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I wanted to live as righteous of a life possible. Not to get to heaven. I already knew I was going to heaven. But I wanted to do it because I was so thankful to the Lord for what He had done for me. There’s just something that I wanted to please God. I wanted to delight myself in the Lord. And I knew I could not do that if I did not know His Word. This is one of the things that motivated me to go to Bible school to study the Word of God.

Because I knew I could not know the will of God unless I knew the Word of God in order to know the will of God. And he says, he that will do the will of God shall know of my doctrine. In other words, if you are willing to do whatever God wants you to do, God will help you to find the way and reveal His will. Also why you’re right there. I want you to see another verse. Look in the verse 130.

Verse 130. Verse 130 makes this statement. And it says, the entrance of thy word, giveth light, the entrance of thy word. Did you know without the word of God, even as a Christian, you walk in darkness. You may know Christ is your savior, but if you’re not doing what God wants you to do because of the word of God, because of the light that’s in the word of God, because of the truth that’s in the word of God, you still walk in darkness.

So you’re going to heaven because you trusted Christ as savior, but you’re not in heaven yet. still left us down here to live a life. And there’s so much that God wants us to do. We’re looking verse 18, while we’re right here, so close. Looking verse 18, open thou mine eyes, that I may be whole wondrous things out of thy law, out of thy word. Open thou mine eyes. Why? So that you can see. See, a lot of people who are lifted up with pride don’t think they need to go to church.

They don’t need to study the Bible. They don’t need to. They’re blind and naked and miserable and don’t know it. Revelation chapter 3 when he’s talking to the church at Leo Decilla. Another quote that I got that I loved, He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, the gain that which he cannot lose. And by ever heard who said that? Jameliot, he was a missionary to the Aqua Indians down in Ecuador. Years later they had a daughter that came to Florida Bible College and they’d fly the guy around to give testimonies that had killed Jameliot.

missionaries got killed. I heard one story about one guy that came from a tribe and there’s going to kill these missionaries and they didn’t do it. Years later they led him to the Lord. He said, oh how come you didn’t attack us? We knew you were around us. You had us totally surrounded. They said, well we couldn’t because there so many people protecting y’all. They said they saw a circle of guards around those missionaries at the jungle. God can enable them to see what you and I don’t naturally see.

Did you know that God has a reason to purpose for the things that happens in our life? And you may find yourself chasing soap bubbles. You know you blow the bubbles all over the place. And some people, that’s all they do is chase dreams. And all they do is pop and leave you empty. Next thing, you know you like the man who climbed the ladder for 20 years and found out it was leaning against the wrong wall. And you lived your whole life and wasted it.

Now you know you’re getting close to the end and you’re going to be You’re facing God one day and you’re going to look back over your life that I wonder what God could have done if I had availed myself, if I’d have studied the Word of God. Maybe God wanted me to go to Bible school. Maybe God wanted me to be a missionary. Maybe God wanted me to be a missionary. Another statement, David Livingston, missionary in Africa, he says God had only one son and he made him a missionary.

Think about it. God had a son and he called him to be a missionary. He sent him on a mission into another world. It was a terrible world. It was a dark world. A miserable wicked world. And that’s where God sent his son to be of the light to the world. Sometimes God puts us in places where we don’t really like. You may be working with people on a job. You can’t stand. Maybe they’re profanity and all the things that they say, and you just can’t stand, but maybe God puts you as a light right in the middle so that you could shine.

Where would you want to be? You want to sit in church all day long? Where there’s no problems and everybody’s wonderful, and everybody’s kind, and going to church enough, and you’ll find out there’s hypocrites at a church. There’s people that lie at church. There’s people that steal at church. There’s all kind of people at church. You’re here. If you find the perfect church, don’t join it because then you’ll ruin it. David Levison also said this, if a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a heavenly king be considered a sacrifice?

We have ambassadors that go to different countries and represent our country and they consider what an honor. The Bible says that we are ambassadors for Christ. What an honor. Yeah, we call it sacrifice, but sometimes the sacrifice is giving up something that you have for something better. Because I’ve never given up anything that God didn’t give me something better in its place. I don’t give what it is you give up in this life and you sacrifice. You give up something.

Do you like what God’s got for you and you get to heaven? I used to think I had plans and dreams. But when I used to always listen to, you know, tires and of the jungle, man, I wanted to go to Africa so bad and live in a treehouse and swing around on monkey vines. Don’t laugh, you did too. I used to put a towel around my neck and not be flying a Superman. Man I could run so fast, I could almost feel my, I was hardly touching the ground, I was so fast.

You did too? I even got some shoes for my son one time and I said, now these shoes are fast. He took off running because I told him the shoes were fast. And he won’t see just how fast those shoes were. And he’d run as fast as he could run. You’d be surprised some of the things that we can think about when we’re young. And lo and behold, we grew up to be adults, just like little puppies. Puppies are so nice and they turn out to be dogs.

The only thing God has to make a man of God out of as a child that grows up and God wants to work in our lives and wants to make something out of us. CT Stud said this, some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell. I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell. A lot of you want to play it safe. They don’t want to get dirty, They don’t want to get hurt.

Don’t want to get offended. If you serve the Lord, you’re going to be offended. And you’re going to offend. If you decide to serve the Lord, you will offend people. You will hurt people. You know what would be safe for me? Get in my little motorhome and just go from one church, cause all the trouble I want, go to the next church, cause the trouble I want, go to another church. And don’t have to worry about none of that stuff.

people can say because, well, you’re different and yet you’re clear on the gospel and yet you teach the Bible, then why doesn’t everybody love it? Did you know when Jesus was here? The best teacher in all the world. And he said something one day that offended them. And though they left. So Jesus turned to his disciples and he says, well, you also go away. And he To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. For we believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Some people will believe what you’re saying is truth and other people care less. Some people play games. Some people are serious. Some people want to know what the word of God says. They want to be challenged. They want to be motivated. But it’s so easy just to settle down into the world. Ruffle no feathers. Don’t rock the boat. But that’s not how God made me. And I don’t believe that’s how God wants to use me. I have to rock the boat and I have to.

I want to make people think life’s too short for just playing games. Another man said this. CT stood by the way, he said. If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him. That’s what he said. This is why a guy goes to the foreign fields because he said, if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him.

He bought me. I belong to him. He deserves everything that I have, everything that I am. Why would I want to hold back? Second Corinthians 514 says, for the love of Christ constraineth us because we best judge that if one died for all were dead, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who die for them and rose again. So that I should from this point on I should serve the Lord because of His love for me and my love for Him.

And there’s nothing that He should require of me that I shouldn’t be willing to give even my life. Whatever it might be, Oswald J. Smith supported thousands of missionaries, had a great work of an Ontario. He said, no one has the right to hear the gospel twice while there remains someone who’s never heard it once. No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, for there remains someone who has not heard it once. What about the people that never heard the gospel?

Another statement, unknown. He said, we talk of the second coming, half of the world has never heard of the first. You know, you can get so caught up in all you think about is the second coming of Christ that you forget to tell people about the first coming of Christ. I love prophecy. I love prophecy as much as any man I know. But prophecy to me challenging to motivate me to be evangelistic. That’s why we want the radio. That’s why we want the internet.

That’s why we want to produce kids that know how to serve the Lord. That’s why we want a Bible college. That’s why we want the Bible on Institute so we can train people on how to do the job. Not a game to me. It’s serious. And you can try to understand all the prophecies you want to. I don’t care what day Christ is coming back. I don’t even care the day He was born as far as celebrating it. I don’t care if it was on December the 25th.

I don’t care if it was on my birthday, February the 4th. I don’t care if it was on your day. I don’t care what day He was born. I’m just thankful He was born and that He died and paid for my sins. came back from the dead. You won’t find a verse in the Bible that says to celebrate the birth of Christ, but I don’t see anything wrong with doing it. I’m looking forward to him coming back, yes, but I don’t want to forget, there’s some people that’s never heard that he came the first time.

That’s what they need to hear. The reason some folks don’t believe in missions is that their brand of religion they have isn’t worth propagating. Do you believe that what you believe worth telling people about? Do you or don’t you? Do you believe that what you believe is worth telling people about? Do you believe it’s worth being ashamed that people are going to offend you or you’re going to offend somebody that you’re willing to go ahead and do it anyway because you believe that it’s so important?

What do you believe? Every man has to answer this on question because you’re going to live according to what you truly believe. People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world. We waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives. And when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted. Do you realize that all the time that you have lived after you trusted Christ is your savior?

Do you give account to that just like commissioner? Well, everybody has to give an account. But it’ll be better that whenever you stand before the Lord, He says, well done, not good and faithful servant. I called you to go here and you went. Or maybe God will have to say, you know, I called you. I spoke to you, I spoke to you many times. You said they’re not church service, and you heard that preach of parades heart. And you knew that I wanted you to do this and thus.

And you refused. You refused because you were afraid. You were scared. The true greatness of any church is not how many it seats, but how many it sends. Now how many it seats, but how many it sends. This is why I want people, if they listen to belong enough, I want them to be challenged to serve the Lord. And if necessary, yes, to go to Bible school. Now you take that little girl sitting there sitting right there, Rachel. One of the sharpest girls we have in this whole ministry.

But I’m thrilled that she wants to go to Bible school. I was thrilled whenever we would have an angel come and sit right down here. Every service he had asked me questions. I said, you ought to go to Bible school. And every week he still calls me up and asked me, he says, what do you think about this and I said, what did your teachers tell you? Well, they said this, but I want to know what you think. I said, I’m not going to tell you.

I said, you study it. I said, what you went to Bible school for? I said, you’re just trying to do a shortcut to some of the answers. every week, every week, sometimes two and three times a week. But you know, if he keeps on saying, you know, God’s going to use that little feller, he’s going to be dynamic. Somebody’s going to get him. He’s going to go somewhere and do something, but I believe that he’s preparing. point I wanted to give to you.

And that is this, never pity missionaries envy them. They are where the real action is, for a life and death, sin and grace, heaven and hell converge. Isn’t that good? I love it. In no other way can the believer become as fully involved with God’s work, especially the work of world evangelism as an intercessory prayer. I wanna read something else to you about the prayer thing because remember when Jesus said in Matthew chapter nine, pray you the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labors, we can reach our world, if we will.

The greatest lack today is not people or funds, the greatest need is prayer. People pray in that God will use them. And because of that, they make themselves fit for the ministry. Most people are not fit for the ministry. They’re not fit to serve a Lord. They couldn’t become a missionary if they wanted to. They couldn’t become a pastor if they wanted to. They couldn’t become an evangelist if they wanted to, because they will not watch and garden their lives.

They won’t practice what they preach, because too many are hypocritical. So easy to say, oh, I love the Lord and live like the devil. If the God that I know that wrote this book, if you don’t live a godly life, you don’t love the Lord. You may know him as your savior. You’ll go to heaven, but you don’t love him. You can’t love him without obeying him. Because he says, if any man love me, keep my word. You really love him.

You’ll keep his word. You’ll do what God wants you to do with your life. You may love your life too much to serve him, to sacrifice. Another statement, the history of missions is the history of answered prayer. Another man stated this way, I believe that in each generation God has called enough men and women to evangelize It’s all the yet unreached tribes of the earth. It is not God who does not call. It is man who will not respond.

Do you believe that God would give us an impossible task? It’s not that God hasn’t asked people to go. The study is word, to do something else with their life. This is that people won’t answer the call. I want you to go to here. Yes, I ain’t going. I want you to go there. I’m not going. Kind of like this coach one time, he’s coaching his football team. The full back got creamed. They had to drag him off the field.

Coach Holler, give Leroy the ball. Next player, another guy got the ball. He got creamed. Drug him off the field. Coach Holler, give Leroy the ball. They gave the ball to somebody else. He got creamed. The coach said, I said, give the ball to Leroy and quarterback Holler the back. Leroy don’t want the ball. Leroy don’t want the ball. Price to pay. The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet. The church must send, or the church will end.

Isn’t that a good statement? Because that’s the purpose of the church. Let’s just pretend for a moment there are no other churches. We are the only church in the world. world will the world hear the gospel because of us? There is no other church. And only missionaries that will ever go into this world are the ones that are sitting here right here. If we don’t have a radio broadcast, nobody else will because there is nobody else. We don’t send out missionaries, there won’t be any missionaries because there is nobody else.

You know what we always say, well somebody else will do it, somebody else will do it. Somebody else will But you need to ask the question, Lord, what do you want me to do? And make sure that you’re doing what God wants you to do. You’d be surprised what God may have you do, or God may want you to go. Don’t underestimate God. Don’t even underestimate what God can do for you and through you. You should be like, I can’t see down the road, how God, you don’t have to.

Just prepare to be used. Opportunities are on wheels, and a prepared man can take advantage of opportunities. But when the opportunities come and you’re not prepared, you’ll be standing on the sideline, and maybe he got to put you on a shelf, because he can’t use you, because you wouldn’t prepare. You see, you have to have a vision. You have to care. You have to have that compassion. I can’t make people do anything. I only want to try to provide an environment that makes you thirsty.

See, that’s what salt does. Salt causes people to be thirsty. And it preserves you. It helps you to keep your life clean so that you don’t become defiled, so that the meat doesn’t rotten. You’re the light of the world. You’re the salt of the earth. If it’s not us, then who is it? This is what I believe Christmas is all about. So that’s the strangest Christmas story I’ve ever heard. Well, it’s where my heart is. And either we do this and people respond, or you don’t need a guy like me.

You don’t need somebody like me. You can get a preacher to play patticate with you. That’s not my job. I want to see things happen. I’m not here to twiddle out my years in retirement. I’ve only got a few good years left and I promise those to God. And I want to be used. Pick up here. Letting this hand represent you and me. And you need to learn how to do this too. This is you and me and this is sin.

We all have sin on us. God loves us, but He hates our sin. But He loves us. He loves you. Hates what you do wrong. And to pay for that wrong, God says, is eternal separation from God in a place called hell. But He loves us and wants us to go to heaven. And to go to heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God. None of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We have all sinned and come short of the perfection of God.

But God loves us. And He says, we’re like sheep, going astray. We have no shepherd. Every man goes his own way, does his own thing. This hand represents Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord God in the flesh. He came into the world because He loves us. Hates our sin because it separates us from Him. So Jesus Christ who had no sinned in half the die, He took all the sin of all the world. and paid for it on the cross.

Came back from the dead. And God said, if you and I would believe that he did it for us, he would put this payment to our account and we get to go to heaven on what Christ did. When I said it for the Bible college and I would watch Ray Stanford do this little wallet trick. I thought. He ain’t so great. Anybody can do that. Anybody can do that. If you sit here long enough and you listen, he ain’t so great.

I can do that. Ray was copyable. You could copy the guy. Hank copied him. I copied him. Thousands of others copied him. He was a man that never went to Bible college. He just trusted the Lord when he was old, decided to serve the Lord, and just taught people how to trust Christ as Savior, How to make the gospel clear. I just want to be copyable. I want to be so simple you can sit there and listen to yourself thinking in your mind.

He ain’t so great. I can do that. That’s right. You can. And you should. Because that’s what it’s all about. The reason I don’t throw Hebrew and Greek on you is because I don’t know it. I don’t care to know it. I’m having a heart and a time with 10 games. Let’s pray, shall we? Every head bowed and every eye closed and no one looking around. If you hear today and you never trusted Christ as your savior, maybe you’ve heard about it all your life, but you never understood.

I want you to understand God loves you. He paid for your sins and he said, if you would believe he did it for you, he would give his a freak you have ever lost in life. In just a moment, I’m gonna ask you to raise your hand, raising your hand doesn’t save you. It just lets me know that what I said made sense to you. Send free to that made sense to me and I will trust Christ as my Savior and how life you to pray for me.

We’ll just slip you in a very quickly and just put it right back down. Yes, God bless you, John. Anyone else? You can put it down. God bless you. Anyone who trusts the Lord, God saves. It gives them eternal life. Father, thank you so much for all that you’ve done for us. And Father, for the one that indicated by an uplifted hand that they would trust you as Savior, that Father you guarantee, eat eternal life as a free gift.

That person can know that they’re going to heaven because of what you did for them. Bless each one here. In Kefalwe just has to bless us upon us during this Christmas time of year that you’d help each one of us to realize how important it is to let people know about the first coming. More than a second. In Christ’s name we pray. Are you a new listener to Bibleline? Do you enjoy the teachings of Dr. Arnold? Well, if you’ve never contacted us before, we want to give you Dr.

Arnold’s book, The Gospel Driven Man. Every day we receive many emails from folks who have questions about repentance and salvation, about faith in works, and about how to share the gospel with friends and loved ones. This book, The Gospel Driven Man, covers all those topics, and we want all new listeners of Bibleline to receive a free copy. There’s no obligation, no donation necessary, simply call us at 1-800-576-3771 or write to us and request your free copy of the Gospel-Driven Man.

The mailing address is 4811 George Road, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Again don’t forget to include your mailing address and God bless you and thank you for listening to Bibleline. Thanks for joining us on Bibleline. 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. 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.Used today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep looking up.