John Bevere - We Must Resist THIS Temptation
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Hey everybody, welcome to lesson six of the multiplication course. Again, I’m speaking to you from what is written in the book «Multiply Your God-Given Potential.» I can’t emphasize enough the importance of reading this book; there are so many keys in it that I won’t be able to cover even in 12 lessons. The title of this lesson is «Diligence,» and we’re going to discover the importance of diligence in multiplication. Now, in the last lesson, if you’ll recall, I talked about the importance of multiplying what belongs to someone else. If you’re faithful in what is another man’s, if you’re not faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? In this lesson, I want to highlight the importance of diligence.
As a young boy, even when I wasn’t saved, I recognized how important diligence was by observing the lives of my two grandfathers. I had one grandfather who, when he retired at the age of 65, would come to visit us for two weeks every year. I would watch him sit underneath our big maple tree in the backyard in a lounge chair, smoking his pipe and just looking around all day. The one thing we did every day was walk to a grocery store that was within walking distance from our house, where he would get us a bag of candy that we loved. But that’s all he did; he never helped in the kitchen, never assisted my mom with all the busyness she had, and never played games with us kids. He just sat under the tree.
Then, I had my other grandfather who retired at the age of 62. You know what he did when he retired? He started basically his second life. He went to Rutgers University—in his 60s, sitting in classrooms where there weren’t online courses—and studied agriculture because he wanted to start a large garden and take care of animals. He did that very successfully, wrote two books afterwards, and helped bring condominiums to the beaches of Florida. He was part of a group of men that brought condominiums so older people could have beautiful places to stay, as back then, high-rise condominiums were scarce. He would visit us, play lawn darts with me, take us to play putt-putt, and we would have fun at the pool. He even helped my mom cook meals when we visited his house in New Jersey, took us to New York City, Broadway, and deep-sea fishing, and we helped count money at a neighborhood business—counting the money out of the dryers and washing machines at a laundromat. We were always active with him, laughing and having fun.
Do you know one grandfather died at 75 years of age while the other lived to 91? I bet you can guess which one reached the age of 91—the one who was diligent, the one who had a vision for life. Therefore, having a vision for life gives us diligence. Multiplication will not manifest from a slothful, hesitant, careless, or apathetic motivation. I believe one of the greatest temptations in life is the temptation to coast. We hit a level of success and suddenly start saying, «I’m going to maintain,» instead of continuing to multiply.
I want to read to you from Romans 12:1. Paul writes, «Never be lazy.» Did you hear that? Never be lazy! If you have a tendency to slip into laziness, you better check yourself. Does that mean we never rest? No, never! God says you are to take Sabbaths or Shabbats; whatever you want to call it, you are to rest on that seventh day. I’m not saying you have to physically do the Sabbath; in the New Testament, it seems more about ensuring you get the right rhythm of life so that when you’re resting, you’re resting to produce more. But when you’re working, you’re diligent. I hope that’s clear.
Never be lazy, but work hard. Remember, this is a command from the Apostle Paul. Work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. First of all, Paul says work hard. This is one of the first traits you must exhibit to multiply. Secondly, he says do it enthusiastically. I love that word «enthusiastically.» Its origins are Latin, meaning «God within.» When you see someone with an enthusiastic attitude, it is often motivated by their vision for life—it’s God working within them.
So, here’s a statement I want you to write down: hard work is the evidence of true faith. Your belief energizes you. You know, I’m 61 years old, and people often say, «You don’t seem 60! I would guess you’re in your late 40s!» I say, «Yeah, because I have a vision. I’m engaged, multiplying with the gifts God has placed in my life, and I’m just going, going, going.» I want to be more like my grandfather who lived until he was 91.
An important exception is this: not all hard work is an outward sign of faith; sometimes the motivation is fear. But you’ll never find someone with faith who is lazy. You will always find diligence in a person with faith. Getting back to our story, I remember the diligence I exemplified while building the first two churches I was a part of. When our pastor launched us on the road, I’m going to be really honest with you: Lisa and I, when we were birthing Messenger International in 1990, often worked until 11:00 at night. I remember we had a little tiny three-bedroom house, about 1,500 square feet, and we put our two sons in one room while the third bedroom became our office. I was duplicating tapes sometimes at 11 o’clock at night.
Yes, duplicating tapes! We had a master, and the others were called «slaves.» We would put the cassette tapes in there, and it would reproduce from the master to the slaves. Then I would type it out on a typewriter because we didn’t have a computer in 1990. I was the secretary, the mailman; Lisa was doing all the same things. We were busy, diligent because we knew we were called to preach what God had placed within us to people. We wanted to be diligent about it, so Lisa and I never thought twice about working until 10 or 11 at night. We were up early in the morning; I was out by about 5:30, praying and commanding doors to open up in the north, south, east, and west. God told me, «Son, don’t send letters to pastors. Don’t call them and tell them you can come to preach. I want you to pray and believe that I will open the doors.»
It was amazing; there were times when we would go three weeks without having a place to preach, but I just kept doing the same thing: making more tapes, praying in the morning, writing letters, thank-you notes, and articles for our newsletter. That was a real job for me because the gift of writing hadn’t come upon me yet. Anyway, we exemplified what it means to be diligent.
Then in the summer of 1991, God spoke to me and said, «Son, I want you to write.» I remember doing nothing for 10 months. Then, two women from two different states came to me and said, «John, if you don’t write what God is giving you to write, He’ll give the message to someone else, and one day you’ll have to give an account of it.» I remember writing that contract with God and then sat down to start writing. Here’s what troubled me: I thought, «Lord, I’m already working 50 to 60 hours a week. How can I write a book? The ministry is going to suffer!» Lisa and I talked and decided that she would make up time so I could dedicate time to writing.
Both of us were working late at night; I was writing this book, and it took me a whole year to finish. I remember the first editor we sent it to said it was horrible and asked, «Who do you think you are to make statements like these in your book?» because I was calling for people to repent, and I was like, «Oh my gosh!» We sent it to another editor, but she did a horrible job. Finally, we sent it to another editor, who said, «You can’t fix a botch. I recommend you throw away everything those two editors did, even if you paid for it, and start from your original manuscript.» She said, «Lisa, you should edit your husband’s book, and then send it to me.» This woman did a fabulous job, and I sent my manuscript to two publishers—one in Orlando and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The one in Tulsa never responded, while the one in Orlando wrote back and said, «Your manuscript is too preachy; we don’t want it. We only publish well-known pastors and authors.» I thought, «Oh my gosh!» Then I said, «God, what do I do? You told me to write!» I told Lisa, «Let’s self-publish it!» So we printed 5,000 copies. I remember packing boxes in our little Honda Civic, going to churches, and preaching my heart out on this message. The books would just fly off the table! If there were 80 people in the church, it was like we sold 40 books because the message had substance.
Then I felt called to write another book. I sent it to publishers; no responses. I sent it to my second-year Bible school teacher, who was my favorite teacher and had published some books. She replied, «Who do you think you are? This is terrible!» I fought discouragement like you wouldn’t believe. I remember lying on our living room floor, staring at a spot on the ceiling for about 30 minutes, thinking, «What have you done? You’ve spent two years writing, and nobody is interested except for the few people you preached to.»
Did discouragement try to hit me? Yes, absolutely. But I was convinced God had called me to write books that would go all over the world. I knew it, yet I was getting all these discouraging reports. Should I listen to my second Bible school teacher, the publishers, or my friends who criticized my writings? Yes, I had a friend who told me, «John, I think you use too many scriptures in your book.» I mean, I was so discouraged. I was fighting discouragement; I’d have to stir myself up because guess what? It was time to write a third book; God had dropped another message in me.
I remember a friend of mine called and said, «Hey John, I want to take you to lunch with a friend of mine.» So, we met at a restaurant, and it turns out this friend is the publisher of the publishing house in Florida that rejected my first two books. He was the new guy because the previous head had left. He asked about my family and what we were doing. He said, «So, you travel and preach. What are you preaching right now?» I started sharing about offenses—how offenses take people into captivity—and you would know this message as «The Bait of Satan.»
The publisher looked at me after hearing my message and said, «We could never publish this.» I said, «What?» He replied, «Because we only do 24 books a year, and we work with well-known pastors and authors.» I said, «You asked what I was preaching. I’m not trying to convince you to publish it!» He said, «Oh, yeah, that’s right, I’m sorry.» So, I kept sharing about the message, and 15 minutes later he asked, «Can you get a manuscript to me?» I said, «For what?» He replied, «I want to publish this!» I said, «I thought you just said you could never publish this.» He said, «As I listen to you, this message has to get into the Earth.»
I wrote that book, and they published it. It didn’t do very well initially; it only sold a few copies. I was so discouraged because I knew in my heart God had called me to write books that would reach millions of people. That book came out in June of 1994. Later that year, I got a call from the publisher saying an international talk show wanted to feature us to discuss our ministry and mention the book «The Bait of Satan.»
I said, «Great!» I remember coming on that program on January 16th, 1995. We were only supposed to do 20 minutes, just mention the book, but the couple interviewing me held up the book and said, «Tell me about this book.» I ended up sharing on that message for the next 40 minutes. The next day, every bookstore in America was sold out. The publisher had 20,000 backorders. By two days later, that book exploded and became a national bestseller.
But was that the extent of the multiplication that God was going to do with books? If you stay with me, you’ll find out that the multiplication is only just beginning. Interestingly, the publisher of that book was the one that rejected me initially, and since that time, it has become one of their top-selling books of all time. Isn’t it just like God? He sees you rejected, but He is actually laughing and saying, «Oh, yeah, this is the publisher I’m going to use to get this message out to the world.»
Let me tell you something: I wanted to stop in my diligence so many times. I wanted to quit; I wanted to throw in the towel. But I knew God had spoken to me. That’s why faith is so important. That’s why a biblical vision is so important. A biblical vision means spending time with God to get clarity on what you’re supposed to do and then believing it, no matter the adversity. Stay tuned for the next message, where I’ll share how this multiplication has even more potential than I initially believed.