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All right, 2 Timothy 2, the part that I'd like to focus on is beginning in verse number 19 there where the Bible reads, Nevertheless, the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His, and let everyone that nameeth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. The man therefore purges himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor. Sanctified and meek for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lust, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure art. And what I want to preach about this morning is that phrase that's found up very into verse 21 where the Bible reads, Prepared unto every good work, and that's what I want to preach about this morning, being prepared unto every good work. The Bible talks about the three ways here that you can be prepared unto every good work. Purging yourself from bad friends and hanging around the wrong people is what the immediate context is there. But jump up to verse 15, the Bible reads in a famous verse there, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Study is a type of preparation. I mean study is gaining the knowledge and gaining the wisdom that you're going to need to perform some later task or to pass a coming test. Preparation is very important. The Bible reads you don't have to turn there in Titus 3.1. Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work. Similar to what he said when he said to be prepared unto every good work. Be ready to every good work. The Bible talks about a king in the Old Testament, you don't have to turn there. 2 Chronicles 12-14, he did evil because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord. See whenever you're doing something that's good or righteous, there's preparation involved. Now you don't have to prepare yourself to do evil because that's just the default. We're all born sinners and so if we don't prepare ourselves to do what's right, we're probably just going to automatically do the wrong things if we just go on autopilot. But let me start out by saying this, go to Ephesians 6. The first thing I'd like to preach about being prepared for this morning, because we're talking about being prepared for every good work, would be being prepared to be a soul winner or being prepared to win people to Christ or give the gospel to people. The Bible reads in Ephesians 6 verse 14, Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth. Of course this is the famous passage about wearing the whole armor of God. Having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the what? The preparation of the gospel of peace. Go to Romans chapter 1. The preparation of the gospel of peace. So when God is referring to preaching the gospel, he often uses your feet as a reference to preaching the gospel. Why? Because we're supposed to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That's why he said how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. That's why he said to have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. So number one, soul winning has to do with your feet. Don't wait for them to come to you. Don't sit around waiting for it to fall on your lap. You've got to put on your shoes and go out and win people to Christ. But not only that, it's associated with preparation. It's going to take preparation to be a great soul winner. That's why Paul said in Romans 1.15, So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also. He said I'm ready to preach the gospel. Implying that one might not be ready to preach the gospel. Now there are times when we have an opportunity to preach the gospel that we didn't expect. There could be a loved one or a friend or an acquaintance that we had no clue would ever have an interest in the gospel or in being saved. And we might think that the opportunity is not going to rise. And then all of a sudden you're alone with that person and they might even bring it up. They might even ask you a question about it. And boom, there's an opportunity. But are you ready? Soul winning time rolls around. Sunday, 1.30, Wednesday nights at 5.15, any of the other soul winning times that we do throughout the week. Are you ready to go soul winning? Now a lot of people miss opportunities because of not being prepared. And opportunities arise and you're not prepared. And here's the thing, you must be prepared before opportunities arise. Because once the opportunity arises, it's too late to get prepared. See the first three letters of prepared is pre-prepared. Because it's something that you have to do before the action. It's something that you have to do in advance. And I believe that if you're prepared, God will give you the opportunities in your life. I think it's our job to prepare for every good work. And then God will give us the opportunities. You see, God looks down from heaven and he sees somebody who's ready to preach the gospel. He sees somebody with their feet shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. He's going to give them opportunities to win people to Christ. He's going to guide them to a soul winning church. He's going to give them opportunities with their friends, with their family, with their loved ones. The key is being ready. The key is being prepared. Now notice what he said, as much as in me is, I'm ready to preach the gospel. He's saying I have so much in me that I'm ready to preach the gospel. What do you think he's talking about having in there? The word of God. Knowledge, wisdom, skill, understanding about winning souls. Now he said, well how do I prepare myself to be a soul winner? Well, first of all, the best way to do it is to memorize scriptures. You should take all the scriptures that you want to use to give somebody the gospel. If you don't know where to start, you could go with us out soul winning obviously and watch what verses we use. You can watch on the church website the soul winning demonstration video, a 10 minute video. Just a really basic presentation, a lot of scriptures in there. You can flip over the back of our church invitation. It has some bible verses there that you could use to win some made in Christ. Get that in you. Get those scriptures in you. Get the word of God in you because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. We cannot help but speak the things that we've seen and heard. You've got to get the word of God down in you. You've got to be prepared to be a great soul. I talk to the people who are now successfully winning souls in our church and they put work into it. They put preparation into it before they get out there. They actually took the time to maybe watch a video, to memorize the verses. Now, for example, I've been soul winning for a long time. I've been soul winning for, let's see, over 13 years now. I've been soul winning pretty much every week of my life for the last 13 years. But something that I haven't done for as long is soul winning in Spanish. That's something that I've only done effectively for the past several years. I think I probably started really being effective at it maybe 3 or 4 years ago. And so that's something that's a little bit newer for me. And let me tell you something, that took a lot of preparation. Because I remember one of the first things I did is I got the video that Brother Roger Jimenez made. Where he's given the gospel, actually I made it with him, but he's given the gospel in Spanish. I've probably listened to that thing hundreds of times. I was on a long drive, I just had the thing on repeat for hours and hours and hours and hours. Just trying to listen, trying to learn. And then just reading the Bible in Spanish and practicing the Spanish language. And then getting out there and practicing and trying. It took a lot of preparation. You know, you see one person walks up to the door and knows how to give the gospel. Knows the verses, knows what they're doing. And you see another person who doesn't. It's not that one person just magically was born with all this skill and talent and knowledge. No, they prepared. They worked at it. They invested time and energy into preparing to be a soul winner. You know, if you want to win souls, you need to memorize the Romans road. You need to memorize other scriptures from the book of John or wherever you like to use to give people the gospel. Memorizing those scriptures is going to make you a much more effective soul winner. Also, sometimes you might not have your Bible with you. But you can still be ready to give the gospel. You can still be prepared unto every good word. You can still have your feet shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace anytime, anywhere. It's on the tip of your tongue. Romans 3.10, Romans 3.23, John 3.16, John 3.18, John 3.36. It's all right there. You're prepared. You're ready to do it. A person like that, God is going to give them all kinds of opportunities to give the gospel. A person who's ready like that. You know, you go out soul winning, you knock doors. That's how you learn to be prepared. For example, I've been saved since I was a six year old boy. And all throughout my life I've had a burning desire to get people saved. I really wanted to give the gospel to the lost. But I was ineffective at it because I wasn't properly prepared to do it. And I tried a few times giving the gospel and I never really had success at it. But then I got in a soul winning church and actually got out there door to door. And was a silent partner of a guy who knew what he was doing. And I followed him around for a few hours. I watched how he did it. I went soul winning with the pastor of the church. I went soul winning with some other people. And by being a silent partner and just following along, just praying and watching and learning. And then going home and memorizing the verses. Maybe putting a bookmark in my Bible in certain places. Putting tabs in the Bible to show me where to turn to. That's how I got to where I could do it myself and open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. Have you ever been soul winning with Brother Segura? Talk about being prepared. He's got like 5 million tabs at the Bible. He does it so fast. He's got all these verses marked with all these little fluorescent tabs and everything. He's prepared. I remember my parents. My parents used to have their Bibles marked up to where they would just open their Bible to Romans chapter 3 verse 10. And there was a little note there telling them the next place to turn. They told them, hey, turn to Romans 3.3. They would turn there. And then it would tell them, turn to Romans 6.3. And it guided them. Each verse they turned to, they had a little note telling them what the next verse was. And it was all underlined. It was all ready to go. So that if they had the opportunity to preach the gospel, they could pull out their Bible and turn to Romans 3.10. And it would guide them to the next verse. It would guide them and then they could just preach it from their heart and be able to get somebody saved. Look, be prepared for these type of opportunities. You're not just going to accidentally go through life just winning people to Christ by accident everywhere you go. You've got to learn how to do it. You've got to study to show thyself approved unto God. You've got to memorize the verses. You might need to put some marks in your Bible, some tabs, some underlining. You might need to spend several hundred hours out walking around, knocking doors, watching other people do it. That's going to make you effective. You say, well, that sounds like way too much work. Well, it is a lot of work. But that's why most are unprepared today. That's why most today, let me give you an example. Just a few months ago, you might remember the spirit. A missionary comes to me and he's trying to get money and I ask him to give me the gospel. I said, give me the gospel, present me the gospel. He started shaking, didn't know what to do, failed to give me the gospel. Talk about being unprepared. But yet he's going to go to some foreign country and shine the light of the glorious gospel of Christ. Amen. You know, and he's got his slide shows prepared. He's not ready to preach the gospel. He's like, if we could see him spiritually, he came to church barefoot. Now, did you ever have that dream when you were a kid where you accidentally went to church barefoot? I had that dream all the time. It was a recurring nightmare that I would have, where I would show up to church and I'm all ready to go. And I'm walking in, I looked down on barefoot and I was just embarrassed. Oh no, what am I going to do? Has anybody had that dream? Nobody? Be honest. Did you ever have a dream where you showed up to church barefoot? I was in my dreams. Okay, there you go. That's even worse. But you know what? I've talked to a lot of people who have that dream, I guess in faith or in Baptist, not so much. We got one that was close over here. But anyway, you know. That's how he was. He didn't have any shoes on. His feet were not shot with the preparation of the gospel piece. He finally, after shaking and stammering, pulled out a gospel track and just read it to me verbatim, because he didn't know how to get the gospel. What a shame. What a tragedy. His dad was a pastor. And he was an adult, middle-aged man. And he was just not prepared for that. You know, he was prepared. I asked him a bunch of other questions. Man, he had the answer on the tip of his tongue. Just, oh yeah, no, no, no. Hey, can you tell me how to be saved? Can you give me the gospel right now? Like as if I were an unsaved person, didn't know what to do. Not prepared. You see, some are not just magically good at soul winning. Notice that there's a list of spiritual gifts in the Bible, right? Have you seen those lists? They're in Romans 12. They're in 1 Corinthians 12. Do you see something missing? I don't see a gift of soul winning. I see a command to everybody to go soul winning. And in fact, he said, I'll use the weak. I'll use the weak to confound the wise. I'll use stammering lips and an unknown tongue. I'll use the one who's shy. I'll use the one who's not good at it. But he's going to have to be prepared. You're going to have to learn. You're going to have to read. You're going to have to study. You're going to have to practice. And you're going to be able to do it. You know, there are shy people in our church who are effective at winning souls. I was just out soul winning with brother Jimmy. He won two people to the Lord on Wednesday afternoon. Did a fantastic job. And he's not a super outgoing guy. I mean, he's not super shy either. But, you know, I think of Scott. Scott doesn't exactly talk your ear off. But yet, man, when he gets out soul winning, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he does a great job out of soul winning. I remember the first time I went soul winning with him, I was just wondering, man, is he going to come out of his shell? And he does. But he worked at it. It doesn't just come naturally to him. I don't think he just rolls out of bed every morning just with a desire to go out and meet new people and just talk to people and whatever. But he does it. He's prepared to do it. Okay, it's not about talent. It's about preparation. It's about hard work. And it's about wanting it. It's the people who want to get people saved that want to be able to do it that are going to put in the hard work to get there and learn how to do it. And whether it's preaching the Gospel, whether it's soul winning or soul winning in a foreign language, you know, that's something that takes a lot of work, a lot of preparation. Some people are more gifted in that area than others. I will be honest with that. The Bible talks about that, and I've seen it in my own personal experience. Some people have a knack for picking up languages. Others struggle hard with it. I would put myself somewhere in between. Maybe I have a little bit of a knack for it, but I don't have as much of a knack as some do. Like, I remember Victor Tate. I mean, there's a guy who just picked things up. I mean, he was really fast at learning Spanish. I would put myself maybe, you know, partway in between. I'm not bad at language, but I don't just pick it up like it's nothing either. But, man, learning a foreign language takes a lot of hard work. Right? It's a ton of bad work. Showing up at the Spanish class once a week, you ain't got to cut it. You got to do a lot of studying during the week if you're ever going to learn how to speak Spanish. You know, the Spanish class can explain to you some things that are difficult, maybe explain the grammar a little bit, but you're going to have to sit down and memorize those words. You're going to have to do the work. You're going to have to try at it. And you know what the payoff is when you're out soloing and you can give the gospel to people who don't speak any English. And you can give the gospel to twice as many people out soloing because you did the preparation, because you're ready to speak Spanish. I remember I learned how to speak Norwegian a long time ago. Going back 10 years ago, I learned how to speak Norwegian. Everybody's like, why are you learning Norwegian? What's the point? And I was kind of like, I don't know. And I ask myself the same thing sometimes. But, you know, I just really like studying foreign language. I used to have a hobby for me. So I studied it and studied it and learned it and learned it. And then several years ago, I had an opportunity arise to go to Norway, to go soloing, to get a bunch of people saved. And God was able to use me because I was prepared. Why did that opportunity arise? Because I was prepared. God looked down and said, okay, well, here's a guy that's prepared for a job. I can use him for that job. And he can make it fall into place so that I can use that. Because there were so many supernatural things that guided me on that trip to Norway. For example, one hour after I booked the flight for the trip to Norway, I lost my job. An hour later. Okay, now, let me explain some for you. If I would have known I was going to lose my job an hour later, I wouldn't have booked that flight. You don't book a flight to Norway when you just lost your high-paying job an hour ago. You know, you decide to cancel that. But you know what? I didn't know, and really, I should have known sooner than I wasn't going to. Because I should have known on Friday that my job was gone. Because what happened was the company ran out of money. The company that I was working for ran out of money, couldn't pay me. My paycheck didn't come on Friday. You know, but I figured I'll just wait till Monday to figure out why my paycheck didn't come and blah, blah, blah. Of course, I booked that flight Monday morning. Then I found out why my paycheck didn't come, you know, because the company doesn't have any money to pay me or any of the other employees. That's when I decided to go into business for myself. Well, look, I wasn't going to be taking a trip, a soul-winding trip, a missions trip to Norway when I just found out that I lost my job. But that's why God didn't allow me to find that on top. And then just the whole trip, supernatural thing, I mean, everything just falling into place, God's hand guiding your... I could literally spend a half hour, and I'm not going to, just telling you all the supernatural things, all the miracles, you know, and I'm not talking about walking on water or anything, but just how God made everything fall into place on that trip, and just so many things fell into place that caused it to be such a successful trip and for many people to be saved. Why? Because of preparation, and then the opportunity comes because you're prepared. So being prepared to go soul-winding is important. How do you prepare? Getting the Bible in you, memorizing God's Word, and just getting out there and doing it, being a silent partner, learning, practicing, trying. And listen, you want to get your relatives saved? If you go out soul-winding door-to-door, you'll be very prepared to give it up, because I tried to give gospel to friends and family before I became a door-to-door soul-winner, and I always failed. After I went soul-winding door-to-door for years, then I started being successful at getting people saved because I had the preparation that I needed, and I had the experience and the knowledge to do it. So be prepared for soul-winding. Not only that, turn, if you would, to Psalm 33. Psalm 33, I'll read you another verse on soul-winding. The Bible reads in 1 Peter 3.15, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Now, this is often misquoted and misused verse, let me tell you. The Bible says, be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. It doesn't say, be ready always to give an answer to every man of every stupid question that he asks. Is that what it says? Be ready to answer any stupid question that somebody asks. No, because the Bible says, avoid foolish questions, knowing that they do gender strike. The Bible says, avoid foolish questions in oppositions of science, falsely so-called. It doesn't say, be ready to prove everybody wrong on everything that they could possibly ask you. Bizarre question or weird scientific data that they pull out at you in your soul. No, he says, be ready to give an answer to every man that asketh you of the reason, that asketh you of the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Now, I don't know about you, but the reason of the hope that's in me is my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and my faith in God's word. It's not any kind of a complicated data point. It's just faith. It's just God's word. So I need to be ready with God's word to show people from the Bible why I have hope in my death, why the righteous has hope in his death, why I know for sure I'm going to heaven, why I believe the Bible is God's word, because faith is the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. And so we need to be ready always to give an answer. When somebody asks you, now, sometimes I've even felt guilty because I'll be in a situation where I know, you know you should give somebody the gospel, but you're just not doing it. You know what I'm talking about? You know, you're in a situation, you know you should be giving the gospel, you know it's a good opportunity, but you're just, you know, the spirit's willing, the flesh is weak, and you're failing to do it. And sometimes I've been in a situation like that, and then the person will just ask me about it. And then it's just so easy to give the gospel because they asked you. And then it's so easy, but then I feel guilty, like, man, God is just doing it for me practically because I'm failing here to do what I'm supposed to be doing. Because other times, you know, you fail to give the gospel when you know you should, and they don't ask. That's most of the time. But every once in a while, it'll just fall in your lap. But you know what? It's pretty rare. That's why you better put your feet child with the preparation of the gospel of peace. You know, if you wait for it to fall in your lap, yeah, every once in a blue moon, you'll get somebody saved. But if you're going to get a lot of people saved, you better be ready to go. You better have the right shoes on and so forth, spiritually speaking. But not only should we be prepared for soul waiting. The Bible said we should be prepared for every good work. And let me say this. You should be prepared to serve God in other ways, and the area that I want to focus on a little bit is in areas of music. Now, music is an area that's important to God. That's why the longest book in the Bible is a song book, the book of Psalms. And we sometimes underemphasize music. And I kind of see why we do, because of the fact that our society sometimes tends to overemphasize music. But really, music is something that matters a lot to God, and God does care about it. Look at Psalm 33, verse 1. The Bible reads, Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely for the upright. Praise the Lord with heart. Sing unto him with psaltery and an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto him a new song. Play skillfully with a loud noise. Now, what I want to focus on there in verse 3 is two things. Number one, he said sing unto him a new song. Now, is that easy to do or hard to do? I mean, composing a new song is going to be a difficult task, extremely difficult task, okay? And what about this? Play skillfully with a loud noise. Now, is it easy to play skillfully with a loud noise? No, it's easy to make a loud noise, but it's the playing skillfully part that's difficult. And, you know, a lot of people who do not play a musical instrument, they have very little understanding of the preparation that goes into playing a musical instrument. You know, just as somebody who doesn't go soloing might just think, oh, yeah, that's easy, there's nothing to it, you know, until they try it. It's the same thing with a musical instrument. You know, people who are good at playing a musical instrument, they make it look easy, don't they? And you look at them playing a musical instrument, and you think, oh, I can do that, it's a piece of cake, until you sit down and actually try it. Now, some people might have exceptional talent, but most people have to work very hard at playing musical instruments. But let's take Brother Matt, for example, who's our main piano player, okay? Brother Matt has talent. There's no doubt about that. But how often do you play the piano, Brother Matt, on average? How often do you usually play the piano, and how long do you spend playing the piano over the past few years? About 30 hours a week. How many? 30. Did you hear that? Everybody hear what he said? Say it nice and loud. 30. About 30 hours a week he's spent playing the piano over the last several years. Okay, did you hear that? Now you say, oh, there's no way. Yeah, but honestly, I've spent literally, there have been months and months on end when I was in town a lot, where I've spent literally a few hours every single day playing the piano. I don't play near as much as Brother Matt, which is why I don't play as good as Brother Matt plays. But honestly, I've spent eight hours in one day playing the piano many times. And I'm not that good at piano. Why? Because it takes a ton of hard work to play the piano. Would anybody have guessed that he spends that amount of time playing the piano? You can tell how much he plays because he sits there and he starts at the beginning of the hymnal and plays through the whole hymnal and cover to cover. Now look, how many songs are in the hymnal? Over 450 songs in the hymnal. And have you noticed that I just call out whatever song that Brother Matt, he's just ready to play it? 450 songs and I just call out, play this song, play this song, he plays it. Now, most churches, literally, there's a list in advance. You've got to get the piano player that list and he's got to practice those songs or she's got to practice those songs. My sister, for example, was a church piano player for years and she would have the list in advance given to her by the song leader and she would spend hours and hours preparing for that list. But Brother Matt even has the whole book prepared so that I can, and I love that because I like to just, oh, I changed my mind. Let's sing this song and just, at my caprice, just throw whatever song at him. He's ready to go. I'm working on trying to do the same thing. I'm trying to learn every song in the hymnal. I know about 100 songs and I'm trying to learn more and I'm trying to get better at them and I'm trying to improve. It's a ton of hard work and you take it for granted sometimes. You just sit back, you show up for church, oh, I turned the songs on. Of course there's a piano player. Of course there's an organist. But you know what? It's because somebody put thousands and thousands of hours, literally thousands, into learning how to play that instrument. Song leading takes a lot of work. Even singing takes a lot of work. Go to 1 Chronicles 9. I got this verse from you, brother Dave. Or maybe I got, let's see. Yeah, I think this is the one I got from you. 1 Chronicles 9, 33. It's ton of work. It's preparation. He plays a song for a couple of minutes. You know, you hear somebody in a piano recital, for example. They might play for five minutes. And then everybody goes home. But how long did it take to learn how to play for five minutes? It took hundreds and hundreds of hours to learn how to play for five minutes. And so we need to understand that if it's going to take a lot of preparation to be a good soul winner, if it's going to take a lot of preparation for learning how to play an instrument and to praise the Lord on an instrument of ten strings and to play skillfully with a loud noise, everything in life that's every good work is going to take preparation. We need to be prepared under every good work. We're going to have to put some work into this. Look at 1 Chronicles 9, verse 33. And these are the singers, chief of the fathers of the Levites. So are these like just lame people that are not that important? Are these the people that, okay, here are some people. We have nothing else for you to do. So let's find you a job. Is that what it is? No, these guys are important guys. These are the chief of the fathers of the Levites. These are senior people. These are people who are well-respected. They are well-known. They are the chief of the fathers of the Levites. And it says that they were the singers. And it said they remained in the chambers for free for they were employed in that work day and night. So the Bible says that these guys were just day and night, you know, working on things regarding the music and singing and so forth back in the Old Testament, back in the days of King David and so forth when the book of Psalms was being composed and so forth. Obviously, it's fired by God. But it had musical accompaniment. You know, it's been lost with time. We don't know what the musical accompaniment was today. But there were people that put that to music and put that forth and wrote these songs. Obviously, God was the one who wrote the words. God is the author of the Bible. But we see that these people had an important position. And I believe that leading the singing is a very important position. You know, in most churches I've been in, you look at the pastor. Obviously, he's kind of the bishop, the top guy that you would think of in the church. But then, you know, you kind of think of the song leader as being right there because he's a person who's front and center. Obviously, I'm not saying they're the most important people because everybody's important, everybody plays a role. But when you think about leading the people, who is the main leader? The pastor is the main leader, obviously, when it comes to preaching and teaching God's Word. But you know who else is a leader? The song leader. And the singing is not just something we do to kill a few minutes while everybody's showing up late. You know, because we know everybody's gonna show up late and they can't get here on time. So let's sing a bunch of songs. That way they don't miss anything important. That way they don't miss the preaching. You know what I mean? And so this will give them time to show up late and not miss any of the preaching. No, the singing is important too. Now, if I... I've told people, some people said, you know, that they searched and searched and they couldn't find a good church in the area and all they found was a church that had like this really bad music. But, you know, they were right on the gospel, right on the doctrine, but they had some kind of, you know, like Christian rock, contemporary worship service or whatever. And I just told people, frankly, I'd show up late. I'd just show up when all that stuff's done and just show up with the preaching and stuff. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with our music. There's nothing wrong with our music here. You know, we're congregationally singing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. You know, it's a blessing to be here for the singing. It's a blessing to lift up your voice in the congregation and sing praises unto God. It is a time of preparation for the preaching, getting your heart in the right place, getting your spirit right, being filled with the spirit, speaking to yourselves in songs and hymns and spiritual songs. You see, that is something to get your heart prepared. And it's a pleasant noise unto the Lord. He wants to hear us sing. He says over and over again to praise Him, to sing with a loud voice. He has people singing and praising Him all day long in heaven, the Bible teaches us. And so He wants to bend His ear down and hear the members of Faithful Word Baptist Church singing out, singing from the heart, singing with a loud noise, playing skillfully with a loud noise. You see, what glorifies God more, playing skillfully or playing like you don't know what you're doing? I mean, why did God put this in the Bible? Why did God command? Look at Psalm 33. This is an imperative sentence. This is a command. I guess I had you turn somewhere else. Sorry. Sing unto Him a new song. Play skillfully with the loud noise if you want. That's not what it says. It doesn't say play skillfully or play like you just started yesterday. No, He's saying praise Me, sing unto Me, and do it skillfully, do it right. God is glorified when we do things right. And He's glorified when we sing right, when we play right, when we praise Him skillfully with a loud noise. Hey, that matters to Him. He likes that. It's not just something that doesn't matter. It's not like, wow, it's really just all about the preaching. Okay, I guess we'll sit through a little bit of singing. No, lift up your voice. Sing from the heart. Take it seriously. Do it right. Have a piano player that plays right. I make mistakes. Brother Matt makes mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. But you know what? Try and do the preparation to play right. Try and do the preparation to sing right, to be able to praise the Lord with a loud noise, not just mumbling along. You know, actually singing the words, actually singing out. They say, well, I'm not good at singing. But you know how you get good at singing? By practicing, by trying, by learning, by preparing yourself to do so. Now, obviously not everyone has musical talent and ability. I understand. It's sort of like foreign languages in that regard. But you know, everybody can sing and do the best they can. Everybody can get loud. You know, when we sing the songs, that's the main thing. But I'll tell you this. In a church of 60, 70 people, I don't think there's only three or four people out of 60, 70 people that have any musical talent whatsoever. But that's about how many people help out here in any way, shape, or form with the music whatsoever. It's about three or four people that do it all. And they're not even the most successfully talented people. You know? I would say in this whole church, the only person I would look at and say who has musical talent is Brother Matt. Okay, nobody else. I mean, the rest of us just work hard at it. Okay? And you know, I think of Brother Dave. Brother Dave, you know, when I think of people who don't have, no, I'm just kidding. Brother Dave, Brother Dave is not the type of person who's just, he was just born Mozart. But yet, Brother Dave's been going to church here for over five years, and he has worked at it. And he has become a very good song leader. And he does a very good job. And he is a better song leader than I've seen in many churches because he's worked very hard at it. And a lot of the work that he did, you don't see the work because he was overdoing it at the nursing home, practicing, practicing, practicing at home, practicing in the car, practicing in the shower, you know, practicing everywhere, learning how to do it. But honestly, I just believe that out of six years or 70 people, I don't think that there's only three or four that have the ability to do anything musically. I think that there are probably other people who just haven't prepared themselves, who just aren't putting in the effort, who just have no desire to learn and to serve. And it's easy to say, well, we already have a piano player. We already have a song leader. But you know what? There are times when the song leader's throat is messed up. There are times when he can't be here for whatever reason. And you know what? There are times when the piano player is not available for whatever reason. Or there are times when he can have a piano and organ. Both. And then you say, well, what's the point of that? Let's do it a cappella. Is that what the Bible says? Is that what God said? Do it a cappella because everybody's too lazy to learn anything? Do it with one instrument because we only have one person out of 100 that will learn anything? No. The Bible talks about all different instruments. And the Bible says do it skillfully. Do it with a lot of good. Play it to the accompaniment of a psaltery and a harp. He didn't say do it a cappella because it's easier. He said do it right. Do a good job. Do the best you can. That's what he said. And I guarantee you there are more people who could learn to put in the effort. And here's the thing. Obviously I don't respect Brother Matt to leave the church. But you know what? We've had a lot of piano players. And we, oh, let's all kick back and do nothing because we have a great piano player. And then they don't go to the church anymore. And then where are you without a piano player? You know, you don't have what you need. God's work suffers because everybody just thinks that somebody else is going to do it. Somebody else is going to take care of it. And I can give you a long list of piano players who used to go to church here that don't go to church here anymore. If they were all here, we could have a lot of pianos and organs playing. We'd never have to worry about it. Let me tell you. And so we need to take preparation seriously. Everybody wants to perform. Everybody wants to get out there and, you know, play sports and just instantly be good at it, right? You'd love to just get out there on the court with your friends and just make three pointers and do all that stuff. And that's something that doesn't even matter. That's just a stupid game. But if you do that, you know, you're going to have to do a ton of work to get good at it. Everybody would love to just sit down at the piano, right? Just start playing piano. Who thinks it'd be fun to just sit down and just be able to play piano? And just play, just know how to do it. Everybody would love that. Everybody would love to just get up here and have a good singing voice and be able to do the hand motion and sing it out. And I remember as a kid, I used to look at it and say, that hand motion, he's just waving his hand around. That doesn't mean anything. Until you try to do it and learn how to actually do it right and actually learn what the movements mean, then it turns out that's a lot of work. It took me weeks and weeks of working on it all day to learn how to do it. And so we need to realize that learning how to do stuff is hard work and preparation. The performance, listen to me now, the performance is 1%. The preparation is 99%. And I'm running out of time, but let me get on my last point. Go if you would to Ezra chapter 7. And I have to cut out, actually I have to cut out my last point. This third point is going to become my last point. And I want to talk about being prepared to pastor or be prepared to preach. And the first point, prepared to go solo in 80, that's for everybody. That's for man, woman, boy, and girl. Every girl, every woman, every man, every boy, young, old, all can win somebody to Christ. They can all give somebody the gospel. That's for everybody. Music, you know, in a sense that's for everybody too because we should all be singing praises to God in the congregation. That's biblical for everyone to be singing. Say, how do I get better at singing? Sing on Monday, sing on Tuesday, sing on Wednesday. And don't sing the garbage that the world puts out. Sing the hymns. Sing God's word. Sing these songs. And get experience singing. Then when you come to church on Sunday and Wednesday, you'll be ready to sing and ready to sing it out because you know the songs and you've learned the songs. Also, some should work hard at trying to become a song leader and trying to become a piano player or an organist. You may not always go to church here. You may go to a church that needs you in some capacity. If you're going to be a pastor, listen to me now. You're a young man. You want to preach and you say, I have no musical talent but I want to be a pastor. I want to preach. You better get some musical talent. You better learn how to do some music. Because guess what? When you start a church, guess who the song leader is? You're the song leader. And you're not going to have a piano player. And it's a lot harder to lead to singing when you don't have a piano player. When you have a piano player, you can kind of use the piano player. When it's just you and it's acapella, you better know how to sing. If you're only singing with 5, 10, 15 people, you better be able to lead those people. And if the blind lead the blind, they're both going to fall in the ditch. And so you've got to learn how to do these things. But more important than that is to be prepared to pastor or be prepared to just preach. Even if you're never going to be a pastor, just be prepared to preach. That's my last point. Look at Ezra 7-6. The Bible says this Ezra went up from Babylon. And he was a what? A ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. And the king grabbed him all his requests according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him. Hmm, I wonder if God's hand being upon him had something to do with the fact that he was ready. Go to verse 10. For Ezra had what? Prepared. He was ready. He was prepared. And then oh, God's hand on him. Wow, I wish God's hand would be upon me like it was upon Ezra. But the difference between you and Ezra is, is that he prepared. He was ready. You can get prepared. You can get ready. And then God's hand will be upon you as well because you're ready. Because you've been prepared. Because you put the work and the effort and the time into preparation. He said Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord. He was prepared by learning the law of God. He was a ready scribe in the law of Moses. The law is by God's word. The Bible, Moses, the word of God. He studied it. He learned it. He was ready to preach it and to teach it. That's why it says that he sought the law of the Lord and to do it, it says, and to teach in Israel, statutes and judgment. Why was Ezra able to get up on that pulpit in Nehemiah chapter 8 and preach God's word to a whole nation? That was 1%. It was 99% preparation. I mean, you think when I get up to preach for an hour on Sunday morning or an hour on Sunday night or an hour on Wednesday night, do you think that that just takes three hours a week to preach for three hours? And in reality, it took a lifetime. It took decades of learning and studying and reading because the preparation is 99%. I mean, how much time does brother Matt spend playing the piano versus how much time he spent practicing the piano? I mean, playing it in church. I mean, how much time does he spend playing it publicly, the performance, and how much did he spend practicing? How much time do you spend practicing and learning how to do an activity versus just getting up and performing an activity, getting up and preaching for an hour? You know, you write a 10-minute sermon for the preaching class. That ain't gonna take 10 minutes to prepare. I mean, the guys who are coming to the preaching class, what's the next one, April 3rd? Yes. They're not gonna spend 10 minutes preparing or it's not gonna be a good sermon. If they're preaching for 10 minutes, they're gonna spend more time than that preparing, and in reality, they spent years before that of studying and reading. You know, reading the whole Bible cover to cover over and over again, making sure that they know their doctrine, making sure that they know what's right, memorizing scriptures, all of the work and preparation that goes in to a 10-minute... You say, 10 minutes? Yeah, but you get up here and say what you know and you'll be about 40 seconds into it wondering what you're gonna do for the next 9 minutes and 20 seconds because 10 minutes of preaching takes preparation. It takes work. It takes practice. It takes studying and so forth. Go to 1 Peter 5. 1 Peter 5 is the last place we'll turn. And while you're turning there, I'll read for you from Luke 180. This is talking about John the Baptist. The Bible reads, And the child grew, talking about John the Baptist as a child, and waxed strong in spirit and was in the debtors till the day of his showing unto Israel. How long was the ministry of John the Baptist? Six months. Pretty much. I mean, you know, six months or so, less than a year, whatever you want to call it. It was not a long ministry. But he was in the deserts for decades, waxing strong in spirit, getting stronger, growing in his faith, learning the Bible, walking with God, praying, studying, learning. He was in the deserts, the Bible says, until the day of his showing unto Israel so he could just have a short ministry. But what a powerful ministry. What a powerful man. Jesus Christ. How would you like Jesus Christ to say, hey, among them that are born of women, there has not risen a greater than your name? And that's what he said about John the Baptist. He said, this is the greatest man who's ever lived. Yeah, but he only had a short ministry. But the ministry, the showing unto Israel, was such a tiny thing compared to all the preparation. You think God just grabbed some random guy? Okay, you're going to be the one to baptize the Son of God. You're going to be the one that's going to preach to the whole nation repentance and prepare a people unto their God. Notice the word, prepare a people unto their God. What was the purpose of John the Baptist? To prepare people. To get them to repent and turn from all the garbage that they've been taught by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the garbage that had been passed on to them from their fathers and their grandfathers that had turned the Jewish religion into falsehood and wickedness and then condoned all kinds of sin and ungodliness. He had to come and prepare the people to be ready to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be ready to hear the truth. But he himself had to be prepared. To be the preparer, he had to be prepared. And the preparation for John the Baptist was way longer, way more involved than his short ministry. But it's the part we don't see. It's the part we don't think about. You know, I remember the first time I started working in department stores. Just when you go back into the stock room, you know, where you're doing the fire alarms, you see all kinds of stuff that goes into it that you wouldn't really think of. You know, you just kind of think. You walk into the grocery store, and you just think to yourself, well, yeah, there's a bunch of food on the shelves. People buy it. This would be really easy to run a grocery store. But what you don't see is all night, stocking the shelves all night, unloading trucks, all the paperwork that goes... There's so much involved. You know, or maybe you walk into, like, an electronics store, like some of the guys at our church work at. You walk in there, everything's on the shelf, and you just think there's nothing to it. But there are people preparing it, setting up the displays, putting it out on the side. You walk into church and just... No, no, no, no, no. You don't even realize everything that went in. Like the bulletin. The bulletin doesn't make itself, you know? Somebody had to prepare that. Somebody had to find that butterfly picture and all, you know, the Bible verse and all the different things and all the plans that goes into it. You know, somebody cleaned the building on Wednesday night before church. Somebody came in there, cleaned the building, washed everything, you know? It doesn't just happen by itself. You know, you just walk in and trash the place. You know, and just leave your cup everywhere and just make a paper airplane out of your bulletin and throw it and dump food everywhere. And, you know, you walk by and knock all the chairs out of place. Oh, whoops, excuse me, you know? And then somebody comes in and straightens them all up, puts all the songbooks back on the chairs, does the cleaning. And I don't do the cleaning, okay? You know, ladies do the cleaning. And the thing is, somebody did it, though. It's not just automatic. It doesn't just happen by itself. There's preparation on Sunday morning. There's preparation on Sunday night. There's preparation on Wednesday night. There's work that goes into being a preacher. There's work that goes into being a song leader. There's work that goes into soul winning. There's work that goes into playing the piano. There's work that goes into anything that's a good work that you do for God. It's work. It's preparation. It takes skill. It takes practice. It takes learning. For example, I just replaced some windows in my house. And I was really nervous about it, because it's something I've never done before, and these windows are these ancient metal windows, and the house is made out of brick. And so it's metal windows that break, and they have these panes of glass. It's just really, really not something that I had ever done before. So I just went on YouTube and watched every possible how-to video on how to replace windows in a brick house with metal windows. And I went and talked to people at Home Depot and Lowe's and all these different places and asked them and talked to them for hours. And I spent hours talking to people, hours watching videos, trying to learn how to do it. And, you know, you kind of got to do it in one day, because once you rip out the old window, your wife's not going to be happy if it's like, okay, good night, honey. There's a big hole in the house, and intruders can just walk through the window or whatever, where the window used to be. And I remember I was really nervous about it, so I wanted to make sure that I was ready. I wanted to make sure I was prepared. And so the night before, man, I had all my tools laid out. I had all the stuff stacked up, all the parts I was going to need, all the tools. And I spent hours and hours just getting everything ready. That way I could just get up in the morning and just attack. And it's all there. It's all ready to go. You know, that's how you have to be about the Christian life. That's how you have to be about serving God. That's how you have to be. If you're going to go a day and resist the temptations that are out there, you're going to be ready to resist the temptation. Thy word have I hidden my heart that I might not sin against thee. You've got to get up and have a plan and say, okay, I'm going to be a pastor someday. Well, here's my pathway to getting there. Here's what I'm going to have to learn. Here's what I'm going to have to prepare. Here's what I'm going to have to do. You say, well, I'm never going to be a pastor. Just be prepared anyway. Be prepared to every good work, because you don't know. Maybe you will. Maybe you don't think you will. But maybe you will be. Meet the qualifications anyway. Do the best you can to fill that role, okay? You should just be ready, and you're going to have to make a plan. And it's going to have to take work and preparation and investment in that in order to have the performance of the good works. But look at 1 Peter 5, the last place, verse 1. The elders which are among you I exhort who also am an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint but willingly, not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind. Neither is being lords over God's heritage but being in samples to the flock. And what I want to point out there is a ready mind, a mind that is prepared mentally to do the work of God, to do the will of God. Now, I have a whole other page of notes where the Bible talks about being prepared to suffer, being prepared for adversity, being prepared for tribulations and trials and things that are coming, being prepared for those things. You know, we need to be mentally prepared for the works that God has called us to do. We need to be ready. I mean, when you go out so early, you need to be ready for the door to be slammed in your face because it's going to happen. You need to be ready for somebody to be rude to you. And you know what? You need to decide now, hey, I'm not just going to start swinging. When somebody starts yelling at me and cursing me out and maybe even shoves me or pushes me, you know what? You need to be ready and decide, hey, this is part of the job. This is part of what God calls humility. Don't just start, wow, you know, just start swinging but to rather control yourself. You know, you need to be ready to deal with the things that are going to come up in your life. You need to be psychologically prepared for suffering, for troubles, for trials. Look, you say, man, this sounds like a lot of preparation. But that's what life is, my friend. It's getting up in the morning and getting prepared to face the day by reading your Bible. It's getting up in the morning and praying unto God that you might be prepared for what's going on that day. It's about learning. A wise man will hear and will increase learning. It's about every day learning the Bible, every day practicing and studying and learning the skills and the tools that you're going to need to preach, to win souls. It's about having note cards in your pocket versus that you're going to use out soul-winning and memorizing them and learning them. That's how you're going to succeed in life, my friend, by being prepared to do it. It's all about the preparation. If somebody's prepared, they're 99% done. I joke around sometimes when I'm on my job, you know, we'll be working on a really hard job, and I'll get to a certain point in the job where I'll say, you know what, the job is already done in my mind. Because I've already seen all the problems, and I've already decided how I'm going to fix it. Now, some points in the job, it's not done in your mind. You're still kind of struggling and feeling around in the dark. How are we going to do this? How are we going to solve this? How are we going to do this? Then you get to a certain point where the job's not done yet, but it might as well be done because you could see the light at the end of the tunnel. You know exactly what needed, and you're prepared for all of it. You have everything purchased from the hardware store. You have everything already worked out in your mind. You know exactly how you're going to finish the job. Now it's just finishing. And that's the easy part. But the preparation is the hard part. What's the hardest part about fixing stuff at the house and replacing windows? The fact that you have to go to the hardware store like ten times. Because you always, you know, you go down there, you buy everything, and I always joke around. I went to the hardware store yesterday when I was doing these windows, and the guy literally said to me as he rang me up, see you in an hour. I was like, don't say that. Don't say that. I've got everything I need. And thank God that was the last thing I wrote down. So who's laughing now? Mr. Clerk at the hardware store. See you in an hour. But the sad thing is, that's pretty true most of the time. See you in an hour. And I thank God that I live really close to the hardware store because otherwise, I mean, you know, you forget something, and it's always some dumb thing. Oh, now I've got to go back to this. Oh, you're not prepared. Man, if you're prepared, if you have all the parts you need, all the supplies you need, this stuff wouldn't be that hard. Be prepared. And I try to prepare myself for anything, even stuff that I don't even know if it's going to happen. I just prepare for it. I'm just ready for it. I want my body to be prepared. In case I have to go do some hard work. I mean, think about it. All of a sudden at your job, you get hit with some physical hard job, and you're just totally out of shape. You know, as a man, you've got to be prepared to do some work. I think of Chris Broughton. He's got a new job that he's been doing. And it's a job that takes a lot of physical ability and physical strength because he rides a bicycle. Who's seen the thing that he pulls around? What do you call it? The pedicab? Yeah, he's been pedicabbing. It's been working out great for him, as far as I know. And if not, just tell me I'm in service. But anyway, it seems like he's been working out great for him. But man, a lot of people want to talk about a physical job because he loads the cab up of people and they pull some on his bicycle. But you see, you don't build those kind of muscles overnight. You know, so he had to have some kind of a preparation for that. And you know, as men, you've got to be prepared to do some hard work, some physical work sometimes. You know, that's going to take a little more muscle. You know, mentally, we need to be prepared to be able to handle things. Spiritually, we need to be prepared. We never know. You never know. What if you just have an opportunity where it's like, hey, we need somebody to preach here. There's nobody to preach. Are you ready to preach? Do you have a sermon? Do you know the Bible? Do you have the ability to get up and do it? And you say, that'll never happen. You know what? That could happen. Are you ready to preach? What if we get here and we need a song leader? Who can do it? Are you ready to do it? You know, be ready to do things. And then I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Be prepared onto every good work. Prepare yourself. Prepare your heart. Learn the Bible. Learn skills that are going to help you serve God later. And you may not have the glorification and the gratification now. It might be start preparing now. I mean, look, if you start learning the piano today, you're not going to be playing piano in the service next Sunday. Oh, it's going to take years. I forget it. By then, there will be more piano. No. If you start learning now, it'll take years. But then you'll be needed because God will give you the opportunities to use the skills that you've learned. Let's borrow that word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your work there, God. And thank you for the many hundreds of scriptures on being prepared and preparing and being ready. There's so much that I couldn't even turn to. But Father, thank you for giving us a perfect book that would help us be prepared for anything. The Bible is there to prepare us for everything. And God, I just pray that every person here would take life seriously and realize that there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of ways to serve you that are going to take some preparation and work and effort, help us to put in the word necessary. Help anyone today. And I know there are young men in our church who desire to pastor someday. And the Bible says that if a man desires the office of a bishop, he desires a good thing. But please help those that are here to realize that being a pastor is going to take a lot of preparation, a lot of learning, and help them to just not just say, oh, well, this is something I can just walk into in a few years. Help them to realize that it's going to take a serious daily effort of learning the skills necessary to work hard every day to learn the skills necessary to pastor and to preach. And not to be on the slow track, but to be on the fast track toward learning what's needed. If we, time is short, help us to redeem the time more and help us all to work at preparing ourselves for the tasks ahead. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.