myself, and I will put my heart into you, because I do want you here. The choice is yours, what you want to do, but you make the decision. What do you value? Do you want to serve? What is your role? What are you going to fill? If you consider yourself a member of this church, what is your job? What can you do? We have a lot more needs. I have more things that I want to do in this church, I haven't told anybody about, and I have nobody that I can see that's going to be able to help with some of the things that I want to do. That's okay. We're going to get there, and we're going to work, and work together, and grow, and work harder, but hopefully you share the same vision I do. I want this church to be excellent, great, a serving church, serving one another, and serving ultimately for the best value of Christ, and that everything is top notch at Stronghold Baptist Church. Hopefully that's what you want, because that's definitely what I want, and I'm going to close with this last thought. I've mentioned it before, but sometimes serving, oftentimes serving is a thankless job. It's a thankless job. And you can ask the people who have invested their time cleaning for the past couple years, the few years that we've been here, they don't get very many thanks. I try to thank people as much as I can, but you know what, just in general that job is a thankless job. They don't get very much recognition. You're not like always being called out in front of everyone, and given a pat on the back, and everyone knowing, hey, this person did a really good job. It's a thankless job. And that's just one example. There's so many jobs here. People are doing work, and there are a lot of people doing work. Like I said at the beginning, please take the right spirit of what I'm trying to express here, because it may sound harsh. I am extremely thankful for all the hard work that people have done. I do think this is a great church. I really do, and people give of themselves a lot here. But I want to do better. That's why I'm free to deserve it. I want to do better. Better. More involvement. More people getting involved. The apostle Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 12, 15. He says, I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. That happens in a servant's role sometimes. You may end up giving of yourself a lot to helping out somebody, or doing something for someone, and they show no gratitude for it at all. In fact, they even love you less and start treating you like more garbage. That happens, and it's unfortunate. It's not just, but it doesn't change the job of a servant. Think about it. Sometimes people take advantage of you. Sometimes other people don't recognize the work you're doing. Sometimes other people don't consider the sacrifice that you're making. They act like jerks. Does that mean you stop serving? Does that just mean, well, just throw it in the towel, then forget it? I mean, if you do it that way, then forget it. What if I quit pastoring? Because people eat up my time. They ask me for advice. Always asking for advice, and then never taking it, or people who are, you know, they want you to do all this, and do that, and you invest hours, and days, and maybe even years, and they go through hard times, and you're there for them, and they need help financially, and you give to them, and you give, and give, and give, and stab you in the back, and lie about you, and leave, and whatever. Because you know what? That happens. Should I just quit? And let people, a few people who do bad things, or evil things, spoil it for everybody? Or should I just keep working? Should Jesus have quit? I mean, my number one, one of my 12 disciples is treasonous. Man, I don't deserve this. He didn't deserve it. People are plotting to kill me, man. I mean, come on. I could, you know, I need to, I need to, I got other things to do. I got a mom to take care of. I've got, you know, whatever. Like, he didn't quit. He kept going. Thank God Jesus didn't quit. It's not always going to be easy. It's my whole point. It's not always going to be easy. And you may, you may have to deal with, with people who are going to be unpleasant, but just keep serving anyways. Just do it. Do it because it's right. Do it because we're supposed to be humble servants. Do it because Jesus did it. And you know what? You will, you will end up finding joy because, you know, I brought up a few, maybe like extreme or bad examples of how I maybe I'll give of myself and then people just don't care. But you know what? There's a lot of people who do care and there's a lot of people who've benefited and grown from the investment that I make and you know what? That is great joy. And anyone who's ever been involved in helping other people knows that joy that when you're able to give of yourself and self-sacrifice and say, yeah, I had this other thing planned, but you know what? I'm going to get rid of that because I'm going to help you out. I'm going to give up some of the time, some of my free time, some of the time I would have to just enjoy whatever because I'm going to help this person out. That's great. We had that happen in a camping trip last year. Brother Kevin's truck broke down, right? And what happened? There were people, there were multiple people, and this is why I think our church is great. There are multiple people that said, you know what? I'm going to stop having fun for a little while here on this fun camping trip where everything's leisure and fun and activities and man, there's a beach and there's all this other stuff going on and we're going to all stop and we're going to work because this person, this brother has a need. And a lot of people pitched in and helped. You know what? God bless those people. God bless that spirit and that attitude. It's going to make this church great. It's what I love about this church and let's continue to see that grow. Let's borrow every word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you. Thank you so much for this church. I thank you for all the people that are here today. Lord, I pray that you will please help us all to grow spiritually and have the right mindset, dear Lord, to serve you. I pray that you would please just help us to reach more people and God, be able to do things with excellence so that we could reflect your values and what you teach us, dear Lord, and what we do. We love you. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Alright, sorry for keeping you all a little bit later this morning. We're going to sing one last song and then we'll be dismissed. Alright, for the final song we're going to sing is song number 162. 162 to God be the glory. Again, that is song number 162. God be the glory. Great things he had done so beneath the world that he gave us his Son to yield his life and atone him for sin and open the light gave that all may go in. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the people rejoice. O come to the Father through Jesus the Son and give him the glory. Great things he had done over earth, in redemption the purchase of fun to every believer the promise of God the vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the people rejoice. O come to the Father through Jesus the Son and give him the glory. Great things he had done great things he had taught us great things he had done and great are rejoicing through Jesus the Son the purer and higher and greater will be up under our transport when Jesus we see. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the earth hear his voice. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord and let the people rejoice. O come to the Father through Jesus the Son and give him the glory. Great things he had done. . . . . . .