John Bevere - Your Calling, Learning The Big Picture
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We're going to talk now about what I consider to be the most important reason for fulfilling your calling, so let's put it back up. Why is it important to live in your calling? Watch this, guys: you will be rewarded eternally. This is so important to have an eternal perspective. You know, if I live with an eternal perspective, I live differently than with a 70- or 80-year perspective. I mean, I think about it like this: if I go to a wedding and there's a dessert table at the reception, if I have a one-day perspective, I'm eating all those desserts. But if I have a three-month perspective, I'm going to eat one dessert because I know tomorrow I'm going to have an upset stomach if I eat them all. I know that in a week I'm going to be ten pounds heavier than I was, and I'm going to carry that additional ten pounds for another three months. So it's the same way with eternity; we have to live with an eternal perspective.
If you look at John the Apostle, he was actually in his 90s when he penned these words—some of the last words he wrote on Earth. He says, "Look to yourselves that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward." Now we all know God is a rewarder. I love the way God introduced Himself to Abraham. He appears to Abraham and says, "I am your shield and your exceeding great reward." What a way to introduce yourself to someone when you're God!
But the thing that really got my attention in this verse is that John doesn't just say "reward." Do you notice that? Brandy, isn't that something? Casey, look at this! He says "full reward." Now, I started thinking: for there to be a full reward, that means there's a partial reward scenario and there's a no-reward scenario. Isn't it interesting that John doesn't say, "Hey, live in such a way that you're going to get a partial reward." Why doesn't he write that? Because God wants us—He wants you, Casey, and you, Arden—to receive the full reward.
As a dad of four sons, I want to reward my boys, but I don't reward them unless they earn it or deserve it, because if I reward them without their earning it or deserving it, I take away incentive. Incentive is a very good thing. So why is John writing this with such passion? Because he knows something that a lot of Christians in North America just don't understand: one day every one of us will stand before Jesus Christ as our judge. Wait, wait, wait! He's my savior! Yes, He's our savior, but one day we will stand before Him as judge. Where do I get that from? Second Corinthians, chapter five. Look at what Paul says here in Second Corinthians 5: "We are confident—yes, very well pleased—rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." We know right there Paul is speaking only to Christians; he's not speaking to all of humanity. Why? Because when an unbeliever is absent from the body, they're in hell. That's not a mean or harsh statement; that's a statement of fact. Jesus didn't come to condemn the world; He came to save the world, to save us from what we condemned ourselves into.
So we know that Paul is speaking only to Christians there. Then he goes on to say, "Therefore, we make it our aim or our goal"—I like this even better—"whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to Him." Art, do you remember back when you were about 11 years old? All four boys were sitting around the table, and one night at dinner, I looked at all four of you and said, "Guys, you can't do one thing to make your mother and me love you any more than we do, and you can't do one thing to make us love you any less." You could just see you all reveling in that. Then I said, "But you are in charge of how pleased we are with you." They kind of looked at me like, "Oh." Well, we can't do anything to make God love us any less or any more than He loves us. We are in charge of how pleased He is with us. That's why Paul said we make it our goal—not just to be pleasing, but to be well-pleasing. Why? Because, in the very next statement, he explains that we Christians must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Now I love this—there's a new translation called the Passion Translation, which is translated from the Aramaic, not the Greek. It says "worthless," and I like that; I think it describes it well. Arden is the one who pointed that out to me, "Hey Dad, look at this!" So worthless—that's a much better description. Every one of us as Christians will stand before Jesus Christ at that judgment seat. Now, most Christians, when they hear the word "judgment," Casey, you know what they do? They immediately think of the word "condemnation." The Greek word for judgment is the word "krima," which simply means a decision resulting from an investigation. So Jesus is going to do an investigation into every single one of our lives as Christians.
Now I want to make this statement, and I never want you to forget what I'm about to say, because it's probably the most important statement I'll make in this entire lesson: we will not be judged for our sins at that judgment seat. Why? Because our sins have been eradicated by the blood of Jesus. We're going to be judged on how we live this life as believers. He'll do a thorough examination of our lives; He'll judge not only our words and works but our intentions as well. Intentions are so important. And as a result of this judgment, He's going to make decisions regarding our lives. As a result of those decisions, we will either receive rewards or suffer losses. The Bible is very clear that the rewards we can receive and the losses we can suffer vary from ruling and reigning with Christ forever to having everything we did burned up. Wow! Now, the former would be the full reward; the latter would be the no reward, and everything in between is the partial reward.
Now, Hebrews chapter six tells us that these decisions He's going to make over our lives are called eternal decisions. Eternal judgments—what that tells us is this: the decisions He makes over us at that judgment seat will never be revised, altered, or changed; they'll stand forever. So you know what that tells us, Brandy? What we do with the cross does indeed determine where we're going to spend eternity. Most Christians know that; however, the way we live as believers determines how we're going to spend eternity.
Let me help you understand this. Let's say we could live in our bodies a little longer than we can. A leader says, "All right, the way you live over the next 24 hours will determine how you'll spend the next thousand years on Earth." A thousand years! That's a long time. If you go back a thousand years, there's no Christopher Columbus, no King Louis XIV of France; you are way back, right? Yet the job you have, the work you do, the people you work with, the neighborhood you live in—whether you live in Siberia or Newport Beach, California—for the next thousand years will be determined by how you spend the next 24 hours. How would you spend that one day? Would you live it with purpose? Absolutely! Or would you throw it to chance? You'd live it with purpose, absolutely! Yet it's nothing compared to what I'm talking about because one day divided by 365,000 days—the number of days in a thousand years—is a finite number.
Now did you know that if you take 80 years and divide it by eternity, what do you get? You get zero because any finite number divided by eternity is nothing in comparison. Right? So if you live to be 120 years and divide 120 years by eternity, you still get zero! What we do in this zero time determines how we're going to spend eternity. You would think, "Man, that thousand years—I'd be on my game! I'd be on my game for that day!" Yeah, we're talking about eternity, which makes this life zero—nothing in comparison. So that's why it's so important that we fulfill our calling. Can you see that?
When God gave me this, I remember it was years ago, and I actually wrote a book on this called "Driven by Eternity." When God told me to write on that, I was like, "Lord, how can I write a book on the judgment seat? I may have preached on it for 20 minutes my entire life! How can I write a chapter, let alone a book?" Of course, God didn't say anything to me. So I went home, got on my computer, and gathered every scripture in the Bible from seven different translations that had to do with eternity, rewards, judgment, heaven, and hell. I compiled them in a notebook and meditated on it, and you know what I discovered? God has so much to say about this! It all just went over my head, but when I started looking intentionally, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes like, "Wow, God's got a lot to say about this!"
One of the things I noticed is that when God speaks about our callings, our lives as Christians here on Earth, do you know what He calls us? He calls us builders. Now I want you to think about this: builders! "Except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." The stone which the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone. Are you with me? If you look at Ephesians, God has given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to do what? To equip His saints to build up the body of Christ, which is His body. We're called builders!
Now if you look at what Paul talks about in First Corinthians chapter 3, he says in our lives we can build for the eternal or we can build for the temporal. Every moment of our lives we have a choice: we can use our God-entrusted gifts to build for the temporal, or we can give our God-entrusted gifts to build for the eternal. Think of it like this—let me do an example. Let's say you're on the worship team at church, and the whole reason you want to be on the worship team is that you want everyone in the church to see you because you're looking for a potential wife or husband. If that's your motivation, everything will be burned up—all your practices, all your efforts; you will have built for the temporal.
This is when Paul talks about to the Corinthians. Look what he says: "But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder—remember, we're builders—has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value." If you put fire under wood, hay, and straw (that's the temporal), it burns up, it destroys it; it's done. If you put fire under gold, silver, and precious stones, it purifies them. Look at the next verse—it's amazing, guys. "If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward," hopefully it's a full reward, just like John the Apostle said. But look at what he says in the next statement: "But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss." Now watch this: the builder will be saved, so the builder, he or she is going to heaven, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.
You guys are young, and maybe you don't understand this yet—me being a little older, I do. As Americans, we prepare for retirement. We have our 401(k)s, our Roth IRAs—all this kind of stuff—because we want to have a good quality of life when we retire. But can you imagine the day you retire? Your bank shuts its doors; it's done! You've lost all your cash, all your savings, all your checking—it's gone. On the same day, social security goes bankrupt—all that money you put into social security for 40 years involuntarily is now gone. On that same day, your house catches fire, and everything gets burned up, and you escape with the shirt on your back. On that same day, your insurance company goes bankrupt. What do you call that? A bad day! Right? We can't even imagine that.
My wife was just in Iraq and met a family who last year was making $500,000 a year, and now they live in a shipping container with nothing because of ISIS. They can understand that language in a way we can't in America, because we've got a government program to bail us out. But yet, this is the language Paul uses to describe how some believers are going to enter into eternity. Wow, that's sobering, isn't it?
Now, Paul makes a statement: "Run your race." I want you to see this. Paul makes a statement: "Run your race." Everybody say, "My race." That you may lay hold of the prize and make it yours. Now John says, "Live in a way that you're going to get a full reward." Paul says, "Run your race in such a way that you're going to get the prize." Do we want to live for God to receive a reward? I've put this on my Facebook, and because I have about 780,000 followers, I've received a lot of feedback on these things I've been writing. I had people say, "Well, I don't live for Jesus to get a reward." I thought that was a good answer, but then I started thinking about it: nobody loved Jesus more than John the Apostle. He's the one who calls himself the disciple Jesus loved; he's the one who puts his head on Jesus' chest and asks, "Which guy is it?" I mean, he was close.
He's the one that Jesus said, "Behold your mother," and gives His mother to John. But yet, he tells us to live in such a way that at the end of his life we're going to get a reward. Paul says, "Run your race in such a way that you're going to get the prize," and he's just eight years away from being beheaded when he writes this. I started thinking about this, and God gave me a vision that answered my question. It was a very vivid vision. I saw the armies of heaven marching into the New Jerusalem. Now remember, it's a big city—1500 miles by 1500 miles—and these armies were bringing Jesus His rewards. They were on the streets of gold, and in the middle of the city was Jesus, high up on a platform, and they were presenting to Him His rewards—His reward being lost souls, impacting people's lives, right?
This army was bringing Jesus His rewards, and there were myriads of people on the sidewalks cheering, just so excited, cheering the soldiers as they walked through the streets. There were many more people on the sidewalks than there were soldiers. The Holy Spirit said to me, "Do you want to be one of the people on the sidewalks, or do you want to be one of the soldiers?" I said, "God, I want to be one of the soldiers. Live in such a way that you're going to get a reward!" Are you with me?
But now, notice He says, "Run your race." Everybody say, "My race." For you to run your race means you have to know your course. For you to finish your race means you have to know your course. If I don't know my course, I don't know if I finished or not. I'll run all night until I collapse, and then they'll take me home! Listen to what Jesus said: "I finished the work which You have given Me to do." He's basically saying, "I ran my race; I finished my race." Look what Paul said: "I have finished my race." He's basically saying, "I finished the work You've given me to do." Now the only way you are going to know your race is if you know your specific work you're called to do.
So let's go back to Ephesians, and it's going to make sense. Paul says, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." There are two things I want you to look at there. Number one: He prepared your work, your specific calling, beforehand. Number two: He said that you should walk in—He didn't say you'd automatically walk in; He said you should. So when I answer these two questions: Number one, how long ago did God prepare your specific work, Jonathan, Casey, Arden, Chris, Brandy? How long ago did He prepare your work? Psalm 139 tells us, "You saw me before I was born; every day of my life was recorded in Your book." God wrote a book about you before you were born, Jonathan, Arden, before you were born—what's in that book? Every day of your life.
This is what He does: He writes the whole story and then goes back and says, "Let's start it," because He's not bound by time. That's why Jesus is called the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He wrote that story before the foundations of the world and said, "Now let's go back and start it." "Man's going to make a mistake; they're going to mess up. Jesus, will You do this?" "Yeah, I'll do it, Dad!" So that's me calling you the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world, right? Every moment—now look at this—every moment is laid out in that book before a single day of your life began. Jonathan, do you understand? If you go to your book and go to my book and you go to this exact time, you and I are sitting at this table talking about this with Art, Casey, and Brandy—that's amazing!
Every moment—not just the major things; every moment! Did you ever wonder when it says in the Book of Daniel that the books will be opened at judgment? What books are going to be opened? The book He wrote about your life! He's going to say, "Hey, let's see how you lived and let's compare it to how I wrote about you." Now look what, as far as should walk in—remember, He said that we should walk in. Look what the writer of Ecclesiastes says: "That which is has already been." That which is happening at this table right now has already been; it's been in all of our books—it was written before we were born. God wrote about it. What is to be—that's our tomorrow—it's already been; it's already in the book—every moment, and God requires an account of what has passed. In other words, did we walk in what He wrote in that book, or did we go our own way?
So you know what that tells me in regard to our callings that I've been talking about? We're not going to be judged according to what we did; we're going to be judged in the light of what we were called to do. Hear what I just said. Now listen, there's a link right down there at the bottom of your page. I want you to pause this and click on that link. You're going to see a powerful four-minute video that I'm going to show you guys right now. It's riveting, and the first time I saw it, I was so touched. Every time I've played it for audiences, I've heard weeping. I was doing a 1500-man meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, and I could hear guys weeping. It's true, and this is what we want to know.
In my years of traveling, I've seen men in ministry that I knew were called to the business world. I've seen businesspeople that I knew were called to ministry. I've seen people I knew were supposed to be raising their kids out trying to make a name for themselves on a field. I remember one senior pastor I said, "You need to be in the business world." It didn't go over really well when I said it, but they ended up going, and they called me years later and said, "I'm so fulfilled! I'm so satisfied! I'm so happy!"
I think about a really good friend of mine, Colin. In 1994, Colin had a radical encounter with God—God saved him, he met Jesus, and fell in love with Jesus. He started going to church and attending youth retreats—what you call summer camps. He said to me, "John, there were always three nights: the first night was salvation, the second night was another topic, and the third night was always dedicating the call to be a full-time minister." He said, "Of course, year after year, I'd go up about the calling." Finally, he pursued it and went to work for a church, becoming their junior high pastor or assistant junior high pastor. He said, "John, I was cleaning houses on the side. I was struggling financially. I was not really happy, but I was going after the high call of serving God, being a minister, just waiting for the breakthrough."
But he said, "I had no life. I was not satisfied; I was miserable." Finally, after several years, he walked away. He went to another church, a very healthy church, started getting restored, and one day the pastor there said, "You know, some of you don't care much about money, but if you know how to make it, go make it to build the kingdom of God." When the pastor said that, Colin thought, "Gosh, I've got business ideas! I'm good at business!" He went to work for another man, worked for that man for three years, and said, "John, I had the Midas touch! Everything I touched started making this guy's company so much money." Why? Because it was the gifting in his life! He was in the calling he was supposed to be in.
Three years into it, one night while in prayer, God gave him a strategy for starting a business. He resigned from his position—it was a non-compete strategy—and he said, "I started a business." He's been in that business for 11 years now. He said, "I have over 50 employees; we now install flooring and other things for huge buildings in five different states. I have over 50 employees, and we're a $25 million company a year." Colin said, "I've given over a million dollars to the kingdom, and I've influenced so many more people for the kingdom." He just went to Mongolia with us and spoke to thousands of people there, impacting many lives. He has a businessman's ministry and a women's ministry in Southern California. He's doing what he was created to do. When Jesus looks at him, He's going to say, "I called you to the business world. You fulfilled it. Let me show you all the souls you impacted by obeying my call!"
I've seen this time and time again, and I know that some of you might be thinking, "It's too late; I'm in my 50s or my 60s." Let me tell you, it's not too late! In the next session, I'm going to show you that it's not too late. There are some very important questions now that arise as a result of what I've spoken about. Question number one: How do we discover our calling? Question number two: How do we fulfill our calling? Question number three: How do we maximize our calling? We're going to go into all these questions in the next several lessons. Are you ready to go?