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Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s Word on Bibleline, everywhere, every time. Here God’s truth on Bibleline. Welcome to Bibleline with Dr. Ralph Yankee Arnold, pastor of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida. Clearly declaring the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the radio and the internet. Your regular prayers and monthly support make it possible for Bibleline to continue on the You can reach us toll free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made through the Bibleline website at Calvary of Tampa.org. We pray that you’ll enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

Be convinced you can do all that God says you can do. confidence that is not backed by action is dead. That’s James chapter 2 by the way. The little statement there inside the box, how you live is an expression of your opinion about God. You only limit yourself by your own limited thinking. No man is ever any bigger than what it takes to get him down. What will it take for you to have your dreams destroyed. What is that vision, that dream that you have, that you want to do?

And what is it that’s going to take to destroy it? In other words, the death of a vision, when it seemed like there’s no hope and you’re in total despair, you see, You have to have the knowledge that if I quit because I got a little discouraged down the road five, ten, fifteen years later, you’ll figure, what did that little discouragement cost me? Well, I think what I could have done, I could have had, and I got a little discouraged.

I looked at the problems instead of the God who’s a big God. They can solve anything. The God of solutions. Number five, this is fear. Fear is a success crusher. God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of love and power and of a sound mind. But anyway, number five, fear not controlled will destroy success. To fill a man’s mind, and this is important, with worry, fear and anxiety is the most costly and the least productive activity of man.

These are dead giveaways to an undisciplined mind. They are a poor substitute for clear, cut thinking. Happiness is like success is not a destination, but a way of travel. As love grows, fear goes. As you learn to love the Lord more and more and more, it’ll dissipate all the fears, and you’ll have less fear in your life. right now when you’re young, so you become afraid to step out by faith. Don’t you think Peter was a little fearful of stepping out of the boat?

But you know why he stepped out of the boat? He wanted to walk on water. Have you ever wanted to walk on water? Or do you want to be like everybody else? Never does anything. You want to live your life like millions and millions and millions of people. They were born, they lived, they died, accomplished nothing. or do you want to do something with your life? Fear will keep you from doing it because you’ll be afraid. Afraid I’ve been a failure.

Afraid God won’t come through because your trust is not really in him. And you limit yourself by your own limited thinking. So thinking about what you could do in that little box I got there on the bottom. Worry and fear are acquired habits. You weren’t born that way. You learned how to worry. And most people today are experts at it. You can start them and you can stop them. They’re in your hands. And some people will worry all their life.

As Paul Harvey would say, age two. Look at number six. Sewing before reaping. You see, if you want good things to happen, so good things first. Before you can reap the harvest out there in the field, you have to plant the seeds. And some people, they want all these good things to happen to them. Start sewing, start sewing good things, doing good things for people. Everywhere Jesus went, he went about doing good, just doing good, doing right. So the right thing.

Do you realize when Peter, it didn’t have the money to pay his taxes? Jesus says, go catch fish. The money was in the fish’s mouth. The money’s in the fish’s mouth. What I’ve seen in 50 years is majority of the time, the money that I’ve needed for the Lord’s work was always in the fish’s mouth, the fish that I caught, people that I wanted to Christ. They seemed to have caught a vision and they said, Yank, you need to be on radio and they would help me pay the bill.

I’ve had some say that Yank, you need to be on TV and they would pay the bill. I’ve had people when I went on the road, I had people in different places all across the United States that would send me just a little bit every once in a while, people that I led to the Lord over the years. You see, there is an advantage. The money’s in the fish’s mouth. When a church is not growing and the church doesn’t have the finances, the money’s in the fish’s mouth, we need to go fishing.

You need to go fishing. What about that as an individual? Go fishing. Remember what the Lord says, say, first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be what? He’ll be added. We see you got to get your priorities straight. The number one thing that you can always do is seek in the lost. Let it be your goal that motivates you in everything that you do. Because see, that’s what holds your testimony in line.

It helps you to be aware of what’s going on. So important. Look at the next statement here on the number six. Don’t expect physical and material blessings on credit. Ephesians 1, 13 says that God has already blessed us with spiritual blessings and the Hephiles. There must first be action before reaction or response to set in. You must sow righteousness to reap blessings or rewards. If you stand still and watch the world go by, it will. So what are you doing?

Oh, I just sat in on the corner watching all the girls. I mean the world go by and it will. It’ll go by. And one of these days you’re gonna wake up an old person and realize that all I did will stand and watch the world go by. I didn’t do anything. Compensation works regardless and guarantees you 100% fair treatment, but it demands payment in advance. Sacrifice is not hard if you perceive what it really means to give up something of lesser value or something of greater value.

When God asked you and I to yield our bodies as a living sacrifice, we’re going to give this up, but is it a big sacrifice to give up something of lesser value for something of greater value? Do you think you could serve the Lord and lose? Your heavenly Father is going to give you so much more. It will be worth it all. And He says that the glory that we’re going to have, He says, the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared what the glory which we will gone to get.

So whatever it is, it’s going to be worth it. That’s why we should look that away and believe it. But as a Christian, so in and reaping, so the seeds first. In other words, put forth your faithfulness, serve the Lord and do what’s right and then trust the Lord from all those seeds that you plant Some day down the road to grow. As God will take care of it, you just keep sowing, just always keep sowing. Don’t worry how it’s going to work, just sow the seed.

Why do you do that? Because you have confidence in the seed. You have confidence in the Word. You’re just going to keep planting the Word, planting the seeds. And God’s going to bless you because you do that. Number seven, enthusiasm is the interest or the excitement you put into your goal. How excited are you about the things of God? You love the Lord. Do you love the church? Do you love His people? Enthusiasm. An unlit candle cannot light another candle.

So it says here, an unlit candle can never light another candle. I wonder where that came from. Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic. As a team captain with his team, I was excited just watching those team captains at camp. They just look like playing on normal everyday kids. So you put them in front of about, no, 30, 40 other kids on teams and they come alive. And because they got excited, their whole team got excited. They followed their leader and in serving the Lord, that’s the way it is.

God is looking for leaders, somebody that takes that step willing to try to walk on water, even though you’ve got anything I might think I may feel. Yes, but at least I got out of the boat. I got out of the boat. You know those other ones that were still in the boat? You know what they said? I was just fixing to do that. I thought about that. I was going to do that. Oh, but they never did. And there’s going to be people all your life and you’re going to hear them and they’re all going to be saying, you know, if I’d have only, if I’d have only, if I’d have only.

not only. So we’re going to start a club called the if I’d only club. See how many members I can get? If I’d only, if I’d only, something to say, if I’d only went to Bible college, if I’d only went to this, if I’d only done this, whatever. Look at the next statement. You are involved in a great work for a great God. Act like it. Your success happens when preparation meets opportunity. Why would a person go to Bible school?

Preparation. Prepare. Why do you come to Sunday school? You’re learning. You’re preparing. And why do you kids go to school? We call we’re preparing them. We’re teaching. We’re always trying to prepare people for life. How to live the Christian life. It’s so important. Look at the next statement I have there. See opportunity as on wheels and you must be ready to seize the moment when it passes your way. Watch, pray, study, equal preparation. And many people cannot take advantage of opportunities that come by because opportunity is on wheels.

They keep on rolling. Preparation means that when the opportunity comes I’m prepared to take advantage of it. And most people are not prepared and they don’t even see opportunity. I’ve had people say, well, I never have opportunities like you do. Look at number eight. Environment may be your influence. Show me the company you keep and I can tell a lot about you. Your environment, whether it’s family, work, or church, over a period of time can become even stronger than willpower.

Probably 90% of our environment is negative. Therefore, it becomes easy to be saddled with a defeated mind. It takes a continual effort to stay positive. Remember to thank God in everything. Quality of friends, this is a very important statement, quality of friends is better than quantity of friends. I’d rather have a few people that know the Lord, love the Lord, and have good quality than to have a thousand friends that aren’t worth a quarter. It’s better to have a few friends.

And that’s why if you want to serve a Lord, you better surround yourself with people that are serving Lord. If they’re always cutting you down and negative and pulling you down and holding you back and you need to get new friends. Are you going to be like them at the end of life? Well, I would have, I could have, but my friend, but my friend, you’re going to use that person as an excuse for the rest of your life.

Number nine, share and bear burdens. This is where you put it into practice. No man is an island to himself. Your overall well-being is greatly dependent upon your ability to cooperate with others. Cooperation is unity and unity is power. Forget ego, me me me me and make it we go. The thinking power of two or more together in harmony with God and amen at a common goal is at least eight times out of the individual. Teamwork fills the gap in your own thinking.

Benjamin Franklin says, if we don’t hang together, we’ll all hang separately. And when you help someone else up the hill, you both get closer to the top. Number 10, you didn’t think we’d cover so much so fast, did you? I can read fast. Number 10, now this is a good one, don’t procrastinate. People are always, you know, one of these days, I remember years ago they had this little thing come on there and it was, I wish I could remember the guy’s name.

It wasn’t a clamp, it was somebody else that, the old man walks out, he’s buried to this great big old large woman and Montpauch Kittle. And every time he goes out the screen door, it just about falls off the hinges. He said, I’m gonna fix that one of these days. I’m gonna fix that one of these days. Now you and I knew he never fixed that door. But one of these days I’m gonna fix that. And there’s a lot of people, you know, one of these days I’m gonna carry track.

One of these days I’m gonna witness somebody. One of these days I’m gonna leave it track. One of these days, one of these days. The road is always paved with good intentions. It’s just that they never get done what you really wanna get accomplished. And so, now this is important. So look there as I read this. Some bulls are quick to rush headlong for Angel’s fear to tread. Even too much gas into the carburetor can cause the motor to stall.

Patience, patience, patience. To claim patience when action is demanded is disobedience. Delay obedience is disobedience. Did you know that? Delayed obedience is still disobedience. And do not squander time for that is what life is made from. When you waste time, you waste life. And when you waste life, you You waste yourself. God despises laziness. Did you know the Bible read the book of Proverbs? And look how many times it talks about being sloppel. Lazy. Lazy man can’t get anything done.

If you ever want to get anything done, find a busy person. A busy man can always find time to get things done. But a lazy person doesn’t have time. do anything but they never have time. You always get James to get something done because it’s always busy anyway. You see, when you’re already in, it’s easier to steer a car that’s moving than one that they don’t even know how to move. And most Christians are like the little kids playing behind the steer of all of the We’re going to go to the middle of the car.

Where are you going? Nowhere. Just playing cars. And there’s other people. But other people say it’s easy for the Lord to steer and guide you when the car is moving. But the car that’s not moving doesn’t need to be guided. It’s not going anywhere. Get in motion. Get in motion. Start it. The next statement. Shunning away from what has to be done is the biggest thief of time. Success will never knock the home where procrastination lives. But the devil will lean on the doorbell.

The devil will always lean on the doorbell until you answer the doorbell. Procrastination is a terrible thing. The successful person must faithfully do what needs to be done. Whether he likes to do it or not, the road to misery and failure are paid with good intentions. There are two ways to get to the top of an oak tree. Climate are set on an acorn. I think the climbing is going to be more successful. You should for something will not bring it to you, but the act of doing the right thing, the right way will bring you to it.

Do not hope for a brighter tomorrow. Do something to make it brighter today.” And this is a statement I learned from Dr. A. Ray Stanford. Your future is being determined by your obedience to God today. Your future is being determined by your obedience to God today. Is today important? Yes, because it determines your future. And when you waste days, it can alter the course of your whole life. Believe it or not. Number 11, you might as well know that there’s always something going to come up.

The devil is not going to let you alone. Adversities are God’s stepping stones to success. Always look at every problem you have as an opportunity. If you don’t, your attitude is not going to be right and you’ll despise hidden opportunities because see, a lot of times success comes disguised as work. And so because people don’t like work, they can’t see the opportunities that comes away. Problems are unsolved opportunities. Remember every problem has a solution and a problem once solved is no longer a problem.

happens to you is not as important as your response. Problems become stumbling blocks or stepping stones. All depends on your attitude toward them. Do you have problems? So what? Everybody else does too. You’ll need to stumble over yours or use them as an opportunity to step up and increase your faith and become stronger in life. Don’t you curse your problems? You don’t curse the night you light a candle that you’re measured in the eyes of your fellow man by your ability to stand up to adversity.

You understand what that’s saying? People watch you to see how do you handle adversity? How do you handle problems? Because everybody’s got them and it reveals things about your character. No man has given more temptation than he has the ability and the strength to overcome. Because the Word of God tells us that God will not lay on you any more than you’re able to bear. You just don’t know what I’m going through. I don’t have to know, but God knows.

And it’s not an excuse or a reason to stumble and serve in the Lord. And don’t you dare use it as an excuse. God ain’t gonna accept the excuse. Why should I? I’m not God, but that’s between you and Him. You can be as strong as you want to be and you’ll be as weak as you choose to be. I don’t like baby and people. I’d like to tell you straightforward and right to the point. Make up your mind what you want and then go after it.

You want to be faithful, then be faithful. But you can’t be faithful. Yes, you can. It’s the devil that tells you you can’t. You can. Look at this statement in the bold, if he looks for the way out that God has made, God’s always made a way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Look at the next statement, to be knocked down is not to be defeated. It’s when you stay down. That’s when you’re defeated. Adversities and obstacles and problems are opportunities given by the Lord to help you grow.

So the Lord is allowing you to have all these problems so it reveals to you what you don’t know, so you’ll go to the Lord. And God says that I will teach you and give you what you need. But let him ask in faith, not wavering. For a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. God’s trying to get you anchored. So what you want to do is you want your roots of faith to go down into these big old boulders in the Word of God.

And you latch on to this verse. That’s a great promise of God. And you put your roots around that one and you got another group of faith that goes down here and rips on to this one. And another one on to that one. So it doesn’t matter which way the winds of adversity come. You’re anchored into the Word of God and you’ll be rock solid because you’re anchored to the rock. Number 12, runaway emotions, runaway emotions, you have some of those, is a life jumping out of gear.

You don’t know what’s going to happen. When you let your emotions control you and take and you lose control, you don’t know what you’re going to do. That’s why it’s dangerous. So look there at the statement I have, the greater number of dissatisfied, insecure and fruitless lives stem from a lack of self-discipline and God-discipline. Uncontrolled emotions result only from a mind not submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit. It is poor reasoning to lose your head when you are in most need of it.

And that is a good statement. When you throw mud, you lose ground. The difference between a mole hill and a mountain is dirt, just more of it. And some people make a mountain out of a mole hill. They throw more dirt on. So anyway, these are a few things that can help you in developing your mind and to learn these things and to memorize them so that you’ve got them all the days of your life. And if you’ll apply them, you can learn how to be faithful.

And if there’s anything that I want is for God’s people to be found faithful. The day will come when we’ll have to stand before the Lord and where you faithful, where you faithful to the Lord. Look up here. Some of you are still in disbelief that we covered all 12 of these points. I watched some of you whenever they were passed out. Bitty doubt he still can’t believe it. You’d be surprised with the preach you can see from up here.

This hand represents you and me. The wall of represents sin. We all have sin on us. But God loves us. Hates our sin, but He loves us. And to pay for this sin is eternal separation from the Lord. But God doesn’t want us to have to pay for sin, so He paid for it. You see, we have to be perfect to go to heaven and none of us are perfect. We’ve all done things wrong. God says that you can’t save yourself and that we’re all condemned.

And so He did something for us that we didn’t have the power to do. This end representing Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord, God in the flesh. Came into the world because He loves us, but He hates our sin because our sins He separates us from the Lord. So Jesus Christ who had no sin didn’t have to die, so He took our sin, paid for them on the cross and came back from the dead. And God said, if we would believe He did it for us, it put this payment to our account, and we get to go to heaven on what He did.

Eternal life is the gift of God. For He God hath made Him Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, to be sinned for us. That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The whosoever, believe it in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life. We go to heaven on what Jesus Christ did for us. Let’s pray, shall we? The hedge bow knives closed, no one looking around.

I pray that you have trusted Christ’s Savior, most of you in this room know that you have. And I know that times you struggle with faithfulness, seeking to be consistent in your Christian life. But do you always talk to the Lord and stay close to Him? Realize the times you’re going to have a lot of questions and doubts, a lot of adversities. But understand where they come from and why God lets them come. Because they can either be stumbling blocks or stepping stones.

And you can rise and learn more and draw closer to the Lord. To have a purpose, to have a gold, to understand that you need to sow before you expect to reap. Sometimes we always expect God to give, give, give, give, give, and we never have to sow, so, so. But we do need to. And if you’re here tonight and you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, or if you’re watching by internet, understand that God loves you and he paid for your sins.

He said, if you would believe that he died for you, that he would put the payment he made to your account and all your sins would be forgiven. And you can go to heaven. There’s only one way and that’s through Christ. You can’t earn it. You can’t work for it. So will you believe that Christ died for you was buried in the rose again from the dead and is alive forevermore and will save all those who come to Him?

So if you have never done so would you do it right now? And if you will make a decision, I’d like to know it. I’d like to have prayer for you. And I’m going to ask you in just a moment to raise your hand. Raising your hand does not save you. Just let’s me know that what I said made sense to you. And you say in preacher, I will trust Christ as my Savior tonight. And I want you to pray for me.

In one of all, just slip your hand very quickly, but if I take down in one of all, I follow. We thank you so much for this time together. We ask your blessings upon each person here. And we pray Lord that the message would be understandable and that the Holy Spirit will pick out the little nuggets here and there that can be applied to each person and help them to see and understand what they might need to correct in their own life.

The Father we pray for the strength and grace of the earth. We Christ and we pray Amen. You’ve been listening to Bibleline, a teaching ministry of Calvary Community Church in Tampa, Florida with Dr. Ralph Arnold. We pray that you were blessed by today’s message. If you have enjoyed our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, you can reach Bibleline and pledge your support to keep us on the air in your area by dialing toll free 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771.

If you wish to hear today’s program again or would like to download a free MP3 of today’s or any previous Bibleline program, go to BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the spinning globe in the upper right corner of our homepage. If you’re in the area, we welcome you to visit us. The address for Calvary Community Church is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Our Sunday morning services begin at 1030 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by going to our church website, calvaryoftampa.org.

Thanks for joining us on Bible Live and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. We will be changed. Caught up to meet the Lord in the air. live today and every day, believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up.