I want to talk about what it means
to our lives when we glorify God.
That is the subject matter today.
You know, in English language, the word glorify
means that you honor someone in such a
way that it causes other people to see
that person in the most favorable light.
Now that's just my definition, I don't know
what Webster would say about that, but you
think that's about right?
That, you know, it's something we're doing or
saying or whatever is causing others to see
that person who we're glorifying, honoring, in a
positive light.
It's kind of the opposite of tearing someone
down, gossiping about them, criticizing them or whatever.
Well, you know, once you took the name
Christian on, when you came to the Lord,
you set yourself up in the role as
being a representative of God on earth.
Whether you meant to or not, whether you
intended to or not is secondary, it doesn't
matter, because as soon as you call yourself
Christian, that's the reality.
That the way you live your life is
going to be a direct representation upon what
the character of God truly is.
So, you know, that's all in the sense
of glorifying someone, but I want to focus
on the Hebrew term, really, more than the
English term.
And the Hebrew word for glorify is the
word kabed.
And kabed literally means heavy, weighty, you know.
So, I mean, sometimes in Scripture it's used
in a literal sense, and it actually does
mean, you know, something that's a heavy burden
or something like that.
That's the word kabed.
But most of the time in Scripture, that
word is extended to refer to a person.
It's extended to refer to a weighty character.
Weighty character.
And so when the Old Testament writers would
talk about glorifying God, what they were saying
is that they wanted others to recognize the
weighty character of God.
That He is someone of substance.
He is a substantial person.
His character, His nature, His personality.
You know, not just, okay, He's big, He's
majestic, you know, He's powerful, all those things.
When you're glorifying God, you're not really talking
about those kind of physical, as it were,
attributes.
No, you're more talking about who He is
as a person.
So to kabed God means that you are
ascribing to Him the reality of His character.
Who He is as a person.
Now, there's a short little phrase out of
1 Samuel 2.30. You don't even need
to turn to it.
I'm just going to tell you what it
says.
This is what the Lord spoke.
He said, those who honor Me, those who
glorify Me, those who kabed Me, I will
honor.
Those who honor Me, I will honor.
Those who glorify Me, I will glorify.
Those who kabed Me, I will kabed.
Them and them alone will be honored by
Me.
And, the second phrase, those who despise Me
will be lightly esteemed.
All right, now, I said, this is a
positive message.
I want to talk about what it means
to glorify God.
But just as a contrast, I want to
focus on the negative just for a second.
This second group of people, because really this
verse refers to every single human being who
has ever lived.
Every human has either glorified God or he
has despised God.
And what I mean by despise, not what
I mean, who cares what I think about
it, what the word means is literally that
word means light.
Isn't that interesting?
The literal meaning of despise, I can't remember
what the Hebrew word is, but the literal
meaning of that word is light.
So, you've got to see this balance of
weightiness here.
Those who recognize the weighty character of God
and treat Him as such.
And then on this side, which is the
enormously vast majority, those who treat God as
if He, His word, His commandments, and so
on are a trifling matter.
You know, just nothing of significance, nothing of
importance.
And they live their lives focused on self
and focused on this earth and so on.
It says here they are lightly esteemed.
And I think it could be said that
their souls will become increasingly depleted.
I think that's true.
They will become lighter and lighter and lighter
as they go on.
And it's interesting, you know, if you've ever
read The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis' book,
outstanding little book, outstanding.
And it's interesting that the people who come
down to this middle place, I won't get
into the story, but from heaven, he calls
them the solid ones.
And the ones that have come to this
place from hell are ghosts.
He calls them ghosts.
And that is exactly the reality of the
situation.
It's the exact opposite of what our fleshly
eyes see.
We see substance and we talk about God
in the ethereal, you know, like He's the
one that's not really there almost, you know,
He's just spirit.
There's no substance to Him.
But it's the opposite of what our eyes
tell us.
So the unbelievers of this world, you know,
it could be said that they're all empty
suits.
All unbelievers are empty.
All unbelievers are going from nothing to nothing
in life.
The psalmist said they are like chaff which
the wind drives away.
It's interesting that, you know, in our verse
here, those who despise me will be lightly
esteemed.
Or as one translation says, esteemed as nothing.
And it's that same sense of just ghosts
with no reality, no substance.
Now, just on a brief side note, that
is true of all unbelievers.
All unbelievers are substance-less, if I could
say it that way, or without true substance.
But there's a secondary phenomenon spiritually that also
goes on.
And that secondary phenomenon is this, that the
more a person gives over and indulges in
sin, the more depleted he becomes in life.
And I think that probably most of you
guys know that feeling too well, right?
I can remember my days of being given
over to sin, and just the utter emptiness
and misery of life.
And it's like the more I gave over
to try to fill that void, the bigger
the void became inside me.
And so I think that that whole process
is really a picture of the just desserts
of sinners when they stand in judgment before
God.
That the reality of the way they live
their lives, hell is not going to be
the same for everybody.
You know, I know some people say, well,
they all get thrown in the lake of
fire.
Well, that's a very simplistic perspective of hell.
I guarantee you that people are going to
be judged by what they did in life.
Adolf Hitler is not going to get the
same judgment as some little old lady who
just kind of lived a simple, quote-unquote,
decent life, but never gave her heart to
Christ.
They are going to live two completely different
hells.
And that's about as far as I can
go with figuring that out.
But I believe that this whole thing of
giving over to sin, there's something that so
depletes the soul and increases the agitation of
lust that a person has to live in
for eternity.
You understand what I'm saying?
You know, I don't know how well I
even understand it.
I don't know if anyone really understands it.
But there is something in that.
All right.
But anyway, like I said, I want to
focus on the positive.
I want to focus on what occurs in
our lives as believers, as true, sincere believers,
when we glorify the Lord.
And, you know, I don't think I need
to tell you that we glorify the Lord
mostly by the way we live our life.
It's not what we say.
You know, we all sang some very wonderful
worship songs in here today.
And I don't think that that means much
to the Lord.
When He hears people who in their daily
life are doing anything but representing His character,
and then they come to church and just
sing some songs that supposedly glorify Him, do
you think that's pleasing to Him?
All right.
So, like I said, I want to focus
on those who glorify the Lord.
And, you know, I kind of alluded to
it, that as we glorify God in the
way that we live our lives, we are
adding weighty substance to our souls.
We are becoming increasingly more solid and more
substantial inside.
Weightiness of character is being built inside of
us.
And so I want to talk about three.
I always like to make these little three
-point sermons.
They're just nice and neat and tidy.
But I'm going to just share.
I suppose there's others as well.
I've picked out three that I felt like
were most pertinent.
Three ways that we glorify God or should
be glorifying God and how that affects us
as well.
But with each of these is an inherent
challenge.
And what I mean by that is that
it does not come naturally.
And so the challenge is to go against
what comes naturally and to fight against that
and to attempt in our best efforts, by
God's grace, to do the things that will
bring glory to the Lord.
Okay?
So, you know, number one is we glorify
God by loving other people.
And I suppose, you know, that that is
maybe the thing that glorifies him the most.
I'm not sure exactly, you know, how you
weigh one against the other.
But I know that it certainly glorifies God
when we treat other people with his love.
Jesus said, Let your light shine before men
in such a way that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father who
is in heaven.
And those good works, almost always in Scripture,
refers to doing good to those in need.
You know, whatever that may mean.
There's a million different ways to meet needs.
And God has a special calling on each
of your lives.
That's not just talk from this pulpit.
I want you to understand that.
That's not just trying to rouse you up
and somehow get you, you know, all stirred
up that when you leave here you're going
to go do some great thing for God.
I'm telling you, just as a matter of
course, as a matter of fact, spiritually speaking,
that each of you has a direct call
on your life.
A direct pathway that has been written out
in ages in the past.
I shared it in a different message that
God has written a DNA on your heart.
And that pathway, you know, that path that
a DNA is physically, spiritually, is your life
of good works.
How you're going to love other people.
You know, there's the general sense of just
being kind with people, being compassionate, and things
like that.
But there's something much more specific for you,
you know, that God has in mind.
The other night, when we were here in
the chapel, sitting in silence, waiting on the
Lord, I opened my Bible to 1 Corinthians
13, and I was just sitting there, just,
I started reading at the beginning of the
chapter, and I got stuck.
As soon as I got to verse 3,
I just sat there and pondered those first
three verses.
And I looked at them, and I thought
about them, and I prayed over them, and
I considered them, and I knew vaguely what
I was going to be preaching on today.
And so it was just kind of stirring
in my heart.
Let me just read those briefly.
We're talking about glorifying God by loving others.
And this is what Paul says, and he
refers to himself, which is very interesting.
He doesn't point at some, you know, I
don't know, make-believe Christian out there or
something.
He talks about himself.
If I, the Apostle Paul, you know, if
I speak with the tongues of men and
of angels, but do not possess this thing
called love, agape, I have become a noisy
gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and
know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if
I have all faith so as to remove
mountains, but do not have love, I am
nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to
feed the poor, and if I surrender my
body to be burned, but do not have
love, it profits me nothing.
Now, there's a couple of things that stood
out to me when I looked at this.
First of all, that verse 1 refers to
speech, and verse 2 refers to knowledge or,
I don't know, the workings of the mind,
and verse 3 refers to behavior.
And it kind of basically covers all the
bases, doesn't it?
And the second thing that stood out to
me is that this very much shows how
our lives will be evaluated one day.
Notice, here's the word that caught my attention.
Okay, so here's the truth.
This is why it grabbed my attention the
other night.
The last word of verse 2 and the
last word of verse 3.
Nothing.
Because I very much had in my mind
this whole concept of weight.
You know, I knew I was going to
be preaching on this subject.
And when I started chewing on that word
nothing, I started realizing, you know, if I
don't possess love, then at the end of
my timeline on earth, when I stand before
the Lord, what am I going to be?
What am I going to possess?
Nothing.
Now, I don't know how that figures into
our salvation.
I won't go there.
But I suppose it could be true of
those Christians referred to by Paul in 1
Corinthians 3 where he says they just escape
as though by fire.
You know, somehow they make it through just
barely, but they end up with nothing to
show for their lives.
Nothing.
And then, of course, there's the vast majority
of mankind who just are nothing.
They have substanceless souls, ghosts, bodiless beings.
I don't know how you would say it,
but it reminded me of something someone said.
The great day of judgment determines nothing.
It only makes visible and palpable what we
really are.
And that's true.
The reality of who you are is going
to be shown before millions of angels and
dear saints who have paid a dear price
with their lives.
Who and what you are is going to
be seen by all, and me too.
Me too.
But these three verses, let me just kind
of rephrase them a little bit.
If we reverse the logic on these verses,
again, I'm trying my best to be positive
this morning.
It doesn't come naturally to me.
It's not my call to be positive.
It's Jeff's call.
He's the pastor, and I'm the one who
has the gift of making people feel bad.
And it is a gift.
And I've been greatly endowed with it, as
you know.
So let's reverse the logic on these verses,
and let me say them this way.
Verse 1, if I allow love to dominate
my speech, my words will have significance and
weightiness.
Verse 2, if I allow love to dominate
my attitudes and perspectives and my viewpoints of
Scripture and spiritual life and people, etc., my
value to God will only increase.
And verse 3, if I allow love to
dominate my actions and behavior, the way that
I treat people, great profit will be affixed
to my life on that day.
I think that's pretty true.
Would you say so?
I think that's pretty right on.
Okay, number 2, we glorify God through humility.
Now here again, we have a challenge.
The challenge is that naturally we're prideful.
We just have this innate desire to glorify
ourselves, don't we?
I've got one person that nods their head,
and everyone else quickly looks away.
We just naturally want to grab honor for
ourselves, don't we?
We just naturally are prone to do that.
And we do it in a thousand different
subtle ways.
What is pride?
Pride is exalting yourself at the expense of
those around you.
That's what pride is.
I once gave this illustration.
I think I was in a prison when
I was doing it.
I made one of the guys stand up
on a chair, and I used him as
an example of pride.
I said, now see him.
He's standing up.
Everyone's looking at him.
He's the center of attention.
He's just glowing and basking in all this
attention.
But look at where you are in relation
to him.
But that's what pride does.
This desire to glorify ourselves.
Jesus saw this in the Pharisees in a
lot of different ways.
But one of the times he really grabbed
it.
Man, it was good.
In Luke 14, he saw something that was
going on.
I think it was at a wedding feast.
He saw something happening there, and he used
it.
But he always used situations and things around
him to illustrate spiritual truths.
And he did that in this case.
And I'm just simply going to read this
because it really, you'll get it.
You'll see what I'm saying.
Luke 14, verse 7.
And he began speaking a parable to the
invited guests when he noticed how they had
been picking out the places of honor at
the table.
Saying to them, When you're invited by someone
to a wedding feast, do not take the
place of honor for someone more distinguished than
you may have been invited by him.
And he who invited you both will come
and say to you, Give your place to
this man, and then in disgrace you proceed
to occupy the last place.
But when you are invited, go and recline
at the last place so that when the
one who has invited you comes, he may
say to you, Friend, move up higher.
Then you will have, what?
Honor in the sight of all who are
at the table with you.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
And that last phrase, or that last sentence
there, that Jesus said, is expressed by him
in a number of different occasions in the
Gospels.
And also, Peter said it, and I think
it was James that said it as well.
I mean, this was one of the most
important truths that Jesus wanted to leave with
his disciples.
If you try to exalt yourself, I guarantee
you, you will be put in your place.
But if you'll humble yourself, God will raise
you up.
God will exalt you.
God will honor you.
And that is the truth.
That is a spiritual reality, men, that if
you'll just humble yourselves, you are entrusting your
life to God, and you're saying, Lord, you
know better than me how I should be
honored, if I should be honored, and so
on.
You know how to handle all that, Lord.
But again, it's our natural tendency to want
to bring it to ourselves.
We do it in just so many different
ways.
Boasting, name-dropping, gossiping about others to make
ourselves look better somehow.
There's just endless ways that we can try
to exalt ourselves at the expense of others.
Jesus used this situation to illustrate that truth.
I'll illustrate it in another manner just to
kind of hopefully bring it out a little
bit better.
There were two little boys that went to
a parade.
And there was this big parade in the
middle of Boston, let's say.
And these two little boys didn't know each
other, and they were there with their dads.
And all the different processions were going through
and stuff.
And then came this smartly dressed military academy
marching in cadence going right down the main
street.
And both of these little boys had the
same reaction to seeing these other boys in
their uniforms and their hats and marching just
in perfect step and all of that.
And both of them had the same reaction.
I want to be in that school.
I want that to be the reality of
my life.
And so they both talked to their dads,
and their dads took them separately, of course,
to this school.
Well, Jimmy, his father was well-to-do.
So Jimmy's father takes him into the headmaster
of the school.
And he makes a sizable donation to the
school and says, look, I want to make
sure that Jimmy is taken care of.
I want to make sure, in fact, I
expect Jimmy to be that kid that was
out in front of that marching formation.
Next year, I want to see my little
boy be the one who's out in front
of that formation.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
And, of course, the headmaster, he's a good
man and all that, but he has a
great financial need for the school.
And so he bends and compromises his integrity
some, and he makes the promise.
So Jimmy enters the school.
Well, Bobby, on the other hand, comes from
a lower-middle-class family there in Boston,
and he's been saving his money for some
amount of time, and his dad decides to
match funds.
And between the two of them, they're able
to pay for the first semester in this
military academy.
And so they go in for the interview,
and he's accepted as well.
So all through this school year, Jimmy is
given preferential treatment.
And the instructors have all been told, you
make sure he passes, you make sure he
gets this, he gets what he wants, you
know, et cetera, et cetera.
And by the end of the school year,
you know, he becomes that lead cadet.
Well, Bobby doesn't have that, you know, all
those privileges.
He's got to fight his way for everything.
He's got to go the hard way.
He's got to earn it.
Here's what I want to say to you.
And this is the point I'm trying to
get at, is those two little boys represent
the way that we can do the Christian
life.
You know, there's always going to be those
people who want the easy path and they
want the honor without earning it.
They want the name.
They want to be exalted.
They want their name up in the lights
and so on.
But they're not willing to pay the price,
you know.
And just the way things are in the
spiritual realm, God doesn't necessarily honor outwardly those
who he esteems highly in his kingdom.
You know, he doesn't.
Daniel Nebuchadnezzar is a perfect example.
Daniel was highly esteemed in heaven, the angel
told him.
But who was he?
He was just a bureaucrat in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom.
And that's a picture of what we see
in the church so often.
Sometimes the big names in God's kingdom, lightweights.
I'm not saying all the time.
You know, don't take that beyond where it's
meant to be.
But I'm telling you from much experience, that
is the reality spiritually.
I have met very big names, and the
sense you get around them, spiritual lightweights.
But, you know, you take a Bobby who's
had to go the hard route.
And can I say to you guys that
that's what you're doing here?
God bless you.
You're fighting through.
You know, you're doing the hard thing.
You're not the one who just flakes out
because things get rough.
You're still in there fighting.
Bless your hearts.
Solomon said, a man's pride will bring him
low, but a humble spirit will obtain kabed.
Yes, a humble spirit will obtain honor.
All right, number three.
We glorify God by the way we handle
adversity.
Here again, the challenge is to go against
our nature.
All of us are this way.
Nobody enjoys trials and opposition and hardships and
affliction and adversity.
And none of us enjoy persecution.
Who in the world wants to go through
any of that?
I don't, you know.
And yet, if we can handle these things
in the right way, they are the very
things that bring God glory.
And they're the very things that are the
most effective ways of building weighty character into
our beings.
It's just true, guys.
It's the difficulties.
You know, I've said this before that God
will occasionally give us those mountaintop experiences.
Pastor Jeff had one this morning that we
heard about.
You know, glorious revelation of the eternal kingdom.
You know, and it just thrilled his soul.
But Pastor Jeff, tomorrow is Monday.
And Monday, huh?
I backslid temporarily.
I'll encourage you at the end.
But Monday's coming, was that one sermon.
It's Friday, but Sunday's coming.
Well, I'm telling you, it's Sunday, but Monday's
coming.
Monday, you find yourself down slogging through the
jungle floor.
You know, through swamps and hard areas and
muck and mire and opposition and snakes and
lions roaming around.
And you don't know what you're going to
run into.
Dangerous toils and snares, John Newton called it.
That's the reality of the daily life in
Christianity, isn't it?
That is the pilgrim's progress.
It's to go through all that.
But God does give us those mountaintop experiences
to encourage us along the way.
But the mountaintop experiences don't build character.
Jeff is no more godly of character today
because of this morning.
But what he went through, you know, in
Central America, you know, the hardships, the difficulties,
the battles and all of that, fighting through.
Those are the things that build godly character.
That's where you're changed and transformed.
And, you know, when you're going through it,
it's hard.
I understand it's difficult.
It's a struggle.
And it is hard to get your eyes
out of the small little picture of your
own little world.
But I can tell you from experience, when
I look back over my life, and this
is the truth.
Of course, it's easy saying it from here.
But it was the hardships that I thank
God for most of all.
That is the truth.
It was the hardships.
It was the times I was humiliated.
It was the times that people got right
in my face and called me names and
ripped into me after I poured my heart
out at a church service or something.
It was the times when I would pour
my heart out to some man sitting up
here in an office, and he would, you
know, turn on me in hatred.
Those were the things that built character into
me.
Those are the things that God used to
change me and soften me and humble me
and so on.
You know, it's just the reality of the
Christian life.
Paul said in Romans 5, he said, not
only this, but we also exult in our
tribulations.
Why?
Why would we exult in our tribulations?
Are you crazy?
Because this, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance
and perseverance proven character and proven character hope.
You know, I remember a time, guys, that
I don't know how to say it.
I was just a big baby.
I couldn't take the slightest crossing of my
will.
You know, every little thing in life had
to go my way, or I was whatever,
bent out of shape or whatever.
I was very much that way, very, very
much that way.
And, you know, the Lord helped me to
grow through this process over the years and
did change me.
But it's through that process.
I can't explain it, but when God takes
you through a hardship, somehow you come out
the other end of it with brighter hope.
It's just true.
And the reason why is because you've been
carrying 500 pounds, if I could say it
that way, 500 pounds in the wrong way,
500 pounds of flesh.
And God has used some experience to carve
off 50 pounds of it.
And you're only, now you're walking at 450
and you feel light as a feather, you
know.
It's not a good analogy because it's kind
of backwards, isn't it?
But, you know, that's just the process that
God takes us through to change us.
And it happens little by little through life.
You know, a person with a weighty character,
everything can be taken from him.
And one day I believe that's what's going
to happen to true believers.
That's where we're headed, that they are going
to persecute us.
The false church are going to be right
at the forefront of the persecution.
You better know that.
The pseudo-Christians that you feel like are
your brothers aren't.
And one day they're going to turn on
true believers, the remnant.
And they can take everything we own away
from us.
They can take our loved ones away from
us.
They can take our freedom away from us.
They can take all our stuff away from
us.
They can even take our health away from
us.
And they will take our lives.
But they can't take the spiritual substance that
God has built within our souls.
They can't lay a finger on that.
They can't lay a finger on it.
And as God takes you through difficult circumstances
like this live-in program, He's building something
so wonderful inside you.
Again, the Apostle Paul.
This is 2 Corinthians 4.16. Therefore, we
do not lose heart.
But though our outer man is decaying, yet
our inner man is being renewed day by
day.
For momentary light affliction is producing for us
an eternal weight of glory.
Far beyond all comparison.
While we look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are
not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are
eternal.
Let me read that in a couple other
translations.
Phillips says it this way.
Verse 17.
These little troubles, which are really so transitory,
are winning for us a permanent, glorious, and
solid reward out of all proportion to our
pain.
And the Amplified says it like this.
For our light, momentary affliction, this slight distress
of the passing hour is ever more and
more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for
us an everlasting weight of glory beyond all
measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations.
A vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never
to cease.
Hallelujah!
That's what God is doing in your lives,
men.
It's hard to see it sometimes, I know.
But that is the reality of what He's
doing inside of you.
The eternal, long-lasting picture of what's going
on.
You know, it's interesting that Jesus, when He
referred to the cross, He often talked about
how He and how His Father would be
glorified through that.
Now think about the reality of that.
Jesus was stripped and beaten and mocked and
spit upon and nailed to that cross.
The worst thing that the world could do
to a human being would be to treat
Him like that.
A spectacle in front of everybody.
I mean, that's about as humiliating as you
could possibly be.
And that, in the Kingdom of God, is
what it means to be glorified.
To glorify God and to be glorified in
the most extreme sense.
You know what I'm saying?
That's the extreme.
In God's Kingdom, and you study it out,
I promise you it's true.
That you will find that it's true.
It's when they persecute you.
Great is your reward in heaven, Jesus said,
when they revile you.
That is where you're truly glorified and esteemed
in God's eyes.
When you go through that sort of thing.
And when He expressed that in John 12,
He said, The hour has come for the
Son of Man to be glorified.
He went on to say, If anyone serves
Me, the Father will honor him.
The Father will honor him.
That's a very interesting statement.
The Father will honor him.
Do you know, men?
The Father will one day honor you.
For everything you've done.
For God.
It says in 1 Corinthians 4, just after
Paul has described the foundation, the building of
our judgment and so on.
The fire will test the quality of each
man's work and so on.
Then in chapter 4, he says, Praise will
come to him.
Meaning a godly Christian.
Praise will come to him from God.
What an incredible concept.
I can't imagine God praising Steve Gallagher.
I cannot comprehend that.
I can't comprehend that.
And yet, that is basically what he's saying.
That if we will live our lives in
such a way that glorifies God, one day
before multitudes, God will glorify us.
Not because he really, I mean, he will
say some things, I'm sure.
But it will just be the reality of
who we were.
Of what God built inside of us throughout
our lives.
Will be seen by all.
There won't be any more of the facades
and the lies and the flattery and all
the falsehood.
All of that will be swept away on
the day of judgment.
And the reality of who we are and
what we are will be revealed to all.
But it's a process.
It doesn't happen overnight.
We're building something for an eternity, aren't we?
We're not building something.
We're not throwing together a shack that we
can live in for a few months or
something.
We're building something that is meant to last
us forever.
Now, I have a little illustration here that
I'm going to show you.
Because I want this to get inside you.
You know, I don't want you to ever
forget the reality of what I'm sharing with
you this morning, okay?
Pastor Steve has so much love for you
guys that I went down to Fort Knox
yesterday.
I ran down there and I talked to
the commander and I asked him, could I
borrow a few bars of gold?
And he was kind enough to give me
these.
Loan them to me.
You can see here, this is your life
from God's eyes.
This is what God is doing inside of
you.
And everything that you are going through in
life is adding to that building, to that
eternal building that God is building inside you.
So when you resist that sinful thought and
it seemed like such a struggle and you've
forgotten it in moments and it's gone, God
has just added another block, another gold brick
to your soul.
And when you did that kind deed to
that lady down the street, God has just
added a little more substance to your inner
being.
And when you humbled yourself before that brother
and you just went under and you let
him think that he was the big shot,
God was watching.
He went away a little more depleted and
you went away a little more weighty.
And when you gave yourself over to spending
time in intercession for some lost soul, more
weight was being added to your soul.
And when you poured out your heart to
someone in need, more weight.
When you gave of yourself and of your
substance, more weight.
That's the reality, men, of what's going on
inside you.
And I hope that you can get a
sense of it.
I hope that you can get a sense
of it.
I hope that you can see what a
glorious and awesome thing that God is doing
inside you as you go through this process
that can seem so difficult at times.