(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There is a name I love to hear. I love to sing its word. It sounds like music in my ear. The sweetest name on earth. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Because He first loved me. It tells me of the Savior's love. Who died to set me free. It tells me of His precious blood. The sinner's perfect queen. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Because He first loved me. It tells me of my Father's hand. His sword for every day. And though I shed a darksome pack. His sunshine all the way. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Because He first loved me. It tells of one whose loving heart can heal my deepest Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Oh how I love Jesus. Because He first loved me. Amen. Father God we thank you for today. We thank you for all the souls that have been saved. And God we thank you for this church. And God we are a land of the world. We are a thought of the earth God. May you fill past the verses with your spirit. And allow for him to preach another awesome service. Blessed to have our ears attended to the word that we've spoken today. And God we thank you for all those who have gathered here together as brothers and sisters of Christ. And God we bless your service and bless all that's going on today. We praise you and thank you. We say this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Turn to Psalm 178. Psalm 178. Jesus loves even me. Psalm 178. I am so glad that our Father in heaven tells of His love in the book He has given. Wonderful things in the Bible I see. This is the dearest that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves even me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. Oh, if there's only one song I can sing, Maybe he's with me and see the great thing. This shall my song in eternity be. Oh, what a wonder that Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me. I am so glad that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me and me. Wednesday night seven is our Bible study. We'll be in Psalm 99 this week. So come on out to our Bible study for Psalm 99. We'll go through verse by verse and expound the scriptures on Wednesday night. We've got the soul winning opportunities listed there as well as the salvations and the baptisms for the month of March as well as for the year. Let's go ahead and count the salvations for today. Soul saved today. Four in the back and four up here. Amen. Nine, 11, 13. Am I missing anyone back there? I can't see behind the piano. Wow, awesome day. Very, very, very good. Praise the Lord. 15 salvations today, 15 yesterday. So it's a great weekend of salvation. Thank you all so much for putting forth all that time and effort out preaching the gospel. It's what it's all about. Excellent. Very good. All right, down there at the bottom of the page we have the offering total. Did I miss any salvations from earlier in the week before I just continue? I'm pretty sure everyone is here this morning. Offering totals down there at the bottom of the page. Prayer requests. I went over the update. We added Mrs. Williams, Margaret Williams, back to the list. Brother Brian's grandmother is in ICU. So please pray for her. And then, of course, everyone else went over most of the updates this morning. So please continue to pray for everyone who is on our list. And pray for all of the church members that are out too. I think there's a little sickness again going around maybe. But some people I know for sure are out sick. So just say a prayer for them as well. And then, oh, we have Brother Lance's brother is added to the list as well, Phillip. So Phillip Germany has some blood work that he's waiting on results to see if he's got a disease, like a disease of the blood of some sort. So he's had a couple of odd things happen that are not good from other test results and some very concerning levels. The last one was like a platelet, a blood platelet level that was really not, it was at the very, I think, low end of almost close to having to get a blood transfusion or whatever. So it was very significant. And then there was another issue prior to that. So now they're doing some testing to see if there's a disease that's causing those numbers to drop, something that's attacking that stuff. So obviously that's real. It could be extremely serious, so we'll pray for Phillip. Please add him to the list as well. April challenge, baptism challenge, so hopefully with all these salvations we're getting. Yes, sir? Yes. It's a drug. So they saw, what did they see again? In the prostate? Okay. I appreciate the update. We'll continue praying for Charles. So they did see something that looks cancerous from the PET scan, and they're going to treat it with a specific drug that hopefully will work and we'll be in prayer for him to continue to pray. Thank you for the update. And I forgot, does anyone else have any other updates for people on the prayer list? Yes, sir? Yes. That's Estelle? Okay, so she just needs to get imaging done? But needs to figure out how it's going to get paid, essentially, like through services or whatever, however that's going to work? Yes, sir. Okay, like some kind of insurance or whatever. Yes, sir. Okay. And then obviously that needs to be done to diagnose further what the, all the underlying issues with that. Yes, sir. Okay. Cool. Well, yeah, we'll pray that she gets, she has the, that that red tape doesn't take too long to get figured out so that she could get the imaging done and, and get the diagnosis moving along. So we'll pray for that. Thank you for the update there. Anyone else have any updates? All right, very good. Leslie's doing well. She's, she's just at home. It's, you know, the slow progression, so doing too much is going to, you know, she's, she's got to take it a little, a little bit at a time so she's able to get up and do some things. But a full day out here at church is still a little, a little much. So her, her leg swells up and she needs to, needs to get it up. So that's where she's, she's at home tonight. But I appreciate your prayers there. On the next page, of course, the, the baptism challenge, as I just mentioned, you know, we're getting a lot of, a lot of souls saved recently. Please remember to be bringing up baptism. So it should be one of the things that we should be focused on and thinking about a lot. And especially, you know, some challenges like this, it's just like everything else. Things can slide and, and, and kind of take a backseat in your life and you sort of can forget about them. And I'm going to be preaching about this tonight, but one of the goals with the challenges is to maintain and to keep all these various things from completely slipping off and into, into nowhere, right? So we want to be, be able to be conscious of, of all these various things and push ourselves a little bit more in different directions as we, as we continue. So, so I really want to have a push to, to see, you know, really talk to people about getting baptized and kind of thinking about that. It's easy sometimes when you lead someone to Christ to, to, you know, you're excited and everything else and to just, and you just move on and then continue to the next door without leaving them with, with a little bit more information, a little bit more instruction. Like I said, with like King James Bible, coming to church, getting baptized, things like that. So I really want to make sure everyone's just conscious of that and thinking about that. And if you haven't really done that, you went out today and you're like, oh man, I didn't, I didn't bring it up at all. Okay, well, that's why we're doing this to now, next time you go out to, to write it down or something, write it on your hand or do something, put it somewhere to try to remind yourself, hey, we, I need to be doing this, doing a better job of, of trying to get this done. And if you're able, if you are able to encourage someone to be able to get baptized, that's, that's saved. And of course we'll get, you know, be able to receive a prize for that. And the person who gets baptized will also receive a prize. So just throwing that in there, just like we did with the, the visitor challenge, right? So tell people, you got a little bit of extra incentive. We might keep these around for a little while and be like, hey, congratulations, here you go. Here's a little sweet treat for coming into church and getting baptized. So just, just throwing that, throwing that out there. All right. And speaking of these, if you did not receive your prize this morning, I know I called everybody up to come and get, get a prize for the last challenge for last month, the prayer challenge. Go ahead and help yourself after, after church if you did not get one yet, or if you did not get yours for the, the one hour from the previous month challenge, this will also be available for that as well. We got coffee creamer today too. I brought it to church for those of you who've been wondering about that. And, oh, should I say something or not? Just say it. Well, I don't want to sound like a jerk because I'm really not trying to be a jerk and I don't want people to take it the wrong way, but if you, if you don't, I was just saying this, let's say like, some people really don't like coffee. If you don't like coffee, just embrace it. And what I mean by that is if you have to have a lot more creamer than you actually have coffee, you don't like coffee. And it's okay, and you can just not like coffee. And then let the people who want to add a little creamer to their coffee be able to continue to drink coffee and not continually run out of creamer because you want to drink creamer instead of coffee. So, just a thought. But, but, but honestly, I don't, I don't, I don't really care. I'm kind of, I'm just saying that's why I was debating whether or not I wanted to say that. We'll keep stocking the creamer for you. Okay, those of you that like a splash of coffee with your creamer, we will continue to, to supply the coffee creamer for you. And, yeah, good enough. It's there. But those of you that actually like coffee, you know, that's, that's where it's going. All right, enough about that. New church plants, no news there yet. We're still, we are still continuing to look for other places. And I mentioned before now, now we are on, the ball is not in our court on this. We're waiting. And I still follow up occasionally. The guy that we're working with is very communicative and, and, and is responsive. So I'm not worried on that front of who we have working for us. That is very helpful. So, so they've always been available and responsive really quickly whenever I reach out. So it is what it is. Now it's just, you just pray that, that things will continue along and go well and the Lord's going to lead. So if this is not the place, then fine. We'll find another one. But this is happening. I just, at this point, just can't be too definitive until, until it is. So just keep praying about that. Bible memory passage, one week left to, to wrap this up. So you get these 20 verses committed to memory and quoted out loud by midnight next week. You'll, you'll earn a prize for being able to do that. We've got the birthdays and anniversaries there through the month of April. And then the upcoming events. I just wanted to make a quick mention to now for our camping trip. If you're, if something comes up, you're not able to make it, let me know as soon as possible. As you know, I've had a couple, one or two people have to change the plans. No problem. Okay, no problem at all. Just, just if you, if you think that's the case, of course, please let me know. So I could just have as much time to be able to plan and, and offer up opportunities for other people. We're still almost at capacity 100%. So we're, we're, you know, it's going to be a great event. Looking forward to that. But we have a sign up sheet now that I placed on this little table over here where all the sign up sheets are typically kept. If you want to, and this is only for if you want to volunteer your time to help prepare meals for the pastors that we're inviting to come out to camp. We provide dinner for them every night of the week. And if you are interested in helping, the church supplies the food, like the church pays for all of the ingredients for all the food. If you would like to help make the meal on one of those days during the week, please sign up here. And Brother Peter is going to manage all of that with the days and the meals and kind of considerations for the people who are coming, what they, they, if there's any dietary restrictions or allergies or anything like that, and we'll coordinate with everybody and to make sure you have the help that you need, you have the tools that you need, utensils, you know, all that stuff. So he's going to be managing all of that for us. And all we ask of you then is if you, if you want to volunteer your time to help with that, please just use the signup sheet. I have a name, place for your name, email and phone number, just so that he could get ahold of you and kind of go over everything. And that's up here. I'm hoping, I planned, I wanted to have it this week, but by next week to have the actual calendar if you want to do any activities and volunteer some time to lead any type of activities. I'm hoping to have that, well, hopefully even by Wednesday, but by Sunday at the latest. I'm making, the reason why I don't have it right now is because I decided to, by request, people have been asking me to do this, but, and I think it's a great idea. One of the days, I think we're not going to do an evening service. I think we're going to hold a morning service. So I'm going to rearrange the schedule just a little bit. And the reasoning behind that is everyone has a really good time hanging out by campfires and stuff like that. But since we do the preaching in the evening, it starts at early evening and could go kind of late. And then for people who aren't staying up half the night, it's not a whole lot of time to hang out before you're going to bed. So we were thinking that at least one of the nights can just be spent like as a, as just a big fellowship night and really just have the time to hang out at the camp and enjoy campfire and stuff like that. So instead of doing preaching in the evening on one of those nights, probably Wednesday night, we'll just have it in the morning. And it doesn't matter because we're all at camp, right? So we could do whatever time we want. But because I haven't finalized that yet is why I don't have the calendar available because that obviously is going to impact a little bit of available times for sign up for doing other activities. Because while we are out there to have fun and play games and do other stuff, the primary focus is still the preaching. That is the important part, right? Like would expect you have that there. I'm also going to be publishing just in case a list of expectations for camp. And very briefly, it's going to be things like, you know, single people have to stay single in camp. Okay, one single guys could share a tent and that's about it. Single ladies can share a tent. No alcohol. You know, all these types of rules are going to just be published. And I want there to be zero possibility of there being a, but you didn't say that. Because these are the type of rules. I mean, it's like a first Corinthians five type of list, right? It's going to be, you're just not allowed in camp at all if someone's found breaking these rules. So that's the way that that's going to be. Nothing shocking, nothing weird, just that is what it is. So I feel like I just need to have that put out there because we have friends and we'll have guests and we have other people that aren't necessarily like regular church members and stuff like that here too that can come to these camping trips and participate. So it just needs to be well known what we believe and what we're going to tolerate what we're not. Anyhow, that is it for the announcement. So I will turn the service back over to brother Peter. Sorry, brother Devin. I'm not even thinking. All right, everyone. Our great savior. One sixty one. Jesus. Friends. I. Me. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. I. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. On the last. I. I. Me. Me. At this time, I'll go and ask the ushers to come forward. Take up our Sunday. While those offering plates are passed around, you can all take your Bibles and turn to First Thessalonians chapter two. First Thessalonians chapter two. And as we always do here in Stonewall Baptist Church, I'm going to read the entire chapter, and I'm going to go ahead and ask brother Cohen to read that book. All right, church, that's First Thessalonians chapter two. For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance is unto you, that it was not in vain, but even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated. As you know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention, for our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God as witness, nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children. So be affectionately desirous of you. We were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear unto us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail, for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you. We preach unto you the gospel of God, your witnesses and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe, as you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children, that you would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory. For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus. For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and they please not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always. For the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. What we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavored the more abundantly to see your face with great desire. Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for today, allowing us all to gather here at church, pray for those that weren't able to make it, if they're sick or just busy with life. I pray that you bless them, you bless the service, and you fill pastor with your spirit, and you just help us to glean something from his message. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, keep your place there in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 and flip over real quick to 2 Thessalonians chapter number 3. I'll give you a minute to get there while I'm adjusting my backup recorder here. Backup recorder is important because it gives me the time spent preaching. So you definitely want me to have this on. If I'm not paying attention to the clock, then I could be going a little bit longer than I wanted to. So, all right, this evening I'm going to be preaching a sermon. It's called The Balancing Act of a Christian Life. And I had already thought about preaching this in the past, and I asked today, and it seemed like there was interest in this anyways. So it's a little bit different of a sermon because we're not focusing on any one particular Bible passage to then expound into the whole sermon idea. So some topics will look at very specific things the Bible talks about, the Bible teaches, as a very specific doctrine. This is more of a practical sermon. It's something to help guide and give some advice using biblical principles. And so we're definitely going to be turning to some Bible, maybe not as much as we normally do. I'll be referencing a lot of scripture, but not necessarily turning to all the scripture. Because there are going to be more basic truths and things that absolutely should be guiding the application and what I'm going to be teaching tonight. But isn't as important to go and get every single word and kind of do expository on each individual passage. And I had you turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, because the Bible says here in verse number 7, For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us, for we behave not ourselves disorderly among you, neither did we eat any man's bread for naught, but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you, not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us. And there's other places in scripture as well, and you could turn back if you would to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, that refer to the apostles being examples. Right? Just saying, hey, we're doing all these things and we're showing you this so that we could be an example to you, so that you can work like we do, that we could show you the way that you need to do these things, as we, you'll follow me as I follow Christ. Right? So this is more of a sermon tonight to kind of give you a little bit of guidance. And it's going to be based off of my experience, and I'm hoping to be a good example, to just be able to help pattern some things that you might be imbalanced on in your life, and understand how to try to get everything done in the time that we have on this earth. Now, I do not say what I'm saying to say I have it all figured out and I'm perfect and everything. I'm not, okay, but there's principles that I've learned, that I've learned from other people, that I've watched and I've implemented, and they do work very well in my life. There are, you know, there's always going to be areas that we need to get back and push a little bit harder on, and then there's going to be some that we focus on a little bit more, some we focus on a little bit less, and things change and things shift and our life changes and different things pop up. But the Christian life, we need to try to maintain and put things in place, we need to put priorities, we need to put, we need to establish priorities, we need to set schedules, we need to have established in our mind standards by which we will use to gauge where we're at to make sure we don't ever drop below specific standards in different areas of our life. So that way, as things change and fluctuate, we might spend some more time here, some more time there, we can always maintain, at the very least, a level that we consider to be a minimum in our service to the Lord, and obviously we want to exceed so we set goals as well, we have goals and we have minimums, but we want to be able to stay within those things, and ultimately though, we need to use Scripture to help guide us on what's appropriate with how much time we need to spend on these things, and what's doable, what can we do with our time, and what's expected. And a lot of times, one of the reasons here we see, and one of the things at least that I take out of what we see in Scripture about the apostle Paul referring to being an example, the few times it's mentioned, it's usually talking about their hard work. So hey, we work day and night, so part of it is just to show this is all doable, like you can get things done. You can work, you can provide for your family, you can do other things, and you can serve the Lord, and you can kind of do it all. Now, if doing it all means like have super riches and everything else, no. You have to dedicate way too much of your time to just be extremely rich and kind of go after the mammon and the money, but you can absolutely serve God, you can pray, you can read your Bible, you can go soul-winning, you can go to church, you can minister to other people, you can go to work, there's so many things, you can raise a family, you can do all these different things that take up a lot of time individually and still get it all done. And what I'm hoping that I could just impart unto you is just a little bit of, well one, I'm going to focus from scripture on the importance of setting up priorities in your life to be the guiding and the backbone of your decision-making and your scheduling for what you do with your life, with what you do with the waking hours that you have every single day. Your actions ought to reflect your priorities, but the priorities you establish right up front and say here are the things that I consider to be most important in my life and rank them and put them in order. And after we go through some scripture, I'm going to share with you what I do. I'll share with you my priorities, I'll share with you my scheduling, and I'll share what I do, my standards personally. And look, you don't have to follow my specific application of what I see in scripture. However, the way that I do things is a template for you to say, okay, well you know what, I agree with this or I disagree with this, and I'm going to place a higher value on this than on this maybe, and I'm going to apply this standard for myself as opposed to his standard or whatever, right? Like, you set that up for yourself, but hopefully you can see there is structure, there is thought, there is intentionality to doing these things, because without intentionality, you're not going to achieve much. You won't accomplish much. If you just kind of wake up every day and just be like, well, I don't know, what am I going to do today? I don't know, let's see, let's just figure it out. I mean, you will not get much done. Guaranteed. I know that by experience. I mean, there's some days I get a day off and I'm just like, I've gotten so frazzled, I'm just like, man, I don't even know what I'm going to do tomorrow, I'm just going to bed right now. Right? And okay, fine, that happens from time to time. And then, but then you know what happens the next day? You get some stuff done, but not as much as if you had planned and thought like, okay, hey, I need to get up here, is it going to take this long? You know, it is what it is, but in general, we want to be able to have a good plan and a good thought and just, hey, let's structure our lives in the sense that we're going to try to do our best to serve God and use our time wisely, redeem the time because the days are evil. So what do we have to balance? We have a spiritual life ultimately, and we do have a carnal life. When I talk about carnal life, I'm not talking about walking in the flesh. I'm just saying there's other aspects of this life, and the one thing I have in a carnal life is provide for yourself and your family. Right? And there's always a little bit of intermingling that you could consider between a carnal life and a spiritual life. Because another aspect I put in a carnal life is some education on non-spiritual things. Right? That could be good things, you know, science, math, language, whatever, but you can use those things in a spiritual way. So having wisdom and gaining a lot of understanding is a spiritual concept, but you don't always put that in the same boat as a spiritual activity. Does that make sense? So, but this is what we need to balance. We need to balance that. Right? I don't want to spend all my waking hours going so deep into math theory and not end up really reading my Bible. You know, like you could really kind of go off the deep end in many areas that aren't even inherently sinful, but maybe you're just interested in it. We want to be able to set boundaries as appropriate. Right? Now if you're into math theory and all this other stuff and that's your career and that's your occupation, well cool, you get to spend a little bit more time doing that because that's also how you're providing for yourself and your family. So you're kind of able to knock off a little more, you know, it becomes more useful and has more utility for you. But the spiritual life, like here's what I have for what a spiritual life requires is attending church because we're commanded not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Bible reading because man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. By praying because the Bible says we're supposed to pray without ceasing. By soul winning because the Bible says, hey, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. By Bible memory because the Bible talks about hiding God's word in your heart. And by men spiritually guiding their house, right, because God has put you in that position of authority and if the wife's going to learn anything, let her ask her husband at home. And singing praises to the Lord is another spiritual activity because God commands us, hey, praise ye the Lord. So these are all, and like I said, it's all scripturally based, but when we go over there's kind of a summary of all these various things that it's like, okay, I could focus, and I have, preach entire sermons on soul winning, on reading your Bible, on praising the Lord. And when we go through those, it's like, man, you've got to be doing this and you've got to be going soul winning and you've got to be, you know, and everything is just really important. And it is really important, right? But on any one thing you could kind of think like, well, wait, how much time should, you know, should I really be spending on this when everything is so important? And this is the struggle, right? This is part of the struggle that we all have and we all face and, hey, my family's important, my job's important, church is important, right? All of these things are important aspects of our life. So when it comes to making priorities, we use biblical principles to prioritize what's the most important thing, if everything else is gone, like what's the number one thing, what's the number two thing, what's the number three thing. I started with the carnal life where we have to balance spiritual versus carnal and then within those you also have to care, right? I think we all agree, hey, spiritual life is more important than the carnal life just by default, okay? It's more important. But it doesn't mean that the carnal life is unnecessary, for example, like eating food. That's pretty important. That's pretty high on the list of just eating and sustaining your life, right? But to get to that point doesn't require too much time either if you only just need to eat, right? But the Bible teaches this on the carnal side of things as far as just food and stuff like that. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 5, 8, you're still in 1 Thessalonians 2, just stay there. But if any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. So something that we would consider maybe to be a carnal thing, which is just providing food by working and stuff like that for your house, the Bible, so it's still kind of a spiritual thing, because the Bible says if you're not providing for your own, you're worse than an infidel, an infidel is someone who doesn't have faith, right? It's an unfaithful person, someone who's lacking faith, an infidel. He's saying as a believer and you're not providing for your own, you're worse than that. So obviously that's important. You can't just forsake everyone in your house and just go off and do anything. You have to be able to provide. It's your responsibility, it's your duty, it's something that you're obligated to do as a man to provide for your family. Another principle that we look to for our priorities is the fact that godly men and women are marked, and both godly men and women are marked by their wisdom and their hard work within their respective roles. So you look at Proverbs 31 for a godly woman, and what do we see? A very hard working woman. And a woman that has wisdom, knows what's important for the family, knows how to do all these different things, and doesn't waste her time. And is very hard working, doing her job as a wife, whereas the husband also is marked by someone who works very hard, and works by the sweat of his brow and provides for his family in a different way. But then also has wisdom, also is able to teach and spiritually guide the house. 1 Thessalonians 2, look at verse 8, the Bible says, So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. So here we have a little bit of an example, and a priority, of what they're doing here. They're esteeming others better than themselves, they want to impart the word of God unto them, but not even just that, they also want to teach and train by being examples, and what do they do when they're teaching and training, being examples, is working really hard, in order to provide for themselves, and to be able to minister and to help them. This is, this was a very important priority for the Apostle Paul to teach and to help other people, and to be self-sacrificial and to help them. That was a virtue, that was a value that's held in high regard to esteem these other people, and do what it takes and do what's necessary to provide for them and to help them. Now, the Apostle Paul doesn't have his own family that he has to work for and worry about, and he's an evangelist and he's doing this, and has the power to be able to receive of other people, to do the work that he's doing. So it's not necessarily the same position that you're in, however, the takeaway from this, even though you're not necessarily an evangelist getting paid and going off to preach the gospel and to make all these trips like the Apostle Paul is, well hey, if he's able to labor and travail night and day and support himself financially to do it and preach the gospel, I think you can too. Right? So when it comes to preaching the gospel, you say, yeah, but I work. I have a family to support. Guess what? You can work and preach the gospel too. You can do it both. You can do it both. And you say, well, I don't know how to do that. Well, that's what I'm here to help you with. Literally, that's one of the reasons why I'm preaching this sermon is just so people can know what is available. And it's amazing as human beings, you know, we set boundaries for ourselves sometimes artificially. And this is real evident in things like sports, right? Records keep getting broken, don't they? And there's limitations that we, you know, as human beings, we kind of think like, oh man, we'll never break this or no one will ever break this or, you know, the mile run or anything, you know. No one will ever break this minute mark. No one will ever break that. And then it's like, but then someone does it. And what's interesting is that for a long time, you get people not breaking records and then one person does it and then it's like another person, another person, another person, another person. It's just like this, it kind of opens up the door and it's the same thing with even something like serving God. If you see someone, it's like, man, how are they doing this? Like for me, I was looking at Pastor Anderson. I'm going like, the guy's got a family. At the time, you know, he had a full-time job. He's putting out documentaries. He's, you know, going soul-winning. He's running church. He's doing all these different things. Like how does he do it? You want to know because guess what? He's just a man. You have the same amount of hours in a day that you or I do. And so you have to start paying attention to, well, what's the trick? What is he doing? How is he getting it done? And I learned a lot of those things from him to help me to get things done. And we're not the same and we don't necessarily have all the same scheduling and everything else and whatever, and that's fine. You won't have the same thing necessarily as me, but you got to see that all these things can be done, but it has to be well thought out and planned out to be able to do these things. And you absolutely want to keep yourself from backsliding and kind of falling away in any of these areas. So we have the examples here by the Apostle Paul and the other apostles that are going out and doing this work. Flip to chapter 4 there in 1 Thessalonians. We see a priority and a value given to, again, to work. In verse number 9 of chapter 4 the Bible says, But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another, and indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. But we beseech you brethren that ye increase more and more. So just keep doing more and more. Just keep on going on the upward path. Don't get too comfortable. Continue to work more and more and keep adding and building. And wherever you're at in your prayer time, in your Bible reading, in any of the spiritual areas of your life, you're going to want to try to continue to improve more and more. And this is a point that I have for later, but right now I'll just bring it up. You know, you can't ever just let yourself get into a lull or be like comfortable in life. If you live life very comfortably, you have a lot of room to do more. So I'll just put it that way. So you have to decide what kind of life you want, what kind of impact you want to have, how much do you want to get done with your life, because if you're more complacent and you just want everything to just be real easy, I just want to come home, I want to relax, I don't really want to have too much going on, and just I want to live my life and I don't want to sin, and I want to be righteous, and I want to serve God, but I really just want to have a quiet, peaceful life. You're not going to accomplish as much as you could. That's bottom line, 100%, no doubt. Now look, if you choose to have that life, that's your choice. But don't be surprised when you see people at the Church of Christ receiving a lot more rewards than you. But again, hey, your choice. I'm not going to sit here and say you're in sin, if that's the life you want to live, not at all. Hey, if you're being righteous and serving God, and you're like, okay. But I think, especially at our church, there's a lot of people here at Zelles and want to do more and want to serve, and are constantly trying to figure out, hey, how can I improve and how can I do more? Well, it can be done. And some modifications and rearranging of your schedule is going to help you to be able to do that. And just as Apostle Paul is saying here, he's like, hey, I want you to increase more and more. And then verse 11 says, and that you study to be quiet and to do your own business and to work with your own hands as we commanded you. Not getting involved in other people's business is a big time saver. You want to increase more and more, stop getting involved in everyone else's drama. Worry on your own work. Stay focused on what you got to do and stop getting into other people's business. Verse 12 says that you may walk honestly toward them that are without and that you may have lack of nothing. So here's a really good way to make sure that you're just providing for yourself. Shut up and work. I mean, I'm putting that in my own words, but study to be quiet and do your own business is equivalent to shut up and work. It's just said a lot more nicely with much more grace and tact than the way that I'm saying it, but it's, look, be quiet, do your own work. Do your own business. Work with your hands. And look at this, as we commanded you. So you see there how you could have this, the carnal life is still could be sort of applied to spiritual life too. I mean, it's a commandment, hey, we got to work hard to be able to provide for ourselves and that I'm not being a burden unto other people. But spiritual life is definitely greater than the carnal life. And when it comes to priorities, turn to Matthew chapter 10. Because we want to balance our spiritual life with our carnal life. We want to balance our work, how much time should I put in at my job, what do I, you know, and then balance that with my spiritual life and then even within the spiritual life, well, how much should I be doing of all these different things? I mean, you know, I want to do it all. From a high level perspective, priorities. Priorities, and I don't care, you could change your priorities as we get down into other numbers, but number one, priorities should always be God. And that's a fact and that's from scripture and we're going to see that here in Matthew chapter 10, verse 37. The Bible says, He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it. And he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. And I believe family is extremely important and ought to be extremely important to you and extremely high priority in your life. And I think that church is really important. It should be a high priority in your life. I think there's a lot of things in this life you could deem to be important, but nothing should have a priority over God, over the Lord. Number one should be number one in your life, a priority. So if anything is going to take a backseat, it's not God. So as you think about the values in your life, because that determines how you're going to schedule your life and what you're going to place as important, if God is number one in your life, you have to reflect that with your scheduling and what you do with your time. If God truly, if you could go in here and in your heart and say, God is number one. I agree with that. God is number one. Well, does your life reflect that God is number one? And that's a challenge, first of all. Is God really number one in your life? What do you do when you wake up? How long in the day do you go, do you live, before God even enters your mind? Do you go days without even really thinking about it? Haven't prayed, haven't read my Bible, I mean, nothing. Okay, now again, I'm not saying these things to shame you. I'm saying this to just be conscious and aware that if you, if you can think about and establish and say, no, this is a priority, this is a priority in my life, God is number one, then you need to make your life reflect that priority. And you need to be doing the things that can demonstrate God is number one in my life. Like, no, when I wake up, I pray or I read my Bible or, you know, something. And then later on in the day, I'm doing this or doing that. And then again, later on in the evening, I'm, you know, this is more indicative of God being at the forefront and God having the primacy in your life than just it not really being a thing. I mean, if someone just said, I mean, yeah, of course God's number one. I go to church every week. Okay, dude. Well, you know, I'm just a pretty happy guy. I love, just love Lord, got a happy life and I go to church. That's how I know God's number one. But I mean, hey, you might say God's number one, but what else are you doing anything to show that, right? We get that point. And we see here how God's saying even your father, your mother, your son, your daughter, you know, God needs to be in that number one spot. He deserves it. He's worthy of it. More than your closest relationship, more than your spouse. God's number one. So if there's ever a conflict between any other human being on this earth and God, the decision making, the priority goes to God. This is what it should be, right? This is, we're establishing priorities. Luke chapter 9, turn if you would to Deuteronomy chapter 6. I'll just read from Luke 9 for you. Luke 9, 57, the Bible says, And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And notice here, he says, let me do this first. Let me do this first. He says, hey, no, no, no. I'm telling you to go do something. Is God first? So if God tells you to do something, are you going to say, well, wait, no, I actually need to do this first? Or are you going to say, no, I'm going to do what God said to do first? And another said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, no man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. The things that these people are wanting to do are not inherently sinful or anything. Like, hey, my dad died. Can I bury him? I've got people at home. I want to say goodbye to him. But the problem here is, no, let me do this first. And then I'll do what you want me to do second. You're not putting God first, right? That means it's demonstrating that. And this is what God demands, and this is what God wants of us. So when we make a plan, when we think of our life, what are your priorities? Where does that fit? Well, biblically speaking, God should always be number one. Okay, another prayer. Where's your family priorities? Deuteronomy chapter six, look at verse number six. And these are obviously, just cherry picking a few small passages to kind of look at and get a biblical perspective, even if it's just one passage like it is here with family. There's so many on family, but Deuteronomy 6, six, the Bible reads, And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and thou shalt pass frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates. Now, of course, this is talking about the word of God and the primacy and importance of that, but what I want to glean from this and what I want to just point out is, look at all the references to the children and all the communication, all the time that you're spending with your children because you're rising up, you're going to bed, you're walking in the way. You have to be spending time with your family in order to be teaching your children and doing this stuff that the Bible's saying here. So, and the reason I bring this up is because a lot of times, you know, people can get out of balance spending too much time away from family. And I get it. Now, look, there are certain jobs and certain careers that can pull you away into times where you might have to spend a lot of time apart. And I don't think those are ideal, but again, you're going to have to prioritize for yourself and make the right balance and figure out how you can make these things work. And as we get into this, you'll see, so everything's going to have somewhat of a spectrum, okay? You could have daily, you could have weekly, you could have monthly, you're kind of, things will shift and you could kind of focus on different areas and make sure you're not leaving anything undone, okay? So I do want to just stress that there should be flexibility in how we accomplish and how we put these values into practice. But there's obviously a high value in the education and making sure the family is all in on the Word of God. I mean, you got the Word of God up in your house, you've got it in your heart, you're teaching it to your family, you know, all these things, but the family is obviously very important as well. Matthew 6, turn to Matthew chapter 6, where does money fit in to all of our priorities? And this is a real big one, like, if we can get established an appropriate amount of time for working, that really is going to be the biggest factor, and I'm talking about working, I'm talking about secular working, like just earning money, right, earning an income. On the rest of the time that you have, because that's the number one thing that probably is going to eat up a lot of your time when it comes to all your different priorities, is focusing on how much money you're making. Now, in order to support your family, in order, you know, not to be worse than an infant, you have to support, you have to provide. Sure. And, unfortunately, now we're living in a economy, like, you know, we live in a real rich place, but things are getting more and more expensive and more pricey, and it's getting harder and harder to be able to support your family and stuff like that, but we also, as we're going to see here in Matthew chapter 6, when you're looking at your priorities, when you're thinking about your time, you're thinking about how much do I have to work and how much time do I have to do these things, at what point are you potentially over-providing for your family? And I'm not saying that in a negative way. Obviously, you know, as a father, as a husband, hey, I want to provide as much as I can to my family. I mean, I really do. But we still have to maintain a balance, right? Now, look, one of the ways you could provide more is to work your way up to earn more money in different positions and different fields and, you know, gain some education here and be like, wow, hey, if I could learn this, I could move into this field maybe and then earn this much more money, and if I do that, it's not because I want to be filthy rich, it's because then I don't have to work, you know, 10 hours at a job to make X amount of dollars. I can work six hours at a job and make that same amount and have more time, right? So we want to be wise in our planning, especially in long-term planning, in careers and in things like this, because, look, you know, we should never have an inordinate love for money and no love for money at all, but, you know, time spent just focused on I have to make this much money, but let's be wise about it, too, right? And especially the younger you are, consider this, right? Consider, yeah, okay, look, it's good to be working, it's good to be earning, but have, try to get a good plan so that you know in your heart, like, hey, look, I could, if I could just make a good salary, then it buys me time. It can buy me more time to do other things with my life. And that's, that is valuable, too, and these are, these are, this is intentional, intentional ways of planning your life and planning your time. And, you know, you have an immediate and you have short-term and you have long-term. This is a long-term plan, long-term goals. But Matthew chapter six, we get this principle of how do we even deal with money and where does that fit into our priorities? Verse number 24, the Bible says, no man can serve two masters. So, again, who's number one? Who's the master in your life, right? Do you work, do you live, do you, do you, are you here to serve God or are you here to serve money and mammon and things, you know, just to go and just get wealth, financial wealth here on this earth? Is that why you're here? Are you here to serve God? The Bible says no man can serve masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. If you want to get rich in this world, I just want to get rich. You're not going to be serving God. You can't. You can't. It's going to demand too much of you and it's going to consume you too much and you're going to focus too much on that thing. You're always going to have to do so much more work to really get in and to really do that excellent job needed to get to that level of riches that you won't have the time to serve God. Just won't be able to do it. And, you know, I learned this as I get older and older and older. I mean, there's just years and years of experience. There's things I pick up in my industries, in my field, in technology and stuff. And I know, well, as much as God would at least allow me to, I know that could be really, really successful, but I would have to, that would require me to say, hey, I mean, I don't have time for this church stuff. I barely even have time for my family stuff. I'm going to have to like stay on the cutting edge and really, really, you know, work myself in this area or this area and I could work myself up and I could get these great paying jobs, man, and I could probably make millions of dollars. Who cares? And what's it really worth? Right? That's not what life is about. So, so what? Be willing to just say, yeah, nuts to all that. I mean, hey, look, if I can do all I'm doing and serve God, of course, I want to make as much money as I can while doing that. That just makes sense because, like I said, I want to be able to maximize my time over here and I could also provide amply enough for my family. But I'm not going to sacrifice anything that's a higher priority just for money, just for extra comfort, just for extra whatever that this world has to offer because the world doesn't have to offer anything worth it. Look at verse number 25. Therefore, I say unto you, for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on, is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment. Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought, excuse me, for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. For Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, sufficient unto the day as the evil thereof. This is a great mindset that we have to have as believers to where you're not, because look, all these thoughts, what am I gonna eat, what am I gonna drink, they're fears, they're worries, they're oh no, what's going to happen? And it causes people to make decisions then of going, oh man, I don't know what's gonna happen here, I don't know what's gonna happen there, I don't know what's gonna happen here, I might lose my job if I say anything wrong, if I say anything offensive, or if I do this, I'm gonna eat tomorrow, what am I gonna drink? Don't let that be your driver, don't let that be, and look, this has to of course reconcile with all the other passages that talk about providing for your family and stuff like that, this doesn't contradict that whatsoever. So Jesus isn't saying, well just don't work at all. Right, because just, I mean hey, if you just are trying to be righteous, then you don't have to worry about working or anything. He's not saying don't work. He's saying don't get caught up in being all worried about that, God takes care of the grass, God takes care of animals, God takes care of his creation, he takes care of all this stuff, and especially if he sees you saying hey, you know what, I'm gonna live my life and make my decisions, well I just put God first. He will take care of you. Now, this is a great time to point this out, because it's just totally relevant here, and this will come, I'm also gonna go over this a little bit, when you make up your own decisions on what you're going to do and what's important and when you prioritize things, church attendance, as one example, okay, my personal standard is three times a week, because that's how often we have church services, that I will always be here for church, and you say well you're the pastor. Yeah, well I had this same standard way before I was a pastor, okay, and it was something that I decided that hey, this is important to me and I am going to do this. Now, when it comes to work, wait, work is important, I need to provide for my family, right? But this Matthew chapter six concept really comes into play when people go yeah, but I don't think I can make it to church because I have this job and I gotta provide for my family, and you know, look, if you seek God first, God's not promising you're gonna keep that same job, but seek him first, you don't have to worry about these things. Look, if you want to, and you're going to not just want, but make sure that you're serving God in the way that you see fit and you think that is the most important, you're gonna say I'm gonna prioritize the spiritual side of my life, I'm gonna prioritize God and I'm only gonna take jobs that's gonna allow me to come to church, God will bless you for that. He will. Because you're seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and you may not make a ton of money, but your needs will be met and that's what we have to learn to be content with and get distracted and pulled away into covetousness of other things. We're stay satisfied with our needs being met, you got some food in your belly, you've got a roof over your head, you've got clothing on, great, great, I'm winning, I'm doing good, but I want to keep serving God so I will work as long as I need to to make sure that I'm doing what I need to do and God's blessed me with a job, amen. But I'm gonna keep making decisions that's gonna revolve around improving spiritually. So whether that be what job I have, whether that be where I live, whether that, you know, all these various things, I'm gonna seek first the kingdom of God and I'll let God hold true to his word and make sure that the things that he knows I already need will be added unto me. He will make sure that happens because you're seeking him first. So we don't have to worry or fret or be anxious or make bad decisions where we compromise on serving God in order to have this comfort and to maybe quell a fear that we shouldn't have because God already made a promise. And any time I've seen any believer test this through their actions, I've always seen God pull through, always. I've known many people who've had different careers, different jobs, many people, I'm not talking about one or two that have had different careers that would keep them out of coming to church and keep them out of coming to church and keep them out of coming to church and they said, you know what, I'm done with this. Cause I want to be here. Every single time I've seen that person be able to do that. Every single time. Every time. You know what I've also seen? I've also seen people go, well, you know what, this is a really good opportunity for me but it means I have to be out of church a couple times a week. And they go after those opportunities. And too many times, not 100%, I'm not going to stand up here and lie to you and tell you, oh this happens every single time, but too many times I've seen a lot of those people just fade off and kind of fade away and the attendance goes down and down and down to where it's zero. It happens. And when you start making decisions for the wrong reasons, right, we need to maintain that right faith and that balance and be able to say, okay, look, no, I'm going to do this and this is going to be a priority for me and I'm not going to let anything come in the way of that or at least anything with a lower priority supersede that decision. And again, this is from a high level perspective. There's variations and you might not say that your standard is coming to church three times a week because obviously the biblical, you don't come to church three times a week, does it? If you don't come to church three times a week, you're a forsaken assembly. No, you're not. Okay, clearly you're not. But you have to decide for yourself what is that, right? I don't think once a week is forsaken assembly, right, coming to church once a week. Of course not. But you have to start asking yourself, well, is it once a month? Is it once every six months? If you've ever been to church, you have to be able to draw a line. And again, for yourself, draw that line, okay? Make the standard based off of what you think and then you can also have the goal. The goal and the standard are not necessarily always the same thing. So these are some of the principles. Now I'm going to just get more in the application and kind of share what I do, just if it's a help for you and what I try to do and whatever, but the standards that I try to hold, I set for myself are based off of my priorities. Standards should be set and then from those standards, I also use those standards and then set my schedule on how I'm going to keep those standards because of my priorities. Make sense? Established priorities, real high level, God, family, church, work, right, are probably the big four. In your life. And then of course, you could have hobbies, you could have other stuff, whatever, right? Other stuff. You have to have these standards and from those priorities, you build your standards and say, okay, well since God is number one, how am I going to schedule my life so that God's number one? And families, they're maybe number two, well what am I going to do in my life to make sure my family is still being at that number two spot in my life only behind God? And you know, you look at your time and then you say, and you look at your priorities and you say, okay, well what kind of standard do I want to keep to make sure my family stays there in number two or whatever you have there, right? How am I going to do this? What standard do I need to keep? And then again, with that standard, you say, okay, well I need to fit this in somewhere. Where does this go? Well, I've got 24 hours in a day and I'm going to start looking at the clock. Let's start looking at the time. When can I do this, when can I do this, when can I do this? This is a way of doing, and it doesn't have to be all written down in a spreadsheet or something, it just, you could do this in your head, right? But it's a way of thinking that we should look to. Okay, how do I prioritize my life and plan my life? I have number one is God, of course. I have number two is my family. Family comes before my work and family comes before church. So sorry, church. My family is number two in my life. God's number one. God and church are obviously linked but so is my job and so is work. Okay, those are also linked to serving God, to my family and things like that. There's a little interconnection here. But then my number three is actually, I have this split because I have like a 3A and a 3B with work and church because they are both very important and especially for me, part of my church is work but I kind of have to have both and the reason why I have those on the same level is because there's always this shifting of where I'm spending time. Sometimes I have a demand at work that requires a little bit more of my time and attention but then sometimes I have more of a demand at church. For example, we have more activities and other things I have to plan or there's people that may need a little bit more attention. I'm gonna spend time on the phone or visiting or whatever. You know, there's different things that will come up and sometimes I just have to forsake a different area of like my work, for example and things, these two specifically will kind of trade off sometimes so I put those on that same level for that reason to prioritize one over the other because obviously I love the church and everything but I also have a job that supports a lot of other things too so they're both very important for what I do. Now look, you can say, no, I'm very clearly putting church and then work here. Okay, you do that, right? But my point is make a priority and I'm just sharing with you what I do, make your priorities and move your schedule around what is most important to you and really look at this and say, okay, here's how I, and with family being number two, well, work plays into family because one of the reasons I'm going to work is to provide for the family. So they will all kind of build off of each other. It's not always super neat and that's why you can't just build some exact spreadsheet necessarily and do this as succinctly as you want this. Okay, so that's my priority. I have God, family, and then I have work and church kind of on a shifting, always close to three and four. That's my priority. Standards. I have minimum standards for myself that I will maintain to which I will, this is like I have to maintain these standards. This is something that I have to keep myself to. There are circumstances and obvious things that could come up, sicknesses, emergencies, whatever. This is what I'm going to do day after day, year after year in my life and just absolutely have this minimum baseline that's not going to be breached. And for me, my standard is I'm going to make sure I read my Bible once every year 100%. Just cover to cover. That's not what I do right now. That's my standard. Other things I may do, other things I'm just saying if I notice that other things are taking up time and eating up attention, I'm not going to let myself fall below these things. Does that make sense? Okay. And these are all going to be spiritual things. I make sure because God is number one and I don't have these all. I didn't really tie this into each one of my priorities. I just want this to hopefully be helpful to you without tying. Well, this one's God. This one's church, whatever. Standards. Okay, one hour of soul winning per week. One hour. Now, my normal soul winning time other than just the past few weeks is Sunday, which is obviously more than that. Anyways, but I just want to make sure, hey, I don't want soul. That's not like I'm going, yeah, I'm an awesome Christian because I went soul winning for one hour a week. It's a minimum. It's something that I just want to make sure it doesn't just, oh, well, I just haven't been soul winning in months now and it's just like not even a thing anymore. No, I got to keep that going. Three church services a week, that was something that's just you could just do it. That's how many services we have and that's what I can do. Daily prayer time. Now, my minimum doesn't have a specified time, but I have to pray every day. That's not hard to keep either, but it is a standard. It's a minimum, right? God forbid I would go without like trying to communicate with the Lord and pray to God, okay? I have to do that every single day, every day. And that's part of, I've read the whole Bible cover cover once a year, but included in that standard also is a daily Bible reading. I don't go a day without reading the Bible. As a minimum. So daily prayer, daily family Bible instruction. Unspecified time, but I need to make sure that I'm keeping my family hearing the word of God as my responsibility as a Christian. You might not have a family, then you obviously don't have that, right? But even married couples, you're a man, hey, read the Bible to your wife, instructor, by the word of God, that's your duty, it's your responsibility, do that, okay? But again, my standards, you do what you want to do, this is what I do. And then, you know, singing in church and at various times, during some other circumstance, it's absolutely not going to get lower than that, but then there's goals that you should also have for yourself. So a goal is going to be more like, you know, eight or nine chapters of the Bible a day, which is similar to the New Testament challenge, right? Which doesn't always happen, and sometimes that happens in, you know, as I prepare for sermons and other things, I'll read the Bible more than that. This is more of a goal, four hours of soul winning a week is more of a goal to just, you know, try to keep up with all these things, an hour of prayer a day, okay, is another goal to stay with, like trying to exceed, obviously you see the difference between the standard, the minimum, and more of what a goal would be, and then memorizing a chapter of the Bible every month, okay? Goals. No. And I'll tell you right now I'm not hitting all of those goals because other things come up, but it's important to have your minimum, have your standards, and say, okay, I will not fall below this, but then also to be thoughtful of going, this is what I really want to do and set for myself. Now, and then, oh, I added this too, I wrote this in, education is another one of my goals. History, science, okay? I've incorporated some of this as well, I'm listening to audiobooks and trying to increase my wisdom in other areas, but this is low, lower on the priority list than some of the other things, but it's still there, okay? And you're going to have a switching back and forth between these things. It's also important to understand that there are seasons of life, there are things that require change of schedule and change of plan. What you do when you're single and young is not going to be what you do when you're older and have young kids and married and a family, which is also not going to be what you do when your kids are grown and you're still, you know, in younger years and you've got grown-up children and you're having grandchildren, and then also when you get later in life and you get different times in life, your schedule will change. So we kind of need to maintain a good thought. Here's my priorities. I've established those. My priorities don't really change as far as God number one, family, you know, church and work. But my scheduling then and my standards may change because some other things change in my life. And as maybe you need less or you do work to support your family and everything, well, that can slip down lower on the priority because you have that better covered. And maybe you need less or whatever. There's, you know, there's all that you could spend more time here, but you should be evaluating then what can I do with my time so that you're using it wisely. There's also not just seasons with your age and like big time periods. There's also temporal seasons in your life with more immediate changes. And for my life, example right here is, let's see surgery. Unexpected. Something happened. Guess what? That really screwed up my normal routine. As you've noticed, I'm not using my Sunday soul winning time for the past couple weeks because of that. But look, this is temporary. We can't let this derail you because this is why you still need to be aware of your minimums need to kick in and be like, okay, look, I know there's all these things going on. My schedule is out of whack, but you know what? I still need to maintain this. I still need to do this. I need to make sure this is going to happen one way or another and not lose sight of what's important even in the midst of other things and other schedule changes and changes in the schedule. Cool. Let's fine tune this. I can add some more time here and I could gain 15 minutes here and I could cut this out or change this and continue to improve. But when you get something that just comes along and you're like, whoa, well, I lost my job. Okay, well, that's going to change some things up a little bit or, you know, whatever, right? Big dramatic events happen. It's going to cause you to have to knock you out. We need to focus on the things. Now, here's the other thing, too. Hopefully some of the things that I've mentioned will help you. But again, one of the biggest problems is deciding how much do I have to work to provide for my family. And a lot of that comes into, so some of that's going to be making sure you have the right level of contentment in a very covetous society, that we could be content. Again, you could think about other avenues of income or whatever, but still, I mean, that contentment is key no matter what job you have to be, to know and say, hey, what you've provided for me, Lord, is sufficient. Because if you're working and you have families, whatever, God will make sure you provide when you're putting your priorities on God first. It will happen. And if we could learn to be content with, I mean, you think back on history, it's so hard. Step backwards any length of time really over maybe 100 years ago. We live in such an insanely wealthy time. It's crazy. When you really think about it, I mean, the size of houses have never been as big as they are now. The technology, the vehicles, the communications and all of this stuff that now we've gone so accustomed to and the standards have been raised so high for a standard of living, we need to be conscious of this because when we look to scripture, what did Jesus say? Having food and raiment therewith to be content? He didn't even say shelter. Let alone AC and all these other things that are comforts that we like, man, I can't live without that. That's how we feel right now. But if you struggle with I just don't seem to have time for anything, you can always reevaluate your contentment and with what you have. And it may be something that's important to impart unto family as well, right? Because obviously, especially as I'm speaking of husbands primarily, you know, we love our families, we want to support them, but it's important for us to understand, hey, we're putting God first and he commands us to be content and we're going to serve him. And having that right heart and attitude, I'm not saying you're going to be rich, but God blesses for that. There are ways you receive these blessings and financial burdens or other burdens that can just kind of go away and just be dealt with over time that it comes as a result of you just putting God first. So the more you do and the crazier your life gets because you're trying to accomplish a lot of things, there's also going to be times where different portions of your life become more important, right? So there may be a time where family all of a sudden, you know, you could be going pretty fast and then it sounds fine and then boom, big problem, big health problem, big, you know, relationship problem, for example, because especially, you know, speaking as a man, we don't have as, I don't have as good of a, think about a lot of things all at once, so I kind of have to have this, okay, now I'm going to focus on this, now I'm going to focus on this, now I'm going to focus on this. And I'll spend time going, okay, and just kind of take, every once in a while just do a check. Man, you know, church has this big priority, we've got a church plant coming up, we've got activities coming up, I really need to dedicate a lot of extra time to this, right? So I've got this stuff coming up, I need to just invest time here, but when you do that, you have to at some point sacrifice something else, right? So, but I want to get stuff done here, so that means I'm going to have to work a little bit earlier, maybe I'm going to, or maybe even just spend a little bit less time at home, or spending time with my family, because I'm going to be focused on this. But you could only do these things for so amount, you have to be aware of what you're sacrificing in order to do some other projects, some other things, so you can't let anything get too degraded, you know, like if I take too much time off of work, well guess what, that's going to cause a lot more stress and just a lot more issues at home, and then it's going to run into the risk of, wait, am I even loving my wife properly, am I loving my children properly, am I, you have to keep all this stuff in balance, but at any given moment, there's going to be areas where you're going to be focused on, right? And what I do is I just, I kind of shift and pivot from one to another, and not that long ago it was going to have to not do as much here, it had an impact on some of my scheduling and some of the things I could do here in order to get that accomplished, okay, that's done, now, good, done, I could put that to the side and I'm going to focus on church, I'm going to focus on family, I'm going to focus on all these various things. And that happens, so don't be discouraged if some big event happens in some particular area of your life, maybe you're, okay, and you're going to drop down a little on, man, I've really been focused on making sure, I want to read through the Bible five times this year, cover to cover, but then something else big comes up and you're like, I just, I don't have that time any longer to invest in reading that much Bible. So, okay, cut back, it's fine, because now you've got some other endeavor. And I was just sharing, I'm sure you'll probably be okay with that, because there's a whole new church plant that's being established. Well, the time to invest in a church plant is going to have to come at a cost with some other things, right, in his life, because he's a busy guy, he's got a lot of stuff going on, he's got a family, he's got a job, he's soul winning, he's doing all these other things. Well, yeah, now all of a sudden this is going to have, you're going to have to make some changes. But you're doing something spiritual anyways, you've just traded a little bit, you've kind of refocused, but you're still in good shape and you just have to do that sometimes. And part of this came, he was asking me some questions about what I do to help himself to be able to plan properly. Now look, there's people out here, I'm sure, there's someone in this room that probably reads their Bible more than I do, like right now. Okay, but you have to do a lot of other things, spiritually, to help this church run and just a lot of other things going on, right? So it's not about, you know, oh, I'm better than you, that's not it. Managing your time, different parts of your life, different responsibilities, you've got to put it all in perspective, but still maintain the balance. So like for me with becoming a pastor, well hey, I need to at least maintain, like I still have to do all this other stuff that just goes along with the territory, but I still can't let that bog me down from like doing all the basic things, right? And no matter what's going on in your life, you've got to maintain that same perspective of just being able to say, okay, I'm going to do this and not let all the other little things completely take me away. So sometimes you're basically maintaining your life and sometimes your relationship works. But then once you get the fire put out, then you want to have that good plan to kind of fall back to and be like, okay, now I can get back on track with this. And you want to recognize the fires before they get to be too big, right? You've got family problems, there's a fire burning, get that taken care of. It's critical, it's important, you need to make sure that's solid. But again, other priorities, same thing as well. Yeah, so my last point here, last thing I've written in my notes is what I had already mentioned previously and that's that life should never be comfortable if you want to achieve great things. It's not going to be. So, you know, I pass through this church, we're planning another church plant, I have a family of eight, including myself, I have a full-time job with a pretty good position within a company of small business. How do I have time for it all? Well, there's not a lot of time for other stuff. Being honest with you, there's not a lot of time for other stuff. Between my family, I don't, I don't, I mean, and many of you probably testify, when's the last time you hung out with anybody? And my friends are here. I don't have other friends, right? I don't have secret friends that I go and hang out with and do things with. Okay? So, my wife is my friend. Okay? And, you know, there's just other things, right? Entertainment, there's no, I don't, don't go and do much. Now, what I get with that entertainment is my family time. So if I do anything like that, vacation or something like that, that's family time. And I'm going to build on that and work on that, but oftentimes that also gets mixed in with other church events and other things like that. So, but we have time. I have time to work a full-time job and get nothing from, no monetary value from church. And you know I still go soul winning. You know I'm praying, you know I'm reading my Bible, you know, I mean, if I'm not reading my Bible, it's going to be evident in a preaching. You can do it too. Great things only come by a lot of effort and sacrifice. It costs you. If you want to get a great work done for the Lord, you have to put your mind to it, you have to dedicate the time to it. You may have to sacrifice some other areas, but think about it, plan for it, know the cost. That's another biblical principle. Determine what's the cost going to be before you really go into something. You want, you know, whatever it may be, whatever it is, your goal of reading the Bible so many times or winning this many people the Lord or setting up this, you know, going this way, I could do this, I'm going to work it out this way, here's how I do it, here's where I spend my time, and here's how I make sure that everything can still be maintained and I could also get this great project done. And there's going to be some times where I put this to the side or that to the side, but we're going to get this done. Just don't allow the important parts of your life to be damaged from the lack of attention. And that's, you know, unfortunately there's some people, and I think Brother Carter touched on this with his sermon that he preached most recently on being overzealous, where it could be a problem when you want, you get real zealous and sold out, you want to serve God, there's been some really great men of God in the past that have done some tremendous things for the Lord, but in my opinion have ended up sacrificing their family too much. And have neglected that important part of their life too much to where there's some damage done to the family that then, and you got to think about it this way too, you say, well why is the family so important? Well hopefully you shouldn't have to ask that question, but if you think about it this way too, here's another way of just thinking about your, because your life, what, if you could impart what you do to your family, I mean obviously to a church, great, you want to have other people replicate and kind of do and follow what you're doing, but if you can't even get your children to do that, you're not going to be quite as effective as getting everyone else to do it, in my opinion, I think it's going to fall short somewhere. Be the example for your kids, get them solid, and try to get everyone else solid as well, but you know, have that time for them as well as everyone else, okay take some time away, you need to do something big, great, but then come back and make sure you're, now I'm investing time here, and I'm going to scale back a little bit there, and I'm going to invest and focus here for a while, make your children great, make church great, hey be great on the job, right, and be a great Christian for the Lord, make it all happen, it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to take a lot of time, you might have to cut away some other areas of your life that just take up too much time, this would have been a great sermon right before the digital detox month, that's coming up for May, okay, you've heard it here first, camping trip month, digital detox, be prepared, because that is probably one of the biggest time wasters, and if you want to do things that are great and you want to really make sure your priorities are in line, that is going to be a great opportunity to do that, get a head start now, alright, I've been preaching long enough, let's have a word of prayer, dear heavenly Father, thank you so much for your word, for all the great truths and the priorities that we ought to follow, I pray that you please help everyone here to really think earnestly and think about it from a sense of hey, what is important to me, what do I want to accomplish in my life, and how am I going to make that happen, and what standards am I going to set, dear Lord, and hopefully just help people to gain those standards from your word, to be able to look at the Bible and say yes, this is emphasized, this is really important, here are some areas that give me guidance on how much or how little I should be able to do to help us to improve, and Lord, I fail, it seems like almost every day, but I pray that you please help me to continue to improve and to be a good example, and I pray that you would help us as a church collectively to get a lot more done for you in reaching the lost and just being able to replicate and disciple people and train up more and more believers, Christians, and soulwinners for your service and honor and glory. We love you, so in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed. Brother Devin, will you please lead us? All right, everyone, we'll turn to 158. Down there at the bottom, 158, oh, for a thousand tongues to sing. Song 158. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise. The great Redeemer's praise. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise. The great Redeemer's praise. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's praise. The glory's God, my God, in faith, the triumphs of His praise. My gracious Master and my God assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth the ground, the honors of my name. Jesus, the name that charms our fears and our hearts. Jesus, the name that charms our fears and our hearts. Jesus, the name that charms our fears and our hearts. Please be parkour. Please be special. Please be foreign. Jesus, the name that charms our fears and our hearts. Jesus, the name that captures us from God, the name that captures us from the distance of Satan's reign. Jesus, the name that treats Here, nearly death is raising up your loosed tongues employ. Be why behold your Savior come, and be he thank for joy. Amen. Thank you both for coming. You are dismissed.