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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 us toll-free at 1-800-576-3771. Online donations may be made by clicking on the donations link on the Bibleignmenistries.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.

I want you to look at a couple verses with me And that is in the book of Luke, the book of Luke in chapter 9, because you know, Acts talks an awful lot about the results of discipleship. It’s what they did. Luke is where Jesus began to do and teach, so you have a record of his historical life. We call it the life of Christ. Then in the book of Acts is what, through the Holy Spirit, they continue to do.

So he tells them what to do in the book of Luke and they carried it through in the book of Acts. And so those two books go together. And so Luke, he wrote to a guy named Theophilus and what a name. But Anyway, here in the book of Luke in chapter nine, he’s talking about, you know, Jesus comes along and he’s getting disciples, people to follow him. And, you know, going to heaven, aren’t we? We’re glad that’s free. No, no conditions, just totally free.

All we had to do was just trust Christ to save you. We get to go to heaven. He does all the work. But afterwards, we find He didn’t take us to heaven. He left us here. So while we’re still here, many people fail to find out what is that purpose? What is the reason? Why did God leave us here? But just like He doesn’t make anybody trust Him, He doesn’t make anybody serve Him. But there’s consequences in our service.

If I serve Him, He promised to bless. If He says, if I don’t, He promises to chasten. So He says, many are weak and some are sick and some were taking home before their time. So I just kind of came to the conclusion, well, since I want to live a nice, ripe, long life, I better not try to do anything. We couldn’t, sure. And so far, I’ve made it to 75, and I’m already planning my 100th birthday. So I hope y’all will be able to make it.

So y’all stay in good shape so you can come to my 100th birthday. I want y’all to celebrate with me. And if I don’t happen to make it, I’m going to have my ashes there anyway, so y’all can still celebrate. All right? In the book of Luke, you’ll look there where he makes a couple statements, look at verse 57. And verse 57, and it came to pass. And that’s one of the greatest promises in the Bible. I don’t care what comes, it came to pass.

You know, all of the troubles that we have right now, all the trials, it’s going to pass. I figured out I can endure anything for a short period of time and sometimes this short period of time gets longer and longer and when you realize you’re running out of time you just want to have a few more good times instead of the bad times. It’s like whenever you get older it’s not that you don’t stumble and fall it’s just that it takes you longer to get up.

If you noticed that I used to be able just to reach down here time I shoot and I still get down in time I shoot but I don’t get up as fast as I used to. Sometimes I have to put my hand on something. You don’t even have to push myself. I wish you wouldn’t laugh at me like that. Your day’s coming. Your day’s coming. And sometime I wake up in the morning and tell my body, get out of bed and my body says, I will not.

So we have an argument. And so I have to force myself to do things that I know I should do. But look what he says here in verse 57. He says, it came to pass that as they went the way certain man said to him, Lord, I will follow the word there so ever, though wherever you go, I’m going with you. And so, because he knew that if he followed the Lord, you know, they’d be sleeping at the holiday end, you know, the Ramallah, and eating every day at McDonald’s, and you know, some good high-falutin’ restaurant.

And so he knew that if I follow him, everything’s gonna work out great, but here’s what Jesus said to him. And Jesus said to him, Foxes have holes. Birds of the year have nest, but the Son of Man have not where to lay his head. In other words, he didn’t even have a home. He was always traveling. And I guess they slept one of the stars a lot. Now there’s a time when these days was with the Lazarus and Mary Martha, but the Bible says that he traveled, he walked.

Now if I was the Lord and I knew I was going to have to walk a lot, I didn’t invent roller or skates or roller blades or something, or maybe even a car. I mean, I only had to do a snap his thing and he had an automobile just that quick. But he didn’t do that. Now, if I was the Lord and I could do all these miracles, I probably would have abused it. You know, that’s one of the reasons why God doesn’t give us supernatural power in his life because we would abuse it.

We would abuse it. I mean, if I could walk on water, I’d be showing off every day. you, if you can walk on water when you show off, hey look at me, look what I can do. If I could fly, man I would intimidate everybody. And if I was faster than a speeding bullet, well I would. Somebody nasty me, I just, before he could blink his eye, I’d slap him and wash off.

We would abuse, because we abuse everything we have anyway. Didn’t God give us a good body? and we abuse that. Give us time to live and we abuse that. We abuse just about everything. And so the handful of people that will take this old body we have and yield it to the Lord God says I’m gonna bless you because so few people do it. I decided years ago I want to do something with my life that’s different from everybody else.

You say well what’s that? Serving the Lord. There’s hardly no competition. I don’t have to compete hardly against anybody. Then I find out that certain the Lord you’re not competing anyway because you’re competing against time. You’re competing against the devil. You’re competing against the lust of the flesh. All the things that would destroy your life, you’re competing against that. We’re running a race but not against another person. It’s like a race against time. This little short period of time that God’s given us to live.

What in the world are we going to do with it? And isn’t it that since you’re in a race, you might as well run. You know what I got the other day, this was awesome. When I had gone up there to Georgia, my granddaughter, she said, I’m 12 years old, she was gonna run in this little race and it was the hurdles. That little thing, I can hardly get over a hurdle. Those hurdles up there three feet and she’s only about four.

And I thought she’s really gotta jump. And I looked down there and me and Eddie standing against the little fence there you got and they have about seven or eight girls in there, and they’re gonna race against them. And here’s my little granddaughter. And she’s got a, and right beside of her was this great big girl. She at least saw five foot tall, six foot maybe, big as I am. And she had long legs, and here’s my little granddaughter.

And she’s got a race against this giant. And so they fired the gun and they took off. And my grandson told her, when you run toward the hurdles, go over with the right one, and then go over the next one with the left one. See, most times they do it the same way, exactly the same way every time they get to the hurdle. He says, go over this one, and then there’s a couple steps over that one, otherwise you have to work your steps.

And she started doing that, and the little girl could fly. And I’m watching as he comes down here, and we’re hollering, go Abby, go Abby! And little girl just pouring her heart out. And that big girl’s right to recid her. And all of a sudden, little Abby pulled ahead of her. And we got to the finish line, she was woo, couple seconds ahead of her. Of course, I went wild, you know, as grandpa’s would do. And so it looked like impossible, but she did it.

And I was so proud of that girl. And so my son just sent me another one, where she had to run another race. And she won that too. Now if she had lost, I wouldn’t be telling you this story, Now all of us are running races and I am bragging about what she did because she achieves so much but she’s running against somebody but now when we get to heaven God wants to be able to brag on you. He says don’t brag on yourself here he says let me brag on you and then he says when you get to heaven God if you do it just to be seen of men he says you got your reward but if you’ll do it for my My honor.

Then when you get to heaven, I’ll honor you. And you say, I did this for the Lord. And so I did this for the Lord. So that when you get to heaven, God says, you did this for me. And God just said, you did this for me. I want to reward you for everything you did for me. Now all the things you did for yourself, though they weren’t bad. Now your sins are not going to be accounted for heaven because heaven’s been paid for.

That’s not an issue. But all the things that you did, but you did them for you, not for me. So God’s going to reward you for praise, honor, and glory that you gave to Him here. So you’ve got a body and you live inside of this whole house. And so we’ve got to take care of this whole house that we’ve got and we do it for Him. So I don’t do anything with this body I wouldn’t want to do that would displease Him because He gave it to me.

He can take it away. You realize if God would take his body away from me, what would I have? It’s called D-E-A-T-H. That. So I know that I can live here as long as I keep on the Lord and doing right. But one of these days, I know because I’m going to get old, hasn’t happened yet. But one of these days, we’re going to get old if we’re going to move out. And so until then, honor the Lord now, and he’ll brag on you later.

And he’s going to reward you. It’s going to be a rewarding stand. And God wants to be proud of you, not ashamed to call you his brethren. And you don’t want to be ashamed before he met his son. If the Lord came right now, would you be ashamed? This is what he talks about. So now he’s getting disciples. Remember this, you don’t have to be a disciple to go to heaven. A disciple is a follower, a learner. And as a lot of people, they go to church and they follow Christian principles, but never trust him as Savior.

So you can go to church and you can live a good life, you can do all those good things, but that doesn’t get you to heaven. I told some people last night in the thing, I said, you do not have to go to church to go to heaven. You don’t have to give money to go to heaven, but if you’re going to do it, come to Calvary Community Church. I don’t know if it went over very good or not, I thought it was a pretty good statement.

But since you don’t have to, but if you’re going to, come here. But anyway, look what he said in verse 58. Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holds, birds of the year have net, but the Son of Man have not where to lay his head. And then, now we don’t know if that guy ever followed him or not. Doesn’t say. Look what he said in verse 59. And he said unto another, follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first or permit me to first to go and bury my father.

Well, if his dad is dead, shouldn’t he have already done buried him? What’s he doing now? Well, he was saying, I’ll serve you, but first of all, I need to stay at home with my parents until my dad dies, and then I’ll be free to go. And Jesus says, just forget it. He said, let the dead bury the dead. To let the dead bury the dead, let the spiritually dead bury the physical dead. He says, but I asked you to do something.

Follow me. Well, I will, but not right now. And there’s always people who have something else to do that is a priority. They will one day, but not right now. And so it never becomes a priority in their life. When I decided years ago that I’m gonna serve the Lord, says nothing else is going to be my priority. Nothing else. I’m going to make up my mind. And I believe God honored that because I honored Him. I decided to follow the Lord.

That’s why I would never mean Betty decided to go to Bible college. Wife and two kids. No job. And we traveled from Chattanooga, Tennessee all the way to Miami, Florida. And a hurricane was on the way. The devil heard I was coming so he was bringing all of his forces. And lo and behold, I got to Orlando, Florida, ran out of money. I only had enough money to get to Orlando, Florida. So my brother gave me $40 and I went on down in Miami.

But I started off a reckless abandonment to faith. I figured if this is what God wants me to do, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to either live or die. As David says is one step between me and death and either I’m gonna live or I’m gonna die. I’m gonna trust Him and I told the Lord I says God I says your reputation is at stake. I says I’m your child and I’m gonna trust you and if you don’t take care of me I’m gonna tell everybody.

I says either you do it or I’m gonna tell people not to trust you. So I would take and step out on the limb. You say you shouldn’t do I know now I know that but at the time I really didn’t care because I had already resolved myself I’d rather die than not serve a Lord Because there’s nothing else in this world worth living for. So I had a make up my mind. And I looked back on the knife and I thought, oh man, I’m stupid.

You’re. But I actually believe that God honored that blind faith. Because I didn’t have anything to go on. I didn’t know the word of God enough. All I know is if you’re God, you’re God, you can do anything. Then if you can give me eternal life, you can give me a hamburger from day to day. And I’m going to find out. I said, Lord, I said, don’t you ever expect me to stand in a pulpit and tell people you’re going to take care of them and bless them and meet their needs if you can’t do it for me.

I says, you’re free to do anything you want with me. I says, but I’m going to tell people this is what you did to me. I says, they can do anything you want. And I really, I remember her, Betty’s dad, he says, Yankee, because I was married to his daughter. And he knew that whatever I wanted to, she’s got to go through. And he was cringy. Oh, Yankee, I wish you wouldn’t say that. But in my mind, it made perfectly good sense.

I want to see what God’s going to do. So little did I know how bad it would get. I mean, everything seemed to fall apart. I was like Indiana Jones. One crisis into another crisis. I thought he’ll never let up. You know, you always think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t even find the tunnel. And then after so many years in that tunnel, I finally saw a little light down there and there was a gorilla with a flashlight.

And I thought, man, this is terrible. But I had made it, but I’m going to serve the law. I’m going to follow him. Whatever he wants me to do. And so lo and behold, whenever the kids, both kids got sick at the same time, I lost my job, had a tag of appendicitis. I’m laying on the gurney and every time somebody came in here, they’d, what’s wrong? So I got a pain right here. Right there. I come up off that bed.

And they were having a shift change. So they never told the other one what had done. So everyone that came in here about four times they come in there and said, what’s wrong with you? Oh, I got to tell them again. They do the same thing to me again. So they finally said, you know what that thing’s ready to bust? I thought I’m telling you. And they’ve been poking it. So anyway, I had to have surgery. I had no insurance.

And it was just both kids in the hospital at the same time, Veronica and pneumonia, and I had no insurance to cover the thing. I’m going to Bible College. And the last thing I wanted them to know at the hospital was that I was going to Bible College. Because I didn’t want them to ask me anything about, don’t you go to that Bible College? Because I didn’t want to…how do I tell them? My God shall supply. Why that was the guy that wants some money.

He wants that green stuff, and I don’t have none of that stuff. And I know that it was either I got to pay the bill or they get to keep the kids. No, I did think about that. But I thought, well, we better keep the kids. So I went out that night before when I knew the kids were coming home the next day, and I had figured, how am I going to pay? ylum went out that night, and I had one hand on one clothesline and one hand on the other close line and I prayed.

And I prayed in such a way that I was blessing God. I said, God, I followed you. I came down here like I thought that’s what you want me to do. And if you can’t be any clearer than you ought to stop, you’re in the wrong business. I’m your child and I want to do what you want me to do. Can’t you speak a language that I can understand? I said, I got kids in the house when I tell them to do this, they do it.

And I said, do that, they do it. I said, at least they can understand what I’m saying. I said, why can’t you speak clearly? If you’re gonna leading guide me, well do it and I believed it and I, here I am. And I says everything’s falling apart and I don’t have any money and I got a good I didn’t see those people tomorrow. I said now how are you gonna get out of this? Because I’m gonna tell everybody you let me down, you failed me and I had tears in my house.

I was crying because it was a serious business. Because I had people tell me say, Yankee you’ll never finish, you’ll never finish. And I was about that point, you know I’m ready to break, I’m out of here. I’m gonna do whatever I want to do, I got I gave you a chance. Well, it wasn’t over. Next day, I still love my kids. So I thought I’d better get them. When I went down there, they asked me if I was going to the finance office.

Oh, it’s a good word. And I walked in there and the man set me hand and he looked at me and he says, he says, you go to that Bible college, Daniel, don’t you? I thought, how did he find out? Somebody said, Lord, you did this. You knew I didn’t want him to know because I didn’t want to have to explain to him how you failed me and you didn’t give me no money and I can’t pay the bill.

And I don’t have a clue how I’m going to get out of here. It was so exciting. It is now, at the time, it was not. So I said, yes, sir. He says, I know that young men go into Bible college with a wife and two kids. If it gets pretty rough. He says, but one of the things that we need here at the hospitals, we need blood. I thought, oh, no, he wants my blood. You know, my mom always says, you can’t get blood out of a tournament.

and I felt like I’d turn him. He said, but we do. He says, we need blood. He says, could you get this people down here at that Bible college to come up here and donate some blood and we’ll put it to your account? I says, can I use your phone? He said, I call up Dr. Stanford. Ray Stanford, he’s the one that trained both me and Hank Lindstrom. He answered the phone. And I told Ray, I says, Ray, I need to know if the people down there at the Bible College can come up here and donate a pint of blood.

I said, the only way I got to pay my medical bill. And he says, I’m going to chapel right now. I’ll tell him. He walked in the chapel and the whole college came in there and donated blood. Paid off my bill. Now, this was the very next day. You know, the night before when I’m blessing God out from not coming through, I never had to tell them anything. He wanted, they needed blood and they would rather have that blood.

And so they just put it in. Anyway, I felt so bad that I had a little doubt that God would come through. Now, you know, I had to admit it taught me a few things and to realize it for almost a year because my car broke down and I had no money to fix it. And I had to walk to school every morning five days away and then church on Sunday. And you know what it’s like walking in Miami, it’s only been on the hotter side, the humidity.

And we’d walk the church. church, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, over a mile, we walked it, walking with the kids because I never liked to miss. So whenever I had to work, I worked. I had no time for myself, but I had committed myself. I’m gonna make this work because I knew my life was a mess. And I didn’t have anything to go back to because I didn’t have anything I left. And I thought, I didn’t want those people who said, Yankee, you’ll never finish.

I’ve got to finish. So I made up my mind. And when it was all over with it, I decided I can fix my car. I’ll do it myself. So I went out there and I took the carburetor off. Back in those days, you could do that if you had a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and some bailing wire. So I took the carburetor off. And my gasket was leaking so bad, the water just some gasoline come on. So I can make another one.

So I took that old one off there and I laid it on top of a, you know, you ever seen a Cheerios box or a cornflate box and you can cut off one side of that thing and, man, I can make me a gasket out of this. So I laid it over top of it and I traced it, punched the hole where it posed to, and I caught me a gasket. I didn’t have money to buy gasket. So I put that gasket on top of that thing and then I put that carburetor back on there And when I did, I heard something go.

Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck. Uh-oh. Something just fell out of the carburetor, and went down into and landed on the top of a piston. I thought, I wonder what that was. I didn’t know what it was. I just heard something go in there. So anyway, I tightened everything down, and I started it up. It went, boom, boom. And it locked down. I thought, uh oh, and the motor wouldn’t turn. So, been the brain that I am. I got underneath the car, took off the bell housing, a little cover that it had just so I could get a crowbar and I put it to the teeth.

And I said, I’m gonna turn this thing until that motor turns. Now I’m not a mechanic. And this is probably, you know, you’re a mechanic. This is what I was doing anyway. And so I pressured that thing and it would not give. So I finally got a friend of mine named Lenten Fowler. Lenten Fowler came over to the house. I said, Lenten, I got a problem. I didn’t know he didn’t come over there. He just told me, he says, you can’t pull out your spark plug and put a little magnetic thing in there.

He says, you probably got a bolt in there and it’ll come out. Alright, so I pulled out his part plug, nothing there, and lo and behold, I put that thing in there and there was this bolt that it fell in there and I had smashed it. And we put that thing back together, fired it up, and it ran just as smooth. And so Betty needed to go up here because her mother was dying in hospital, having a tumor on the brain.

So we decided we were driving up, so we drove up, got to Perry, Georgia. My cars are running like a champ. And all of a sudden go, boom! It wasn’t funny. It exploded. And I made it up to the side of the road. And I found out I had weakened the head of the piston. And it decided it didn’t want to run anymore. So now I’ve got a motor blown up. And so it ruined that and it’s scraped inside of the cylinder walls.

And It ruined the block was ruined, the pistons and rings. It just broke it. It was one big mess. And so I had to call somebody up there, come down from Adam, get us, tell you. You see, when I was decided to serve the Lord, everything went smooth. No. I went from one crisis to a next one. And I always found out my limitations. I couldn’t make things work. And I was so ready just to, then if I had a gun, and I’d probably use it.

I’d have probably missed, you know. And I always thought about that there, but I’d probably be one of those guys that would miss and I’d be sitting in a wheelchair the rest of my life, you know. If I could do on a clean job, I probably would have, but I was always afraid I’d mess that up too. And I’m talking about, see, people, they see me now, they think Yankees had it smooth all his life. Yes, I was raised with a silver spoon in my mouth.

I don’t know what a hard day’s worth is like. But God worked miraculously. And he always brought me through just in the nick of time. He was never late. He was always on time. But I had him, God just posed the work according to my timetable. And God said, no, it doesn’t work like that. I thought I would fill in this piece of paper and then I’d say, God, would you sign it right here? This is what I want.

Sign it right here. No hard times, everything’s smooth, everything’s wonderful. Happy, happy, happy. Sign here, God. And God says, no, no, no, no, no. He says, here’s a blank piece of paper. He says, you sign it and let me fill it in. Oh, no, that’s not what I had in mind. Have you had things happen in your life? No, that’s not how I planned it. That’s not what I anticipated. Well, when he says, follow me. It means you don’t know where you’re going, except you’re just gonna follow Him.

You don’t know where you’re gonna have this or that or whatever, you don’t know, you don’t need to know. Why? You’re following the one that’s doing the leading. You ever try to go through life, push a rope, push a rope. It gets all balled up. Now that’s what happened to people’s life. He said, if you follow me, just get one into that rope and walk and it’ll straighten out. And it will. Your life will straighten out if you follow the Lord.

You don’t follow the Lord? Nothing works. Nothing straightens out. 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 Main. 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. So live today and every day. Believing that the Lord is coming soon, just keep in looking up.