Important Things

Let's take our Bibles and lift them up, wave them around.

We're glad that you're with us tonight.

Let's say this together Say, heavenly Father, I'm glad to tune into live stream.

I want to start the year off right.

I thank you for your Holy written Word and for the Holy Spirit that's going to shine the light on it so that I will be illuminated and understanding will come.

In Jesus' name, and let's turn in our Bibles to Romans, chapter 12, verse one, and read there I'm reading out of the King James I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

And maybe a little better translation would be Be not conformed to this world's way of thinking, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good, acceptable and perfect will of God.

And for I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly or to think accurately about themselves, according as God have dealt to every man the measure of faith.

And so, beginning this new year here, on the fourth day of January, I just wanted to share a message entitled important things, important things.

You know it's tendencies the tendency of the human being is to pay more attention to the immediate at the expense of the important.

You know, the devil, as I've mentioned recently, is a great divert.

He uses diversionary tactics.

He'll light a fire over here, he'll create a noise over there, anything he can to distract you from important things, and we begin to react instead of respond.

So you know the world, you know they're running big specials on gym memberships.

They realize at this time of the year people want to lose weight, they want to get back in shape, they're wanting to lose the holiday weight they gained, and so forth and so on.

People are making new year's resolutions to do this and to do that, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I think that there's a priority for spiritual things.

And these verses, I think, bear our attention tonight because if we're going to go down a list of things we'd like to change, let's do a spiritual checkup on ourselves and evaluate ourselves.

And in these areas that I'm going to cover three things, let's remind ourselves See, we need to be prepared for what God has in store for us in 2023.

I had a message Sunday morning and if you weren't here Sunday and if you haven't heard the message yet, I invite you to get online and hear it.

2023, the year of God's power.

And God gave me a prophetic word for this year and kind of pointing the way to what we can expect.

And I believe God's power is going to be manifested through the church in unprecedented ways.

I think we saw a little piece of that Monday night when that young man was injured and suddenly people were talking about prayer, people were forgetting about this important football game.

It had playoff implications and seeding and all of that.

Well, all of that went out the window and everybody said, hey, this game is not important.

What's important is life and death that young man.

I mean their compassion turned up to maximum and I believe that God is getting the attention even of unbelievers and this is a Christian nation, let's remind ourselves and I believe that God is going to be on display through the church this year.

So we need to be prepared for that and by looking at these three important things and getting that settled in our personal life and in our church life, we'll be prepared for God to use us.

So let's remind ourselves of the importance number one of the Word of God.

I know it sound like a broken record, but again, after 35 years of ministry, most of the time when I'm talking to people about their trouble, it's just almost.

I don't want to put a percentage on it, but most of the time I'll just say most of the time the people that are having the biggest trouble or the people that have ignored the Word of God, they're just not reading it and they're not doing it.

And you know it's kind of the way the church is.

The church is good at listening, but the church needs to do better at doing.

Listening doesn't do you much good if you don't do what the Word says.

There's a gap between what we know and what we're doing, and that gap must close.

And so I can't evaluate that for you, but you can.

And so Jesus said it this way in Matthew 4,.

Man does not live by bread alone, by every word that comeeth forth out of the mouth of God, if man live every Ramah word, the God breath word.

In order to have a Ramah word, you've got to read it and you've got to have a prayer life.

So that's how we live.

The just shall live by their faith, and faith is based on revelation of the Word.

A man once said, and I'm gonna quote him don't compare this book with other books talking about the Bible.

Don't compare it with other books.

This doesn't contain the Word of God.

It is the Word of God.

It is supernatural in origin, eternal in duration, regenerative in interest, personal in application, inspired in totality.

Read it through, write it down, pray it in and then pass it on.

I get goosebumps every time I read that.

That's a prophetic word if I've ever read one.

We need to have high esteem of this word and so that we're not willing to live without its counsel every day.

So let's start ourselves, remind ourselves of the importance of the word.

Number two, remind ourselves of the importance of the Holy Spirit.

I know I say these things all the time, but we still need to be constantly reminded.

Why?

Because we're constantly bombarded from the other side.

We're constantly bombarded by the opinions of man.

We're constantly bombarded by the thoughts of man and also the spirit of this age, which is not the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5, 18 says be continually and habitually filled with the Holy Ghost, with the greater one.

Greater is he that's in us and he that is in the world.

So magnify him, magnify the fact that he's in you.

First, corinthians 12, one I recently taught on the utterance gifts and I reminded everyone then which should not be ignorant of the ways of the Holy Spirit, the winds, the spirituals.

That means winds of the spirit, the ways the spirit moves.

We shouldn't be ignorant, and ignorance can be total, it can be partial or it can be ignorance.

We know about it but we don't really.

It's not in the forefront of our important things that we're focused on.

It ought to be on the very front edge of what we're thinking about.

Whenever we approach any situation, we ought to know what does the word say about it and what is the plan the Holy Ghost has for me to deal with it?

Amen.

To ignore means to be negligent.

We shouldn't be negligent about what the spirit of God is leading us to do.

Sometimes it takes time and prayer to find out what the Holy Ghost response is to this trial, this trouble.

He's always gonna provide a way of escape for us, but sometimes we have to wait on him to show it to us.

So we need to be filled with and controlled by the Holy Ghost, amen.

You know, lest the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain.

That build it.

Psalm 127.

And I was encouraging our staff this morning.

One of the great things about glorious way churches it's always been guided and fueled and powered by the Holy Ghost and by the Word.

I mean from the very time it was started until today, and that's why we're still here.

We're starting our 29th year here the end of this month, and so you know God knew what he was doing when he put this thing together and we've had to depend on him every step of the way.

So you're the same way in your life.

You need to learn how to depend on him and to look at the Word and listen to the Spirit and find out what his plan is.

He's not gonna bless your plan, your plan.

He's not gonna come over to your side of things and say, okay, little darling, I'm gonna bless this.

No, find what his plan is.

Just get there, start doing that, and it's already blessed.

You know it didn't say they wouldn't build a house.

It said they'd labor in vain, in other words, the labor of building a house.

I've done this in my business.

Back years ago, I built a house outside of the will of God, and it was blood, sweat and tears to build that.

I built it but nobody bought it and I lost it.

You know it was God.

Well, god, you see, god's not obligated.

He's not obligated to bless my efforts, and he won't only what he authors.

And so let's learn that.

Let's let that be at the top of our list of things this year, because, again, this is the year of God's power, and let's get in position to be the beneficiaries of that power.

All right, and then the last one is found there in verse three.

Let's remind ourselves of the importance of our place in this church.

You know, if you're a member of this church, you've got a place here, and I urge you to stir yourself up to take your place of service, to take your place in prayer.

We're gonna have prayer tomorrow night.

We're getting back in the prayer mode.

On tomorrow night, thursday night, the fifth Glad us will be there leading.

Let's take our place.

Let's take our place in prayer.

Let's take our place in service.

You're important.

Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

What do you mean by that?

Well, the way I'm taking it tonight is is some people think that their time is more important than to mess around with working in the church.

They've got more important things to do.

They've got more important things to think about.

They've got a business They've got.

You know, they get up early in the morning, they drive to work, they drive home.

They're tired and their time is their own.

They don't have time to get involved in church work.

You know there's people that can do that.

Well, see, you're thinking of yourself more highly, perhaps, than you ought to.

In fact, your attitude.

I urge you, you know, don't get on the sidetrack.

Don't let God say, okay, you're irrelevant to my kingdom, you're not, you're not available.

So I'm gonna put you over here on the sidetrack where I saw those locomotives.

They were all powerful.

Not all of them are worn out.

Some of them were, some of them were old and had graffiti on them, but many of them looked like they were quite serviceable and yet they weren't pulling trains.

They're sitting over there in a yard for three years.

I found out they'd been there three years plus.

What a waste.

And God does not want to waste any of his members.

I mean, you're important to God.

There's no big eyes, little youths here, in glorious way.

We're all important.

We're all part of the same body and we can only function as we function together.

So let's remind ourselves.

I mean, look at Hebrews 11, what I call the hall of fame of faith.

Look at Noah.

You know, noah wasn't an educated man and yet God told him to build an ark and he was just simple enough to believe God and do it in the face of all criticism.

Took him a hundred plus years to do it, but he did it.

And look at Rahab the harlot my goodness, nobody had any respect for her, but you know what she believed that God, the God of Israel, was the true God, and her faith saved her and her family and all her kin vote and all the others that are mentioned there in Hebrews 11,.

You know, I came across something online and it was 10 things that require zero talent and if you'll indulge me, I'm gonna read five of them.

I'm not gonna take the time to read all 10.

And I just thought it was kind of funny, but it's true.

These are five things that require zero talent.

Number one being on time it takes no talent.

Number two making an effort.

It takes no talent.

Number three being high energy.

It doesn't take any special talent.

Having a positive attitude Doesn't take any particular talent, any particular talent.

Being passionate doesn't take any particular talent.

And there's five others that were very good too, but I just didn't wanna take up all the time tonight reading about it from a secular thing.

I don't love the source, but it was true.

It's a true statement and you know, it doesn't take any particular talent, because God supplies an anointing.

When you say yes to him, he will supply an anointing.

That's his ability.

See, this is the gear of God's ability, god's power, and he wants to show himself strong through the church.

So let's remind ourselves that we are needed in the church.

It needs more than just your tithes and offerings.

Does it need that?

Yes, it needs that, but it needs more than that.

It needs your participation.

And so I just wanna remind you here, at the beginning of the year, before you get all of your important things all prioritized and all your the things that you've got in line to do, let's do a spiritual checkup on what we are doing and remind yourselves of the important things this year and everything else that concerns you.

If you'll put these things in order, everything else will fall into place.

Everything else will fall into place and you can just have a very productive and blessed 2023.

Let's lift our hands and receive the word.

Father, thank you for the important things, thank you for the word of God, the Holy Ghost, thank you that you've given us the measure of faith with which we're able to do all kinds of supernatural things in the kingdom of God.

We're not just observers, we're participators in kingdom business.

Amen, amen, amen.