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The wonder of it all, the wonder of it all, Just you be that God loves me. Showers of blessing, this is the promise of love. There shall be seasons refreshing, Send from the Savior above. Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us for falling, But for the showers we cling. There shall be showers of blessing, Precious, reviving again. Over the hills and the valleys, Sound of abundance of rain. Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us for falling, But for the showers we cling. There shall be showers of blessing, Send them upon us, O Lord. Grant to us now a refreshing, And now honor thy word. Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us for falling, But for the showers we cling. There shall be showers of blessing, Oh, that today they might fall. To God we're confessing, Now as on Jesus we call. Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need. Mercy drops round us for falling, But for the showers we cling. When Jesus comes to reward his servants, Whether in dinner or night, Wait closer with him and find us watching, With our mental strength and pride. Oh, can we say we are ready, brother, When he put us both right on? Say, will he find him and be still watching, Waiting, waiting when the Lord shall come. If at the dawn of the early morning, He shall call us one by one. When to the Lord we restore our talents, Will he enter me? Well done! Oh, can we say we are ready, brother, Ready for the souls right on? Say, will he find him and be still watching, Waiting, waiting when the Lord shall come. Have we been true to the trust he left us, Where we seem to do our best? If in our hearts there is not, God damned us, He shall come before us best. Oh, can we say we are ready, brother, Ready for the souls right on? Say, will he find him and be still watching, Waiting, waiting when the Lord shall come. Blessed are those whom the Lord finds watching, In his glory they shall share. If he shall come at the dawn or midnight, Will he find us watching there? Oh, can we say we are ready, brother, Ready for the souls right on? Say, will he find you and me still watching, Waiting, waiting when the Lord shall come. What if we're lost, shall we find sin, Running from the cloud of Jesus? What if he made me whole again, Running from the cloud of Jesus? Oh, precious is the Lord, That leads me wide as snow. Oh, father, that I know, Running from the cloud of Jesus. And for my part in this I see, Running from the cloud of Jesus. And for my part in this I see, Running from the cloud of Jesus. Oh, precious is the Lord, That leads me wide as snow. Oh, father, that I know, Running from the cloud of Jesus. Nothing can pour sin at all, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Not a good man I have done, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the Lord, That leads me wide as snow. Oh, father, that I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the Lord, That leads me wide as snow. No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. I will sing of mercy to the Lord forever, I will sing, I will sing, I will sing of mercy to the Lord forever, I will sing of mercy to the Lord, With my mouth full I think of, I think of this, I think of this, With my mouth full I think of, I think of this to all generations, I will sing of mercy to the Lord forever, I will sing, I will sing, I will sing of mercy to the Lord forever, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. Moments have come that have rested my faith, Mountains have risen to stand in my way, But no matter the trial, When my path grew so hard, I have walked hand in hand, With an Almighty God, With God all things are possible for me, By His grace I can stand, And I claim to be He, And with the Lord on my side, This assurance is mine, Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will begin, For I walk with God. Life holds its truth, valleys often appear, But His Word gives this promise, That my God's ever near, When my steps are uncertain, And my strength's almost gone, I can lift the impossible, To an unfailing night, With God all things are possible for me, By His grace I can stand, And I claim to be He, And with the Lord on my side, This assurance is mine, Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will begin, For I walk with God. O land of rest for the eyesight, When will the moment come, When I shall lay my arm, Where I am well in peace at home, Will work till Jesus comes, Will work till Jesus comes, Will work till Jesus comes, And will be gathered home, To Jesus Christ I pray for, And for rest we may resist to go on, And before supper on His breast, He'll be inducted home, Will work till Jesus comes, Will work till Jesus comes, Will work till Jesus comes, And will be gathered home. All right. Good morning everybody and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. If we can go ahead and find our seats we will get started. It's great to see everybody here. If we can go ahead and find our seats and grab a hymnal. We'll start this morning in song number 364. Song number 364. Standing on the promises. Song number 364. Let's all sing it out together on the first. Standing on the promises of Christ my King, Through eternal ages let His praises ring, My glory is the highest I will shout and sing, Standing on the promises of God. Standing, standing, Standing on the promises of God my Savior, Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God, Standing on the promises I cannot bear, With my habits hung about and fear assailed, By the living Word of God I shall prevail, Standing on the promises of God, Standing, standing, Standing on the promises of God my Savior, Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God, Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord, Mounted and eternally my love strong forth, Overcoming daily with my spirit sore, Standing on the promises of God, Standing, standing, Standing on the promises of God my Savior, Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God, Standing on the promises I cannot bear, Listening every moment to this dearest call, Resting in my Savior as my all in all, Standing on the promises of God, Standing, standing, Standing on the promises of God my Savior, Standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God, Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer. Lord we love you. We just thank you so much for this church. Thank you so much for everything you do here. We just ask now that you fill this room with your spirit and help us lift up our voices unto you Lord. And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. All right for our next song. Let's go to song number 101. Jesus never fails. This may be a newer song. Song number 101. If it isn't sing it loudly. If it is follow along. I'm sure you'll get it after the first verse. Song number 101. Jesus never fails. Earthly friends may prove untrue, Gouts and fears assail, One still loves and cares for you, One who will not fail, Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Never ever give back, So in love, Jesus never fails, Hold us, guiding your danger, Fierce and strong the veil, Just remember he is near, And he will not fail, Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Never ever give back, So in love, Jesus never fails, In life's dark and bitter hour, Love will still prevail, Trust its everlasting power, Jesus will not fail, Jesus never fails, Jesus never fails, Never ever give back, So in love, Jesus never fails. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you did not already get a bulletin and you would like one, just lift up your hand real quick. One of our ushers can come by and get you guys a bulletin. And on the front we have our Bible memory passage. We're still working on Matthew 28. And on the inside we have our service soul winning times. We have our church stats down below. Please continue to turn in any of your soul winning maps and your stats to our group chats or our bin. On the right we have our expecting ladies list. Please be in prayer for all of them. Upcoming events. Our kids choir practice is starting today at 2 p.m. And so if you would like to participate, you can just stick around right after the soul winning is sent out. Then we'll be starting our kids choir practice. Evangelist Urbanic is going to be preaching for us this Wednesday. So please, please, if you can, I encourage you to come out this Wednesday and support Evangelist Urbanic and be here for that service. He's going to be preaching and it'll be just a great time of fellowship and getting to see them. He's traveling a lot farther than you to come to service, all right? So there you go. Also, this Saturday we're going to have a small town soul winning marathon. It's going to be an ASIL. We're going to meet around 11. I don't know if we are we meeting at 11 or being sent out at 11? I can't remember. I think it's I think are we getting are we sending out at 11 or meeting at 11? Sending out at 11. Sending out at 11. See, Brother Urbanic, if you if you want the address of the park, they're going to be meeting at. But who's kind of planning on going out to the ASIL thing next Saturday? OK, so, yeah, I would say about you got 40, 50 people at least. So he's going to be preparing food and some some activities and stuff like that, weather permitting. But they'll also have a lot of soul winning out there in that region. So that's kind of West Fort Worth area. It's a little bit west of the Fort Worth area. If you would like to participate, if you Brother Urbanic can put in our group chat, just address and other details as well, and then you can follow up with him. That Sunday. And so it's not this Sunday. You almost made it. It's next Sunday. We're going to have a barbecue bash. All right. So, well, since Evangelist Urbanic is coming, we're going to be celebrating him. And so we'll have a barbecue luncheon here on Sunday. You don't want to miss it. Also, our spring recital is going to be Saturday, March 22nd, most likely in the afternoon. And then we're going to have we have a signup sheet for tryouts for that. I saw several people already signed up. We'd love for you to participate if you would like to. And of course, the entire church is invited to come and join us for the recital, even if you don't have a student or anybody that's directly participating, if you just want to support it. Usually they're pretty short. And honestly, our kids do a really good job. So I've been to a lot of recitals before steadfast and I hated them. And but the steadfast recitals are great. So I'm just being really blunt. All right. I went to a recital like two hours and I have never gotten over it. So but it's our recitals are really actually well performed and very engaging. And I've really always enjoyed them. So if you'd like to participate, you can come out. Our Mansfield soul winning marathon is going to be April 19th. That is the day before Easter. We do already have Easter flyers made, but we'll probably just wait just another week or two. And then we can start handing them out. So if you'd like to hand out a flyer invitation for our Easter services, we have made some. But we are going to have a special marathon the day before in Mansfield. And that's really just kind of across the lake. So there's Joel pool lake over here. And then kind of on the other side is that South ground prairie and then Mansfield area. And so it's not too far from here. And we figure we go out and invite people for Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is April the 20th. And so we are looking forward to those services down below as our church reminders on the on the back. I have a note. We had a Spanish marathon yesterday and we had a couple dozen people come out for soul winning. And we ended up having 22 salvations for yesterday from just the Spanish soul winning. So thank you to all of our soul winners who did that. We also probably have some remnants of food. So we'll probably just set out all the food that we had left over from this morning and from yesterday for anybody that was that would like to have that this afternoon for soul winning. So if you'd like to stick around. It's a free for all. I don't know how much there is. Just I'm just saying. So just eat it. I don't care. Down below we have our prayer list. Continue to pray for our church family. And that's pretty much all I have. We do have some Spanish like our normal little business cards for the church. We have Spanish versions of those available. So hopefully they're either set out. But if they're not, just ask. But we have Spanish specific cards. So if you'd like to have some of those, you can have them. We're also working on ordering the pamphlets in Spanish too. But just as an extra reminder, we do have some new Spanish cards that you can use for our soul winning. That's pretty much all I have. That's pretty much all I have. We're going to go ahead and sing our psalm of the week. It's Psalm 15. Psalm 15. All right. That was Psalm 15. Psalm chapter 15. Psalm 15. Let's all sing it out together. Let's 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. All right. Great singing. Now as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 8. That's the book of Acts chapter number 8. Acts 8. The Bible reads, and Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time, there was a great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem. And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and hailing, men and women committed them to prison. Therefore, they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them, and many taken with palsies and that were lame were healed. And there was great joy in that city. But there was a certain man called Simon, which before time in the same city used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. But when they believed Philip, preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Then Simon himself believed also, and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, for as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this manner, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me. And they, when they had testified, and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, and eunuch of great authority, under Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot, read Esaias the prophet. Then the spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water, and the eunuch said, See, here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest, with all thine heart thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still. And they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus, and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea. Let's bow our heads forward in prayer. Father in Heaven, we thank you for this day, and for our church. I pray that you fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit, and give him boldness and clarity of mind as he preaches your word to us. Give us ears to hear the message this morning, and apply it to our lives, and enable us, Lord God, to be doers of the word, not hearers only. We love you, and in Jesus' name I pray, Amen. The title of my morning sermon is, Problems with Bible College. Problems with Bible College. Now, I want to make a few things clear before I start this sermon. Number one, I don't think that Bible college is a sin, or that it's necessarily something that is just bad inherently. But at the same time, I think that we can still look at biblical principles and make our own conclusions. And for our church, you know, I want to make it clear where I kind of stand on the issue, and what I see as the future for our church. We have a lot of people in our church. We're a growing church. We have a lot of young people in our church. And I feel like it's important to cast a vision for the young people, and essentially give my opinion on what I think they should do for their future, and for essentially their growth, and what's the best decision. I wouldn't say that even people that go to Bible college are doing anything necessarily wrong. I just think there's better alternatives. And so I want to essentially talk about the problems I see with Bible college, and what I think are a better solution to the education, or future, or career for our youth. As a church, I can't say, I don't want to say things, you know, dogmatically, but I don't really see a vision where we'll ever have a Bible college, or anything similar. I don't believe that we'll ever have a Christian school, or anything similar. It does not matter how big we get. I personally believe in homeschooling as a superior form of Christian education. And I believe if someone wants to get a college education, it's best leaving that to colleges, and not necessarily having the church focus on such an idea. You know, the church does not need to replace all of the businesses and institutions we have in this world. I think some people have this attitude where they want church to become all these things that are not church. Like to become a supermarket, to become a social hangout, to become an education center, to become friend zone, to become a playground, to become a cafeteria, to become all these different things that it's not, and then a lot of churches, they almost emphasize or become all these things that it's not, rather than focusing on church. Church is something that all these other places are not. Right? The restaurant is not a soul winning center. Right? The restaurant is not a place for you to learn hard biblical preaching. That's the church. Right? So church should be distinct. Church should be separate. We should focus on church activities and not trying to become our own little social environment where we accommodate, you know, this is a place for sleeping. We have a place where you hang out. We have our own dormatorium, and we have our own education center, and we have our own furniture making business. It's like, no, we're not going to be like that. We're not going to be the Amish. We're not going to create some kind of community out of church. We want church to be church, and we want, hey, restaurants can be restaurants, and we want education centers to be education centers, and it's sometimes good to have these distinctions, whereas I think some churches want to try and be a, we do everything. We're focused on all these things, but then it distracts from the point of church. And so I really want to make it clear where I'm standing on some of these issues. Additionally, I would say if someone went to Bible college or is enrolled in Bible college, I'm not trying to attack that person or go against them, but again, I find there to be some problems with Bible college philosophy, and I don't want our church to go down that path. Now, this morning's sermon is also not just only just to attack Bible college. I want to provide a viable alternative. I want to make it clear what I think young people should do. So I don't want to just sit here and say what not to do. I want to tell you what you should do as a replacement or in lieu of going to Bible college specifically, okay? Now, the word college is found in the Bible a couple times. For sake of the sermon, I don't think it's really necessary to necessarily go to all those places. But, you know, just to bring it up, a couple times it mentions a woman in college, and they're like going and asking her about the word of God. It's usually in a very dark time in history. It's when there's not a man of God there to ask. So we go to the college, and we find women there, and we ask their opinion on the Bible. Not really a big supporting verse on college. You have another mention of a school in the book of Acts, and it's basically the disciples run out of places to go preaching. They get kicked out of the synagogue, and then they're going to a school of tyrannous to dispute with people and argue with people, okay? But, you know, school and college really isn't mentioned that much in the Bible. A college by definition is this, an educational institution or establishment, in particular one providing higher education or specialized professional or vocational training. So it's basically to learn something at a high level or for specialized knowledge for a job. And I think that's a good definition for college, and I think that would be the purpose of college. I'm not against college. In theory, if you're going to learn more about something or you're going to get special knowledge for a job, those are great. Problem with most of our society is college has turned into everything but that. And a lot of times people go to college not for those goals and not for those purposes, and they're being taken advantage of by a system that's pushing college on a lot of people. And in an effort to compete with this, churches instead of providing an alternative has said, let's just do our bizarro version of college, and we'll call it Bible college, and I don't really like that. Why? Because if the point of going to college is to get a job, which to me, if you're not going to college to get a job, you're probably going for the wrong reasons. There's almost no reason to go to college unless you're going for a specific job or a specific career that that education is needed, okay? If that is not why you're going, you should really question why you're going. If that's the point, and then you create an institution called Bible college, which what is the point of Bible college? It's to have a job in ministry. It's to have a job in ministry. Well, here's the thing. I don't believe that jobs in ministry are for sale. The ministry is not for sale. The ministry is not for the highest bidder. The ministry is not, do you want to pay $20,000 to become a pastor? Do you want to pay $40,000 to be an evangelist? That is not how the ministry works, according to the Bible. And we have a guy in the Bible trying to purchase a position in ministry, and what does the Bible say? It was wicked. Let's look at Acts chapter number 8 here. Let's look at verse number 14. Now when the apostles, which were at Jerusalem, heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw that through laying on the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto them, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. The Bible rebukes the idea that you can buy your way into the ministry. Now again, no one today can be an apostle. To be an apostle, I believe the number one requirement is you had to see the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you think you've seen the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, you can leave at any time. Go join the Pentecostal church, okay? You have not seen him. And they always try to tell me what he looks like, and it's the opposite of what the Bible says he looks like anyways, okay? So number one, we don't have apostles. But I don't think that this passage is limited to a time of apostles. We can make application from this further down, and there are gifts in the ministry. The Bible says that the laying on of the hands of the presbytery is a gift. So a pastor laying hands on someone, whether that be an evangelist, whether it be a deacon, or whether it be another pastor, they are giving them a special gift of the Spirit, and they are passing their Spirit onto that particular person. And you know what? That is not something that is for sale. That special gift is not for sale. Just like the apostles giving out gifts of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was not for sale. Also, ordination is not for sale. I do not believe that there's an ordination certificate that you should be able to purchase. They are handed out at the discretion of other men of God that have found you worthy, not because you paid for it, not because you bought it. And you know what? It's a shame today there's so many people getting married today by an ordained minister, and that ordained minister bought their ordination certificate online. You know, there'd be a lot less faggot marriage if you couldn't buy your own ordination certificate, because they would come to a real church and say, hey, will you marry us? And we'll say, you're not even allowed to be on the property. Where you're standing is holy ground, and you're unholy. Get away from us. So faggot marriage couldn't even exist if you didn't allow bozos to literally go online to, I think it's like some Denver school. There's like some Denver school or something that everyone buys this online ordination certificate for like $59 or something like that, and they all become this licensed minister because they'll just hand it out to anybody. They'll pay them money. And you know what? It's a joke. It's a fraud. It's not legitimate. And you say, well, that's not what Bible college is doing. Yeah, you have to wait more time. Right? I mean, you just have to wait more time. You know what? The ministry is not a participation trophy either. It's not like, hey, I just paid $10,000. I went to the two-year program, the four-year program, and they just gave me a license to preach, and they gave me an ordination certificate, and now I'm ordained. That is what a lot of Bible colleges are doing today. A lot of Bible colleges are, quote, ordaining 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-old men that are not married, don't have kids, and then there's their license to preach. Now they're just an ordained minister because they showed up, took a couple of Bible college courses, and now, okay, you're an ordained minister. I don't believe in that. That is not the biblical principle. And so the number one problem I have with Bible college is that the ministry is just not for sale. It's not for sale. It should never be for sale. And whenever this guy tries to purchase it, what does the Apostle Peter say? Thou is neither part, look at verse 21, thou is neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent, therefore, of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and of the bond of iniquity. Then answered Simon and said, Pray ye the Lord for me that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me. Now here's the reality, is our society is not built by preachers that bought their way in the ministry. You show me the great preacher of the day that just simply went and just paid for his ordination certificate. I mean, if it was effective, then we would see the results of it. Wisdom is justified of our children. If Bible college is really, really great, then we would see the fruit of Bible college. But show me the red hot fiery preachers, show me the zealous soul winners, show me the guys making a big difference in this world, and I'll show you people that don't think Bible college is what got them there. Some of them may have even gone to Bible college. But at the end of the day, they're not going to say Bible college is the reason the way they are. They'll say it's despite Bible college in many cases. Despite Bible college because, you know, it's not something that can be purchased. Go if you would to John chapter 2. The Bible says in Proverbs 23 verse 23, buy the truth and sell it not. Also wisdom, instruction, and understanding. I can understand that if a young man wants to be in the ministry, has a desire to be a pastor, and everyone around him is saying the only way you can do this is if you pay money, then they would be willing to pay the money. I can't even necessarily fault that guy if that's the only option he's given and he feels like he wants to serve God. You know, we should be willing to buy the truth. If I can only get the truth by buying it, I should be willing to buy it. But you know what? You should never sell it. You should never sell it. You know what we don't see the Lord Jesus Christ doing? Going around signing up people to be a disciple and they have to pay tuition. You don't see Elijah going to Elisha and saying, hey, can you get some student loans to pay for this? You don't see Timothy going around having to make payments to follow Paul. No, no. You know what? The ministry should not be something that ministers are selling. It's not something that we say, hey, can you afford to be a pastor? Can you afford to be an evangelist? Can you afford to be a deacon? You know, the Bible talks about God choosing those who are rich in faith, poor in this world that are rich in faith to do the great works of God. You know what? There shouldn't be a limit on people entering the ministry because they don't have enough money to enter the school. And why in the world would I as a minister want to say, like, hey, I want to take advantage. The next generation that wants to serve God and wants to be zealous, I want to take advantage of them. I want them to pay me in order to become a pastor. Pay me to become an evangelist. Pay me to learn the Bible. You know, how are you applying this verse when it says to not sell the truth then? And there are many pastors, many churches where they say, hey, I want to learn about this topic. They say, well, go to Bible college. I'm not going to preach on that. They won't preach on everything. You know, it's a shame. Churches should be preaching everything. Now I get it. There's a little bit of specialized practical knowledge that comes with pastoring that you're not going to preach a sermon on. Right. I'm not going to get up here and explain to you all the practicalities of a funeral. I'm not going to get up and preach a sermon on the practicalities of how to run a wedding. I'm not going to get up here and just demonstrate for you how to baptize someone. And we're going to all take turns and baptize each other or something. Okay. But, you know, to be honest with you, it probably takes just a few hours or maybe a day or two to explain some of those practicalities of someone that has a high aptitude. It's not like you need four years of education to learn how to dunk someone underwater. In fact, I would argue you don't even need it. It's just a nice to have. You can literally figure it out. You want to know how many times Pastor Anderson sat me down and explained to me how to have a funeral? Zero. You know what he did? He gave me a book. He's like, this explains it. Here, have fun. You know how many times he explained to me how to have a wedding? Zero. You know, he did explain to me how to be baptized. We sat on the ground. Okay. I crossed my arms and he just air baptized me. All right. I wasn't in real water. That was like my one time. And then he's like, all right, here's four people. Go. It's intimidating. But you know what? We made it work. I was able to put someone underwater and pick them back up. Okay. And if they if I hadn't done it, they probably figured out themselves. Okay. Praise God. But at the end of the day, it's like I don't need four years to explain all that. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure there's a little bit of practical knowledge, practical wisdom that could benefit in the ministry. But just generally speaking, ninety nine percent of the information should be coming from the pulpit. Whereas I find that a lot of churches, they're going to preach about 10 percent of the Bible from the pulpit. And they're like, hey, the other five percent I teach go to the Bible college. And they're still lacking in a lot of instruction in the Bible. I mean, you know, they act like, oh, in Bible college, you just learn so much. But I guarantee people that come to this church for four years, if you come to this church four years and go to all three services and you take notes of everything that's being said, you will learn more than any of the Bible colleges that are being taught out there. And not not just because it's right. I'm just saying quantity of information, quantity of information. There is a lot I mean, I preach long sermons. You think the professors are long winded. Just come to St. Vass Baptist Church. Okay. These are some long sessions. I mean, you know, they call it Brother Ben called me. It said this is a pastor Shelley hour. I was like, what's an hour and 15 minutes? It's a pastor Shelley hour. Okay. And hey, I'm preaching a lot of things. I'm preaching all kinds of parts of the Bible. We're going through all kinds of Bible studies. You will learn a lot going to church and you should. And not just the college grads, everybody. Because I don't want there to be this facade like, well, I don't know as much as the Bible college students. That's just that's a joke. Everybody should be on the same page. Everybody has the same opportunities. You have the same Bible. We're not going to sit here and pretend like there's this special eclectic knowledge that you learn by going to Bible college or something. It's usually fake anyways. And a lot of Bible colleges, they'll just teach you theological vocabulary to make it seem like you know more than everybody else when you really don't. They use a specialized language to make it sound like they know things that you don't know, but it's fake. It's not real. There is not this extra knowledge, secret wisdom that they really have. It's really a lot of just junk. And I would I would take any of the young men that have been in our church for a while, their knowledge over the young men in Bible college today. Matthew 10, verse eight, I'm just reading for you a verse. It says, Freely you have received, freely give. How do you apply that? Hey, we should be freely giving out the wisdom of God, not saying, well, yeah, you'll get 10 percent of the Bible at church, but if you want that other percentage, you've got to you've got to pay. You've got to pay to learn or something. No, no, no. I spend hours and hours and decades of my life studying the Bible to just spoon feed it to everyone. Not just the people that are willing to pay everyone. We put it online. We put it out there. You know what? It's more important that people just have the truth. Then I make a buck off of it. Then I make some money off of it. My Bible Institute or something like that. No, it's kind of embarrassing that people are studying the Bible to then make a prop like a minimal profit off of it. Hey, you want my sermon? Pay three bucks for the tape. You know, you have to have the password online. You don't have to have any. In fact, we have the opposite problem. We're trying to give it to too many people and they censor us. They ban us. You know, they take it down. I'm trying to give it out as much as I can. And they're like, no, stop. You know, this is dangerous. This is dangerous information. But the church is not supposed to be a place where we're just making money. Look at John Chapter two, verse 16 and said unto them that soul doves take these things. Hence, make not my father's house and house of merchandise. This is just not a place where we're supposed to be selling a bunch of stuff. Okay. And I'm not I'm not going to try and throw stones at churches that sell anything in any context, but like we try to be as far away from that as possible. And we as a church just don't really sell anything. I mean, I don't know of anything that we've ever sold. I don't know of anything that we've ever made someone pay for. You know, sometimes we reimburse people, you know, because they helped, you know, acquire material for us. But it wasn't something that we were expecting them to pay for. Obviously, on missions trips that are for missions trips, we sometimes ask people to buy their own tickets and stuff out of practicality. But generally speaking, that's not I didn't make money on you buying a ticket for yourself. The church isn't selling things. If anything, we I guarantee are one of the most generous churches in this area, period. I was looking up just because I was interested. I was looking up other churches. And I saw this like old. I'd be church was having a men's conference and I was just looking at the men's conference was not at a special resort. It was not at a special area. It was at their building with just preachers coming. You had to pay 50 bucks to go to it. How many how many people in here have paid to come to any conferences here? Yeah, not true. All right. I know somewhere else, somewhere else. I know what you meant. I mean, yeah, we would have luncheons at the old church I went to. You had to pay to eat the lunch. And, you know, for some of us that have, you know, when you start having six, seven, eight kids, those start things like nickel and dime. You know, I mean, it may not be that much to you that have point one, seven children or something. But those of us that have eight, nine kids, you know, five bucks a pop starts adding up. Then it's like, oh, I paid forty dollars. And then when it's not and it's not brisket, like you go to some of these old I.B. luncheons. It's not Texas brisket, folks. It's like warmed over cafeteria food sometimes. And I'm thinking, like, I paid 40 bucks for this. You know, that's kind of like it's kind of starts. You know, it's kind of like that's weird. But you just want to participate. You want to be with the church. You want to be with them. You got to pay for the tracks. There are churches that make you buy the tracks. There are churches that make you pay for all this stuff. And look, I'm not trying to throw a bunch of stones at these people because I get it because, you know, this is why they do that. So you don't gripe and complain about everything being free for some reason. Sometimes people have a better attitude that they paid for it than if you give it to them for free. It's weird. It's really, really weird. But at the end of the day, I just want to be extra generous and I want our church to stay as far away from selling things. But how much more education? How much more? I mean, the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. But I'm supposed to say, hey, all of you young people, all of you 18, 19, 20 year olds that actually stuck with it and like the Bible and actually want to do something with your life. Make sure to give me a bunch of money so that you can really learn so you can really get the information. I think that's pathetic as a church. I think as a church, we should be willing to give you all that information for free as much as humanly possible. So point number one, why I have a problem with Bible college is that the ministry is just not for sale and the ministry should not be for sale. And the people that are trying to sell it are not the ones making a big movement in this world. They're not the ones doing a lot of great work in this world by and large. There could be exceptions. Go to John Chapter seven, go to John Chapter seven. And again, like someone's going to bring up an exception. They're going to think about what I'm saying right now. And they're like, well, my Bible college doesn't sell tracts. OK, well, my Bible college gives out scholarships every once in a while. OK, well, if it doesn't apply to you, then guess what? It didn't apply to you. You know, but by and large, a lot of what I'm saying is true for a lot of different schools and a lot of different contexts. OK, I'm not just bringing up strongman argument. I'm bringing up things that are really happening at real Bible colleges. Point one, they're selling the ministry. It is not for sale. If you come here and you say, Pastor Shelley, I want to be a pastor, I'm going to give a million dollars to the church. You, in fact, are probably at the bottom of the list now. I'm skeptical of why I would even ordain you, because why would you think that you could buy it? What did Peter say when someone tried to buy it? You're done. You have no part. You have no part. You can't even participate now. Do not think that giving money at this church will give you special privilege. It does not give you special privilege. In fact, I'll be skeptical of you. And look, sometimes people seem to like want to buy their way into this church. They want to buy becoming a friend. They want to buy being a good member. They want to buy a position of authority. And let me tell you something. None of them are for sale. Our soul winning tribe captains, not for sale. Our music ministry, not for sale. Being a piano player, not for sale. Being a soul winning leader, not for sale. You want to be an evangelist, a deacon, a pastor, not for sale. We're not going to sell it. We're not interested in money. We're interested in the truth. And we're interested in people that want to work hard. And, in fact, we'll try to help you. You know, people that are willing to go into the ministry and make those sacrifices, I'm extremely generous towards. Ask any of the guys that we ordain to be evangelists or pastors or anything. Ask them if the church paid for their moving expenses. Ask if the church paid just over an abundance of their moving expenses, just extra love offerings or extra bonuses or just extra checks. Because, you know what, I want to make it easy on these guys. Ask them. Every single one will have to say yes. Every single one of them will have to say, yeah, they actually tried to make it pretty easy for me. Because, you know, I don't want to make it hard. I don't want to say like, hey, you better have 20 grand or 50 grand to serve God. You know what I want? A heart that loves God. I want a heart that hates covetousness. I want a heart that's not in it for the money. I want someone that's willing to serve God. And, you know what, we'll fund it. You know, we want to invest in the people that actually want to serve God. Whereas Bible college, it's putting a barrier to entry. Do you have the money? Are your parents rich? Can you finance these things? And, you know what, that's not the right way to serve God. Number two problem I have with Bible college is that the church ends up watering down its preaching because of Bible college. It waters it down. Now, this is not a new thing. Water down and compromise people in church. And you say, why are people watering down the preaching? For fear. For fear. Now look at John chapter 7 verse 13. Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews. People were afraid to say things in the Old Testament because of the Jews. Look at John chapter 9 verse 18. John chapter 9 verse 18. John chapter 9 verse 18, the Bible says this, But the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and received his sight until they called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they asked them saying, Is this your son whom you say was born blind? How then doth he now see? This is crazy. This is so funny. They're saying, they're not saying, Hey, your son that was blind. The son you say was born blind. They're trying to gaslight parents on their own child having been blind. Did you catch that? That's a weird nuance. The Jews are like, Hey, you say he was born blind, but was that really what happened? Yeah, we know our son was blind. Okay, folks. Like that's what the Jews do. They try to gaslight you on your own reality and your own history. Like, of course, your son couldn't have been born blind. You just say that. You're just claiming that now. Why? Because they're trying to get rid of the miracles of Jesus, aren't they? There was a man born blind. Jesus heals him. And then the Jews are trying to twist the narrative so much. They're like, You just say he was born blind, don't you? What do the parents have to respond? His parents answered, verse 20, his parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. You can't you can't gaslight us on this narrative. We know this guy is our son and we know he was born blind. You know why? Because we had to change the diapers of a blind kid because we had to watch a blind kid. Look, you know how hard it is to watch kids. How about one that's blind? That's I mean, think about all the dangers, all the the pits they could fall in, all the times they hurt themselves, all the times they ran into things. You're not going to forget as a parent, if you raised a blind child, it was a huge burden. And they're like, Look, we know this is our son. We know he was born blind. OK, now, verse 21. But by what means he now seeth? We know not. Who hath opened his eyes? We know not. He is of age. Ask him. He shall speak for himself. These words spake his parents because they feared the Jews. There's the thing, they're willing to at least say it was a son and born blind, but they were afraid to say it was because of Jesus. They're afraid to admit that Jesus had healed them. Why? Because they're afraid of the Jews again. OK, so they won't say this for the Jews had already agreed that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. They don't want to lose their position. They don't want to be kicked out of church. So they're afraid of saying this fact. Verse 23, therefore, said his parents. He's of age. Ask him. So they're basically putting their son in the tough spot. Hey, we're not brave enough to speak this. You say it. You be the one that's brave enough to preach this doctrine. John, Chapter 12, verse 42. Skip a few more pages. John, Chapter 12, verse 42. This is a theme in the New Testament that people are afraid to say things because of the Jews. John, Chapter 12, verse 42. Nevertheless, among the chief rulers, also many believed on him. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. Let me tell you something. This is not a new doctrine. Churches, pastors and members are afraid to talk about Zionism because of fear of the Jews. And let me tell you something. Bible colleges will not turn on Zionism because of fear of the Jews. You want to know something? Bible colleges need something. It's called money. And you know what? They're afraid of going against Zionism so they'll lose bank accounts. Why bank accounts? Because there's a certain group of people that own banks. Let me tell you who they are. Jews. And let me tell you something. Show me a Bible college today that won't preach pro Zionism sermons. They're all Zionists. They're all watered down and compromised on that issue, and they will not talk about it. In fact, if anything, they raise money for Israel, and they raise money for the Jews, and they have Israel flags all over their sanctuary and all over their building. And look, you know, if you had a sanctuary decorated with all the different flags of the world because you want to go missionaries there, I'm not mad at you. If you have an Israel flag next to a Jamaica flag and a Mexico flag, I'm not mad at you. But if you have a big giant Israel flag on the stage next to a Texas flag or America flag, that's blasphemous. And that's weird, and it doesn't make sense, and it's a cult-like behavior, and it's for fear of the Jews. You know, I love people that live in Israel. I want them to be saved. We shouldn't hate a group of people just because they're born into a bad ideology or a bad religion. The apostle Paul wanted Jews to be saved. But let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. He wasn't afraid to tell people what Jews were like. He wasn't afraid to preach the harsh realities of Jews. And you know what? We have John also not afraid. He's calling them the synagogue of Satan. How many churches, I mean, how many Bible colleges today are going to get up and explain what the synagogue of Satan is today? Not only that, they're afraid to say that they know Jesus. They can't talk about him openly. How many Bible colleges today listen to a new IP preacher and they can't tell anyone? And let me tell you something. The Bible colleges will not preach the truth on sodomites today. Because almost everybody has a faggot in their family somewhere. Some uncle, cousin, brother, sister, mother, both their dads or whatever. And for some reason, they just won't preach the truth on that issue. They won't take a big stand on that. They don't want protesters at their Bible college. They don't want to lose the funding. They don't want to lose the enrollment. They won't preach what Leviticus 2013 means. They won't preach what Romans 1 really means. They won't preach on Jude. They won't preach on 2 Peter chapter 2. They'll just go to 1 Corinthians chapter number 6 in the Greek and try to tell you that means homos can be saved. They'll ignore all the clear verses on homos and try to go to an obscure passage not about them to try and preach this weird hypothetical that doesn't exist, folks. They're not going to preach the truth on the rapture. They're going to be pro-Zionist. They're not going to tell you the distinctions of the Trinity because they don't want to get people riled up on the Trinity. They don't want to talk about church discipline. They won't exercise church discipline. If they catch kids in their Bible college drinking, smoking, committing fornication, they'll handle it privately and they won't kick anybody out because they don't want to lose those enrollment dollars. They're going to be weak on alcohol. They're not going to get up and say alcohol is a sin, period, because people will leave the church. People will leave a church if you get up and rip on alcohol. That's why churches have to constantly say, like, I know it's not a sin and I know that people can drink in moderation. Look, that's lies. Drinking alcohol is a sin is poison. Drinking alcohol is poison. Why in the world would I get up and say drinking poison is not a sin? The thought of foolishness is sin. Good night. What an idiotic thought. I love drinking alcohol. You drunkard. You know, they won't get up and preach Proverbs 23 on a beverage that's never supposed to be looked at. In fact, you go to a lot of Bible colleges, they'll literally hand out the birth control to their Bible colleges handing out birth control. They're not going to preach the truth on birth control. They're not going to preach the truth on divorce. They're going to get up and tell you, yeah, divorce is fine. Yeah, it's you know, sometimes there's exceptions. We understand there's all these different scenarios and they basically make a case for divorce. They're not going to talk about women wearing pants. They will not bring up that issue. It's too divisive and they'll lose people in their car. They're going to be compromised on the issue. They're not going to talk about racism. They're not going to talk about issues with different communities. They're not going to say like, hey, the black culture in America is hurting black people because then it's offensive. And now they're seen as racist and they don't want that kind of heat. They're not going to take bold stands on any of these issues. They would never defend anybody on any kind of issue that has to do with race. They would avoid it. They'll stay away from it. In fact, they're probably closer to teaching CRT than they are teaching what the Bible says on these issues. They won't teach anything about the death penalty at all. They will avoid the death penalty. They will avoid the applications of the death penalty. They won't tell you historically what the death penalty was like in America. They won't tell you that in 2003 it was illegal to be a fag in the state of Texas. They won't talk about any of these things. And let me tell you something. The new IFB is forbidden in all Bible colleges. You better not bring up the documentaries. You better not bring up their preachers. You don't bring up their their zeal for soul winning. You can't talk about any of that stuff or you'll be thrown out. And I'm not just saying these things as hyperbole. I know people in my personal life that have told me they were brought into the dean. They were brought into the school counselor's office and said, if you listen to what I've been preaching, we're kicking you out of the school. Just listening. All the haters couldn't go to Bible college because they just they listen too much. Go with the Second Timothy Chapter one. Go to Second Timothy Chapter one. Look, I'm not going to go and start a Bible college so that I just stop preaching all those things. And you know why? Because they're afraid of losing money. They're afraid of the Jews. They're afraid of losing their position. They don't want to take bold stands. And you know what? This church is never I don't want to make any decision. I don't make any decision that ever stops me from preaching something in the Bible. I don't want to get too big. I don't want to have too big of a nice of a building. I don't want to be stretched out financially. I don't want anything to stop me from saying, you know what? If I say this, it's going to cause us problems because I just want to say what the Bible says. It's more important for me to get up and just say what the Bible says, period, and let the chips fall where they may. If that means our church grows or shrinks or has problems or has issues or has protesters, I want to say what the Bible says. And there's too many people today that won't say everything the Bible says. And let me tell you, Bible college is a big reason. It's a huge reason why a lot of those churches will not preach the things that I just mentioned. And it's not even like they have to agree with me personally. They just won't even touch the subject. They won't even provide an alternative to these subjects because they're too controversial and the Bible is too clear on them. But let me tell you something. That is not the right attitude. The right attitude is not be ashamed of anything in the Bible. Second Timothy chapter one verse seven, for God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. We should not be afraid of Jews today. We should not be afraid of the synagogue of Satan today. We should not be afraid of sodomites today. We should not be afraid of losing money today. We should not be afraid of protests. We should not be afraid of persecution. We should not be afraid of the devil. We should not be afraid of other Christians. We should not be afraid of being embarrassed. We should not be afraid of losing family or friends or fame or fortune or any of it. We should preach the truths of the Bible. God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. And we should preach with boldness today. And let me tell you something. Bible colleges are not preaching with boldness. They're preaching with fear. Pastors are getting in their pulpit and they're afraid of the congregation. They're afraid of other churches. They're afraid of their friends. They're afraid of the bankers. They're afraid of politicians. They're afraid to get up and just say something and they don't know what they're talking about. And so let me tell you something. Get up and they preach watered down, lukewarm, basic sermons so as not to offend. That's not this church. It will never be this church as long as I'm the pastor. As long as I'm the pastor, I will not water it down. I haven't watered it down. It's not even about to start. If we get a new building that's bigger, I might go harder just to be safe. I'm not going to go softer. And let me tell you something. Right now, when we can barely fit in the building, it's not going to get soft anytime soon. Because I don't want soft people here. And I don't want to try and get a bunch of soft people to feel like we need to move to then just lose them anyways. So if I can get you out, I'll try. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 1. Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. We're supposed to be strong as preachers. We're supposed to be strong as Christians. And let me tell you something. Preaching weak, compromised sermons doesn't make you strong. It makes you weak. Easily offended. When you won't preach things that piss people off every once in a while, you know what you do? You make them soft. You make them soft. We need to challenge our congregation a little bit. We need to put a little pressure on them. Sometimes you should feel a little uncomfortable in church because we want to make you a little stronger. Think about going to the gym. If you never felt any pain or any discomfort when working out, you're not going to make any gains. You make gains by actually working your muscles out to where they hurt. They hurt a little bit. Or you get that soreness the day after. Or when you get older, that second day soreness gets real. Actually, it turns into three and four and five day later soreness. Man, when you get old, you're thinking, like, what's wrong with me? I mean, if I haven't worked out legs for a while and I work out legs, it's like two weeks. Man, I'm just telling you, it gets rough. Those stairs for soul winning actually become a challenge. You're like, I'll take the lower apartments. You can have upper apartments because it's rough. But you know what? That's going to be the Christian life. We should actually feel a little bit of discomfort. We should feel a little pain. We should be challenged a little bit. We shouldn't just be going and just be like, oh, church is so comfortable. Oh, that sermon was just so nice. It's so pleasant. No, you should feel a little uncomfortable. No, you should hurt a little bit every once in a while. No, you should be challenged a little bit. Okay? That's the type of preaching that we want. That's the kind of preaching you're going to get whether you like it or not. Go to Revelation chapter two. So point one is this. For Bible calls, I need to speed up for sake of time. Those are some important points. I'm just going to kind of run through these next ones so I can get to some practical application here. But number one, the ministry is not for sale. It is not for sale. Number two, the problem with Bible college is they water down the preaching. And we don't want to water down our preaching for any reason. Any decision I make that waters down the preaching was a bad decision. Number three, Bible college distracts from soul winning. Now in Revelation chapter two, this is an important point. Look at verse two. I know thy works. Now he goes on a long description of the fact that church has works, but they've done something wrong. Verse four. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first work. Let me tell you something. The Bible college is a lot of work. It is real. I mean, you have to hire staff. You have to get all kinds of people to write curriculum. You have to be challenged. Like the amount of work that goes into Bible college and school is immense. Tons and tons of work. But you know what? If we're taking all that effort and energy to put into the school, it's got to come from somewhere. You only have so much energy for the day. You only have so much creative energy. You only have so much zeal. And if you're just putting so much work into this institution, it's got to come from somewhere. And a lot of times what happens is it's taken from the soul winning and it's taking some of that energy, effort, creativity and money and finances and time. And it's investing in the school to get the school done. And so it's zapping some of the soul winning energy, time, focus, attention. When you notice our bulletin, what is the first thing? Service times and soul winning times. We want to keep those as the first works, as the preeminence, as what we... We don't want to take away from those. We want to increase those. And if you've come to St. Elizabeth Baptist Church, you've noticed our soul winning times, we've gotten more. It's grown. When I was here at first, it's only like a couple days a week. Now it's every day of the week. There's ladies times. We're trying to do more. There's more regional times. There's more missions trips than we've ever had. More small town soul winning events than we've ever had. We don't want to get less. We want to get more. And we're going to increase that. Bible colleges don't. Plus a lot of kids, they come from a church where they don't do soul winning. They do visitation. And they don't want to offend those kids. So they don't want to get up and rip on the importance of soul winning. Like soul winning, if you want to do that, we have an option over here behind closed door three. But don't pressure anybody. Don't make anybody feel uncomfortable. And if you don't want to do it, no problem. Or let's just have a visitation because we don't want to like confront people on soul winning. It's just not the biggest program. They're distracted with other things. Bible college will distract from soul winning. They have too much of a mixed culture. They're too focused on the school. They're too worried about all the school activities. And they're too worried trying to be like a real university with programs, groups, and sports rather than emphasizing soul winning. Look, our main program at church is soul winning. Our main program is not Christian academy. It's not college. It's not the college sports. It's not the college hangout. It's not only things. And whatever you give your time, focus, energy is going to become the most important thing. For many churches, their most important thing is their college. And showcasing their students off and getting them to graduate and their little choir and all the other things. No, we want to focus our effort, energy, money, time to soul winning. When we have special announcements, what are they about? A missions trip that they went to Antigua, where they went to St. Thomas, where they went to Nassau. We have somebody come up here and talk about the Philippines next week. What do other churches do? Here's our graduates. Here's our kids in college. Here's the choir. Here's what they're doing at their sports activity. Here's a banquet about the kids. They're emphasizing the school, not soul winning. And look, if you go to a school, I would expect for them to emphasize the school. But when you come to church, you know what we want to emphasize? Soul winning. That's what we're emphasizing. That's what we're promoting. That's what we want on the forefront. Some institution has to put soul winning at the front. You go to a restaurant, what are they making priority? Food. I mean, do you really want to go to a restaurant and they're putting all their effort and energy into education? Hey, we go to this restaurant. Well, we want to teach you some stuff. We put our chefs back there. They're actually learning how to educate. They're not learning how to cook. No, no, no. I want to go to a restaurant where they're focused on making quality food. I want to go to a furniture store where they're focused on making furniture. I worked for a bank, and they put all this money and effort in making software. And I'm thinking, like, you're a bank. You're not a software company. Let's let the software companies make software. Let's let the banks worry about managing money. Let's let the restaurant worry about making food. Let's let colleges worry about education. And let's let the church worry about soul winning. About soul winning. It is the primary thing. Go over to Titus chapter 2. Go to Titus chapter 2. You're pretty close. Fourth problem I have is it zaps the zeal of many youth. Bible college zaps the zeal of many youth. I've seen a lot of young men on fire, zealous and ready to make bold stands. And then by the end of Bible college, they're a different person. You say, why? How in the world could you take a red hot 17 or 18 year old man and then at 22 he's kind of weak and soft? You want? Let me explain it to you. It's really simple. He went to Bible college and had a bunch of women teach him. He had a bunch of women professors. You know what? You're not going to you're not going to have a bunch of women produce a bunch of red hot, fiery preachers, especially not the women in Bible college. You might have a mama bear. Right. You might have a Proverbs 31 woman teaching her son Lemmewell at home. But let me tell you something. It's not going to be the women in Bible college those because they're trying to be like a man and they're a soft version of a man. They're a weak version of a man. You know what produces a feminine men? Women teachers. Women teachers because they're soft, because they're feminine, because they're a woman. I don't want to send my son to Bible college to learn how to be a God fearing, fiery preacher from a woman. And you know why they have to have that? Because most men actually have a career and a job and are trying to make serious money. So who do they need? They need people that they can use and pay a low wage that need to do on the side. That's usually women. And so there's getting older women to come in somebody to come in and just teach them how to be basically a watered down, weak, soft guy and zapping the zeal. You know, the Bible says in Galatians, they zealously affect you, but not well. And of course, that's about a different context, but you can be zealously affected, not well. It's a good thing to be zealously affected, always in a good thing. But look at Titus 2 verse 14, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifying himself of peculiar people, zealous of good works. I want the youth to stay zealous and red hot and fiery. And let me tell you something, it's not coming out of Bible college. Their enrollment trumps all of their standards. They're not going to take bold stands. They're not going to go and let the school be threatened. It's going to be a safe space. Let me tell you something, colleges, even Bible colleges today are worried about having a safe space for the children. Let me tell you something, steadfast is not a safe space. It's a dangerous place. I mean, there's protesters. You don't even know what's going to be preached. You have no idea, except for you know it's going to be Bible. But let me tell you something, the Bible scares people. They get nervous when the preacher or the prophet comes into town because he could say anything in that book. And it's gnarly. And let me tell you something, this isn't a safe space. That's what actually produces strong men. Not going to Planet Fitness. Going to Strouds or whatever, right? Yeah. Going to a real gym where you actually have to grip, you have to actually pick up the free weights. It's not on a lever system where you can just click a bunch of buttons and then just it helps lift it. There's a pull up bar and there's nothing underneath to hold you up. You actually have to be able to do a pull up to even start doing the pull ups. And let me tell you something, when we talk about church, this is a church where you have to come, already have to do some pull ups. You pretty much already have to hate fags to even show up. That's a pull up. That's one pull up, OK? Second pull up is you already are against Zionism. And I'm just telling you, if you can't do one of those, you won't even be able to start. You'll show up and just kind of grab the bar and just kind of hang in this and then fall. And they're like, I need to go to Planet Fitness Bible College. Is there a counselor? There is no counselor here. I'm the counselor. If you got offended by me, I'm the one to console you. Sorry. I don't like how Pastor Shelley preached. Who do I get to talk to? Pastor Shelley. Brother Tanner is not the person to complain to. My wife's not the person who complained to. In fact, honestly, if you ask my wife, she'll be harsh with me. When I hear the advice that she gives, I'm thinking like, all right, you know, I was like, dang. I'm like, did they ask another question after that? No. Yeah, I get it. All right. Good Acts chapter 17. There's no soft guidance counselor here to try and help ease your little pains and your little woes and whatever. No, no, no. Go to Bible college and you'll have some lady there to try and tell you why what the Bible said didn't really mean it. And why you're an exception to what the Bible said and why we, you know, we might have we said that, but we were just riling up the base. The preacher didn't really mean what he said. No, no, I really mean what I say. Obviously, I can exaggerate and sometimes I can be a little over the top. You know, the Bible exaggerates. I mean, Paul said he's the chief of sinners. That wasn't literal. That was him using hyperbole. OK, some people get really nitpicky with preaching. If you do that to the Bible, you're going to find mistake because the Bible constantly uses hyperbole and exaggeration. 70 times seven. It's not literally 490 times, folks. It's just an expression. Jesus is constantly using expression. It's where people just miss the whole point. It's like, oh, what about if you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart? What about the guy that doesn't have a mouth? It's an expression. Quit trying to twist the Bible in something that wasn't real. It's like, well, Pastor Shelley said 20 was really 18. It doesn't matter. OK, you're missing the whole point. And people just need a safe space today for weak minds. Weak minds. And you know what? This is not this place. Here's a fifth problem I have a Bible college. This is not legit careers. Now, look at Acts chapter 17, verse 21 for a second. And this is kind of a parenthetical statement. But if you notice about the Athenians and the strangers, it says that they spent their time and nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Let me tell you something. Just because you're learning something, a Bible college doesn't mean it's beneficial information. Yeah, the Greeks love to just go and just chat all day. And look, a lot of colleges. It's just you go around, you just chat and you just chat with professor. You just chat. We're just learning stuff. You know, that doesn't mean it's beneficial to you. You can just go to school and you just learn about World War Two. That doesn't necessarily help you. You could just go and learn Arasmian Greek. It's not necessarily going to help you. You could learn all kinds of things. You could learn about the historical context. Let me tell you what it was like in the days of the Jews. And you're like, I'm learning so much information. It doesn't help you. What was the point of college? Oh, yeah, getting a job. Not all information gets you a job. Not all information gets you a job. Well, I learned this click language. Well, great, but that doesn't help you get a job. That doesn't help you in the practical world. You know what? Just because you're learning stuff doesn't mean it's good. There's an opportunity cost to your time. And you need to be careful what information you're learning. Is it good information? The Bible says, happy is the man that finds his wisdom. I find that a lot of Bible colleges, there's kids that are spending four years to become a pastor. But that's not a career they're necessarily even going to have. And then they just wasted four years. There are women going to Bible college to get a career and being a secretary. I'm not I'm not like saying this is like a joke. It's real. There is real Bible colleges where you can get a four year degree and being a secretary. Like, is there like answering the phone one on one? You know, pick it up. Hello. I mean, here's how you write on a on a piece of paper, a note. Here's how you type on a keyboard. I mean, there's typing classes. OK. I mean, what I mean, I'm just trying to be honest, like how much formal education do you need to be a secretary? And look, I'm not saying that there isn't a little bit of benefit, but you really need to spend ten thousand dollars going to a Bible college for four years. Do you really want to send your daughter to school to learn to be a secretary? And you know what? I just personally think we should eliminate 18 to 20 year old secretaries at churches. I mean, if you have a male pastorate, probably the worst person to be. His secretary is a young, attractive 20 year old woman. Like if I were to say like, what is probably the most distracting person to be a secretary? How about a 20 year old graduate from college? Female. Yeah, that's probably bad. In fact, most preachers would say, like, if you get a woman secretary, she should be your grandma. And I'm thinking, like, if you had to have a female, that's probably the best option. But you could have a male assistant. You could have male assistant pastors, male deacons. We see in the Bible they didn't hire a bunch of 18 year old girls to help in the church. They hired men like Stephen. And you know what? You'll get a lot more work done when you're working around men than women anyways, folks. I'm just sorry. Sorry to say it. You know, why don't we just eliminate that position? Not a legit career. Why would I want? I'm not going to send my daughter to school to learn to be a secretary. Are you kidding me? She could be my personal assistant. She'll learn way more. All right. For sake of time, I'm not going to go to this other verse. But number six, it takes the money from our youth. You know what the last thing we need to do is make our youth have even less money. We live in such a debt society where they're behind the ball. Inflation is so high. What's like one of the worst things I could do is put them in debt or take all the money, the little bit of money they already have. You know what young people need is some extra money. You know what makes money? Money. You want to know why rich people stay rich? Because it takes money to make money when you have money. It's easy to make money. It's just easy. You can literally just put if you just have like millions of dollars, you could just put it in the bank and get five percent interest on your money and do nothing and just make a couple hundred thousand dollars. You're doing nothing. Literally. Or you could just invest in stuff and you just make a bunch of money. The reason why people have money is because they have money. It's a sad reality. So if you want your children to have money or be well off financially, the worst thing you can do is say, oh, can I take the two nickels that you have? Can I take the little five thousand dollars you have? I mean, you worked for four years mowing lawns when you were 14, 15, 16, 17. Let me take all of that lunch money you had just to just to sell you the ministry. It doesn't make sense. You know, the parents are not supposed to take the money from the kids. The parents are supposed to lay it for the children. The children are supposed to lay it for the parents with the parents and the children. You know what? I don't want my children to be in debt after they leave my household or have to pay their way to get a job. You know, I'd like to help them. And if you're spending money, if you're spending money for a career that is not a very clear, high paying career, don't do it. Do not do it. I do not believe in it. I think it's a bad move. I think that there are some programs that you might have to spend money for education to get a better career. And I'm not against that. But it should be really clear and really specific. And you better work really hard to get there fast. You know, there's there's certain trade schools, there's certain code camps and similar like activities. And there are specialized careers like being a doctor or lawyer that made sense to go to college. In times past is pretty much you go to college to be a doctor or lawyer. You know why? Because when you graduate, you make millions of dollars. So it can make sense to get one hundred thousand dollars in debt. If day one, you're going to make half a million or a million dollars. You know, it does not make sense to go two hundred thousand dollars in debt because you went to an Ivy League school or Division one school to go out and have a general studies degree where you have to get a sales job. Or you're going to go out to get some job that you didn't even need the degree for in the first place. Doesn't make sense. Don't do it. OK, not worth it. So I want to provide some alternatives here. Here's my alternatives for men. Number one, instead of the ministry paying for the ministry, the ministry not being for sale, this is what young men should do. And I'm talking about 17 to 22 or whatever the college age. Right. What should you men do? You should serve in your local church. You should not worry about being a pastor until you're married with two kids. I have people email me, will you train me to be a pastor? They're 17, not married, of course, not married, no kids. I'm like, no. Get married and then have kids and then tell me if you're still interested in pastoring. OK, don't even ask me about it because I'm not interested. Read your Bible. When your pastor asks you to step up, take every opportunity. Train from the best. Train from the best. Go find Elijah and follow him. Go find Jesus and follow him. Go find Paul and follow them. That's what you should do if you want to be in the ministry. Come to church three times a week. Take notes. Work on sermons all the time. Preach at church. Go soul winning. If you want more opportunities preaching, preach in a nursing home, preach in a prison ministry, preach in preaching class. And hey, you say, I don't get that many opportunities. Well, then when you do, it better be an awesome sermon because you've had months to write it. I mean, if you have three months to write a five minute sermon, shouldn't it be a pretty good sermon? And let me tell you something. When you've had three months and we haven't heard you speak and you have a five minute sermon and it seems like you threw it together last minute and didn't really try hard. Boy, am I going to give you an extra opportunity? No. Let me tell you something. When I showed up at church as a young man, I had a sermon in hand. I had a sermon in hand. I was ready to preach. I didn't know the pastor would ever ask me to preach. I just had a sermon ready. I'm ready to go. When I guess visit, I have a sermon I could preach right then. If I walk into a church and the pastor said, hey, would you preach? I'd say yes. And I'd have a sermon in hand. Not because I'm expecting that. I don't expect it. I expect to just sit down, shut up and learn, but I'm ready. And there's a prepared place for a prepared person. I'm not even kidding. One day I went to church and the pastor just literally at the end of his sermon just says, Jonathan Shelley is going to preach tonight. I was just like, okay, that's weird. But you know what? I had already written a sermon. I was ready. I wasn't sitting here like, oh no, what am I going to do? I'm like, I'm ready to go. Let's go. Hey, prepare yourself maybe an opportunity to open. Dress nice. Dress like a man. Read books. Memorize scripture. Learn a foreign language with the most soul winning opportunities. Here's the list of languages you should learn in order. English. You say like, I already speak English. Well, you better learn it too. Okay. Spanish, French. Those are the order. Why? Because they're the most soul winning opportunity. If you want to learn Greek, Hebrew or other major languages, that's great too. But I'm just saying from a priority perspective, that's what I would do. You know, when it comes to Timothy and Paul, it says, but you know the proof of him that as a son with the father, he has served me in the gospel. You know, the picture of ministry is finding someone to just serve. It's not going and paying to go to some institution where some lady is going to teach you the Bible. Okay. Number two, when it comes to watered down preaching, instead of going to Bible college and getting watered down preaching, you should go to the best church in your area. Period. Not where the Bible college is, where the best preaching is. And you should listen to challenging preaching. And if you feel like it's inadequate, you should move to the best church you can go to. Period. Go to just the best church period. Why not? We only have one life to live. Why would I? I mean, people want to go to the best school. People want to go to the best hospital to work at. People want to go and train with the greatest athlete. Why would we not say, hey, in Christianity, go to the best church. Go where the best preaching is. Not just where the biggest school is. The best preaching. Don't compromise on doctrine if you don't have to. If you're in an area and it's the best church and there's a little bit of compromise, you just go, sit down, shut up and learn. But if you don't have to compromise, never compromise on doctrine. Go to church for the preaching. Go to church for the preaching. Don't go to church for the friends. Don't go to church for the proximity to where you live. Don't go to church for the music program. Don't go to church because that's where your family goes. Don't go to church because you're friends with the pastor. Go to church for the preaching. Go to church for the preaching, period. Here's number three. Instead of going to Bible college to distract from soul winning, you should go to a church where you're challenged to do more soul winning than you already were doing. Ask anybody that came here if they were challenged to do more soul winning or less when they showed up. If they felt like, hey, I feel like I'm doing too much. Or if they're like, hey, I started doing more. Go to Bible college. I guarantee many people go to Bible college and they start doing less soul winning than they were before. Like the soul winners that were plugged into churches, they'll go to Bible college and they'll be busy with books, studying, girls, whatever, and they'll do less soul winning. Go to a church who challenged you more soul winning. Number four, instead of going to Bible college where it zaps your seal, go to a church where you're going to be challenged. Where you're going to be around people that are actually more zealous than you. People that are fired up for the things of God and hang out with those people, rub shoulders with them. Instead of going to Bible college and not getting a legit career, get a job. I mean, just get a job and get experience and have a career minded focus. Think of the job that you want and work at getting that job, whether you can get it right now or not. Just think, here's a job that I want. I want to be a plumber. I want to be an electrician. I want to be a programmer. I want to be an accountant. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a doctor. I want to be whatever, whatever it is that you want to be. Just figure out, I want to do this and then I'm going to get there. That's what you need to do. You need to be career minded as a young man. If you're 17, figure out something you're going to do and do it. Review applications for the requirements of that job. Say, okay, I want to be, just figure out what it is. General contractor, electrician, whatever. Go read about the job that you want. Just go find a job online, find the job you want. Say, hey, here's a senior electrician, master electrician. They're paying $150,000. I want this job. And then look at requirements. It says 10 years experience, this certification, working here. And then you say, okay, I'm going to do everything on this checklist. It's now your checklist to get that job. Find a job you want right now, look at the requirements and get that job. And whenever you get that job, say, I want a job higher than this. Go look at that job requirements. Get those requirements and do it. Hey, you say, I want to be a business owner. Okay, look at the requirements to be that business owner. Meet that checklist. Do that work. As a young man, instead of just going to college aimlessly, like, I don't even know what I want to do. I'm just taking this class on underwater basket weaving. I'm taking this class on, on Jewish philosophy. I'm taking this class on what the historical context was of Galatians. Who cares? You're just learning stuff in vain. Network with people in the industry you're going to work in. You say, hey, I want to be a contractor, find a contractor and go talk to them. Find people in this church or people around or neighbors or friends or whatever that are successful in that industry and say, I want your job. How do I get it? And network with those people. Talk to those people. You say, it's all in who you know. Well then go know them. Talk to companies you want to work for. Say, hey, I'm 17. I saw this job of being a senior in your company. I want that job. Where do I start? And many times they'll say, great, we'll put you at this low level. You work a couple of years. We'll keep moving you up. You successful. We'll put you in that job eventually. Go find the job you want. Go talk to those companies. Go talk to those people. And then whatever education you need for that job, get it right now. Don't waste money on this college stuff. It's a joke. This is what they really want. Now if there's a job that you have to have college, then go to college. But go to a college that's the best college that's going to give you that education that's going to make sense. Number six, instead of going to Bible college that takes money from the youth, invest your money in real estate or in a new business. Invest your money in real estate. Look, you could be a young man and already start buying properties, start buying things. I mean, think about how much money people are spending on college. $100,000, $200,000 on an education. Think if you put $200,000 into real estate. I mean, you could buy two or three properties. Especially if you were working on the side as a plumber or an electrician, you could be buying houses and fixing them up. I saw a YouTube channel of this guy, him and his wife, they just dedicated their life to basically just buying a cheap garbage house, fixing it up. And as soon as they fix it up, sell it, put all their money in the next one. Then fix that one up, move and sell it. And then by the time they're like 30, they have a million dollar property that's super nice. Why? Because they went through that hard work and that dedication and they had a vision and they put that money and effort and energy into doing that kind of work. What if that guy just got a $200,000 debt and now he's just working some $50,000 a year job. They're borrowing against their own future. It doesn't make sense. Take the money you have, your parents give you, you work for it, invest it in yourself, invest it in your future. You want to start a business, invest it in that. Instead of, I want to make sure, oh, I'm on women already. Alright, here's my quick women rundown, alright? For women, the ministry is not for sale. You shouldn't be in it anyways, okay? You should just be a sole winner. Don't get a secretary degree. Go to conferences. You know why girls go to Bible college? To get married. Just go to conferences. Go to the conferences, always be at church, always be available, always be attractive. Just be in public. Be friendly. If a guy comes to talk to you, talk to him. Be clear to them. If they are interested in you, just be clear if you're interested or not. Don't play games, it doesn't matter. The games aren't, no one wants to play the game. If you're not interested, just say, hey, I'm just not interested, thanks. I appreciate it. If you're interested, be interested, okay? And you know as men, when you confront young ladies, make it clear what you want to do. Don't put the ball in their court. Don't say, hey, if you want to ever hang out with me, let me know. Wrong. I'm taking you to lunch at 12. Now maybe ask your father first before, you know, don't get too aggressive, okay? But I'm just saying, like, have a plan. Don't just, you know, don't just throw up there, if you kind of like me, will you let me know on Instagram? Don't do that. Just say, hey, what's your name? I like you. I would like to take you to lunch. Could you go to lunch today? No? Next week? No? You have like eight backups, I don't know, it's just like, I'm free Monday, what about Monday? No, Tuesday? No, Wednesday? No, Thursday? Yes, okay. You just wore it down, all right? I mean, it's just like, hey, just don't take no for an answer. Be ready, right? And if you're a lady, don't go to the Bible college because you're getting the weak, watered down guys anyways, okay? Don't go to a church where there's watered down preaching, you know why? Because that's not the men you want to be around. You want men that are tough. You want men that can handle you. You want men that don't need a counselor because of the woman preacher or the woman professor. You want to be around men that are going to lead. You want to be around men that are not intimidated easily. You want to be around men that see your value. You want men that are going to take marriage serious. You want to go to a church where they're saying never divorce period. You want to go to a church where the preacher's getting up and screaming, you need to provide for your spouse. You need to go to a church where the guy's encouraging men to be strong and not weak and not soft. They're going to take marriage serious and that are going to be challenged. You want to go to a church like that because you want someone to tell your husband what to do. Not you. You need the pastor to tell your husband what to do. You need the word of God to tell your husband what to do. And if you're going to these weak, soft, watered down churches, you know what? They have to tell their husbands what to do because no one else will tell them what to do. You should be appreciative of a guy getting up and ripping on your husband every once in a while. Go to that church. You don't want to go to Bible college to distract some soul winning ladies. You want to go to a church that increases soul winning. You know, Philip the Evangelist had four daughters which did prophesy. Four virgins that prophesied. The Bible says in Philippians, Paul praised the women which labored with him in the gospel. Don't go to a church that zaps your zeal. Go to a church where you're pressured to dress godly. Not where it's like, well, women pants. Stupid. Go to a church where you're encouraged to be a wife. Not a pastor's wife. Men, if you go to talk to one of these girls and she says, like, I'm called to be a pastor's wife, run away. You do not want one of those. You want a wife. You do not want a pastor's wife. She will tell you what to do for the rest of your life. And the reason why you don't fight, you know why? I do think there are couples that don't fight. You want to know the couples that don't fight? The ones where the husband never tells his wife to do anything. That's the only way to not fight. There's only one way to not fight in marriage. It's because the husband never corrects his wife, period. The wife is the one constantly correcting her husband. That is the only way to not fight. And he's just holding it in and he's soft and weak and effeminate and not a good example. Don't go to a church where you're encouraged to be a career woman. Be encouraged to be a mother. I don't know, like one where it's an expecting ladies list constantly. Go to a church where you're not encouraged to be a busybody and a gossip, like the pastor's wife. Go to a church where you're encouraged to not gossip. Go to a church where if you go try to gossip to the pastor's wife, she'll give you a bad look. Go to a church where the pastor's wife is a good example of a soul winner, a mother, a wife, and serious. Let me tell you something about my wife. She is a soul winner. She is an excellent mother. She is the best wife. And let me tell you something, she is extremely serious. She is sober. She is not playing games. She doesn't like the women trauma. She doesn't like immaturity. She is not about that. And let me tell you something, that's the type of pastor's wife you want to see. Is one that's a soul winner, a wife, a mother, and serious. Not constantly trying to be a slander, busybody, online, having her ministry, and trying to gently lead all the ladies. You don't want that. You want her to be educated. And look, my wife is extremely educated. My wife is extremely smart. She knows her Bible. In fact, I had her take my pastor's test, and she did better than I would say like 80% of the men that take my test. That's sad. You should beat my wife, okay? But it's tough, because she knows her Bible. You know what? She knows a lot of the Bible. She's really smart. And she's not involving herself in other people's lives. You know, some people think that the pastor's wife should be like everyone's friend, but that's how you become a busybody in the gossip. You'll notice my wife's not like trying to get into your life. She doesn't care. She's about, you know what she's about? Soul winning. You know what she's about? Being my wife. You know what she's about? Being a mother. You know what she's about? Being serious. She doesn't need to be gal-paling with everybody. Don't expect to be friends with everybody and with every lady. Ladies need to be friends with their husbands, all right? Make women focus on their family. Isn't that what it says in Titus about the aged women that they're supposed to love their husband? And look, I'm not against women having friends, but let me tell you something. Friends is so far down on the list, it should not be your top priority. Top priorities, soul winning, wife, mother. Go to a church where that's emphasized. Don't go to a Bible college where you're emphasized to be a secretary, where you're emphasized to be a women's pastor or be a women's guidance counselor or the women's teacher or the women's professor or the women's... No, no, no. Be a wife and be a mother. We need more wives and we need more mothers. Have you seen what guys are in here? Someone needs to be available for these guys. And they need a lot of options apparently, okay? Man, we're low on options, okay, folks? You know, as a young woman, instead of worrying about a career and becoming a secretary, become a soul winner, want to be a wife, want to be a mother, be a help at home, help with kids, maybe babysit if it's the right opportunity, read, date. When you date, learn about the career the guy you're dating wants to have. You say, well, what if he doesn't have a career? Stop dating him. Say, oh, you're interested in me? What job do you want to have? I don't know. Bye. I'm not joking. I am dead serious. Guys that don't know what they want to be, don't figure it out in many cases. You want a guy that knows what he wants to do. You want a guy that's ready to take care of you because for the rest of your life, you're on his dime. What do you want to do? I don't know. That's a guy working at Subway when he's 40 years old. You don't want to be with that guy. Learn about the career he wants to have. Oh, it's a career where he's going to be traveling 90 percent of the time. Don't want that guy. It's a career where he's not going to focus on church or family. You don't want that guy. It's a career where he's going to surround himself around a lot of young women. You don't want that guy. Learn about the career of the guy that you're dating. And if he doesn't have a good career, bye. Date men you want to follow. Date men you want to follow. That they're a spiritual success. They're career minded. They're family minded. They want kids and they want you to have kids. Learn how to cook. Learn how to clean. Learn skills. Learn sewing. Learn gardening. Learn home improvement. There's a lot of things that you can do. Don't go to college and become a secretary. There's a lot of skills you can learn as a young woman. Go to Proverbs 5 and we'll finish. Sorry I went a little long on this, but look the youth is important and I don't want to just get up here and say Bible college bad. I want to tell you what's better. And I'm going to tell you this. Church is going to stay church here. We're church first and second, third, fourth and fifth. We're not interested in becoming a school. I'm not interested in babysitting your kids. I'm not interested in taking your youth's money. I'm not interested in trying to get everybody married. That's the conference. Show up at conferences. Look, you'd be surprised how many times just a random young single person would just show up at church and people miss out on it. I can't even count how many times a young single lady just shows up at church and none of the single guys talk to her. I'm sitting here like someone's bringing her to talk to me and I'm like I don't need to talk to her. Where's the single guys at? And they're all hiding over here talking about Dungeons and Dragons or something. They're over here in their little mini chess club or something. They're over here talking like, who would it be like if we talked to a girl? Don't be like that. Find out. Just go talk to her. And let me tell you something. The Bible colleges actually prevents people from getting married younger. A lot of people say we have to wait till we graduate to get married. Bad idea for some people. Not all. Some. Look, if you're already super interested and you're 17, why wait four years to get married? If you're 18, 19 and you're serious, you know, I don't I want to I want to tell my kids, like, let's wait another four years. That's weird. I don't think it's a good idea. Just get married. What does the Bible say in Proverbs 5 verse 15? Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of the youth. Me and my wife got married like virtually the week or something after we graduated college because we were waiting. We were waiting for college. Let me tell you something. I wish we got married sooner. We had started dating seriously when we were 17 and waited till we were 21. I think we should got married at 18 if I met the criteria that was on here. Now, if I wasn't focused on a job or career and I wasn't ready, then, yeah, I need to wait to get to those points. I need to get the approval of her father. And look, I asked both her mother and father for her hand in marriage. And they said yes. I bought her a really expensive engagement ring. Men. Hey, we actually planned our wedding. We actually paid for a wedding. We actually went on a honeymoon. You know what I hate? And I'm just going to be honest with you. This is my personal opinion. This is what I hate. When single guys come up to me and say, hey, we're getting married. And I say, oh, congratulations. When did you propose? Well, I didn't. Where's the ring? I don't know. Can you throw me a free wedding in a week? I think that's real special. That's real special. And look, I'm not against throwing free weddings. We don't need to waste twenty thousand dollars on a wedding unless you have it. If you have it, go for it. I don't care. But I'm just saying, like, make it a little. I mean, you're getting married to this woman for life. Right. Let's put a little bit of effort and energy into it. Let's actually make it seem like you really want to do it. You know, when you're actually asking the parents permission and you're actually buying a nice engagement ring and you actually proposed and made a serious public profession of love, your banner over her was love. And you're preparing to invest in this relationship. It shows a lot. And let me tell you some people that a lot into the getting married will probably put a lot in their marriage. People that just fly by night. And look, the young ladies that we're raising are high value ladies. They deserve better than that. They deserve better than that. And we need to take marriage seriously and we make it great again. Not just America, marriage. All right. And, you know, I'm just I'm not into Bible college. I think there's a lot of problems. I'm into us being a red hot, fiery church. So, again, if you're in Bible college, you can quit and join steadfast whenever you want. And if it's not steadfast, go to a better church. Go to the best church that you can possibly go to. If you're trying to become a pastor by paying for it, stop and get a real job. Don't think because let me tell you something. Being a pastor is a real job, but buying a pastorate is not a real job. That is not legit. You should be called into the ministry, not purchase your way into the ministry. And, you know, this church is not going to focus on school. It's going to focus on soul winning. That's our S that we're focused on. Soul winning, soul winning, soul winning. Let's go to prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for our youth. I pray that as a church we wouldn't zap their zeal. I pray as a church we wouldn't take their money. I pray as a church we wouldn't hold back information and knowledge from them. I pray as a church that we wouldn't try to put them down a bad career path. I pray as a church we wouldn't set them up for failure. I pray as a church we wouldn't encourage them to get birth control. I pray as a church we wouldn't try to water them down and take away their energy and take away their zeal. I pray that you would help us as a church to allow the youth to expend their energy into marriage, into careers, into a successful life. I pray that young people out there that are hearing this sermon or hearing this message, that they would start making wise decisions for their future. I pray that you would help our church to not compromise on the truth in any way. And I pray that you would help us to set a good example for the youth and that we could raise a great generation. Please help us as we encourage these youths. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, in closing, let's go to song number 327. Song number 327, Higher Ground. Pressing on the upward way. Song number 327, let's sing it out first. I'm pressing on the upward way. New hearts are made every day. I pray as I long for ground. Lord, when my feet are higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. I think my hand is stable then. A higher plane than higher ground. Lord, when my feet are higher ground. My heart has no desire to stay. Where doubts arise in business day. Though some may dwell where these abound. I pray my name is higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. I think my hand is stable then. A higher plane than higher ground. Lord, when my feet are higher ground. I want to live above the world. Build Satan's gardens and be our world. Lord, make us love the joyful sound. The song that sings our higher ground. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. I think my hand is stable then. My heart has no desire to stay. Where doubts arise in business day. Though some may dwell where these abound. My heart has no desire to stay. Build Satan's gardens and be our world. My heart has no desire to stay. Build Satan's gardens and be our world. Lord, lift me up and let me stand. I think my hand is stable then. A higher plane than higher ground. Lord, when my feet are higher ground.