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

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, everybody. Welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. Glad you could make it this Sunday night. Let's go ahead and take our seats, and we'll take out our hymnals. The 420. There's a song in the air. 420. There's a song in the air. And that's 420. Sing it all together. Oh, sing for them. Oh, in the light of that star and that's all far in the nations that Jesus is in the the song down from I shout love me and we say your name. Amen. We thank you again that we could be here tonight for you to help us to hear the message and apply it to our lives. Please bless Pastor Shelley that you would fill in with your Holy Spirit so we could teach us your word here. And we again worship you this Christmas time. We celebrate the birth of your son. Thank you for sending him here, Lord, so we could be redeemed. We just love you and praise you for all that you do. Just want to ask these things in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Next is going to be four hundred and thirty. Two pages over. While shepherds watch their flocks. Call number four hundred and thirty. While shepherds watch their flocks by eye. All seated on the ground. The angel of the Lord came down. When glory shone around. When glory shone around. Fear not, said He, for mighty is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is is Is the Bible pretty clear here? Isn't this really similar to what we already read? Ignore all this junk. And notice it's a strife. It's always a fight. It's a fight about the Bible and whatever. Verse 10, a man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition rejects, knowing that he that is such a subverted in sin as being condemned of himself. So notice once you realize this guy is a heretic, you should walk away from them. You should have nothing to do with them. You should reject them. Not worry about them. Not try to rescue the heretic either. Just have nothing to do with them. Avoid this person. And you can even tell that there's heresy in a church if there is division. I want to prove one more thing. Go to 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11. I know I'm kind of dancing around in the scriptures here for a second, but I want to prove a few points. When it comes to recovering yourself from the snare of the devil, you have to realize that the devil is not going to just walk up to you and be like, here's a trap. Put your foot in it. And any trap, the way that they trap people is they put something, they put a shiny object in it. If you want to trap squirrels, you put nuts and acorns in it. If you want to trap a mouse, you put what? Cheese. Or my dad would put peanut butter. Who's ever done the peanut butter? Yeah, yeah. You put some peanut butter on the mouse trap and then it comes and it's like, and it kills it. But here's the thing. You're not going to really catch a lot of rats and stuff like that if you put no peanut butter on the trap. You've got to put the peanut butter. And you think the devil's the same way. The devil's going to slather up a whole bunch of peanut butter on a trap. He's going to put some cheese. He's going to put some acorns on there for you. And so you're going to be like, oh, but I like the peanut butter. It's like, of course you like the peanut butter. That's the whole point of the peanut butter is to try and track you to then get into the trap and then get bit. And then get hurt by the trap. So that's what happens with false doctrine. They try to appeal to you in something that you like and suck you in on the things that you think are cool and nice and then they just snap you. And you didn't even know what was going on. It was too late. You already got sunk in. Now, look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and look at verse 17. Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not that you come together, not for the better, but for the worse. First of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there'd be divisions among you and I partly believe it, for there must be also heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. So notice, he says look, if there's a division in your church, I'll tell you exactly why. Heresy. Just false doctrine. It causes problems in a church. You can pretty much just go hand in glove, heresy and division. Also, there's going to be pride in that scenario, in that little equation that you have there. So it's important to just eliminate heresy, eliminate false doctrine, get it out of the church, squash it like the bug that it is. But you know where a lot of people will bring this heresy in is from conservative media. I don't know, like Tucker Carlson, like Sean Hannity. Here's one. How about Alex Jones? But here's the thing. Didn't the Bible already tell us a man that is an heretic out of the first and second ammunition? Reject? Well, let's see some things, let's hear some things that Alex Jones said. Alright? Just sit back for a moment, okay? Let's take a journey to info wars, right? What's the real info wars? It's the Bible, my friend. Not whatever junk he's selling. Here's what Alex Jones said. We live in an amazing space-time continuum and we're on this planet and Einstein's physics show it. Max Planck's physics show it all. There's at least 12 dimensions. Now that we're all top scientists and billionaires are coming out and saying it's a false hologram it's artificial. So according to Alex Jones, we live in an artificial 12-dimensional space-time continuum. Sounds brilliant, okay? Not only that, he said this. Now there's like this sub-transmission zone below the third dimension that's just turned over the most horrible things is what it resonates to and it's trying to get up into the third dimension. That's just a basic level of consciousness to launch into the next levels. And our species is already way up into the fifth, sixth dimension consciously, our best people. But there's this big war trying to like basically destroy humanity because humanity has free will and there's a decision to which level we want to go to. We have free will so evil's allowed to come and contend and not just good. So, you know, instead of fighting over the word of God and the truth of scripture, Alex Jones says that there's this evil force that's trying to stop us from getting to the fifth and sixth dimension. If you could just get into the fifth dimension, man. They're trying to hold us back. We're just in the third, you know, our brilliant people. Elon Musk is in like the sixth dimension, bro. We need to get and figure out what's going on with Musk, you know. Sounds like he smokes a lot of marijuana is what I would put, I would postulate. And that's not, that's like a second dimension. You're going downhill when you do that. Okay, you're not going uphill. He says the truth is our bodies, this is a fact, are a communal hive organism of all of our ancestors and all of their race memories but not in just some compressed epigenetic system. It's beyond that. It's an electrochemical antenna. A provenness. That connects to higher and lower dimensions. So our body suit, because our predecessors wouldn't put us in a position without giving us a body suit, that is them, our families are loving us, they're holding us. They're wrapped all around us. Their strength, their will, this sounds like the Native Americans or something. Their will, their bad, their good, their sins, the good things they did, the battles they won, the battles they lost, the woman they loved, the man they loved, it's all in us. All these people, it's why we're able to look into so many things and have so many different experiences. Apparently just everything that's ever happened is touching you and around you and in you and whatever. We're a communal hive organism. He said this, humans are basically really powerful creatures that can live right close to suns. They're highly radioactive. Nothing else can live this close with very short lives. Because we're like a hive organism that actually lives second to second in the space-time continuum. We transmit our data up to be able to live next to like these stargate jump gates that are our suns. So if you just enter into the sun, oh I wonder if there was ever like a weird cult where they're trying to like enter into the third dimension through the sun or whatever, drink the Kool-Aid. This is bizarre my friend. So because we live so close to the suns, we only have like milliseconds to be alive. We're actually a hive organism that keeps transmitting up to the next species in our hierarchical system and then down below us. So we're alive right now in this continuum and we're trying to progress and make things better and the elites are trying to make sure that we don't dial into that incredible knowledge we've got as a species. Basically die as a species. So that we're not competitors on the next level as the Bible says of the inter-dimensional plane. So the Bible teaches about an inter-dimensional plane that we're supposed to enter into. Chapter and verse Alex. Oh well that's just fun stuff. He's talking about the Bible. And look anybody that's listening to Alex, he brings up Jesus and God and faith and whatever. You know what, he has a false gospel. And he does not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. He does not believe salvation by faith. But beyond that, he believes so many weird things. And in fact, if you know anything about cults, you know what this just sounded like? Scientology is exactly where you got these photons or pha-tons or whatever and they're all surrounding you and you have to have these therapy sessions to get rid of them and all this nonsense. It sounds like the stupid junk that he's into. Look, the devil just repackages the same crap over and over again and tries to confuse people and drag people into all kinds of nonsense and then you have it sounds like evolution a little bit. You know we're evolving into these different dimensions and going up this hierarchical plane and you know Bill Gates is trying to keep us out you know, oh man, George Soros is trying to keep us up. No. Those people are just pawns of the devil. And the devil is just leading all these people astray and it's really just the snare of the devil my friend. Heresy is the snare of the devil and they're just trying to destroy you. And that's why they have all these doomsday predictions and all these doomsday doom and gloom stuff because they just want to motivate you through fear. No one would, anybody that ever heard this would not care at all. The only reason they care is they feel like this could be my lost broadcast and you know we're gonna die and it's all over and you better buy now and get the information now and blah blah blah. And they just try to use fear and scare tactics to get people on their program, to listen and they attract you with all the peanut butter. Like, oh, liberals are weird. You're just like, yeah, I like that. You know, oh man you know Brian Stelter's an idiot. He is an idiot. You know, CNN's propaganda it is propaganda. But then they just trap you with all this junk on top of it. And notice that the Bible didn't say, hey let's go listen to as much of this as we can and fill ourselves with this junk as much as we can. It says to avoid it. It says to shun it and it says to have nothing to do with it. Why would I want to just wrap my whole ministry around Alex Jones and what he's doing. When the Bible's telling me to literally have nothing to do with him. Literally to not want to think about it or talk about it. He's a heretic. He's an unsaved person and look, I'm not saying that he's the worst person on the planet, okay. Not like Biden or something. He's not like Michael Obama or whatever. But at the end of the day, he's still a heretic and I should have nothing to do with that. And when it comes to New Year's resolutions, here's one. How about you make a recovering resolution and say I'm not going to listen to heretics. It doesn't matter how much of the peanut butter they slather on it. It doesn't matter how much cheese they offer me. It doesn't matter how much of this junk I'm just not going to listen to it anymore. I'm just going to turn it off and once I realize these people are heretics and losers and freaks and weirdos. Because you know what? Even if you don't fall for all that junk, something that he says you'll fall for. He'll seep in something that you're not really, you'll get confused about or you won't understand. And look, it happens all the time. These people become like these truthers or whatever and then they come up to me and they ask me all these weird questions. Like, well, you think the earth is flat? No. Where'd you find, where'd you get that junk? You know, they get on these weird fad diets and fad medical things like, you know, instead of going to the doctor when you have a heart attack, just put cayenne pepper under your tongue or something. It's just like, what? You know, and they're like, hey, you don't even need to eat food anymore. Just eat these vitamins, you know. Or just eat these, you know, it's like, no. Milk, good. Okay. Steak, good. Bread, good. Honey, good. I'm going to stick with what the Bible teaches. So, even though they may not fall for like the 12th dimension, okay, they fall for other junk, my friend. And I did take this to an extremity, but I'm trying to help you realize that there's a lot less stuff that people kind of start thinking like, oh, maybe, kind of, that kind of makes sense. No. Reject all of it. You got to think about the source and the trigger of heresy. Okay. And if it's coming from a bad source or it's going to trigger you to go down a dark road, you need to just avoid it and have nothing to do with it. Go back to 2 Timothy chapter number 2 for now and I just have a few more verses and I want to prove two more things. That was the majority of my sermon, okay. But, when it comes to recovering resolutions, here's a really good one. If you've been listening to heretics, stop. And make some New Year's resolutions that say, you know what, I'm going to avoid people that just don't believe the Bible. You know, and when someone's going to teach me a weird false doctrine, I'm just going to say, I'm not interested in that video. I'm not interested in listening to see what the weird junk is that everybody has out there for me. No, I want to just stick with the things that I know that are true already. Now, here's the second thing that you need to do when it comes to recovering yourself, is recover yourself from iniquity. Look what it says in verse number 19. Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having the seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameeth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purges himself from these, he should be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work. So he's trying to tell the pastor, he's saying, look, or anybody that wants to be the man of God, don't listen to heresy, don't listen to the false doctrine. Also, you need to get, you know, away from iniquity. You need to get away from sin, because both these things destroy Christianity. Heresy and sin will destroy you, derail you, get you off of serving the God. And look, will a little heresy just, you know, wreck the ship? Maybe not. Will a little sin wreck the ship? No, but you're playing with dangerous things here that they can lead you down to a road of complete and utter destruction. That's why it's important to depart from iniquity. That's why it's important to get sin out of your life. And you know what, we probably all can sit here and make a list of some sins we committed in 2021 that we're not proud of. That we don't like. And so you have to think about, okay, what is the source of that and what is the trigger for that? Like, what is triggering me to make that bad decision? You know, what's that trigger that's causing me to hear heresy? Infowars, okay, well then just don't go to that site. What's triggering you to go get drunk? Going to the bar? Stop going to the bar! What's triggering you to drink alcohol? Buying it? Stop buying it! You know, what's triggering you to go and do drugs? Hang out with your buddy at work? Stop hanging out with your buddy at work, right? You have to start thinking about, hey, why did I make that mistake? Why did I make that problem? Realize it could cause even worse problems in the future and nip it in the bud. Say, you know what, I want to cover myself from the snare of sin, of iniquity, of this issue. You know, someone commits fornication and they say, well, I'm alone with the person that I really like that I'm not married to. That's probably going to be a failure. Don't put yourself alone with someone that you like, right? You don't want to put yourself in bad situations and bad places where you're going to basically fall into this iniquity. It's going to cause you to have what? Dishonor. Some to honor, some to dishonor. What's the dishonor? Meaning, you're like a lot when we read about you and it's like, oh, the guy that knocked up his two daughters. Way to go. I mean, you're a vessel under what? Dishonor. We're all going to be examples. Some good examples, some bad examples, okay? And at the end of the day, you want to be a good example. You say, well, how am I a good example, Pastor Shelley? You don't listen to heresy, number one, and you depart from iniquity, number two. And you know what? Nobody is going to do it just willy-nilly. You need to set up boundaries in your life. You need to identify the problems you've already had. Identify areas where you failed and say, you know what, I'm going to build a fence up. I'm going to build a bulwark up for that and I'm not going to allow myself to go down that road in 2022, okay? Now, go over to Titus 2, just to the right. Titus chapter 2, look at verse 11. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify in himself a peculiar people zealous of good work. Notice what God wants for us. God wants us to constantly be redeemed, purged, sanctified, set apart, made holy in our lives. And you know what? Living the Christian life, you're never going to go from being a sinful person, like a really sinful person, to just like goody-two-shoes overnight, okay? Especially if you've been in the world for a long time or you've made a lot of mistakes. You know what? Sometimes it's a process. That's what's called sanctification. Sanctification is a process where you slowly get cleaned up over time. And you know what? When we reach people and we're bringing new people into the church or people haven't been to church or people have been backslidden, we should anticipate they're not perfect. And they may need some grace and they may need some time to help get sanctified and clean things up and try to right some of their wrongs. And when we fall, when we backslide, you know, there's new mercies every morning is what the Bible teaches. And a just man falls seven times and rises up again. You know, the Bible doesn't say a just man never falls. It says he falls seven times. That's a lot. And when you think about Romans chapter number seven, the Apostle Paul is saying he does that which he hates. Now I hate sin. The new man inside of me hates sin. The old man loves it, okay? But the new man inside of me hates sin. He abhors it. He doesn't want to allow it. But let me just tell you something. Sometimes the old man wins in my life. And you know, it's frustrating. And you know what? The old man is going to win in your life sometimes. But instead of just constantly just making the same mistake over and over and over again, you know, that's called insanity, okay? What you're supposed to do is you're supposed to identify the triggers and the sources of that mistake and say, you know, I don't want to keep making that mistake and try to set new goals for yourself of how to avoid that sin, of how to not go down that road, of how to avoid certain situations or things and building up some kind of a wall and trying to protect yourself from iniquity. We want to depart from it. We want to work on that on a regular basis so that we can be a successful Christian our whole lives. Not just tomorrow, our whole lives, okay? And a little bit of sin could end up destroying your entire life. Now I like, go if you would to Luke chapter 22 for just one moment. I want to go one more place on this point. And then I want to go to my last point. But when making New Year's resolutions, and you know, you don't have to, but I think that it's a good idea. I like it. Make some goals. Because you're never going to get anywhere if you never make a goal to go anywhere. Imagine getting in your car and your wife says, where are you going? You say, I don't know. And you just start driving. Are you ever going to get there? No. You have to say like, I want to go here, right? And then you drive to that destination. Now there's a lot of ways to get there potentially. You want to go the shortest path possible. But at the end of the day, you know what, if you want to get somewhere, you have to decide to go there first. And in your life, if you want to get somewhere or if you want to eliminate something that's hurting you, you have to make some goals about it. You have to make some plans in order to arrive there. Luke 22, look at verse 61. Let's get all the way down. 61. And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to them before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Now this is a low moment for Peter, okay? That's a pretty bad sin is to deny the Lord Jesus Christ. Just to be like, I don't even know the guy, okay? And you know what, he wept bitterly over that sin. But you know what Peter did? He got it right. Because I don't see Peter ever denying Christ ever again. In fact, under the threat of death, standing before the chief priests and everyone, they're like, we ought to obey God rather than men. You're not going to stop us from preaching in the name of Jesus. That's a pretty big turnaround. From going from just a little girl asking if you know him and he's like, I know not the man, you know? To the fact that you're going to stand before every one of those Jews knowing they've already killed Jesus, knowing that they hate your guts, knowing that they want to rip you apart, and saying like, we're never going to stop preaching in the name of Jesus, you know? You're not going to stop us from preaching. That tells me that we too could have low points. And so we have to work on that and strive on improving our lives and getting better so that we can be meat for the master's use. We can be prepared unto every good work. And you know what, God's going to use those that clean themselves up. Peter said when he met the Lord, Lord, depart from me for I'm a sinful man. You know, when the Lord met Peter, Peter didn't say like, pretty obvious you picked me. I mean, I figured. I was assuming you would come by and get me first, right? No, no, no, no. He literally, he said like, don't pick someone else. Like, depart from, get away. Like, I'm too sinful for you to use me. Maybe, but then just clean yourself up, right? Start making changes in your life and getting to a point where God can use you. Start serving the Lord and start departing from iniquity so that God can use you. You know what, God uses sinners. In fact, the Apostle Paul said he was chief of sinners. And guess who he used the most? The Apostle Paul, because he really cleaned himself up. Really got his doctrine right, didn't he? Now go back to one more verse here in 2 Timothy chapter 2. And here's the last point I'm going to make when it comes to recovering Christians is lusts. Lust is another thing that will destroy you when it comes to serving God. And lust, you know, if you really understand the word, it just means simply desire, okay? Lust, a lot of times has a very negative connotation, and it typically is. But it simply just means desire. And in fact, the Bible has positive mentions of the word lust when it's talking about you sell your tithe and then you take the money and you come back and you convert it back into whatever goods you want. He says, like, whatever thy soul lusteth after. It's just meaning, like, whatever you desire. Okay, whatever you want. But most of the time, the things that we desire are sinful. That's why it's usually coupled with the idea of it being a negative word or a sinful word, because oftentimes people are lusting after something that they shouldn't be lusting after, right? Now, in verse number 22, the Bible says, Flee also youthful lusts that follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. So we have three elements here. In order to recover yourself from the snare of the devil, you want to avoid, what, heresy? You want to avoid iniquity, depart from iniquity, and you also want to flee youthful lusts. And when you do such things, it's going to help enable you to not get trapped by the devil, and then us in meekness want to approach other Christians and try to help them to recover themselves out of the snare of the devil there. You know, the Bible says in 1 Timothy chapter 6, you might not even be able to turn there, but look at verse number 8, the Bible says, In having food and raiment, let us be there with content. They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men into destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some covet it after, they have erred from the faith, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows. Notice another place in Scripture, another one just saying, look, there's a snare out there, it's called the love of money. Pride will destroy you, sin will destroy you, and the love of money will just really destroy people. This is kind of the trinity of evil that the devil's trying to throw at people and try to destroy Christians. He'll destroy you through false doctrine, he'll destroy you through sinful habits, and he'll destroy you by dangling things that you want. Oh, that big house, all that money, all that fame, what are the things it is that you desire that you shouldn't really have a desire for? Or a woman that you shouldn't have a desire for? And all kinds of things that you shouldn't even be feasting your eyes on, it destroys people. Luke chapter number 8, the parable of the sower, talks about those, the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches, entering in, choke the word, lest you become fruitful. And so we can't think that the devil isn't going to try and destroy us, we have to realize that he could do that. Look at 2 Timothy chapter 4, just flip the page and look at verse 10. For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. So notice, what was Demas' downfall? His lust for the world. He just loved the world. He just loved all the things that the world has to offer, rather than serving God. And so he just forsook Christianity. You know what's going to stop people from serving God? The lusts of this world. The deceitfulness of riches. The cares of this life. They come and they enter in and they choke the word and they stop soul winners from being fruitful. Stop Christians from producing fruit in this world. And you know what? You can pretty much almost chalk it up. Somebody that quits church, that was in church, it's one of these three reasons. Pretty much, you find someone that's not, that was going to a good church for a while and others not going to church, I guarantee it's pretty much either they got involved in heresy, their old sinful habits creeped up, or just some lust of the world that they got attracted to just threw them out. And I've seen it, I've seen people that were soul winners, good soul winners, good Christians, just the love of money bug just got in there. They started their own business and they started making money. I mean, talking about, like, lots of money. And it wasn't like the devil wasn't putting lots of peanut butter. I mean, he was putting lots, I mean, he's just slathering the thing with peanut butter. He's like, I'll give you a whole jar of peanut butter. I mean, I'll give you a bucket of peanut butter. But the problem is, is the trap that's around the peanut butter. It's a deceit. It's a lie. And you know what? You go and chase money at the end of your life, you'll only have it full of regret and woe and sorrow. Whereas having no money and having served God, you'll have joy, peace, and you'll be looking for that crown of righteousness that's there for you in heaven. So, we're here at the end of the year and there's not another service, Sunday service before we end up the year. So, I just I always like to do this for myself and I think it's a good exercise. But if you're going to make a New Year's resolution or you're going to think about things that you could try to have goals for, I often just try to really think about where was I in 2020 at this time, okay? Like, what was I like in 2020? And then I look at myself now and I say did I get better, worse, or the same? And I try to look at all the categories of my life. I try to say, okay, job, right? How am I doing on my job? Is my job better, worse, or the same than what it was 12 months ago, right? How about my church attendance? Was my church attendance better, the worse, or same? How about my money? My money better, worse, the same? How about my weight and strength? You know, as a man, it's important to be strong and you got to look at these things and say like, am I improving in my body or declining in my body? And obviously age gets us all, okay, a little bit. But I'm just saying, you know, you should kind of look at these things and measure yourself. How about your house? Your housing situation? How about your Bible reading? And I'm not saying like how many times, I'm saying like your daily Bible reading. Are you reading the Bible daily as much less the same as you were a year ago? How about your Bible memorization? Are you memorizing scripture? Are you working on the word of God? How about your involvement in church? Is your involvement in church more or less the same? How about your family? Is your family relationships? How about the number of your family? Is that more or less the same? Now you got to think about these things. How about your kid's education? Kid's education, improving, going lower. How about your soul winning? Are you doing more soul winning? Is your soul winning getting better? Are you improving as a soul winner? Are you getting worse as a soul winner? How about your marriage? You know, it's supposed to be sweeter as the years go by. You know, I believe that marriage, successful marriage is always going to get better every single year. You know, and so if I look at my marriage and I'm thinking like, wow, I wish we could go back, then I need to make some kind of improvement in my life, in my marriage, in my relationship, and try to do something to make that better. Now, I just threw out a bunch of random stuff, okay? You probably know which areas that you need to work on more than anybody. Alright? But if there's an area, let's just pick one, okay? Bible reading. Let's just say you're like, that one stung a little bit, okay? Well, then you've got to think about this. How many times do I want to read the Bible in a year? You know? And then you start making goals to actually achieve that. Or you start thinking like, I made a goal to read the Bible once this year, but I never did. Well, why? Well, every time I woke up, I was late for work. And so then I would just jump in the shower and go and then it was late at the night and I didn't want to read and then I wouldn't read. And I woke up the next day late. And then you're like, okay, well, why were you late getting up? Well, because I stayed up late. Well, why did you stay up late? Because I was watching Infowars. So now, you can kill two birds with one stone. You say, well, now I'm going to go to bed early, knock out the heresy, and then I can wake up in the morning and read the Bible. And believe less in the 12th dimension and believe in the 12, you know, tribes or, you know, the 12 layers of the new heaven and earth, okay? There's your 12 layers, all right? But it's important that you try to think about, what did I do? You know, you got a few days. Think about the areas that you feel like you failed in. You say, my marriage isn't going the way I want. Okay, well, then I say, or I ask you, what did you do for your marriage last year? Why did you do this last year to work on your marriage? And you say, well, I married them. That's not enough, okay? Here's some ideas. How about saying, you know what, this year we're going to take a date night every week. Friday night is going to be our date night, or Saturday night is going to be our date night. Okay? I'm going to increase the number of date nights. We're going to sit at home and we're going to read the Bible together at night for 15 minutes instead of watching Alex Jones, okay? I'm just hitting that horse, I'm just trying to kick that dead horse, all right? I mean, you got to think about, okay, I'm going to buy her flowers once a month. How many times did you buy her flowers? How many times did you take her on a date? How many times, you know, hey, I'm going to tell her that she looks pretty, you know, more regularly, right? Or, here's something, a tip that I can give you. To try and help my wife and our relationship, I said, you know what, on Tuesdays we're going to go to lunch together. So, for work, I'll just make work, you know, work out and I'll just take a long lunch on Tuesdays and we'll just go have lunch on Tuesdays. A nice little break in the week and we'll just have that time, makes her feel a little bit more special, we can be closer to one another, you know, we'll read the Bible together, I'll take her out on dates, I'll do whatever. You got to look at the areas of your life and say, where am I failing, why am I failing, how can I improve? And we need to make sure that we also create resolutions that are not just only like thinking positive but also thinking about the failures we had, the controversies we listened to, the iniquities we got wrapped up in or failed at, or the lust that we had that were just not really appropriate and try to replace them, try to put boundaries in our lives and try to think about how to improve ourselves. And you know what, you're never going to get anywhere in your life on accident. You know, if you want to have big muscles, you got to work out all the time. You want to read the Bible, you got to just open it every single day for a long period of time and just read scores of scripture, scores of chapters day after day after day, you know. If you just kind of every once in a while randomly open the Bible, you'll never read the whole thing. You know, how do I memorize a chapter? One verse at a time. You know, just one phrase at a time often. It's hard to even memorize a whole verse by itself, but you know unless it's Jesus wept or something. But I mean, you got to sit there and you just got to plug away, make goals, work on your goals, and realize, you know what, every year when I do this and I kind of look at the goals I had, I realize I failed in a lot of ways. That's how I feel. I kind of look at them and I'm just like, man. But then I say I succeeded in some ways, okay. But it's important to kind of try to evaluate yourself and push yourself to be the best version of yourself. And that we don't fall victim of the snare of the devil, we don't allow ourselves to get destroyed, but we're constantly trying to improve and getting better. Because if you employ these tactics over a long period of time, over a decade over decades, you will notice major differences. You'll say, you'll look at yourself and you'll say like, wow, I wasn't going to church, now I'm going to church three times a week. I wasn't going soul winning, now I'm getting people saved every single week. I didn't know any Bible, I can quote whole chapters of the Bible now. You know, my marriage is on the rocks, now it's greater than ever, she's my best friend. And we've never, I've never had this much joy, I've never had this much fun in my life. I had zero kids, now I have a thousand, you know. Like whatever it is, if you employ God's tactics, it's just going to get better and better and better. If you don't have any goals, you're just going to get worse and worse and worse. If you don't identify the problems in your life, it's just going to, you're going to fall into all kinds of traps that you never even wanted to fall in. You've got to kind of build some boundaries and create some recovering resolutions as well. Alright, let's close in prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father for the word of God, thank you for giving us an opportunity to serve you. Thank you for 2021. Obviously there's always challenges with every year, but we always have an opportunity to improve ourselves and to get better and draw closer to you. And whatever areas that we may have failed in or areas that we want to try and improve in, I pray that you would just motivate us and strengthen us and give us the wisdom to see how we can improve and to try and make goals and try to motivate ourselves to constantly get better and to not allow ourselves to just be apathetic and just fall into all the traps and the snares the devil wants us to fall into. But rather we would guard ourselves and protect ourselves through the scripture and through the wisdom of God's word that we would not only avoid traps but also gain wisdom and knowledge and be a successful servant of the Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. With that, let's go ahead and sing one more song. You should have these handouts for O Holy Night. If you don't have one, raise up your hand and we'll try to get some ushers to bring one to you. If not, make sure you try to share with your neighbor. We'll give it a second so we can get some more handouts. We want to hear you all sing. It's congregational, right? Alright, let's go ahead and sing O Holy Night. O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night O Holy Night oh oh oh Oh oh oh Amen gracing your you you you