Grace Life Church in Pryor, Oklahoma. The first time I ever went to Grace Life Church, they had James White in. And I'd never heard James White preach. I thought, well, I'll go up here and hear James White. He's close. I got up there and I met the pastor, which is Derek Melton. And he's like, I'm a cop. And I was like, oh, really? He goes, yeah, let me introduce you to my other elder. Jason Cummings, he's a cop. Let me introduce you to my other elder, he's a cop. And I'm like, this is a cop church up here. I didn't know what was going on, but I grew to love these guys over time. And I've been up there a couple of times to hear other people preach. I've even preached up there a few times. But every time I get around those guys, I appreciate their ministry. And I want to tell you something about their church. They have been working with a group of teenagers. It's called Thunderbird Youth Academy. Anyways, basically what Grace Life Church and Prior does is they bus these kids in on Sunday morning and they preach to them. And then they go up there on the middle of the week and they do Bible studies with them. And then on Wednesday night they bring them back and they teach them again. And these are troubled youth that are at risk. And so what they're doing is they're working with these kids and every six months they get a whole new group. It's like 120 to 180 kids, okay? And their church just pours themselves into these kids for six months and then they get a new group. And Brother Jason's instrumental in teaching them. So I just admire the church. I admire what they do. And I just, I want Jason to come and preach to you this morning. I think you'll enjoy him. Look, support these kind of ministries. You know, instead of just sending money off and letting somebody else do your mission work, I hate to beat up Southern Baptists, but we're bad at missions. We need to seek out men that are doing what we think is a good ministry and get behind them. And I'd encourage you to get to know Jason Cummings and get to know Dalton and ask about Thunderbird Youth Academy and how they minister to them. Okay? Come up and preach, Jason. Good morning. I want to thank Pastor Harold, Lee Creek Baptist Church for allowing me the opportunity to preach the gospel to you this morning. I've been thinking a lot about this message over the last couple of weeks and I think my whole goal this morning is just to encourage you pastors. You have a tough job and it's easy to get lost in that grind from week after week after week and to start looking for things to make things just a little easier. But don't do that. Stick with God's plan. And God's plan is God's word. Amen? 2 Timothy chapter 3. The title of my message this morning is The Power and Priority of the Pulpit. The Power and Priority of the Pulpit. I'm going to start reading in verse 10 of chapter 3, and I'm going to read through verse 5 of chapter 4. The Word of God says this. Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecution, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch and Iconium and at Lystra. What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate for every good work. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth. and we'll turn aside to myths, but you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Let's pray. Father, I pray that this morning you would be glorified in the preaching of your word, and that you would be glorified in the hearing of your word. Encourage these brothers, strengthen them, Lord, in the work that they've put their hand to. that they may do what you've called them to do. In Christ's name, amen. 2 Timothy is Paul the Apostle's final letter to Timothy. And in a sense, it's his last will and testament to his church. It's the final word on how a pastor is to pastor God's church, how to care for and to grow the people of God. Timothy didn't have the same strong personality as the Apostle Paul, and he's often described as being timid, and unsure of himself. And Paul's desire is to strengthen and encourage Timothy to overcome these personality hindrances in himself and be strong and be steadfast in his proclamation of the gospel and his care for God's church. And Paul all through this letter has a recurring theme of exhorting Timothy to be strong and to continue in sound doctrine. His advice and teaching to Timothy over and over is to trust in those things that he learned from his youth. those sacred writings and those doctrines that he's heard since he was a boy, those things he heard through his godly mother and through his godly grandmother and through the apostle Paul himself, and to pass these things on to faithful men under his care, to remind them again and again of these solemn truths. In chapter 3, Paul begins to warn Timothy of a coming time of difficulty where wicked men will rise and seek to destroy and seek to deceive, false teachers who will seek to lead the people of God from the true path set them on the broad road that leads to destruction. Tells Timothy that many will be deceived by these false teachers and that this will bring about a time of great difficulty within God's church. A time of persecution and a time of pain, time of apostasy, where seemingly godly people will fall away and be led astray by false teachers into heresies. Paul's desire is to prepare Timothy for this coming time and to encourage and strengthen Timothy to stand firm in the faith, to not waver in his proclamation of the truth, to not waver in his care for the church. He also knew Timothy's personality and that Timothy could never do something like this on his own. So he reminds Timothy the only thing that's going to carry him and the people that he cares for through this time of deception. He tells Timothy that even though these things are happening around him and the outlook looks dark and fearful, that when persecution hits the godly and false teachers are deceiving others and deceiving themselves, that he is to continue on in the things that he has learned and become convinced of. He is to stay steadfast in Scripture. The sacred writings, the Word of God. Paul brings Timothy back to the very beginning. He reminds him that the thing that has kept him throughout his entire life and that will continue to keep him is a steady diet of God's Word. So what it means by the sacred writings, the context here is the Old Testament, but the big picture with us here this morning is the whole counsel of God's Word, all 66 books of the Bible. It's God's holy and inerrant word. It's his full revelation of himself to us, and it contains all that we need to know about him, about us, and about salvation through Jesus Christ. It's the means that God uses to bring sinners to salvation and to bring saints to sanctification. This is the very reason why the preaching and teaching of the Word of God to the people of God is the top priority of the pastor of God's church. This is also why hearing and learning the Word of God is the top priority for the people of God's church. It's more important than anything else that we can do in the church. That's why Paul goes here with Timothy. to ensure that he knows that the only way to care for the people of God in a fallen, sinful world is to ensure that they have a steady diet of faithful preaching to grow by. The only thing that will keep the people of God safe in an apostate world that's full of false teachers and false teachings and persecution and abounding sin is a steady diet of the Word of God faithfully interpreted and faithfully preached. And I want you to remember that fact this morning, pastors. Remember that if you don't remember anything else. This is what will bring sinners to faith in Christ, and this is what will make God's people holy, and it's what will keep God's people holy in a sinful world. This is God's power revealed, and it should be prioritized within the church. I have two points today, and I have some short application to add on at the end of that if we have time. And Paul's going to show us in this passage the power of the pulpit first, and then the priority of the pulpit. And we're going to look at those practical applications, as I said, if we have the time to get into them, to help you prioritize the pulpit and ensure that the Word of God comes forth with power in your church. Number one, the power of the pulpit. Look at verses 15 through 17. And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate and equipped for every good work." Let's look at the Word of God. Paul calls it here the sacred writings. Those holy things that Timothy was taught as a child by his mother and his grandmother, those things that he's become convinced of, that he learned from them. And Paul goes on to clarify what exactly these sacred writings are in verse 16. He says, all Scripture is inspired by God. You see, Timothy's mother and grandmother didn't teach him philosophy. They didn't teach him worldly wisdom. They taught him the Scriptures. Paul's reminding Timothy of these things, these Scriptures, these sacred writings. The Bible, sure, in Timothy's day, they didn't have the complete canon of Scripture. They had some of it. They had Paul's writings, they had the Old Testament, but we have it all. We have the whole counsel of God's revelation to us. It is and has been preserved throughout history and provided to us through faithful men in a language that we can read and understand. This is God's holy word, His sacred word, and it's powerful, brothers. It's powerful. It's everything that God wants us to know about life and godliness. It's true. It's without error. It's infallible and unchangeable. And God has preserved his book down through the ages and provided for us a way to know all that he desires and requires of us. He hasn't left us ignorant and in the dark. He's given us his word. Now, I've heard a lot of objections to the Bible over the years, but all of them fall flat on their faces in light of the power and the authority that's in this book. self-verifying, meaning that it contains in it prophecies that have been perfectly fulfilled, not ambiguously fulfilled in a kind of sort of way, but precisely and perfectly fulfilled. including hundreds regarding the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's perfectly unified. It's a collection of 66 books written over 1,500 years by 40 different authors from prisoners to herdsmen, prime ministers and kings, three different languages, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic on three different continents, Asia, Africa, Europe, and its message is completely unified and has within it no contradictions and no errors. Try to gather 40 different people from the same field in our day and time and have them write one book and see if it's as unified as the Scriptures is. It can't happen. It won't happen. This book's been attacked and attempted to be destroyed, but it's weathered all of these storms and it's proven itself to be indestructible. It's been proven to be accurate time and again through archaeological digs and finds and its effects on the hearts of men and women throughout the ages has been second to none. Some of the most vile people in human history have read the scriptures, heard it preached, and their hearts have been completely changed. Men like John Newton, a vile drunkard and a slave trader, turned into a saint of God through the preaching of the Word of God. This is God's Word. It's His God-breathed revelation to His people. And what more do we need to lead and to keep the people of God? What more do you need to live your Christian life out? What will sanctify you more surely than God's revealed word? Nothing. Amen. God's word saves. Paul says that the word is able. The Greek word that's translated able is dynamite. It's where we get the English word dynamite. It has power, but power to what? Paul says that the sacred writings are able to make one wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. The Word of God contains all that is needed to give a sinner the wisdom that leads to faith in Christ. It is the means that God has provided for those who are lost to know the way of salvation in Jesus Christ. God didn't make a plan B. This is it. This is His plan A. I think, you know, that's one of the hardest lessons that I can get through a Thunderbird cadet's head, is that God didn't mess up. He didn't get caught off guard and have to scramble to make a plan B to make everything work the way he wanted it to, no. This is plan A, and his only plan and means to save the lost. Without the faithful preaching of this holy book, no sinner will ever come to know that they are separated from God by their sin and under the wrath of God. They'll never know that God has sent His Son, Jesus, who lived a perfect life, perfectly fulfilling the law of God, and died on the cross as a propitiation, a sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God, that He died and was buried, rose from the grave and ascended to the right hand of God. No sinner will ever know that if they repent and believe the gospel, that their sins will be forgiven. They'll be reconciled to a holy God and have eternal life in Christ Jesus. This is God's means to reveal to the heart of fallen man the wisdom of God that leads to salvation. And without this word, they will not know any of that. Paul addresses this very thing in Romans chapter 10. In verses 1 through 13, he tells us about the wonderful gift of God and salvation through faith in Christ. Then in verses 14 through 16, he says that no one's ever going to know what they should believe if there's not a preacher that goes to proclaim this message. And he gives us the glorious climax of this passage in verse 17 when he tells us this. So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. This word is the means that God has chosen to save sinners. It's how you were saved. You heard the gospel proclaimed. Holy Spirit worked effectually in your heart through that word and brought you from death into life. And essentially, this is how every single sinner is saved. All of us have different stories. Sure, all of us have different testimonies, and they look just a little bit different from every different angle we see them. But essentially, this is how a sinner is saved by the power of the Word of God preached. God's Word saves, but God's Word also sanctifies. When a sinner becomes a saint, when they're saved, God places them in His church and He sets them on a lifelong journey of sanctification, a lifelong battle of putting to death the sinful nature and nurturing and growing that new holy nature that God has given us. It's a long journey, it's a hard journey, it's full of disappointments and failure. If it's anything like mine, it is anyway. full of disappointment and failure and sometimes it looks absolutely impossible. But we know, we know that God will finish in us the work that He has started and that we will become what God desires us to be. How do we know that? That's a good question, right? We know that because the Bible tells us that. And how does God accomplish this within us? He's given us the perfect tools to do it with. And the main tool that He uses is His Holy Word. Paul says the Word is powerful to save sinners, but it's also profitable to work His will in the hearts of those who belong to God in Christ. In verse 17, Paul gives us a list of things that the Word will do in the life of a believer that's pretty much all-inclusive. He says that the Word is profitable for teaching. From the Bible, we get all the cardinal doctrines that make up Christianity. It teaches us on the sovereignty of God, the Trinity, the triune nature of God. teaches us that He's perfectly holy, that we're sinful rebels separated from God by our sins, that there's no way that we can save ourselves, that our works are like filthy rags before a holy God. But it also teaches us that God has sent a Savior and His Son, Jesus. And we learn of the effectual work of Jesus from His birth to His death on the cross and how these works provided all that is necessary to redeem to God a people for His glory. We learn of the ascension and the the ever present intercession of Jesus from this truth that God will keep his people to the end. And then the glorious truth that someday Jesus is going to come back. He's going to return and collect his people to himself, destroy his enemies and reign as a sovereign, unchallenged king for all eternity. The Bible is profitable for reproof and for correction. The Word of God confronts us in our sins. It corrects our wicked behavior. It convicts us of the rebellion in our hearts against our holy God. It admonishes us and it turns our hearts away from the lust of the eyes, the lust of the ears, and the pride of life. It rebukes us and it crushes our haughty ambitions and it causes us to fall on our faces in repentance to God and returns us to Christ in faith, trusting fully in His finished work on our behalf on the cross. It teaches us how to live righteously in a sinful world. Paul says it trains us in righteousness. It shows us how to walk upright before God and men, teaches us how to pray. It teaches us how to speak, teaches us how to redeem our times, how to love our wives, how to raise our children. It shows us how to forgive and how to fellowship and how to care for those that God puts under our charge. It's profitable for all that we are to do and to be in this life. Why? So that the man of God may be adequate and equipped for every good work. so we can carry out all the plans that God has for us on this earth, so that we can be witnesses to the lost, so that we can be pastors to the Church of God, so that we can be adequate to every challenge that we face and equipped for every work that we find before us, everything. Everything we face in life, every challenge and work that we will be equipped to face if we are faithful students of God's Word. This word is powerful and it's able to accomplish all this in us through the power of the Holy Spirit working through the word of God in Christ Jesus to the glory of God the Father. This word is God's gift to you, pastors. And with it, he will enable you to accomplish all that he's called you to do. You may be in a dark place and you may be struggling right now, but remember that God's word is with you. You have God's word. And this word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of the soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. There's no program. There's no scheme. There's no idea that any of us can come up with that will ever come close to that kind of power. Nothing. This is why the power of your pulpit is and can only ever be the word of God. This is why it's so vitally important that you avail yourselves every chance you get to not only sit under and learn from the preaching of God's Word, but to preach faithfully, to study, and to give to your people what God has given you through the Word of God. It is vitally important for you, pastor, to preach God's Word to God's people. It's the power of the pulpit. Let's look at the priority of the pulpit. Chapter 4, verses 1 through 5. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn aside to myths. But you. Be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Pastors preach the word. Preach the word. Because this word is so powerful and profitable, we should ascribe to it the top priority in the life of the church. There's nothing else that should rise up or ascend to take its place. It should be the nerdy of your church to preach the word. We should be preaching and teaching the word of God. And it should be at the top of the list of everything that we do in our lives. I know that our lives are busy, full of things that we have to do, things that we should do, things that we need to be doing. But the most important thing that we should be doing is preaching and teaching the word of God to God's people. This is the pattern that was given to us by the apostles in Acts chapter 6. It's the pattern they set for the church. We read in Acts chapter 6 that they had a dispute among the widows in the church that needed to be handled. It was a real dispute within the people of God. There was real problems there. So the people went to the apostles, their leaders, for help. And what did they do? They said it's not desirable for them to neglect the Word of God in order to serve tables. They appointed seven men full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. to handle that in their stead. Pastor, if you neglect the Word of God, you neglect the most important thing in life that you have to do. This was Paul's solemn charge to Timothy. It wasn't to be a better counselor. He didn't tell Timothy to be a better counselor. He didn't tell Timothy to go and visit the people in the church more. He didn't tell him to be a better administrator of the affairs of God's church. He told him to preach the Word. Be a preacher of God's holy word, Timothy. Be a preacher of God's holy word, pastor. You want to see sinners saved in your church? You want you and your fellow church members to be more Christ-like? I can't imagine any of you brothers sitting here this morning saying no to those questions. I can't even imagine that. Do you want the church that you pastored to be a thoroughly biblical church? Well, in order for them to be a biblical church, they have to know the Bible. And for them to know the Bible, the word of God must be preached. It must be heard and it must be obeyed. This is God's means to accomplish these things. So when are you to preach? You are to preach and it should be your top priority. But when? Always. That's the answer. Always. Look at what Paul says. Be ready in season and out of season. This is what Paul is saying to Timothy essentially. Preach all the time. Preach all the time. When you're in the church, when you're out of the church, preach. When people want to hear what you have to say, but even when people don't want to hear what you have to say, preach the word. When people love the message that's coming from the pulpit, you preach the word, but you preach it even when they don't. Paul is clear that people aren't always going to love the preaching of God's word. The message is going to go contrary to our cultural expectations. It's going to rub people the wrong way. And no matter the trends of modern cultures or the desires of fallen people, we are as men of God called to preach the truth of the word of God at all times, no matter what it costs you. And how is this done? Well, I believe. The best way for us to preach is to preach verse by verse expositionally, it's going to force you to handle every truth that the Bible contains. Without this approach, preachers are prone to get on our hobby horses, to find the things that we like, and that we're good at preaching on, and to kind of camp out there. But that stunts the growth of the people, and it hinders the church's growth and sanctification. But if pastors take the Word and preach it to the people as it was given to the church, line by line, book by book, then we will find that the church will understand the Scriptures better, and they will grow exponentially more and faster than we could ever have believed. And expositional preaching is good for you too, pastors. It forces you to preach text that you're not familiar with. So it makes us better students of God's Word. It forces us to handle issues that we aren't always comfortable handling, so it makes us more bold in our proclamation of God's Word. There's a time and place for topical preaching, beloved, but I believe that the best diet that you can give the people is the verse-by-verse preaching of God's Word. And we do this always, always. I don't have time this morning to address the Bible's command in regard to women preaching in the context of the local church, but I believe that the scripture is very clear on this. I don't believe that you can get any other interpretation from it unless you're just being untruthful. But I do want to say this before I move on, that just because God has not allowed this in his church doesn't exempt you from proclaiming the word of God, ladies. There are lost people that you encounter every single day that need to hear the truth of God's word. You've young girls in the local church that need to have godly influences in their lives, and even more important than that, you have your children. You, mothers, are the greatest influence in your child's life for the first and most important years of their lives. Use that time to instill in them the truth of God's word and to teach them the gospel that scripture reveals. I mean, think about this. Where did Timothy learn the truths that brought him to salvation? Paul says it wasn't from him. He wasn't saved listening to the preaching of the apostle Paul. He was saved listening to the teaching of his mother and his grandmother faithfully proclaiming to him the truth of the Bible. Wouldn't you want this to be the testimony of every one of your children? Preach the word. Preach the Word and persevere in persecution. I know we don't like to hear that. You start talking about that P-word and everybody kind of gets all quiet and weirded out, right? But Paul is clear to Timothy, and I've already mentioned it to you, that people are not always going to want to hear sound doctrine. They won't always want you to preach the truth of God's Word. They will forsake the Scriptures and seek out men and women who will preach to them a message of peace and prosperity a message that contradicts what the Bible clearly teaches. They're going to go after ear-ticklers, false teachers who will lead them aside from the clear truth of God's Word and into falsehood and myths. If you don't believe this, all you have to do is jump on social media for about five minutes, and you'll see the fruit of this. As Pastor Harold said, we have a new class of Thunderbird Youth Academy cadets that comes in every six months, about 150, 160 kids or so. And whenever I begin to preach to them out of the Word of God, you would not believe some of the heretical things that they have been taught their whole lives by men who claim to be pastors, who stand behind pulpits. It's heartbreaking. And the result of this is that it causes them to hate the Word of God. I see it on their faces when I preach the truth of scripture. I see that that seething hatred starting to surface. And it breaks my heart every single time. Causes them to hate the word of God and to lash out against those who faithfully preach the word of God. Brothers, when you preach faithfully the word of God, people are going to slander you. They're going to mock you. Sometimes they will even physically abuse you for staying faithful to God's word. People are going to lie about you. Some of you guys have already experienced this firsthand. They accuse you falsely for your faithfulness to the Bible. Paul knew this was coming from Timothy. He knew it was on the way for Timothy. How did he know it? Because it had been happening to him throughout his entire ministry. And he wanted Timothy to be ready for it when it came to him. And he wants you this morning to be ready for it when it comes to you. Some of you are in the middle of this fire already. Be encouraged. because you're not the only one that's ever been there. I know it seems lonely, and it's painful, so painful to have to go through it, but you're not the only one that's ever been there. God has tried His saints from the beginning in the furnace of affliction. And just to encourage you this morning, look at the life and ministry of Paul. Paul was slandered, he was mocked, he was beaten, he was arrested, he was imprisoned, and ultimately he was put to death. Why? For the sake of the gospel. because he faithfully preached the Word of God. And this has been the case to one extent or another of preachers of the Word of God all throughout the history of the Christian faith. Maybe you won't be put to death for the gospel, but you will be persecuted for preaching the truth. Paul says that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And he said that in verse 12, right before he gives Timothy this exhortation to be faithful to the powerful preaching of the Word of God. You will be persecuted, beloved, But Paul tells us, as he told Timothy, to be sober in all things and to endure hardship. That term be sober, it means to have self-control in all things. It's hard, it's so hard when people slander and strike out at you to be silent and steadfast. I understand that. I go through this on an almost nightly basis. As Pastor Harold said, I'm a police officer and people don't really like us a whole lot. It's so hard to be silent and steadfast. Our immediate reaction is to strike back. To defend ourselves. To go on the offensive and to take back that which has been taken from us. But all through scripture, we're told to be silent, to endure patiently everything that comes our way. Listen, brothers. When you're going through this fire and you want to strike back and you want to fight and defend yourself, remember this, that God is clear that vengeance belongs to Him. Vengeance belongs to Him. He will repay and He will vindicate all of His people when He vindicates His holy name. We are simply to be self-controlled and to endure every hardship and suffering that comes our way. This is our charge from God's Word. And as we endure, we evangelize the lost. We preach to the lost the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we fulfill the ministry that God gave us. You have work to do in this world, and ministry to fulfill in this world, and you are to do this no matter what is happening around you. No matter what's going on around you in your life, you are to fulfill this ministry. No matter if everyone hates the message of the word, no matter if they love it, doesn't matter if they attack you. It doesn't matter if they slander you, if they hurt you, doesn't matter if they don't. You continue on in the call of God in your life and you fulfill this ministry regardless of the cost and for the glory of God's holy name. Amen. This is the priority. The pastors are to put on the preaching and the teaching of the powerful word of God. And for those of us that sit underneath the preaching of the pastor, it's the priority that we're to put on the hearing and the learning of this powerful word. Takes precedent over everything, everything, always. Amen. I've got three short applications that I want to give you this morning before I close up, just three short things to maybe encourage you and to help you make this Word the top priority in your church. Number one, and it may sound kind of redundant to hear, but we learn best through redundancy. We learn best through repeating and hearing and repeating and hearing. Number one, prioritize the Word of God in prayer. Prioritize it. Make it first in your life. I know it's easy when there are a thousand things that are pulling at you. in a week when everyone wants you to go in every single direction at once, but what is the most important job that you have, Pastor? It's to preach and to teach the Word of God. And you can't do that if you're busy about everything else. You have to spend time in the Word. You have to spend time in the study. You have to spend time preparing those messages. And I know that some of you may be bivocational. Some of you don't have the resources to hire a staff. I understand that when this happens, the weight of the ministry is falling on your shoulders. But in those cases, you still have to consider that the reality still stands. Your people will not grow without a steady diet of the Word of God. No exceptions. No exceptions. You undermine your ministry and you hurt your people when you don't prioritize the Word of God in prayer. It takes discipline. You have to order your days and it will frustrate your people at times, but it's necessary. It's necessary. Number two, be intentional, be intentional in your ministry, be intentional in your life as well. Understand busyness. I'm a full time police officer. I'm a I pastor as much as I can when I'm off and I have a third job that I also go to once every other week. So I understand what it means to be busy. I understand the I understand the struggle to find time for things, but you have to learn to choose the best over the good. There are a lot of good things that you can do in a day. But you have to stop and you have to ask yourself, are those the best things for you to do right now? You have to learn to differentiate between the good and the best. Figure out what's necessary. figure out what's unnecessary, be willing to put those unnecessary things aside. And I know that this is the hardest thing for a pastor to learn. Say no. Learn how to say no. Maybe you guys should repeat that with me this morning. No, no. OK, learn how to say no. Folks are going to get mad at you, but they'll get over it. And if they're if they understand the Bible, then they'll understand that they have to get over it. The only way for them to understand the Bible is if you're faithfully teaching it to them. Amen? Discipline your time. And this is probably one of the most important lessons that I've learned over the years of ministry and balancing that with full-time work. Be where you are. Don't multitask. That's a losing battle. God created us with a mind that can focus on only one thing at a time. And if you're multitasking, you're cheating something and something. When you're with your family, be with your family. When you're in the study, be in the study. When you're in the ministry, be in the ministry, be where you are. And lastly, and this is and I don't understand why sometimes this is the hardest struggle for for pastors to learn is raise up godly men to lead where you can't. and where you shouldn't. There are places where you can't lead and there are places where you shouldn't be leading. You can't do it all and you shouldn't be required to do it all. Know your people, know your people and recognize those who are qualified and capable and invest in them so that they can grow and take some of the burden off you and free you up to do the most important thing that you have to do in the church. And this will lead to the powerful proclamation of God's word. It'll lead to the salvation of sinners, and it'll lead to your church growing to become what God has desired her to be. Amen.