True Value Brings Honor

0:00:00     Hey, did you know I can predict your future? That’s right. You catch today’s podcast and I’ll teach you how you can predict your future, too. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another more faith, more life podcast. Did you know I can predict your future? That’s right, I can predict your future. I don’t have to be a palm reader, a soothsayer, or even a prophet. I can predict your future because your future is predicted by what you value.

0:00:22     Whatever you value is what you’re going to become, what you’re going to have. For instance, if you’re a person who above everything else, you value money, money is your value system. You may value, not that you don’t value your family or other things sometimes, but your main value is money. Then I can predict your future. You’re going to be on a lot of vacations, aren’t you? You’re going to putting the money away and looking forward to how you can go and indulge yourself and use the money to indulge yourself.

0:00:51     Now, I can also predict that that’s if your love is, money is your central thing of your heart, well, you’re going to pay a price. There’s going to be a little price to pay in children or relationships or marriage or people at work or just your own emotional self, because that’s not how you do it. Now, Jesus said, just the difference, the difference of that is, he said, listen, if you want to find life, you have to do something. You have to learn how to lose your life.

0:01:16     Now, that’s very difficult in our culture because we’re not taught anything about losing our life. You can imagine today if somebody came along and said, hey, I’ve got a new system. And the system is you’re going to bow down to me. Now in the Great Britain, they still bow down to the king. Now, as the queen, not the king, they bow down. Those that do it, you don’t hear any complaints or anything because it’s in them, in their culture, that that’s what you do. But in America, can you imagine that they. I don’t bow down to anybody. But that’s not true.

0:01:48     You don’t bow down to anybody now in our culture. But if you were back in the roman empire and you say you wouldn’t go, I don’t bow down to anybody. Well, you’d only say that one time. And so everybody bowed down, right? It’s not voluntary. You lose your life. And so, and so you’ve got to understand your value system shows what you’re going to be and what we were trying to do, and what Jesus tried to do is say, I want to change your value system to the kingdom of God and prioritize the kingdom of God. It’s not, nothing else is in your life. Nothing’s important.

0:02:22     You just, you know, ignore family, ignore money, ignore your job or whatever, and just you’re this super spiritual saint or whatever. But it is a priority, the kingdom of God. And that’s where we falter, because we don’t know in our mindset and our culture how to prioritize anything but ourselves. Cause we’re a selfish, self-centered, catered to your self-culture. And it’s getting probably worse. But nevertheless, as we look through history, this is where I, you begin to shape your life and you shape your eternal life, which will be in the kingdom of God. If you’re a believer and you’ll be a part of this thing forever, right?

0:03:02     So you want to start shaping your life. So your value system around the kingdom of God will then cause you to live a fulfilling spiritual life, but you’ll start having a fulfilling relationship. It will spill out all different directions if you’ll prioritize the kingdom of God and the value system of the kingdom of God. So everybody has a value system, and most people do not, even though they go to church.

0:03:30     Most people do not have a kingdom of God value system because they don’t even know what it is. In other words, I believe in Jesus. I believe I’m going to go to heaven when I die. But most people’s value system is still back. But I’m here to pretty much take care of myself, to do what feels good to me, to try to make life as good and happy and easy, easy as can be. I remember a story, I don’t know how many centuries ago, it was a long time ago, of a teenage girl who would not recognize and, you know, bow down to the powers that be in that day.

0:04:04     And they said, if you do not confess the powers of the day, then, and not Jesus or not God, not Jehovah, whatever your beliefs, and you confess us, then, we’re going to burn you at the stake. Now, this is a teenager, a teenage girl. If you have a teenage girl in your life, or daughter or even younger, you can imagine how that’s going to be when the father shows up and the father shows up and they’re about. They’re going to burn her to the stake. And he pleads with her, he pleads with her, trying to say, listen, this is too high a price.

0:04:40     Your value systems off. It’s too high. But she didn’t listen. And guess what? Yep, they burned her at the stake. And you start thinking about, I don’t want that to happen to you. You don’t want it to happen to me, I hope. I don’t want that to anybody. I know that’s not where we’re going with this, but where does a person get that kind of value system to where it is so important that they do not deny the Lord and they get into the kingdom of God, that it overtakes everything else, becomes the top priority.

0:05:09     Now, chances are that’ll never happen to you or anybody. You know, hopefully that does happen around the world, even today. People that give their lives as martyrs. But that’s not our goal today. Our goal today is to talk about the mandate of honor and true value. Getting a value system brings, first of all, honor to God. And that’s the first thing we want to do, is get it back to, what are we doing with this, this thing called Christianity? What’s the purpose of it? How does it operate?

0:05:38     What was the focus before Christianity even? Because Christianity comes out of Judaism. What was their focus? Right. Well, there was a lot of problems. There were a lot of great historical things in Judaism. But when we get to the New Testament, unfortunately, trying to open the eyes of people, the New Testament can seem anti-Jewish, but it’s not. Jesus was not. You got to read. He went to the synagogue. He participated 100 in Jewish things. So did Paul.

0:06:10     But he was revealing the corruption and that the value system had changed, even though they’re still doing religious things. Okay. And so it gets a bad rap. Like, Jesus was anti-Jewish and still to this day, like, he’s not Jewish anymore or whatever. Now he’s Christian or whatever, and that’s just totally untrue. He was trying to reshape the value system of the Judaism of that day, and it turned out to be called Christianity.

0:06:36     But I it could have been anything called anything because it was a mixture of Jews and gentiles that were now combining together in their differences and same to have a value system that was God’s and the value system of the kingdom of God. So that’s what church is today. It’s people coming together with a fresh value system. We don’t have to dress alike. We don’t have to put rules about dress or hair to some degree. We don’t even have to agree on political views, since there’s a lot of politics going on in the world and all our views. But we do have to agree on the value system and mold ourselves into prioritizing that value system.

0:07:19     And as you do that, your life will get better. God’s value system really works, right. And unfortunately for many people, though, they’re never going to get it because God’s value system is not going to prioritize you, okay? You’re going to be in it. It’s going to be great if you do it God’s way, but it’s not going to prioritize you. And so with that in mind, we’re not used to that. We’re not ready for that. We’re not ready to un prioritize our feelings, how we feel every time we wake up, how we feel every time we go to bed, how we feel, you know, how people make us feel. You hurt my feelings.

0:08:01     You hurt my, you know, how many people are going around you? Well, you hurt my feelings. Yes. Well, that’s the end of the world then, isn’t it? Because your feelings are the most important thing about you, right? So in other words, instead of developing character, strength, sacrifice, loyalty, all the great things that make people great and sets a value system to where now they can value other people, they value other thoughts. They value the thoughts of other people.

0:08:29     And it just changes everything in relationships. You become a better person in reaching other people, if that’s what you think it’s about. But we want to back, let me back up there just a little bit, maybe off my subject, but I think it’s really worthwhile. Is Christianity over the years through the Catholic Church, probably particularly. But now it’s in Christianity, too, is Christianity is about helping people. It’s about humanitarian needs, helping people.

0:08:57     And so we get together and people start ministries around helping people. That’s okay. I was talking to somebody the other day and they said, you know, their whole ministry is to help the homeless. All right, but that’s fine. But then that can happen. But that should not be your first priority. Your first priority is to get God’s value system and honor goddess. All right, honor God and gather together with purposeful honor. You could say, okay, I got it, I got it. I get this.

0:09:29     Well, I’m honoring God by helping this homeless person. Yes, that’s true. That’s a good thing, too. But that’s not how it all started. It all started with Judaism into Christianity, where people gathered to honor God. They honored God and they got together to prioritize their lives, to reset their minds, their hearts, their eyes, their ears, right, their mouths, to make the kingdom of God the priority and God’s value system.

0:09:59     And we take time to honor him, to speak to him, to get together in a group. And together we’re going to honor God. We’re going to say honorable things, we’re going to sing honorable songs, we’re going to preach honorable words, we’re going to preach kingdom God things, then go out and help the homeless. But what we don’t want to do is go around and substitute that person who’s laying, you know, living in a cardboard box and prioritize them as though. Now that’s my focus because they’re almost like, that’s a God thing.

0:10:33     They’re not God. That person in the cardboard box is important, but they’re not God. You have to have a God priority and a God speaking relationship and spend that time doing it to set who God is in the world and take away all the bad things said about him and set it right and get it, get it right. And so the value system that you have will determine the direction of your life. And I’m encouraging people, if you’re going to be called a Christian, if you’re going to say you believe in the Bible at least and sometimes go to church, I’m not sure what you’re hearing when you get there, if it’s a God’s value system.

0:11:12     Unfortunately, most people are hearing sermons, which is human value system, reiterating how valuable you are to God, rather than us getting together to declare how valuable God is to us. Get it? Ah, simple. Simple. But it’s life changing. It’s a life changing time when you go, ah, that’s the difference. I am valuable. You are valuable, but you’re not first valuable. My life is not to, not to prove, not to defend my value.

0:11:47     My life as a Christian is to take on the value of God and declare his value, honor God. And as we restore that value system of who God is. And my goal, especially come, especially in our gatherings, is to not now have a sermon on how valuable I am. Yuck. I know. It happens. That’s, that’s what’s happened. That’s what’s going on in many different forms. They’ll add scripture and they’ll throw some God in and all that kind of stuff.

0:12:16     And it’s not 100% wickedness or anything like that, but the focus is off. And so that’s why we’re carrying with us the world’s value system. That’s why we still have heartache and divorce and just families that are divided, and trouble and tension and depression and anger and offense. And then that anger and offense spills outside of the home. Right? We see it on the Internet, we see it against the pastors. We see against each other.

0:12:52     It’s just everywhere, everywhere. So it’s the value system, though, because we’re so, we have so highly valued ourselves and our feelings and protecting ourselves from ever getting our feelings hurt, protecting ourselves from ever getting embarrassed. Nobody wants to be embarrassed, but you know what I’m saying? And be, you know, in this cocoon of, I’m going to just not get out there and do it because I don’t feel safe or whatever around other people or whatever. I don’t want to trust anybody or things like that.

0:13:20     And so we got to change our value system. When we put the value system on God, it’s going to spill over then into every other area of your life. And it’s just rare. What I’m telling you is more rare. But I can predict your future if your value system is off, not on God. And you call yourself a Christian, you at least believe in God, and you have no value system of God at all. There’s no value there. In other words, I believe in God. I believe in heaven, I maybe believe in hell, whatever.

0:13:47     But you have no value system or fruit of a value system where you’re prioritizing, honoring God, setting it out, getting together, and so let’s get together, honor God, let’s learn about him. Let’s learn what’s important to him. Doesn’t matter if it’s important to you. I had people. I’ve had people come in and we’ve got a great worship service going. Everyone hands raised, and people are singing and they look so happy, and then somebody else looks miserable. Well, I just don’t feel like worshiping God. I don’t feel like it, and I don’t know what they expect me to say, but usually my answer is, yeah, so.

0:14:25     And your point is? Cause you’re not in here to feel anything. You’re not in here to feel something. You’re in here to have God feel something. Oh, wake up every day like that and your whole life changes. And now the blessings of God, the favor of God, all the things that we want, and we do hear about it. We hear like, it’s available, but then you have the frustration. Like, I hear about prosper, God prospers us. God delivers us.

0:14:56     God gives us the joy of the Lord and all these great things. But then you go like. But I go home and there’s strife and there’s fighting and I’m lonely. I’m married, I got kids, but I’m lonely. I have friends. But I’m lonely. I don’t know what direction my life. I don’t know who I am. Some people are like, I don’t know, what am I the wrong gender? Was I born the wrong person? Is that the problem? What, was I raised wrong? Should I not ever have gone to church? Maybe it’s the church’s fault, all these confusing things that go away because you’re realizing your humanity is not to come first.

0:15:33     It comes, but it doesn’t come first. The kingdom of God comes first. Seek the kingdom of God first and prioritize that and go, like, your feelings do not come first. God’s feelings come first. Well, that’s hard for some people because they don’t know how God feels, right? They have no idea because they haven’t sought him to find out. And so you still, like, I’m a believer. I want to go to heaven when I die, all that kind of stuff.

0:15:58     But as I said, maybe here last week or on some other people said the problem is people want to go to heaven when they die, but they don’t care who’s there when they get there. But if you prioritize in your feelings, I want to know. I want to know Christ, I want to know Jesus, I want to know God, want to know the kingdom. I don’t know how God feels about stuff, and I want to adjust my value system. So therefore, then the old saying, you die to yourself, well, that sounds miserable, I guess, but it’s not.

0:16:23     It’s that your priorities of humanity and your human thoughts are not taking over your life. They’re still there. God cares. Yeah, God loves you. Your humanity is important. You as a human, of course God loves you. But when you go to a church where humans are being prioritized as you are, the most important thing to God, and God cares about you, and God loves you and God loves me and all this. That’s all true, but it’s not a priority.

0:16:49     Life gets off, Christianity stops working. And so what we need to do now is restore a proper value system. Today I hear the word revival thrown around and there’s so many things to learn about that. But one of the things that happens in a true move revival, true revival, is people change their value system. And when we did the smith and outpouring and we went to church five days a week for three years, over three years, three and a half years, just mind boggling to most people because they were long. Services showed up at 06:00 630 stayed till 1030, 1112. Some people stayed till 01:00 I don’t know how you do it. How did you do it? I don’t know.

0:17:28     We changed our value system. When your value system changed, he said, you know, how did you go to church five days a week? Well, because we didn’t go to play soccer and we didn’t watch Netflix. We didn’t rent movies. Cause that’s what you did back then. You had to rent them, you know, on. You had to go down to the store and get them, you know, we didn’t do that. And. Okay, we just changed. Did you miss it? Was it horrible? Oh, how did your kids do it? Going to church all the time? We changed our value system. We had a blast.

0:17:55     We had a blast. Our kids were together with other kids. It wasn’t just us. They were together with other kids. And we’re having fun, and we’re doing family stuff like they did 150 years ago, before they had all this entertainment. They had to find. They did family things. And one of the things families did was they went to church. Now, of course, if you watch movies and you see churches and movies, they’re all bland, stupid, boring, ritual, legalistic, all that. But that’s not how it was. That’s not how it was. There were great moves of God and the pioneers and et cetera.

0:18:26     Okay, but anyway, to be able to change your value system and value it on God, then it’s going to change your life. So I can predict your future. If you get a value system of goddess, start finding ways to honor God and get the mandate of honor and find out, what can I do? What can I do that brings honor to God and things of God. It’s elementary, but feelings are very elementary, okay? Because that’s not really what anything is about. But let’s put it in that, because, like, as I said, people get their feelings hurt all the time, right?

0:19:00     And so if you’re prioritizing your feelings and that’s where you really are, and that’s where most people are, even though they go to church, their feelings, they want to go to a church where they feel comfortable. Okay, okay, okay. I get it. But come on. Your whole life is around feeling comfortable, not just going to church. Everything’s about you feeling comfortable. And instead of picking things that say, well, I want to find someone that can challenge me. Cathy’s been talking. My wife Kathy talks to people and says, you really need to try to listen to Pastor Steve, because he will challenge your faith.

0:19:35     He will not soothe you in your level of faith. He will challenge you in your faith. What an adventure it’s just life gets so much better to where I will what you want, God. Your will is more important to me than my will. It’s simple. That’s been ever since Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane and said, not my will, but your will be done is the standard to Christianity, but we’ve lost it altogether. So churches now are everything about us and everything about who we are and our feelings and making us comfortable and come to the church. And so great strides are made to make people feel comfortable.

0:20:12     Right. I remember you that have been with me for years and years. You’ll know when we had those five services a week. And they’re long. They’re long. And one of the things about the services that everybody always says is, oh, it was so cold in there. I got cold. I got cold. Why do you keep it so cold in there? I said, because when it’s cold, people pay attention. So, yeah, most of the time you’re supposed to make everybody feel as comfortable as possible.

0:20:41     But I didn’t quite do that, did I? And so people, when they had the wrong value system, it’s been a disaster for years and years when God would, by the spirit of God, would warn people. One of my favorite examples is the 1930s, particularly in Germany, but not just in Germany, but in Europe, towards Jewish people. As in our country today and in the world today, anti-Jew, anti-Semitism is exploding.

0:21:10     I am just overwhelmed. I cannot believe with the idea of accepting people the way they are. We’re supposed to accept everybody, and here they’re pressuring us to accept everybody’s gender or gender change or pronouns or whatever or whatever thing really pushing that agenda. But when it comes to the Jewish people, they’re not accepting them. No, there’s anti-Semitism on campuses and in our country and everywhere and rising anti Christianity.

0:21:41     And like, I thought we were going to accept everybody. I thought everybody got to be what they wanted to be. If you wanted to change and be a girl instead of a boy or a boy instead of a girl, I’m supposed to just, okay, that’s okay, whatever you want to do. But how come if I want to become a Christian, you don’t? Look at you, hey, that’s okay. Whatever you want to do, you want to be Jewish. If you’re Jewish, whatever, that’s okay. But it’s not there.

0:22:01     So it shows the hypocrisy of humanism and self-centeredness. Right. People are centered on what they want for themselves, and it doesn’t work. And so the Jews, not just the. Because there were other groups, too, that got persecuted. But they are the most well known in world War two. Across Europe, I believe the Holy Spirit was pushing and did encourage people to move, get out, go to America, go here, go there.

0:22:31     And sometimes it was difficult because they found antisemitism would not let them move, or wouldn’t they put them on a boat and wouldn’t let them land anywhere. Generally, many, many Jews stayed where they did not need to stay because their value system was in. I get it. Don’t you? I get it. We’re there. We’re there. We’re in the same boat. Their value system was in, you know, their job, their income, their friendships. They have a shop. They shopkeeper, bread keeper, tailor, or whatever. People sold potatoes, whatever they did. And that’s where their value system was. And they would have to leave that value system that they knew and just hope that perilous times were not coming.

0:23:10     And that’s where we are in America today, I think, is we’re on the edge of hoping that perilous times don’t come. And the only way we can turn back the perilous times according to the Bible, whether you like it or not. I guess I get my opinion, is perilous times, I believe, are coming because people are purposing perilous times. There are people in our country and on this earth that are purposing perilous times. For Jews, they’re purposing perilous times. For Christians, they’re purposing perilous times for parenting, for parents deciding what’s good for their children, for actual parenting, for value systems, valuing God, valuing life, they’re purposely setting up perilous times with those that don’t agree with them.

0:23:54     And the only way we can do that is have a change of heart in those that want to cause us harm and do harm to our country. But you can’t do that while you have a church that’s set on the same thing as they are. We’re set on humanism, my feelings. I want to go to a church that makes me feel good. I want them that understands me. I want people, they understand me, they love me the way I am. They don’t have any expectations on me. You know, they tell me I’m valuable just the way I am, and, well, that’s not Christianity. Christianity is we lay down our lives.

0:24:26     We value and we decrease. Now, that doesn’t mean we go away. Decrease doesn’t mean disappear. We decrease and we increase. God in the presence of God, the value of God, the knowledge of God. Right? And we increase in that. And when you do that, your value says, and Jesus said, you’ll find your life. And I think maybe some people think, well, you’re going to find eternal life, which is, they think is way in advance.

0:24:51     But, you know, eternal life is now, eternal life starts when you have eternal life. It starts, right? And it just goes forever. It means life goes on forever. And Jesus said, you’ll find yourself. If you’ll lose yourself, you’ll find yourself. Well, how many? How many? Not many churches out there that are called the lose yourself church? Well, they don’t have to call themselves that, but there needs to be that element that is Christianity, teaching us, helping us together, encouraging us to lose ourselves together so that we’ll find life, not only find Jesus, we’ll find life.

0:25:24     And that’s what we’re missing. We have billions of people that claim, millions of people that claim they found Jesus, but they haven’t found their life, they haven’t found themselves, and they should, but it’s because we’re going the wrong direction. And our preachers are taking us to the wrong direction, teaching how to find ourselves. And then we found life and then we can’t find it. And then it just goes on and on and on. Well, you’re getting the point of that, that we have a mandate to bring honor to God.

0:25:52     And that honor when we prioritize bringing value and we come in and say, okay, I want to make God feel good today. All right? It’s not about me feeling good God, it’s about you feeling good. You know what? When I make God feel good, good things start happening to me and I feel good. It works very well. So I hope you can get the mandate of that. We have today. The mandate to value. True value brings honor.

0:26:15     And so when we value, we bring honor. When we bring honor, we bring life to ourselves. It’s just a great, great system, and there’s so much to talk about and there’s so much to learn. If you’d like to get this study guide from the one I’m holding in my hand right now, you can get it for free. You go to https://morefaithmorelife.com and you can download it. And this is part four of, I think, The Mandate of Honor. There’s been one, two, three. Now there’s four. You can get them all. And you can, you know, hold it in your hand, print it off, hold it in your hand and just go over it. And there’s scriptures on here, and there’s, you know, quotes on here. So do that, would you also, I continue to mention If You Only Knew: A Guide to the Clueless Generation. You’ve got to get it. It’s still free if you want to download. It will cost if you want to buy a copy of it and hold it in your hand.

0:26:56     So I hope you get this right. I can predict your future. I can predict your future by what you value. Till next time. Bye.