Um, so, um, you know, well, you could ask Pastor Rick. I had started out with a sermon all about the Spirit because, you know, we have been talking about the Holy Spirit at Bible study, and it's just really been good. And so, um, if you weren't there, then be there next Thursday, and I'm gonna look at exactly who wasn't there. All right, so. So be there. So we're gonna deviate from that for a moment, but I really have to tell you, I do believe God's spirit is working in me. changing my appetite, making me, yeah, it's not the same. I'm having victories. And we should be willing to share our victories with each other, right? And then high five each other, right? It's not all about, oh, I failed. It's not always that. Sometimes we should be able to and really willing to shout out our accomplishments in Christ. You didn't do what you ordinarily would have done. Tell somebody. Tell somebody it wasn't you. I know me. It was God who lives in me. Bless the Lord. Bless God. Bless the Lord. Bless the Lord. So anyway, I call this sermon Dying for Christmas. And then we'll start out with the scripture Matthew 16, 27. For the son of man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Now, I say this all the time, that according to what we've done here, there's compensation. The wages of sin is death, right? That's a payment. You want to get paid with death, right? No, we want to get paid for what we've done in life. Now, if we weren't saved, we would get compensation for our sin, but we're saved. And so therefore we won't, we won't be sent to hell or separated from God for eternity. Bless the Lord. That's good news in itself. But, There's a Bema Seat Judgment, if you don't or never heard of it, it's worth digging into, where Christ is judging us for the work that we have had time to do, that we've had the resources to do, that he's given us everything we need, space and time, to get his work done, right? Okay, so believe it or not, it's just don't, Don't lie to yourself or come with a make-believe. I'm saved, I believe, and that's all there is. That's all there is to getting into heaven. But when you see your fellow soldier being draped in gold and jewels and everything, and you sitting there with some sackcloth or something. No, of course, there won't be sackcloth in heaven, but Jesus is making it clear that some will have a bigger reward than others according to what they've done. Right? All right. You know, look, I'm not making this up. Matthew 16, 27 is basically telling us, work for your reward, not for your salvation, but for your reward. Right? Okay? So what we think is, oh, he gifted me with this and that, so I'm gonna do a whole lot of this and that. That might not be what he wants you to do. Gift and all. Many people have many gifts. Don't fool yourself. We wanna follow the Spirit and the Spirit will lead us if we start asking God, help me follow your Spirit. Let me recognize Him, show up. Let me recognize Him, right? So when I was a kid, I remember dying for the day for Christmas. I just couldn't wait. I mean, you know, I still can't wait sometimes if I think I'm getting something. But those gifts have been so few and far in between since I was a kid. You can't count on these gifts now, nowadays, right? And so, but I would wait around, daydreaming all the time about, and it would be way June and July, December is six months, seven months away, right? And they would start advertising more up around October and stuff like that on TV and stuff. But I would already see the stuff I didn't get last year, I wanted that before the new and improved came out, right? I just wanted gifts. And Christmas was the time to get them. Used to be, anyway. But you know, my visions were matchbox cars, matchbox, remember those? And then I wanted the Mattel Hot Wheels, and other games and toys, Candy Land, and all of that stuff. Now, I'm telling my age, but y'all know my age, but these were the gifts that I wanted, right? And some of you, I'm sure, had your own focus on your own gifts. I wanted a gift that was more of a girly gift Not, yeah, I did want the Easy-Bake Oven because, no. No, but you know, I had to really focus in on why. Why do you want the Easy-Bake Oven, David? Because the commercial showed you baking all these cookies and cakes and things. And so I really thought that if I had that Easy-Bake Oven, nothing could stop me from getting all the cakes and pies, because that stuff looked real on the commercial. And then my neighbor got one and she tried to make some cake. That stuff was all sloppy and linked over and stuff. I wouldn't even eat it. It was nothing like the commercial, right? But I still wanted one because maybe she can't cook. You know, I don't know. You know, she didn't know how to bake, right? So, So anyway, all you needed, all I needed was just the gifts that I was dying for. I wanted to really, I mean, I think as a kid, I think, you know, as a kid, you think that's all life is all about, right? Until you grow up and you find yourself looking at the news all the time and wondering what's going on in the world, right? But as a kid, you're kind of like, no, I want, I want stuff, you know, just give me stuff and then I'll be happy. And I really think if there was no real issues in life going on, right, if people weren't dying and people weren't corrupt and doing crazy stuff, we would be like children in a sense that there's nothing to bother the regular day, a regular day, a day. We've never known life without issue, right? We've never known that. You know, we might, look, it took a while before I saw a dead person. I might've been 15, but I heard somebody died. When you start hearing of death and stuff like that, that kind of diffuses the gift desires and the mundane things that you start to grow up in a way that's not really the healthy, godly way, but it's reality. Right here in this reality of ours, we start to just suffer this life around us, trying to make the best of it. So you guys, I'm sure some of you guys wanted gifts for Christmas. I'll tell you what you wanted. You wanted the slinky and light bright and silly putty. and the Wham-O Frisbee, and then the new and improved baking oven, Susie Homemaker, those things. Remember those things? All right, all right. And Mr. Potato Head. Yeah. And so I had a Mr. Potato Head. I did get one. There was a time when Mr. Potato Head was really made out of a potato. You guys remember that? That they were sending out the parts and you provide your own potato. You remember that? Sure, you don't? Yeah, so y'all not that old then. Yeah, it was for 10 years. And then parents like my mother wanted to know what was that stinking in your room? You know, this rotten potato that I had things, all the eyes and ears all stuck into it. I had a real one, right? And when I think about that, it makes me remember or makes me come to the conclusion that you know, that potato head, the way they presented it, that was a gimmick. Because all they're giving you is little pins to push into your own potato, right? And so in that case, it's gonna die. The potato's gonna become rotten. It's gonna be a rotten potato and for a kid, they don't know this is gonna be the result unless you tell them, right? And that's kind of how it's been in my mindset now concerning gifts that I would ordinarily long for here, but the reality of their value here, like that potato, right? I'm being honest. It might sound like, oh, he don't want nothing. No, give me things. But I don't place the value on those things here because they're not going to last. And if the manufacturers and the marketing promoters and all of these commercials and everything would tell the truth, they put like photos. This is how your potato head is going to look in a week. It's going to be all rotten and green with ooze and all mushy and everything. But they're not. They're trying to sell you a product. And so that's kind of indicative. I mean, who's gonna do that? I'm not gonna tell you, even me, if I was trying to marry you, I'm not gonna tell you that, you know, how often I don't wash my underwear, you know, or something. You know, as an example, but I do wash them every day, so don't get it twisted on a regular basis. But we don't tell our stuff. It's like, listen, we have to present ourselves better than we are, right? And so these guys, they know they're marketing a product. We wanna sell this product. We're not gonna tell you that the potato's gonna, and we want you to ignore it when it rots. You don't pay attention to it either. Just keep buying our stuff every year until somebody speaks out, right? This is indicative of the enemy, and this is how the enemy works. It's like, get yours now. It's better to have it now. It's gonna rot. You won't be able to keep it. You're gonna rot. You won't be able to enjoy it for forever. You right? All right, you're going back to the ground from where you came and invest all you can in this life now. This is the bottom line. Get it now, right? So now, knowing this, knowing that the enemy is behind the scenes, working this facade or whatever, we need to come to some conclusions. I think we need to pay attention to the place we're going and how long stuff lasts there. How long do the people last where we're going, right? How long is it before the pavement starts to crack? It doesn't. Where we're going, we won't have these kinds of ordeals. It'll all be streets of gold, right? Now, that might sound like a bit much. How can we have all that? Because we only have gold because our father made gold. And so he has all the gold he wants. And if we're out of gold, he speaks more gold into existence. We can expect a palace, a kingdom, sure is gold. Right? Nothing dies there. I was listening to an argument on, I'll try my best not to deviate too many times, but there's more coming. But I was listening to an argument about these guys talking about, you know, pets in heaven. And I believe, firmly believe there will be animals in heaven that we knew. Pets, the ones we love, except if you had a pet cockroach. Now, this guy brought this up. Oh, I know a friend that have a pet cockroach. I don't think he'll be in heaven because, you know, animals probably won't be in heaven. Well, a cockroach, why is there a cockroach? Why is there a worm? Why is there an ant? Insects are invertebrates. They aren't animals. So they're here for ecological reasons because when death entered in, To sustain the place, God used critters to eat dead things and then to be eaten so that we wouldn't die right away, right? It's the truth, okay? Now, since we know there's no death in heaven, those won't be necessary there, right? The dog and the goat and the cat and the stuff that we loved and hugged, right? Only a good God, right? Expect that there. He gave us dominion. God gave us dominion over the animals. We failed. Why shouldn't they be there before us? Okay, there'll be arguments. They don't have a soul. No net fish is a soul There'll be arguments. Anyway, let me get back on track here We're talking about we're talking about a God That loves us and loves animals. He loves his creation when he created everything. He said this is good Right, the animals were counted on the ark. I thought I was leaving there, but they were they were they were counted. So anyway, I I believe celebrating Christmas is not a question of right or wrong. So there's gonna be those that don't celebrate. I used to put up a tree and all of this sort of stuff until the tree started reminding me of death, people that died, right? It's beautiful to look at, but if you're looking at it and it reminds you of the accident that happened five years ago or whatever the case may be, Right, it might not be that appealing anymore. But there are those that would say, no, it's pagan in its origin. And there could be some truth to it. Who knows? Not in its very origin, because if it symbolizes the birth of Christ, then that's not pagan. But we don't want to excuse the fact that Greek mythology and all these other pagan beliefs would not try to enter in and counter the truth of the gospel. So if we cut down a tree and then decorated it or whatever, well, if the, say the Canaanites started cutting down trees and decorating them, we might say, oh, looking back, that's a Canaanite practice. I cut down this tree and decorated it because it reminds me of Christ. I can't speak to the pagans and what they may be trying to do to upset, right? My desire to celebrate Christmas with the tree. So look, Romans 14, 5 through 6 says, one person esteems one day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it to the Lord and he who does not observe the day to the Lord, he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, and he, for he gives God thanks, and he who does not eat to the Lord does not eat and gives God thanks." Pretty much. If you believe your motive is to honor God and celebrate the birth of Christ, enjoy Christmas, right? Do celebrate, decorate. It works for you. I just told you why it doesn't work for me. It has nothing to do with the sabotage that the enemy's trying to do to keep me from recognizing Christ. It's just that I haven't been fully, so fully delivered from Christmas nowadays being a day I had hoped for, but then polluted with deaths, accidents, sickness, and this kind of stuff. I haven't fully been delivered from that, right? Right, but it's still a day like today that we need to honor Christ. Every day is a day to honor Christ. We honor people more in funerals than we honor Christ. Speaking people up and all the wonderful things they've done I think it would be fitting to have a funeral then for Christ every day so that we can remember his death and resurrection right Consider consider some of these people and I think this is going to be a help to me right now That some of the people that have died Let me get a grip They may be alive with Christ right now. We believe Christ is alive. He rose from the grave, right? And he's in the splendor seated by the right hand of his father. And so some of these people that we love, I'm not saying all of them, some of them are gonna be there. So I see a mission for us. It's to give. A mission for us is to give. Where I always looked at Christmas being something that I should get gifts. Well, how do you justify that? Well, they brought gifts to Christ. Myrrh and frankincense and stuff. Give me a Mr. Potato Head. You know, give me something. We need to bring gifts to Christ. What would be more fitting than to bring the fruit that he's looking for? Show up with fruit. do what we can to tell people about the gospel message, right? With this little time that we have left here, right? We are bringing gifts to the Lord. So the day of the Bema Seat judgment, that judgment will be rewarded. That makes sense? Okay, it makes perfect sense. Live our lives out. contrary to the way we've lived our lives to this very moment. Okay? It's never been good enough for God. He's the highest pinnacle of purity and holiness, and we fall so far below that. So our goal is to, every day, try to please the Lord. Try to please him. I have no gift to bring. Yes, I do. Get out there and tell somebody about Christ. Be rewarded. There's a Christmas gift. It's a Christmas gift for Christ. Right? So I pass out tracts and stuff. I know you guys are out talking and telling people about the Lord and stuff like that. I didn't want to pass out tracts because it seems so Jehovah Witness-y. The moment I come with my tracts, oh, here come one of them Jehovah Witness. No, no, no. This has happened to me before. I have to set the precedent. No, they may pass out tracts, but Christians pass out tracts too. So I can't let the pagans and the crazy cults or whatever the case may be stop me from doing what I have to do. And you can't either. None of us can. Right? Bless the Lord. Now, people are saying over and over, I don't even think I cut my own phone off. Let me see here. Yeah. People are saying, you're gonna hear a lot of pagan stuff. If they talk about Jesus, you know they're gonna talk about everything. And there are those that are, Netflix came out with that movie, The First Temptation of Christ, Last Temptation of Christ, saying that he was gay, that he married Mary Magdalene, All of this stuff, I'm not gonna touch. Look, all right, expect more blasphemy as we close in near the end. Expect it to come from everywhere. It's not just that you run into somebody one day and they're an atheist. Look, expect everybody to be an atheist and be surprised that somebody's a Christian, okay? Because that's where we're at. Okay, so expect it. Expect it on your job. Expect it in the neighborhood. Just think right now in your building that you live or the neighborhood you live in. Start counting Christians. I mean, real Christians. You're going to have a small number start to show up. Okay, the devil is working. And look, I hate to tell you, but when you start counting the young people, you know, just start looking at them as Antifa and attack people and, you know, Lamech. Complained was it Lemic? I can't I think I keep missing missing this up, but Who's read if Cain was justified then I'm justified seven times more or seven times seven seven? nonetheless youths tried to attack him and He ended up killing a youth and this is when back in the Old Testament before the flood All right. We're living in a time right now that there's some crazy stuff going on and it's demonic and And so what I don't want to do is get into a whole sermon about transitioning and transsexualism and trans-trans. We can talk about that another day. But it's silly to think that here's a holy God wanting us to live up to a holy standard when in fact he wasn't holy himself. but he would go and suffer this death as a sacrifice only suitable for God, but he had a blemish that makes no sense at all. Then everything's not satisfied. We should still be looking for another savior. You get it? Okay, so, Jesus, what about Jesus being married? Why couldn't he be married? That might come to your mind. I don't see why he couldn't be married. You know, I've been married. The woman at the well was married three times. There's nothing wrong with marriage, right? So there's some reasons why he shouldn't have been married, and I got a couple of them. So in a human marriage, a husband and a wife, they become one flesh. Jesus was pure. So he should marry one of us? You pure too? I'm looking. All right, now, do you join that and become one and still be a suitable sacrifice? It doesn't make sense, right? His relationship to his wife, would have raised some confusing uncertainties. If Jesus had become one flesh with the sinner, would that connection have tainted him with sin? Say his wife was chosen in an arranged marriage by his father. I mean, back in the day, that's all that would happen. Your marriage was arranged. You didn't get to go and say, I'm going to marry Bob, right? It would have been already set that you're going to be marrying Bob from the time you were born in some cases, right? And if you had to grow up and Bob was turning into Mr. Potato Head, you still had to go through with the marriage. You get it? And so what the Lord is doing is making sure this bride of his son doesn't turn into a potato head. He's working everything out in us to make us suitable, right, for his son. His bride was chosen. Just think about it. Samson chose his bride, a crazy woman, Delilah, right? But God chose us too. We crazy, but he had a plan for us. Samson, we crazy too, I'm trying to tell you. So you might look at it like, oh, that's a spiritual bride thing. Well, then let's stick in the spiritual sense of this thing, okay? Help me here, Lord. You know, because I was thinking about it this morning, it was frustrating me. It was really making me kind of angry. And we should have a level of anger when we hear people try to diminish the purity and holiness of God and his son. We need this purity and holiness because we're so, look, we need a standard. to live by, it's the truth. If we don't have a standard to live by, then we go by our own standard. Every man's standard is, and that's what's happening in the world right now. Everybody's thinking what I believe is my truth, and that's your truth, and we all got our own truth, and we'll live in harmony with all our different truths. It's not gonna work. It won't work, because the moment I disrespect your truth, You want to cancel. You want to cancel me. Look, you can paint this thing any kind of way you want to. Oh, we can all live in harmony with our own respective truths. Then why are you canceling someone that doesn't see your truth? Right? It's not going to work. We need one standard. The highest standard, right? The common denominator. We need this standard. And we need to look at the standard and see ourselves for what we are. Delilah types, Mr. Potato Heads. That's where we're at. Bless the Lord. So, We're the bride of Christ. Had he married a woman, say he married Donna. No, say he married Donna, okay? Then all the rest of y'all would be thinking, well, make her so special, right? And she'd be thinking that too, right? So let's all be like Donna then. Whatever she, buy the shoes Donna wear and the coats and the things, right? Think about what I'm saying. What we have here is it's not, what's not important to us is very important to the dignity and integrity of the Godhead, right? Okay, if for instance, he married Donna and she's a sinner like we all are, every man has fallen short of the glory of God, think about it. And she's a sinner, and he married her. What's to stop her from saying, you know, why we can't go down to the Humpty Dumpty? Everybody else down there, I want a divorce. I mean, consider this. These are only a fragment of the reasons why, first and foremost, he didn't come here to choose a bride. Today, we're choosing bride after bride after bride after bride. And this day, the Bible says what? It'll be like in the days of Noah when there'll be marriages and giving in marriage. Look, it's nothing for Elizabeth Taylor to marry 80 times, right? Yeah, so you get what I'm saying? The enemy is in there trying to pervert everything that God calls holy, number one. So Christ can't come, he wouldn't come here and marry. So let me get off that subject because I think you guys get it. It doesn't, wouldn't make sense because he would be disobeying his father. His father chose his bride, us. That's satisfactory to Christ. He doesn't need what we think he needs because we filled our desires in the ways we filled them. Okay, we ate off the tree. So we have this appetite. He didn't. So we need to bow down and let God be God and understand him. That yes, we are the bride of Christ for whatever that's going to turn out to be. God is satisfied with us, pleased with us. And he sees us as we're going to be. And we're going to be some happy, rejoicing people. You can't imagine, okay, where we're going to be in our enthusiasm. It's like I could see it killing us, but Him keeping us alive. At the same time, you know how they say that you're gonna fall down and throw your crown in front of him, but you're back up again with a crown on your head to throw it again, because you can't, look, he's gonna keep us exhilarated, is the word, because we'll be in his presence. We've never known anything like where we're going and what's in store for us. Our future is different than what we think. There's parallels. There'll be an earth, but it'll be an undefiled earth. It won't have death. No smell of it, no sign of it, no look of it, no treachery. Right? We want to hold out till the end, and we should want to come in. Pastor Jamie said it in a Bible study. We wanna come in with the Lord singing over us. We're talking about God the Father singing over your entrance. Over my entrance? You get it? It's a no. Look, we know each other, but we don't know each other's minds. Christ reads our hearts. Okay, if you could get in there, Tina, and see what's going on in my heart and mind most of the time, you say, oh, no, he ain't finna sing over you. It'll be one of those death dirges that... No way. But here's the deal. He sees us finished. Because look, if I say, I'm going to take you, Janetta, and I'm going to make you a fashionita, a fashionita, a needle, whatever it is, nista, I'm going to make you, and I was like, Juan, or if I was Juan, and I said, oh, come on, Janetta, I'm going to make you beautiful in the fashion industry and everything, and I'll put you all together and everything and get you all fixed up in the way I think you should look, I might get laughed at. I might, because look, one minute they love you, the next minute they hate you. But the work God is going to do on us, on you, on you, on me, no one, everyone will exclaim every time everyone sees everyone. Wow, look at you in this new garment, a body that's imperishable. Wow, it reminds me of the eunuch, who eunuchs will also be in this gala that we're headed for. That Esther decided, I'm gonna do everything Haggai says. She didn't do like the other women in the harem waiting to meet the king. She followed the eunuch's advice, right? And he got through with her, the king exclaimed and put the crown on her head. That's us. If we follow the Spirit like Haggai and Esther, if we follow that that Spirit is going to make us look like everything that when God sees us, give them crowns. Crown them. Crown them in my honor, in my presence. Put a crown on Dorothy's head. You get it? Look. The enemy has come to lie about this place, this Christmas present, okay? The enemy is not telling the truth about heaven. And I've said it before, okay? Let's look at this thing. Let's look at it properly. If the enemy's there saying heaven is clouds, and I said this before, little cherubs with harps, Right? That's the extent of it. Then you just billow in the wind and you're ethereal and disembodied and you just kind of float around. I might bump into you one day. Right? Okay. Look, if he can play down this place that God is trying to afford us and afford us in abundance, meaning you can have more or less, depending on the service you provide, based on what I've given you. I've given you, Barbara, everything you need. It might not be Teslas and mansions and all of this, but it's all you need to share the gospel. Bless the Lord. And if you use what I gave you, you're going to get so much more. Acknowledgement, praise, my father will sing over you, crowns, robes, rings, stones, stuff that will never perish. That potato head perished. You get it? Any gift that he gives us in eternity lasts forever. Ask the Lord, open up my heart so I can see this destiny you have in store for me. Bless God, bless the Lord. Is that Clephena? Man, I didn't know. Yeah, bless the Lord, I'll hug you. Yeah, man, all right, cool, cool. So yeah, but see, see how it's going to be? You're going to go, is that Beverly? Is that Clephena? We're going to be running into each other for life. Because when I do run into you at a funeral or run into someone at a funeral, we're older. We're next. Right? Perhaps. But in this reunion of ours, no way. Forever I'll be able to go over to Geraldine's and eat. And hang out. Forever. She'll always have what God has given her. It won't be rusting. And moths won't be flying around it. and thieves won't be hanging out waiting for her to leave. You get it? This is what we want. This is what we want, saints. We don't want to forfeit any bit of it. It's like an inheritance that you can have this much if you do this much, we'll do this much. Get the whole package. The abundance is what the Lord wants for us. This is a Christmas present. We're gonna bring our treasure into the storehouse. But what does that mean? Collect, get, look, have it on your tally that you witness, witness, witness, witness, witnessed. Don't know how to witness? Ask the Lord, give me boldness and courage and tell me what to say. Look, let me tell you what he'll do. He'll give you what you're asking for. And you won't have this fear anymore. And also ask Him, give me, beside my own flesh, the drive to work outside of my flesh so that I can witness to someone that I might otherwise see as a good friend, that I don't want to bring Christ up, or a sex maid, or any of these things that might fall into my mind. I need your help there. Look, there's nothing we can't ask God for. Let's be real. We have predispositions, but we can serve the Lord with His help. Bless God. Bless the Lord. A lady told me, this lady, she might be looking, but she told me, quit asking the people. You get it? And quit saying, bless the Lord, as if you need to hear from them, right? She told me, so now she'll probably never tell me nothing else. Because I did it so many times, and I'm trying to, it's not like I think I need confirmation as if I'm telling you a lie, but do I need to take another avenue to make it clear, right? That's what's happening, yeah. So I tried to tell her. So I had an Aunt Rose that came over one day and she told me I was getting every gift. I was eight. Aunt Rose came over and said, oh, no, I got that for you. I got your potato head and your slinky and all the things you love. I got them. Oh, on Christmas, you're gonna be so happy. I got all these things and I'm getting some more. What else you want? Candy land and all that. Aunt Rose got it, baby. And then my brother started telling me way after Christmas, call Aunt Rose and ask her where those gifts at. And Aunt Rose drank, by the way. She did a lot of drinking. So I didn't fully understand the impact from drinking at that age. But she didn't have nothing, none of it. She didn't have, as a matter of fact, I could tell at my young age that Aunt Rose was embarrassed by my call. You know, she was trying to weasel out of it and everything. And then when my brother asked me, he was like a mediator. He told me, call her again. I, nah, nah, nah. I don't want to do that to Aunt Rose. She can't come through. She can't provide. So I didn't want to do it. So I mean, it was sad, but true. We don't have what each other needs to satisfy God outside of satisfying God. And then he ties us up. in a unity. So it's what we do is we seek Him. Then there's your husband and there's your wife, in Him. There's your best friend and your, you get it? It's in Him. It's not me, what I decide. It doesn't make sense for me to believe that I could make a sensible choice anyway. You want to know about the first 30 years of my life? Okay. You want to know about some dingbat choices? Okay, so look, now they're starting to make sense at 63. 30 more years later, I'm filling deliverance that I've been praying for forever. Resisting is one thing, but filling the freedom is a whole nother issue. We can resist the pull to sin, praying and asking, but one day when you turn to yourself and say, I don't even feel that pull anymore. Right? I mean, look, I don't feel that one, but I still feel the need to go and slap somebody. Well, you're still a work in progress. But tell about the stuff that he does do, that he's able to do. It's a surprise for all of us. Our requests are not in vain. He wants to show up and show us. I can deliver you. Look, I might deliver you quickly with this thing and a process with that thing because in that process I'm going to use you and I'm going to reward you. I want to reward you. He wants us blown away. Isaiah 60 says, my heart will throb and swell with joy. That's at the sight of the people coming to him. This is Jesus at the sight of the people showing up on his holy mountain, that his heart will throb and swell with joy. He can't, look, it's gonna be that for him and that for us. Blown away. I can't see that blown away ending. I see just joy and beyond joy for eternity. We don't deserve what this offering tells. Look, we don't deserve it. I feel like I've been talking long, though. Sheila, how long I been up here? All right now, because we can go. All right, so I'm going to close in a minute. No, I really am. But look, what I want to say is there's ways that we can garner rewards, OK? Look, ask the Lord. Little things garner rewards. If you resist personal sins that only you and God know about, that garners rewards. You get it? You think that that doesn't deserve a reward because I should be living a righteous life. No, that garners a reward because you're not doing it for you. Whatever you're doing to honor Him, to seek His approval and to make Him happy garners you a reward, okay, of some sort. And any reward that you get from God, believe me, just one inkling of it is far more than you've ever had in your life here. Just the mere fact that it lasts forever. You might think, well, what would I need this for? We're gonna live forever. What would I need gold and stones and things like that for? It sets your, what it's gonna do is it sets your status. I'm telling you there's status in heaven. There's hierarchy there because that's why we have angels and we have archangels. And the Bible says some will reign with Christ. And while Peter, Who was it, Thomas and, Thomas and whoever the two twins of thunder were and they mother wanted one set on Jesus side and one on the right, one on the left. That's my father's appointment. Christ didn't say there's no appointments. He said, that's my father's appointment. And if you look in Joseph, where they came from, when he brought his whole family from, to Egypt from, I need help. But he brought his whole family to Egypt from wherever they were living in Jerusalem. And then the king, who's indicative of God, started giving his brothers appointments. So based on what you do here, Shirley, he'll say, she did a good, good, good and well job, my good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest. And let's see what I have for you. Yes, you can lord over Barbara for eternity. Look who knows all I know is that there are positions available for the faithful in his kingdom Why would I want to go in at any lower level? I might get to hang out with Christ for a whole day in eternity based on what I've done and since eternity is eternity I might be able to hang out with him more than once and Okay, let's open up our hearts and minds to this place we're going. This ain't me telling you, let's go to the Wizard of Oz. Then you pull the curtain and see some fool back there, right? This is real. And the Wizard of Oz, by the way, and other movies like it are really a work against the truth to play everything down and make it all look like a fairy tale. Bless the Lord. We inherit the kingdom of God, which it's our home. Mansions and mansions in his home, okay? We'll be living large. Don't seek being an elitist here, be an elitist there, right? So, praying and fasting, Matthew 6, says, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who's in secret. I got it. No. Oh, it's okay. Um, who's in secret. And then, and your father who sees in secret will reward you reward. Okay, bearing insults and being excluded for the name of Christ. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn you and call your name evil on account of my son. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy for behold, your reward is great in heaven. So if your reward is great in heaven, there should be a not so great reward in heaven. Okay, common sense, common logic. All right? Hospitality that can't be repaid. He said also to the man who had invited him, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Okay, so listen, if you, I keep thinking this is my tablet and it's not wiping, but if you want to give, don't give to these people on TV telling you you're gonna be blessed here with the cars and the diamonds and the Mercedes, first and foremost, even if that was true, they can't go with you to where you're gonna live forever. Number one. Number two, if they say that, you know to turn the channel. God is not promoting your wealth here. He gave you exactly what you need here. You look good today. So he's obviously giving you something. Right? If you want to make sure, go give it directly to the person that's in need, the blind, the lame, the go help that person. Because you're storing up rewards your father knows about. I'm not saying you can't send to UNICEF and these kinds of things, I'm not saying that. But look, go directly to the person if you can and transfer money from your pocket to theirs. They're not gonna tell you that. They're not gonna tell you that that'll get you a Mercedes here. They're gonna tell you, no, you send it to us. See, that's their MO. But God is saying, hey, nobody needs to know what you're doing, but I know. I know when you're helping them, right? And I'm going to give you 10, 20, 1,000 fold for what you've done. Imperishable, right? So faithfulness through trials and in this you rejoice though now for a little while if necessary You've been grieved by various trials so that the tested gene genuineness of your faith More precious than gold that perishes though It is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ You want the praise? You'll be in the glory and you'll be in the honor of God Because he will acknowledge you in that day So look, I'm not gonna go through all of these Because I know y'all anxious to get out and start living the Christian life You thought you had been until today So we all gonna march up Hey your Avenue Listen, saints, let the Lord use you. Follow the Spirit. How do I follow the Spirit? Ask the Lord. How do I follow your Spirit? How do I do that? That's the Spirit. I can't see Him. You can hear Him. If you're a believer, He speaks up every time you get ready to make a mistake. You feel it here or you feel it here. He's there. It's true. He's the one that tells you in the morning when you wake up, you should read your Bible first. Oh, I'll get to it. That's the spirit. Ask the Lord, make me in tune to the spirit. Make me in tune to his voice. Let me see the footsteps he sets. Help me follow the spirit. He'll lead me into all truth and into abundance. So defer what we're planning. Got a lot of plans here. I've had plans. I've been a web designer, a script writer, a book writer, all kind of stuff from day one. The moment I got a, look, even when I was on drugs, I had, I wanted to write for Living Color. That was working. I was working with some people that knew some people. I was trying to get some kind of something going on. Everything seemed to have some fruit, right? Until it perished. You know, where's the benefit of this? Okay, look, because I've been on rabbit trails rather than following the Spirit. And the Spirit's going to lead me into doing things for eternal rewards, not for these temporal rewards. Bless the Lord. Don't forget to ask. And so with that, I'm gonna say we have crowns, the crown of life, an incorruptible crown, the crown of righteousness, crown of glory, the crown of rejoicing, five crowns, get all your crowns. Don't walk away from here seeking a potato head. And with that, we're gonna pray.