[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's Word. All right, well, tonight is Q&A night, first Sunday night of the month, and so we're going to have a little bit of questions here.
[0:17] And since I didn't know how many of you asked, I have two messages ready to preach. So we're going to click right on to about 7 o'clock, not a problem, amen? So if you have, I think they said there are 10 questions.
[0:30] Two of them might be a tad on the silly order. I never know what that means. But if you'll throw those questions up, we'll see if we can answer a couple of them before we sing our next song. From Robert, may I take you out for a steak dinner?
[0:43] Sure, you never have. That would be a good start. You always talk about taking me out. You never do. And so since I bought you several, I think it is your turn. Next question. Do what?
[0:55] It doesn't say that. Go back to that question. Tonight. Whoa. Let's get Joe Gibby's permission. If Joe Gibby will give you permission, I'll go.
[1:05] So you talk with Joe tonight and see what Joe will do. All right. I didn't catch that tonight part. I do like that idea. Next question, please, if you would. If you don't know, Joe Gibby put me on an all-vegetable diet.
[1:17] And so Joe's trying to get me to look as skinny as he does. Lord, help me if I do that. But anyway, all right. Do I see the new baby here, Trent?
[1:28] You want to do better than that and bring the new baby? Maybe you and your wifey can walk up here to the front and introduce the new staff member. The church is always growing and we grow by having the staff have babies, I guess.
[1:44] She must be locked in their stream. So if they'll come quickly, I won't answer that question. If they won't come quickly, I will start answering questions.
[1:54] There they go. They're getting her out. Now, this is the newest Cornwell. And so y'all come on up and I'll let you say a word.
[2:06] They have, you know, Thatcher and Tinsley are their children. And now they have Selah. Selah. You got to say it right. Did I get it right? Whoa, I've been practicing.
[2:17] Selah. Come on over here, Trent. You can say whatever you would like. I say the word, she holds the baby. It's worked out pretty good for us.
[2:28] Yeah, this is our daughter, Selah Elizabeth. And she gets a middle name from my wonderful mother-in-law. Hope she's watching tonight. And here's that. But she was born. She's supposed to be at church.
[2:39] Yeah, she's supposed to be at church. That's true. That helps us as a pastor's wife when she goes. Selah was born on Monday morning. And we praise the Lord for a healthy child that we get to raise in this church.
[2:51] And appreciate your love that you've shown. People visiting and calling. And it's a real gift. We understand that it's a gift for God. And my wife told me, she gave me, nine months ago, she gave me a little placard that said, As arrows in the hand of a mighty man.
[3:05] And I said, I really appreciate this. And she said, well, there's three arrows on it. And I'm like, yeah, there are three arrows on it. That's really neat. I just had no idea. Not that bright. But we really do see this as another arrow that gets to be shaped inside of this church to make a difference in this world.
[3:22] And I'm really excited to have another child, a gift from God, but even more excited to get the razor among all of you as her spiritual aunts and uncles in the Lord. All right. Now you give a round of applause to Selah.
[3:34] Don't wake her up. Now, that was a quiet clap. Y'all did good. All right. He thought that the three arrows were the Trinity. Just you have to understand how spiritual Trent is.
[3:46] When he saw those three arrows, he said, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That's what he was thinking. All right. Let's see if we can work our way through some serious questions. If we got some. I saw one about me being discouraged.
[3:56] How do you personally deal with discouragement? Frequently and always not so well. I think that every one of us needs to realize that there's this big battle that goes on in our lives.
[4:14] And so I'm going to give you two verses that you can look at with me. Ephesians chapter 6, if you would. And let's see. I'll make sure I get the right verse. Ephesians chapter 6.
[4:26] And go down to verse 16. Ephesians 6.16. If you would. After we show the verses, you can come back to the question. So the old man doesn't forget what the question is. But Ephesians 6.16.
[4:38] The Bible says, above all, taking the shield of faith with you should be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked. So I'll get you to look this way in a second. Let me just tell you a few things about us. Do you know who you are?
[4:49] Do you know who you are? Do you know who we are? We are children of the great God of heaven. We have been saved by his grace. He doesn't remember our sins or our failures.
[5:03] He has separated them as far as the east is from the west. He has made us new creatures. And all things are old. The old things are passed away. Behold, all things are made new.
[5:15] So God never thinks about you or me and our failures. He never thinks, he never thinks, Austin, not that great a preacher. Austin gets angry.
[5:26] Austin or whatever. He never thinks that. He thinks, Austin, my son. Austin, the one I love. Austin, the one I saved. Austin, the one I saved. Austin, the two the agua sent him.
[5:53] purpose lift the shield and remember because it is very easy for me to think of everything wrong with me there are 155 people at church this morning that's only about 30 or 40 short of last week so when i looked down and saw that email after church i was like okay that's it god left me the church left me shoot me i'm not worth killing i'm not a good pastor where were all of um and so i could get mad at you or i got mad at me and so and so then i went into this little uh disappointment discouraged depressed junk this time i dealt with it in about five minutes i was real proud of myself i dealt with it about five minutes but there's a thousand things that go on it's a it's about your appearance it's about your financial situation it's about your health it's about uh your family situation it's about people you work with and a ton of things come against all of us all the time and and the devil likes to make it into something that it's not supposed to be so the devil turns it into something like you know why you have these problems is god left you well the truth is you have these problems because people have these problems such as it's common to man the bible says so we every temptation is common to man and we are all of us are dealing with the same junk everybody else deals with but because we're so in love with god we're kind of like a jealous woman scared he's not loving us anymore we're scared he's not caring for us but we have his word on that so we are to lift the shield of faith because satan is throwing the fiery darts at us he makes us feel like we're nothing it can be not accepting how he made me i've had big problems with that i've had big problems i was sitting at the table with my girlfriend her name was kathy and i was probably 16 or 17 and i thought she was like the greatest girl on the planet and i hadn't met betty yet of course or that would have never been true but i can remember sitting there we were talking and she was looking longingly deeply into my eyes and she went oh and i said uh what and she said your eyes aren't connected i said what do you mean she said it looks like your eyes are going to fall out of your head they're not in there right well i've never noticed that i mean i looked at me all the time but i didn't know that so i go to the bathroom i look in the mirror and i'm like they're not now all of you are going to be gonna i can see all of you want to all of you want to talk to me tonight don't you you're going to be going hey alston do this also let's see and so you start thinking i can remember walking across the plaza the san marino of amir afluores and uh my dad all the time i was a kid my dad had this really funny walk he walked basically like a penguin he had short legs and a long body when he walked he swung himself from side to side as he walked and i used to think man that's a ridiculous walk nobody walks like daddy but me and so we were in peru and this peruvian of all people i walked up to him he said you know you got the funniest walk i said what do you mean he said well you got this big long body you got these little big legs and you kind of swing yourself while you're walking i was like i'm gonna kill you right here i'm gonna drop you i'll just tell them terrorists did it amen and uh so uh all this junk comes at us and it's easy uh if my sunday school class doesn't do well if uh if uh my marriage is having some problems i'm gonna i'm gonna sometimes accept bad thoughts and what are the bad thoughts well the bad thoughts are stupid things like god doesn't love me uh everybody's done me wrong we do the same thing by the way with stuff that happened to us 25 years ago some of us are dealing with somebody who abused us as a child somebody did something wrong to us as a child and it's been forever but we're still hung up in what happened back then when all of that is behind us and i'm a new creature and old things are passed away and
[9:54] behold all things have become new one person told me somebody somebody did somebody did abuse this person and they told me i feel dirty about it well you didn't do anything and it happened a long time ago and you're a new creature and so we went over this and this is my other verse philippians 4 8 i believe philippians 4 8 was especially written for us it's especially written for every christian because i've got to control my mind i've got to control my mind so philippians 4 8 says finally brethren whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely of good report if there be any virtue there be any praise think on these things so i have to control the way i think i have to control the way i think my child dies why did god do that to me because my child died um a preacher and man so many of us have been hurt by preachers and i'm so sorry and i've been as bad at hurting people as anybody but we're like that like that gun and we're still hanging on to we got this root of bitterness i think that's hebrews 12 15 can you check that out for me there tiny tim uh uh uh check out hebrews 12 15 i'm not sure i'm right on that but uh so we have uh so we have this uh we have all these things in our heart we have all this junk going on in us and it causes us to think bad thoughts and it causes us to spiral down down down and so uh uh i can tell you that in every time you are always going to win you are all you're promised to win greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world greater is he that's in you that's in the world than that is in the world god's going to work in your life look at that verse hebrews 12 15 says looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of god lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled and sometimes you let your bitterness affect everybody and so you're mad so how do i deal with it usually i start off pouting that's how austin deals with it'll happen and betty will know betty will say what's wrong with you nothing and she'll say well something's going on i know there's nothing going on somebody do something no and uh so she knows best thing to do is get out of the way leave me alone because i'm in a mood because i'm on my little downhill trail and i'm feeling bad and feeling guilty about junk or whatever's going on in my life i'm mad at people you know you want to blame everybody don't you i do too i want to blame everybody i want to blame i want to i want to blame you i want to blame my neighbor i want to blame the president i want to bring i want i just want to be vindictive like so many christians are that's not what i'm supposed to do i'm supposed to think on truth i'm supposed to think on truth i'm supposed to find gospel truth and think on that i'm supposed to think on go back to philippians 4 8 tim uh i'm supposed to find something like what's true what's a good report what's just what's honest and i'm supposed to think about those things that's what's supposed to be in my mind in the word there's think on these things it's a command get it in your head and start thinking about it so that you know who god is and so does he love you yes he loves you he loves you enough to die on a cross for you is he ever going to leave you he said he would never leave us nor forsake us is he not going to help me in this problem he said there's always a way of escape uh so you through christ can have victory in your life and and so the big thing is always to control your mind you could have something really bad going on when when i found out that i had kidney cancer the first 24 hours to be honest with you i was like what in the world is happening i'm gonna be honest with you i was like i cannot believe god's doing this to me and it took me about 24 hours and so that first day i was in shock at first
[13:56] and you know they tell you cancer and then i google don't ever google anything that's by the time you have been on google 20 minutes you know you're dead you are dead and it's over and that's where i was uh but the next day i woke up and i realized hey whatever's going on god's going to take care of this he's going to take care of me and if i go to heaven that's going to be great i actually sat betty down and i said you know i'm probably going to die so we got to work out some things that you're going to know how to deal with when we were in peru and uh i had this literally magical ministry god did stuff in our ministry that you write about in books we saw great things happening and i mean i was burning the candle at both ends i would preach six times on sunday uh three different churches three times in the morning three times sunday night and i would i mean i was having the time of my life i usually dropped into bed at night so exhausted i could hardly walk but i loved every second of it and then my son david or son chris got diabetes and i can remember sitting outside there the doctors didn't know what to do with him he couldn't see two feet in front of him he had lost so much weight he could hardly walk his legs were hurting so much he told me he said my legs hurt so bad i said well go run it off and he got up he had a hard time walking across the room and we go to the peruvian doctors and if we'd have stayed in peru they would have killed him they said we're going to put him on one unit of insulin and we're going to leave him there for a week and at the end of the week if he's not better we'll put him on two when he landed in america he was at like 75 to 100 a day that's what it took to take care of him but so anyway betty flew out and i went on and preached a conference somewhere our daughter got raped when our daughter got raped three guys raped her i cannot explain the anguish uh as a helpless dad uh you feel like you are worthless you feel like you're no good you feel like you just about did it because you weren't there to protect your daughter and so i had to focus on this i must think truth i must think truth laying on the bed in the examining room with the with the gynecologist checking her out and examining her and making sure joy looked up from the from the from the table and she said daddy peru didn't rape me don't be mad at them but before betty before joy said that all i could think was if i could i'd kill them all i want to kill the doctor i don't know how to explain it as a dad i just want to kill somebody i want to kill somebody i i you say well that's bad i i know but you ask god i dealt with it i want to kill somebody bad i really want to kill somebody and uh and uh my daughter said daddy it's not proof it's three men not not peru and my daughter actually helped me get through it so here's my answer lift your shield control your thoughts lift your shield control your thoughts answer the devil with truth answer the devil with truth philippians 4 7 let's show them that and then we'll move to the next question philippians chapter 4 and verse 7 verse 6 says that if you're you've got problems you make them known unto god let your requests be met on it known unto god with thanksgiving and so you're going to thank god and you're going to say god this is what i need i'm asking you to take care of it and then i'm going to thank you for it and then the next verse says verse 7 says the peace of god that nobody can understand that's beyond human comprehension floods your soul because god's given you something special and so i deal with this problem literally literally on a weekly if not daily basis i really do sorry to disappoint you i think most of y'all probably think he just floats around and in spiritual land and everything's great for him actually i deal with this quite a bit and so i have to constantly be reminding myself what's truth what's truth don't listen to that uh because i look around and in every every area of my life i can see failure in every area of my life i can see where i messed up in every area of my life i can see where i'm not the best and i
[18:00] ought to be so i have to think truth if you it's not what you feel it's what you think it's don't let your feelings don't let your emotions rule your life let your thinking rule your life and then you can have success one more question and we'll have a song how much should you pray before making a life-changing decision probably not as much as you think too many of you pray too much because what you what that means is somehow with no bible and no truth you're going to pray and god's going to talk to you and tell you what the decision ought to be that's not how it works so when you're making a a life-changing decision what you need is truth you can't go but what you feel and praying and expecting god to talk to you is honestly charismatic and that's not what i would teach you at all um if i were going to walk in if i were going to walk into the office of the wisest man on the planet i think the best thing i could do would be ask and shut up so let's let's say i want to start business i'm going to go talk to john over here and i'm going to say john i want to start a business you know i really don't need to talk too much because because he knows about business i don't know about business so i walk in and i'm i'm saying well john this is what i want to do and here's the guy who knows going yeah yeah yeah if this guy ever shuts up i'll help him but how does god help you he doesn't speak audibly listen to this and he doesn't speak to your heart unless it's bible god gets blamed for everything god gets blamed for everything and so what we'll say is well god wants me to marry this girl maybe he does and maybe he don't but the bible certainly doesn't give you any authority to say that and so then you go ask her and she says no and you're like what is going on here god's already told me yes i think most of us would have to say well maybe god did if god was going to tell you he'd probably told her so maybe that wasn't the way you do it so if you're going to make a life-changing decision let me give you two or three things i think you do number one you find every bible principle that has to do with what you're talking about you go to wise counselors that understand the bible who can take bible and say these are bible principles and let them lay them out for you you do pray we always pray and we believe god but too much has been laid on if i pray god will speak to me and we pray dumb dumb dumb dumb prayers like god if you want me to have this car let the loan go through they want the loan to go through as bad as you do because they're selling you the car and they don't mind breaking you over the coals and and threatening you with bankruptcy as long as they get that sale so the salesman's like don't worry i'm gonna fix this any way i can i'll do whatever i need to do because he needs to make that sale and so when you say to god god i want this house and if you really want me to have this house you let the loan go through well we proved that since about 2008 haven't we haven't we proved that god probably wasn't giving all those people their houses they lost their house if god had given it to you he wouldn't have took it back say amen right there god didn't give it to you you kind of played the system to get it i've done that so i'm not being critical please don't take it as critical but we blame everything on god well i married this woman and and she did me wrong so god messed me up wait wait wait wait the woman might have messed you up
[22:01] but god didn't mess you up so when you're making a decision get wise people don't get somebody's going to tell you what to do get somebody's going to say well these are bible principles then take those bible principles write those bible principles down and spend time praying over those bible principles but just obey uh a good example would be uh should i co-sign for that man to get that car okay how much praying do i need to do about co-signing for that man to get that car does anybody have an answer for me zilch because god said you want him to take your bed too they said when the guy doesn't pay they're going to come get the car and your bed that's what the bible says and so later on when they come get your car and your bed you go to god you say god i prayed about co-signing and you told me to god's going to say oh no i spoke in proverbs and you ignored what i said so don't try to blame that on me so all i can say to you over and over is i i'm afraid too many decisions are made and and people get mad at me about this all time and i won't even tell you this even down to when a missionary is going to go to a mission field you have to be very careful god told me to go to this country well nobody can prove that so you liked it when you were a child so you think that's a cool culture so you know there's a lot of need there but god didn't necessarily tell you go that country because when god speaks there's no doubt about it i'm going to divorce my wife is that okay god god's going to say i ain't for that i already wrote that down so you don't need to ask me so i tell the mysteries all the time you know uh how many of you i mean everybody knows jim roberts senior well he's the third actually how many of you know brother jim old man when he talks you know brother jim was a missionary in new zealand but his visa didn't go through god told him to go to new zealand his visa didn't go through when his visa didn't go through he's talking to the mission agency and something opened up in scotland and he went to scotland uh did you know that aaron bay shore was a missionary to venezuela he is now in morocco that tyler masters was a missionary to paraguay and he's now in tunisia after he was in spain and after he was in morocco now he's in tunisia we can't just pray about that and know for sure because if the bible doesn't specifically say something i can't be assured that god said it give you two more examples of that and we'll sing a song and you all know this is true you just don't want to admit it but what if i walked in here and told you i'd been praying and god told me to tell you that i needed y'all to double my salary i've been praying about it and y'all want to obey god or don't obey god i mean i think y'all would look and say the budget don't handle it first sounds awful uh awful lot like somebody trying to take advantage of the system amen it sounds like somebody's trying to play games and you'd all be going well he didn't tell us that i can just see me walking to the deacons and world evangelism committee and saying well i've been praying about it god just want y'all to buy me a helicopter he's told me i mean i prayed about it and he told me everybody'd be like you're an idiot the only one who would be that dumb you've been following benny hen too much so how much should you pray before making a life-changing decision not as much as you think pray pray but like let's say you're going to marry a girl and you're saying i think i'll marry this girl and you've prayed about it and god gave you peace i hate to say this i don't mean much find out who she is go find out about her family watch her character see what other people know about her and as you do that you'll be you'll you'll get to a place where you can say no i really think this is
[26:08] a wise decision but i know you're probably upset with me because you think that we're supposed to get and i haven't done that since i've been pastor i want you to know eight and a half years i've not come in here one time and told the men of this church i really believe this is what god wants us to do if i say that i only say that based on facts and i say these are the facts this is why i think it i don't even think i've ever done that but if i do that's the only way i'm going to do it i am never going to pull the god told me card i'm never now i would let me just say i would i'll pull the god told me card if you decide that our church ought to quit believing in jesus i'm gonna pull the god told me card i'm gonna say it says right here that jesus is god and if that's where we're going i'm out of here i'm gonna that's the god told me card if you came in here and you say to me if you came in and you said to me brother austin we no longer believe in having services we we want you to preach on internet and there i'm gonna say hey we're supposed to be congregating he said that he told me that i got that i got his word on that hebrews chapter 10 24 and 5 so that's where i'm going to go but if we don't have bible we don't know so let me just say to you in a multitude of counselors there's safety why would you need counselors if you could just pray and and so be careful not to fall into a charismatic mindset that says i need to pray about this and i'll make this big decision i wouldn't move to another town if i were you i wouldn't take a job based on my prayer life like that i really wouldn't you you make mistakes sometimes you there's a principle in first timothy chapter 6 verse 6 down to verse 10 sometimes you make a decision there's a lot of money in this and you'll get off the path because the love of money the root of all evil and but what there wasn't why by that some coveted after that they have erred from the faith they have erred from the faith because they were chasing money got to be careful with that one uh uh uh so if you're going to make a move say man i'm going to be able to honor god with this i'm going to be able to to uh take care of my family and i'm going to be able to find a church and i'm going to be able to worship god and i'm not making a move just to make a move so i don't know how to tell you the praying part's not as important as the study in the bible part in all honesty in a conversation between a dummy and a really smart guy the dummy should be quiet most of time and the really smart guy wrote a book i don't know if you heard that the really smart guy wrote a book and he said i've given you a lot now you're going to say to me but it's too much bible for me to know all about it so warren frick him and noah were around on the boat he's only six years older than me so that's not really an insult we're in the same gap there but guess what he could help you there are men in this church you could say let me show you bible principles let me show you bible principles so truth is not found by emotions or feelings that are affected by your prayer it's found by getting in the book all right we have uh taken a lot of time i have taken a lot of time on three questions i think there's seven more so watch this this will be speed question answering go to it that's a good one q a any questions on uh okay when is it okay to give up on a hurting person i'm dealing with a person who had a rough upbringing and got saved later in life i know they are a hurting person but they always seem to walk with uh away from god i feel like i could use my entire life on them what do you think jesus would do first off i think jesus would help any hurting person and it helped them as much as possible uh and so i would be there but i would not allow this person to consume my entire life um there are too many people that are hurting and to be blunt honest sometimes people have got to take and make a move so whenever you're dealing with somebody you got to say to them look this like when
[30:10] people want to meet want to meet with me for counseling if they meet with me for counseling i'm going to give them some homework and i'm going to say if you don't do the homework i can't see you again because a lot of people they just like to use you they just like to talk they're you know most people when they come for any kind of advice already know what they're going to do they just want to be able to blame you one way or the other when most people walk in i pretty well know where they're headed when they start and so i'm going to help anybody as much as i can i'll be there for them i love them and i'll help them but uh i'm not going to let them take control of my life and so so what would jesus do he would love them and help them what would jesus do though he would say hey let the dead bury the dead he was pretty harsh if you want to know the truth about jesus he was pretty harsh hey if you if you want to follow me take up your cross let's go die together drink my blood eat my flesh your mom and your dad are going to be your enemies you're going to stand for me i didn't come to bring peace but a sword he was pretty harsh and so many of these hurting people that can't seem to get over it may not be saved that's one of those things where they may have prayed the prayer and pretended to be saved but they never turned from themselves to jesus and let me say real quickly you'll you meet people all the time and you'll say well they told me they prayed the prayer so catholics pray prayers all the time i mean i can remember i've witnessed to many catholics that i showed them how to pray and they said i'd like to add that to my prayers and i'll pray that every day well that that doesn't do any good it's really not the prayer it's the saying i was wrong i sinned i acknowledge my weakness and my failure i turned to jesus and so if they never made that turn something may be the reason why they keep causing so much heartache next question sir in the old testament god led and directed and told people what to do how does he direct us now in the new testament good deal for example exodus he told people specific jobs to do in the new testament it doesn't seem that he tells us what to do specifically and in the old testament god specifically told a very small number of people what to do and if we were living in the old testament we wouldn't be one of them okay if we were alive in the old testament we might be levites but we'd probably be the guys that are loading the planks on the wagon to be moved to the next place and moses would be over there talking in fact as cora goes to moses said hey i'm a man of god just like you're a man of god what gives you the right to be the leader moses said hey if you want to argue about who the leader is let's just go over here and i'll ask god i'll say god if i'm in charge uh show them in a way you've never shown before the earth opened up swaddled them alive moses said okay i'm almost still standing here i must be in charge but if we were alive if we were alive i wouldn't be moses a lot of time my life i used to want to think well i would be the abraham no you wouldn't i'd be the isaac i'd be the jacob we probably wouldn't be we're just too regular we're too normal if i was a great pastor we'd probably have more than 155 this morning we'd have more than 200 that we would normally have or 198 195 185 we'd probably have more than we probably have that many thousands so i'm really just not a i'm just a regular guy and you're a regular guy so god never told people even in the old testament specifically what to do he told some individuals what to do the rest of them obeyed bible principles god tells solomon to write a book called proverbs but you don't know what his son wrote his son wasn't writing scripture and so you need to understand it so what how do i know what god wants me to do well here's the best way to know how god wants you to do you are gifted everybody in this room is gifted and every one of you are special so get in the church and do everything there is to do find get every job become one of the people that helps with the cleaning get in the choir and sing say i can't carry a tune in a bucket well do it long enough that you give it a good effort get involved in going soul winning get involved in discipleship get involved in everything you can go to the nursing home go to the to the hospital to help people whatever you can you do that get involved in church and as you start working and using all your talents slowly you'll start figuring out who you are
[34:15] you'll figure it out when i was a young kid from the time i was a young kid people said that i had this knack for being able to encourage and exhort people uh when i was a kid and so i was doing everything i had kept the nursery i mean i was i was in high school i kept the nursery and lord help me i was glad this station was over when it got over amen i do not know how these ladies do it but do everything you possibly can and as you do that you'll start seeing what your gifts are and where you can work there's not so much a well god made me to be a even down to being a sender or a goer that's kind of a misnomer all of us are supposed to be goers so he doesn't tell us what to do there are specific things he definitely tells us to do we are to congregate okay we are to congregate hebrews 10 24 25 we are to honor him with our money we are to make him lord of our life and preeminent in every decision that we make we are to love our wives as christ loved the church we are to love our husbands submit to our husbands so what some things god has told us some things god has told us the rest of it you're right he doesn't tell us i will tell you this you know how i knew to come to to alpharetta to start a church i was pastoring and i was working in atiquipa and i was the probably the highest peak of my ministry i don't know if i'll ever get back to that place i'll leave tomorrow to go back down there uh to preach for to preach for a few days uh and as we talked we were dealing with trying to train american missionaries and john pearson and i were talking on the phone and we were talking about buying this special piece of property where we would set up a training center here in america and i would start trying to train guys and the question came up and i said well just act like i was a pastor in this john said that sounds good he got i got off the phone i thought yeah it does and i got thinking about it so let's go to the states well uh blunt truth uh betty's parents lived in roswell that's pretty close to here john lived in coming i was looking for a place where i could bring young people together first i wanted to come home and be an assistant pastor for somebody and then i would train the guys because i knew i'd travel too much and i'd spend too much time training guys and the lord just step by step worked it out go forward doing all you know to do today and every day you'll get just a little bit more light about what you ought to do as long as what you're doing is right next question why did jesus love hurting people so much i can give you that answer in one sentence and that is god is love the bible says that so all jesus really did was expose the heart of god we found out what god's like if you could peel god back and find out what he looks like on the inside you'd find a god that loves people next why are what are some good steps to developing a systematic prayer life well you know i hate that i don't like doing this but i'll give you i'll give you something you know the main thing about any system is forget the emotion i do not come to church um i do not come to church because i feel like coming to church i don't read my bible because i feel like reading my bible you want to hear a wild one i don't love my wife because i feel like loving my wife everybody wants some kind of feeling about everything love is an action it's not a feeling that's why hollywood can't stay married they don't even know what the word means so if you want a prayer life you're probably never going to feel like praying i'll just tell you so you get a system and you say all right at x time i am going to spend some time reading my bible and i'm going to spend some time praying so you pick a place and and you pick a time and and you discipline yourself and you make yourself do it you make yourself do it you say well i don't always feel like it and that's why i need a good system well no system will work for you because you're not going to feel like it
[38:18] no system will work for you you're not going to feel like it can i tell you that i love studying the bible but almost every on every sunday night sunday night's my my favorite time of the week it is the night when i crash not tonight gotta go eat a vegetable but not not tonight but normally i go home and i just man that's the night i get bloated i mean i eat anything i want and i i sit on the top of the bed i eat popcorn i i eat cheese and crackers uh cheese balls you know i just can't have none of that uh well i'm just lusting right now and i get all i have all this uh especially because it's the one time of the week when there's not a message staring me in the face i wake up on monday morning i go okay thursday night's coming uh sunday morning's coming all day long i've been thinking tuesday night's coming that's the first time i preach this week i'll preach tuesday night i'll preach wednesday about three or four times in the morning i'll preach two times wednesday night thursday morning same way thursday night same way uh and and friday morning and then i'll be free till sunday morning and i'll preach two or three times on sunday morning two or three times a night probably i hope not i hope they hold me down to maybe a couple each time and then i'll have a few days with my family so just remember this the system is no system works because you're going to have to gut it out you're going to have to gut it out and the word disciple has as a root discipline you're going to make yourself do what you're supposed to do next question is it okay for christian to celebrate halloween i love trap questions thank you very much uh so you know i cannot please everybody in this room with this question this answer i wouldn't celebrate halloween because i think halloween in and of itself is uh is a night that is given to evil when i was a kid we didn't ever think like that i was a kid we did halloween all the time we put people's toilets in the or outhouses in the middle of the street i mean we had a good time say amen and uh uh so uh uh it was just a night of trick or treat and and tricks were more fun than treats actually and so uh i don't think you should celebrate halloween but i think some of you can go way too far the other way you know uh uh halloween like uh halloween like when kids come to my house we don't we don't lock the door and put a cross on the door and say if you touch if you get on our steps we're gonna shoot you with a water hose because it's like a devil night and you're not coming to our house have you seen the joke on the internet they said that the jehovah's witnesses don't believe in in halloween and somebody said because they don't like random people knocking on their door so people come to our house they're going to get candy well we'll be yeah we'll be here they're going to get candy and a gospel track and we're going to be as nice to everybody as we possibly can i'm the candy man good night every kid around here knows come back to my office they can have a piece of candy so betty will go out and she'll spend some money she'll buy candy i think the church is going to have a trunk or treat that's a substitute for halloween and i think if you overreact kids are going to be like why and and if you overreact and and you don't there's not a verse that says don't celebrate halloween just to be blunt honest with you so you're going to say to them i don't think this is the night that honors the lord but we're going to do something that honors the lord and so that's how i would answer that question so we're not going to be ugly to people never am uh we're never ugly to people they come to our door we smile we we give a gospel track we are friendly to them i don't know if anybody's ever come to our church for it but the can't by the way we don't give one track and one piece of candy we fill the bag up with candy and put a track in it don't be that's like people at t i hate christians that don't know how to tip if you're going to be if you're going to go if you're going to tip don't leave a gospel track unless you're going to give a good tip you know a good one if you don't give 18 or above don't leave the don't leave the track i mean because they're going to
[42:18] know the tightwad game from vision if you're going to do that put the nut somebody else's church's track on there okay so put the glade baptist church there amen pastor glades is here tonight all right next question can someone confess to love someone and dislike them at the same time if yes then how can that love be displayed is there a time in the bible where jesus did that and you stumped me i have no idea i don't know that jesus ever did that i don't know if that came up i let me let me tell you those are terms that are our terms uh i love you but i don't like you that really means i really don't love you probably uh jesus loves us he may not like our actions uh but he loves us and so i would say to you i would say to you uh uh just learn to love people you know what loving is loving is hurting anytime you love it hurts love hurts because love says i put myself out there to spend and be spent to give and to give more no matter how they treat me and that's how you do it so jesus on the cross said uh as they nailed him to a cross he said father forgive them they don't know what they're doing is that it you got one more three more put them up real quick these guys are going to fire me i understand the sin and peace offerings what is the meal offering go check the message out of exodus next one it is between if it is between paying my tithes and paying my rent which do i choose well you know the truth of the matter is i think you should pay your rent uh but i don't think you should uh it probably doesn't come down to that usually uh so you have not heard me beat you over the head ever about giving that i know of i mean i preach the bible i preach the bible and i try to tell you what the word of god says about giving as we go through it uh uh and we are not in the this is not a place where we're trying to get money out of you we give because we love god tithing is a good place to start god has not put any threats no curses on you if you don't tithe you're not going to get beat up if you don't tithe your legs aren't going to get broken god's not going to send the mafia after you you're giving because your heart wants to you love jesus so pay your rent but can i just tell you this if you if you uh if you if you would be honest about this thing you would say you would say that uh uh you would say i love god and i'm going to put him first and whenever you sit down to say god's first i will cut out his part for him first and then you get order in your budget you'll probably have the money to give so the problem is get order in your life because most of us treat god kind of like a like a hound dog uh now i know they don't get treated like this anymore dogs are now part of your family they're they're people but when i was a kid a dog ate table scraps and buddy when we had a good meal they were really happy i mean if we had pork chops and there's a lot of pork left over man they were they were you could they ate chicken bones and and uh hog bones and and and beef bones and whatever was left over there they ate beans ate anything you could improve one of the mysteries why dogs ate sweet potato great dog food he said i don't never have eaten sweet potato like a dog so i don't know but uh if you if you don't do right you're going to end up throwing to god whatever you have left over he is not the goodwill santa he is not the goodwill santa he's not goodwill down here where you give him your trash i i would not even when i was improved i would get a bad bill given to me which they offered to give you counterfeit money when they did that i would never give that counterfeit bill in the offering i would take the loss i wouldn't make it to the church next one did god choose us before we chose him well we were chosen before the foundation of the of the earth so we're gonna have to say god chose us so that brings in a whole big theological argument that's been going on for at least two thousand years between calvinist and arminian and i'm neither one of those
[46:21] so here's what i know i was chosen in christ and i was choked god know exactly god when god looks at time he sets on the bubble of of time and it's like a small speck in all of eternity you have to understand god has no beginning and no end and when you look at time you look at it like it's some big deal and god looks at it like that's nothing i don't even see it so god knows tomorrow from today because he can see tomorrow just like he can see today he has no limits and so the bible is very clear everything about us getting saved was god's doing god did everything to get us saved now god chose us based on jesus christ and his sacrifice on the cross god chose us and then when it comes time he deals with you you accept or reject that gift everyone can be saved because when you ask that question some people are like so the only ones that get saved the ones he chose he wants everybody saved he's made that clear as all get out all through your bible he wants everybody saved he takes the death for every man he's a profitation for our sins and not ours only but the sins of the whole world so god wants everybody saved so you can relax in this god loves you you can rest on what he's what he's going to do in your life and he keeps those of us are saved by his grace next one you said two more right zero that's it all right thank you so very much for this message was recorded at vision baptist church in alfred georgia for more information log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times location contact information and more audio and video recordings of course you you you you you you you you you you