Bobby Schuller - Your Philosophy Will Produce the Results You're Getting
Your philosophy is perfectly designed to give you the results you're getting. Anybody upset at me yet? Somebody will be. If I don't get at least one person to stand up and leave this sermon, I don't know if I've done my job. Your philosophy is perfectly designed to produce the results you're getting. Here's an important thing I know. I know how to get to heaven. Now, I'm gonna tell you how to do that in just a minute. Maybe you know how to get to heaven, but here's another question maybe you haven't asked that I can also answer. What is heaven? Or here's another one, where is heaven? The best way to answer those questions is, one, heaven is anywhere God is, and his rule is obeyed, and his life is given, and his promises are fulfilled.
Heaven is the very present reign of God. Heaven is here, all around us. The gospel of Luke says heaven is within you. Ooh. That sounds a little eastern for me, that's a little, it's in you. Okay, so where is heaven, and what is heaven? It's where God's reign, and it's here, it's present, so that when we die, we don't go to heaven if we're in Christ Jesus. When we die, we stay in heaven. We stay in heaven, and that's why we don't taste death. It's a bit philosophical, isn't it? Well, it's an important thing, because your philosophy is gonna produce results. Hmm. I first want to brag about going to the gym, which I do. My gym is amazing.
Someone in the last service said, "You should be a sales rep for this gym," but let me tell you all about it. It's five stories, and there's also a gym part on the roof with a running track. It has a hot tub, a swimming pool, it has both dry and steam saunas, the showers are Immaculate and beautiful, they have four types of, like, soaps and lotions you can use when you take a shower, they have racquetball courts, basketball courts, they have yoga classes and dance classes. It's amazing, all the stuff you would want, not only the good stuff, they also have the gnarly stuff. They've got ropes and steel and lead and bars and chains, all the stuff that's really uncomfortable, and you'd be surprised to hear that this gym which I love is actually not too expensive.
If you can afford Taco Tuesday, you can afford my gym. If you can afford a tank of gas, you can afford my gym. Which I can, because I ride my bike to the gym. Hey, that's a good idea. And you know, in fact, it was so funny, I was talking to a kid at Target about a video game I wanted to buy for my daughter for Christmas, and we had a nice long conversation 'cause I love talking to people, and a week later I saw him at the gym, and he works at Target. Isn't this is an amazing country, America, where you can work at Target and go to a five star, five story kinda gym, that's an amazing thing, and still be a kid. I love that.
Where was I? Oh yeah, America. No, yeah, this gym is beautiful, and the biggest question that came to my mind was how does this business make any money? It had to be at least 100,000 square feet, and there is, in fact, one guy who all he does is use the hot tub. He's a Greek guy, and I asked him once, I said, how on earth does this gym make money? And he said, "Well," very wise thing, he said, "Bobby, a lot of people pay to be members here, but not a lot of people go here. You know, if everybody who was a member here came on the same day, nobody would be able to get in". And doesn't that tell you something about human nature?
See, every gym doesn't have one price, it has two prices. The first price is the price to get in, the price to get into the gym. You go, you sign up, you make a commitment, every week a fee is taken from my credit card, that's easy to understand, isn't it? That's the price to get in. So, when I go in, they say, "Hello, Mr. Schuller, nice to see you again". And I look around, and nobody's there. That's because nobody's paying the second price. The second price is what you pay to get the results from the gym. That is the thing of going to the chains, going to the yoga class, going to the ropes, pushing, stretching, running, training.
That is a second price, and that price is worth it, and it comes with gym results. Paying money for the gym is a little bit easier than paying the lead of, you know, that you pay in the gym. In life, life is very much this way. Most of the time when people leave church they don't really leave church, they just stop going. Most people don't leave the gym, they just stop going. They keep payin', they just stop going, 'cause they're gonna go tomorrow. Are you gonna go tomorrow? No, you're not, you're probably not. Maybe you will. Maybe I'm a possibility thinker, it's possible. It's possible that you'll go to the gym tomorrow. But it's more likely that you're gonna go to the gym tomorrow if you go today, because health is never owned, it's rented, and the rent is due every day.
You can cheat sometimes, I sure do. I cheat on Mondays. It's called a cheating Charlie diet. I cheat like crazy on on Mondays. But in life many of us, we want to pay the price to get in, but we don't want to pay the price to get the results. In the kingdom of God there are two prices. There's the price of heaven, and then there is the results of heaven. The really good news, as we call it, the gospel, here, are you ready for some good news? Really good news? Someone paid the price so you can get in. Won't even cost you Taco Tuesday. Price has been paid, you can get in. But if you want the results, there's a second price. You gotta take up your cross too.
There's something you've got to do to get the results from heaven. Treasures in heaven are not the treasures you get just when you die, they're treasures you get today. There are things that give you results today, tomorrow, and the next day. They are the results of the principle of the seed and the sower. You ever heard you reap what you sow? That's true for positive things too. But remember that Jesus doesn't tell us you reap what you sow. He tells us you reap much more than what you sow. You reap 30, 60, a hundredfold if you pay the price, the second price, the price that has results. You need both. If you don't know about that first price and how it was paid for you, there's only a few times in life someone looks right at you and says, make a decision to change your life today. And I'm asking you that right now, actually. Make a decision right now to follow Christ.
Pray a prayer in your heart that you're not gonna ride the fence anymore. Maybe you used to follow Christ and you need to come home, stop waiting, come home today. Jesus says anyone with a little bit of faith can move a mountain. Maybe you just believe in God just a little bit. Give god that little bit and watch what he can do. Make a decision today to follow Christ. Ask Christ to enter into your heart. And when you die, you'll stay in heaven, and that'll be a very good thing, I can promise you that. If you make that decision now, I want you to text the number on the screen. I'm keeping track of all the people that come to faith so I can pray for them. We've had hundreds of people already, I want a thousand people to come to faith by the end of this year.
So, there's the price that's been paid, and then there's the second price that's probably waiting to be paid, and that is your philosophy. Your philosophy is perfectly designed to produce the results you're getting. What if you don't like the results you're getting in life? Whose fault is it? What should change in life if what I'm saying is true? What should change is your philosophy or your worldview, the way you see things. Most things in life are skills that can be learned. You don't like your marriage, you used to like that person, that's why you married them.
Did you know being married is a skill, a philosophy that you can develop and learn? You hate your marriage, how many books have you read on marriage? Well, it might help you. Did you know... you say, I am an unhappy person, and it's this person's fault or it's the government's fault or it's my parents's fault or it's nasty friends or neighbors or it's my work's fault. Did you know there are a lot of happy people that are poor? A lot of happy people that have jobs they don't love? Being happy is a skill, and there are books on being happy. I know, I wrote one. Being a friend is a skill. Being healthy is a skill. Being successful is a skill. And leading a holy life is a skill.
And all of these are outgrowths of your philosophy, of whether or not you take responsibility and decide, I can become who I want to become. I can change the way I think, I can change my friends, I can change the way I think about money and work and God, I can change how whether or not I spend time watching TV or reading a book or developing my relationships, or do I use my free time to escape the life I have or do I use my free time to attain the life I want? All those are good questions, and when you ask good questions, you get a good philosophy. When you get a good philosophy, you get a truly good life.
That's good news. That leads us to Matthew chapter 13. Jesus is telling us about the kingdom of heaven. What's that? What is the kingdom of heaven? The reign, presence, goodness of God all around us and in us, what God wants to happen is being done. Okay, Matthew 13 says, "Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again". It's like pirate treasure, right? And then in his, what? "Joy, went and sold everything he had and bought that field". That's what the philosophy of the kingdom of heaven is like. This is probably a reference to a real legend. In those days, people, you know, there wasn't the banking system that we have today.
If you had some wealth or something you accrued, sometimes you put it a strongbox, bury it under your favorite tree somewhere on your land, and sometimes, you know, life in the ancient near east, people died of all sorts of things, war, dysentery, duels. Can you imagine if that was the way you went? And probably some Joe forgot about is box, or nobody knew about his box, and he died, and the guy who owned the land obviously didn't know, and the law of the land says because it's happened so often, if you own the land, you own the box. So, some worker out there found the box and overpaid for the land. I'm sure that seller thought more than once, why is he paying so much for this land? Doesn't that cost him everything? It was worth it.
Jesus says, "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had to buy it and bought it". Also, another story, you know, pearls of great price in those days are hard to find, but if they were found, they would be worth the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars. Lots of stories of adventurous people who looked through the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean, found humongous pearls, came back to Rome, and sold them for generational wealth. You search, you search, you search, you search, and you find. So, here's a good question. What is Jesus even talking about? What is the pearl of great price? What is this strong box of gold coins? And the answer is it's the kingdom of heaven.
Here's the next question. How do I get it? How do I get the kingdom of heaven? You become a disciple of Jesus. Here's the best question, what's a disciple? Disciple means literally, someone who is trained. It's where the word discipline comes from. Not discipline to punish, but discipline to create regular habits in your life that produce training that change who you are that develop you as a person, and those things are worth it. It's the second price.
The first price is paid by Jesus, the second price is paid by you the day you decide to change your philosophy, take responsibility for your life, and create the life that you want. By learning from the scriptures, good decisions, good thinking, good patterns, and everything will change. I just saw somebody write that down. That person's gonna get more than everybody else. They're gonna get twice as much. If you hear what I'm saying today, I promise you, your life will never be the same. This is one of those sermons that there's gonna be someone who's gonna really get it, some of you'll really get it, and you'll look back, and you say, "I remember that sermon I heard from Bobby Schuller, I was never the same again".
Here's what I'm really getting at. It's all about training. Don't try harder, train better. Many of you grew up in really religious churches, it was all about not doing stuff. Don't smoke, don't drink, don't chew, don't go with girls that do, my favorite, I love that. In that way of viewing Christianity, this podium is a perfect Christian. Look at it. It's not smoking, drinking, it's not partying, it's not dancing, it's not breaking any rules, it's obeying all the commandments, and most of all it's in church. Here we are, the perfect life. Who wants to be this podium? Not I. Not you. Certainly that's not what God's calling us to do and to be. God's calling us to be stronger. He's calling us to be full of power.
That's why Jesus doesn't use phrases like that. He uses phrases like, "Go ye therefore. Go out and take nothing with you so you can see what I've given you. Go out and pray with authority, go out and stand on God's Word, go out and see what you're really made of". That's the thing that Jesus tells us to do. And he tells us to train, to train by doing all the things we can to weave a good philosophy into our body, mind, and spirit. So, don't try harder, train better. Don't ask God to make it easier, ask him to make you stronger. Yes, you can ask God to take things out of your life, and some things you shouldn't have in your life, and there are many things that God doesn't want you to have in your life, but ask the Lord to make you stronger.
Don't ask God to prepare the road for you, ask God to prepare you for the road. Don't ask God to take away your challenges and problems, ask God to give you spiritual power to overcome them. Ask God to create in you what he intended from the beginning to do greater things than Jesus did. That's what he's called you to do. On Wednesday, Cohen had a series of seizures, and we had to call 911. It was in the morning, we heard him crying, we went in, and he had multiple seizures. They wouldn't stop, we tried all of the emergency things, it wouldn't stop, and Hannah and I looked at each other, and just said, "Should we call an ambulance"?
What should we do? We don't love to do that, because we always know it means it's going to be a lot of days of of time in the hospital. But we called, and the fire department came, and they took Cohen, and they wheeled him away, and put 'em on the ambulance. And it was a long couple of days. We had to take shifts, and it was hard. We're in Chalk Hospital, great facility, and here's how I used to pray. Can I tell ya? You might say, oh, I'm going, Bobby doesn't know what I'm going through. I know what you're going through. There's not a lot of hells worse than sick kids. You know, it's rough. There are some things that are worst than that, but not a lot of things.
Here's how I used to pray, because this is an old thing we've gone through. I used to pray, "Lord, please, please, please, Lord, please, please". I have a new philosophy, I don't pray that way anymore. Because I know God's will and power. I say, "Cohen, come". He's asleep when I say this, you know. "Cohen, come in line with God's Word. Cohen, be well. Cohen, be healed". That's how the disciples prayed, because they had something special baked into them. You see, it came naturally. When Paul saw a man who couldn't walk, he said, "Stand upright on your feet," and he did. And when Peter saw the man at the gate called Beautiful, he said, "Silver and gold have I not, but this I have. Stand up and walk".
And when Jesus saw that his best friend had died, he didn't say, "Lord, please, please, please". What did he say? "Lazarus, come forth". This is how you pray, it's a better way to pray. And when I pray too, I used to say, "Lord, let us get out of this hospital please, please, please". But this time I said, "Lord, make me the man that my son and my wife and my daughter need. Don't make it easier, Lord, make me stronger. Don't take away my problems, Lord, make me capable. Don't take away my obstacles, Lord, give me spiritual power. Help me become who you knew I could be that day I said I believe in Jesus," and it happened.
And Cohen's fine, by the way. And we went to Disneyland yesterday, and he recovered faster than he ever has. If we're applauding, we're applauding for the Lord, and not for me, because all I'm telling you is just that I started to really believe this stuff, that I actually said, what if the Bible's just true? It just is true, and I'm gonna believe it. That's a better way, that's a good philosophy. God is interested in making you stronger, but you have to be interested in paying the second price, in doing the work which once you get used to it is worth it. It's enjoyable. It's a great feeling to look back on your life and say, I'm not who I was a year ago. I'm not who I was ten years ago.
I made a decision to change my philosophy and stop blaming the government, my boss, my nasty relatives, or my community, or my this, or my that, or any of these things. I just said I'm gonna get a new philosophy. I'm going to fashion my life according to the gospel. And I'm just choosing today no more excuses, no more blame list. Keep your blame list, I'll keep my philosophy. And I'll become someone new today. Well, that is an exciting thing, that life is something to be fashioned and styled, created and made based off of your philosophy.
How lucky we are that we can know this information. There are many good philosophies and good questions and great things you can learn about money and people and leadership and serving, holiness and spirituality, and I don't have, if I had all day, I couldn't go through all of them, and there's still many more that I'm learning, and I'm still not an expert. But here are three things that if you change today, your life will never be the same. I saw someone pull out a pen, that's good. Your cell phone works too. You write this down, you won't be the same.
Number one, I want to see someone who is linked, linked in, someone who is connected, someone who understands the power of other people. You ever looked at the TV screen, forgive me for saying this, really. I love everybody. But have you ever looked at the TV screen or listened on the radio and asked the question, how do so many dumb people get power? You ever ask that question? I hope that doesn't seem arrogant of me. And my guess is you answered it rhetorically. Ask it practically. That's actually a good question that has a good answer. How do so many intellectually challenged people get power? How does that happen?
The answer is somebody helped them. The answer is they understand reciprocity. The answer is they aren't...they know the power of being linked in. I think it was Dale Carnegie who said, "The dog is one of the few pets on this planet who doesn't work for their keep. You know, you look at a cow, and cows gotta have milk, and a chicken's gotta lay eggs, and a canary's gotta sing, but the dog just gets to be a dog". Why is that? Why is it? That's a good question. Why does a dog not have to earn it's keep? 'Cause dogs really, really love people, and they're not faking it. You come home, and they're excited to see you. You tell them all about your co-worker and your long day, and they'll just keep listening. They're a great friend. They're man's best friend. And they get free room and board.
Now, there's a lot of smart dogs, and there's a lot of dumb dogs, but they all get the same rewards, 'cause every dog I've ever known is linked in, and linked in doesn't mean that they're faking it, doesn't mean faking liking people. It means understanding that people really are interesting. Every single person in this room is super interesting, and if you ask good questions, you'll discover that very quickly. Here's what I learned from Dr. Schuller. Your net worth is your network. Your network is your net worth. Somebody else wrote that down. Their net worth just went up. I'm not joking. This is important.
I have a friend, Dr. James Davis. He came out and he called me once, and he said, "Hey, Bobby, I wanted to get together with you. I'm going to be out in California on such and such date. Do you have 30 minutes and we can get a cup of coffee"? And I said, "Sure, that sounds like a great idea. I'd be happy to do that". Came to my office, we had a short cup of coffee, really nice chat, and I said, "So, what brings you to California all the way from Florida"? And he said, "You". I said, "Excuse me"? He said, "I flew out from Florida for a 30 minute cup of coffee with you".
Now, think about how genius this is. I learned something this day, because if he had called me and, said, "Hey, Bobby, I'm gonna fly out to California just to have a 30 minute a cup of coffee with you and I'm gonna leave, that's all I want to do," I'd be like this guy's crazy. Or I'd be like, "I don't", I'd be like, "That's silly, why would you fly out for 30 minutes"? But now this guy and I are dear friends. I've spoken at his conferences, he's gonna be here in two weeks, and he's gonna tell us all about how he's building a school on Mount Everest. And it's almost done. And it will get finished.
This is someone who knows the power of a network, because I can tell you Dr. Davis did not build that school alone. You gotta be linked in. You say, "I don't like people, I'm an introvert". I know a lot of introverts, and introverts are just smart, because they don't like talking about the weather, and they don't like wasting their time, they don't like boring people. But there are some people you would enjoy being with. I thought long and hard about this.
Who is someone that everyone, even people that don't like people, would love to be with? Who is someone? And I found it. I found the person that liberal, conservative, rich and poor, communist, capitalist, that every single person on earth would love to sit down and have a cup of coffee. This is 100% true, the answer is Jeff Goldblum. Everybody wants to hang out with Jeff Goldblum. There's no exception to this rule.
Now, you say, "I would like to talk with Jeff Goldblum". Well, if you like Jeff Goldblum, there's other people like him that you would find interesting. And then you say to me, "Well, Bobby Jeff Goldblum would never want to spend time with me". What am I gonna say? Become the kind of person Jeff Goldblum would want to hang out with. That's your answer. Don't blame anybody else, become, if that's what you really want, become one of the 500 people on Jeff Goldblum's list that he would want to spend time with if that's important to you. And if it's not, forget about it. That's the first one, I have two more, and I'm already at negative 24 seconds. But I'm gonna take an extra five minutes, 'cause this will change your life.
The first thing is you need to be linked in. The second thing is you need to understand, this is a fact. You are anti-fragile. Anti-fragile is a word coined by N.N. Taleb, my favorite author. He said, "The opposite of fragile is not robust, the opposite of fragile is anti-fragile". So, when you think of something fragile, think of a bunch of champagne glasses. You want to keep any two year old as far away from this tower of glass as possible, right? It wouldn't take a lot to shatter all of this glass.
So, you think what's the opposite of that? And you would think, maybe bowling pants. How's that? Does that seem like the opposite? The answer's no, bowling pins are not the opposite of fragile. Bowling pins are robust. You can knock 'em around, but they're not gonna change, they're not gonna get worse or better. Bowling pins would only be anti-fragile if every time you hit them, they got bigger or thicker or stronger somehow. Anti-fragile means that small amounts of harm cause the thing to become better. So, here we have to look at Greek myth. One example is the story of hydra. You might remember hydra. Heracles is fighting hydra. Every time you cut off one head, what happens? Two grow back.
So, you cut off another head, and what happens? Two more grow back, gets stronger and stronger. And in fact, the only way that Heracles is able to defeat hydra is by mending the wounds. So, people are like this, books are like this. Books are anti-fragile. The best way to get a book to sell is to ban it. Ban the book, and people are like, "Whoa, that's interesting". Or even better, burn it. If someone out there can take a pile of one of my books, "You Are Beloved," and create a huge pile and burn it and call it something horrible, whatever, just make it up, I don't even care, just make something up, I will sell more books that week than I've ever sold.
Books are anti-fragile. The best way to sell more books is to say, you know, that it's evil or it's bad or you shouldn't read it. Politicians are anti-fragile. I think many of us know intuitively, if you think about it, Mr. Trump's best friend is CNN. That's his best friend. Miss Cortes's best friend, Mr. Sanders's best friend is Fox News. The more you talk poorly about politicians and what they do and give them attention, the more it helps them as long as they don't apologize. I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right. That's an old saying. This is not a new thing. This is understood in the Roman Empire.
The Roman politicians knew this, and would try and go out of their way to do these things to get attention just because they wanted to get reelected. The church is anti-fragile. Church has done the best when it's been persecuted. It weeds out the wheat from the chaff, separates the men from the boys, the ladies from the girls, right? And this is true of you, of just the human body. This is true of the human soul. We don't do well chilling out all the time, being comfortable and lazy. We do well with adventure, challenge, setbacks, building. You must see that, to a point, the harm that you face in life is good for you, that when you go through struggle, the gym is the perfect example, right? When you work out, you're actually harming your body, but you're making it stronger.
One key is just seeing the challenges that you're going through as an opportunity to develop into the person you've always wanted to be. It's hard to do that when you're in it, but if you're not in it now, be ready for it so that that's how you respond when you get there. Finally, the first thing is you want to be linked in, the second thing is understand you're anti-fragile, and the third is that it's all about other people. Servant leadership is the word I'm going for.
Jesus told us we're not here to be served, we're here to serve others, to just find the immense joy of finding a need and filling it, to make your goals, if you have big goals, about someone else. It will do something for you, for sure. But when you make goals about other people, they get real power. He means that you really do believe in people, that when you talk to people, you ask them about themselves, and you really are interested in them, and you really do care about them, and you're willing to serve people, even if it might embarrass you a little bit.
Most of all, I want to encourage you today to make a decision to follow Christ. If you don't know him, you're just missing out on such an amazing treasure. The world doesn't have the right answers, my friend. It just doesn't. The Lord has the right answers, and if you want to become the person you want to be, you need to follow Christ. And if you make that decision today, again, I want you to text the number on the screen. I want to hear for you, I want to pray for you.
Lord, we come to you in the strong name of Jesus, and, yes Lord, we pray for help, we pray in our time of need, we thank you that we already know your will, but we also pray that you'd give us real spiritual power. And we pray it all in the strong name of Jesus. All God's people said, amen.