Thank you for that song here this morning. Turn in your Bible, if you would, to Ephesians, chapter 5, and also Romans, chapter 6. We have two passages we'll begin with here today. Ephesians, chapter 5, and also Romans, chapter 6. We're blessed to have you in attendance with us this morning as we worship the Lord. The story is told of two men riding a tandem bicycle, bicycle two, up a steep hill, After much effort, they finally made it to the top. The front rider said, that was a tough ride. To which the second rider replied, it sure was. And if I hadn't kept the brake on the whole time, I think we would have flipped back. Working together, yielding to one another, is our theme today. The Bible tells us in Philippians chapter 2, verse 13, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, Let each esteem other better than himself. Esteem other. Esteeming other people. Now look in Ephesians chapter 5, the first few verses that we'll read, beginning in verse 21. The Bible says, Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. And he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let wives be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of the water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spots or wrinkles or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So want men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth him, even as the Lord the Church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and they shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery. I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you, in particular, so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverends her husband." Verse 33 summarizes all of what we just read, but it begins in verse 21, submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of God. One person said this, a good husband makes a good wife. It's a good statement. By the way, it could be reversed. You could say it this way, a good wife makes a good husband. Sees the good, perceives the good, helps establish the good in the spouse's life. That's possible. You find that being taught in Ephesians chapter 5. So how can we submit one to another? How can we yield to one another? How can we make this possible in our life? It all begins by yielding to God. Now look in your other passages in Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. Now if we are to yield to one another and prefer one another and defer to one another, we must begin with our yielding to God. Ephesians chapter 6 beginning in verse 13. Neither yield ye your members. There's our word again, yield. As instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Verse 16. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves, servants to obey, to servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Friends, when we yield to someone, we're saying, I'm going to serve you. I'm respectfully yielding to you. I am respectfully serving. When we're yielding to others, when we yield to God, we're saying, I don't want to follow sin, I don't want to serve sin, but I want to follow God. I want to yield to God. Look at the next verse, verse 19. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness. unto holiness. We make decisions every day if we're going to yield to our holy God or yield to our unholy flesh and the sin nature. We make a decision about who we are going to serve. Now the word yield means to stop resisting, to surrender, to pass something on to somebody or let somebody pass. Many of you drove here this morning, perhaps you drove by a yield sign and I hope that you actually yielded. because you could not yield and get into an oncoming traffic and have a wreck or have an accident. Just about two and a half miles from here, there was a major accident just yesterday. And I don't know what happened with that. If someone did not stop for the light or if they did not yield when it was yellow, I don't know what happened, but somebody got hurt because of that crash. And here we have a yield sign. All of us are familiar with this. And we have an opportunity and an obligation every single day to yield our lives to God. Here comes the Lord. Here comes His will. Here's what the Word of God tells us. And we can yield to that, submit to that, say, I'm going to serve what God says. Or I'm going to keep pushing my own way. I'll just veer into the lane of traffic of my life and make things pass my way. You can live like that and not yield to God. By the way, If you're unyielding to God, here's the crux of most of the message today. If you are unyielding to God, you're not going to be able to yield to other people. And you're in a marriage relationship where you want to be married one day, you're rebellious to God. If you're not submitting to the will of God, if you're not yielding to the Lord, what makes you think that it's going to be a good life? What makes you think you're going to have a smooth sailing in your relationship if you're not yielding to the Lord? You can't do it. It's impossible. Now we have a choice today. We can yield to the Lord or we can yield to sin. And in our personal relationship, we can yield to ourselves or we can yield for the other person. A successful marriage is not a gift. It's an achievement. That's what somebody said. I like that. Marriages work. It doesn't just happen. Oh, we're going to have a great marriage. It doesn't just happen. It takes work, it takes commitment, it takes determination, it takes guilty in serving the other person. In 1995, Christopher Reeve, the Superman, I've never watched the Superman movies, but this man who played Superman, the actor, fell from a horse. I remember that in the news. It was a riding accident, and it severed his spinal cord, paralyzed him from the shoulders on down. In the days following, he started to recover a little bit, He and his mother were considering pulling the plug and just letting his wife expire. Reeves said that in his book that he wrote about the experience, he said that his wife, Dana, when he was trying to speak with her, the first words that he could say that she could understand, he said, maybe we should let me go. In other words, let my life expire. But his wife, Dana, through the tears, persuaded him to fight back, saying, I want you to know that I will be here with you the long haul and no matter what, I will not. I am yielding. I am serving. I am giving my life to you. That's what we have in marriage. That's what we're supposed to have in marriage. I'm going to serve you. I will yield to you. Friends, today, the Lord can help us yield our life to Him. And the Lord can help us yield our life to Him. Our message, we can call it this, red triangles are okay. Red triangles are all right. Every time you see a yield sign from here on out, you think about this, answer these two questions. Am I yielding my life to God? And am I yielding my life, my relationship to God? Let's go to the Lord in prayer and ask the Lord to bless this time. Father, we thank you for your word today. We do pray that you would help our relationships. Help our relationship with you. Lord, we want to yield our lives and faithfully serve you each day. That's the desire of my heart. Help us be in the desire of all of God. And Lord, in our first relationship, let us be yielding. not pushing for our own ideas and what we want, but preferring one another, yielding to each other. Teach us your word today. May you be glorified. May your spirits, through your word, have free force to touch, to challenge, to change our hearts. In Christ's name, amen. The Lord can help us yield. An unyielding life to the Lord will not be a life that's yielding to other people. What happens when we yield our lives to God and in turn yield to other people. Let's turn back to the beginning, back to Genesis. Our first point this morning is simply this, we focus on others' input. We focus on the input of other people. If you are wanting to yield your life to God or yield your life to another person and prefer them or defer to them in everyday life, then you will focus on other people's input. Our example is Abraham. In Genesis chapter 12, begin reading the first six verses. Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and will make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Baran. And Abram put Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran. And they went forth to go into the land of Canaan. And to the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, a place of Moriah, or Morah, and the Canaanite then, and the land. Here is Abraham. called Abram at this point. He is yielding his life to the Lord. He has some important decisions to make. Where are we going to live? What are we going to do? Those are important decisions. And the Lord gave him direction. The Lord said, here's what I want you to do, and would you obey me? Would you do this? And Abraham responded, and he obeyed. And we can focus, like Abraham, on what God would have for us and some decisions that we are making. He submitted. He yielded. He obeyed the Lord. I read this article and it's very compelling and very helpful for families today. Years ago, a famous children's specialist said to a parent, when it comes to serious illness, the child who has been taught to obey stands four times the chance of recovery that the spoiled and undisciplined child does. That's an amazing statistic when you think about it. Those words made a lasting impression on that parent who said this, up until that time I had been taught that, and I just thought that one of the Ten Commandments was for children to obey their parents, never had it entered into my mind that a question of obedience might mean the saving or losing of a child's life. The reason I draw up that story today is that parents make a big difference in the relationships of your young people in expecting them to obey you, to yield to you. What is your will as a parent, your child? And following through and helping them be obedient to submit to what you have to them. Because if they're not going to submit to you and your rules and your guidelines and the whole, why would we say, oh, we want them to obey God when we don't expect them to obey us? And then we wonder about the relationships later on. How do they yield to someone if they refuse to yield to you? We focus on others' input in our decisions. All of us are making decisions. Every day you make decisions. Consult your spouse. Talk to the person. God gave you focus on others and put, not only in decisions, but in direction. The Lord says, I want you to go where I will show thee. Abraham didn't know where they were going, but he said, I'll show you where to go. And Abraham, he pulled off the stakes. He got his tent ready. He got everything ready to go. And he started to go. And they came to the place where God wanted him to go. And he followed the Lord. Abraham moves to a place called Bethel and he builds an altar there. A famine comes and God leads him then to go down into Egypt. After a while, after the famine leaves, he comes back to Bethel. Bethel is 10 miles north of Jerusalem. The name means House of God. It was there later on that Jacob saw the Jacob's Ladder and the angels of God ascending and descending. It was right there. It was an important place. He set up a house, if you would, and he put an altar there to worship his God. But God gave him direction. God said, every step of the way, I'll show you where to go. You just follow me. I'll show you. And Abram follows. Aren't you glad God does not leave his throne on earth? I mean, he's bright here. If you have a question, if you are a believer, the Holy Spirit of God resides within you. He lives in you. We have the word of God. God doesn't just leave us alone and, oh, I hope it all works out for you. He's there to give direction in our lives. I like playing toys, cars, and trucks with our son, Kyle. And some of the cars are just straight lines. They don't have any turning features on the wheels or anything like that. But one of them is an RC, that means remote control, and it says full function. So left and right and front and back and all of that. God gives us an opportunity for full function. I mean, there's decisions every day. And you have to know, where am I going to go? Where should I turn? Should I take a turn here and take this job? Should I take a turn here and marry this person? Should I slow down for a little bit? I mean, we have full-function lives, and God's right there with us all along the way. Just like He was there with Peter. See, good advice can be found. We have the Lord. We have other people in our lives where no counsel is. The people fall. but in the multitude of counselors there is safety. God gives people to talk to. Here's an idea about the idea of somebody. And ask someone, I'm having issues parenting and what should I do? Don't ask a peer, ask someone who's been there for a while and get some information and try to get some help. And God gives people to help give direction as well. Listen to your spouse. The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 3, verse 7, likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge. giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not in vain. We yield ourselves to God and to others, but we are yielding to focus on other people's intentions, decisions, directions. How about duty? Abram assumed many duties. I'm going to take care of Sarai. He didn't have any kids at this point. I'm going to take care of my nephew, Kod. I'm going to make sure that we have a house. I want to make sure primarily that we have a place to worship. I'm going to provide some of these things and see that these things happen. And he had some duties to worship the Lord. I found at least four times where Abram or Abraham builds an altar to the Lord. He moved to a place, God directed him there, and he said, the first thing we need to do is build an altar. He took responsibility for his household to worship the Lord. Men, take responsibility for your household to worship God. That's one of the first things we would do is set up an altar. God. He would provide for a house. Everywhere he went, he would set up a tent. The Bible talks about him in these tents. He would move, and he would move a little bit further, and God would lead him along this way. And I wonder what that would be like in their home. Sarah, guess what? This one's not going to leave. I made some improvements on this. Or this one, it has a floor in it, you know, less dirt. We put some material down. I wonder what it would have been like, you know. We could put this tapestry over here, there. It's going to look really good, this room. And he provided a house. He provided a space to live. He also established peace. Look over a couple pages in Genesis chapter 13. Genesis chapter 13. Look, if you would, in verse 7. There was a strife. between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle, and the Canaanites and the Perizzites dwelt then in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen, for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, I will go to the right. If thou wilt depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld, all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah even as the garden of the Lord like the land of Egypt of Thomas and Joachim. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan. Lot journeyed east and they separated themselves once again. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelled in the cities and the plains and fished his catch toward Sodom. Lot, we're brothers. We're family. You need to make a decision here. I'll let you make the decision because we need to have peace. He was willing to do what was necessary to provide for peace. His duties of worshiping the Lord, providing a house, and establishing peace in the household was very important to him. And giving choices to others, that's a good idea to do sometimes. That's deferring. What do you prefer? Then that's good for me. That's submitting, that's yielding to someone. He was yielding to his nephew-in-law at that, this place is great. You choose what you want. I'll go the other way. That's yielding in a great sense to the other person. He's seeking the thoughts of others. What do you think? What do you prefer about that? He is listening to the request of other people. By the way, young people, some of you are considering a Christian college or Bible college. I highly recommend that because it can help prepare you for marriage and for life. Simply for the fact that dorm life, you know, living with somebody else that you're not related to, sometimes that helps because you're going to live with somebody, maybe if you get married the rest of your life, it can help you prepare for it. And here's another, by the way, parents. If your young people can't get along with each other, solve that before you send them out to get married. Because if they don't know how to relate to each other, The brothers are going to have a hard time with their spouse because they are not practicing guilt. Make sure your home is a place of guilt. When you ask your spouse about a decision, I hope that you can, what should we buy? How should we live? Yeah. What direction do we want to go in life? Ask your spouse, young people, talk to your parents. If you're not married, talk to those around you. Find a counselor, someone that can listen, and listen to them. Find a Sunday school teacher, or a deacon, or talk to a pastor. Find somebody, get some advice and counsel, and listen, and yield your life to the Lord. The outside circumstances do not control your home, but you can let them. See, you guide the home. You control your home. You make your decisions. Oh, it's just a tough choice. And these outside decisions, these outside circumstances, they don't have to ruin your life. They don't have to do that. You can yield to the Lord. You can yield to other people no matter what you say. Later this week, I have a proceed, so I'm going to talk where I'll be out a little bit. I have a privilege to preach at Sunday. And I'm looking forward to hearing the recording of that. So I hope you come back and listen to that. Many years ago, I was playing basketball. And I was going up for a rebound, trying to grab the rebound. This other guy was going up for a rebound, and his elbow met my nose, and his elbow was. It usually happens that way. The elbows win. Well, my nose was relocated all the way over to here. And I decided, I'm going to take matters into my own hands. I went to the locker room. I wanted to keep playing basketball. So I had to stop bleeding. So I just went into the bathroom, looked here, and pressed right back. It sounded like it. Later on, and I finished the bathroom. Later on, I had my dad look at it. He was looking at it. He's not a medical doctor. He worked on it some more. We made it straight, which I think When we went to the ER late, late, late that night, they put a cast on, and no one looked. And one side, Harden, Burt, and Saul, I've had over 50 years, didn't even know them. And so it's called a deviated septum. I like that term, deviated septum. It's very practical for pests like this, because what can happen is you get off the ground. We can try to adjust things, make it work ourselves. We can try to get our relationship to work, our flesh, make it happen. But you know what I really needed? A doctor. What I really needed was someone to fix it, not just on the outside, but on the inside as well. And our marriages and our homes need to stay in place. We'll get off track. We'll go off track somewhere. We'll try to fix it ourselves, make it ourselves. But friends, if we're not yielding to God and allowing it to change, we won't find out. We might look good for a little bit, we might seem like everything's okay, but there's still some more work to do. Because ultimately, we may not be able to yield to God. We need to yield to God, we need to yield to others. And we focus on others' input when we decide, I'm going to yield to them with the decisions of what we're going to do. Number two, we follow who we are. Turn over to the book of Ruth. Go ahead and look at Ruth. So Abram was focused on other people who was ultimately focused on God. And as a result, he was an ultimate, a really a terrific example of yielding to the Lord. Then we find Ruth. And Ruth follows wholeheartedly because she is yielding to other people. Her first husband died. And she sticks around with Naomi. Now Naomi is from Israel. She and her husband had moved to Moab, and Ruth had met one of the sons, and they got married, but he died, and her sister-in-law was still there because her husband had died, and now they're all left alone, and Naomi's destitute. She has nobody, but Ruth is there. And Ruth, she's so yielding. She's got such a sweet spirit and such a kind, serving spirit about her as you read the book of Ruth. And we find that Ruth is wholeheartedly yielding her life to other people. Ultimately, she's yielding her life, of course, to the Lord. And Ruth is not always second-guessing the people that she loves. I mean, she's yielding her life. Look at Ruth, chapter 1, verse 15. So Oprah, she leaves, and Ruth paved unto her mother-in-law. But verse 15 says, she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people and unto her God. Return thou after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee. For whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so unto me, and more also, if aught but death part thee. to thee and me. We wholeheartedly follow when we are yielding to other people. While I'm yielding to people, you have that characteristic of focusing on others' input and following wholeheartedly. She was not always second guessing. What commitment do we find? She said, I'm just, I'm with you. By the way, most of our interpersonal relationship issues stem from a lack of trust for the other person. or lack of trust for their decision. You think about that for a moment. Why am I not getting along with this person? Why can't we work this out? It's because you either don't trust them or you don't trust their decision and not going along with what they're trying to do or what they're saying. And how practical that is. Now, a lack of trust is founded upon our personality superiority complex. I made that up. It's a big word. It means pride. The reason we don't trust people is because of pride. I've been hurt too much in the past. I've been married all this time to this person. I still don't trust them. There's a pride issue. There's a pride issue. And that needs to be addressed. She wasn't full of pride. She said, Naomi, I married your son. He died. Your husband died. Everyone around us died. But that's all beyond us. I love you and I'm going to stick with you. And even though you're destitute, you're not going to be destitute all your life because I'm right here with you. And I prefer to be with you. And I'm going to defer my life and serve you with my life." She absolutely trusted her. Think about this. They were living in Moab. Moab. And then they move from Moab all the way to Israel, and they go to a little place called Judah. She had only heard about it from her husband for a short time that he was married. And now she said, I'll just follow you. And by the way, traveling back then wasn't as easy as it is now. So it was a big deal to get on the back of a camel or a donkey or to walk. It was a big deal. She did it, and she followed. She was building. It was not always second-guessing. It was a lot. You second-guess who's found. It's always taken. Take it down. Have a doubt about it. Do you like it? Do you not like it? Ruth placed herself in the care of others. Notice what she said. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. You mean that house is good enough for me? Yeah, that house is good enough for me. Where you lodge is where I'm going to lodge. Your God, he will be my God. Your people, your people be mine. I don't like your relatives. Your in-law, all they're terrible. No, your people are my people. Are we yielding in this way like she is? Where you die, I will die. Where you're buried, that's good. That's fine. I'll be buried. That's fine. What you decide, Naomi, is good enough to me. And she said, and if the Lord wants to do more, I'll accept that. And that speaks about the grace of God. Martin left by God's grace. We get a lot better than we did before. God is so good to all of us. And in spite of their desperate situation, they sensed the grace of God. They knew that God was with them through the fire. What you choose, that works for you. And so she was going right along with that. Ruth placed herself in the care of others. Ruth worked hard at being a blessing to other people. She was not a sponge. Even though she placed herself in the care of other people, she had initiative. And she wanted to get some things done. She worked hard to be a blessing to other people. She did not say, bust in it for me. She didn't say, how's this going to work out for me? That was not her approach. She did say this, let me go, Naomi, and let me go and work and bring some food home. Can I do that? She did ask that. She wanted to be a blessing to other people. Look at chapter 2, verse 2. Ruth Amobitus said to Naomi, let me now go to the field and clean ears of corn after him into whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, go my daughter. How can I help? Now she had no children because they had no children. Her husband died before they could have a family. And so she was free to work. She was free to go out into the field. mother-in-law. She wasn't able to go and work, but she was able to go and work. She said, I want to do this. I have some initiative. I want to help and be a provider and be a blessing here. And so this is the approach she had yielding her life. She had a good work ethic. Chapter 2, verse 7. She said, I pray you, let me clean and gather after the reapers among the seas. So she came and had continued even from the morning until now that she carried a little in the house, in fields and Old days, such as this, they would have a little type of a house or a shack or something to get some shade from the sun. Maybe get something to drink. People might have some food to eat, be at the edge of a field. And so they said, well, she only tarried in the house a little while. She only went and rested for a little bit. She had a good work ethic. In other words, she's been working from sunup to sundown, and she rested right in between just for a little bit. That was the testimony that was given about her. That's the type of work ethic that she had. How could she do this? How could she live such a yielded life? Because yielding to others is the fruit of God. We love God, we want to serve God. We want to yield to God. If we love other people, we want to serve them. We want to bring food home to them, if you will. We want to make sure that they have things provided for them. Because we are yielding to God and yielding to others to serve us. 1 John 4, verse 19, speaking of Christ, we love him because he first loved us. In 1927, verse 50, Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up to God. Why did he yield? Because he loved us. Why did he die? Because he loved us. He took our sin, our payment, because he loved us. Believers today at the church who show love to others, when we yield to him, when we serve one another, Other people know that we are disciples of Jesus Christ because of our love for Jesus Christ. Our love for one another, deferring to one another. We follow wholeheartedly. Ruth completely trusts those who are faithful. Naomi, I completely trust her. Boab, Paul Boab comes into the picture in Ruth chapter 3. And he redeems her and claims her as his new bride. He's the Kinsman Redeemer, a picture of Christ redeeming his people for the whole world. and Boaz, he hears the testimony about her good work ethic. And he praises her for her attitude and her outlook and said, you know, you weren't trying to get married and looking for the young boys or the rich boys or all that. He said, I'm an older man, but it seems like you have some respect and you have some love and there's some wonderful things that I see in your life. It's all in chapter three. And he is ultimately then the kinsman redeemer. He says, there's someone else who's closer. It was in biblical times where They wanted to keep the family name going, we would say. And so they would marry a relative to keep the family name going and keep that family line, that heritage. And there's somebody closer than I am, but I'll see if he wants to marry you. The other guy wanted the land that he owned, but he didn't want to marry her. And so Boaz said, oh, I would love to have you to be my wife. Thank you. And she is yielding to him as well. You can read the whole rest of the story to see the sense of love and this wholehearted following. She followed Naomi, and then when she was married, she followed Joaz. And so she's a good example of someone following wholeheartedly. When we yield to fathers, we focus on others, but we follow wholeheartedly. And number three, we find a sense of satisfaction. A sense of satisfaction. Here's our example. You think about what Jesus Christ did for us. Now friends, today we need to find the will of God. God's revealed his will to us. God has revealed his will, the spirit of God to lead us and guide us. Matthew chapter 26, verse 39, Jesus went a little further and fell on his face in pain, saying, oh my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he said in Luke 22, 42, father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done. Jesus came to fulfill the will of God. He knew the will of God. Now that cup of trembling, that cup of suffering, all the intense agony and pain that he endured because of our sin. That's what we deserve. But he willingly took that and he suffered in our place. And he fulfilled the will of God. But it was because of us that he suffered. Because he was yielding to his life. Because of love for us. Could it be, in our relationship, that when we yield to other people, could it be that sometimes we hurt them? He was yielding to the Father. There he is, suffering and agony and suffering. Sometimes you yield to somebody in front of hurt. Sometimes you yield to somebody in front of cause. And you may not feel like, well, I don't really want to go through that. But if God wants to heal other people, sometimes it could hurt us. Sometimes what is in our best interest is that our best interest decides what is best for us. Lord, if it would be possible, let this cup pass for me, if there's any other way of salvation. But there wasn't, and there isn't. Only by Jesus Christ. Only by His finished work on the cross. We can be redeemed. We can have eternal life. What is convenient for you? Take second place in what is best for you. What is easy? What you would prefer? Take second place in how I can prefer myself and how I can show love to those around me. Find the will of God today and then finish the will of God. Jesus said it this way in John 4.34 Why, me is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work. And it was on the cross where Jesus said, it is finished! And salvation's plan was complete. Now we know that Jesus Christ, at the right hand of God the Father, received this, that through the work of redemption, it was complete, it was done. I challenge you today, if you do not know the finished work of Jesus Christ, trust Christ, Ask Him for forgiveness of sins. The whole reason God came to earth, that Jesus came to this earth, was to live a perfect life and die in your place. You deserve death. I deserve hell because of my sins. Sin separates us from God. Jesus yielded up to God. He gave His life to yield us to God so that we could have eternal life. Finish the will of God, Jesus said. There's a fulfillment to finishing the job. You can't sit down and rest for a minute. That sense of completing something that God has for you to do. There's a satisfaction in yielding to others. There are desires or perceived desires of other people that you meet. That's a blessing to you when you're able to do that. It gives you an increased perception of your own personal value and accomplishment. It allows you, when you are yielding to others, to sense The ability that you have to make a difference in the life of somebody else. It makes the opportunity for you to see the joy on the face of somebody else. And it shows that you value them. You are yielding to other people like Christ. Yielding from showing how much love. There are blessings from yielding to God and blessings from yielding to other people that are the intangibles of life. Friends, they focus on others' input. When you yield to other people, you'll have that. And when you yield to others, you will follow wholeheartedly. And you'll find when you do so, you'll have a sense of satisfaction in completing what God has given you. Dr. J. Wilbur Tappan, a preacher years ago, asked William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, he said, tell me the secret of your great life for God and man. Booth humbly replied, since the first day God put the poor of London in my heart, he has had all there was of William and Mary. I'm giving all myself to God, and because of that, I can give all this to these people around me. Friends, we yield all of our life to God. It makes it a lot easier to be yielding to the people around us. Philippians 2 verse 3, Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others. The esteem of others is better than the power. Hadley has asked this several times over the last few months. It's of large importance. He said, I don't have much of monetary value to give. But I do have a wedding ring that he gave me. I sold the one that I was married with. We sold that last week. He said, should I ask permission to marry you? And I said, no. I don't have much of value to give to this project, to give to Don. But I do have this wedding ring. Friends, let me tell you something. I trust her with every bit of my heart. The reason is that Satan wants to have a woman that yielded everything in the world, including his own life. My friends, when you yield your mind to Satan, when you yield to the decisions and choices and instructions of the mind, no matter what it comes to, this time it will come. That will enrich and further establish What happens when we yield our life to God and yield to others? I'll tell you what happens. We become better husbands and wives. We become better parents. We become better sons and daughters. We become better students and co-workers, better church members. Thank you for your good attention today. Red triangles are okay. Every time you see a triangle, a yield sign, ask yourself these two questions. Am I yielding to God? And are you yielding to yourself? Maybe there are some today, you need to yield to God. You need to follow the Lord. Go ahead and do this. Maybe you need to Join the church, be a part of what God is doing here. Maybe you need to yield to God. You've been holding back, not serving. You've been trying to get your interest accomplished, not serving like you know you should. Why not yield to the Lord today? There's an altar we call, an altar to run, to yield and pray. And ask the Lord, help me to yield to you. Maybe in your relationship you want to yield to your spouse. I need to prefer my son. I need to defer some of these decisions to him or her. I need to get their answer. Maybe God has challenged you in first love and first relationship. Whatever the need is today, we invite you to stop. And get that right to stop. Maybe you say, Pastor Harness, stop. I want to yield to God. God has taught me something about yielding to him or yielding to my spouse or to other people. God has challenged me about this thing called yielding. That's you around the sanctuary with your raised hands. Maybe you say, Pastor Hartley, you spoke about eternal life and trusting Jesus Christ. I could be forgiven of my sins and be saved today and have a new life. I would like to know more about that today. Is there anything you'd like to say? I don't want to know about anything. I just want to invite you to come and pray. Take this decision and give it to the Lord. Maybe you want to pray for your marriage. Maybe you're a young person and you want to pray for your future marriage. It's time to give yourself to the Lord. If you pray at home, you can yield to one another. Father, we thank you for what you are doing in our lives to commit these decisions to you. May you be glorified in our response to what you would have us do in yielding to you. Would you please stand to your feet as the candidates begin to play. The altar is open. Would you come?