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We will never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. Though often tempted, tormented and tested, And like a prophet, my pillow of stone. And though I find dear no permanent welling, I know he'll give me the best in my own home. I've got a mansion just over the hilltop. In that bright land he'll never grow old. And someday I'll hear he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. Nonetheless, don't think me poor, deserted or lonely. I'm not discouraged, I've been inbound. I'm just a pilgrim in search of a city. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. I've got a mansion, just over the hilltop. In that bright land he'll never grow old. And someday I'll hear he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. In that bright land he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. In that bright land he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. In that bright land he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. I've got a mansion, a heart made of ground. In that bright land he'll never bore water, The thoughts on streets that are pure and small. Good afternoon, or morning everybody, and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. It's great to see everybody here this morning. If we can find our seats we will get started. And once we've found a seat, let's grab a hymnal and we'll start this morning with song number 397. Song number 397. A little as much when God is in it. In the hardest in the right land there's a word for all to do. Hark the voice that God is calling to the harvest calling you. Little is less when God is in it. Pray for God for wealth for fame. There's a ground that you can win in if you'll go in Jesus' name. Does the place you're called to labor seem so small and little known? It is great when God is in it and you'll not forget his home. Little is much when God is in it. Pray for God for wealth for fame. There's a ground that you can win in if you'll go in Jesus' name. Are you made a silent servant body warm from toil and care? You can still be in the battle in the sacred place of prayer. Little is much when God is in it. Pray for God for wealth for fame. There's a ground that you can win in if you'll go in Jesus' name. When the conference here is ended and our prayers on earth is done we will say to all the faithful welcome home my child of God. Little is much when God is in it. Pray for God for wealth for fame. There's a ground that you can win in if you'll go in Jesus' name. Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer. Lord we love you and we just thank you so much for this church. Thank you so much for the ability to gather here and hear the singing and be a part of it. We just ask that you help us lift up our voices and fill this room with your spirit and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright for our next song let's go to song number 108. Song number 108 this may be a newer song to some if you know it well sing it out loudly. Song number 108, Son of My Soul. Let's all sing it out together on the first. Singing out my spirit's eyes when the soft news shall find me sleep my weary eye is gently seen. Be my last come my Savior's rest. Abide with me from morn till near for without me I cannot live. Abide with me when night is nigh. For without me I cannot die. Be near to bless us when we win. Air through the world our way we take. Till in the ocean of our love we lose ourselves in the air. Great singing. Thank you for coming to Setfast Baptist Church if you don't already have a bulletin you can lift up your hand nice and high one of our ushers can come by and get you guys a bulletin and we got a picture of the Bahamas here on the front of our bulletin and I want to talk about that here in a minute but we have our Bible memory passage Matthew 28 verse 17 anybody who can quote the verse of the week can get a prize on Wednesday night as 18 and under and then additionally anybody who can quote the entire chapter of Matthew 28 can receive a special prize as well. We have a lot of people here and maybe even some more filling in so if an usher asks you to kind of just move around please just help us out on that. On the inside we have our service and soul winning times and then we also have our church stats down below so we have a Spanish service on Sunday mornings at 9am if you'd like to participate the entire service is in Spanish so all the singing, the announcements the preaching and everything and that ministry has been doing really well and so if you'd ever like to participate we'd love for you to join us. Sunday evening is our 4.30 and Wednesday night is our 7 o'clock Bible study. We have church wide soul winning that meets here at the building so on Sundays at 2 we just meet here and go out. If you want to participate today just be here at 2pm and we help organize people to be sent out for soul winning. Regional times meet in different parts of the city and we have different leaders that meet throughout the city for that. Down below is our church stats and honestly this has just been such a great start to 2025 and we've been doing a big work and so we want to maintain that zeal and that effort and that energy but thank you so much to everybody who's been participating in this. On the right we have a list of our expecting ladies down below some up and coming events so we've been practicing we've had a kids choir that's practicing for an Easter special and my wife's been helping lead this it's a Sundays at 2pm and so as soon as we get the soul winning organized and out of here she's going to help organize there's two groups for the kids choir practice they just meet here in the sanctuary area. Spring recital there is a sign up sheet hopefully you already signed up because there's try outs and my wife is going to be doing that today so make sure you show up for your try out time. We also have an exciting news about the foley's who are going to be having their wedding on March 28th at 6pm so congratulations to them finally yeah it's exciting. This has been a long prayer request and so it's great to see it come to fruition and just continue to pray also they are planning on inviting the entire church so if you'd like to just participate it is that Friday March 28th 6pm we'd love for you to come but they are going to have an RSVP and so please make sure to RSVP you say who do I ask ask brother Sam alright so ask brother Sam and we probably put that detail and information in our group chat as well so you can follow up but if you are planning on coming please let us know so we can organize that. Down below that we have our Mansfield soul winning marathon it's April 19th and that's going to be just the day before Easter now we have Easter flyers that can be handed out in preparation for Easter services and we'll be doing that on our marathon as well down below of course is Easter this year is April 20th there's some church reminders down below make sure and again this is a little bit different we sometimes have a quiet time in between services but because of the kids choir that's a little bit different for now but we also have some reminders please no running or rough playing in the church we don't want kids on our stage area please also kids shouldn't be in the kitchen or fridges or ice machine without adult assistance and then children should also not be in their mother's baby rooms without their mother we want them to be in there we have one right here right behind and then we have another one across the way so there's two mother baby room options we also have a fellowship room back here with several chairs so if a dad or somebody needs to use that area or overflow seating we have that in the back as well also children shouldn't be using any of our church supplies we should be cleaning up after ourselves the water bottles in the fridges are for soul winning and parents please just make sure you're watching your kids kids if any adult gives you some instruction just say yes sir yes ma'am and just do it so you know we allow you just need to obey whatever authority is in there today we are having a luncheon and it's going to be outside in our back patio area and everyone's invited so we're having a big barbecue bash and brother Ryan Urbanic his company RNN barbecue is going to be cooking for us and so you definitely want to have it because you know there's nothing like Texas barbecue and not only just Texas barbecue but brother Ryan's really good he's actually he competes very well and he makes a good it's hard for me to say positive things about him but I mean when it comes to the brisket I mean it's good so I have to say it alright I can't lie so but his better half's here with us Duncan Urbanic and his brother and so we're going to get a testimony from here in just a minute I do want to say on the back they organized an Azle marathon yesterday and had 92 soul winners come out and 43 salvations that that is a great work because it's not like they're going to the Bahamas or something okay Azle and so that's a great work down below we have our prayer list please make sure you're praying for our church family if you have other prayer requests that you would like to add to our bulletin please email us or you can fill out the communication card and just slip it in our offering plate and we'll try to get that added to our prayer list I did want to take just a few minutes just to say this week I went on one of our cruise missions trip ideas I went with one of my friends Pastor Steven Anderson and we went to a couple different spots we went to Nassau Bahamas and then we also went to Freeport Bahamas and then they had just like a recreation day so we kind of only had like two days for soul winning but on the first day we went to Nassau I was able to meet up with one of our friends there brother Kenton Knowles who lives there and he helped facilitate taking us to their university there and it's really just a hot spot for soul winning because there's just so many students there and the student population is really receptive to the gospel so we just pretty much we went out there and just did soul winning for about five hours straight and we ended up having as a group 58 salvations for just that five hours of soul winning which is honestly unbelievable but if you go you can believe it and it's really just a lot of fun I personally was able to preach the gospel to over 30 people and I had 30 people saved for that five hour period which you know for me personally like I don't remember exactly but I would say like the biggest days I've had in my mind are probably like 15 or 18 or something like that I've never even probably gotten into 20 so to get all the way to 30 is just it's kind of unusual and so you know I preached a whole sermon on this called Bahamas Soul Winning Made Easy and honestly for four admissions it probably can't get any better in my personal opinion just because it's really close to where we live it's super beautiful it has pretty much every American amenity you could ever want and then the soul winning is just honestly one of the easiest places to go soul winning you talk to people and say hey could I show you how to go to heaven and they're just like yes I'm really interested yeah I want to know people know the Bible they have respect for the Bible but most of them just aren't saved I did run into a few people that were saved already but for the most part most people think that they have to work their whole life and be faithful their whole life and ask for forgiveness every day and just be like a zealous Christian in order to be saved and so when you show them that it's a one time event of believing on Jesus Christ and just trusting in his finished work a lot of them you know it really connects well and they get saved and so you know I can't really recommend the Bahamas anymore there's a little picture here and I mean the water there is beautiful the beaches are beautiful the weather is amazing it's pretty much everything you could ever want this is the only danger of the Bahamas I was thinking is you might get spoiled because like other foreign missions trips actually a lot more work and effort and not necessarily as nice but me and the Bahamas is just like one of the easiest soul winning opportunities and so I highly highly encourage it we also went to Freeport and we ended up going to one of their universities as well which was much smaller a lot less student population but we were able to preach to several of those students and many of them got saved too I think we had 18 salvations for our Freeport day which is still a great great day big number it's just hard to compete with Nassau I mean you just can't really compete with that particular area and so but you know thank you so much to everybody who was praying for that trip thanks for brother Duncan for coming and preaching for us on Wednesday while I was out of town and I know some people here weren't here on Wednesday and didn't get to hear so I wanted to ask him to just come up and just kind of give us a little bit of a brief just summary of what he's doing in the Philippines and what's going on and then of course today we're celebrating lunch with him and celebrating the work that they're doing and them going back so why don't you give us a little bit of a testimonial First I'd just like to thank Pastor Shelley for bringing our family back here it's great to see everyone you know it's been about a year and so we moved March 22nd so we're hitting on that year mark so it's great to see everyone again I got my family in the back here my wife RG and we have two children Titus and Anna but actually we have three now because my wife is expecting so praise the Lord on that Thank you And I'd just like to thank everyone here because without this church we would have no ministry in the Philippines and as you've been seeing through the reports I've been sending out through this last year it is a very receptive country I mean especially if we're talking about foreign missions again the biggest comparison with the Philippines and the Bahamas is just distance because that's why it's easier to do missions in the Bahamas because it's really close but they're probably about equal as far as how receptive it is since we moved there last year in March we just started soul winning right away as not counting March salvations so for the last 11 months we've had 4319 salvations and that's just it's crazy to think about and I was reminded about the soul winning gospel in the United States yesterday out in Asil because I'm like wait why does no one want to hear the gospel because when you go to foreign missions especially to the Philippines you don't have that issue and typically for us we're not going door to door we're going to parks filled with teenagers who want to hear the gospel and they're in big groups and a lot of them speak good English so it's just really easy you can walk up to a group of five ask them hey do you want to hear the gospel they're all excited they say yes and virtually like everyone you talk to agrees with you you don't deal with as many heretics and weirdos as you do in the United States so the soul winning there is just insane and so I believe it when Pastor Shelley is saying they got 30 in the Bahamas in one day because you can get similar results in the Philippines as well if you're spending several hours per day you can get a lot of salvations and those salvations weren't 100% by me also through my wife's soul winning we also have a couple of kids in my wife's family they're both 17 now and I think one's about to be 18 and there's another one he was with us but now he's working so he's not always with us today but we've trained three members of my wife's family and now two of them are going soul winning with us on a weekly basis and also brother James he pretty much moved to the Philippines as well and so he's able to do a lot of soul winning so I think this year from March to March we'll have around 4,500 salvations and I really think this year in 2025 we're going to have even more especially if we're counting brother James numbers I think we're going to get a lot more than that and so it's just a great opportunity and I appreciate all the support from the members of this church again without this church none of those people would have been saved right and so this all just started a year ago so we're excited to see what the Lord is going to do I like the competition that Pastor Shelley's bringing us now because y'all are taking all these trips to the Bahamas so now you know I'm starting to sweat a little bit as far as keeping up with you guys because we're about neck and neck right now I think for January and February I think we're around like 900 or 1,000 salvations so now I'm going to make sure I'm going to beat you guys this year and here's the thing the day we get back to the Philippines we're staying here until March the 24th so we're getting back in the Philippines on the 25th I have a school I'm scheduled to go pre-chat on the 26th so there's over like 1,000 students there so if y'all want a chance y'all got to keep soul winning a lot because we're going to hopefully Lord willing we'll dominate but we're really hoping we can get into a lot of more schools this year so just keep us in your prayers for that again it's great to see you guys and God bless okay yeah thanks so much to our evangelist Duncan and his family and honestly while it is other people that have contributed he's definitely the pioneer and the individual that's caused a lot of people to have the zeal to go out there he gave the zeal to brother James and without brother evangelistic going out there brother James probably wouldn't have even gone out there and I wouldn't have gone out there and a lot of people may not have partnered with them he's trained a lot of people and so we're planning on trying to start a little church plant in his area and so just pray for that pray for evangelistic if you ever want to donate to him and his ministry specifically you can always just let us know and he definitely accepts those donations he appreciates them very much and our church does pay for them 100% as far as just funding their operation and funding their opportunity and you know our philosophy on missions is different than other churches instead of having 150 missionaries that we support for 25 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month we try to just put that all together in one and just support one evangelist and try to get him out there and it's great to see his testimonials he's giving us a monthly update and it's really exciting to see hey he's getting 400 saved 500 saved and the schools are going into and the new soul winners and the baptisms and all the different works that are being done and so we really really appreciate the work he's doing we also appreciate Verdi Baptist Church in the Philippines with pastor Matthew Stuckey we've tried to partner with his ministry and also come alongside them and help them as well and they've been a great success and help so we're still very supportive of their ministry and helping them as well and you know the Philippines it's kind of crazy to think about numbers like that but Metro Manila just that area is approximately 15 million people is kind of an estimate of how many people live there and it's very densely populated so if you've ever been to somewhere like New York City or maybe another very densely populated area in the United States the Philippines is more densely populated from my personal opinion and so you know that's why sending multiple missionaries and multiple people out there is just kind of a drop of water on a hot stove in many ways just because there's just so many people and there's just so much opportunity to preach unto people because 15 million is a lot I mean the Dallas-Fort Worth area is about 8 million and it's a lot but think about double and in almost a smaller geographic area all just densely packed into one spot and so and that's just Manila Metro there's still tons of other little cities and areas and communities and towns and just the Philippines is a very populated country and it's growing, the population's growing and a lot of people are moving there and so it's definitely a thriving area and with more and more of the gospel and people getting saved I think the country is going to get better and better every single year and so we want to just keep doing the work and keep harvesting while the harvesting is just so plenious over there so we love the Philippines, we love our evangelists and we love that work over there and we want to keep supporting it while it makes sense right now so but for a lot of people it may be hard to go out there, that's why we also advertise Mexico missions trips, we advertise Caribbean cruise missions trips and just small town, we have a lot of small town soul winning opportunities and so you know you just got to get plugged in, we want to be a church that's doing a lot of soul winning and we want to emphasize it because that's the most important thing and that's what I'm going to be preaching about this morning anyways is about the works and so I'm very excited to preach unto you this morning and actually today and tonight, this morning and tonight I'm going to be preaching a lot about just Steadfast Baptist Church and things we've gone through and our history and some of the stuff that we've seen because I think it's important to reflect and this is a time for us to reflect, to celebrate, to enjoy and to kind of get more zeal for the things of God and we've had other people, brother Jacob and Jared, they went to the Philippines recently and they did a lot of work and they got a lot of people saved and so you know anybody can get plugged in anybody can do a lot of soul winning and that's what we highly encourage at our church so thank you so much for being here, please join us for lunch this afternoon now we're going to be singing a new song, if you want to get out your binders I'm going to be leading it, it's Psalm 58 and how, now we talked a lot about a lot of positive things and exciting things and encouraging things and I love those but the Bible has some negative songs, okay, and so Psalm 58 I'm just going to be honest, it's not a nice song in any way alright, but here at the church we like to balance ourselves with singing not just only positive things but also some negative things and so you know we also sing praises of the Lord but you know you can't get mad at singing a song that's in the Bible, okay so we should be excited, now this is a song that goes through five times, so the first time you may not quite pick up all the words perfectly or the tune but it repeats five times so hopefully by the third, the fourth, and that fifth you can really sing in, you can really kind of get the song kind of in your heart a little bit our musicians have been practicing really hard on this so I'm very excited to sing it it is a little bit low of a tone but it's kind of a dark hymn so alright, so I'm excited to practice this with you guys and learn it, this is the first time we're singing Psalm 58 you're on the verse oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh thank you very much for singing that with me if you turn in your bibles to second kings chapter four and we're going to pass the offering plate second kings chapter number four oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh second kings four the bible reads now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto elisha saying thy servant my husband is dead and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the lord and the creditor is come to take unto him my two bondmen and elisha said unto her what shall i do for thee tell me what hast thou in the house and she said thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil then he said go borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors even empty vessels borrow not a few and when thou art come in thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons and shalt pour out into all those vessels and thou shalt set aside that which is full so she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons who brought the vessels to her and she poured out and it came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son bring me yet a vessel and he said unto her there is not a vessel more and the oil stayed then she came and told the man of god and he said go sell the oil and pay thy debt and live thou in thy children of the rest and it fell on a day that elisha passed to shunem where was a great woman and she constrained him to eat bread and so it was that as oft as he passed by he turned in thither to eat bread and she said unto her husband behold now i perceive that this is an holy man of god which passeth by us continually let us make a little chamber i pray thee on the wall and let us set for him there a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick and it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn in thither and it fell on a day that he came thither and he turned into the chamber and lay there and he said to kehazi his servant call this shunammite and when he had called her she stood before him and he said unto him say now unto her behold thou hast been careful for us with all this care what is to be done for thee what is thou be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host and she answered i dwell among mine own people and he said what then is to be done for her and gehazi answered verily she hath no child and her husband is old and he said call her and when he had called her she stood in the door and he said about this season according to the time of life thou shalt embrace a son and she said nay my lord thou man of god do not lie unto thine handmaid and the woman conceived and bear a son at that season that elisha had said unto her according to the time of life and when the child was grown it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the reapers and he said unto his father my head my head and he said to a lad carry him to his mother and when he had taken him and brought him to his mother he sat on her knees till noon and then died and she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of god and shut the door upon him and went out and she called unto her husband and said send me I pray thee one of the young men and one of the asses that I may run to the man of god and come again and he said wherefore wilt thou go to him today it is neither new moon nor sabbath and she said it shall be well then she saddled an ass and said to her servant drive and go forward slack not thy writing for me except thy bid thee so she went and came unto the man of god to mount caramel and it came to pass when the man of god saw her afar off that he said to Gehazi his servant behold yonder is that Shunammite run now I pray thee to meet her and say unto her is it well with thee is it well with thy husband is it well with the child and she answered it as well and when she came to the man of god to the hill she caught him by the feet but Gehazi came near to thrust her away and the man of god said let her alone for her soul is vexed within her and the lord hath hid it from me and hath not told me then she said did I desire a son of my lord did I not say do not deceive me then he said to Gehazi gird up thy loins and take my staff in thine hand and go thy way if thou meet any man salute him not and if any salute thee answer him not again and lay my staff upon the face of the child and the mother of the child said as the lord liveth and as thy soul liveth I will not leave thee and he arose and followed her and Gehazi passed on before them and laid the staff upon the face of the child but there was neither voice nor hearing wherefore he went again to meet him and told him saying the child is not awake and when Elisha was come into the house behold the child was dead and laid upon his bed he went in therefore and shut the door upon them twain and prayed unto the lord and he went up and lay upon the child and put his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes and his hands upon his hands and he stretched himself upon the child and the flesh of the child waxed warm then he returned and walked in the house to and fro and went up and stretched himself upon him and the child sneezed seven times and the child opened his eyes and he called Gehazi and said call this Shunammite so he called her and when she was come in unto him he said take up thy son then she went in and fell at his feet and bowed herself to the ground and took up her son and went out and Elisha came again to Gilgal and there was a dearth in the land and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him and he said unto his servant set on the great pot and seeth pottage for the sons of the prophets and one went out into the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine and gathered thereof wild gourds as lapful and came and shred them into the pot of pottage for they knew them not so they poured out for the men to eat and it came to pass as they were eating of the pottage that they cried out and said O thou man of God there is death in the pot and they could not eat thereof but he said then bring meal and he cast it into the pot and he said pour out for the people that they may eat and there was no harm in the pot and there came a man from Baal-Shalisha and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits 20 loaves of barley and full ears of corn and the husk thereof and he said give unto the people that they may eat and his servitor said what should I set this before and hundred men he said again give the people that they may eat for thus saith the Lord they shall eat and shall leave thereof so he set it before them and they did eat and left thereof according to the word of the Lord let's bow our heads for a word of prayer Father in heaven I ask Lord God that you would fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit enable him to preach the sermon you've laid on his heart with clarity of mind and with boldness I pray also that you would help us to pay attention to the message this morning and apply it to our lives and help us Lord to glorify you in everything we do we love you in Jesus name I pray Amen Amen I want to look back in 2 Kings chapter 4 look at verse number 14 the Bible says and he said what then is to be done for her and Gehazi answered verily she hath no child and her husband is old now in this story we have a woman who has been ministering unto Elisha and the man of God and doing good unto him and so the question is kind of like what's going to be done unto her how can we bless her and Gehazi brings up this idea of the fact that she doesn't have a child now in verse 15 he said call her and when he had called her she stood in the door and he said about the season according to the time of life thou shalt embrace a son and she said nay my lord thou man of God do not lie unto thine handmaid and the woman conceived and bare a son at that season that Elisha had said unto her according to the time of life now something you'll notice in the Bible as a big pattern is the men of God are often telling you things that are going to happen and then they come to pass exactly like they said and this is a confirmation of the fact that God is with them that God is confirming them through their works and so we can constantly see in the Bible the real men of God are constantly confirmed and established by their works whereas the fake men of God the insincere imposters they have no works or their works are in failure and what's great is contrasting in this story Elisha and Gehazi Elisha and Gehazi because they're partnered together Gehazi is his servant but the problem is that Gehazi cannot do what Elisha does in this story now she gets this child a little bit later the child dies if you skip down look at verse number 25 because the woman goes to try and seek for the man of God to help her says in verse 25 so she went and came unto the man of God to Mount Carmel and it came to pass when the man of God saw her far off that he said to Gehazi his servant behold yonder is that she and I might run now I pray thee to meet her and say on her is it well with thee is it well with thy husband is it well with the child and she answered it is well this is interesting because her son dies she goes and seeks after the man of God on her journey she runs into Gehazi Gehazi is sent ahead Gehazi is there to ask like how's it going and she's just like it's well it's almost like she could tell that Gehazi is kind of off for a bozo and so she doesn't even want to get bothered by talking to him about this issue she's just kind of in a beeline to Elisha specifically now in verse number let's skip down to verse 27 and when she came to the man of God to the hill she caught him by the feet but Gehazi came near to thrust her away and the man of God said let her alone for her soul is vexed within her and the Lord hath hid it from me and hath not told me notice that when she finally gets to the man of God and she's going to beg something of him she wants something Gehazi kind of wants to get rid of her Gehazi is not really interested he doesn't really care he's not empathetic and yet Elisha is like let her alone obviously there's some kind of an issue here I don't know what it is God hasn't told me yet says in verse 28 then she said did I desire a son of my Lord did I not say do not deceive me then he said to Gehazi gird up thy loins and take my staff in thy hand and go thy way if thou meet any man salute him not and if any salute thee answer him not again and lay my staff upon the face of the child so Elisha now sends Gehazi out and says hey just go just go straight to the child put my staff on him to try and raise him from the dead so Gehazi is sent out to go and do this task specifically for Elisha he's instructed by Elisha to do so and it says in verse number 30 though and the mother of the child said as the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth I will not leave thee and he arose and followed her so you get the picture Elisha's there the woman comes he says fine send my servant to go raise the kid from the dead and then the mother says I'm not going back until you go back with me she doesn't trust Gehazi she's not into Gehazi and as we get further in the story it's good reason but she's like I want you to come so then he comes back with her to their son now it says in verse number 31 and Gehazi passed on before them and laid the staff upon the face of the child but there was neither voice nor hearing wherefore he went again to meet him and told him saying the child does not await and when Elisha was coming to the house behold the child was dead and laid upon his bed he went in therefore and shut the door upon them twain and prayed unto the Lord and he went up and lay upon the child and put his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes and his hands upon his hands and he stretched himself upon the child and the flesh of the child waxed warm then he returned and walked in the house to and fro and went up and stretched himself upon him and the child sneezed seven times and the child opened his eyes so the child comes back to life now there's a lot of things we can talk about in this story I'm trying to just get some foundation before I really get into my sermon one thing that's kind of interesting is how he lays on the child like eye for eye mouth for mouth all these things I don't know exactly what that means but this is kind of what I thought is that it almost pictures like your spirit reentering your body because it's like eye for eye nose for nose mouth for mouth and I think what it's kind of illustrating is a resurrection in the sense that when Jesus Christ rose again his spirit his soul returned into his physical body and he came back to life and so it just is like kind of picturing a resurrection and it really was a resurrection where the child really comes back to life now what's interesting is you contrast this Gehazi was sent by the man of God told by the man of God had the rod of the man of God yet when he laid the staff on nothing happened whereas when Gehazi is put aside and then Elisha comes in Elisha actually performs the miracle and Elisha is successful and what we can discern between these two guys is one is successful at doing the works the other one's a failure at doing the works now let's go to chapter five let's read a little bit more go to chapter five verse fifteen here's another story about Gehazi and again for sake of time I'm not reading these whole chapters you should read all of them but Naaman the Syrian comes unto Elisha has leprosy ask Elisha to heal him he tells him to go dip in the river seven times he is healed then Naaman wants to give a gift unto Elisha for having done this and it says in verse fifteen he returned to the man of God he and all his company and came and stood before him and he said behold now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel now therefore I pray they take a blessing of thy servant but he says as long as the Lord liveth before whom I stand I will receive none and he urged him to take it but he refused and Naaman said shall there not then I pray they be given to thy servant two mules burden of earth for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burn offering nor sacrifice on other gods but unto the Lord so Naaman wants to give Elisha a gift and Elisha says no because Elisha is not a prophet for money Elisha is not into the things of God for a reward now there is nothing wrong with him having taken a reward there is nothing wrong with him getting paid but just in this particular circumstance he is just he is not saying yes and he is not taking it and he is sending Naaman on his way with a blessing well the problem is Gehazi doesn't like that skip down to verse twenty but Gehazi the servant of Elisha the man of God said behold my master hath spared Naaman the Syrian in not receiving at his hands that which he brought but as the Lord liveth I will run after him and take somewhat of him so Gehazi followed after Naaman and when Naaman saw him running after him he lighted down from the chariot to meet him and said is all well and he said all is well my master hath sent me saying behold even now there be come to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets give them I pray thee a talent of silver and two changes of garments and Naaman said be content take two talents and he urged them and bound two talents of silver and two bags with two changes of garments and laid them upon two of his servants and they bare them before him and when he came to the tower he took them from their hand and bestowed them in the house and he let them in go and they departed but he went in and stood before his master and Elisha said unto him whence comest thou Gehazi and he said thy servant went no whither this is like all your kids it's like hey what are you doing nothing it's like you're not doing nothing no one's doing nothing okay you know this is where we all learned it right the excuse it's just like oh I didn't go anywhere well where have we been then I mean think about how silly that is like you've been missing you and you've been gone and he's like where'd you go nowhere and he said unto him went not mine heart with thee when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee is it a time to receive money and receive garments and olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and men servants and maid servants the leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seed forever and he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow and so we have another story another example of Gehazi who doesn't perform a miracle doesn't do right only interested in money and he ends up being cursed with leprosy for having deceived the man of God deceiving Naaman lying about things and just trying to get money whereas the real man of God doesn't lie isn't interested in money and you know what actually helps people and blesses people and what we can tell the difference between these two people is the works one person heals people helps people does good unto people the other person lies to people for money and if you want to understand Christianity if you want to understand the real prophet from the false prophet it's all about the works and that's the title of my sermon this morning is it's all about the works now we could go through the whole Bible and I could just show you this because there's so many examples but I just kind of wanted to focus on this one and then I'm going to go to a lot of different illustrations but here's another simple illustration how about Moses and when he has this standoff with the magicians of Pharaoh and we see Moses performing miracle after miracle turning water into blood then he casts his staff down and it turns into a serpent and of course the magicians are able to copy some of those things but we notice that Moses' serpent swallows up the other two serpents and then gets his staff back and then eventually when he gets to the lice they're like this is the finger of God because it's again all about the works the real works of God will always triumph over the works of darkness and over evil and we of course need to make sure that whoever is doing the works has the right message the Bible gives a caveat in the Old Testament it says if a man were to give some prophecy and it come to pass but he was trying to get you to go after false gods to still not listen to it the Bible tells us in the end times that the anti-Christ will perform basically miracles, false signs and wonders and that we're not supposed to necessarily be them so we have to have the right message but when you have the right message there still can be a Gehazi and there can be an Elisha and how we determine that is it's all about the works so when we have the right messenger we have the right message we still need to make a distinguishment between a Gehazi and Elisha and look you say well Elisha is a man of God and Gehazi is a servant okay but Elisha used to be the servant too because he used to be Elijah's servant and then what we end up seeing is that Elijah ends up performing great works and why is it that we love the men of the Bible why is it that we love the prophets of the Old Testament it's because of their works why is it that we hate Gehazi because he doesn't have any works and because he's a liar and so when we're measuring and we're testing the spirits and we're trying to see what's really going on in this world God wants us to trust in things he wants us to trust in the works in many cases now think about this Gehazi character it's a very interesting character because to some degree Elijah would have trusted him why would Elijah have this guy as his servant why would he be sending him out to do works why would he be there to try and have him do all this you know spiritual stuff if he didn't actually trust in him and the reality is sometimes men of God are going to have servants or people that they put in positions of authority they send out to do works and they believe in them they trust them they think that they're sincere they think they're a good guy they must have confused them or lied to them or something but we know that he lies to Elijah doesn't he when Elijah asks him hey where'd you go he's like oh I didn't go anywhere because he's a liar and he's fake he's not real and as the man of God sometimes you just excuse people's behavior you think like well I know Gehazi went and the staff didn't work but you're just kind of like yeah but he's probably still a good guy he's still at least he did the task I don't know what's wrong but he must have given him a bit of a doubt but finally he's just like okay this guy's obviously not legit he's cursed with leprosy he was wicked he was not sincere and we have to realize that in our ministry and in the ministry of Christianity we will have Gehazi's we will have fakes we have bozos we'll have people that we send out we'll have people that we put our blessing on our spirit on our authority on and they just completely fail because they're a fake insincere Gehazi and you say how do you know he's a Gehazi? The works it's the works that tell us you know what did Gehazi want? He wanted a reward he was really in it for the money and a lot of people are in it for the money he was told to run ahead but he was not able to do a spiritual work he was sent but he wasn't established and here's something we have to understand is that sometimes men of God can be sent in a sense or they're ordained but they're still not legit because God never established them and there's a difference between being ordained and being established ordained as a you're appointed to do a work established as you accomplish the work that you're doing good with the work and at the end of the day it's all about the works you know who cares if you're ordained and you accomplish nothing for God who cares if you're sent out to do work for the church and you do nothing I mean hey they sent me to the Bahamas and I got zero saved well what's the point? Hey they sent me to the Philippines and we did nothing you know it doesn't really matter what matters is like hey we got 4300 people saved that's what matters because it's about the works I mean how many missionaries have been sent out into the world to preach the gospel that's not what's important you know what's important? The results you know what's important? The works because at the end of the day we're not sending out missionaries to fail we're not sending out missionaries to learn a foreign language we're sending out missionaries to preach the gospel and get people saved and let me tell you something it's about the works and you want to know which missionaries I get excited about the ones producing works people like Evangelist Duncan or Bannock is going out and doing works but you know what maybe one day we'll send out a Gehazi and he won't have the works and we'll say like well you suck hey I guess you're going to have a lot of problems and you know what there is an Evangelist I can think of that was sent out of a church Pastor Aaron Thompson's church that was sent out and was entrusted with the work and he totally failed his church totally failed he's a complete failure and a loser and then he ended up stealing money from our church because he's a disgusting evil failure and what happened to Gehazi when he went out and failed oh yeah he got leprosy and you know what it's no coincidence that the same failure of Pastor Thompson now has some incurable disease and is dying of some unusual strange punishment you may not have heard about it but this weirdo who's just rejected Christianity loves fags now now has some strange weird creepy punishment that according to the news only 70 people in the world have this disease it's like unknowable this person he was given six months to live I hope it's less and you know what is it any coincidence that Gehazi is fake and then gets all this leprosy for wanting money and stealing money and lying about money and then the same thing someone gets sent out and then guess what they're a Gehazi and they're going to be destroyed too look it's not about being ordained as an Evangelist it's special you know what's special doing the works you know what's special is sending someone out there and getting thousands of people saved preaching good sermons having a zeal and a love for the things of God and that's why we love Evangelism panic and that's why we hate Gehazi you know my love should be for the people that are doing the works not for the people that are fake and a failure and a loser and let me tell you something you shouldn't mess with Steadfast Baptist Church because you think that's one story I got plenty more okay and when you got people in this room praying for you you might buy some shoes and end up dead later all right that's all I'm going to say because let me tell you something you know if God be for us who can be against us now I have more to I want to say you know not every Gehazi though or fake guy is in it for just the money but he's got people like Simon the sorcerer he wasn't really in it for money but he just wanted attention he just wanted attention let me tell you there are certain guys that it's like the only thing they want is attention and boy the worst thing you do is give them attention and boy when they try to buy attention what does the man of God say you don't have any part or law in this matter you're done like we don't care about you in fact because you want attention so much God's going to give you zero attention and that's going to be your punishment because you're just such a narcissist and you love yourself so much and so God will strip all of that away from you whereas the men of God they often don't even want attention but they just get it anyways they don't really want it and you know God likes to give attention to people that don't want it God does not want to give attention to people that want attention if you want attention you need to change your heart if you want to be used by God because it's not about attention and let me tell you something when you just humble yourself and you just do a small work or you just go and do something where no one's noticing but you're filled with the spirit of God the attention will come if you do the right thing you know but you know the attention's honestly not worth it like here's what's funny people that have actually gotten attention realize it's not something to desire it's not something you want it's way better to just be under the radar it's way better to not have because the attention is mostly negative it's not positive anyways you know I would love to be able to still use I don't credit cards, YouTube any app on the phone like I mean I can't hardly do anything I don't love that that's not fun that's not convenient it's not fun to sign up and buy all of our Airbnbs for the Bahamas and it all gets cancelled and then I have to do it again it's not fun to just sign up for all kinds of services it's not fun that I can literally be on almost nothing that is a sermon platform sermon audio no, podcast no, YouTube no, Facebook no I mean it's just like that's annoying it's annoying to constantly be banned and censored and attacked and threatened protesters at your house like that's not necessarily fun and so don't give this attitude like man I can't wait to get attention it's not worth it it's better to just go somewhere and serve God and get a lot of people saved and if the attention comes well the attention comes there's another thing I want to mention go back to 2 Kings chapter 2 and I think this is really interesting is if we think about Elisha and you kind of have to really emphasis the last part of this word because you got to like J and then you got to like SH all right J is before SH think about it J before S right so you got to like J who appoints Elisha and when Elisha is being appointed he's asked like essentially Elijah asks him like what do you want now think about this in contrast with Gehazi Gehazi what does he want he wants the talents of silver he wants the money he's in it for the goods what does Elisha want well look at verse number 9 and it came to pass when they were gone over that Elijah said unto Elisha ask what I shall do for thee before I be taken away from thee and Elisha said I pray thee let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me and he said that was asked a hard thing nevertheless if thou see me when I am taken from thee it shall be so unto thee but if not it shall not be so so when Elijah is going to be carried up by a whirlwind into heaven and he's basically saying Elisha this is our last chance like what do you want and he says I want a double portion of thy spirit and he basically says well if you see me go up then you have it if you don't sorry you're stuck with one one time speed all right and he ends up seeing him go up he gets a double portion of his spirit when you're reading the Bible what do we see about Elisha what makes Elisha different than Elijah he does double the works he does double the works because again it's all about the works folks it's not about like oh I got this double spirit so now I can just smoke people or do whatever like do weird stuff what's the point of having the spirit is to do more works it's about the works being accomplished and accomplishing great things now I'll say this whenever I was going to be ordained by Pastor Steven Anderson because that's my sending pastor I was going to Faith Ward Baptist Church in Phoenix Arizona I got on my knees before that happened like a few weeks before and I just asked God I said God please give me a double portion of Pastor Anderson's spirit and I wasn't joking I was it was it wasn't just to try it I meant it and I believed it he ordained me I got sent to pure words Baptist Church just doing my thing but then something happens with steadfast and I ended up being willing to come up there and you know what the first service he ordained me a second time that is not a coincidence folks that is not something that just accidentally happens I asked for this and guess what he has laid hands on me twice and blessed me twice and you know what I take that very seriously I know some people don't really care about ordination I think ordination is special and I think it's very serious and I prayed for it and by no coincidence I believe it happened now here's the thing what would make that special though is only one thing if we have a lot of works because what would be the point if I go through that process and then nothing is accomplished nothing happens then it just is meaningless who cares if you get laid on by hands by a hundred preachers a hundred times if you end up accomplishing nothing you know it doesn't really matter it doesn't really benefit anything and let me say something it's not special to take over a church of fifty people and run it into the ground I don't even care if it has a great name it could have the greatest name of the church it could be in a great position when you take over it but let me tell you something if you run it into the ground that is not special now if you take over a church I'll say this if you take over a church of a hundred people and the pastor is committing rampant adultery preaching weird stuff there's a bad spirit there's tons of weirdos he's doing drugs he's doing weird stuff with the money and he gets cast out and the whole church finds out if you take over that church of a hundred people and after five or six years you're running fifty so it's less than half and you're doing good works and they're going soul winning I personally believe that's a success that's a success because you know what that's a rough situation to enter into and when you have a bunch of weirdos just by even keep going and cleaning up the spirit and actually doing the works that's a success if you were able to just maintain if you just kept the hundred you know the number and you're doing great works I would say that's phenomenal if you grow it to more than double that is impossible that is only because God is blessing that work and God is doing something special and you know what you should recognize that is special and that God's hand is upon those people and recognize the works I mean this morning I don't even know what our final count is but I think we have two hundred and seventy one people here this morning which our previous church record was two hundred and forty one that was the highest attendance we had that was our ten year anniversary service where I told everyone to come to take a picture and that me and my wife were going to give everyone a gift we had two hundred and forty one okay the second highest attendance we had ever had before that was two twenty two so like way less twenty twenty three and it was on my birthday it was a secret birthday party that y'all threw for me with food okay we have two hundred and seventy one this morning okay now of course we have food and we have guests and visitors whatever but I mean obviously God is just trying to grow this church and bless this church and I'll be honest with you it is not because I'm trying to do it at all like if you're saying hey pastor what are you doing to try to grow the church? Nothing I preach sermons to get people to leave like you know this I'm preaching and people are just walking out in the middle of the service I'm screaming leave I'm rough around the edges I'm not necessarily the most polished speaker, pastor any of that but you know what God is just doing something special here and we need to recognize that you know God is doing something special when we send an evangelist to the Philippines and he's getting over four thousand people saved folks there's going to be four thousand people in heaven that are going to come up and shake your hand and say thank you for sending an evangelist to give me the gospel and that's just the start we don't even know where the Lord is taking us right now but you know how silly is it when the children of Israel come out of the wilderness and they just forget oh yeah the Passover where God spared all of our firstborn oh yeah God drug us to the Red Sea and we walked through it and then he destroyed all the Egyptians behind us oh yeah he's raining down heavenly bread from heaven and we're eating this manna and they're just like I want cucumbers but you know what there are people like that that have been with us and they saw all these miracles they saw God blessing us and guiding us and then they were like well go to the old guy for me and pay for cucumbers okay but you know what it's kind of silly to have God just be with us so much and have blessed us so much and so many good things have happened and then just act like you know it's bad or something look we can tell the Gehazi from the Elisha folks why because it's all about the works and you know when I came here I think the devil did one I want to go to Acts chapter 5 I want to go to Acts chapter 5 I think that God was definitely blessing me but let me tell you something the attacks were real when I first came to be the pastor of St. Vaz Baptist Church I was immediately ripped off for over a hundred thousand dollars which most of you don't even have a hundred thousand dollars to lose okay I clawed my way to that money just saving, investing, doing businesses you know cleaning up poop from rental properties that I had acquired just anything and everything I mean a decade of just trying to accumulate all this wealth and just hard work, investing, saving, all kinds of things because when I I mean whenever I was a college graduate I had no money I didn't have anything so it took a long time to accumulate that kind of money just to have it lost in just a month or two boy that's a real big incentive to get sad, mad, frustrated, want to quit I mean it's real or just to have a bad mentality it's really easy I mean I'll be honest I was kind of low mentally I'm just like man what a failure but at the end of the day I think that that's just Satan trying to discourage me not only that I had all kinds of people were stealing my back I had someone smash into my car steal my backpack with the thousands of dollars worth of merchandise I had people that I hired to do other work and they ripped me off and did bad work I mean just all kinds of horrible things happening in fact not only did I get ripped off for a hundred thousand because this guy was just attacking me on top of this I went to a lawyer just to consult like what do I do and he was saying like well actually you need to count all the damages and the damages in the situation was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of damages but you know I don't even want to sue people I just want to like move on with my life and so I did but you know sometimes God just wants to humble you just to help you realize like he's in control and I'll be honest with you I think that God blessed me through that experience because prior to I kind of have this attitude that like I can't really like I always make a decisions I'm really smart I'm good with money which is not like I'm not but God is showing me it doesn't matter how good you are with money it doesn't matter how smart you are it doesn't matter how Dylan's you are someone can just come out of nowhere and rip you off someone can just come out of nowhere and take advantage of you do you dirty and it happens to the best of us and it helped humble me to realize wow God's in control and it doesn't matter how smart how much I protect myself like bad people out there and they'll rip you off and you know what there's no justice in our justice system when you get ripped off taken advantage of many times you have to eat it you have to just suffer and it's ugly it's nasty I'm sure many of you have been ripped off before so many of you have been stolen from and taken advantage of and it can be very discouraging but you know what when you come into a church situation you have all this weird stuff happen just all at the same time you have to realize that it's some form of persecution and whenever you're persecuted for the cause of Christ instead of getting upset about it what you should really do is say you know what this is a privilege you know not only did I come in we have protesters we have all kinds of heat coming in on us and we're a small church in comparison to a lot of churches in Texas I mean Texas has mega churches folks they have huge giant churches all kinds of groups all kinds of associations and for us to get so much attention and why are we being so protested and so many attacks you have to realize like we're blessed I mean look what it says in Acts chapter 5 verse 41 this is Peter and John it says and they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name you know what if our church is protested and attacked and persecuted we should say like thank you God for considering us worthy to be persecuted because not everybody's worthy of being persecuted God's just like you're not even good enough to be persecuted if our church is persecuted hard that means in God's mind you're worthy to suffer persecution he likes you he likes what you're doing and he wants you to receive that persecution because you're the one doing the right thing it's like when you play a sport if you were the wide receiver out on the corner and they say no one guard him you know why they say that because you're not good they're like hey we're gonna put him in triple coverage that's worthy you're worthy because they're saying this guy is a threat this guy is legit there's something special about this guy and so he's needed to be covered in this way that's how it works in God's economy that boy the church is being triple covered you should say like wow that's an honor that's an honor that they think that we're actually doing something that we're actually a threat that we're actually the ones really doing something for God and look from 2019 to now we've accomplished some giant works it's obvious why the devil wanted to triple cover us because he knew what Randy Moss could do you know what I mean I mean Randy Moss I think he hits the Cowboys he had like a three catch game and it was like 260 yards and three touchdowns because every catch was a touchdown I think it's like a Thanksgiving game or something like that and it's like it didn't matter if he triple covered, double covered I mean the guy is just gonna catch it and you know when you see a church doing things like that it's not about the individual for our church but when you see a church doing things like that you just have to recognize wow God must be doing something with that church because again it's all about the works what's the point of having a wide receiver if he never catches the ball what's the point of going out and playing on the field if you never score what's the point of being a church if we never accomplish anything what's the point of us all just coming up here and showing up and patting ourselves on the back and doing nothing you know what it's about the works and we need to accomplish works you know but this church has reached millions of people if not billions I mean billions of people have heard about our church millions and millions of people have heard about our church at one point in just a week's time we had 5,000 emails I'm sorry voicemails not emails we had way more emails we had 5,000 voicemails the phone was ringing every 30 seconds 24-7 just voicemail, voicemail, voicemail, just voicemail why? I mean you think about it we're just kind of a smaller church at the time especially I mean we're running 100, 120 people at that time we made a movie the Preserved Bible film after just a few weeks of uploading it already had 50,000 views tons of people were being reached by it then of course they shut down our YouTube channel because we can't let that thing grow I saw someone mirror it they mirrored our Preserved Bible film it got over almost 100,000 views before they took that channel down if you want to destroy a YouTube channel just put a video with me on it okay but like here's a movie that got around I mean conservatively that movie got over 200,000 views on YouTube alone and I'm thinking like how many small medium-sized churches can make a film and get 200,000 views on their film I mean just take another random old IB church that makes a film and put it on their YouTube channel and get 200,000 views it's not going to happen and if we were back in 2016, 2018 when YouTube wasn't there and we put that movie up it would have gotten millions and millions of views for sure no doubt we made a movie The Sodomite Deception and one week 20,000 views and I put this on internet archive which is just like it's supposed to just be you can put anything on it and they would just like take down one and put it up on it I was putting it on our website like the internet archive version and just put it up taking down it would get like 5,000 views taken down 7,000 views taken down I mean that film at least has gotten over 30,000 views if that was back in YouTube days again millions and millions and millions of views but here's the one thing I love about Sodomite Deception you know what I love about Sodomite Deception? is Brother Rich Caputo Brother Rich Caputo was living here in this area didn't even know about our church watches Sodomite Deception gets super excited and joins our church and boy I love Brother Rich Caputo you know why? because of the works that he does he does a great job song leading I mean he's excellent on the guitar helping all kinds of people great soul winner great friend he's done a lot of work for our church you know what? even if that was the only thing that Sodomite Deception accomplished praise God it's all about the one isn't it? I mean that's what all of you just reach one person Brother Rich Caputo he's our Sodomite Deception baby alright? and look look at the fruit I mean that's a great product if I say hey said Pastor Shelley if you make another film the only thing you're gonna get out of is another Brother Rich I would make it right now not only that our church with one on one soul winning has gotten over 10,000 people saved in the last six years so since 2019 you say what happened before 2019? no records okay I don't know I can't tell you alright? the records ceased to exist I don't think they started to exist either but since 2019 I take meticulous records of our church we had over 10,000 people saved just on one on one soul winning not only that we've had just on paper like we take account of all the people that are members of our church people that leave our church people that have been thrown out of our church people that were kind of coming a few times filled out the visitor card but maybe they just didn't come enough to become a member those people so not just one time visitors basically they've come at least a couple of times to fill out the information we have the record of them they've been coming through our doors 631 people have come through the doors since 2019 and then I then I also thought well how many people are labeled a railer and been thrown out of our church? and it was 19 okay so because this is what's funny these people say like oh pastor Shirley labels everyone a railer well out of 631 19 it's less than three percent so sorry you know not everyone gets labeled a railer railers get labeled railers okay and they're less than three percent I would not want to be on that list of our church especially when I just saw this one guy have the worst black lesions all over his body and having this incurable disease and he's like melting like a snail literally I'm so glad we sang Psalm 58 today currently we have around 280 active members of our church which is pretty much the highest that we've ever had and when we when I took over it was about 120 now active members is not people that show up for a service it's people that come they come for services maybe they don't always come Sunday morning sometimes they come Sunday night or whatever so as long as you've been coming to the services regularly you're considered an active member and we had about 120 when I took over we have 280 so our first services when I was a pastor I was like we're running 89, 99 around 100 when I for the services that I was here Pastor Romero told me they had like 150 people coming for services but that was just not true so it was like it was a lot closer to about 100 because we really didn't hardly lose anybody when I first came it just then you preach against the flat earth and you just lose lots of people so but you know if you kind of look at how our church works like every year or so we lose about 20 people that are active members like people that are plugged in active members lose about 20 people but then well we leave slash get thrown out it's kind of a combo I'm just putting them in the same category then we have about 45 new people joining every year as well so we end up having about a 25% net gain year after year now of course it's not necessarily always just like exactly like that because you you typically kind of have big purges every once in a while where you just lose a bunch of people we recently had one of those so about six months ago there was a lot of drama people trying to make drama more drama than it was and so I just kind of looked at it I said six months ago to now how many people did we like lose as a church we lost 38 people so 38 people had left our church now not all of those are for the drama many of them actually several of them had nothing to do with it at all it had nothing to do with it just personal issues or whatever so we lost about 38 people but since then we've added like over 40 people so we've actually had a larger increase and we've had even more people in the last few weeks they're not even on the radar I'm just saying our church somehow keeps growing and I don't have space just look around the room okay we have 240 chairs in the sanctuary 271 this morning that doesn't math alright and I keep preaching for you to leave but you just won't alright I can't figure out how to do that but I mean there's so many things going on in our church and I kind of wanted this evening I want to talk a little bit more about the emotional well being of our church how that's changed we're just kind of talking about numbers here for a second because the Bible says be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks and I'm going to be preaching on that this evening but we should know I want to know the stats of our church I want to think about the people I want to think about what's going on in their hearts and their minds and the works that we're doing why because the church is about works folks what's the point of us just getting together pat ourselves on the back no we need to think about the works there's been so many marriages that have happened at this church since I've been the pastor many babies birthed since this church and there's been many marriages that have been preserved because you don't know but I was just kind of I just kind of made a quick list in my mind there's been well over a dozen well over a dozen couples and individuals that I've counseled had marriage conversations with because it's a common thing there's no such temptation taking you but such is common to man and people have all kinds of issues and problems and you know what? I think that's a great thing because the world is divorcing at a 50% rate let us not be that of steadfast Baptist church where we're exactly the same let us work on our marriages and let us preserve our marriages and you know if you feel like man we've had some hard spots in our marriage join the club there are some pastors and preachers out there that want to make it seem like we've never fought, like me and my wife have never fought he's never said a bad word to me she's never said anything she's never been irrational I'm just thinking like do you even hang out? like how is that even possible? the only way I can rationalize a couple that never fights is if the husband always does what the wife says period like if your wife just says something and you're just like yes ma'am whatever you say every single time then I can kind of see how you don't fight but if you actually ever rule your house for even one second there'll be some friction every once in a while there'll be some problems but you know what, it's good and really friction just kind of tells me that you both like each other and you actually care because when you don't have friction it's usually because you don't care about the person people that I work with are friends that I don't like I try to avoid them I don't talk to them I want to stay as far away from them as possible and there's very little friction because I'm just I could care less, you say something stupid I'm just like whatever but somebody that I care about someone that I actually like when they say something dumb I'm like hey that's kind of dumb like hey you shouldn't do that hey I don't like that because you actually care about the person and you want to be around them and what I'm just trying to help you understand is that look there's no such thing as this perfect marriage it just doesn't exist and we all are in this boat but you know what I've seen a lot of people's marriages improve and I've seen a lot of people get over issues whether they be minor, whether they be severe and you know that's that's special to me because marriages you know problems are ugly and I personally don't want to deal with it I'm just going to be honest with you like I don't want to deal with it but I will deal with it because you know what someone needs to deal with it someone has to do it and you know a pastor that's neglectful in this area you'll see a lot of just marriages falling apart constantly and a lot of huge problems in these areas because they just won't deal with it and they won't deal with it appropriately a lot of times this is what marriage counseling has turned into in other churches and that's just right I heard Jimmy Evans a former pastor I had a long time ago he was talking about how he goes to marriage counseling and he's just like yeah we went to this lady marriage counselor and she told me that I was wrong my wife was right and I'm just thinking like that's not you know that's just bad it's bad advice you know and again I think that men can be jerks men can be wrong men can do things that are bad but you know what we need to make sure that we're not tearing down male authority in the marriage you know according to the bible the man is 100% in charge and he is the one that gets to make the decisions now I think that men should be a benevolent dictator they should make decisions that are sometimes a sacrifice on their part to bless their wife but at the end of the day they need to make all the decisions and they need to be put back in the driver's seat we need to make men drive again and in the marriages right and spiritually and buying the pulpit everything okay put men back in the driver's seat I mean you really think that our country would be great with Kamala running the show and as much as I have problems with Trump at least he's a man alright and he's given us an opportunity to focus on our job right now while he takes some of the heat so just praise God for Trump alright whether he's saved or unsaved I don't really care he's just taking heat off and I just like it all the missions trips that our church has been taking just tons and tons of missions trips we've gone to Mexico almost every year sometimes twice we've gone to the Bahamas we've had lots of people go to the Philippines on their own we obviously have Evangelist Urbana going to the Philippines we've had other people just go on other missions trips to other churches just join up and I had a pastor compliment me this week they said you know what I love about steadfast is like for some reason your people just always show up he said whether we have like a conference somewhere steadfast is always well represented there and he said you have a missions trip steadfast is somehow well represented there and steadfast is excited and he said also when they show up it's not weirdos it's cool people he said there's a couple exceptions not just kidding no he's saying hey the steadfast people are cool people and they're showing up and you know our church runs hundreds but you know what you don't see steadfast you don't see our church is running our mouths online like a bunch of just unhinged lunatics and you know what that's a great testimony it's a great testimony that we don't have a bunch of loud mouth women in our church constantly defending our church and running their mouth and just making our church look like an embarrassment and there are some people that are doing that we had three church plants and here's here's what I can say is the moment that I was handing it over it was in good shape I can say with an honest heart that when I handed the keys over to revival you know taking over our Jacksonville church or when I handed over the keys for pure words Baptist church or when I handed over the keys to anchor Baptist church when I'm handing over the keys it was in good shape I can say that and you know I can't I can't force Gehazi to put the staff on the kids face and it actually worked out but you know what I can do is I can give them the staff and it's not my fault if they screw it up I want to go to a few more verses we need to go a few more verses hey we got lunch for you so you can stick around all right I know you're not going anywhere go if you would to go to Hebrews for a moment go to Hebrews chapter 13 you know the Bible says that wisdom is justified of her children and at the end of the day I believe this with my whole heart that the pastors and the missionaries and the evangelists that are being used by God you can tell you say how? the works it's the works you can see the move of God because of the works John the Baptist is out in the wilderness everyone comes up here and preach you know why? because he's a better preacher than everybody else his YouTube channel got shut down and they're still coming out to hear him even the haters the Pharisees can't get enough of John the Baptist preaching and then Jesus shows up same deal they just follow him around all the works of course Jesus no one's going to out preach or out do his works but you know those that are filled with his spirit are going to be likewise when Peter comes into town when Paul comes into town you see the works being done and the works is confirming and establishing you know a young pastor needs to allow God to establish him before he gets a little too big for his britches when you do something for God you come to our church why don't you become a successful soul winner for a while before you think you're hot stuff why don't you do something why don't you actually prove that you're a godly Christian before you act like you're so hot stuff you're such a great pastor well you know if you're a great pastor then you don't even need anybody to tell you it's kind of like the Proverbs 31 woman you say like why is my husband not complimenting me well what about the works because the woman that's doing the great works will be complimented period the person doing great works for God will be complimented period if you're doing great works at your job you will be complimented period because it's about the works and we're here because of the works look at Hebrews chapter 13 verse 7 the Bible says remember them which have the rule over you who have spoken unto you the word of God whose faith follow considering the end of their conversation hey follow the people that you considered like hey I want to follow these works I'm looking at what this guy is doing and I want to do likewise go to John chapter 14 go to John chapter number 14 and you know you could argue it sounds like bandwagon Christianity but honestly like I can't see how that's wrong I mean why would you not want to join in with the movement of God that's doing great things for God why would you not want to be a part of the church that's growing and not shrinking why would you not want to be a part of the church that's doing more soul winning not less soul winning why would you want to go to the church that's never going to be protested versus the church that you never know why do you want to go to the church that's never going to make a step on anybody's toes not preach anything that's going to challenge you you're not going to grow that basically says hey you want to learn that go to Bible college no I want to go to the church that says you don't need Bible college I'll teach you that no I want to go to the church where hey they're encouraging people to have babies physically and spiritually hey I want to go to a church where they're encouraging women to dress like women and to dress like godly ladies and not have to show up at church where there's some woman dressed like a hoochie mama that I have to kind of try and not look at while I'm trying to worship God I don't want to have to go to church and fight the idea of a whore sitting there in church that I have to try and disguise my eyes on from and where my wife's like looking at me where I'm looking because you know what I know I'm like I'm just like I'm just like trying to be like praise the Lord praise the Lord good night that's where I want to go to church I want to go to church where men have a gun on their side of their hip I want to go to a church where men actually talk and act like men I don't want to be around a bunch of lisping effeminate weirdos I don't want to go to a church where it's all about school and the college and all this other stuff I want to go to church where it's about the Bahamas and Philippines and Shreveport and Lancaster and South Dallas and preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ I want to go to a church where evangelist comes up and doesn't tell me about his missionary trip to Israel he tells me about his missionary trip to the Philippines where he actually got people saved we'll pray that Alfonso will come to church one day no it's like brother Duncan's like hey I got 4,000 Alfonzo's saved you know what I mean? that's the kind of church I want to go to you say well I don't know I don't know if I can believe you Pastor Shelley okay what does the Bible say look at verse 10 believeth thou not that I am the Father and the Father and me the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself but the Father that dwelleth in me he doeth works believe me that I am the Father and the Father and me or else believe me for the very worksake hey if you don't like me you don't like my face you don't like my sermons well okay put all that aside believe steadfast Baptist church for the worksake how can you deny what God has done how can you deny what the Lord is doing here and the works that are being accomplished here you know what you should believe me for the worksake you say like hey was it a good thing that Pastor Anderson came and helped this church and appointed a pastor and we moved on what was because of the worksake you know when you don't know what's the right decision you're going to find out eventually because of the worksake you say hey what kind of minister do I want to follow well look at their works what kind of works is that guy doing and that's the kind of guy that you should follow that's the kind of pastor and mentor that you want I don't want to go somewhere where the works aren't being accomplished because let me tell you something then the Spirit of God is not flowing there because wherever the Spirit of God is flowing the works will be accomplished and we can't always judge a church just by well they have a lot of attendance that isn't the only thing we're measuring here we're measuring at the works have you seen the soul winning numbers though because hey if our church cuts down to half but we get more people saved I'm going to say praise God because we need the room anyways it's not about that I don't want to have a thousand people and ten people going soul winning I'd rather have fifty people and fifty people going soul winning you know what I mean I'm not praying for God to send me church members I'm praying for God to send me laborers you know why laborers you know why God's asking for laborers because it's about the works we are a church about works here that's why people get plugged in you know people hold their nose at the hard preaching for the works people come to a soul winning church for the works well I don't really agree with the sodomite deception but I'm going to go for the soul winning and then eventually they're wearing the shirt alright because they went soul winning and they ran into those people and they're like wow they hate the gospel every single time is there a movie that explains us here you go oh they're protesting us LGBT terrorists here you go is there something that explains why King James only churches are doing way more than everybody else yeah here's the preserved bible watch it how do you know the King James is better than the other ones the works how do you know what preacher what pastor what evangelist it's the works folks hey here's a good application I didn't even think about it how do you know what person you want to marry marry someone that has some works and wants to work I don't want to be in a relationship where they're not going to work because you know what marriage is work go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 hey why did you believe Jesus the best preacher to ever preach never man spake like this man spake his works how can you argue with the works how can you disagree with the works that are being done and let me tell you something when you see a church just thriving in the works you do not want to be on their bad list it is just it is a fool's errand you are just kicking against the pricks look at 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 13 and to esteem them let's do verse 12 too and we beseech you brethren and know them which labor which labor which labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you to esteem them very highly in love for their works sake and be at peace among yourselves you know why I love Pastor Anderson because of his works you want to know why I love Pastor Mahia because of his works you want to know why I love Pastor Jimenez because of his works you want to know why I love Pastor Thompson because of his works and you know some of the younger guys the newer pastors you know why I'll end up loving them because of their works of his works. How can you hate that guy when he is just tearing it up in the Philippines? I mean, he's starting churches in Poland. You know, these Europeans think they're so much better than everybody else. You got somebody in the Philippines starting a church in Poland because you can't get the job done because it's about the works. You know I love Evangelist Urbanic? You know why we're celebrating him? Because of the works. If he came back and said I got 4.13 people saved, 3.14 Pi Day, we probably wouldn't have a barbecue bash. We'd be like, yeah, maybe you need to ride the bench. Right? I mean, what's the point of us spending money on a guy that's gonna go out there to one of the most receptive places in the world and do nothing and accomplish nothing? Like, it's all about the works. Well, but he has such a sweet spirit. You know, I'm not paying for sweet spirits. I don't know if you've met me before, but it's not how I play. Go to Revelation. We'll finish. When you see a pastor, though, that's not doing what I'm saying, and you know the Bible says, I hate the work of them that turn aside. It shall not cleave to me. You know, when you see a pastor not doing this, you know, I don't have good feelings towards that person. We should love the pastors for their works, and we should hate the work of them that turn aside. You know, I'm not excited about that. I don't like that. What is turning aside? The disgruntled, railing, back-biting people that just want to attack the work of God. You know, those are evil people, and you should look at their church, and you'll notice things. You'll notice that their church is filled with unhappy marriages. You'll notice that they have bossy wives in their church. You'll notice they have unruly wives in their church. You'll notice that their church members are running their mouths online all the time, and are unruly, have no respect for authority, no respect for pastors. You'll notice that they're not doing more soul winning. They're doing less soul winning. There are people that were pastors that were friends of ours, pastors of the new IV. When they leave, they do less soul winning. They're not doing more, they're doing less. They're not skilled in soul winning either. You go to their soul winning marathon, you go with their soul winners. They're weak, ineffective. They don't know what they're doing. They're not good at soul winning. They're not very skilled. They have goofy doctrine. They teach you that railing is not really railing, and they make it meaningless. They say that women should be teachers. They tell you that, hey, if you preach the right gospel, but then you sin, that's preaching a false gospel. And they put a wet blanket on soul winning and tell you to not go soul winning. Look at the jobs of the people in their church. And you say, you say like, what does that mean? I feel like you just, you just care about money. No, but here's the thing I know in America, if you're a hard worker, you'll have good jobs. You have skilled jobs. When everybody in the church has some kind of a lazy, apathetic, unskilled job, it's coming from the preaching folks. I'm just gonna say it. I'm sorry if you don't like that point, but it's just fact. They're friends with heretics. They don't take bold stands. They're not preaching really hard sermons on fags. They're not preaching hard sermons on Jews. They're not preaching hard sermons on King James onlyism. And you know what? They don't have a big faith. They also don't appeal to intellect. They don't make sound arguments for their preaching. And you know what? They don't appeal to authority either. But let me tell you something. That is not the type of church you want to go to. Why? Because of the works. I don't even, you could insert any personality, any person, any like prior stat sheet they had. It doesn't matter. If this is the works that they're producing, I want nothing to do with that church. And if you insert another guy, I don't care how rough around the edges he is, I don't care the sound of his voice, I don't care about any of these carnal things, show me the works. And that's the kind of guy I want. Why? Because it's about the works. It's all about the works. What is Revelation 2? It's a church, it's written to seven churches which are in Asia. What does it just say? Look at verse 2. I know thy works. Look at verse number 5. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works. Look at verse 9. I know thy works. Look at verse 13. I know thy works. Look at verse 19. I know thy works and charity and service and faith and patience and thy patience and thy works. Hey, I just want to remind you again, it's about the works. And I know your works and then I know your works too. Verse 23. Look at the end of this. And I will give unto every one of you according to your works. Look at verse 26. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. Look at chapter 3 verse 1. I know thy works. Look at verse 2. For I have not found thy works perfect before God. Look at verse 8. I know thy works. Look at verse 15. I know thy works. Man, I feel like I'm noticing a pattern that when God's judging a church, how does he judge a church? Works, works, works, works, works. Faith without works is dead. And you know what? There's a lot of dead churches a day because they don't have works. And it's something that we need to make sure that we're taking care of. Now look, you can be dead and be in heaven. I mean how many people have died and are in heaven? Lots. Millions. Millions of people are dead and in heaven. But you know how much they're accomplishing on the earth right now? Zero. And Christians who are saved, but they're not doing anything, they're effectively the same as a dead person. That's what the Bible means. Faith without works is dead. It's just saying, hey, if you don't do any works, well you're effectively a net zero. You just don't do anything. So hey, you're not helping. And what's the main thing that we need to do? What is James 2 really driving at? We need to have works. Add to your faith works. Patience, you know, all these other things. And you know, of course, the first works is super important because in verse 5 of chapter 2 he's saying, hey, if you don't even have the first works, you're just done anyways. I don't even care. There's a lot of work to church. We never ever want to leave the first works, the first love, which is soul winning, which is preaching the gospel. That's what really matters at the end of the day. The people that we drag with us to heaven. Look at verse 11 of chapter 3. This is the last thing I'm gonna say. Behold, I come quickly. Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Let me tell you something. If you are with us right now, if you are steadfast right now, you are working towards a crown that only one person can take away from you. You. There's only one person. And look, why would I want to go through so much work, so much, so much drama, so much strife already to have been getting this crown to then quit later? You know, and you know, I don't know if I can believe you pastor Shelley, well believe me for the work's sake. I mean, have you seen what our church has been accomplishing? Have you been seeing the spirit that God has been... Look, the spirit in this church has never been better. I want to talk about the emotional well-being tonight and I want to talk more about that, but just if you just look at the numbers and the works, something's happening here and something special. This church is special. I feel like I have a great privilege to be the pastor of this church and I love you guys so much. You know why I love you guys so much? Because of the works. If I was pastoring a bunch of carnal jerks that wouldn't go soul winning, I wouldn't have nearly as much love. It wouldn't be so much of an honor to pastor that kind of a church. It's an honor to pastor a church that's zealous of good works. It's an honor to pastor a church that takes sacrifice of the time, money, effort, family, job, and everything to preach the gospel and get people saved. And you know what? You know and I know the people in this room are special because of the works that they want to accomplish. Let us not stop. It's all about the works. And you know what? When we see people that are doing great works for God, you better love them. And this is what I know. People that don't love Pastor Anderson don't love God. People that don't love Pastor Mejia don't love God. People that don't love Pastor Jimenez don't love God. People that don't love Pastor Thompson don't love God. People that don't love Pastor Stuckey don't love God. And you know what? If you don't love me, you don't love God either. And let me tell you something. There's not some like magical old IV guy out here doing so many works and I don't like him. If you can find me someone doing great works, I guarantee I love that person. Because I love the works. I love the things of God. I want them to be greatly accomplished. And you know what? We should have great camaraderie with people that are doing the works of God. Whether you like their face, their personality, where they're at. It doesn't matter. Just like our church. Don't get so fixated on everybody's personality and looks and all the other stuff. Just love the people in this room for their works. Because it's just all about the works. And when you notice Gehazi's out there that don't have the works, stay far away from them. You don't want to get leprosy either. Thank you Heavenly Father so much for giving us just a great litmus test that we can just see clearly. The work of God being done because of the works. Thank you for using our church to do so many special things in the last six years. Thank you so much for Evangelist Urbanic and men that are willing to sacrifice to do great works. We know that being a pastor is a great work. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to pastor this church. I pray that you would help motivate me to be an example of working. I pray that you would help our soul winning captains to be an example of working. I pray that you would help our soul winners to do great works. And I pray that we would never lose sight of what makes this church special. And that's the works. And I pray that we give you all the honor and glory for those works. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, in closing, let's go to song number 408. Song number 408, Loyalty to Christ. Song number 408. Let's all sing it out together. Let's all sing it out together. Let's all sing it out together. Let's all sing it out together. Let's all sing it out together. Let's all sing it out together.