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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 air. We just 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 concluding message of this teaching will be a blessing to you and your family.

When I decided years ago that I’m going to serve the Lord, I said, nothing else is going to be my priority. Nothing else. 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 into Miami. But I started off a reckless abandonment to faith. I figured if this is what God wants me to do, I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna either live or die. As David says, there’s 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 going to trust you and if you don’t take care of me I’m going to tell everybody. I says either you do it or I’m going to tell people not to trust you. So I would take and step out on the limb. You say you shouldn’t do that. 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 the 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 a knife and I thought, oh man, I’m stupid, you’re. But I actually believed 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 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. He knew that whatever I wanted to, she’s got to go through. And he was cring, oh, yank, 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 gonna serve them. I’m gonna follow them, whatever you want 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 landing on the burning lady. Every time somebody came in here, they’d, what’s wrong? I said, I got a pain right here. Right there, ah, 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 here said, what’s wrong with you? Oh, I gotta 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. I didn’t want to tell them, my God shall supply.

Try that with 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’s 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’d better keep the kids. So I went out that night before when I knew the kids were coming home. I’m in home the next day and I had figured, how am I gonna pay?

So I went out that night and I had one hand on one clothesline and one hand on the other clothesline 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 wanna 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 going to lead and guide me, well, do it. And I believed it. And here I am. And I says, everything’s falling apart. And I don’t have any money.

And I got to go down there and see those people tomorrow. I said, now, how are you going to get out of this? Because I’m going to tell everybody, you let me down. You failed me. And I had tears in my eyes. 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 wanna do, I gotta give you a chance. Well, it wasn’t over. Next day, I still love my kids, so I thought I better get them. When I went down there, they asked me if I were 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 told, 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. I mean, 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. I’m so excited. It is now, at the time, it was not. So I said, yes, sir. He says, I know that young men going to Bible college with a wife and two kids, if it gets pretty rough.

He says, but one of the things that we need here to hospitals, we need blood. And I thought, oh, no, he wants my blood. You know, my mom always said, you can’t get blood out of a turnip. And I felt like a turnip. He said, but we do. He says, we need blood. He says, could you get this people down there 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? 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 said, 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. The night before when I’m blessing God out were not coming through. I never had to tell the man 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 Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, over a mile, we walked it, walking with the kids, cause I’d 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, cause 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 to 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 came gasoline came 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 Corn Flaked 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 a 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. I click, click, click, click. 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 and went, boom. And it locked down. I thought, uh-oh. And the motor wouldn’t turn. So, in the brain that I am, I got underneath the car, took off the bell house and 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 not what, 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.

All right. So I pulled out a spark plug, nothing there, and lo and behold, I put that thing in there. And there was this bolt that 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. 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 the block was ruined the pistons and rings He said, just broke it.

It was one big mess. And so I had to call somebody up there, come down from at it, get us, take it. 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, I’d probably used 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.

Now, 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, you think he’s headed 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. He says, here’s a blank piece of paper.

He says, you sign it and let me fill it in. Oh, no, that’s, that’s not what I had in mind. Have you had things happen in your life? Now, that’s 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 going to follow him. You 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. That’s what happened to people’s life. He said, if you follow me, just get one into that road 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. But anyway, look what he says here. He says in verse 6, he went, and another one said, I will follow thee, but let me first go and bid them farewell, which you’re at home at my house.

I’ll follow you, but first, let me go home and go home. tell everybody goodbye. Well, Jesus, no, that’s just an excuse. You’ll never show up. That’s the way you feel right now. Do you know why when you go to a car dealer and you look at a car and they say, hey, come on, get inside of this thing. Sit down. Because they know if you can touch it. No, you feel that thing. Let’s go for a little test, right?

Oh, isn’t this wonderful? Look how fast it goes. Look how pretty it is. And you thought at the time You know, made a little circle round of luck. You know what they want you to do? They got to get you to sign on this dotted line now. Because they know when you leave that showroom in about a half an hour, you’ll be glad you didn’t get it. And they want it now, sign now. And so they’re trying to get you to sign on the dotted line.

Well, the Lord knows that once you decide, I’m going to serve the Lord, but a little bit later, I’ve got to just, this other thing that I want to do. And God knows you do that. Out of sight, out of mind, you’ll forget all about that. This is why a lot of kids can go to camp, dedicate their life to the Lord two weeks later, Lord who? What do you mean? And just that quick, they can figure it all about, I made up my mind, I’m going to serve the Lord.

So a lot of people that sometimes in their life say, I’m going to serve Him. And then lo and behold, they get sidetracked by so many other things. And the life is a sour, bitter place. And there’s peace and love and joy and happiness if you serve a little. But if you don’t, there’s results. Do what it says. In verse 62, he says, And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plow. And looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.

And this is why Jesus says, like, who’s going with me? with me. You remember in John chapter 6 when he had a multitude of people there. He’d just finished feeding about 5 or 6,000 people. And so he said some things that was hard for them to understand. And so he says, and many of his disciples left him. So he turned to the 12. He says, will you also go away? And Peter says, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the word to be turned to life and we are sure that thou art that Christ the Son of the living God.

He said, well, you also go away. In other words, here’s Jesus Christ, God in the flesh who knows how to do everything perfectly, having a difficult problem getting people to follow Him. If He walked into this room right now, Jesus Christ the Son of God, He says, follow me. Well, I got to think about this thing. Wait a minute. He’s the one who gave you breath. He’s the one who gave you life. He’s your creator He can snuff you out like that Isn’t it a shame that the Lord God Almighty has to plead with us the servant We ought to be so thankful that we even had the chance to be born The opportunity to hear the truth Trust him as our Savior know that we’re going to heaven we’re gonna get a new body and everything’s gonna be wonderful eternal blessed and yet we can’t give him a few years of our life to say,

thank you Lord. How you live your life is the way you say, thank you to the Lord for how good he’s been to you. Now get this and most people never get this. To live a bitter critical life is because somebody’s mad at God. It’s not people and it’s not things. People are upset with God and I find myself so close of getting upset with God. Because I thought, God, you could have stopped this. You could have stopped that.

If you’re in charge, but if it is, you’re not in charge. So I’m going to take charge of my own life. I can do a lot better job than what you’re doing. You’d be surprised. I mean, I deal with people all the time. I don’t know how they think. I know how I thought. And I find out that God doesn’t always lead us the way we think. He knows where He’s leading us. And God will take care. But now look at the last part of this verse.

This is a very good statement. No man having put his hands to the plow. Now my daddy, down in Georgia, I should say from here, up in Georgia, he had a horse called Carrie. Name of the horse, Kerry. I didn’t think anything about it then, but later on I thought that’s a stupid name for a horse. But he was supposed to carry, I guess, so that’s called Kerry. But my dad’s horse, well, he didn’t feed him very much because he had that old bony spine on the back of that horse.

Have you ever said on the horse that didn’t have much meat on it? Have you ever rode on the horse? And when you get off you can’t walk. You talk about it. murder. It was terrifying. I didn’t want to ride that horse. But sometime he would walk us down to the place where we had to catch the bus and it would go over a mile on a dirt road. We lived way back in the woods. We were so far back in the woods they had to pipe in the sunlight.

But he had this horse and then sometime whenever he would plow we had this so field out there and I hated it because he had plow it and then you’d have to, I’d have to get out there. And throw rocks all day long throwing them out of a garden. This looks like we raised rocks. You know, we raised rocks and the more rocks you through, the more they grew. And so I was throwing rocks all the time. But he would put those blinders on the horse.

And so the horse wouldn’t be distracted by anything and he’d get a a straight row. And so my dad would do that and then I’d have two and mama and my two older sisters. We had like a broom handle and we would just punch a hole in a dirt and put about three seeds in another one six inches and put and he would always put the growing the beans in there with the corn and they would put them on and so whenever they grew up well the beans would grow up and they’d have to have to sever six.

They’d just grow around the corn. And so it were not beautiful. But that was, he was pretty smart. And this is what he had to do. But those blinders were for a reason. See, in the Christian’s life, God wants us to make up our mind, your face is set like a flint. I mean, like it’s hard. You don’t look to the right, you don’t look to the left, you just look to the Lord. And And as you live your whole Christian life, just stop looking at the attractions of the world.

I’m God’s child. I’m going to act like God’s child, live like God’s child. And you keep your eyes on the Lord. And you’d be surprised how wonderful your life could be. Yes, God’s got a lot of things you want to teach you, but you’ll get stronger and stronger and stronger in the things of the Lord. And so when He makes a statement here, no man, heaven put His hand to the plow. In other words, once you make up your mind, if you look this way here, do you realize you’re not going to plow a straight row.

You’re going to look over here, and then you’re going to look over there, and that row is going to be like this. If you’ve been amazed that whenever you go for like in Iowa, and they’ve got miles and miles and miles of the rows of corns and how perfectly straight they are. I used to look down and say, you could see almost a mile down between the rows of them. It’s just as straight as can be. Well, now they’ve got tractors and do it all for them, but the guy that drives it has got to keep his eyes straight, have a point and you drive to that point.

But if you don’t and you just hear an area that will robe you like that, and a lot of Christians lives are like that. They’re over here now though, there are no stability in their life. Keep your eyes on the Lord. He says, and looking back is not fit for the kingdom of God, not the words that word fit means you’re not fit to serve. So a lot of God’s children, God can’t use them because they’re not fit. Well, you read that verse over there in the book of, oh, let me just show it to you.

We can close over there with that verse. Look there in the book of 2 Timothy in chapter two. 2 Timothy chapter two, and there’s a verse that kind of gives us this idea. Look in verse 21, verse 21. If a man, this is on page 12, 80 in the church Bible, 2 Timothy chapter two verse 21, if a man, see that word if, because you don’t have to, nobody’s gonna make you. If a man therefore did this purge himself, in other words, when you look at yourself, what do you see that you don’t like?

What do you see that needs to be changed? If a man therefore purge himself from these, get this. He shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, means that apart, and meet for the master, means fit for the master to use, prepared under every good word. Some people, God’s children, are not prepared where God can use them. When I decided I wanted God to use me, I had to prepare myself. I had to be taught a few valuable lessons that I need because those lessons that God’s going to teach me are the material that I’m gonna use for the rest of my life.

Have you ever had eggs? I love eggs every way you can serve them. I love eggs, but I like to put salt and pepper on my eggs. The salt and the pepper gives it a better flavor. The experiences in life is the salt and the pepper upon your life. That’s what makes it taste good. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. And that taste comes because I saw God bless me here. God taught me this, God taught me this, God taught me.

And that’s what makes your life wonderful Because of what you’ve learned from it. Hard times in your life, everybody has those, but what did you learn from them? Don’t that make sense? You can follow what I’m saying? Good, then I’m through. I was told to always speak up and then shut up. Look up here, this hand represents you and me. The wall it represents sin, we all have sin on us. You can tell I went to Florida and in Miami, See, there’s, I spin it all.

It’s all, it’s all gone. God loves us, but he hates our sin. And the Bible says to pay for sin is eternal separation from him in hell. But God loves us, he wants us to go to heaven and they go to heaven, we have to be perfect as righteous as God, none of us are perfect, none of us are righteous. We’ve all done things wrong. We cannot save ourselves. So your good works won’t get you to heaven. This end represents Jesus Christ.

He’s the Lord, God in the flesh. came into the world because he loves his hate, his sin because it separates us from him. So Jesus Christ took all the sin, paid for it on the cross and came back from the dead. And he said that if we would believe he did it for us, he would give us a free gift everlasting life. And we get to go to heaven on what Christ did for us. That’s the best news in all the world.

Let’s pray, shall we? With his bow nice clothes, no one looking around. Would you just simply right now just talk to the Lord and say something simple like this, Lord, I know I’m a sinner. But I believe Jesus Christ died on that cross because He loved me. He died for me, paid for my sins. And friend, if you’ll believe He did it for you, He will save you and give you eternal life. And if you’re making that decision to trust Christ as your Savior, saying, yes, I believe it, I’d like to know and I’d like to have prayer for you.

I’m not going to have you forward and I’m going to embarrass you. But right where you’re sitting. So it preached that made sense to me and I’ll trust Christ as my Savior. And I’d like you to pray for Him. And just slip your hand up very quickly and pry back down. It’s annual at all. Yeah, it’s all. I want each one of you to be praying that you will be prepared, prepared to take that finest hour when it comes your way.

God has something special for you. And yes, He’s preparing you. Be faithful in little things, And He will entrust into your care bigger things. Our Father, we thank You so much for all You’ve done for us. We’re thankful for the free gift of eternal life. And more thankful, Father, for the opportunity You’ve given to us to serve You as a church to have the Florida Bible College right here, to train others to serve You in Christ’s name we pray You.

Amen. to learn how to live your life as a strong Christian, lead others to Christ, or excel as a church worker or ministry leader, then look no further than Florida Bible College of Tampa. With traditional and online classes taught by instructors, with years of experience, Florida Bible College of Tampa can help you grow in your Christian life. Whether taking individual classes or working toward a one-year degree, Florida Bible College of Tampa is here for you. To learn more, visit online at florida-biblecollege.us or call the register Bob Gilbert at 8502275325.

That’s 8502275325. 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. For end to one day it will happen, the trumpet will sound and we will be changed. Kata 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.