God’s Will

So I want you guys to know that as I was preparing this message, I am listening to feedback. I am trying to take your feedback to heart on my speaking. And I have heard all sorts of things from different people, mainly my mom. And so these are her quotes, in order of the three messages I've done so far. Passionate, but loud.

Still passionate, still loud. Chris, I love your passion, but you have to be so loud. When you follow Leon, Pastor Leon, and you follow John, and they are so loving, and they are such great teachers, and they are even, and they come across as just so compassionate, and they can keep their voices so level. And I'm sitting back there going, how do they do it? I try so hard.

My wife's like, just be loving, Chris, just be soft. Just try to do it in love. For some reason, beyond His grace, God has given me the opportunity to preach. Makes me tear up. He's given me this opportunity, and I'm so grateful.

But God knows my strengths, He knows my weaknesses, He knows my passion, He knows my style. Most importantly, He knows my heart. And He does know that I am loud. He's okay with it. I am glad that I have Dr.

Gwen here. But I want you guys to know that behind the passion, behind the loudness, is a heart of love for you. I care so much about what God says and how it affects our lives, and that is why I come across the way I do. And it's different for every person, and Pastor Leon, his passion comes across differently. Brother John, his passion comes across differently.

Sister Miranda, man, she brought heat a couple weeks ago. It came across differently. And so you may sit back there and think, this dude is loud. Why is he yelling at me? It's like he's coming in with a sledgehammer.

I just want you to know that it comes from a heart of love. I do care. Thankfully, I have a great example set before me of someone who wasn't exactly subtle. And his name was James. I love getting to preach out of James because James, as I read him, I imagine a little bit of me.

He just wants so bad for people to get it. And I can see him preaching with enthusiasm, probably a little bit loud, and probably very emotional because it is done out of love. He understands and believes wholeheartedly what he's preaching, and he understands the consequences if it doesn't come to fruition. He understands that it is not gray. It is black and white, and it is life or death.

So as we read James 4 today, I just want you to hear the passion that comes out of this. Today, we're going to be talking about finding God's will, the search for God's will. And if you've read James 4, or if you've read it, you may be wondering, how in the world are we going to get that out of this? But we'll get there. So if you have your phones, your Bibles, they may throw it up here.

I'm not sure. I think I forgot to put that in the actual slides. Shock and surprise by Matt back there that I screwed that up. Not. I'm going to read this quickly and then dive in.

It is just a few verses. And then we're going to dissect this a little bit. The title in the ESV, which is what I'll be reading to you today, is Warning Against Worldliness. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. Ask what you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people.

Do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you not suppose it is not to no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning, your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge. He who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Now, if you've been in church a long time, the moment that you hear somebody say, finding the will of God, what jumps into your mind? Usually, it has to do with long-term, big picture.

What's God got for me? Am I going to be an evangelist on TV? Am I going to run this awesome, amazing homeless ministry or women's ministry or marriage retreat? Am I going to be a millionaire? What's he going to do long-term in my life?

What has God anointed me from birth to do? That's what we hear when we hear the word will of God. We tend to make it the overarching, big, long-term thing. And that is somewhat true. God's will for us, for our lives, is defined in two ways.

This is your first two blanks. The first is the life-defining purpose, God's plan. This is what I was just talking about. This is the overarching, long-term plan that God has for you. He's got something for you, a purpose, a particular thing that you were born for, that he's going to train you up for, and it could be when you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, even 70 years old before it.

It comes to fruition, but God has something specific for you, God's plan. The second is the life-encompassing purpose of God's will. This is the day-to-day, the little things, the little instructions, the little commands. And when I use that word, little, guys, please put that in air quotes. Because there is absolutely nothing, zero, zilch, nada, little about my God.

So the first thing that we're going to talk about, and I'm going to hit this fast and hard, because the first part is great, but the second part is what I'm going to dive into really deep today. So I'm going to run through this first part. Please stay with me. If I talk too fast, they're going to record this, I think, and you can go back and listen to it later if you really feel like it. Or you can just completely ignore it and write down what you get.

God's plan. This is what most of us who have grown up in the church see as God's will. It's the big picture, the long term. This is where most of us spend a lot of energy focusing on. We focus so much on the big plan, on the big picture, on the future.

We spend more time on our knees asking God to reveal his will for our life. Lord, can you show me what I'm going to be? Can you show me what my ministry is going to look like? Can you show me so that I know what I'm running towards, God? Because if I don't know where I'm running, those without vision perish, right, Lord?

So I have to have the long term vision. Not so. In fact, most of us, if God gave us a vision and showed us what he has for us, many of us would run in fear. If you grew up as a pastor's kid, like I did, like Pastor Leon did. I know there's a couple others in here.

The reason, Lillian, the reason that we run when God calls us into ministry is because we've seen a vision of what it requires. We grew up watching our dads have heart attacks and have ulcers and run themselves ragged, getting called every time, 2, 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning, 7 days a week, having families live with us nonstop their whole lives. And we see the little, little bit of gratification, the little bit of thankfulness that they get from this job. And so when God says, when you hear the call and God says, I want you to go into ministry, the immediate thing as a PK you think of is run. It is natural instinct.

It happens immediately because we've seen the vision. We know what it looks like. But for some reason, as Christians, we spend so much time focusing on that and begging God to give us that. It is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a theological definition for this.

This is going to be your next two blanks. It's God's sovereign will for our lives long term. That's God's plan. He's got something mapped out. Now, we as humans, with free will, we tend to take a path that does something like this instead of going in the straight line.

But God's got something for us. And that is his sovereign overall long term plan. We spend years, this is your next blank, trying to figure this out. And God spends years preparing us for this. This is a time of trial and failure.

Now, I can give you guys, as I was preparing for this, I can give you guys a list of people who failed and became great successes. I'll give you a quick list. Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the list goes on of people who failed and failed and failed and failed until they found that spot, they found that thing, and all of a sudden, bam, and it blows up. But I believe that the greatest examples are first-hand examples. And if you've met me, if you know me well, you may have met my dad or seen my dad.

I am extremely proud of my dad. Not in an egotistical way, I don't revere him like I do God, but I'm proud of where he's at. And I'm proud of it because he's been faithful to stay in the little path while God had a much bigger plan. So I'm going to give you a quick story, quick rundown of my dad's life to show you what long-term is. Like I said, I'm not going to stick here long because we've got a lot of other places to go.

This is a crazy story. My dad knew he was called to ministry when he was really young, like anybody else who had anybody else in their family, and he had multiple grandfathers that were pastors and preachers. He ran, ended up doing his undergrad as pre-law. All it takes is about five seconds with my dad, and you understand why he was pre-law. What takes me 485 words to get across to you, my dad does in three, and makes you feel real small if he wants to in those three words, much like Miranda.

Hey, if you have been around her, it takes you about three seconds to understand, I am no longer the sharpest tool in this room because she is sharp. So that's all I'm saying is her intelligence is high, much like my dad's. You got it. Okay, as long as there's no offense with Miranda. Man, get in trouble when you start getting in trouble with a pastor's wife.

So he does pre-law. Well, about halfway through his freshman year of pre-law, he understands this isn't going to happen. God has called him to ministry. So he finishes out his pre-law degree because he needs some kind of undergrad, goes directly to seminary, after he marries my mom and my mom becomes pregnant with me. My grandparents were not happy.

They saw going into seminary, they understood the issues with that, and they knew exactly what it meant. So my dad takes off. I was a seminary baby. My mom, who has no degree of any kind, worked full-time while my dad was in full-time at seminary, painted houses while he could to try to make things work. Graduates, and his first pastorate is in this little bitty town called Tyrone, Oklahoma.

Population, 485 million cows, maybe 400 ranchers. All of those ranchers above the age of 45. Little bitty Baptist church. My dad went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He was there, he was there probably a year before he realized this isn't going to work.

He could not get the people of that church to move in the direction that God was showing him as a vision for his ministry. And he kept butting heads and butting heads and butting heads. If you know anything about little tiny Baptist churches out in the south, in the west, they are elder-run churches, and the pastor is replaceable. And when you are, let's see, I think he was 26 years old, and you are an evangelist at heart, and you are passionate, zealous, and you are ready to see the kingdom of God explode, Tyrone, Oklahoma is not the place you want to be. If you've ever heard of eight-man football, that's what their high school had.

That's because there is not enough people to field 11 on the field, maybe you have 20 on the team, maybe 15 or 16, so they play eight-man football. You literally blink, and this town goes, you just go right through the town. So God gave him a vision, and God all of a sudden instilled upon his heart, it's time to plant a church in Denver, Colorado. By this time, we'd had my sister. My sister, I was just turning four, my sister was two, and my mom was .

. I'm exactly nine months pregnant with my baby sister, and my dad decides we're going with or without the backing of the Baptist Convention. And so he gets a U-Haul, and he loads up his family, we were half, me, my dad, and my great grandfather were halfway to Colorado from Oklahoma when my mom gave birth to my baby sister, and we had to turn around and drive all the way back, and then turn all the way down and go back. If you talk to Leon at all, you'll know the ups and downs of planting churches. It is, for every success, there is eight or nine failures.

Every time you feel like we've got momentum, Satan comes in, and you feel like all of a sudden you're being driven back. This was eight years of our life. My dad never took a paycheck from the ministry because the ministry could never afford to give us a paycheck. We lived off gifts from churches, from pastors that he knew in seminary who were willing to help support us. Time and time and time again, we went, started out in one house, moved to another house, moved to a school, moved into a storefront that we renovated, got all the chairs, got everything done.

Three years later, church shrunk, couldn't afford it, had to auction everything off and move back down. I can remember the weeping that came out of my dad and mom's bedroom. I can remember my mom holding my dad while he wept, wondering, God, why, and am I really supposed to be doing this? Like, am I really supposed to do this? About two years later, he handed the church off to a younger pastor and went to San Antonio, Texas to help with another church plant.

About a month and a half in, he realized things were not what they had seen from a distance. And he resigned. And when he resigned, about half the church left. And he went to work in a tile factory. Now, if you didn't, if you know my dad, he is a passionate man.

And he was much like our pastor here. It's probably why we get along so well. He had an evangelist heart. He wanted to see the world change. He wanted to see people cared for and live for.

And now he's in a tile factory. And we were living off other people's food stamps. Late, late, late one night, he gets a phone call. And it's this chaplain that he had never met in his life from the U.S.

Navy. And he said, hey, heard you need a job. Heard you'd make a really good chaplain. Six months later, my dad is off to officer candidate school, chaplain training school, off the Navy on the East Coast. Came back about 60 pounds lighter and a lot humbled.

First duty station, and I'm going to go into warp speed after this, but this is the crux of this that I want you to hear and take into our second section. First duty station was Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Arizona. Average temperature, 110 degrees, lots of scorpions, lots of snakes, lots of desert, nothing but heat. He thought he was going in to be a part of the air wing. They had harriers and super hornets there and super cobras, the helicopters.

And so he thought when he got given this station, sweet, I get to go out, I get to hang out with the pilots and fly around. I'm going to get to go. This is going to be great. He shows up, and because he's the junior chaplain, you get the worst of the worst. They send him out into the desert to this little bitty place called the Cannon Air Defense Complex with the grunt marines.

And the reason he was sent there is because their chaplain had been fired by the commanding officer and sent home from the Middle East. That's not a good situation. First week there, I will never forget this. They go on a 35-mile hump. A hump is where you have your full pack, full gear, and you run out into the desert, usually late at night or early in the morning when you're in Yuma because otherwise you will die.

35 miles. He comes home, and he is this, like, green Navy chaplain who's out playing with the Marines. And he went out there in brand-new boots and utes and tried to keep up with these young Marines. And he came home, and it took three of us to peel those boots off of his bloody feet. He screamed.

He was in pain. Once again asking God, why in the world am I here? Why in the world do you have me here? The reason God had him in that place for that specific time was to meet a man named Sergeant Major Jones, who was a military vet of 37 years, had been in wars, and this dude was the Marines, Marines, Marine. Don't mess with that dude.

He's the guy who walked through the base and didn't salute anyone because he just didn't feel like it. And not even the commanding officer of the base, a full bird colonel, was going to mess with him. And he reamed my dad up, down, inside, out multiple times, multiple times. My dad just kept going and kept going, and finally he called him in one day. And he said, Sergeant Major, I respect you.

I know that you know what you're doing. I know I don't. But I know God put me here. I'm not going anywhere. You can be with me, or you can be against me.

And if you're against me, then you're against God. One thing about Sergeant Major Jones, he was a devout Catholic. And that hit his heart. And so he began to help my dad. He showed my dad the weaknesses of most of the chaplains in the chaplain corps.

He showed him how to wear his uniform like a Marine wears their uniform. He showed him how to spit shine his combat boots, which then I learned how to do. What else is a son there for? Hey, I made money on this deal. I started doing that for a living.

I made a lot of money. My dad was probably the first chaplain most of those Marines had ever seen that if you walked up to him, his boots looked almost as good as Sergeant Major's within a few months. He began to earn the respect of Marines. He then began to earn the respect of line officers in the Navy who, when you would see my dad, you would have to walk up to him to see his little cross on his lapel because he looked like an officer, not just a chaplain. This was the catalyst.

This place, this point was the catalyst for where my dad is now. Now he is going to be penned next June as a two-star admiral. He's going to be the chief of chaplains for the entire Navy. His current position is chaplain of the Marine Corps, which is where he belongs. I'm not saying this to boast on my dad.

What I'm telling you is my dad was born for this. God had my dad, when he was born, this in mind for my father. He knew what my dad was going to be long before my dad had a clue. My dad thought he was going to be a church planter. He thought he was going to be an evangelist.

He thought he was going to have a big church, a small church. He went through all these visions of these things that he thought, and the entire time, God's plan was here. But God had to get him there. God has created each and every one of us for a specific thing, a long-term plan, a sovereign spot within this planet, within this galaxy that he has for each and every one of you. And I want you to take that as an encouragement and understand that God's got such big plans for you that you can't even begin to comprehend them.

And you may think because where you are right now that there's no way in the world God can do these huge, amazing, mighty things with me, but God is training you. God has got you where he wants you right now for a reason. And this is where most of us get mixed up. This is where we go into the second part and the thing that I think is so important and hits home to my heart so much, God's will. This is the oft-forgotten and ignored, but in my personal opinion, the more important of the two definitions, because if we don't succeed with this aspect, we can never succeed in the big picture, the big plan that God has.

If we get so caught up in the long term, we get so caught up... In the grand scheme that we forget right here, right now, He can never give that to us. He can never put us in that position. He wants us to be faithful right here, right now. God’s Will are the ways of God.

That's your next blank. They are the moral law of God, the requirements that we are given as Christians of God. These instruct our daily lives. It's so easy to get caught up, and if you're not a Christian, you're here today, I want you to know this is applicable to your life. If you're in a position and a job, and all you can think about is that other job, and where you want to be ten years down the road, and you get so caught up looking down in the future that you're not paying attention to right here, right now, you will never get there.

Because if you are not content, if you are not faithful with what God has placed you in right here, right now, He can never trust you with that. And your bosses at work, if you're not faithful with what you've been given, if you're not attentive to the details, to the small things where you're at right now, they're never going to promote you to that. They want to know that whatever they give you, you're going to be content with, that you're going to focus on it, that you're going to grab it, take it, and run with it every single day. And that's what God wants from us. And that's what James is talking to the people here.

The trap is that we focus so much on figuring out God's plans for our lives that we forget his will, his actual will. I've got quick quotes. Sir Richard Branson, if you guys know who he is, founder of Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies, billionaire, dude does everything, jumps out of planes, you know, he's crazy. T-Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, all those belong to him. More money than anybody knows what to do with.

And he says, think small to grow big. Keep your eye on the bigger picture, but don't slip on attention to detail. UCLA coach John Wooden, 10 NCAA basketball championships in a 12-year period. He said, it's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

It's the small things. As we read in that chapter 4, that's what John is trying to get at with these people. He's like, guys, you don't understand. These little things that you guys are letting grow rampant between you, these little things that you're allowing into your lives, these little things are going to hinder the big thing. They're going to send you down the wrong road.

If you don't pay attention to this, if you don't grab this, if you don't hold on to this and run with it and do what God has commanded you to do, you're going to hell. It's really that simple. And I say that in love. I love you enough to tell you that you need to understand that there is life and there is death and you have a choice. And that's what James is trying to get across to these people.

Charles R. I'm sorry. I'm tongue twisted there. Chuck Swindoll. I tried to say his proper name and then I was going to tell you who he was, but I'll just go with Chuck.

The Charles R. isn't working right now. The difference between something good and something great is in the details. It's in the details. And that's what James is talking about us here.

So we're going to talk about God's will. And I got probably about 20 minutes before they throw something. 10 minutes if I get lucky, they'll start throwing things. The God's will according to James. The first one.

This one is the most important. There's a reason that James was talking about this first and foremost. And it is submit our lives completely, wholeheartedly, and unabashedly to God. It's real easy, guys. When you're in trouble, when things are happening, oh, Lord, I give you my life right now.

Lord, I give you my finances right now, now that I'm in bankruptcy. Take them. They're yours. No. Everything, all the time, belongs to him.

We have to submit ourselves to him in everything all the time. Acknowledge, this is the next blank, our need for him. This must be in all things, big things, small things, little bitty tiny things that we don't think are significant are significant to God. He understands that it's in the details. He understands that it starts with the little bitty small thing.

This goes in everything. You want to be faithful with your marriage? As a husband, as a wife, be faithful in the small things. If you're not faithful in the small things, you won't have a husband or a wife to be faithful with. You want finances?

You want success? If you want to be financially secure, get your budget out and start figuring out where you can cut. Because if you're not faithful in that small stuff, you will never, ever not be broke. Because it's the small things that make you broke. It's not the big stuff.

It's the small stuff. It's when you look at your thing, and I've done this with my wife, and I'm going to say it up here so you're going to hear this. Looked at our budget. She put it in the computer, and it popped up and showed me what my budget was for the year at Starbucks. I just about could have bought a car.

It was, my wife is over here amening, it was ridiculous. I had to cut back. That's where my money is going. It's Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, yeah.

Well, this is my wife's. This is her. I'm a Starbucks. She's a Dunkin' Donut, and her thing is always, but this is just so much cheaper. Yeah, not if you have seven of them a day.

She used to work directly across from Dunkin' Donuts, and she visited it often. It's the small things. If you don't give him the small things, blunt, I don't get paid to say this. This is just a public service announcement. If you are not tithing, and you are a member or a regular of this church, I don't care how small your income is, if you are not tithing, don't ask why your finances are messed up.

Don't come to me complaining about your finances if you're not giving God what is already his. I'm sorry. I know preaching, giving at a church is like not the hip thing to do anymore. There's all sorts of arguments for it, but let me help you out with this. That seems like such a small thing, but if you give God what is already his, what he's already given to you, and you give it back and say, Lord, use this for your kingdom, use this for your glory, use this for your honor, you will have a huge financial, like all of a sudden you're going to turn around and go, how in the world am I still tithing and we have more money?

Guaranteed. And I know that wasn't part of this, but that was a PSA. It works. Distinguish ourselves from the world. This is verses 4, 4 through 5.

I'm not going to go back and reread it. I just don't have time. But he says, I feel like I'm going to go back to the church. It's just like all of this stuff like... You can't be in the world and be with God.

It is impossible. You cannot serve two masters. A fountain cannot give both sweet and bitter or hot and cold. It is physically impossible. And so we must distinguish ourselves from the world.

I cannot tell you, cannot tell you, after I read this like 25 times over the last few weeks, the conviction in the last two days that I had over this single scripture. That there were things in my life that I was refusing to give up, refusing to let go of, that I needed to let go of. I'm not going to go into detail because I can't. But there's things we have to let go of. It's like, but I have the liberty to do that.

God gave me the liberty to do that. But if that liberty keeps you in the world, you're going down the wrong path. If that liberty keeps you tied to your old self, to your old world, to your old friends, if that thing that you want to keep on doing because God doesn't necessarily say no, but it keeps you tied back into this, you can never distinguish who you are from the world. And I'm not saying don't enjoy things. I surf.

We have fun. We go out. We have a good time. But there are things, and you know what they are. I don't even have to get up here and preach details because you know, as I'm preaching this, where God has convicted you in the past, and you're sitting there going, oh, dang.

I know it's not hip, but it's real. And James was real. James didn't play games. He said, you better get the heck out of the world and get into who you are. It's just the way that it is.

Humble, next blank, ourselves and allow God to exalt us. So often, we try so hard to exalt ourselves. We want to put ourselves in places of position. We want titles. We want things.

God, just give me that job. Just give me that job. I hate this job. I hate this job. So just give me that one.

Lord, I'm so much smarter than my boss. I'm so much better than him. I don't know why they would have him in that position because I would make him look bad. It's not humility. Humility says, God, I'm going to do this job with everything I've got, and I'm going to allow you to exalt me.

God might have put you in that position. The reason I gave you guys that story of my dad is because there were multiple times throughout his career, and I could name instances where he was under people that had no business being over my dad. He had people that tried to come in and give him fitness reports, which are the reports that your super superiors see, that they don't even know a clue who you are. All they see is a piece of paper with grades on it. And my dad had direct bosses who tried to cut his knees out from underneath him by filling out bad fitness report after bad fitness report.

And you know what God did? He put somebody above that guy who kept coming back and handing it back to the guy saying, I know better. Fix it. I know better. Fix it.

I know. You know what? Chaplain Scott, write your own fitness report and bring it to me. That's legit. That's a true story.

And my dad's like, I don't even know how to write this. The guy said, you know what you are. Fill it out. If I need to correct it, I will. This guy over here is just trying to take you out.

But it's humility. And when we humble ourselves, God says, man, man, if we have a humble heart, I'm going to bring you up. But so many of us are looking for that long-term thing. We're looking for that thing now. We want it right now.

We want our ministry to be at 4,000 people right now. We want to be out evangelizing. We want to be doing crusades right now. And God says, you're not ready. I've got to, it's going to be some years, son.

I've got to prepare you. I thought I was ready until God humbled me. And he cut me down to size. And he showed me, son, you're not ready. You're not even close.

You got some years to grow. And it's a, at first it's painful. And then you realize he just saved your life. Because when you're not ready for something, you can't handle it. And there's damage, collateral damage to people when you try to take on something you're not ready for.

Second, I know Matt's back there doing jumping jacks. Exemplify God's grace. I'm going to move for these quick. Do not speak evil towards others. That's the next blank.

Do not speak evil towards others. That is a hard thing to do in this world. We all have our own biases, our own views on stuff. And it's so easy to fling darts and fling arrows at people because they're different than us, because they think differently than us, because they feel differently than us. Or maybe they're straight out in a different place in their life than we are.

And we can't understand why can't you just get it together and get in church and be holy. Seriously. Right? I mean, let's not even, let's not even act like that doesn't happen. It's like once we become Christians, it's like God gives us this opportunity to judge others.

You're, you're my underjudge, son. No, there's one. And our job, like Miranda told us, is to speak life. Speak life into them. Speak life into them.

Speak positive into people. In the surfing world, we hear good vibes a lot. You'll see that on, on Facebook. You see it on Instagram and Twitter. I'm sending good vibes your way.

Speak positive towards people. I don't care how bad you think they are. You walk straight up to them. Say, you know what? God loves you.

And because God loves you, I love you. What can I do for you? Do not judge others. There is, I'm not even going to go into this. I'm just going to say this.

There is one single judge. God gives us discernment so we understand the difference between good and evil. So we don't go get caught up in the evil. But it is not our job to walk up to somebody and judge them. We don't know what they're going through.

We don't know what they've been through. And God knows their heart. And we have no clue. We have some people in this church. And my brother back here sitting with his leg up.

Man, Lee Rat. That testimony from that man is amazing. Amazing. And if you go talk to him, I'll let him tell his own story. But I have been challenged and encouraged by his testimony time and time and time and time again.

But I guarantee you there were times in his life when people were putting him down. When people were judging him based on what they saw. And what they didn't know is that within this man who's struggling with some things? God has an evangelist. And there's going to be a day when it's going to be him up in a place like this preaching his testimony and lives changing because his story is that powerful.

If you don't believe me, he just fell 50 feet from a tree and he didn't die because God knows he's got something more for him. Don't judge. You don't know where that guy's going to be in 10 years and he may be your boss or your pastor. Lastly, do work today. Don't take, and this is your blank, tomorrow for granted.

It may not be there, guys. If you spend so much time on your knees begging God to give you the big. And to give you this vision that you forget what God has told you to do today, if you're not faithful with the little things, if you've come from the Pentecostal background, you know what B-I-B-L-E stands for. Anybody? Basic instructions before leaving earth.

My wife. It means these are the things that God has called you to do. These are the little things that God wants you to do. They're basic. They're simple.

It's pretty dang straightforward. And if you forget to read that thing and you forget to do those things, that big thing that you've been wasting all your time praying for, you're never going to get grasped. You're never going to get put into it. God is never going to place you into it because you're not being faithful with today. If we as Christians at Salt Church, if just this group of people here in Virginia Beach at the oceanfront and Red Mill, I know there's people in Ocean Lakes and there's some people from town center, if we were so faithful to God's word on a daily basis that that was our entire thought process was, all right, Lord, I know you've got a couple bigger things for me.

And I know I'm called to this down the road, but I am going to be completely and totally faithful to do your will today. I'm going to do the little things every single day. Dude, this, we would rock this city. We would rock it. No one hit them.

Do not take tomorrow for granted. Do the right thing today. Guys, I could give you all sorts of quotes. I can give you all sorts of stories about paying attention to detail, taking the little things and paying attention to them. There's, for every millionaire, for every billionaire, there's a hundred quotes about that because they understand how it works.

But all you need to know is that that is God's will, that you follow his plan, that you open his word up and you study it out and you do those things on a daily basis because you don't know what he has for you. My dad, if you would have asked him when he got into the Navy, he didn't think he was going to be there long. He thought God was just putting him in a temporary place for a different mission field. He had no idea. When they told him, hey, you're up for admiral, he was like, you're out of your mind.

I'm a non-denominational, gospel-filled, spirit-filled man. There is no way in the world the United States Navy is going to put me in that spot. But God had ordained it. There's nothing they could do about it. And God had prepared him and he was faithful in each and every position he was ever put in.

And it prepared him for what he's in right now. Pay attention to the small things. Open up your word daily. Get in it early and hold on and grasp to those things so God can prepare you for what he's got. Who knows what's in this room?

Who knows how many evangelists and pastors and preachers and millionaires God's got in this room for his kingdom if we're just faithful with what he's given us right now? Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that it is not going to return void today. Lord, I am so grateful that when we speak your word, when we speak the truth, Lord, we know it's impacting hearts.

Lord, I know there's people today here who haven't given their life to you and they've been wondering, like, what is life about? I don't understand. I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I feel empty inside.

I'm aimless. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the answer. We're never going to leave here without the opportunity for people to give their hearts to the Lord. So if you're here today and you're thinking, man, I want direction.

I want a future. I want a future that God has set a part that God has specific and with everybody's heads bowed and eyes closed. Just pray along with me. Lord, today I make the choice to change direction. Forgive me for my sins and come into my heart.

Send your spirit into my heart to take over. I believe that you died and rose again. And that you are the son of God sent as a sacrifice for me. And I want that life.