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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 You can reach a store free at 800-57-77-7. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray that you will enjoy our commitment to the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, which will be a blessing of God’s love.

It’s very important that you stay in God’s love. God is a blessing, and that you stay in God’s love. And we say, God is a blessing, and that you stay in God’s love. God’s the one that knows, see, humility is not a position of the body, it’s a position of your mind. And the position of your mind should be of submission to the Lord so that you’re dependent upon the Lord. And there’s a thin line between faith and foolishness or a person who’s spiritual and a person who’s just plain cocky.

A cocky person says, I can do anything. And a spiritual person says, I can do anything through Christ. the same thing, both come across the same way, but one’s bold and looks exactly the same almost. Now look what else in letter everyone wants a glory. Now we’re talking about the king of glory coming back, coming in power and great Lord to the earth one day. And we’re going to rule and reign with the Lord someday. And remember this, he makes a statement in the book of chapter 8, where he says the sufferings of this present time, not worthy to be compared to with the glory that’s going to be later.

So we suffer now, we go through it now, we submit ourselves to the will of God now, and that’s what humility is, submitting yourself to the will of God. Doing with your life what God wants you to, and if you do, there’s a day coming when you’ll be so glad because God can raise you up and God can exalt you. Now, I don’t know what it’s going to be like in the Kingdom. I don’t know if it’s referring to your position of service.

It’s got to be something, but whatever it is, whatever I can get, I want it. And I don’t think it’s wrong to want it because God desires to bless us. He wants to give us things. But He says, I got something special for those who work for it. And He wants us to love Him. So notice this. This is very important. When He says, feed the flock of God means to 10 to take care of people. It’s taken the oversight thereof.

words what you do and you’ll notice that sometimes you can’t always tell what I’m going to be speaking on on any given Sunday unless I’m telling I’m going to teach in a book and go through the book but otherwise I try to see what do I think that y’all need when I see the people on Sunday morning I’m thinking what do they need what do they need and then I might take them to this pasture over here and say they need to graze here a little bit.

And then sometime I think, well, now I need to take them over here in this pasture and let them graze over here a little bit. So I’m supposed to learn all the pastures for people can feed. They can’t eat it all at one time. You can’t give it all to them at one time. So you find out, OK, they need a little bit of this and a little bit of this. Have you ever gone to a buffet? Don’t you love buffets?

where you can just walk down the line and get all that you want of every kind of thing you can think of. Isn’t that nice? And then you go to another restaurant and they say, oh, we’re serving tonight spaghetti. And then they say, well, how do you, would you like your spaghetti? It’s all you’re getting. Or you can go get some pizza, you know, or whatever. But you find out, well, what do people need? And then as a pastor, you say, okay, I need to give him this and I need to give him a little bit.

then you got to warm a little bit and then you got to feed them a little bit. So you’re like a shepherd and you’re trying to figure out what to be and you can find out a lot about what people need, about what they’re doing or not doing. Their involvement or not involvement tells you an awful lot. True? People giving or not giving tells you an awful lot about their spirituality. Now I never checked that. But I don’t see anything wrong with a preacher doing it, but I just don’t want to get caught in the trap.

I don’t want to treat somebody differently because they do something and somebody else doesn’t. But you’re always trying to find out how to feed God’s people because of what they need to be doing. Some are strong in this area, but not in this area. Some are strong over here and out here. And that’s why not everybody says, you know, I really got fed this morning. But I venture to say that every Sunday somebody got fed. Somebody learned something. Somebody grew a little bit.

So you’re always concerned about that responsibility. Look at letter E, not by constraint, not because, well, I have to. Your peace of mind and joy will come because you want to. Your flock can be your bus route kids, your Sunday school class or such, and you have the same job as a pastor with them. Can you fulfill the responsibility God has for you without being involved in ministries? You can’t. This is why I want people in order to fulfill their responsibilities, find a ministry, find a place where you can serve, get involved, doing something with somebody because that’s how you grow.

That’s just how you find out, do I really know anything about the Bible? Or it’s just a lot of knowledge up there, but it’s not working now. It won’t work for me. And so you’re always working on these things. Letter F, but of already mind, proper motivation is proper thinking. You will always stay motivated if you think properly. You think right, you will live right. And sometimes there’s nobody else around to motivate you. Now thank for a moment. I have not had to depend upon anybody to motivate me for 50 years.

I haven’t had a pastor. I’ve been the pastor. But I’ve always stayed motivated, always wanting to do something as much as I possibly can. others to start a church or to do a radio ministry or TV ministry or the internet or whatever we get, anything. Whatever the guys come to me and they’ve got a, I think Jesse came about this YouTube thing. Let’s do it. We got something up. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s do whatever we can do.

And don’t stop. Just always keep, not everything is going to grow, but man, if I don’t work, let’s try this. Well, if I don’t work, let’s try this. Stay motivated. And you’ll find out that it will give you energy. You’ll die on a vine with a lack of energy if you don’t have something that drives you and motivates you. Makes you go. Let her have to be of a ready mind. You can control how you think. Be always motivated to do what’s right.

Let her gee, God resisted the proud. Give us grace unto the humble. Humility is depending on the Lord. Pride is not dependent on the Lord. So you can be made humble or you can be bold at the same time. But sometimes it’s hard to distinguish that. Look at page two, page two. And I made this statement just a minute ago because some people can, I can do all things with the confidence in the boldness and so forth. And I can do all things through Christ.

And both can be bold. And y’all have come. Paul talked on being humble, but at the same time as he’s telling to the Ephesians, he says, I was with you in humility. He humbled himself, became a servant and all those things. And at the same time, he says, pray that I may open my mouth with boldness. Being bold doesn’t mean you’ve been filled with pride, and some people don’t understand that. Now look at the next statement. And number three, anyone or everyone wants to toot his own horn.

Remember I told you this, I got this from Dr. Kurtz Hudson. So it has to be good. Unless thou tooth thine own horn, it will forever remain in the state of untootedness. Maybe that’s not a good statement. You don’t have to toot your own horn. It’s okay if somebody else toot your horn. But at the little statement here, it’s not the horn or the toot of the horn that makes the train. See what I have right here? It’s not the horn that pulls the train.

Number three, God knows and he will reward. Don’t be self-confident or inferior. Now get this, this is a very good statement. The self-confident person compares his best with someone else’s worst. You want to feel good about yourself, compare yourself with somebody that’s not as good as you. But if you feel inferior, that feeling, that person compares his worst with somebody else’s best, and then they’re always down to depressed. So when you get depressed, good possibilities, you’re comparing either what you’re doing, what you have, or the what you are with somebody else who’s better and you’re depressed.

You didn’t get what you want. Therefore, you don’t think as much of yourself because, well, I should have got it. I didn’t get it. God must not love me. Things didn’t work out my way. Be very careful. The next statement, everyone can receive this crown, not just elders. Pride says, no one tells me what to do. I’ve had people tell me, I said, me, I’d love to be yankie. You know, he’s his own boy. He can do anything he wants to do.

Think about it for a minute. Do I have more responsibility than somebody else in this ministry? Does my work or quality of it make me have to do certain things and fulfill responsibilities? And, isn’t it possible that if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, I can get fired? Remember, I was hired. I can be fired. So if I don’t, if you try to go get any job, you don’t do the job, they can fire you, right? Well, the men on the top, if you don’t do the job, you won’t have a business.

He has to do what those customers out there want done or he can’t have a work. So you always got responsibilities and I don’t care where you are everybody’s got responsibilities fulfill your responsibility and we got open the door and you get another position we’ll find if you don’t be content do what you can do where you are is there anybody that’s watching all of this is God in heaven is watching your life and your attitude is very very important look at the next statement letter I humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God that he makes He’s all to you in due time.

Due time, be patient, wait on the Lord. Don’t run ahead of God. One time told me, he says, Yankee, God could use you if he could ever catch you. Because I was always, shoo. If I didn’t like something, I was so impatient. I mean, I was the most impatient person there’s ever been in the world. I just couldn’t stand it. I’ve corrected a lot of it, but road rage is still right there. It’s number one. But it’s something because when I want something, I want now, I want it done.

And I’m that way a lot with the Lord. And so I’ve had to, you know, surround my people that’s slow, you know, like Dr. Paulson and you take Steve Banker and Bobbin, they slow me down just a little bit. I can’t do everything that I want to do. So I’m not a dictator because I can’t make anything happen. So I got to run everything by the board. They got to say, I can’t do this. I can’t do that. The money we spend.

I never count the money. never write a check. I don’t spend anything because what? Because that’s our job. Let them do it. And that way nobody could ever accuse me of embezzling the money, can they? I never touch it. They can get them, but they can’t get me. But they’re good men. Look at the next statement. This is a very good statement. Casting all your cares upon Him, for He carried for you. What that means is not to cast your cares upon the Lord will be a sign of pride.

Humility is casting your cares upon the Lord. So can you do that? When you get worried, what worry in telling you? It’s an undisciplined mind. It means that you’re not trusting the Lord. That’s why you’re worried because it’s all on you. cast your cares upon the Lord. He cares for you. Yes, but I don’t know if he’s gonna cast your cares upon the Lord. And he says he cares for you. Now he may not give you what you want according to your deadline.

You don’t write God and say, Lord I need a million dollars and I want about a moral. Okay, have fun. I can already tell you it ain’t gonna work that away. But God’s the one that knows and He’s going to reward you with a crown of glory because of your submission to His will. So of everything that you ever do, learn that one thing. Whatever is the will of God for my life, that’s what I want. And you want that more than anything else.

And God will bless you for that. All right, look there page three. A crown for enduring testing. Boy, is this a good one. If you only knew the value of your testings, you’d want more of them, wouldn’t you? All of y’all have gone to sleep. Not a one of you heard a word I said. All right, take your Bible and let’s look over there in the book of James. The book of James chapter one.

And you’ll notice there, and look at this now, just look then in verse, first of all, in verse 12. Blessed is the man that does not have temptation. Well, sometimes the word blessed can be happy. Happy is the man who doesn’t have any temptations or any problems. No testing. Wouldn’t that make you happy? He says, sure it would. But we’re talking about for the long haul. We’re looking on down the road. We’re looking all the way into eternity. And God says that there’s blessings for you.

Now one of the things that Dr. Mark Cameron used to tell us, he says, the testing is the blessing. blessing. The testing you’ll find out later on is the blessing because it comes with such valuable instructions, things that will help you not only at that moment to learn something from God, but it will strengthen you for down the road and you’ll be a stronger person because of it. Now look what he says here, blessed is the man that endured temptation for when he is tried, he shall receive, the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that, what?

Now you don’t have to love the Lord to go to heaven. You’re going to heaven because he loves you. But because you love the Lord more than whatever the testings may be, that love for the Lord can pull you through. But if you don’t love the Lord like you should, the trials and testings of this life are going to bring you a lot of grief, a lot of heartache, a lot of misunderstanding, and you’re not going to be as strong as you ought to be.

And it will be revealed by your troubled mind. You’re not going to be stabilized. The Lord talks about us even over there in the book of 1 Peter chapter 5 where we were just said just remember going that if you resist the devil he will flee from you that God wants you to be stable, mature, stabilized so that you’re not fluctuating so much. God wants to use you but he’s got to prepare you. And there’s nothing that prepares a chalor God faster than all the chaos that can happen in your life.

Trouble, trouble, trouble. And it’ll come. Now nobody says, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. So whenever these things happen, what are you supposed to do? But look there in your notes again, let’s just look at letter B. Endure testings. It didn’t say enjoy testings because a lot of things you go through the question. You don’t enjoy it, but he did make this statement. He says, count it all joy when you fall in the divers temptations.

Well, wait a minute. Some things you may not enjoy, but you can endure them. I always say this, I can endure anything for a short period of time. Just don’t let it last long. Whatever lesson I’m supposed to learn, Lord, let me learn it fast so I can get over this thing. Because if you don’t pass the test, what do you got to do? You got to take it again. If they don’t pass the test, they may have to take it again.

When you hate to go through the same year again and take the same class all over again, I used to hate that. So therefore put in the efforts now to get through it. Because you said, well I don’t have time. Well would you have more time if you had to do it twice? Don’t you save time when you do it right the first time? Then having to go back and do it again? My uncle. My uncle Merle. Up in Pennsylvania.

I was just a kid, ten years old maybe. He told me, he’d get downstairs and sweep that basement out. I thought, what was he thinking? He was telling me what to do. He ain’t my dad. So I had a little rebellion inside of me. But also remember that he went down to Georgia and he got me and my mom and my brother and all of us kids. And nine of us was in one car that only had the front.

It was one of those little Dodge coups, 1949. And it was a bent, they put it in the back, and all of us sat on the back to that thing. There was nine of us in that car, and they took us to Pennsylvania and got us a place to live. So I had a little bit of respect for him. But that’s okay until you’re told to do something. You don’t want to do it. He says, sweep that. I looked at him, and then he gave me that look like you better move boy.

So I got the broom and I swept. And the dust, oh, it was flying all over the place. I did as fast as I could when I said, I said, I’m done. He walked in and he looked at it and he says, get the room. You know he made me sweep that thing about five times. It didn’t matter what I did because I was dust everywhere. And it was just float. Then when I got out there, it said something.

Do it again. Then I had to. Because I was in a hurry. I was in a hurry. You get it done. I had to do it five times. That really saved me a lot of time, didn’t it? And so he showed me just a little bit of time, a little bit of time. Don’t stir up all that dust. Get in that corner and get all of it. And I was glad he said I worked it out of that. But he told me that first time.

And he didn’t. You’re going to go through life and you think, Lord, I would have saved so much trouble if you just told me this in advance. Why didn’t you teach me how to raise kids before we had kids? Lord, could you have just told me all about married life before I got married? I didn’t even know what we were doing. And then they say, no, we got three kids. And I’m not. I got so much to learn. I didn’t even know anything.

And you’re going to find out you’re going to have all these trials and tests, but God is going to teach you through these things. So important. Look at the next statement. Count it all joy. Count it all joy when you fall in the divers temptation. In other words, the more experience you get, and this is how you get experience. This is how you gain wisdom, knowledge, by learning how to solve problems. And the more problems you know how to solve the more valuable you are in people’s lives.

You can help more people. You don’t know much, you can’t do much. So you want God to teach you as much as possible so that you can be more valuable for His use fit for the Master’s use. And so He goes through here, now look in the letter D. I want to be wise. How do you know when you are wise? You know you’re wise when you can make the right decisions. of life is filled with decisions. It’s a problem.

Problems will reveal your wisdom. You may think, I had this all nailed down. I know I’ll never doubt the Bible. And you will be surprised at the problem that can come in your life and make you doubt God’s Word. You can doubt your salvation. You can doubt everything about the Lord. When you have enough problems, it hits you and you don’t have an answer. And you’re trusting the Lord. And this is a good statement to write down in your notes, write this down in.

True faith is when you remain faithful when it appears that God has let you down because you are going to have times when never God has failed you. What do you do when you think God’s failed you? Keep doing right anyway. You don’t see no other way, just keep doing right. Always keep doing right. And so down at the bottom I have this little illustration. I’ve used it before and that is if I had a hundred dollars in the bank and I write a check for 50, How much do I have left?

This is very difficult. I got $50. If I didn’t write a check for 25, how much do I have left? $25. Then I write a check for $30 and it bounces. I’ve come up what? I’ve come up short. However, if I have enough money in the bank, I won’t have a financial crisis. A wise man stores up knowledge so that he will have wisdom when the problems come. In other words, I’ve used this before and I’ll tell you one more time.

If I gave my wife a million dollars, tell her honey, go spend, buy anything that you want. And she walks out the house and lo and behold, there are no stores. How do I have a million dollars? And there’s no stores, there’s nothing to buy. Well, what’s the value of wisdom if there’s no problems to solve? So God is giving you wisdom. And that’s what you’re learning. You’re putting money in the bank so that as you live your life you always can draw out and you have the money that you can spend.

And because there’s other people that have other problems that you don’t have all the answers so you’ve got to keep getting some more. So you keep putting it in because you’re going to spend some. You’re going to spend some of your wisdom as you go through life. And it’s just like filling up the tank full of gas and you want to drive from here to Alaska. But one tank of gas, what’s the problem? It’s further than you got gas to go, you’re going to have to stop and get some more, or you’re going to run out along the way.

And if you don’t keep putting some more gas in it, you’re going to be stuck on the side of the road someplace. So while you’re in Bible college, you learn putting gas in your tank. What we’re doing is each one of you are wells, and we’re putting some water in the well. later on down the road you can take some of that water out. Ray always put it this way. Be careful when you get home from the grocery store because what you take out of the sack is what you put in the sack when you’re in the grocery store.

So as you can, always keep putting things in your mind that are good and proper and then you trust the Lord to bring things to your remembrance because down the road you’ll be so glad that you did. Look up here. This end represent you and me. The wall of represent sin. We all have sin on us. Now God, He loves us. H.R. sin, but He loves us. And for us to pay for sin is eternal separation from God in a place called hell.

But God wants us to go to heaven and go to heaven. We have to be perfect as righteous as God. None of us are perfect. None of us are righteous. We cannot deliver ourselves from this devastating dilemma. God says you cannot save yourself by your works. You need a Savior. This hand represents Jesus Christ. God in the flesh came into the world because He loves us, hates our sin, because our sin separates us from Him. So Jesus Christ who had no sin didn’t have to die.

But because He loved us, He took the sin, paid for it on the cross, came back from the dead. And once you believe that, God gives you eternal life. I had a lady today that was doing some cleaning here. And she’s going down the hallway. And I said, I don’t know you. You don’t know me, right? He smiled. No, I don’t know you. I said, I’m the preacher here. Come here. So I took in the office. And so she sat in there.

I said, where are you going to go in your dies? She said, oh, I’m going to heaven. You can point it up. So I knew she was going to heaven because she pointed to the right place. And I said, is there anything you can do that could keep you from going to heaven? She said, oh, yeah. Did she know where she’s going when she dies? Let’s see how easy y’all know that? She has a problem, but she doesn’t know she has a problem.

Now I wonder, do I have the answer? Do I know how to solve this problem? I think so. I said, can I tell you something? She said, sure. I said, now let’s just say you had asked me, Yankee. Where are you going when you’re dying? I said, I’m going to heaven, just like you. I said, it’s just like you. I said, but now if you ask me, well, how do you know? I says, because I don’t have any sense to pay for it.

That’s how I know I’m going to heaven. I says, you can’t know you’re going to heaven till you know you can’t go to hell. And you don’t know you can’t go to hell. And I said, that’s your problem. I said, you want to know how not to go to hell? I explained the gospel to her. And just like, thinking, almost fell on the floor. Right. And I don’t know if anybody ever talked to her before, but it was so neat.

that’s just a person with a problem, but there’s a lot of people that got all kinds of problems. Serving the Lord has been able to help meet those problems, how to solve those things. That day when we was on that trip and that person was sitting there in that hot tub and I’m talking to him about the Lord, when he gets hot in there and people really do think a lot more. And so, especially if he’s going to talk to him about hell, Squez is the corner and his wife was sitting there.

And all of a sudden she got teary-eyed. But she says, I needed this. I really did. I needed this. I thank you so much. She was so thankful, so appreciative. And she had the tears in her eyes. I thought she did, but I wasn’t real sure. But he said she did. And I couldn’t tell between the sweat and the that. And all that was going on. But you’d meet another problem, solving this problem, that problem. God has blessed us with the wisdom that the world needs.

And people got all kinds of problems, but to use their problems to get them to the book. I never try to just solve people’s problems while I get in them here, because I believe their problems is a spiritual problem. To get them back to the book. Let’s pray, shall we? His bow nice clothes, no one looking around. If you have never trusted Christ as your savior, or if you look online and have never trusted the Lord, why not right now in the quietness of this moment?

say yes I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. And friend if you trust Him right now, He saves you right now and gives you right now the free gift of everlasting life. I praise you well. Father thank you so much for this day. Thank you for this class. What’s each one here in Christ and your Christ? Amen. Are you a new listener to Bible Eye? 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 4081 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.

Hada can meet the Lord in the air. So live today and every day. Believe in that the Lord is coming soon. Just keep looking up.