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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 air. You can reach us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the BibleLineMinistries.org homepage. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ and that today’s first part of this two-part message will be a blessing to you and your family.

There’s a wonderful little book called the Book of Colossians. So take your Bible and turn to the book of Colossians and chapter one and we’re gonna look in verse nine. We did this the other night, but we weren’t through. So here in the book of Colossians chapter one and verse nine. So for this cause, we also sense the day we heard it. Do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you might walk worthy of the Lord and all pleasing, been fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Strengthen with might, all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patient and long-suffering with joyfulness, thanks unto the Father, which yet made us fit or meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who have delivered us from the power of darkness and have translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, and whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Wonderful portion of Scripture, a lot of things that are mentioned here.

But what I want to talk to What you’re about tonight is leaving fingerprints, leaving fingerprints. I remember when I was a kid. I thought like a child. I played like a child. I acted like a child. I talked like a child. And I was telling him in the Bible study today, downtown, how that we used to go out and try get as many kids as we could to ride our buses. So we would go around and knock on doors and try to get as many kids to come to our church, our Sunday school on our bus route.

So I had developed a little technique that was always really positive. You know, you got to be positive. So I would take and go up to the door. The lady come to the door and says, ma’am, I says, I am the pastor of Colorado Bible Church and we have a Sunday school church bus and we drive that bus right down this road and we want to pick up your children and we treat those kids right we’ll pick them up right here at the door and we’ll take them to Sunday school we’ll bring them right back here and I want to know if you will let me have your children to take those little children to Sunday school and And the lady, she said, yes, I will.

Wait a minute, I don’t have any kids. But I would be so positive that if they had some, we’d get them. Because you see, you always looking for fingerprints. And as you rode up and down behind waves, you’d always be looking for signs a child lives here. What is one of the best ways to see if a child lived at a certain house? You’re always looking in the yard for toys. You know, an old bicycle or a tricycle or a ball or a bat or a glove or something, a window broke.

But anyway, you’re always looking for signs. Kids live here because you won’t have time to go to every door. So you just look for those fingerprints where a child lives. If you go into a lady’s home and years ago, this was true, nobody had pampers. Now some people, they have no clue what did they do? They were called diapers. And you had to actually wash and cling the little kid, and you had those soggy diapers left over. Many a time I would go in there and, you know, when you get ready to take a shower or a bath in the bathtub, and it would be about six inches deep in, you know, leftovers.

diapers. Well, they’re just waiting for them to soak a little bit so they’re you know, be clean, easier, you know, things like that. But later on, you know, we don’t have any diapers today. We don’t have to worry about those pampers today because see, we’re not kids anymore and we don’t have kids anymore. Amen and amen. But we had signs that children lived in our home and so you’re always looking for the evidence of a child. Now you know as you grow up a little bit, the Bible says, when I was a child I speak as a child.

I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things. Now you and I know that we don’t act the way we used to. You in here just right now, some of you are younger, but chances are you don’t cry like you used to, the little baby, you wouldn’t thought tantrum would you?

I mean, that’s what little babies do. Babies why? Babies cry like that, but you’re growing up. Now you don’t act like a little baby anymore. You don’t have to have your own way. I mean, when you were a little baby and didn’t get your own way, you threw a fit. But aren’t you glad that now that you’re so mature? You don’t do that anymore. You don’t have to have your own way because you can handle it now. You realize that everything’s not going to go your way and that everything is not according to you and the world doesn’t revolve around you.

Have you realized that? somewhere along the line we expect children and we expect fingerprints. But if somebody was to watch you and saw your fingerprints, are they the fingerprints of a child? Because that’s how they see you. You’re acting like a child or do they see you as a teenager? Acting like a teenager. There’s nothing wrong for the teenager to act like a teenager, but not when you’re 40 and 50, nor should a teenager act like a little child because you’re growing up.

But your fingerprints, as people look at you today, do they see the fingerprints of a mature thinking individual? You see, everybody leaves a trail. Over my 70 years, I have a trail. I have a trail. Believe it or not, way back yonder. When I was a little child, I acted like a child. I thought like a child. But I began to mature a little bit and lo and behold, I became a teenager. I acted like a teenager. While young, foolish, stupid, know it all, sarcastic, egotistical.

The world revolved around me and I knew everything. I was it. The world was here for me. Make me happy. And nobody would. It seemed like nobody cared if I was alive or dead. So I’ll show you. I’m not going to have just people tell me what I like any cannot do. So I ran away from home and joined the Navy. I didn’t say I was smart. I said I was foolish. So now when I sold to them my body, soul and spirit, they told me everything to do.

I had the most beautiful head of black curly hair you ever seen in your life. Even Elvis would have been proud of that. He had to dye his hair to look black. was naturally black. And there I was sitting in that chair and they asked me, how would you like me to cut it? I said, just a little off here and a little off there. And he smiled, it’s okay. He put those clippers right there against my forehead. And he…

And I looked in the mirror. My heart sank. It took me 17 years to grow that. And that quick here didn’t hook away my strength. I felt like Samson. All my strength is gone. And he kept on until I was ball headed. That was to humble me, make me submit. In other words, when I went in there, I was not to get my way on anything. They told me when to go to bed. They told me when to get up.

They told me when to take a bath. They told me when to shave. They told me how to dress. They told me how to walk. It’s like I had no life of my own. him, lock, stock and barrel. Anybody else in here ever been in the military? I’m seeing him. A few of you. But I survived. I didn’t die. I thought I was going to die. And lo and behold, I became a young adult. But I’ve got fingerprints down the road.

And you can watch my trail as I have grown in the Lord. Now, we know that’s true in the physical realm. Now you trusted Christ as your Savior. You trusted the Lord. And as a child of God, well, there is supposed to be fingerprints. Let me show you one of these fingerprints. You see right there in verse nine, where it talks about leaving the fingerprints, and one of them is the knowledge of God’s will. You see, when you’re just a little baby in the Lord, in the Lord, you trust that Christ is your Savior, you have a heavenly Father.

You are His child. Now, because you are His child, He wants you to listen and learn how to talk by using His words. Learn the word of God. And He wants you to imitate Him, in the book of the Ephesians in chapter five, talking about the imitators of God. Learn to imitate your dad. So you look at your dad, just like in their family, you looked at your mom and dad, and you’re supposed to imitate them. Now, sure, mom and dad supposed to be the perfect example.

Well, lo and behold, was mine. Was my mother the perfect example? No, she worked in a beer joint, but that’s what she did. Probably never could have held any other kind of a job. My dad was a bootlegger. Means he’s sold corn in jugs. So my mother and dad, as far as I know, they really didn’t spend too much time raising me or teaching me things. My dad was a very brutal man. So should I use them as an excuse for me not being responsible?

Should I use them as an excuse for me not walking with the Lord and doing right myself? I could have. And yet I’ve seen some kids that go in and they come from a Christian home and everything’s wonderful, you know? I never had that. I was always just the opposite. Sometimes I used to be so envious of all of those people that had such a good upbringing, where they really spent time with them and taught them this and taught them that.

And I never had any of that. I never saw my mom or my dad in her church until after I was saved and then I finally it’s all my mom, I never did my dad. But I always hungered. I wish I could have known my father more. I wish that my mom and dad had been saved and knew the Lord and loved the Lord, but it didn’t happen that way. So now what about me? I still got decisions to make.

So I can stay a child, blame everybody, be mean, ugly, critical, or I can grow up. But what are my fingerprints? You see, your fingerprints, you know that they always try to find out who you are, and if there’s a crime being committed, they want to find out the fingerprints, and they’re always looking for the fingerprints, because there’s nobody quite like you, nobody quite like you. And as you’ve lived your life, you have left your mark as you’ve gone through, and you’ve left it upon people, and they have seen you.

What kind of a person are you? Did you know that sometimes we try to fool people and we don’t want them to know the way we really are? But does God know the way we really are? And so as we go through life, we’re just a walk in. Just keep on walking. And you’ll find out there’s things that God has for us that cause us to mature. God wants us to be strong in the Lord. And so he says here in this verse 9, he says, do not cease.

He says, in the day we do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding. You see, as you learn a little bit, you do a little bit. Here a little, there a little. And so you learn how to walk. It’s a little by little and you fall and then you get up, but after a while you learn how to walk. And isn’t it wonderful when the kids take their first step and we want everybody to see a look at them and you go back and you try to be with them until they learn how to walk.

And the Christian realm don’t think for a minute that Christians automatically know how to walk with God. They don’t. They don’t know the language. They don’t know his word and sometimes they don’t see a good example That they need to follow See this is why younger Christians in the Lord need to see older Christians in the Lord walking the talk Being the example they ought to be and this is why when it says that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will and spiritual understanding, and verse 10, that ye might walk.

You’re learning how to walk, and there’s fingerprints upon your life. The Bible tells us about the Christians there in Corinth. How he says that you walk as men. What did he mean? He says you’re walking like lost people. You walk like lost people. You live in like lost people. You talk, you act, there’s envy and bitterness and strife and jealousy, all these things. That’s the signs of a babe in Christ. So spiritually, what are your fingerprints? If somebody observes you, do they see a baby?

Do they see a teenager in the Lord? Do they see a young mature individual in the Lord? What do they see? What kind of fingerprints are Uriel even? And the fingerprints is not that I left on the podium. I left them on the glass. I left them on a plate. I left them on the window. No, these are fingerprints that were leaving upon people’s lives. And we are revealing where we are spiritually by the, I guess you could say, the damage in many cases we’re doing in other people’s lives.

and we’re acting like babies, children, and we don’t grow up. And so the Bible here is talking about leaving the fingerprints. You see, when you have a certain amount of knowledge, God says, I want you to walk according to the light that you have. You know truth, live truth, walk truth, speak truth. Be the way God wants you to be. Now, the next thing I wanted you to get was, number two, the fingerprint is not only what you’re learning up here, but how you’re living it in your life.

Do you walk worthy of what God has called you to do, fit for the master’s use? Are you right now where God can use you? For example, there’s people who have trouble growing up and you can’t use them because they’re not faithful. You can’t depend on them. The world is full of people like that. They never learn how to work. They’re not dependable. They’re always late for everything. You never know what they’re gonna do. You ought to be as faithful as you can be in every area of your life.

See, this is why it is so important when you make the statement here in verse 10, go away, that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in underlying these three words, every good work. Every area of your life, everything that you do that it’s pleasing to the Lord. Now as you examine your life here tonight, are you a child? Are you a teenager? Are you grown up? Are you mature? Would your fingerprints, the impact that you’re leaving upon the lives of others that see you, know you the way you really are, where do you think it starts?

On the job in the church or at home? The way you are at home is where you really are. The way you are outside of home, you figure that out. That’s where we put on our Christian smile and we fool everybody. And those people that will do that will someday con some boy or girl down the road and they’ll get married. And they’ll raise a few little cons because they will do the same thing they do. They copy. They imitate.

So you’ve got to be what you want others to be. Remember you’re making an impact upon people’s life. You’re leaving an imprint upon somebody. I’ve been here two and a half years. I would like to think that I have made an impression on how you think, an impact on how you live, how you regulate your life. I like to believe that I have made a good impression. Now some people will probably question doubt that, but it’s my goal. Will I do it perfectly?

No. Will you? No. But that’s where we strive to be the way God wants us to be. And so he says here in verse 10, when you’re learning how to gain this knowledge so that you can do every good work that’s pleasing to the Lord. Because if there’s anybody you want to please, because I I found out a long time ago. After I trusted Christ as my Savior and I wanted to talk to my mom and my stepdad, I did not please them.

There isn’t anything I could have done that would have pleased them. I don’t care how I did it, it didn’t please them. My mother would just get up and tell me, he says, I’m out of here, don’t preach to me and leave me alone. I probably was not as kind as I would have been as tactful as I should have been. But I just wanted to let them know that if they didn’t trust the Lord to go into hell.

But how I did it wasn’t probably the best, but at least I tried. My stepdad would just get up and walk out of the room and says, I want to hear a preaching, I’ll go to church. And I didn’t have to worry about losing any of my friends. They left me. I didn’t have to leave them. They left me. of them because I was so headstrong on what I wanted to do. But it was right. I just wish I had a little bit more tact.

But I was a child learning how to walk. And I left an impression upon certain people. And sometimes I heard the very people that I loved. You see, if you don’t love them, you usually don’t hurt them too bad. But if they love you and you love them, you can hurt people very easy because we’re not perfect. We do things wrong. And so as you read this verse here in the last part of verse 10 where it says, being, and you’re on the line that word fruitful.

You see, being fruitful is several things to look at. One is like in John chapter 15 about bearing fruit and having people trust Christ as their savior because of your good works. The reason for our good works is to bear fruit. And when we bear fruit, there’s going to be other people that come to know Christ as their Savior. There’s also the fruit, the character that comes from the Holy Spirit working in your life, because that is where you get your love and your joy and your peace and all that from.

And then there’s also the fruit of the lips of the praise that you give because of what God’s done for you. So there’s the fruit of your life and how you live and how it impacts other Christians. So we’re supposed to have the fruit the results of this knowledge that we gain from studying the word of God. Now, down in verse 11 it says, strengthen with all might according to its glorious power unto all patient and long-suffered with joyfulness.”

Now, I want you to look at the first two words of verse 12, the words giving thanks. You see, learning the Word of God, that I might be filled with the wisdom and the knowledge of God, that I might walk worthy is my way of saying thanks to the Lord, for all that He’s done for me. You see, there is a reason why we should grow up and to mature. It’s because he gave me life. He made me his child.

And so in the next couple verses, verse 12, 13 and 14, it’s talking about, look what I did for you. Look what I did for you. And you ought to look and remember what he did for you. You see, at one time, you were lost. And you are going to hell. You’re not lost anymore. You’re God’s child. You’re going to heaven. And he says that you are now fit or meet for the inheritance. You see, the inheritance can be twofold.

One is because you trusted Christ as your Savior. You inherit everything God has because the Bible says Jesus tries the heir of God and we are joint heirs with Christ. So whatever he has, we share in it. But he also says there is an inheritance that we can have That is a result of our labor and our work for the Lord See if I work for the Lord my reward that I’m going to get is part of my inheritance It’s treasure that I’ve laid up.

I don’t have them now. I don’t have them now I don’t have any my treasure none of my reward. I don’t have them now But I’m going to get him when I get to heaven because see, I’m going to inherit that because all the work that I’ve done was for the Lord. And God says he’s going to reward me. So I have an inheritance in the work that I do for the Lord. So is it worth it to serve the Lord?

Yes, it’s worth it. I wish I could get everybody to see and understand this because it can change your life. Otherwise you just go through life. You hear a little bit, you go there and that’s why I love camp so much. Because you can take a child or an adult, get everything else away and concentrate upon what God says. That’s why more people dedicate their life to serve the Lord out of camp. Because all they’ve heard for about three or four days is the Word of God, the Word of God, the Word of God.

And when it so fills your mind, because you say, I want to do something for the Lord. I want to be what God wants me to be. And it burns inside of you like a passion, a fire. And people say, I’m going to dedicate my life to serve the Lord. And see, if you haven’t got to that place, you’re not going to. You’re just going to take it as it comes, and you might be today and then tomorrow you not.

And you know, you’re a fence straddler. You never make up your mind. Yes, I will. No, I won’t. Yes, I will. No, I won’t. Yes, I will. No, I won’t. And you never have any victory in your life, because you’re never settled it. I settled this years ago, about 50. I made up my mind. I belong to him. And I don’t care what happens. I don’t care what anybody says or does. I don’t care what happens to me. I belong to Him and I’m going to serve Him.

I want to please the Lord in everything that I do. I want to please the Lord when it comes to my wife. I want to please the Lord when it comes to my children or my grandkids or everybody at church. I want to leave the right kind of an imprint, right kind of an impression because we’re all affecting each other. What kind of an impact are you making in the lives of other people? Do you think it’s important? I think it is.

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. Part two of this teaching will conclude with tomorrow’s broadcast. 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 Diling Tool 3, 1-800-576-3771. That’s 1-800-576-3771. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bibleline programs, just go to our homepage at BibleLineMinistries.org and click on the Radio Broadcast link.

If you are 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 10-30 and at 6 o’clock on Sunday evening. Live broadcast of our services may be seen by clicking on the Calvary Community Church link at BibleLineMinistries.org. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline and now a closing thought from Pastor Arnold. friend one day it will happen the trumpet will sound and we will be changed caught up to meet the Lord in the air so live today and every day believing that the Lord is coming soon and just keep looking up