This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.

Bibleline Bibleline, here God’s word on Bibleline, 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.

your Bible and turn with me to the book of Philippians, the book of Philippians and chapter one. Philippians and chapter one, I want to talk in a little bit about an interesting subject. You are a Christian. Are you living like a Christian? So now you’re starting the middle. Do you believe in your own mind? Do you believe a Christian should live like a Christian? I do too. I believe a Christian should live like a Christian. But if a Christian doesn’t live like a Christian, he’s still a Christian, a disobedient child of God, but still a child of God.

So here in the book of Philippians in chapter one, Paul’s made the statement in verse 21, For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. For me to live is Christ. So I believe he lived like a Christian. I remember years ago, right before I trusted Christ as my savior. The reason that Betty’s dad did not want her to marry me, well, there was a lot of reasons. But one was that I didn’t have a job, two, I didn’t have a place to live, three, I didn’t have any money.

Four, I was not saved. And five, from my mother-in-law, she says you’re a hudlem. Now they were right on all reasons. All reasons I can understand that. So they still had mercy on me because they loved their daughter. Now they weren’t in love with me. They were in love with their daughter. And so they knew the only hope for their daughter was to help Yankee. So I kind of like got a free ride for a while only because they loved their daughter.

So for her sake they tolerated me. So I was influenced by them and I lived in their house so I showed submission to my father-in-law. It was his home. I showed respect because he was the head of the home. And when he told me to do something, I just did it. I never argued with him because I was living in his home. Well, he led me to the Lord and it wasn’t long before they hit upon hard times and we’d already done moved out and got us a place.

So they moved in with us. Now I’m going to get them back. No. They moved in with us. I understand the scriptures more than about, you know, leaving mother and father and cleaving. So anyway, even though he taught me a lot of stuff, I was head of my home. This was my house. I laid down the ground rules. I was young, smart aleck, cocky, egotistical, and a few other, you know, wonderful things. And one night, a little trainer, I’d walk back here and I’d put her in her crib.

Good night, honey. Now you stay in the crib, and I went back in there to sit down. And You were all sitting in there all four of us, me and my little darling. And Mr. Mrs. Jackson. And we’re sitting there watching the boob tube. I don’t know what was on. But it wasn’t long before Trina had climbed out of the crib for new achievement. She climbed out of the crib and she come down the hallway. And when she got down the hallway, she, the hallway, she, no, the highway, she stuck her head around the corner and she looked over at everybody and she just gave us a big ole smile.

I got a hold of her and I smacked her a couple of times on the backside and I put her back in the crib. And I walked back in there to sit down and Mr. Jackson, he says, Yankee, I don’t think you needed to have done that. And in my rudeness, I says, you raised your daughter, let me raise my daughter. That hurt him. I think it’s my house. It’s my family. You raised your daughter. I thought he must have done a pretty good job.

I married her. He never said a word about that, but you know years later, that’s bothered me for the last 50 years. I can’t get over how rude I was and unkind I was. I may have been right in what I did, but the way I did it was not right. Now, I know God forgives and the hurt, believe it or not, is sometimes it still lingers. You wish you hadn’t done it. Have you been there? You ever do anything like that?

Tore me up. I trusted Christ as my Savior and I was living in this body for 18 years before I allowed the Lord to move in. When the Lord came to move into my house, I wanted to make sure that He knew and understood this is my house, my body. I can live how I want to live. I can do whatever I please, my house. And then one day I came across the verse, you have been bought and paid for.

This ain’t my house. This ain’t my house. You say, you ain’t suppose to use the word ain’t. I know it ain’t, but it’s not my house. And you have no idea how that hurt me that I said those rude, cruel things or thought them. I didn’t say them out loud. I thought I can do whatever I want. I’m God’s child yet and I took the free gift eternal life, but I can still do whatever I want to do. You know, growing in the Lord is not the easiest thing in the world, except in a free gift of eternal life is a piece of cake.

Sure, a gift free, I’ll take it. But this thing about who owns the body, now that was a different story altogether. So there’s been times over the last 52 years I’ve had a little struggle with what I want to do, versus what he wants to do. But when I realize this is his house, I’m just living in his house. And if I live in his house, I should live by his rules. Now you think about what I’m saying, because what I’m saying is the truth.

Your body doesn’t belong to you anymore. It did. You had control of it or the devil controlled it. But now my body belongs to the Lord. And I guess I need to learn how to live, how to live. How you living, how you doing? Are you arguing and fighting with God on certain things? Does God have the right to tell me what, since I live in His house, where I can go and can’t go, what I can see and can’t see, what I can say and can’t say, but I can hear and can’t hear.

How much of my body does he own? How much of my mind belongs to him? Glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are gods. So now I know I belong to him and he has the right. Now he could say to me, if you don’t want to live the way I want you to live under my roof, I could ask you to move out. You know what that would mean? Do you know what it would mean if I had to move out of his house?

It means that I’m no longer in this world. Does he have the right To do that to me. Yeah, he does. And that’s a hard thing. Because most times we don’t think, well, he loves me too much to do that. Oh, he loves us. He loves us dearly. But I also want you to know there’s a verse in the Bible. I want you to take a look at it with me found there in the book of 2 Corinthians in chapter 5.

Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17. And notice what it says here in this verse. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, okay, when you trusted Christ as your Savior, you’re in him and he is in you. But this says any man that’s in Christ, he is a new creature. Means he’s a new creation. Their new birth was created by God. And therefore, I have a new birth that came from God and there’s something that God wants to have happen in my life.

Now remember, salvation is free. You’re saved by grace without works. You don’t earn it, you don’t work, but you cannot buy it. So God gives you eternal life and it will never cast you out and never lose you. going to heaven when you die. But as a child of God, yes, you can be an obedient child or disobedient, but just still his child. Here he’s talking about this is a new position, a new standing. You see, I once was a child of the devil going to hell.

Now I’m a child of God going to heaven. This is totally different from this one. This has changed. You see, didn’t change my old sinful nature. He simply gave me a new one, a new birth. Didn’t change the old one, gave me a new one. So this new birth that’s born of God is separate from this other one. This is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Means this new old condition is passed away. God no longer sees me as a lost man.

God sees me as a saved man. not as an unbeliever, but as a believer, as a saint, not an aunt. He sees me in Christ. That will never change. Therefore He makes this statement, all things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. Now when you got saved, everything didn’t change and everything didn’t come new. You might have hoped it would, but it doesn’t, generally. You may have new desires and you make different choices over the old one, but you still have the old sinful desires.

God doesn’t take those away. Did you something better? Give you something new. Now it’s up to us to decide whether or not which one will I control my life. So God wants us to yield our lives to him. So he says to live in him. Are you living for the Lord? Are you a Christian? Should you live like a Christian? Are you living like a Christian? You see, everybody needs to think about, you know, what am I? I am a believer in Christ.

I’m a Christian. Have you ever heard people say, you know, that person’s a hypocrite? He’s a hypocrite. He says one thing and he lives another. Did you know just by the very fact that you let somebody know that you are a Christian or a believer in Christ, A lost man expects you to live like a Christian. Even a lost person to tell you, hey, I thought you was a Christian. You’re not supposed to do that. Do you know there are some people that will test you to just see what they can make you do or get you to do and how mad they can make you?

Just to see how you’re gonna react. You say they wouldn’t do stuff like that. The world is full of them and they will. So I want you to see this verse. Look in the book of Romans in chapter 15. Romans in chapter 15. The Bible tells us in his word that we are to learn, learn. Now you know there’s a verse, it says in the book of Matthew in chapter 11, come into me, all ye that labor nor heavy laden, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of man. Let me just ask the question. Are you learning? Are you learning? Are you learning spiritual truths? Do you put yourself in a place to learn spiritual truths? How much spiritual truth do you want to hear? If you like to live in this world, you have a body that It’s hungry and it must be fed. How many times do you want to feed your physical body? How many meals would you like to have?

Don’t answer that. I said, I only eat one meal a day all day long. But spiritually, how are you doing? Some Christians are so spiritually skinny they could use that cherry over a hula hoop. So they’re in bad shape. Some of them might need to put on a little weight. But some are maybe all they do is just eat, eat, eat, and they might need to, you know, do some exercise, start doing something to God. See, that’s what happens when you just feed on the Word of God, but you never do anything with it.

So the Bible tells us some things that would help us. So here in chapter 15, I want you to look there in verse 4. For whatsoever things were written a four time, were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now understand this. The Bible teaches us that tribulation works with patience and through our learning things you’re supposed to learn from your tribulations is to teach you patience and to give you comfort because you saw how God blessed you in the midst of your trials and tribulations brought you through and from that you gain comfort because you’ve gained wisdom.

You understand what it means to trust the Lord in the midst of a problem. You are learning that, aren’t you? Or when you have problems, how do you respond to them? How are you doing under pressure? Now you’re a Christian. How are you doing? Are you living like one? Do you act like one? Do you think like one when you have everything seems to go wrong? How you doing? Oh, fall apart. All right. That’s a dead sign of a undisciplined mind.

It means that you’re not trusting the Lord like you should. So therefore tribulation and those things that causes you to fall apart should reveal a weakness in your Christian life so that you’ll know how to correct it. And he says, count it all joy when you fall in the divers temptations, all kinds of problems. See God doesn’t just give you one problem. He gives you all kinds. Sometimes He gives you a whole bunch at one time. You ever heard that statement when it ran it pours?

Well God allows that. You see sometimes it’s distress you out because if you really did trust the Lord you could cast your cares upon him because you knew he cares for you and it won’t bother you so bad, but if it’s you’re not really as strong as you think you are, those things will reveal your pride that you don’t know at all. You can’t do it all. You can’t solve everything and you’ll need him. So it causes you to go to the Lord and ask and the Bible says and he will give to you.

But he says, you must ask in faith, not wavering, because a double minded man is unstable in all of his ways. So do you believe that your heavenly Father loves you so much that he spices up your life so it’s not born and drab and he gives you all kinds of problems in life because he wants to teach you something? How you been learning? Have you ever heard this statement, some people live and learn, some people live and never learn?

Live all the life, never learn. And as a Christian they never grow because they kind of keep taking the same test over because they never learn the lesson. And you just repeat, just repeat, never growing stronger in the Lord. And don’t think just because you’ve done, well I don’t already had my quota for this year. I assure you, you haven’t reached your quota. It means that you haven’t, Lord, I’ve had enough this year. I don’t need any more patience because tribulation works with patience and you think you’re doing fine.

We’ll see God reveals to you sometimes not how far you have come but how much further you need to go. So there’s things that are going to happen this week or maybe it’ll be next week. But whenever it is, things are going to come, troubles on its way. But the things that happens to you are designed by God to build your character. Because God in heaven is going to reward you for your faithfulness. Faithfulness doesn’t have to be faithful if nothing happens.

It’s when things seem to go wrong that you have to prove your faithfulness. True faithfulness to the Lord is remaining faithful when it appears God’s let you down. Have you ever thought that God has failed you and let you down? You forsook me. I had somebody to wrote me on the email just recently. I thank God’s forsaken me. I emailed him back. You forsook him. God never forsakes you. But you’ll forsake him. You’ll forget the truth. You’ll forsake principles that you know.

You start doing things and living the way you know you shouldn’t. There’s a verse in here says which were written a four-time four-hour learning and get this that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. It means a joyful anticipation of the next one. Because I passed that one. Thank you, Lord. And now God’s got another one for you. And another trial coming down to the road. Why? Because God wants to enrich your life. Because the more you learn, the more valuable you become in the lives of other people.

See, serving the Lord is serving people. You don’t want to listen to somebody who’s never had anything go wrong. You want to hear from somebody that suffered like you suffered and knows what you feel and what you’ve gone through and can experience that. Well, God wants to comfort you so that you can comfort others with the comfort where you have been comforted. That’s 2 Corinthians chapter 1, but it’s all there. I want you to take your Bible and turn the book of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs.

All the way back here in the Old Testament, a book of wisdom, very important book, the book of Proverbs and chapter 3. A lot of people memorize these two verses, and it’s a good verses to memorize, but then they forget to apply it. Look what he says, trust in the Lord, this is in verse 5, trust in the Lord with all vine heart, lean not unto vine own understanding. I’d like to ask you a question. Yeah, which way are you leaning?

Lean not unto vine own understanding. But is that the way you’re leaning? Did you know that the way you lean could determine the direction you fall? You know a tree in the forest, if you cut it down, you know you can cut a certain way and you can cause it to fall, whichever way you you want it to fall. No, I don’t do that. I just say, get a stick of dying in my brother’s veins, may there be rings.

But you’ve got to learn from what God wants to teach you. Lean not unto my own understanding, but in all my ways acknowledge God or thank God. And he shall direct thy path. Now, which way do you lean? When there’s something that seems to go wrong, do you trust yourself more than God? Or do You trust God more than yourself. Do you think you already have all that you need to know and you don’t need any more knowledge? You see, learning the word of God is the knowledge by which you’re to trust.

And when you don’t come to Sunday school or church or Sunday night or Wednesday, well, you can’t maybe because you work or whatever, but when you can and you don’t. Or you don’t study the word of God doing the week. Did you know every bit of knowledge that you did not learn is gonna cost you? The Word of God is complete and thorough for the man of God to be complete in whatever it is God wants him to do.

So when you don’t know something, it costs you something. That’s why God wants us to know His Word. Because the Word of God, all of it, every story in the Old Testament, God wants you to know those stories. Because you see, it builds your faith, your confidence that if God told them to do this and they did it and this is what happened, And then there’s others who didn’t do it, and this is what happens. You learn from that.

Some people never learn, and they just go through life and they’re miserable, and they don’t have to be that way. God has so much for you and I. And that’s why you don’t judge yourself by what somebody else has learned. Well, I know just as much as so and so. When I was going to Florida Bible College, I got As and B’s, a couple C’s the first year. She had already decided that she was going to go to night school.

One semester she made the President’s list. I’m not going to have a wife smarter than me. So she only went that one semester. You know what we used to do when I started going to church, which I said out here, not by words like John where he’s sitting here. And the preacher go up there and he says, take your Bible and turn to the Gospel of John. Well I didn’t know where John was. Still don’t know where he is.

I don’t know what John is, but Betty, she’d have her Bible. She’s ready to wait. Time I go through the table of contents. I can’t even find the table of contents. Then I finally got it. Take your Bible, turn to the book. I’m going to chapter two. And Betty’s already got it. I could stand it. When we first decided that we know we needed to learn, learn. Learn to pray. Well, I didn’t know how to pray. I didn’t pray.

Except between me and my wife. me and God would not even know Him and I don’t remember any of those prayers. I was one of my cousins, one day I had her house and somebody got ready to eat and somebody said somebody needs to say grace. So my one relative’s hallowed it, grace. I thought grace was a girl’s name. Anyway, she decided she would say the prayer, name was Jeanette. She had to be about five years old. I was about maybe seven.

This is God look down to that little crack, bless us while we eat our snack. Amen, John Ben, John Ruth to Korta Hinn, chicken dad, and we’re scratching, say, say, say. Now today I know that’s not appropriate, but at the time it was sufficient everybody dug in. But I didn’t know how to pray, and then it scared me to death whenever I was asked to pray in church. To pray. I don’t know how to pray. We moved to Macon, the Cottaback dischurch, Dr.

Sheehan with the pastor. We had just got down there and we were sitting on the back row. Just walked in, it’s Deacon Medicine, had us fill out a visitor’s card and I gave back to him. And we were watching. They sung some songs, made some announcements, and they said, okay, we’re going to have prayer. And so the preacher got up there and he says, we’re going to have three people come up here and help us to pray for missionaries, all being permissionary.

So he looked over there and he called somebody’s name, then he calls somebody else’s name, and he says, we have Brother Ralph Arnold. He’s just out visiting down here with us. And so we’re going to ask him to come up and close in prayer. And there must have been about five, six hundred people there that night. I’m sitting in the back row. I told Betty, I said, did he call my name? I didn’t have hearing aids then, and I heard very well.

I knew he caught my name. I said, I’m not going. She says, you got to go. I said, I’m not going. That guy got up and started up. That guy got up and started about it. And people started turning around and looking. I said, I’m like, oh, no, I’m not going. I was scared to get petrified. Found she elbowed me. That woman got the wonderful elbows in the world. Right between third and fourth rib, you know. I got up and I started down the aisle.

And when I got up there, the preacher whenever he was sent by the piano. This other guy came up here and he took a seat and what they had went left and that was for me. I sat down here. And so the preacher says, Brother, why don’t you go ahead and play? So this guy got up here and he prayed and he grabbed a hold of the horns of the altar. Hold almost, great just heavily, Father, Creator of heaven and earth.

And I’m sitting there, I’m shivering. I had never heard anybody get God’s attention like that before. I’m serious.uliffe I thought I got to pray like that Brachia boy WARN I thought of a sudden the only prayer I knew was as I lay me down down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And I didn’t think this is not going to be appropriate. And I have no idea how to pray. 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 by the line 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. To listen to today’s message again or to obtain a free download of any of our Bible line 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.