Follow Jesus Christ: Matthew 4:19 - Abandoning Goals for God's Purposes

Understanding the importance of following Jesus' commands.

The Great Commission and its significance in Christianity.

The connection between loving Jesus and keeping His commandments.

The role of grace in enabling obedience to God's commands.

Father, we are so grateful that your word is so important that we, on a weekly basis, come together along with our personal study. We want to gather as a church seeking your truth. We want to also gather because you tell us to come to encourage and serve and minister to one another. You can't do that at home. We gather because we love one another and choose to serve you that way. And also we want to make ourselves available to the community. I pray Lord for our community today that is without you that you would stir their hearts to salvation and hunger and thirst put oats and salt in their diets spiritual diets so they begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness and seek your face and I pray that we'll be the lighthouse that captures an attention right in our neighborhood we want to be witnesses your witnesses we want to be fishers of men today and we just thank you as we look together at this word We pray that your spirit will make it clear and concise beyond my limitations. But instead, your truth will come alive and well through your truth for us to be moved and changed and to be true followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, you can be seated. Now, we are being stirred in Scripture by something that came across out of the Great Commission. In the Great Commission, Matthew 28, Jesus said, go make disciples of all the nations. And a lot of us have put definitions on disciples. But what he continued to say in the command makes all the difference in what we're doing. And as a church, we want to make sure that we are specific in obedience to our Lord. Think about it. If you're a church and you won't do what Jesus says, what are you? You're in danger. I mean, you're just not people of God. Well, in that great commission, he said, teaching them to observe everything I've already commanded you. In other words, he told those disciples, I spent three years with you, and I've commanded and taught you specific things to do. Now, I'm going away to heaven. Now, I want you to continue on. I want you to make more disciples like I made of you, and I want you to keep teaching them everything I commanded you. The word command there is very clear, But Americans don't like to be commanded to do anything, do they? We like to make up our own rules to do things the way we like it and so forth. But Jesus said, no, no. The people I'm looking for are those who are going to listen to my words, follow me. I've already got tea, thanks. Appreciate it. But I want you to know that I want you to teach them specifically what I've commanded. Well, that gives me an ultimatum that if I'm going to be a true servant as a pastor of a church, then I need to teach you what? The commands of Jesus. You can go through and have great preachers that go line by line and teach through from Genesis on, and that's okay. But if in the midst of that they don't teach the commands of Jesus, they have specifically ignored instruction, right? Because we need to make sure within that, We're teaching the commands of Jesus. And if they're doing that, that's good because we want the whole counsel of God. There's nothing wrong with that unless you're doing it and not paying attention to what the commands of Jesus are. So here's why we want to make sure we spell it out. Think of when you go to school. You don't go to first grade and teach nuclear fusion to a child. They'd smile and not have a clue. but eventually the child grows up and can handle or some can handle nuclear fusion and so forth or calculus or whatever but we understand that you don't know all the concepts of Jesus that's why we gather together and stir each other up in the faith but we need to make sure we build the founding blocks of what that means and the commands of Jesus are very specific and very clear cut and our path or our direction to be in connection with Him. Let me give you a few promises I find in Scripture that teaches us this. Look at what it says from the words actually of Jesus in John 14. If you love me, keep my commandments. Keep His commandments? Here's what I hear from everybody. No one's perfect. We can't keep His commandments. Who would ever do that? That's the law. We don't live under the law anymore. We live under grace, and grace says we can do anything we want, and we're forgiven. No, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Listen to the words of Jesus. He's the guy who started all this, right? He said, and he wouldn't tell you something you can't do, right? Now, if you were a kindergarten, yeah, you can't build a ship. But you don't stay a little child. You grow up. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. That means you can do it. And before you think we're talking about perfection here, how many of you ever sinned once? Okay, you're already not perfect, so it doesn't matter anymore. So that's not the question anymore. If you did everything perfect from now on, you couldn't say you're perfect because you already blew it in the first place. So we're not talking about perfection. We're talking about obedience. And if you blow it, what do you do? You ask forgiveness and you go back to obeying. Think about a law-abiding citizen. Can you imagine being pulled over by a police officer? Ma'am, you were driving 75 in a 20. I can't help it. No one's perfect. Would he accept that as an excuse? No, he'd say, lady, I don't care what your excuse is. You can drive 20. There's children that cross in this school zone. If you don't do it, I'm going to fine you. But no one can do this. We're not perfect. Nobody accepts those excuses until you get to the church. And I'm telling you, God doesn't accept your excuses either. You can do what He tells you to because of one cardinal secret. What is it? We've talked about it for years here. It starts with a G. Grace! That's right. Grace gives you the desire and the power to do the will of God. 2 Peter 1 says you receive everything that you can experience Godliness. Because in Jesus you receive the Holy Spirit, His promises, and His grace. You can do it. Stop saying you can't and change your mindset. And say, yes, I'm going to show Jesus I love him because I'm going to keep his commandments. Second promise he gives if you do it is that if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love. Do you want God's love to be poured out upon you? Sure we do. Jesus said, well, if you keep my commandments, you will abide, experience, enjoy my love. Even as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Even Jesus shows the example that he kept the commands of his Father. Whoever keeps his word truly, the love of God, is completed in him. Notice the word perfected doesn't mean you never did anything wrong. When a builder in those days finished building his house, it was perfect. Meaning, it was finished, completed. It could now be lived in. The roof was not still missing, it was there. It was complete. It says, whoever keeps his word truly, the love of God, is completed in him. By this we know that we are in Him. You know you're in Him when you keep His word. If a man loved me, he will keep my words. And my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. You want to be close to God? The closeness to God comes through the reality that if you love him and keep his words, you sense his closeness. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him. What's the word manifest mean? Anybody know that fancy Bible word? What does it mean to manifest? See, that doesn't make any sense to you unless you know what the word means. Show! You bet. God reveals himself to you. You get to know the secretness of God where others don't even know he's around. They don't sense him. They don't feel him. And God makes himself clear to you. You ever had that experience? that you should in Jesus. He makes himself very clear. And I will love him and will manifest myself to him was what I just read. And that's also how knowing Christ is because he continues to say hereby, we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. To know somebody personally comes through the path of knowing Jesus by keeping his commandments. You become known to him. He becomes known to you. That is the pathway of closeness to God. He who says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar. Now we have a lot of liars according to that in the church. Because they keep saying, we can't do it, we can't do it. Well, if you're not doing it, there's a problem, isn't there? That means something that you are not connected. Because if you say you know him, you have to keep his commandments. The truth isn't even in you unless you keep those commandments. Lifestyle change is what God's after. And that's what we talked about last week when we talked about repentance. there's a difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen isn't there and there's a difference between a non-believer and a believer a believer is a law citizen Jesus stated in Matthew 7 after talking the Sermon on the Mount he said many are going are going to come to Me and say Lord Lord we been preachers for you We even did miracles We charismatic We cast out demons. We do miracles. And Jesus would say to them, Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. Not that you lost your salvation. I never knew you. And the word iniquity, if you find it in New King James, it's translated so you understand what that means. He says, you workers of lawlessness, refusing to follow his commands. There's a lot of religious people who will not follow his commands. That's why these promises are so predominant in the Bible. To tell you that following Christ includes a lifestyle change. You follow in his teachings, you obey his commands. And even John said, they're not that hard. They're not grievous, it's used in 1 John. they're not hard to a believer they're impossible to the lost they're criminals but not to the believer you are my friends if you do whatever i command you now you are clean through the word which i have spoken unto you abide in me and you and me sanctify them through thy truth thy word is truth cleansing comes from the word and being part of that now by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. You show your love to your brothers and sisters in Jesus when you obey his commandments. Again, very clear. A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another. And as I have loved you that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another. And how do you love one another? When you keep my commandments. Is it pretty clear what I'm getting at as I beat it into the dead horse that's there this is my commandment that you love one another and as if i loved you greater love has no man than a man lay down his life for a friend notice how clearly we talk here and also back to the great commission to let you see all this means why we have to focus as christians and focus as a church on this very practice go therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. So with that in mind we will focus for a year on the commands of Jesus. Why? Because Jesus promised over and over again He'd be close to us. He would bless us. He'd give us success. In the Old Testament even Joshua received the promise that said that if you meditate on His law day and night, you should surely receive success. I want, excuse me, success in your life. I want you to be blessed by God. God says this is the path to meditate on His Word, to seek and fulfill His commandments. This is the way. Last week, we mentioned the first command. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Now, within that commandment, it starts everything. If you look through the teachings of Jesus, If you see the way it began, it gives in like Matthew. It talks about the birth of Christ. Then it talks about the fact that he was brought into the wilderness. Face the devil. Pass the test. And then it says in chapter 4, verse 17, very clearly, that he then began to preach one topical message to the whole nation of Israel. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That was the message to all mankind. That's the one message that you must obey or surely you will lose out on all things. If you don't obey that command, there is nothing else for you. In other words, there's no plan B. The message for all mankind is repent. Now, I know this is true because if you go further like into Matthew 13, it talks about the disciples. They came to Jesus because after a while he switched his message from repent and started telling these little funny little stories and nobody knew what he was talking about. They were called parables. And they even said, you know, we your disciples are confused. Why are you now teaching all the crowd parables? Now, we always try to make you think the reason for parables is so you understand the truth better. That is not what he told them. He said, it's real simple why I'm telling them parables. It's not for them to know the secrets of the kingdom. the only people to get the secrets of the kingdom are the disciples. And who were the disciples? The ones who obeyed the command one and repented and followed Jesus. The rest of the people, none of the rest of the teaching of Jesus had any reason for them, and he didn't want them to even know it. So he told them funny stories because they wouldn't leave him alone. They wanted free food, free medical. Hey, we tell that to the government, don't we? But they wanted Jesus. So they followed him around because he did what he did. Turned water into wine. He turned a couple pieces of fish and bread into a whole feast. He did all kinds of... He healed their sick. He did all kinds of stuff. They loved it. So they chased Him around the nation to watch Him and to experience the good blessing from them. But they specifically would not repent. Can you believe that? They would not become His disciple. How many in our country today want to go to heaven but don't want to come to church? How many in America want the blessing, but they don't want to do the repentant part? It's never changed, has it? Mankind is still the same. But you've got to be careful and understand, they don't get God's blessing. They're nice people. They're Americans. But they're still not going where you're going if you repented and became a disciple of Jesus, right? They're not going there. They are the ones that we have to look after and follow. And that's why it's so important to see that the second command is important. Just a quick reminder then, the Amplified Bible makes this repentance very clear to you. There's three aspects of it. Repent means to change your mind for the better. In other words, what your life is like is wrong. Leave it. Change your mind. When God says it's a lie, it's a lie. When God says it's adultery, it's not an affair. when God says it's a sin and you say no it's not what makes right and wrong it's all up to your own choice that's all false isn't it God is going to bring a day of judgment you cannot change that when God says it's sin it's sin and you have to change your mind and follow what he says is right and what is wrong that's the issue of what repentance means secondly heartily amend your ways heartily means you get into it think of a person who doesn't want to be poor any longer they want to be rich They go to seminars that you pay $150 to $700 for to show you how you get rich quick. They find out ways to go to college and learn how to be better businessmen. They do something, even if it's stupid, but they're heartily involved in trying to be rich instead of poor, right? You see it. There's a change of heart. That's what God says. Be a change of heart. Make an amend to change your ways. And thirdly, have an abhorrence of your past sins. What's abhorrence? Hatred, disgust. That is correct. God wants you to change your feelings toward what you did. I remember when I first became a Christian, I was 19. Something came over me. I was raised in church. Went there from the time I was a baby. and yet the is this mike the batteries going bad or something what was that noise mike you know okay well just watch it you might need to change batteries on me um and what happened was even though i was in church all that time and i didn't really hear anything except i remember when i was five i heard a sermon that pastor hardy talked about hell i don't know if that's what he talked about the whole way but at five that's the only thing i happen to catch hearing him talk about and it scared me i don't think i ever really heard about hell until that point it just kind of gripped me it changed my perspective my mindset changed suddenly i believe there was something more going on and when i went home and told my mom i was afraid she prayed with me told me to accept jesus into my heart and you know the standard uh teaching of church so i went through that prayer and it kind of satisfied my fear. Then I went on and lived my life until I was 19 and didn't really do much anything else about church. I went to church, thought about girls. Went to church, thought about my car when I was older. How to fix my car more, make it cooler, spend more money, how to do this. I didn't think, nothing gripped my heart. I didn't hear anything. Nothing really was there. I was away from God. I wasn't close. When I was 19 though, brick walls started hitting my life i had planned on being an engineer when i got out of high school my college started i was taking the classes of chemistry you know mathematics computers different stuff because i wanted to be the engineer but one day while i was sitting in chemistry class idea popped into my head what am i doing here I hate this class And I started realizing frustration was growing in my life And I hated the class. Also my personal life. I was chasing after a girl that didn't love Jesus. And I still had that veneer that I was a Christian. And she cursed one day as we got into the thing. And for the first time in my life, I cursed. because I copied what she said and said, I want you. And it almost made me think of Peter as he cursed and said he didn't know Jesus. It kind of struck me, and I never thought about this stuff before, and I felt like a piercing going into me. Suddenly I found myself on a personal level, in my goals, my life. I was hitting these brick walls and lost, confused, guilt. Things were coming to me that never happened all my days. things were coming to an end I guess I didn't know what to thinking all that was happening to me was the grace of God was beginning to operate in my life because what God was doing was beginning to convict me of sin change my direction and cause me to go in a new place or repent and I began to realize what sin was it began to eat at my soul my pride and my immoral thoughts and all the different sins you can think of were all beginning to stir and I was finding myself hitting this wall and not knowing where to go because see I already thought I was a Christian I prayed to accept Jesus when I was five wasn't that good enough? I didn't repent when I was five I never admitted I did anything wrong when I was five I don't even know if I felt like I did anything wrong when I was five. I didn't sense I was a sinner. And the Bible says that Jesus came to save sinners. And call sinners to repentance. He didn't come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. Well, 19, I needed some repenting. And all of my life began to come to a close so that I could start over again in Jesus. And this is what repentance was. Before my days were over at 19, I was on my face in tears, confessing my sin and going on with confession after confession for a year or two as I was struggling through. In fact, the grace of God was so strong on me that I didn't have anybody to explain it to me. I thought grace was you just didn't get what you deserved or whatever. That was even wrong because that's mercy. But anyway, I got enough of church to know a little bit to hurt me and not enough to really make any sense in my life even though I was there all the time. But the grace of God drove me with such new convictions that I couldn't stand sin. I began to hate sin and myself and what I did and hate the things that I would practice and I found myself hating the things so much I wanted them out of my life. That's repentance. Have you been there? Do you know what I'm talking about? Because that's the only beginning to anything we go on from now. Without repentance, nothing's going to help you. Because the second command only is talking to repentant disciples of Jesus. So if you went through number one, number two is now the next step. Here's it. Big letters. I want you to say it out loud with me. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Matthew 4.19 Now, notice that's not a suggestion or request. It's a command. He looked straight in the eyes of men and said, Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. Directly, clearly, in the midst of all that preaching and repentance, he specifically spoke to people and said, Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. Follow me. You have to make a choice. Will I follow him? or will I not follow him? You have to make that choice. That's a command. But it's a command from Jesus Christ. To follow Jesus Christ is to abandon our goals. Our goals. See, my goal was to be an electronics engineer. I wanted to make more money than my dad made. I think Joel's got that in his mind. He already beat me. He wanted to make more money than dad. He remembered how poor we were and couldn't stand it. So he had this goal to make more money than dad. You know, or whatever. because all they remember is when they wanted to buy these $200 shoes, they kept telling them, no, we couldn't afford it. So they decided they were going to make sure that happened. So I pounded in their brains, no, we couldn't afford it. Well, that was not such a good thing. But you see, my goal was that too, but Jesus changed my goal. And I couldn't teach them that. They have to learn that from Jesus, right? But the thing is, I had a goal, and I had to also give up my pleasures, the things that I chose to do. Here's why. If you look at Matthew 16, he makes it clear what he's talking about. The fishermen, Peter and them, had to give up things to be a follower of Jesus. Matthew 16, Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone desires to be my disciple, notice that anyone means you and me, right? Let him deny himself, disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself in his own interest. That's your own goals. And take up his cross and follow me. cleave steadfastly to me, conform wholly to my example in living, and if need be, in dying. To conform that heavily to Jesus means you look at what he did as he lived on this earth, and you do just like him, right? That's what discipling is, conforming to him. And Jesus did not chase after his own pleasures, did he? He spent his time expending himself for you and me. Clearly, it's a call to make a change of direction. Everybody born chases after their own goals and their own pleasures. That's what we do as, quote, sinners. But the change that God wants is not just a place coming to church once a week on Sunday. It's a life-changing experience where you do differently on a daily, hourly basis of life. It's living it differently. It's seeing it different. It's a different mindset than everybody else. Does that make sense? And that's what he says here in the simple Scripture. Embrace the purposes of God instead of your purposes. And what's that mean? To know Him in a personal way is the first purpose God has. Jesus wants to know you. But what we read in some of these verses, if you know Him, you'll keep His commandments. It's like a daddy-child relationship. It's not buddies in the sense that I do my thing, you do your thing, and we don't talk politics and religion, and we're buddies. That's not how it works with God. We give up all that stuff, and we take his politics, his religion, his stuff, and we do what he says. It's kind of a dad-little-child relationship, isn't it? Different. Secondly, to make disciples by teaching them his commandments. We embrace his purposes when we follow the Great Commission and teach others to obey Jesus. Do you see that that's not the pastor's job? If you're a disciple, it's your job. That means it's all our jobs. How are you rating in your experience with Jesus? Are you doing this very thing? Are you teaching others His commands? A lot of times you say, well, I don't know what His commands are. Well, that's why we're going to take a year. Because if we're supposed to do it, obviously, Can you imagine getting hired for the professional football team? And they pay you $20 million. Get on the field and you say, I don't know how to play football. Would they hire you if you didn't know how to play football? And didn't know the rules? No. You have to know what you're doing. God sees eternity even though you don't. We're going to see people in heaven because of what we did here on earth. Right? He's looking to us to make it happen. The first disciples understood the call to follow Jesus and what it meant. They knew it meant to forsake their way of life. And they knew also it meant to be trained by Jesus to be his disciple because he told them, follow me and become fishers of men. That is a job. If you get hired by McDonald's, they say, join us and sell nuts and bolts. So, yeah, if you join them, they're selling burgers. Jesus says he's fishing for men. And he says, if you're going to follow me, the thing, the job you're getting hired into, the life you're getting into, this new way of life, is you become fishers of men. That is the life. And people say, ah, you don't know. I'm not good at talking to people. Either am I. So we have to find ways to fish. Now, you know, when you think of fishing, what do you think about when you go fishing? How do you fish? What? A boat? What else? Bait and rod and reel Exactly That the American mindset You know that not anything what Jesus is talking about They didn fish with bait or rod and reel or hooks How did they fish in that day? No, no, I mean real fish, first of all. Nets. Exactly. See, we can't understand what Jesus is saying because our culture, we think of rods, reels, and hooks. We can't even understand what he's in bait. bait and switch is a terrible way to to win people to jesus you know i'm saying it's like no no no no god wants to make your life wonderful and then hook you with trials tribulations and being a disciple that people hate you and i mean it's not what jesus said the way they fished was very interesting remember when jesus talked to the guys about fishing he he said come up and follow me and then he said something about later on he talked to him about fishing he said, Master we fished all night and caught nothing. They fished at night. Now think about going in the pitch darkness at night with nets how are they going to catch anything? You just throw your net in the darkness? I mean they didn't have electricity. What did they do? They didn't have boats they didn't have sonar. Did they just go out there and throw their nets in the middle of the dark water and hope they hit something? But they fished at night. they actually fished with light do you know that they took out candle I mean not candle but oil lamps and stuff they fished by light they would go out and over the side of their boats they would put light what do fish do when they have they go to the light and when they go to the light what do they do they threw their nets on them and grabbed them they let the light attract the fish. Now do you hear why I'm coming here now? Do you see what I'm saying? Jesus said, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. Just because you're not a preacher doesn't mean you get out of this command. You're still ordered to fish. So if you're afraid to talk, how are you going to change your lifestyle so you can still fish? What do you have to do? Any ideas? I mean, you do want to obey Jesus and get the blessing, you know, all this stuff, right? I went through that, right? So what do you do? How do you do it? What do you do? Okay, you want to be trained. And that's good because it says we need to be trained. That's good. But we want to be fishers of men. And you want to use light. What is light? How do you use light to attract men? Okay, first of all, Jesus is the light. Now, this is something that happened while they were with them. First of all, they had only one type of light. Reflective light. Jesus was the light blasting through the world. They got to go stand by him in the light and go, Ha ha ha ha, we're by the light. And then Jesus drew all men to himself. And they had crowds of people following Jesus. Now, if they separated from Jesus, where'd the crowd go? Yeah, they were out. So they only had reflective light at first. They hung out with the light. But what happened is, three years later, what happened? Jesus went home. So now what do we do? We don't have any light? Are we stuck now because Jesus is gone? No light, no good, no fishing? What happened at the end of Jesus' ministry? He died, buried, rose from the dead. Then what did he do? Before he left, what did he do? amen he gave us and said you are the light of the world and he gave us the light that we only stood by if you were with jesus and now he put the light in us okay a couple weeks from now we'll talk about how to let your light shine which is another command as you go through this but the point is to be fishermen, you have to use the light. And we'll give you hints here, but I'm going to give it away because I've got a lot to talk about about letting your light shine later. But I want you to connect the two here. To be fishermen and do like they did in those days, you need the light. And that's important to see as we talk about this whole mindset of being fishers of men. Now, all who follow Jesus must exchange their then affections, their goals and their priorities. Do you understand what I'm saying? It doesn't mean you stop working because you still have to pay your bills and eat, right? But there's a difference between changing or giving up and exchanging your affections and your goals and priorities. For example, the rich young ruler, chief love in his life was money when he came to Jesus. Now we know that because, first of all, he said, what do I have to do to go to heaven? And Jesus said, oh, no problem. obey every command God gives. And he says, I've done it all. What an arrogant guy. I've obeyed every command. What would we say? Everybody's a sinner. So Jesus said, really? All right, I've got something for you to see if you really chiefly love me more than anything else. And really, God is supreme in your life. Sell everything you have and give to the poor and follow me. What did he do? No way, he left. Now why? Because his chief love was money. Now, he doesn't tell everybody to do that. I mean, he didn't tell everybody to give up all their money. But this guy, his chief love was money. The thing that kept him from heaven was his love of money. The one thing he had to give up, because that was his chief priority and goal, was money. And he was willing to go to hell rather than give up his money, because he did it. He said, forget it, I'm not following you. The Lord demanded a new affection, a new goal, and a new priority for living in this man. And he said, I won't do it. It costs too much. The second example is Peter, James, and John who were fishermen. Their goal was to be successful fishing business, wasn't it? That was their goal. So what did Jesus tell them? Leave your nets. Follow me. He made them choose in a real world their priorities. He said, if you do that, I'll make you fishers of men. He wanted them to realign their goals so that it was bigger, eternal goals. does god want you to have bigger goals if you follow him he wants to change your goals the call to follow jesus is number one to walk away from anything that will hinder your fellowship with him every person has something different that hinders their fellowship with god to me if he told me give up my money that isn't hard to do okay so he wouldn't tell me that see he knows there's other things that are sticking too close to me so he'll tell me something else that you would think well that's dumb that's not even an issue it is for me you know what i'm saying but he knows your heart and so he's going to prod at you and tell you to leave that which is the most dearest thing to you rather than what this guy had with money or fishing i mean if god told me to leave my nets and stop fishing i'd say i hate fishing i'm coming because i can't stand fishing yeah see but see that would kill somebody like pastor paul from the other church man that dude's a fisherman he says he's out in his office you know what he's doing his office is his fishing boat he's not out in his office he's fishing he uses the term in his office talking about fishing out on the water. If he was told to leave his fishing he'd kill him. Number two, to walk away from the things that will hinder our effectiveness for him is the second thing. Some things are evil. They just need to be stopped in your life because it makes you ineffective to be a fisher of men. Hear what I'm saying? certain jobs you have you need to leave them not because they're so bad but they consume so much of your time you have forgotten the true priority that god's goal is for a christian which is to be a fisher of men you know i see that happen a lot it ruins who you are it ruins your life in many ways and takes away your effectiveness for example you ever heard about the the stripper that wanted to be a stripper for Jesus. It doesn't work. I mean, it was in the news years back that she wanted to be a stripper for Jesus. How can that? You can't do that. That's dumb. You know? There's things that you cannot do. And that's an extreme case because I want you to understand what I'm saying. But you understand it can be not that extreme. And God's causing you to change jobs on purpose and you don't understand why and you don't like it. but God's making a change in your life because he wants you to be effective for him and the way you were doing was not effective and he couldn't use you for what his goal is because you kept looking at your goal and haven't changed your thinking to his goal change your goals to his let him lead you Thank you.

Playlist coming soon.