Joshua 1:6-9 (11/26/2017)

How are y 'all doing? Praise the Lord. We are blessed. Who said blessed? Somebody said blessed.

I like that, John. I'm blessed, too. I'm right beside you, brother. Amen. I'm excited to be here.

I get to preach in a lot of different places, but this is truly one of my favorite places to preach and bring the word of God, partly because it's rare to have churches, believe it or not.

There are a lot of churches that are not founded upon the word on philosophy and ideology, but not founded on the word of God.

And the word of God is it. When I say it is it, it is it what?

It is it. It is everything. It is the whole deal. It's the whole kit and kibbutz. I don't know what a kit and kibbutz is, so maybe

I shouldn't even say that, but it's the whole thing. It's what it's all about. And to be in love with the word of God is to truly have life.

And I'm going to share with you a very, I won't say it's very unusual. It's probably not as unusual for y 'all as it would be for some people around the world.

But we're going to start with in Joshua chapter 1. And I'm going to preach a message that I think is so essential for our times, as well as for your lives, because we need to, we really have a great need in our country and in our churches to make a connection between the word of God and how we live our lives.

So we're going to read just a couple of verses from Joshua chapter 1. And it says in Joshua chapter 1, starting with verse 6, and we'll read down to verse number 9, it says, be strong and of good courage.

For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.

Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which my servant commanded thee.

Turn not from the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.

This is the text verse, verse 8. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the

Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. There's so much in there that there's really, like if I was going to preach a long sermon, this would probably be it, right?

Some of you are probably thinking, what, isn't every sermon you preach? No, I just preach short sermons with long introductions.

If I was going to preach a long sermon, though, this would be it. And I want to talk to you today on this subject, God's success formula that never fails.

And I know that even when I say that, like there's probably in some, possibly in some of you, maybe in more than some of you, a little twinge of resistance.

Like, why would you preach that? Well, because it's in the Bible, and it's in there for a reason.

And as all doctrines in the scripture, it is not isolated to one place, but because there are no isolated doctrines in scripture.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth of it. And we just pray that you would open our eyes, that we would behold wonderful things out of your word, and help us, if we don't already, to just absolutely just fall head over heels in love with your word, and to make it be our all -consuming passion that we would learn more about who you are, and grow more and more in love with you.

And we thank you in advance for the work you're going to do in our lives through your word today, in the name of Jesus. Amen. All right. So God's success formula that never fails.

Why would I preach a message called God's success formula? I grew up in a family where we had a lot of love.

And I've got six brothers. I've got one older brother. I've got five younger brothers, no sisters. I don't even think

I saw a girl till I went to school. I didn't even know what one was, right? No. And my parents were hard working, but they were not well -to -do by any means.

We grew up in a house where a lot of things didn't work, so we spent a lot of time fixing things that didn't work.

Anybody can relate to that? Can anybody relate to that? We grew up fixing a lot of stuff. We would get cars that didn't work, so they would work so we could drive them.

I never saw my parents buy a new car in my entire life until all of us had graduated from high school.

Maybe that's why they never bought, because seven boys can eat a lot of food, right?

So we'd fix up houses. We became very, very, very, very good at fixing things that were broken.

But there was a lot of stuff in my life that didn't work. There was a lot of stuff I saw in the lives of the people

I looked around that just didn't work. Now, some people laugh when I tell them this, but I'm not even joking when

I say it. Like, I play golf a lot, and a lot of times when you play golf, if you play golf with people who don't know the Lord, they'll ask you, so, you want a drink?

Can I buy you a drink? And I always say, my aunts would always say, no, I quit drinking when I was 11.

And people laugh when I say that I quit drinking when I was 11, but I'm not joking. I quit drinking when

I was 11. Like, you say, when did you start? I don't know. I started before I could remember. I remember being a little kid, go get beer out of the refrigerator, just like you get soda.

Just wasn't, it wasn't some uncommon thing, right? And so, that part of my life didn't work.

There was so much in my life that didn't work. We had bicycles that didn't work, so what we do, we fix it.

And I can remember having this longing in my life for life to work better.

And I received Christ when I was 16 years old. After having gone to church my entire life,

I can remember, if you can imagine, young parents with seven little boys, my brother's a year and a half older than me, then there's me, then there's a brother a year younger than me, and one a year younger than him, and one a year younger than him, one a year younger.

Seven boys, seven and a half, eight and a half, eight years apart, if you can imagine that, right?

And we're all dressed in our little suits. We go to church on Sunday, we go to Sunday school, we go to vacation

Bible school, and church was a disconnected part of our lives.

We dressed differently when we went to church than we did every other day of the week. We taught differently at church than we did at home.

We sang songs at home, but when we sang songs at church, they weren't the same kind of songs we sang at home. And so the whole church life experience for me was a disconnected part of my life.

It didn't all fit together. It didn't even make any sense. It was just, it was what we did in a religious sense, and here's what

I mean when I say a religious sense. We did it in a religious sense because the best understanding that I had of God was that God is all -powerful, all -knowing.

Yes, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so, but he was also, God was all -powerful, and he wasn't really happy with sin, and he wasn't really happy with me, and he wasn't really happy with us.

So you'd go to church on Sunday, and you'd put your two quarters in the plate, and you'd get dressed up, and you'd say your

Easter speech in an attempt to appease God. How many of y 'all know, maybe some of y 'all can't relate to that, but it was kind of very different than the stuff we did throughout the week.

But when I received Christ, the guy that led me to Christ was a guy that I went to high school with. He said, now you need to start reading the

Bible. That may not be that big of a deal to you, but you gotta understand, I was then, and am now,

I know, I'm just gonna keep going.

So the idea of reading the Bible was not at all remotely exciting to me.

Oh, you know what? That's my stupid watch, it just starts talking whatever it feels like. I got one of those Apple watches, it's a smartwatch.

Yeah, right. Okay, so, it's smarter than I am, because I have no idea why it just said something to me.

So, okay, so, and so, so I had, you gotta understand,

I'm 16 years old, and it was a little bit before my 16th birthday that I received Christ. So I'm 17 years old, this guy says, you need to start reading the

Bible, and you gotta understand, I had never read a book in my life. I'm 17 years old, I had never read a book of any kind other than a karate book, because I was really into martial arts, or a comic book,

I was really into comic books. Other than that, reading was not something I was interested in, because it wasn't something

I was good at. Is there anybody else? Now, understand what I'm talking about. See, I wasn't good at reading. For me,

I don't just talk fast, my mind moves faster than my words come out, okay? And so when I tried to read, it literally seemed like I had chased the words across the page.

Like, okay, if you just sit still, I read you, you know what I mean? Anybody else like that? Okay, well, just pray for it, right?

Okay, because that's where I was. And when they said, you need to start reading the Bible, I said, okay, but this is what

I'm supposed to do. I'm a Christian, I'm not gonna play Christian. Like, I'm going, I'm either all in or I'm not in, right?

You know why I was shocked? We had had Bibles, but I had never read one,

I mean, it wasn't like that, so you could look the part. You know what

I'm talking about? And so, I start reading the Bible, and I'm shocked that this

Bible, with these little bitty words, two columns, no pictures, it's talking to me about my life.

It's talking to me about how my life can get better. I've got six brothers. Hey, when you've got six brothers, you don't get along all the time.

You and your brothers get in fights sometimes. Well, me and my older brother got in fights. Me and my younger brother, let's beat them up.

But my older brothers, me and my older brother, we would get in fights. Notice how he didn't beat me up. We got in fights, but my younger brother was like, okay, sorry, y 'all pick that up.

So, but it showed me, like, for the first time in my life, how to get along with all of my brothers most of the time.

I said, I'm gonna try this. Like, it said stuff like, a soft answer turns the way we're at, the greatest word to start a band.

I said, okay, I'm gonna stop hollering at my brothers, and when they say something to me kind of irritating, I'm gonna see if a soft answer turns the way we're at.

And sure enough, it turns the way we're at. I'm like, that's amazing! It was in the

Bible. Now, when I was a teenager, it was amazing. My parents, when I was a teenager, my parents didn't know anything. Like, I was blown away how

God could give such a brilliant teenager to parents who knew absolutely nothing, right? Okay. All of the parents get that.

The kids are saying, yeah, I know what you mean. No, you don't. Okay, okay, here's what I'm here to tell you. And the older I got, the smarter my parents got, it seemed.

Or somebody did. But it showed me how to get along better with my parents.

And I noticed, when I started reading the Bible, started applying it to my life, guess what? I stopped getting in trouble with my parents. I stopped arguing with my brothers all the time.

I was like, this is amazing. Why did they make me think this Bible was about religion my whole life, and all of a sudden

I start reading, it's not about religion at all, it's just about how to make your life better. Why didn't somebody tell me?

And so, fast forward. I go to a youth activity.

And it was a quiz team. So, back then, we used to go to YFC, Youth for Christ, and they had these four different churches, and the teenagers would have this quiz activity, where they would sit on these benches that had cushions that were connected to this light panel.

This was way before the days of apps, y 'all. There weren't apps, right? They didn't have an app for that. And so, the moderator would begin to read a verse, or ask a question from a verse in a specific chapter in the

Bible, and if one of the kids from one of the teams knew the answer, they would jump up and say, and their light would go off, they'd get the answer, their team would get a point.

So, I watched this quiz team thing at YFC, and I was just going, I said, that's gotta be the coolest thing I've ever seen.

I got real excited about it. So, I didn't exactly know what they were doing, but I just knew I wanted to be a part of it. So, I went to the youth director after it was over, and I'm gonna pretend

Jeff is the youth director. And I said, so, do you think maybe I can be on the quiz team? I think, well, I'm just gonna say, you know, like you're doing a good job.

You gotta fill out an application, there's an interview process. You know, I'm expecting this big, long, convoluted process in order for me to be a part of this quiz team.

And so, I asked him, and he says, sure, really? He said, yeah, you can be a part of the quiz team.

I said, okay, great, what do I have to do? Now, you gotta understand, I have never, I've gone to church my whole life, but I have never been in like this whole

Bible -believing, practicing, Christian -experienced life thing ever. So, he said, well, all you have to do is memorize a chapter of the

Bible a week. I said, oh, okay. I didn't know that was a hard thing. Like, I didn't know, like,

I thought, okay, so this is something you do when you become a Christian. So, Christians memorize a chapter,

I'm just, that's how, right, that's how new I am. I'm a total newbie, don't understand it.

Like, everybody does it. I'm gonna write a chapter of the Bible a week. Then I said, how do you do that?

I don't know, I've never, like, how do you memorize a chapter of the Bible a week? He said, well, what you do is you write it down a bunch of times, you read it out loud a bunch of times.

Okay, I can do that, I can write it, I can read it. So, that week, it was Romans chapter 13, fortunately, a chapter that was very short, 13 verses, right?

That week, Romans chapter 13, let every soul be subject unto the higher powers from thee, our King, and God, whosoever therefore resisteth the powers of the

Lord, to God, they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So, he memorized that chapter that week.

I'm going somewhere with this story, y 'all, trust me. I'm not just giving you a history of my own, it's not that interesting.

Okay, so, the next week, we go, I'm on the quiz team. I'm so excited,

I can't even sleep, because, like, to me, this is my opportunity to be on, like, the Price is Right, or, you know,

I'm like, this is, I'm on a game show, right? This is my chance to make it big, right?

The quiz team at YFC in Harrisburg, trust me. Okay, so, the moderator gets up, I am on the edge of my seat.

He reads one word, I jump up. And so,

I hadn't finished the verse, and I finished the verse, he said, that's right, and we got a point. I was like, yes, now I'm hooked on Bible memory for the rest of my life, right?

I'm like, that was amazing, right? And so, our team won that week, so I got hooked on Bible memory, and then, next week, remember,

I sat in Romans chapter 14, next week, Romans chapter 15, and I just, I was into it, but I didn't know that this was some unique thing.

I just thought, well, this is what Christians do. So, I begin to think, okay,

I'm on the quiz team. I began to notice that the more I began to learn the word of God, and the more I began to implement the things

I was learning, the better that particular area of my life got, whether it was with my parents, with my brothers, the principles in the

Bible, too, in my life, that's pretty cool, that was a pretty cool experience for me.

Like, that wasn't something that somebody told me in a sermon, gave me this plan. I didn't go to church and hear somebody preach

God's ultimate success formula that never failed. It's just, it's just, I began to put two and two together. I take the

Bible, I apply for this, this gets better. The more Bible I had to apply to stuff, the more stuff gets better.

Well, before I know it, like in the summer, when none of the kids that were my age could find a summer job,

I had three jobs that summer. Three. And I was like, this is amazing, right?

And so, over that summer, my other brothers came to Christ, my younger brothers came to Christ.

And so, my brother, Mike, and I, he's one year younger than I am, we went to our parents and we said, the church that we're going to, they have a

Christian school, can we go there? What do you think my parents said? What do you think they said?

They said, no, you can't go to a Christian school, we can't, right? So, we said, and this

Christian school's very similar, they didn't have tuition, but they had an ACE school, I know y 'all got some different tuition, curriculum and stuff, but that was an

ACE school. They said, no tuition, you just have to pay for your paces. And so, we said, well, they don't have tuition, you just have to pay for your paces.

If we pay for our own paces, can we go to a Christian school? Here's what my parents said, we're not gonna let you and Mike go to a

Christian school, not let your little brother go. Okay, so if me and Mike pay for our brothers to go and for us to go, can we go to a

Christian school? And they said, because you know how kids are when they want something, right? They always say, but what if this, you know, we can do that, right?

But what if this happens? We're overcoming objections with loads of the deal, right?

So, they said, if y 'all pay for it, they said, well, let's think about it a little while later.

Okay, if y 'all wanna pay for it, y 'all can go, y 'all can pay for it, y 'all and them, y 'all can go. Later on, they started helping pay for it and stuff, so, but I guess they were just testing to see if we were serious.

My parents are cool, they're like really good people, really, such a blessing. They just did the best they could with what they had.

So, this is not, I'm not putting my parents in front of you. So, started going to Christian school.

Now, here's what's amazing. I didn't, like, I'd never gone to Christian school before, right? This is all introduction,

I'm gonna get to the sermon too. So, every morning, let's leave some flag, let's leave some

Christian flag, and you have to read a passage of scripture every morning for a month. You read the same passage the entire school, read the same passage every morning.

The very first month in Christian school, my very first day in Christian school, the very first month, every morning, guess what we read?

Psalms chapter one. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but is the lightest in the law of the

Lord, and is the law if he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers and waters, that bringeth forth his fruit this season.

His leaf also shall not wither. Watch this now, this is what the Bible says. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

That's in the Bible. Wait a minute, God said, God said, if I will love his word,

God said, if I will meditate on his word, God said, if I will apply his word, everything

I do will prosper. I said, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. And so,

I began to see there's this connection between applying the word, learning the word of God, knowing the word of God, meditating on the word of God, talking about the word of God, taking action on the word of God.

There's this connection between that and making your life work. Guess what the passage was the next month?

Isaiah chapter 55. I'm gonna get into this in a minute. I really have to lay the groundwork so you can see, like, if somebody were to say, man, like, why do you do the things you do?

Because if I had one big objective for my life to help people see, is to see the practical connection of how when you fall in love with the word of God and begin to apply it to your life, every aspect of your life can get exponentially better because when you start doing things

God's way, God's way always works. So, Isaiah chapter 55.

It would be one thing if Joshua 1, 8, this book of the law, shall not depart out of that mouth of thine. So all this is right there, and then it shall not make thy way prosperous.

Then it shall not have good success. Now, the word success is only mentioned in the Bible one time, and that's it.

But that concept of applying the word of God to your life and your life getting better, it's thematic. It's throughout the entire canon of Scripture.

The word of God was not just something that was given to us so we could sit on a coffee table and make the coffee table look better. But it was given to us, not just so we could have something, quote, at a funeral or at a wedding.

It was given to us so that we could literally begin to apply it to as many areas of our lives as possible and make those areas of our lives get exponentially better so people would look at it and say, how are they living like that?

How is their life so good? It doesn't make sense, because it doesn't make sense. It is supernatural.

The Bible is a practical book that produces supernatural results.

It is not a magical book that it does all the work actively while you are passive.

Are y 'all picking up on what I'm saying now? And so here's what Isaiah chapter 55 says.

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his foes and let him return to the

Lord. He will have mercy upon him. And to our God, he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, yet the

Lord knew that my ways were your ways, but as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and it watereth the earth and maketh it, do you know what he said?

It maketh, the rain and the snow maketh the earth, bringeth forth its bud, that it giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

Okay, let me put it to you like that. Just like the rain and the snow come down and it gives consumption to the consumer and it gives production to the producer, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth and it, that is, it, my word, will accomplish that which

I please and it, my word, shall prosper in the thing whereunto

I send it. I get so exhausted with people asking me, are you talking about a prosperity gospel?

I don't know what you mean when you say that because prosperity gospel is not a biblical term.

Prosperity is a biblical term. Gospel is a biblical term. I don't find them together in the Bible, but the fact that you can prosper applying

God's principle, that's as good news to somebody who's struggling as any news

I've ever heard. Maybe that's why the Bible says that I anointed you to preach the gospel to the poor.

I'm not, hey, I'm not saying, hey, I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that God wants every single solitary one of his children to be rich.

I'm saying, though, as a whole, God's design for wealth on the earth is for his people.

There's so many scriptures I could show you, but by the way, I'm gonna kind of go here because what we've done is we've advocated our responsibility under the guise of false piety as followers of Christ.

We've advocated our responsibility to be the lights, to be the hand, not the tail, to be above only and not beneath.

We've advocated that under the guise of false piety.

What do I mean by that? We have been subconsciously programmed by modern day

Christianity and a lot of ways by the media, by the government to believe that somehow poverty is piety and wealth and industry are wickedness and iniquity.

Somebody can say amen. But that's not my point. Okay, interesting verse.

In Luke, I'm going somewhere with this. My watch is talking to me again. He stops, amen, and the opposite doesn't.

Okay. It's really interesting that in Luke chapter four, verse five and six, the devil takes

Jesus onto a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And what does he say to Jesus?

All this power will I give you. And here's what he said next.

For as bad as it is, wait a minute.

Satan said to Jesus, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world, he said all this power. So the power he's talking about is the power of kingdoms, the power to build kingdoms.

He said, I'll give this to you for it was delivered unto me and I'll give it to you so it might work.

So here's my question for you this morning, Terry. Who do you think that Satan has a desire to give the power of kingdom to?

To his seed or to God's seed? Satan wants to give the power of kingdom to his seed.

But God ordained that the power of kingdom belongs to us. What did Jesus say to Peter in Matthew chapter 16?

I give unto you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And he said, and on this rock, the rock of the fact that I am

Christ, the son of the living God, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Oh man, don't chase that man, he's such a... Okay, he said, I give unto you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

What are the keys to the kingdom of heaven? The key of truth. How do I know that's the keys to the kingdom of heaven? Here's why.

Because Jesus said, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

St. Michael, what's your point? Here's my point. Satan has done two things masterfully throughout history.

One, he has empowered his followers and his minions to create wealth. And he has also convinced

God's people that living in mediocrity, living in poverty, not necessarily the same thing, but oftentimes they are, but living in poverty and mediocrity and just being content to go along, to just get along, is enough.

Why? Because he knows that the ones who have abundance and the wealth and the prosperity can promote the message of their master.

Did y 'all pick up what I said there? The only way Satan can stop a follower of Christ, the only way

Satan can stop one of God's children is to get you to believe that doing something, that stopping is a good and godly thing.

Stopping what? Any progression. Here's what I mean by progression. When God made man the burden of Eden, he made man very different than everything else he created.

So God created, I think y 'all probably heard me say this before, but when God created everything in Genesis chapter one, he created three categories in creation.

How many categories? Three. He created creation.

What's it called? Creation. That's the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the grass, the water. Creation.

He created creatures. Dogs, cats, giraffes, alligators, bunny rabbits, and the rest of it.

Those are called creatures. What are they called? Creatures. And then he created human beings and he created us as creators.

God created us to create stuff. He made us to make stuff. God set it up that way.

Myron Gold didn't set it up that way. David Mitchell didn't set it up that way. God set it up that way. God made you, like the world wants us to believe that man is a higher form of animal.

It's so fascinating that they've told children for several decades now that you are an animal and then they're surprised when children don't behave with dignity.

You created the monster with your message because you didn't want to have a

God over you. But people, I want everybody to understand that there's nobody that doesn't have a God over them.

The people who think they don't have a God over them, they just have a God over them that has their destruction in mind. So what we have to understand is

Satan deceives us into focusing on lack and mediocrity the same way he tricked

Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden. How do I know that? Second Corinthians chapter 11, verse three. What does it say? The apostle

Paul, writing to the New Testament church, said, I fear, I fear less by any means that as the serpent beguiled

Eve, that means he tricked Eve, how? Through his subtlety. So your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity of sin.

Right, here's what Paul said. Paul said, the same way Satan tricked

Eve is the same way I'm afraid he's gonna trick you. By subtlety.

Brother David and I were talking yesterday, I said, you know, Satan don't tell any lies that seem like lies. Most of his lies seem like the truth.

That's how he gets people to believe him. So we know that the same subtlety he used on Eve, the same subtlety he used on us.

Is it okay if I throw a little resin smoke and just throw a little gasoline on the fire? Is that all right with you? That's what I'm saying. It's a temptation to focus on life.

I said that for you because I know that's what you were thinking. Here's what it says. You go read

Genesis chapter two, verse 16 and 17. Here's what it says. And the

Lord God commanded the man to say, and by the way, when it says commanded the man, that's the word adonim. And that word man there means man and woman.

The word for male is ish, which is spelled al -yushin.

The word for woman is spelled ishah al -shin -heh. So two different words for male and female, but the word

Adam includes men and women, okay? Because God called their name Adam later, Adam called her Eve, okay?

So the Lord God commanded the man, Adam, saying, of every tree, which tree?

Every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat. Now I want you to notice,

I want you to notice those two words you used. Every tree, which tree, Poppy Church? Every tree, freedom, how?

Free to eat. Every tree, free to eat. Now, I'm gonna ask y 'all a question.

Y 'all, don't get me to answer. Are every and freely abundance words or lack of words?

Talk to me, y 'all. Abundance. Every and freely is abundant. It don't get any more abundant than every and freely.

Then here's what he said next. But of the trees of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for the dead thou eatest their own, thou shalt surely die.

Now let me ask you a question. The, does that sound like one or more than one? That's one. So here's the question.

And it ain't going to like work. I can't help it.

Here we go. Y 'all ready? Everybody ready? Say I'm ready. Here it is. Is the less than every free?

The is less of the tree of knowledge. So there's one tree they could eat up of. One, how many?

One tree they could eat up of. So Satan comes in Genesis chapter three and says, now

I'm certain there's more so than any beast in the field which the Lord your God hath made. And he says to the woman, yea, I want you to notice what happens here.

Have God said he shall not eat of every. Here's what Satan did. By the way, he's still doing the same thing today.

He took, he added a word and he took out a word. He added the word not and he took out the word freely.

He said yea, if God said he shall not eat of every. Is that what God said? Is that what God said? God said of every tree of knowledge, what's

Satan doing? He's getting her focus off of the abundance she had and getting her focus on the one thing she didn't have.

He's shifting her focus. Are y 'all with me? So what happened next?

Eve, in response to Satan changing God's word, she changed

God's word too. She took out two words. See a lot of times, here's what happens. We don't want people to be offended by the language that we speak as peculiar people as elect strangers upon the earth.

We don't want people to be offended. So what we'll do is we'll use their language so they don't become offended. Can I get a word with you?

So Eve didn't wanna, she didn't wanna say, well, she said, she didn't say, we may eat freely of every tree in the garden.

No, she said, look in your Bible. She said, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. I'm gonna tell you something.

The one, the first thing Satan wants to do in all of our lives is he wants to get us to change the word of God.

Why? Because when you change what you say, it changes what you see. Your words are one of the windows through which you see the world.

That's why, that's why the Bible calls us to go. In fact,

I'm gonna tell you again and again. Amen? The Bible uses the term harlot.

We call them ladies of the night. Would I sleep on that? We change the language to make it more acceptable.

All I'm saying is we gotta call it what God calls it. So, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the tree that's in the midst of the garden.

Where's the tree of God for good people? In the midst of the garden. God said, he shall not eat, but he shall be tested.

He just said, no, you don't. But Eve thought she could recruit her flesh to work like that.

You gotta understand, where attention goes, intention follows. Did y 'all hear what

I said? So, if you don't wanna have an intention to do anything, don't give that thing your attention.

Okay, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, God said, he shall not eat, but he shall be tested, lest you die.

Satan said, he shall not surely die. Watch what you do. When we didn't eat, then we deserve. He shall not surely die, but God doesn't know that they eat thereof.

He said, if you eat off this tree, you're gonna be more like God. The only way to get them to do something wrong was to get them to believe it.

And that's exactly what he's done in the church today. He's got the church complacent, waiting for Jesus to come back and rescue us from our wretched situation.

Instead of us occupying until he comes, we're not practicing our occupation plan, we're practicing, we're waiting.

I was doing, he said, occupy. I said, occupy, that means be busy. Be about my business. But Satan has us believing that somehow we're doing some great thing by living a life of mediocrity.

I don't need that much money. Great, make as much as you can and give it to the church. Make as much as you can and give it to the school.

Buy back your time and then use, donate your time to ministry. Amen. But Satan has made us believe that somehow or another, there's something wrong.

Well, I don't wanna think about success because that's a worldly goal. I can't think of any goal that's more godly than being successful.

Here's what I mean by that. Everything that God created, I'm getting to the sermon now, he created to succeed.

The sun shines, why? Because that's what God made it to do. The grass grows, why?

Because that's what God made it to do. The wind blows, why? Because that's what God made it to do. Fish swim, birds fly.

No, they fly. You barely see one today if you go outside. So I'm gonna define success as I find it in this passage.

Here's what success is. Discovering the will of God for your life, his purpose for which he created you, and then doing it.

Wow, imagine that. Success, so simple. Discover God's purpose for your life and do it.

That's so amazing. By the way, there's the general, there's the general success, there's things

God tells all of us to do, and then there's specific success, there's things he made use for specifically, right?

I love golf. Brother David will attest to that, and it's, by the way, it's his fault. It's just his fault that I'm obsessed with my golf because I thought golf was dumb until he beat me at ping pong, and then

I had to learn how to play golf, and then I got hooked on this crazy gang, and it's just, anyway. I'll tell another story for another day.

So I love golf, but I will never be Dustin Jack. God said, you know what

I'm gonna do? I'm gonna make it so that you love golf, and you're gonna enjoy it, but I don't want you to become so distracted by it that you miss your purpose.

So I'm gonna make you good enough to enjoy it, but not good enough that you get distracted by it. Can I admit that?

All right, great extension. Okay, so here we go. Or anger, whatever your name is. God put some unique gifts in all of us.

He put unique gifts in me, he put unique gifts in you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and he put us here for our general purpose, yes, but for a specific purpose, that when we focus our energies on doing the things that only we can do, we can shine and be the best in the world.

So what is success? Success is discovering the purpose of what God created in your life and fulfilling it.

Like, I'm good at some things. There's, I mean, there are a few things

I'm good at, right? But there is nothing that I have passion, there's nothing that I have passion around, like teaching the word of God.

I already know that's the purpose of my life. I already know that's what I'm here for. But not teaching the word of God in some esoteric, mysterious, ooh, no, in a practical sense.

God's people need to be about living his word. So I want you to notice what success, here's God's success.

We shouldn't be talking about CNN constantly making news. We shouldn't, we shouldn't be talking about, we shouldn't be talking about CNN all the time,

Fox News, and ABC, and CBN, ABC, I don't even know the name of it. All the alphabet students, we don't even talk about them.

We don't even talk about all the sports all the time. We should be talking about the word of God and how it applies to our lives.

And not only to bring so much joy to our soul, we can't help but talk about it.

But see, here's the problem. We have to, we kind of live our biblical experience like my mother -in -law was when

I was a kid. It's kind of like, my Bible life's up here in the West. I'm gonna integrate my word into every aspect, every fiber.

This book of the law should not be part of that. Talk about the word of God with your friend, and you'll find so much joy in sharing ideas that come from the word of God.

Remember what it says over in Deuteronomy chapter six? These words which I command these days shall be in my heart, and I shall teach them diligently unto thy children.

I'll talk of them when I'll sit in my house, when I'll walk as my lady, when I'll lie as a town, when I'll write on my hand, and they shall be a strength that's between thy eyes.

Really, he deserves to be our all -consuming passion. Talk about the word of God.

This book of the law should not be part of my mouth, but what? Thou shalt meditate there in day and night. We gotta have the word of God in our minds, not just in our mouth, but in our heart.

Talk of your church, Mary had a little? No, you didn't. It was white as? No. And everywhere that Mary? Went. Was her lamb assured to?

No. Now, when was the last time you said that? Don't tell me you don't have a good memory. You have a good memory.

You just don't have a good system for committing to memory things that are important in your life.

Not that you don't have a good memory, it's just you don't have a good system. We should be thinking about it. We should talk about the word of God.

We should be thinking about the word of God. When I get ready to apply something to my life, you know, it's really interesting how the world would make some of you ladies feel like being a, not less than, there's nothing more important you can do.

Me? Nobody can, nobody can stand in my shoes, oh, there are 11 in the class, so somebody, that's probably a favorite.

You can't stand in my shoes and be my arm, I need to be the best, my arm going, you need to be a woman and a mother.

Don't admit it. Each, buddy child, each is man, male.

Each is Allah, Yud, Shin, and Ki. That's how it's spelled. Allah means God, Yud is a hand or a seed, so it speaks to productivity.

This is a man. And then Shin, destroy, which means teeth are destroyed, so when you put it together,

Allah, Yud, Shin, this is a man, but watch this. A woman is Allah, Shin, Yud, and Allah, Shin, Hay, what's a hay?

A hay is a container that reveals. So good, such a beautiful picture. You understand, go look at Isaac.

I know this is a site, a teacher was talking about how Isaac is virtually the passive, invisible person in the

Bible until one thing happened. What happened? After he got married, he started digging wells, and doing business deals and all kinds of stuff.

Why? Because the woman's, his wife's hay was a container in which his seed, the seed of his thoughts and his productivity could be manifested to the world.

Like, don't think that because my wife is my wife that her job is less important than my job.

Her job is as important as my job. It's just different. But my job wouldn't be here if it wasn't.

Like, I couldn't be Myra Baldwin without Noni. David couldn't be David Mitchell without Charlotte. It doesn't work that way.

God said, together, you're greater than either one of you.

A hay with no yud doesn't have anything to reveal. A yud with no hay doesn't have any place to grow and nurture and multiply.

God put it all together. Don't let the world, don't measure the purpose for your life by the world system.

Measure it by the word system. God put it in here for a reason. That reason is so powerful.

By the way, you know, they're talking about men, men marry a man and women can marry a man. There's no, there's not a man on the earth.

I mean, they may say that, but it's not possible. Because when you remove the man's letter, which is the yud, and you remove the woman's letter, which is hay, you have the same word now.

What's that? It's ash. What is that? In the scripture, I mean, in Hebrew language, that means fire.

Isn't that amazing? You take away what the man is, you take away what the woman is, you put them both together and try to make them both the same thing. Here's what you have.

You have destruction and fire. Interesting that God sent fire from the brimstone for heaven.

Oh, it's fascinating. The word of God, there it goes again. Think, talk about the word of God, think about the word of God, but don't let it stop there.

You wanna have the ultimate success in your life, discovering the will of God, developing yourself in the will of God, and then deploying yourself in the will of God.

You want the ultimate success in life? Do the last part. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth. Thou shalt meditate there day and night.

Why? For the purpose that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.

According to what? All that is written therein. Here's what it says. It says the reason you're supposed to talk about the word, the reason you're supposed to think about the word is so you can take action on the word.

Thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. Here's the promise God makes. Then shalt thou make thy way prosperous.

Then you will make your way prosperous. God didn't say, if you'll do, you'll have other paths.

He didn't say, I'm gonna make you prosperous. He said, then you will make me prosperous. People say,

I'm still praying, ask God for his money, pay his bill, ask God for his money. And we need to remember that when he gives us the power to do well, that we get to do it ourselves.

He's the one that gave us the power. There's nothing wrong with being successful.

In fact, there's everything right with it. As long as you define success like God defines success, discover the will of God, discover the will of God for your life, develop yourself according to that purpose for which he made you, and then deploy yourself out into the world.

I'm telling you, if you will fall in that kind of love with the word of God, if he did that,

I'm gonna tell you something. I was born, and I'm done here. I was born

May 14th, 1961. Now, I'm gonna write that down. I got a birthday coming up next year. Just kidding. I was born

May 14th, 1961. I was born in a segregated hospital in Tampa, Florida that was started by a

Civil War nurse almost 100 years after the Civil War was over. The conditions of that hospital were so poor that I contracted polio before I was a year old.

I've been walking with a brace on my leg for my entire life as a direct result of that experience.

They didn't have ADD when I was in school, but if they did, oh, if they did, they would've sent me home.

They would've told my mom, he's got ADD, he's got ADHD, he's got A, B, C, D, E, F, G. They would've sent me home for the whole alphabet.

He got the alphabet! Which, by the way,

I don't believe there's any, children have learning disabilities. I believe the educational system has a teaching disability. But anyway, that's a whole nother conversation for another day.

But don't let the educational system, well, y 'all ain't participating in that, but if you were, don't let them make your children feel like they're less than, just because they can't teach.

Anyway, that was free. Barely made it out of high school.

I always tell people, I'm one of those kids that did well at school all the way through the third grade, and it went downhill from there.

Loved the 10th grade so much, I took it twice, and that's not for real reasons. I almost quit school two weeks before my graduation.

I have no college degree. Closest I got to a college degree is a finger I got one time when

I was in college. Y 'all get that one on the way home. And people look at my life and they say, him?

Oh, when I graduated from high school, I got one award. You know how they have the awards banquets? I don't know, maybe y 'all have one here?

We used to have awards banquets. There was a table, one of these two front rows, all kinds of trophies on it. I got one award when

I graduated from high school. It was a little pill bottle. I'm not even kidding, this is real. Little pill bottle with some ear muscle on it that said the most likely to get one award is one.

No, people look at me and say, he ain't gonna do nothing. He ain't gonna be nothing. I know that's not good grammar.

So, young people, when you say it, it's that he's not going to be anything. Just want you to...

People look at me and say, he's not gonna be anything. There is no explanation for the grace of God in my life other than the grace of God in my life.

It is not just an answer. It's all the answers.

Fall in love with it. Talk about it. Think about it. Take action on it.

And I'm gonna read this verse. Then, you can say like the Apostle Paul said to Timothy. This is the last verse

I'm gonna read. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy in 1

Timothy chapter four. And 1 Timothy chapter four, four, yeah, that's the one.

1 Timothy chapter four. If I can get my iPad to cooperate here. Here's what it says. Verse 13.

Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee which was given thee by the prophecy and laying on the hands of this presbytery.

Meditate upon these things. Give thyself wholly, that's completely, to them that thy profiting may appear to all.

God's word applied to your life is God's success formula for your life and the life of your children.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that it is truth. May we walk out of this place with a desire, a hunger, an insatiable appetite for consuming your word and letting it consume our lives.

May we love it. May we think about it, talk about it, and take action on it every day for the rest of our lives.

And we thank you for it in the name of Jesus, amen. Brother Dave or Brother Jeffrey, who do

I turn it over to? Brother Jeffrey? Okay, why don't we go ahead and give thanks for the food right now.

Shall we do that? Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ to break bread together, to have fellowship one with another, and we thank you for Jesus who is the bread of life.

And we thank you for strengthening us through this food and strengthening us through your word.

Bless us to be a blessing, and we praise you in advance for it, amen. All right, we're dismissed.