Jimmy Evans - The Foundation of Trust
I want to welcome everyone. We're so glad that you joining us, all the Gateway family and everybody else that's been joining us. We are so glad that you're a part of these weekend services, and we hope that you've been blessed by all of the services. Pastor Robert just finished a wonderful series of messages, and now I'm going to be preaching a lot through the summer. I've got a series coming up through the month of June, a series in the month of July, and also another one in September. And then we have a special series coming up in August. So we have a big summer planned for you, but we're so glad that you're joining us. We hope you're well. For all of you who are struggling through this, I'm going to lead you in a prayer in just a minute. We continue to believe for the COVID-19 to be broken and for us to be set free from that so we can go back, maybe not to normal, but the new normal as a society, and maybe a better normal in a lot of ways. But we want to pray for all of you who are struggling here in just a minute.
Let me say, and you may have seen the commercial just now that I have a new book out called I Am David, and this is 10 lessons in greatness from the life of King David. And King David was a wonderful, great King, a man after God's heart, and he did many things right. He did some things really wrong though. And so greatness is not a matter of being perfect. It's a matter of being yielded. And the thing about David is, regardless of what he did good or bad, he was yielded to God. And this is 10 lessons to achieve your destiny in life, to become all that God wants you to be. And this is available at Gateway Book Store. You can text STORE to 71010, and get a copy of the book here. And so, I hope that will be a blessing to you, that is something you're interested in.
Let me say, then I do wanna pray. And I want to say a word about the death of George Floyd. I want to honor that men. What an unbelievable, horrific crime that was committed against George Floyd. And this police officer, and we know wast majority of police officers, they're brave men and women, who put their life at risk to protect all of us and to serve all of us. But there's a few bad ones, and this is a bad one. And he has his knee on a man's neck for almost 9 minutes, unbelievable, painful to watch. But we grieve with his family, we grieve with the black community and all that are going through. And I absolutely understand, when you see the peaceful protest. There need to peaceful protests to pretest that injustice, this racially motivated injustice toward George Floyd, we know has happened for many others also. I know the black community is very aware of that.
For the riots, those are not warranted in any way. It does not honor the memory of George Floyd, and many of the black communities are disproportionately affected by that. And I'm saying, if you're trying to help the black community, you can't stand in support of these rioters. They are harming the black community and our society at large. We're going to pray against that. And I believe it's a spirit, not the protest, the peaceful protest that we stand in agreement with that. This is an important first amendment right that we have as Americans is to assemble together and to protest when we see injustice or something like that. So our black brothers and sisters in the black community at large, we stand with you. We stand compassionately in support of what you've gone through that many of us really can't understand on your level, but our hearts are with you. Our prayers are with you, and we're praying for the healing of America, both the COVID-19 and racial inequality, and just the division that is in our nation right now.
And I want to read a scripture to you that we've read to you before. Unite714.com is the prayer movement that started, the largest prayer movement in the history of the world, and we've been praying against the COVID-19 and all the effects of that on societies all over the world, but I want us to pray again for that. But this is the promise I want us to remember as we pray. And this is God speaking to Solomon, when Solomon dedicated the original temple that he built. God says (2 Chronicles 7:13-14), "When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land". And we need a healing of our land, both physically and spiritually and morally and racially. We need our land to be healed. He says, "Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually".
So what a powerful promise God makes to us, his people. And in the Old Testament, the temple was a place on the temple mount in Jerusalem. But when Jesus was crucified, the veil in the temple that hid the Holy of Holies and the arc of the covenant, that veil was ripped from top to bottom, from heaven to earth, and the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God was never contained behind the curtain. But the presence of God's Spirit in that temple no longer was in one place in Jerusalem, on a temple mount behind the curtain. 1 Corinthians 6 says, now we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So God's eyes were attentive to the temple mount during the time that that's where his presence was most experienced behind the curtain.
But now we're the temple of the Holy Spirit. God's attention is on his church. God's attention is on the prayers of his people, and aren't you glad that the pen of history has been handed to us and not to someone else, literally? What God is saying is, if things are going bad, and you see all these bad things happening, "if my people", we're God's people. "If my people who are called by my name", and we are called by his name, "if you'll humble yourself and pray and seek my face and turn from your wicked ways, I'll hear from heaven", because God's listening to our prayers, "I'll forgive your sins and I'll heal your land". And so I want you to join with me in prayer if you would right now, and we're going to pray a prayer of repentance and humility and a prayer for the healing of America and the world.
Father, we come to you now in the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name, and we are reminded that you are greater than all of this. Nothing is greater than you. You're greater than all of this. And we're reminded of the promise that you gave us in the Old Testament, and many other promises that when we come together in agreement in prayer, that you'll do it. And so we come right now and we humble ourselves, Lord. The pride of man is on display for the world to see, and the effects of that. But we humble ourselves, God, and we repent of our sins. We repent of the sin of racism. We repent of the sin of murder and violence and pride and immorality and lawlessness, all of these sins that are so prevalent today in our nation and are creating tremendous harm in our nation. These are our sins, and we repent and we ask for your forgiveness, and we ask that you would heal our land.
Heal the hearts of the Floyd family. Heal the hearts of the black community, God. and the misunderstanding, and just the pride of one race saying that they're better or they have some kind of a privilege over another race. It's a sin, God. And we repent of that sin and ask for you God, to heal America from these riots. We come against the spirit, Lord. We understand we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. We're wrestling against spiritual forces in heavenly places that are trying to steal, kill, and destroy, and that's all they're trying to do. And we bind these demons, spirits, and principalities in the name of Jesus Christ and by the authority that he has given us. And we pray for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and joy and peace, to be released over America in a supernatural way. And just as the enemy has come with evil in his heart to try to divide our land, we pray that you will come and that you will undo what the enemy has done and more so. We pray for revival and awakening and the healing of our nation, the political divide in our nation, Lord, the moral divide in our nation, the racial divide in our nation, Lord. We pray that you will heal it God, and do a supernatural miracle in Jesus' name, amen.
Heal the hearts of the Floyd family. Heal the hearts of the black community, God. and the misunderstanding, and just the pride of one race saying that they're better or they have some kind of a privilege over another race. It's a sin, God. And we repent of that sin and ask for you God, to heal America from these riots. We come against the spirit, Lord. We understand we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. We're wrestling against spiritual forces in heavenly places that are trying to steal, kill, and destroy, and that's all they're trying to do. And we bind these demons, spirits, and principalities in the name of Jesus Christ and by the authority that he has given us. And we pray for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and joy and peace, to be released over America in a supernatural way. And just as the enemy has come with evil in his heart to try to divide our land, we pray that you will come and that you will undo what the enemy has done and more so. We pray for revival and awakening and the healing of our nation, the political divide in our nation, Lord, the moral divide in our nation, the racial divide in our nation, Lord. We pray that you will heal it God, and do a supernatural miracle in Jesus' name, amen.
Thanks for praying with me, and we're going to continue to pray. And I want you to continue to pray with your friends, with your family, continue to pray, and let's put our eyes on heaven, and let's remember these promises. And let's remember as God's people to claim these promises as we continue to pray. Now I'm beginning a series of messages this month on Essential Foundations. As Pastor Robert said, we're going to be meeting online during the month of June. We're just reassessing literally every week to see where we are, our main consideration is your safety. We want to make sure when we come back that we do it in a timely manner, and that we do it in a safe manner. So we're always looking out primarily for your safety. I'll be communicating with you. I'll be preaching for the next four weeks, so I'll keep you up to date on what's happening related to us getting back to our services.
But this series is called Essential Foundations: Six Elementary Principles That Create a Rock Solid Faith and Qualify Us for Spiritual Maturity. And you may not realize that in God's eyes, we have to qualify to mature spiritually. Okay? And these essential foundations are the beginning point of us being able to mature in the Lord. Let me begin with Hebrews 6. Now we don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews. It's written to help Jewish people to come to an understanding of Jesus as the Messiah and changing from an old covenant mentality into a new covenant mentality. But it's obviously for believers also like us that were grafted in, gentile believers that were grafted in the faith. This is Hebrews 6:1-3, "Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits".
And so we're supposed to go on to maturity, and that means perfection, that we're supposed to go on as believers after we lay certain essential foundations, there are six that are listed here by the writer of Hebrews, six essential foundations of our faith. And it says here, and this we will do, we'll go on to maturity if God permits. Okay, well, let me ask you this question. Why wouldn't God permit anyone to go onto maturity? I mean, God obviously wants us to mature. Well, let me give you an example of this. So when you're building a house, the first thing you do is build a foundation. It's the most important part of the house, period. And so you build the foundation and after you've built the foundation, building inspectors come out and they test that foundation. And they want, they've got your plans. The city has your plans, and they're comparing your foundation to your plan.
And if you're planning on building a big house, big two story house, whatever you're planning on building, they're going to make sure that the foundation that you've laid can handle the superstructure, okay, can handle the building. And so they do certain stress tests all around the foundation. And if you pass the test, they give you a green tag. And they say, "Yeah, go ahead and build", okay, if you fail the test because of all of their concerns and rightly so, you get a red tag and they say, you cannot build until you repair this foundation. See as believers, when we want to go on in our faith and we want to become everything that God wants us to be, and we want to achieve our destiny and all of that, you understand you can't just do that because you want to do that. You have to get a permit from God. That's what he's saying here. We're going to do this. We're going to leave the elementary principles, the essential foundations, and we're going to go on to maturity if God permits.
And so let me say this. If you have these foundations in your life, you're going to get a green tag from God. And God's going to say, "Hey, I've got a great destiny for your life. You laid the foundations, go on". But if you don't have the foundations, God isn't going to permit. And it's not because he's against you because he loves you. He knows that lack of foundation in your life is going to create a lot of problems later on just like people, the building inspectors, when they see a bad foundation, they know they're doing you a favor by telling you no. They're not fuddy duddies. They're just saying, "Hey, you're going to have a lot of problems later on if you build on this bad foundation".
And so, why do you build foundations? Let me tell you three reasons that we build foundations, and the first is safety. A bad foundation is unsafe to build upon. If you build on it, you're going to have all kinds of problems, and so spiritually, we live in an evil world, okay. This is a very evil world. We live literally in a war zone, and we have an evil devil who wants to steal, kill, and destroy from our lives. Let me say this now. So Ephesians tells us that we're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but we're wrestling against spiritual powers and authorities in the heavenly places. And it tells us to take up the full armor of God. And the full armor of God begins with the sword of the Spirit. This is the only offensive weapon that we're given to fight the devil with. Everything else is defensive, the helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith. Everything else is defensive, but this is offensive.
You say, well, how powerful, how important is the Word of God. In Matthew 4, Jesus defeated Satan himself with three scriptures. When Satan came against Jesus, Jesus, every time Satan came to him with a half-truth or a lie, Jesus responded with, it is written, it is written, it is written. This is nuclear in the realm of the Spirit. Well do I say that? According to a Barna survey, and Barna is a Christian survey group. They surveyed Christians all over America, and they found that over half of people who identify themselves as believers or Christians, do not believe in the devil, they do not believe in hell, and they do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a person. Okay, well, let me tell you the problem with that. So, Jesus taught more on hell than he taught on heaven.
The devil shows up in the third chapter of the Bible in Genesis 3, and he is present and active until Revelation 20. There are only four chapters in the Bible that do not include the presence and activity of the devil. Okay. And besides, the Holy Spirit shows up in Genesis 1:1. And so the Holy Spirit is God, he's all through the Bible. And so a lot of believers are illiterate of the scriptures. Either that, or they just simply don't believe it. Now, let me say something. So if what the Bible is saying to us is wrong related to the devil, why would we believe what it says about Jesus? If the Bible is lying to us about hell, why would we believe what it says about heaven? Now, let me say this. We're living, we live in an evil world and Jesus said, the enemy only comes to steal, kill and destroy.
Do you realize that not only is the devil real, but in Luke 10:19, Jesus said, "I give you authority over serpents and over scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means harm you", if you use the authority. "If you use the authority" is not in there, but that's implied. If you use this authority, there is a devil, he's real, but we don't have to fear the devil. We have authority over him. Many believers, most believers do not have the most fundamental foundation of the reality of the Holy Spirit as God, of a real devil, and a real hell. They don't have those foundations in their lives. They're not safe. This is what keeps us safe is: knowing and using the word of God, operating our lives based on the word of God. That's the foundation. That's the most basic foundation that keeps us safe in this life. If you don't believe the Bible, you're not safe. If you don't understand the Bible, you're not safe. That's why as believers, we need to be disciples.
Number two reason for foundations is unexpected stress. You don't build a foundation for the good times. You build a foundation for the worst times. So you want to make sure that your foundation is as solid as it can be. This is Luke 6. Now this is a very important question Jesus is asking, "Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say"? Now, that's important question. "As for everyone who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice"... Let me stop right there. Jesus didn't say, if you hear his words. Jesus didn't say if you believe in his words. He said, everyone who comes to me and listens to me and puts what I have to say into practice, "I will show you what they are like. They are like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete".
You understand, according to Jesus, again, his words create an indestructible foundation. I want to tell you something. See, you don't know your future. I don't know your future. I don't know my future. I know the devil is going to try to do some stuff. And I know some stuff is coming that's is not so pleasant. Can I say this? Nothing in your life will ever be able to overcome the power of God's Word as the foundation for your life. We have children and grandchildren. Karen, I've been married now for 47 years. And I'm saying we've been through a lot, but the foundation of God's Word has proven in our family and in our marriage to be the solid foundation that has allowed us to live a blessed life.
We're imperfect people, you know, but we sincerely practice our faith, but by God's grace and by the foundation of his Word, we have been able to live safe lives. I've seen many believers who didn't know the Word or didn't care, you know. They were just, you know, illiterate about the Bible or just, you know, agnostic or whatever, living very painful lives. Because when... Jesus said, the man built his house on the ground. What that means is no foundation. It is sure to fall. And when it falls, it means a lot of pain, a lot of pain. God loves you so much. He doesn't want you to fail, but a life without the Word of God as the foundation is going to fail. You're going to have a lot of failures. You're going to have a lot of pain, but it's needless because the word of God is there.
Let me tell you the third reason that we have foundations, and it's the superstructure. The substructure of a building dictates the superstructure. Now just imagine you're going down the street and you see a guy out on a lot and he's laying a foundation and it's about that thick. It's a big foundation, but it's not very thick. And you're thinking, Well maybe he's just going to put a steel building up or, you know, something like that, kind of a storage building. And you walk up to the guy and you say, "Hey, well, what are you about to build here"? He said "A hundred story skyscraper, bigger than anything in New York. I'm about to build a big skyscraper. I'm gonna be famous. I've got a great destiny. And I just know that God has told me to build this big skyscraper". And you're saying, "Well, if you're going to build a skyscraper, I don't think you have enough foundation". "Ah well, foundation, that's expensive. Foundations are expensive. It takes a lot of time. It's going to delay me a year or two. If I lay this foundation. I'm ready to go on with my destiny in life". Now, you know that that guy is a very foolish guy.
Listen, did you know there's a building in San Francisco, a skyscraper in San Francisco that's leaning, and people live in it and they had this on TV. And one of the residents of this building walked over and laid a ball on the floor and it rolled to the window quite fast. And people were moving out of the building. You know why that building's leaning? Because when they built it, they saved time and money and they didn't dig down to the bedrock. And now they're having to go in and retrofit the building and dig underneath it. And now go down into the bedrock and Jack that building up. This is what happens when you cut corners as a believer and you don't patiently go through the process of discipleship and understanding the Word of God and applying it to your life. You may save some time, you may save some money, and you may be able to get on down the road, but you're going to have problems later on.
God has a destiny for your life. And a lot of preaching, a lot of books, a lot of them are out there, including my book, I Am David, is about achieving God's destiny for your life. So understand this. The foundation of your life tells God how much he can build on it. When God comes to, every person is called, and I'm telling you, you're called to do something great for God. I'm telling you right now you are, according to the Word of God. And so, but when God comes and he's looking to build, like he comes up to that foundation that's about that thick. He can't do much on that foundation. He wants to, but he can't. But when he comes and sees your life, and that's the importance of a series over the next four weeks.
Every time I preach a message, I want you to check that box. "If it's not something that you're currently doing, I want you to say, Lord, I want that foundation in my life. I agree with that". And what happens is every single time that you do that, you're checking a box. And then God's going to give you a green slip, where you can go on and you can build. That's what I want for you at the end of this series is for you to be able to be permitted to go on with your destiny. So some people, they don't patiently read or understand the word of God, and they do what's called selective learning. Let me read you a scripture about the dangers of selective learning. This is 2 Timothy 4:1-4, "I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables".
The time will come. This is an end time prophecy. The time will come when men will not endure sound doctrine. Why don't they endure sound doctrine? Because it's no fun, a lot of it. You know, when the Bible tells you to give... I had a couple in, when I pastored in Amarillo, that every November I preached on giving on stewardship. And every November, they left the church. Every year. This went on like 30 years. And you know, it was just kind of an inside joke. And we just thought, well, November is coming. You know, this couple's gonna be leaving. They didn't want to give. Forgiving, serving. There are many things the Bible tells us about that are just simply unpleasant. I mean, they're not things that come naturally to us, but if we're going to be disciples, it means we can't selectively learn.
And what this is saying here, the time will come when men will not open the Bible and read it and go, "Wow, that's tough. But Lord, I really need that". They'll just skip it over. They'll just say, I don't believe that, and just go to what they like. Keeping to themselves teachers, reading the books, going to the seminars, going to churches where they're saying what you want to hear. I was in a store one day and a guy walked up to me and he said, "Hey Pastor Jimmy". And I said, "Hey, how are you"? I said, "Do you go to Gateway"? And he said, "No, I don't go to Gateway". He said, "I come there every now and then". And I said, "Oh, okay". He said, "I'm in the Navy". And I said, "Oh, you're in the Navy". He said, "I float". He floats from church to church. And he said, I don't commit to any church. I just go where I like the preaching.
Well, that's called consumer Christianity, and consumer Christianity means I want to be fed what I want to be fed. I want to be fed when I want to be fed by who I want to be fed. And I don't want to hear anything that I don't want to hear. Well, great. Okay. So understand this, that type of Christianity produces a very weak Christian with very, very shallow foundations. I need to hear some tough things sometimes. And as a preacher, and what Paul is telling Timothy here is, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. He's saying you preach the Word. Well, I don't want to be unpleasant. I don't want to be ungracious or self-righteous, but I'm saying as someone preaching to you right now, I'm under obligation from God to say what he tells me to say, and to feed you sometimes maybe food that may be a little bit hard to digest, but I can promise you it's going to be nourishing because it's according to the Word of God. And I promise you this too. It will lay the foundations in your life that will help you to get where you're wanting to go.
You have an important destiny in your life, but God does not overbuild on a foundation. Foundations are absolutely critical. And now we're going to be talking about six essential foundations of our faith. Let me begin in this message. This message is called The Foundation of Trust. And we're going to talk about the first two foundations of our faith, which are absolutely critical. This is Hebrews 6 again. "Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God". Okay? So the first foundation of our faith is repentance from dead works. The second foundation is faith towards God.
So I'm gonna make four statements to help you understand these two foundations. I'm going to make four statements regarding this to help you understand how you can lay these two foundations in your life. The first truth is this. We are not free agents. We are owned by God and are totally accountable to him in every area of our lives. We are no free agents. Listen to 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s".
Well, this is talking about sexual immorality and we live in a very sexually immoral world. And even many believers are just saying, "I'll do whatever I want with whomever I want, and no one's going to tell me otherwise". Well, what Paul is saying here is now you need to be real careful because every other sin that you commit, you commit outside your body. But when you commit sexual immorality, you sin against your own body. So why is that true. It's because we're not animals. Our sexual organs are connected to our spirits. And when we have sex with someone, we become one with that person. That's what Paul is saying here. He says, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and you are not your own. You were bought with a price.
So there was this big demonstration on TV. And there, it was the reproductive rights, you know, the pro-abortion, the pro-death, pro-murder kind of nonsense. And there was a woman who was one of the protesters and she was protesting for abortion and against the pro-life, and which they call anti-choice. And she has a t-shirt on, and her t-shirt says, this belongs to me with an arrow pointing to her reproductive organs. This belongs to me. Can I tell you a little news flash? Nothing belongs to you. Nothing belongs to you. Your body does not belong to you. Your sexuality does not belong to you. You were bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. We're not our own. We're not free agents.
Listen, listen to James, okay, James 4:13-16, "Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil". Okay. Well, why is it evil? Because I'm taking God's place. See, I've done this a thousand times now. So I'm not talking down to you. I'm saying, you know, there are many times before in my life that I would say, "Yeah, next week, I'm going to go over here and do this. Then I'm going to do this. Then I'm gonna do this". Well, what James is saying here is you don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow. You're not in the place of God. You have no right to say what you're going to do. You belong to God.
And if you're going to say, yeah, I'm going to go over this city over here. He says, then you say, if the Lord wills. If it's God's will for my life, I'm going to do that. But that's why it's evil, is God will not allow us to operate independently. So to live a blessed life as a believer, we have to begin with, we're not free. We're free in Jesus. We're not free from Jesus. Jesus didn't die so that you could be a free agent. Jesus died so you can be free from death and hell, and you can be free to live for him. Okay? So God doesn't bless good ideas. He blesses his ideas. This is one of the most basic fundamental truths of the Christian faith. God has no obligation to you or your good ideas or me or my good ideas.
And this is another way that I say it, and that is if it's your baby, he won't kiss it 'cause it looks like you. You go out and you hatch up all your good ideas and then problems start and you bring it to God and say, God, would you kiss my baby? No it looks like you. But if you'll pray, and if you'll hear God, and if you'll do what God says according to his Word and according to what he speaks in your spirit, which is always consistent with his Word, he'll raise that child and send it to college. God only energizes what he initiates. He only energizes what he initiates. We're not free moral agents. Jesus said, why do you keep calling me Lord and don't do what I say? Don't you know what that word means? It means master. It means boss. If you call Jesus Lord, it means you're not free. You're not a free moral agent. God does not recognize us to be free.
So I learned this the hard way when I was about 25 years old. Karen and I had, we were, before I pastored in Amarillo, we were in the church and we were life group leaders. We had a nice house. It wasn't very big, but it was good for us and our kids. But we had a life group, and our group grew very, very large. And so every Wednesday night... Our group grew up to 75 people, every Wednesday night, but in the house that we lived in, we grew to about 35-40 people, and that included children. So every Wednesday night from about seven to midnight, we had people all over our house. And and so we prayed one day and we thought, you know, we need a bigger living room for the life group. We don't need more bedrooms, don't need more kitchen, anything like that, we just need more living room.
So we started looking for a house. So we found this house that we lived in for 23 years. It was perfect, great neighborhood, kind of an old house needed a lot done to it, but it had a huge living room, a den behind the living room, and a room behind that for the kids. It was just the perfect house. And so we looked at it and I told Karen, I said, this, this house, this is the perfect house. She agreed. And I went to bed that night and I thought, this house will not be around very much longer. And I just felt a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear. And we woke up the next day. And so I told Karen, I said, Karen, we need to put a contract on that house and buy that house. It's not gonna be around. She said, Jimmy, we need to sell this house before we do that so we can get the money out for it. I said, no, Karen, we can make it work. Let's do it.
So out of fear, I pressured Karen into buying this other house before we had sold this house. And so we moved into the new house. It was great. We did some remodeling on it. We didn't have that much money, did a little bit of remodeling on it, and we moved in. And then the pain began. And so my wife was right. I was wrong. And loved our new house, but our other house didn't sell for many months. And every month we had to make that payment. And in fact, our real estate agent came and said, if you're going to be able to sell this house, you need to do this, this and this. Well we had, at that point, very little savings. We had to sell that house to get some money out, just to be able to live, to, you know, keep going. And every month the pain increased and increased. And I kept going back to God, ask him to kiss my baby.
Lord, please, Lord, please. You know, we're at this... we moved in this house for the kingdom. We moved in this house for you, and look what we're doing. And Lord, would you kiss my baby? And the Lord would say, no I won't kiss that baby. And so month after month after month after month, I mean, I got more humble, more broken, more humble, more broken. And we were desperate. I was desperate. I mean, it was so painful. And one day I was driving down the street and I was just, you know, just really, really frustrated. And the Lord said, that house was my will for you. Not the timing. It wasn't time. And you didn't trust me. You did not believe that I was big enough to keep that house for you if it was the right one. So you in fear bought that house, not out of faith, not trusting in me, don't do it against son. And the spanking was over, and the house sold within a week.
I've never, Jimmy still has welt. Jimmy still has that scar. And it's a very beautiful scar, because I learned I cannot act without God's blessing. I am not free. I must pray and hear God. And let me say this too. You need to learn to hear God. This is one of the most important foundations, and there's not a better teaching on it than Pastor Robert's Frequency book, audio book, Kindle, however you want to do it, and the information will come on the screen there, how you can get that. But Pastor Robert's Frequency series, his Frequency teaching will teach you how to hear God. And if you don't know how to hear God, it's the best resource out there. Okay?
So here's truth number two. We are totally incapable of running our own lives. It is why we turned to Christ in the first place. We can't run our own lives. This is John 10:7-11, "Then Jesus said to them again, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep'". Did you know, Old Testament and New Testament, one of the most common analogies for us is sheep? Well, that's not a compliment. Sheep are fluffy and they're sweet and they're cute, but they are pathetically ill-equipped for life on their own. That's why we need a shepherd.
The Bible always talks about us in the context of total dependence upon God. But see our sin is in-dependence. We don't want to be dependent. This is what Adam and Eve did. Listen this scripture, Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all". The basic sin of humanity is we don't want to choose God as our shepherd, and so we've strayed. And Jesus came to pay for our sin, the sin of independence. If we're going to have a foundation that God can build upon, we have to understand, we don't even know tomorrow. You know, by the way, sheep really are pathetic little animals. They can't navigate. You've never heard of the homing sheep. They can't bear burdens. You've never heard of a pack sheep. They can't defend themselves. You've never heard of an attack sheep. They are completely dependent animals. God says that is the animal that you're like. You need me. You need me in your life.
This is King David. This is Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want".. Can I make you a promise? If you make the Lord, your shepherd and you follow him, you won't want. He'll bless your socks off. The mistake that we make is independence, thinking that we can run our lives. We can't run our lives. Psalm 23:2-6, "He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever". And that all begins with a statement, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want".
What a wonderful shepherd. He knows the future. He protects us. He provides for us, everything that we need is in God our Shepherd. But for him to be our Shepherd, we have to disqualify ourselves from being our own shepherds. Let me read you this. We were, Karen and I were traveling, and we went, we were in a hotel and we went to the hotel gym to work out, and I walked into the gym lobby, and I saw a statement that was written on the wall as you walk into the gym. This is supposed to be a motivating kind of a statement. And I want to read it to you.
"I am a force unto myself. Energy is a force I create. I make the most out of every step I take during my time on Earth. I believe in myself. My deep breaths fuel every cell of my being. My body and mind are in motion as one, guided by inner power. I defy gravity every day. I kick my mental couch to the curb. Nothing weighs me down. I live, I laugh. I love infinitely. I never give up or give in. My passions are unrelenting. Fear does not weaken my will or my resolve. Nothing shrinks my determination. I lift others up with me. My strength comes from within. This is my core. It's unbreakable".
Well, I can promise you a 66-year-old man didn't write that. It makes me tired to read it. Are you kidding me? All that. Only God could make that statement. But this is supposed to be something that we're supposed to say to ourselves to somehow motivate ourselves to believe that my energy comes from within. My power comes from God. My life comes from God. Your life comes from God. We're incapable of leading our own life. We're incapable of that kind of stuff, that humanist kind of a nonsense there. So this is a foundation, that I cannot guide my own life. I'm a sheep and I need a shepherd.
Number three, God created us with a detailed plan and purpose for our lives, and only he can guide us there. God has a detailed plan for your life, and He is the only chance for you to reach your destiny in God. Psalm 139:13-18, "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You".
Did you know that when God made you in your mother's womb, he detailed out your entire life? Everything. It says he had so many thoughts for you, they're more than the sand of the seashore. It's truth. You're not an afterthought. You're not an accident. You're not meaningless. You are a very, very important person designed by God himself, and God has a destiny for you. And the only way you're going to get there is by listening to his voice and following his voice. Let me tell you this story. So at 19 years old, I'd been saved for two weeks. And Karen and I had just gotten married a week earlier and I was sitting in the backyard of our house. I think I was reading a Billy Graham book. I don't think I owned a Bible at that point. And I saw a sheet like a sheet dropped down in front of my face, and I could see myself preaching to a multitude of people. I saw all these multitude of people in front of me. That's when God called me to preach.
And so nine years later I went into the ministry, you know, just miraculously, went into ministry, and then in 2015... And so I began to preach, you know, and everything started happening. So in 2015, I went to preach for Joel Osteen at Lakewood church in Houston, and they have a 16,000 seat sanctuary. So I spoke Saturday night two Sunday morning services. And in their 11 o'clock service, they had 12,000 people in that service. And I got up, it was great. You know, just wonderful group of people. And I got up and spoke that morning. And so Karen and I were driving back to our hotel, and Lisa Comes who is Joel's sister is a friend of mine. And so Lisa said, "Hey, Jimmy, we took this picture of you preaching this morning". And you know how Lakewood has a big world behind you? And so from behind me, they had taken this picture. So Lisa sent me this picture, and I looked at it and I took the phone, and I put it up in front of Karen. And I said, that's the picture the Lord showed me when I was 19 years old.
God, isn't in time. Time is a prison that we're in because of sin. God is above time. He's the Great I Am. He transcends time. When I was 19 years old, God was standing in my life when I was 62 years old, and he showed me the exact picture of what would be happening in my life in the year 2015. He showed it to me in 1973. Can I tell you, the plan that God has for your life is incredible. Can I tell you, he's already standing in your future? Can I tell you, God's standing in your future, looking back, smiling at you. Your future is all good in God. And you say, "well, Jimmy, I've made a lot of mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes. I just don't know if there's hope for me". We went to San Antonio last weekend. Our twin granddaughters turned 18, and we were driving back in using our little navigation thing. And so we kind of knew where we were, so we were kind of defying the navigation system there. But it kept recalculating. And every time we missed a turn, the little navigation thing would be saying, in a half mile take this u-turn, in a half mile take this exit or whatever. And every time we missed a turn it recalculated.
Well, if an app on your phone can recalculate, don't you think that God in heaven can recalculate? And every time you miss a turn and every time you make a mistake, it's not too late. God doesn't throw people away. The thief on the cross next to Jesus, Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise. He didn't throw that man away. It's not too late for you. It's never too late in God. And I'm saying to you, God has a plan for your life that was there from your mother's womb, and only he can get you there. And we have to come to the place, no more dead works. What's a dead work? Anything that God doesn't begin. Anything that we began on our own without consulting God, without consulting the Word of God, that's a dead work. What about faith toward God? It means I trust God to be my Shepherd. I trust God to guide me.
Well, let me make one more statement, then I'm finished. God is the perfect Father, and he loves us more than we love ourselves. And he will bless us more than we will bless ourselves if we will trust him. Did you know that God loves you more than you love yourself, and he'll bless you more? God will bless you more than you will bless yourself, if you will trust him as your Father. This message is called The Foundation of Trust. This was the biggest deal for me. I did not have a good father growing up. Later in life, he knew the Lord and he, we became wonderful friends and he was a good father then. Growing up, he was very cold and distant, not involved in my life in any way. And it was very difficult for me to believe that God loved me and was going to take care of me. I could believe that he loved me, but I had no concept in my life of anyone taking care of me, ever. In fact, the men in my life always took advantage of me.
And I just had that basic mistrust of that concept of father, and some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it was a barrier in my relationship with God. And one day I was praying as a pastor in my forties. And the Lord said to me, I want you to begin to treat me like I'm the perfect Father, unless you can prove me wrong. And so I did. I just began to talk to God like he was a perfect Father. I just began to pray like he was a perfect Father. I just began to think, well, he's my perfect Father. Can I say something? I didn't prove him wrong. He's the perfect Father. It healed my heart, all the anxiety, all the fear that I had, all of the mistrust that I had. And I did. I had a basic mistrust of God. I did not know how much he loved me. Today, I know how much he loves me, and I have no more fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Can I say to you, you may not have had a very good father. You may have had an abusive father. Your father may have rejected you or abandoned you, but never, never God the Father.
To begin our Christian life, to begin this foundation of trust, we have to come to the place where we understand we are not free moral agents. We cannot run our own lives. The destiny that God has for us, that he gave us in our mother's womb can only be fulfilled as we trust in him as our loving Father and follow him and follow his Word. These are the first two foundations. Like I said earlier in the message, can you check that box? And some of you, maybe this is just a reminder, maybe you did before. Maybe you've kind of wandered. But I'm saying to you right now, we need God. We need God. And we must renounce the dead works, the self-initiated works that curse our lives that we all do, that we all do. All we like sheep have gone astray. We need to come back to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. We need to humble ourselves and remind ourselves, we belong to God, and what a wonderful, wonderful God to belong to. I want you to bow your heads with me:
Father, we come to you and we repent of dead works. We just repent. The things that we've done that we thought were good ideas, the things that we've done out of greed or fear or lust or whatever it is, selfishness, pride. We repent, Lord. We repent. And that means we change our minds. We turn around, and we put our faith in you. We put our faith in you as our Lord, as our Savior, as our Guide, as our Shepherd, as our Father. We put our faith in you. And Holy Spirit, I pray right now, give us the supernatural ability to trust in God and to lay this foundation in our lives. Give us the supernatural ability to achieve the destiny that you have for us that began in our mother's womb. We pray for your forgiveness. We receive your forgiveness Lord, and I pray your blessing on every person that can hear my voice right now. Bless them, God. Be real to them. Let them begin to hear your voice. Show them what to do, but I pray that you'll bless them, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.