Father, we just thank you and praise you tonight for those
that haven't shown up for attendance, we're thankful that
we're able to impart some things that'll be a blessing tonight
that we've worked on over the last month.
I thank you and praise You that as we continue in the months to
come, that everything that we have to say has a value to it,
something for us to consider to be able to get an understanding
of what is expected of us and how we can be involved in your
business, which is the only business.
So it will ever, ever last forever.
And we want to thank you and praise you for our part in it.
We give you praise for the word tonight and we thank you for it
in Jesus name, Amen. Tonight we're going to talk
about vision and I kind of titled this as a subtitle to
that. What are you looking at?
OK, now I want to give you a
reminder tonight and if you can fill these in for me would be
great. We learned these when Apostle
Earl got to the point of Kingdom.
Most of you know my story in 2007.
It was a Black Friday. I was spending time with the
Lord. The Lord told me two things he
said. One, you're not Kingdom minded
enough. I thought, what does that mean?
OK, didn't tell me, OK. And so it wasn't until a year
later, that was 2007. It wasn't even year later, it
was a half a year later when we came down here and Pastor wanted
to be able to go to a conference.
And when we moved down here, I was supposed to go that
conference with him. We arrived at 2:00 in the
morning on a Tuesday. We were all wore out.
Pastor said I'm going to go to the conference.
He said you don't worry about it, I'll just let you know what
it was about. Great thought that what would
happen didn't happen, OK, because he was so changed from
that one conference in the arena of understanding the Kingdom
like he had never seen it before.
He decided this is the way that the Lord wanted the church to
go. So Paul Sorrell, you know, began
to teach us. He taught us for four weeks.
Were you here? It was 4 weeks call and it was
basically as talking about the unseen realm.
OK and I'll never forget he had me right as we got here.
Print a T-shirt and it was a black T-shirt with black ink and
it said, you know, let's see the unseen.
Now you could see it when the light shined on the shirt just
about right, but you had to really get up on it to figure it
out right. And I'll never forget that he
taught that that particular Sunday morning.
It was June the 7th, 2009. We got here in May.
So the Lord was getting ready to show me what he meant that
previous year on understanding the Kingdom.
The only thing that I had studied it out.
I, I thought, that's what you're supposed to do, that the Lord.
I want me to study it out. And I thought, OK, I'm going to
study it out. I had a opportunity to minister
back in Oklahoma two weeks in a row and I talked about the
Kingdom. I had no idea what I was talking
about still. And then when Pastor dropped the
Kingdom on us, the one thing that clicked with me is
understanding we're talking about a government.
Well, he had basically gone to see Miles Monroe.
Miles Monroe, one of his first books out, was Rediscovering the
Kingdom. All right, when Pastor got back,
he had bought the first three books that that Miles had
written. And he had and and I was going
into his office telling great service.
OK. And I saw those three books.
Well, I go to the other side of the desk and I'm looking in
books over kind of taking a mental snapshot of the covers.
I went and bought those books. You guys have probably heard the
story. All right.
And blew my mind. I mean, this is what we've been
waiting for. And this is before he, he
dropped the message on us. And so I'm, I'm, I'm thinking,
man, I'm getting what I missed out on.
And, and all of a sudden I'm telling Josh about it.
And Josh says, Oh yeah, pastor told us about that and he told
us not to read it. And I go, oh, that's weird.
OK, well, he never told me. So I just kept reading.
And then all of a sudden, 5 minutes later, I get a phone
call. I should have known you'd buy
them books. I said, yeah, man, they are
awesome. And he goes, how far are you in
the first one? I said about halfway.
And he said shut the books, I don't want you looking at the
books until I get done. I said, OK, put them on the
shelf. But I remember the third book,
the cover, because I looked at the covers pretty good before.
I just decided I'd wait, right? There's four things that Miles
said in there I want you to listen to, he said.
These are the greatest, OK? The greatest tragedy in life is
not death, but life without a purpose, OK?
The greatest challenge in life is knowing what to do.
I changed that a little bit, and I'll give you the word that I
added to it. OK, Miss, the greatest mistake
in life is being busy but not effective.
But the big, the biggest or the greatest failure in life is
being successful in the wrong assignment.
So tonight I have a question on each of those because when I got
to the tragedy all right, and he said a life without a purpose,
he said challenge. He said knowing what to do.
And I added the word next because sometimes we may be in
the middle of what to do, but what do we do next?
I always want to know, Lord, what is it?
What is it we need to do next? Because if we obey the first,
there will be a next, OK, all right.
Third thing was a mistake. The greatest mistake in life is
being busy and not effective and being a failure in in life is
being successful in the wrong assignment.
So the question that I have that we need to really purpose to get
in US tonight is who gives us the purpose, all right, what to
do or next? All right, giving us something
that will be effective and giving us something that is the
right assignment. That's that you, we have to ask
who gives us that? I'm going to tell you, and you
should already know, it's God. If we want to be a success in
life, we have to do what He wants us to do.
Now when we talk about vision, one of the things that I'm going
to give you, I'm going to give you several scripture tonight
and I'm going to read them all. OK, Psalms 127 verse 1 is where
I'm starting and this is what Psalms 127 verse one says,
except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build
it, except the Lord keep the city, the watchman awaketh, but
in vain. So the first thing that we have
to ask our ourselves is it when it comes to our vision, all
right, or comes to a vision, we need to understand who's
building what we got going on, whatever it is that we've got
going on. We want to know and identify who
it is. All right now concerning, you
know, life and provision. OK, I want to let you know what
we should be looking at. OK, if we're going to talk about
vision, we're going to talk about what should we be looking
at? And I want to remind you of
Matthew, chapter 6, verse 26 through 29.
Now remember, chapter 6 is in the middle of the Sermon on the
Mount, Chapter 5. Jesus went up to a mountain, sat
down, called his disciples to him and began to say, and he
goes starts a sermon. OK, he gets into chapter 6.
That's where we find at the beginning of chapter 6, how to
pray. We find out how to give alms.
We find out how to fast. We find these things out.
Then he goes into the realm of the way that we are supposed to
see provision. All right in verse 2026, he says
this. Behold the fowls of the year,
for they sow not, neither do they, nor do they gather into
barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much better than they?
All right. The word behold in there is a
Hebrew word in Bleppo and in Bleppo.
I'm sorry, it's a Greek word in Bleppo.
Listen to the definitions. To look on, to observe fixedly,
all right, to look at with the mind.
So what is Jesus telling us here?
He said, listen, when it comes to provision, when it comes to
and we're going to equate this to business, OK, When it comes
to that, he's telling us what we need to fix our mind or what
should we be looking at? He said, behold the fowls of the
air. He said it isn't a casual
glance. Oh, oh, there's a bird over
there. He's saying, no, he wants you.
And the last one, it says that you, you see with your mind, in
other words, you think, you begin to ponder and think about
this bird. OK, Jesus said that.
He said you. I want you to look at this is
what you're supposed to be looking at when it comes to
understanding provision or increase.
He said, I want you to behold the fowls or the birds of the
air. Then in verse 27, he said, you
know which of you by taking thought can add 1 cubit unto his
stature. And he said, and why do you like
take a thought for Raymond? And he says the word consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not neither
do they spin and and the word consider is is the Greek word
catamanthano. You don't need that.
Just just note that this listen to this.
It means to learn thoroughly examine carefully.
So when we ask the question, what are we supposed to be
looking at? I don't know about you, but I
want to start looking at what Jesus told us to look at in the
vision that He had for us. And he said, Yet I say unto you,
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
of these. Wherefore if God so clothed the
grass of the field, which is today is, and tomorrow's cast
into the oven, shall you not? How shall he not much more
clothe you? O you of little faith?
Therefore take no thought saying, What shall we eat, What
shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
For after all these things do the Gentiles seek?
For your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these
things. Then we get to verse 33, which
all of us should know. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto
you. He said, take therefore no
thought for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take care of the
things of itself. And sufficient unto the day is
the evil or translated trouble thereof.
So sometimes we get caught up in what we're living instead of
taking time to look and see what it is that God wants us to see.
Sometimes our businesses, sometimes the the lack of
business or too much business or things like that can distract us
from what God's really wanting us to look at.
All right now, let me give you the purpose.
You know, the purpose that we want to talk about is this is
help business stewards understand the God-given vision
that should manifest in business, daily business
activity, right? We want to make sure that when
we're in business or we're doing something that we want to make
sure that God is, is the one giving us that vision and
showing us how to do it. Because he's, if he's giving you
a business, he lets you know in advance his vision of your
business that you're supposed to be involved in.
Now I was talking to Seth the other day and I said, Seth, if I
asked all the people here, now you got to imagine with me, you
got a lot of people here, OK? And, and The thing is, is that
I, I said, if we asked everybody in the crowd, how many of them
were told by God in their prayer time and their different things
that he wanted them to start the business they're in, How many do
you think would tell us that? And he said not very many, which
is true, OK. Most of us wind up in business
because we have an interest or we have a talent OR we have a
skill. And most of the time we think
about the fact that, you know, if we're working for somebody in
that skill, we see a lot of problems with them.
And we think I could do that better.
And that's usually the thought that happens before somebody
goes into business for themselves is that we could do
it better without knowing the cost, without knowing why we
charge so much. I had somebody years ago come to
me and they said we want to go into business because we can do
this cheaper than the other guy. And I said, OK, before you do
that, let's talk about overhead, Let's talk about, you know, cost
of materials. I mean, you're saying that you
can make this same product, but the fact that you don't have a
place to make it yet. OK, it's going to be interesting
for me to find out the rest of the story, OK?
So be cautious about the fact that you think you can beat
somebody in price because there may be a reason they have that
price, the salaries, the everything.
OK, So you got to be careful about that.
But when it comes down to that last statement that I just made
is that the Lord has told us and what and I said in there, He
said that if God has given you a business, he lets you know in
advance the vision of the business activity you're
involved in. Let's let's take a look at a few
things that God, what he sees about us in business.
OK, let's see what God sees. All right, Deuteronomy chapter
8. Now when he took the children of
Israel into the land of promise, he gave them a picture, He gave
them a vision of what it would look like in advance.
And if you start in verse 7, he said, for the Lord thy God
bringeth thee to a good land, a land of brooks and water, of
fountains and depths and springs out of the valleys and hills,
and the land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees,
pomegranates, land of olive oil and honey.
A land wherein you will eat bread without scarceness.
He said you will not lack in anything in it.
A land whose stones are iron and out of whose heels you'll dig
brass. He said, when you have eaten and
are full, then you shall bless the Lord thy God for the good
land which he has given thee. He said, Now beware that you do
not forget the Lord your God, and not keeping his
commandments, his judgments, his statutes, which I command thee
this day, lest that when you have eaten in are full, you have
built goodly houses, and you dwell therein.
And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and silver and
gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then
thine heart will be lifted up. And you forget the Lord your
God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt from the House
of bondage, who LED thee through with great and, and LED you
through that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery
serpent scortons and drought, where there was no water.
Who brought thee forth out of the water, out of the rock of
Flint? Who fed you in the wilderness
with manna, with the fathers, who knew not that he may humble
thee and and prove you to do the good at the latter end.
And he said, And you'll say in your heart, My power in my mind
hand has gotten me this wealth. That's a key scripture.
OK, he's warning them. Don't say that.
Don't say that my my heart say in your heart that the power in
the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.
Verse 18. He says because you will
remember the Lord your God, for it is he that has given you the
power to get well, then me, He may establish his covenant,
which he sworn to thy Father's that it is this day.
So God's telling us, listen, he's painting a picture, He's
showing a vision. When you get to the land that I
have prescribed for you, you know, I know people that have
not yet made it to their land. Why?
Because they're not holy WHOLLY the Lord their God.
They are not, They are not seeking Him and finding out what
he's about. And he lets him know.
He said, listen, all this stuff's coming, all right.
But he said be careful. Don't forget me when things get
good. Don't forget the things that
I've done to help you get this, He says, because it's me that
has given you the power to get wealth.
And basically if you translate that in the Hebrew, it means
I've given you the creativity or the ability to create wealth.
And he says and and he said that, but you got to find out
the reason, which is the last part of that verse.
He wants us to have all that we need plus more that he may
establish the covenant as it is and he said this day.
So his vision is not necessarily our vision if we're more
concerned about making a business or forming a business
for the things that we won't and the things that we do need
because all of a sudden, you know, got mortgages, you got
everything all right. But he tells us, I just read the
scripture. He said, don't take thought for
those things. What do I want you to do?
I want you to see how I provide the birds of the air what they
need, how I provide what the lilies in the design that they
are what they need. He said that's what I want you
focusing on, OK. I don't want you necessarily
focusing on, you know, the business standpoint of that's,
you know, it's us for no more. Some would say 6-6 and that's
it, right? OK, so he tells us that, but I
want to go back to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy 'cause he
again paints the picture of the blessing that comes on our
lives, especially when we're in business.
Notice what he said and it'll come to pass in verse one that
and notice notice what he says. The condition is if you hearken
diligently to the voice of your Lord your God, Observe to do all
his commandments which I command you this day that the Lord thy
God will set thee high above all the nations of the earth and all
these blessings will come on you and overtake you if you will
hearken to the voice of the Lord your God.
Quick note the word hearken in there is the same word in the
Hebrew as obey. In other words, God doesn't have
a, a, you know, something he's making as a suggestion.
He's telling us what he wants us focused on.
And he says there, it'll come to that.
You will hearken or obey diligently my voice.
I think the problem with a lot of Christian business people is
they're not listening. I mean, he knows how to fix
everything, especially when you get he's done it for Melanie and
I numerous times. OK, Sometimes, you know, we
don't know what's going to happen.
How's it going to happen? All right, this last week we had
Pastor Marcy pray for people that need a financial miracle.
OK, I don't, I couldn't see exactly.
Everybody was in it. But here's the deal.
He, he's into that God's into financial miracles.
He didn't want you to have to live waiting on miracles.
OK, He has a better plan and a substance plan on showing you.
This is what we look at. This is what we need to do.
All right, so you continue on. He said all these blessings in
verse 2 will come on you and overtake you, and you'll hearken
to the voice of the Lord your God.
Now I want you to notice these next few verses.
What word it starts with. Blessed shall you be in the
city. Blessed shall you be in the
field. Blessed shall be the fruit of
your body, the fruit of your ground, the fruit of your
cattle, the increase of kind and flocks of sheep.
Blessed shall your basket be your basket, and in your store
bless shall you be when you come in, Bless shall you be when you
go out. The Lord will cause thine
enemies that rise up against you to be smitten before your face.
They will come in one way, and will flee before you. 7 The Lord
shall command his blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and all
that you set your hand to do. He will bless thee in the land
that the Lord has given you. The Lord shall establish you as
a holy people to Himself as He has sworn into thee, if you'll
just keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in
His ways. And all the people of the earth
shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they
will be afraid of you. Here we go, verse 11.
And the Lord shall make you plenteous in goods, and fruit of
the body, fruit of the cattle, fruit of the ground, the land
which the Lord swear unto thy Father's to give you.
The Lord shall open you His good treasure.
The heaven will give you rain in its land, in your land and its
season. He will bless the work of your
hand. You'll lend to many nations.
You shall not borrow. The Lord will make you the head
and not the tail. You'll be above only and not
beneath, if you will hearken unto the commandments of the
Lord your God, which I command you this day to observe and do
them. He said, And you will not go
aside from any of the words which I have command thee this
day to the right hand, nor to the left to go after other gods
and serve them. I think it's interesting because
there's a little word you know stuck in there.
And, and I believe in verse 1 and in verse 13 where he says
that you'll hearken diligently to the Lord your God in verse 1
and observe. Observe is a word that means to
look at or fix your eyesight on. OK, so he says it again in
there. He said, if you'll hearken to
the Lord thy God, which I command you this day and observe
and do his word. OK, So sometimes I think that
when we talk about the vision, the vision of a company, the
things that you and I have talked about, OK, and and in
getting an understanding of the vision, I think the first thing
that we have to establish that there's a higher vision than
maybe what we've been trained or what we see when it comes to
handling in our own business. All right, because here's the
thing that you want to get a hold of in, in Proverbs chapter
10 verse 22, OK, it said the blessing of the Lord, it maketh
rich and adds no sorrow with it. The word sorrow comes from the
same root as the word sorrow in Genesis chapter 3.
When God has to put a curse on the man, he curses his
provision. He said the ground is now cursed
for your sake because of what you did.
It's your fault. The ground is cursed.
All right, he said. You will dig.
You will try to bring up crops, you'll try to do.
And he said your whole life will be nothing but sorrow in doing
that. The word sorrow there, and the
word sorrow here means to become worrisome.
In other words, you don't know how it's going to come now.
Most of us have been in that position.
Some of us might be in that position now that we don't know
how he's going to do it, but the guarantee we have is that he is
going to do it. And there's been there's been
things I've told you guys many, many stories of just, you know,
it's the but God moment. You've done everything you could
do. You can't do anything else in
the natural that you've been enlightened to.
And all of a sudden he begins to work.
I think he likes that because we are solely dependent on him
because he commands us to be so when he said do not take a
thought saying what are we going to eat, what are we going to
drink, what are we going to wear?
He said, listen, the Gentiles though that have no covenant
with me are going to worry about that.
But he said, not you, right? So again, it's it's it's getting
the eyes fixed on what God says is important, you know, to be
able to do that. Now, let's say that we never
consulted God. We never heard him.
You know what businesses start. Here's a verse, Proverbs 16
three OK, we find ourself in business.
OK, we want to know what are we supposed to be looking at?
What are we looking at? All right, listen to what he
says in this verse 3 Commit your work unto the Lord, and thy
thoughts shall be established. All right, the word work there
is Mahase, Mahase. In the Hebrew.
It means an action, a work, a labor, a business, pursuit or
undertaking of an enterprise. That's what that word means in
the Hebrew. So he says in there, he said
commit your works under the Lord and I thought shall be
established. The word thought means a device,
a plan, a purpose. And the word established means
to be firm, stable or directed a right.
So when we're in business, there's got to be a direction
that we always talk about the vision.
What is the vision? What's the vision of the church?
What's the vision of the company?
What's the and we'll talk about mission later.
But when we talk about that, I think it's interesting because
Pastor sends me a note the other day.
He's never sent me an Instagram ever.
We're calling him an apostle. Don't forget that.
You're supposed to correct me. Correct me, Melanie, you're
supposed to correct me. You're supposed to correct me.
All right, Apostle Roll sent me an Instagram, OK.
And it was a guy talking in there about vision.
I thought, oh, this is interesting.
I didn't know if you'd talked to him about what we were doing or
anything. And he said, he said this.
And man, it woke me up. He said the problem with being
in business is the fact that we don't understand what God's
building. And then this guy said he is not
going to build your business. But man, I, I've read all the
scriptures tonight that let us know that he's going to make us
plenty of some goods and he's going to end the blessing and
all this stuff. And then he said, we cannot
forget what he's building. Matthew 16.
You remember he asked all the guys.
He says, who do you guys say that I am?
And they said, oh, you're Elijah or Jeremiah, one of the
prophets. See.
No, no, no, no. Who do you guys say that I am?
Peter stands up. Hey, I think you're the Christ,
the Son of the living God. He said, blessed are you Simon
Barjona, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
but my Father, which is in heaven.
And then he began to say, you know, he said you are you are
upon this rock. I'm going to build my church.
So if God is interested in building anything, and we must
know that he is interested in building the church because what
did Jesus say? I don't do anything that my
Father does not do. So it seems like that the
passing of the baton to build the church is Jesus
responsibility. Here's the thing he said if
you're building a business outside of helping Jesus build
the church, it will not make it OK.
Whoa. OK, So when you think about you
think about that. It took me and I sent him a note
after I watched this video, I sent him a note and I said
that's why I retranslated Luke chapter 12, verse 21.
Now let me read you the parable, all right, because it has to do
about somebody in business. They decided that they were just
in business to see their increase, he said.
And one of the companies said, dear Master, speak to my brother
and this is 12 verse Luke 12 verse 13, and that he may divide
the inheritance with me. And Jesus said, man, who made me
a judge or a divider over you. He said unto them, take heed and
beware of covetousness. For a man's life does not
consist of the abundance of the things he possesses.
So Jesus telling us right now that our life is not to be
measured by how successful we are in the arena of money, in
the arena of marketing, in the arena.
He said, that doesn't count. Listen to this.
He spake A parable unto them and said, the ground of a certain
man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself,
saying, what shall I do? Because I have no room where to
bestow my fruits. And he said, this will I do, I
will pull down my barns, I'll build greater, and there, there
will I bestow all the fruit and my goods, and I will save my
soul. So you have much goods laid up
for many years. Take thine knees, eat, drink,
and be merry. But God said unto him, You're a
fool this night your soul shall be required of you, and whose
things will they be that you have provided?
But then he says in there he said, So is he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
Verse 21. I retranslated that after I dug
it out in the Greek, which reiterates what is God
interested in building and how is it that what we do helps us
get that building done. And I'm not even really talking
about a building building. Jesus said I will build my
church. He didn't say I'm going to build
another building. He's going to build and grow his
church. The reason I translated that he
said so is the man that lays up treasure for himself and is not,
and here's the translation, becoming rich for God.
That's the translation. If you look it up in the Greek,
you can you pull that out. God says I want you to become
rich for what I'm building, not what you can personally build
for you. This is the perfect parable for
that to let us know. So when we began, when we begin,
you know, casting a vision and that is in our hearts for the
business that God has given us, we need to realize that we are
stewards or caretakers of that. We should learn from the parable
above, There is no room for selfishness in the Kingdom.
There's no room for another plan in the Kingdom.
It's His plan. Jesus went with His plan,
encouraged us. Go with God's plan.
Change your mindset on why you want a business that is making a
lot of money. You're wanting it to be able to
what? Help God build the church.
Think about it. None of us are building anything
we're taking with us. There's only one thing we're
taking with us and that's the church and there will probably
be some in the church might be surprised that they didn't make
it because they didn't answer the simple question of lordship.
They like him as Savior, but they don't understand Lord.
OK, all right now when you know one of the the primary parts of
your vision for the Kingdom should be a simply based on one
word. Very simple.
Write this word down. It's the word service.
Jesus gave a vision of what being the greatest in the
Kingdom of God would look like. All right, Matthew chapter 20,
jot this one down verses 25 through 28.
When we talk about when we talk about our business, when we talk
about what we, what we're going to do in our business, what the
business, you know, most businesses are service
businesses now. We've all been to places where
people that worked for this service business didn't have a
clue. That's what kind of business it
was, OK, By the way they treated you, the way they talked to you,
the way they didn't take care of what your needs were when you
came in there. Mostly in restaurants, you see
it OK, but you can see it in, you know, a store you're going
shopping for clothes. They're over there, you know.
OK, well, thank you. I'll see if I can't find them.
All right, But look at what Jesus said.
He said He called to them and said, you know, that the
Princess of the Gentiles exercise dominion over those
that they are over. And he said, And they that they
are great, exercise that authority upon them.
He said, And it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be
great among you, let him be your minister.
That word is the diaconos in the Greek, and it just means a
waiter. And whosoever will be chief
among you, And notice what he said, Whoever will be great
among you, let him be the minister.
But then he said, But whosoever will be chief among you, let him
be your servant. And the word servant there is
the Greek word dulos and it means slave.
And it usually the connotation is bond slave.
It is a slave by choice, not slave beat into submission.
OK, he said, even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.
So Jesus saying the higher you go up, the lower you must
actually go. You want to be great in the
Kingdom, you need to be a waiter, you need to be somebody
servant. But if he says you want to be
the chief, you've got to become the slave.
And I don't think a lot of people understand that, you
know, when it comes to business. Why?
Because they're selfish. There's selfishness in there.
Why did you start the company? Well, we saw a need and we
wanted to meet that need. And you know what?
You can tell by the way they operate in that company.
Are they really meeting needs or are they really making just
money? That's all they want to make.
You know, I wrote an article years ago and, and what's funny,
I was digging through some little, you know, thumb drives
and I'm popping those thumb drives in the, in, in the
computer, just see what's on them.
And I found my entire collection of the articles that I'd written
for a business magazine and the very first one I ever wrote.
And you guys have heard the story where I want, I wanted to
write, you know, business business articles.
And there was a a magazine called Oklahoma Business Monthly
and I had a little questionnaire in there for entrepreneurs and I
thought that was pretty cool. So I just called them, you know,
main editor and phone number was in the front of the magazine.
I said, how do you get chosen for, you know, entrepreneur Q&A?
And they said, well, we send you an outline and you fill out all
the answers on the outline and, and we sent it to editorial
board and if they like it, we'll use it.
And I said, OK, that's easy to send it.
I sent it back the the same day. They sent it to me in the
morning. I sent it back the same day.
And then they called me immediately and said we're going
to run yours in. It was a month or two down the
road. And I said, well before you send
your photographer, because they always had a picture of the the
people, I said let have them come by and visit with me before
they come to actually take the picture.
OK, well, we usually don't do that.
Just please do that. Would you just do that?
OK. And they did.
And basically what I wanted, I had a set made of everything
that I talked about in the article.
They, you know, ask how did you get started or who's your mentor
or whatever. And I had a picture of
everything that I discussed in there and, and everybody noticed
it. It was interesting.
Usually they just put a plan up by somebody, you know, or have
them sitting in a director's chair, whatever.
But everything that you talked about was in the photograph.
I said, I, I plan that. Well, I wanted to let the, the
magazine, the owner. And I said, I, I so, so thrilled
to be able to get this article. I said, I want to take you guys
to lunch and I thought I want to see if they are open to an idea
of doing articles and having a local business guy do the
articles because they were based out of Tulsa.
And so I had my briefcase with me and they all came in and, and
the owner's name was Jim. Jim says he said, Randy, what do
you, what do you think of the magazine?
I said, I, I love it. I think it's a great magazine.
I mean, it's about local businesses and how people got
started and, and different. I said, you know, one thing
though, I think that would be really good for that magazine is
that you had some locals give different tips and things about,
you know, what, what they have experienced in business, stuff
like that and they go, well, that's a good idea.
Do you have you have you have a sample of anything like that?
As a matter of fact, I do opened up the briefcase, pulled out my
first article called Can I get some help over here?
That was the title of it. And, and, and I just found them
the other day because it was the mock up of what it was going to
look like in the magazine. And they had sent it to me every
month and I wrote for them for over a year.
And as a matter of fact, my book that that I wrote was all of
those articles trans into a book.
And so one of the things in there that I talked about was,
you know, we've all had the experience, you know, sitting at
a restaurant waiting for somebody to come over there, at
least greet ya. OK.
So, you know, or, you know, you you you've gone into a, you
know, a home improvement store and you're looking around and
you're looking for somebody in a colored vest that matches the
logo. And you can't find nobody, you
know, And so you just you just look at her and, you know,
around. And so I talked about the fact
of customer service has to equate to the word servant.
You have to be a servant, all right, And understand the role
of a servant. You're not here just to make a
buck. You're here to, you know, help
them grow their company. But that's by providing the
service that is going to be people that is very easy for
them to part with their money. OK, well, you know, when we take
a look at we take a look at, at at what Jesus said, he said,
listen, you have got to have the servant mentality.
He he let him know when he washed their feet in John 13, he
said, do you all know what I've done?
And they said, you know, they yeah, yeah, yeah.
Think so. Yeah.
He goes, well, here's what you need to understand.
You need to do what I've done. In other words, look for the
opportunity to take care of people and the Lord can bless
that. All right now when we talk
about, you know, when we talk about vision and we go to, you
know, Matthew 16, I want you to jot down Matthew 16 because that
is the particular passage that I wrote to you about, you know,
the Kingdom of heaven and and telling him that, listen, I am
going to build my church. So when we talk about the
building of, you know, Jesus Church, we found out it's going
to take money like any other enterprise that you want to get
involved in. All right.
And I think it's interesting that, you know, pastor has the
longest offering time speech that we've experienced in a
while on Sunday morning. What was he talking about?
He was talking about again, the story of Jehoash was one of
them. Josiah was another one that they
wanted to raise money to do the temple, right.
The temple had fallen into disarray.
It needed some repairs, you know, some different things.
So he says in there, he said, you know, start collecting that
money, you know, from the Levites and the different
things, part of the money that the people are giving them for
the tithe and the offering and everything else.
And he said, and we're going to give this money to those that'll
fix everything. All right.
Well, it didn't happen, all right in the time frame that the
king thought. So he said, OK, enough of this
and he said the priest went and made a little box and carved a
hole in the top of it and had people put money in it when they
came. Finally the box got full and
they pulled all the money out, gave it to the exchanger.
So I was kind of curious where that first bits of money went.
All right, But he was talking to us about, again, what is Jesus
building? Is he building our companies or
is he still building the church and asking us to come and join
him and that everything that we have to do?
Is going to be based upon our involvement in his vision and he
will give us vision. That's where it comes from.
That's why we read those four things at the very beginning.
You know that we don't want to have the greatest failure.
We don't want to have the greatest mistakes.
We don't want to have, you know, opportunities and not knowing
what to do. You know, when I hear people
say, well, the Lord told me to do this and it doesn't come to
pass. And I'm thinking, OK, Lord, are
we being patient? Is there something you need us
to know? Did we just jump out and do it?
Did you really say it or did I just see a need?
And, and you know, we ask questions a lot as far do you
have the ability to hear God? And I found that true because
when I was in Oklahoma and I was on staff, you know, people would
come in and they'd say, you know, you talk about hearing God
all the time. I've never heard him say
nothing, you know, and I'm trying to figure out that's
weirder than me saying I hear God.
But I know this, that until we become people of the Word, we
won't recognize his voice. We've got to know what the word
says. We've got to know what his will
is. We got to know what his vision
is, you know, and, and we were talking about the two main
passages, you know, in the Bible that talk about vision.
And he said, you know, write the vision, make it plain.
All right. And, and basically it was
talking about the vision that we get from God.
It's not our own vision. It's not what we come up
thinking. This is great.
This might be a good idea. What do you think of this?
It was the vision because he said that.
He said don't worry about it If it doesn't show up tomorrow.
He said, wait on it because it'll surely come to pass.
Well, that's not my vision. That's got to be his vision.
And then when he said without a vision, the people perish.
Both of those words, vision is is defined as the word
revelation. OK.
And in the word revelation means something that was previously
hidden, but now you can see it. See, I think sometimes in
business there are things hidden from our vision.
But if we spend time like he wants us to spend time, he has
the ability to move the curtain. You know, I love that that
picture that Apocalypto is the Greek word for revelation.
We get the word apocalypse from it.
That's what the book revelation, the revelation.
And it's not a revelation of John like some print.
It's the revelation of Jesus Christ.
But that word is apocalypsis and it means a drawing back of the
curtain. And they paints a picture that,
you know, if you're in your kitchen and you're doing dishes
and you got a window there, but it's got a curtain, it's got a
nice curtain or some mini blinds or something like that.
He said when you turn the mini blinds or you move the curtains,
you can see what's always been there out in the yard.
He said it's the same thing as we spend time with God, that
we're the vision we're looking for is his revelation of what
we're supposed to be doing. Because, you know, any business
we have landscaping, you know, robotics, you know, whatever it
is, chiropractic, all right, cleaning houses, real estate,
whatever it is. I'm pretty sure he knows about
it, more about it than the rest of us.
He knows the right way to do it. He knows the right ideas.
I've had him speak to me and show me paths that I needed to
take where everybody else is, you know, trying to figure out
the marketing plan or what's a vision for marketing, What's a
vision? And I just just say, listen, it
ain't nobody knows more about this kind of company than the
father. I need to spend time with him.
And he has given me some of the ideas that may have made me 10s
of millions of dollars. And it's by listening.
The only time I get into problems is when I'm listening
to me and I'm losing 10s of millions of dollars.
All right. I don't want to be a loser of
millions. I want to be a investor of
millions and, and, and I'm I'm so convinced that, you know,
when I talk to people, when we visit one-on-one with people
and, and they're so focused on what they're not doing, the
money they're not making, the business is not there.
There's got to be an answer to that.
But the question is, what are you looking at?
Are you looking at the things God told us to look at?
Because it's pretty clear all the scriptures I gave to you
tonight, if you'll focus and observe on what God says is
important to him. And you look at it because I've
said this for years and then a friend of mine puts it in one of
his books. I said, man, you stole that from
me. But we hadn't talked in a long
time. You know, as far as so he may
have got that on himself because I'm sure that, you know, God
doesn't have a stipulation on who he gives it to and they
never, nobody else gets it. But I've often said this.
I said God told me that if I'll take care of his business, he'll
take care of mine. But you know, my problem is I've
been worse at taking his care of his business then he has taken
care of mine. Because every time I have a
need, you know, I just back up a second and I sit there and
listen and I want to know. Sometimes I say, Melanie, I
ain't going here because I'm staying here.
You know, I've got some things I want to get done, some things
that I want to visit with the Lord.
That's why for me, everybody else is out shopping on Black
Fridays. I just kind of get alone in the
house on the Black Friday when everybody's gone, the grandkids
are gone, everybody's gone. And and I just say, you know,
Lord, what is it that you need me to know from that I didn't
get done this year? Anything that can get me on a
better path going into next year, you know, and finding that
out because that's all he all he wants is you.
He doesn't need how smart we are or how, you know, business savvy
we are. All he wants is us.
That's what he sent his son to die for us.
That's all that's going is US, you know, and The funny thing
about it is he thinks he's getting a good deal with us, you
know. So when we talk about that, and
I just want to encourage you, here's the bottom line about
vision is that if your vision and goals don't align with God's
vision for this church and what he's called you to help him
build the church, you will labor in vain.
You'll be more than likely you'll more than likely
experience unnecessary struggles and challenges.
If your heart is to build the Kingdom and his church, your
business and your with your business and you listen to God
on how to do it, you will be successful.
Anybody say Amen, Amen. That's what we're going to do
Amen. All right, let me pray.
Father, we just thank and praise you for the opportunity just to
get a reminder a little bit of of what it is that you need from
us to be able to get the same eyesight that you have to
accomplish what you want in the earth.
Father, I pledge myself even as going through this lesson that I
pledge myself that in the mornings when I get up, I want
to know what is it that you need from me?
I want to know what you need me to be looking at, what you want
me to be focusing on and being able to translate at the proper
time of what you're giving me and what needs to come to you
and the building of your church. I know at the first of the year
you told me when I asked what do I need to be investing in.
You told me this year that I need to be investing in the
maturity of the Saints. So Father, give me those
opportunities. Show me where we will get the
best amount of success from the money that we invest in that,
the time that we invest in that, the ideas that you give us to
invest in that. Father, we want to thank you in
advance because we know you are all about the church and so are
we and we want to thank you for it.
In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
The.