Open your Bibles to 1 Timothy if you would tonight for just a few moments. I was telling Brent today, while he's working on the system, if they got any cameras that they can install that makes me skinny, I want to put those in for those who watch live so that they won't think I'm so fat. And if you have any trouble with online, just let Brother Paul know and we'll try to correct that problem as soon as possible. Last week or two, I've been talking about pitfalls, potential pitfalls. Ain't nobody immune. All of us have a temptation to do wrong. Nobody's perfect in this room tonight, none. We'll never be perfect until we rest in the presence of the Lord. What a joy that'll be. But there is no temptation taking us, but such is common demand. But God, who is faithful, will not have us to be tempted above that which we're able, but will with every temptation make a way of escape. And all God's people said, and he said for us in the ministry, and all of us are, we're either sitting on the sidelines, we're doing something for the Lord, and hopefully we're doing something for the Lord to look out. It don't have to always be the big things that show up and say, they've got a big ministry. Every ministry is big to God. And he said, the thing I want you to do is to be faithful. in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 2. Moreover, brethren, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. Now let's stand together for the reading of the Word of God, if you're able to stand. 1 Timothy. Many temptations assail our souls, and I'll read the text in just a moment, but God is faithful. We rely upon His Word and His way, and the Lord makes a way through the wilderness. And the important thing for us to do is be faithful to the Lord. He's been faithful to us. He's never lied. He's never failed us one way or the other. Everything God does is good. Everything God does is great. The Apostle Paul was writing in verse 11 of chapter one to a young preacher, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. Paul is in the ministry. saved on the road to Damascus, sent to the backside of a desert to study, greatly used of God to write 13 epistles and establish churches in Asia and Asia Minor. He says it's glorious. It's a glorious gospel. I want to get that in our minds tonight. Blessed God, it's wonderful, which was committed to my trust. And I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he hath counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry. We're talking about how to avoid pitfalls and the potential pitfalls that we'll encounter in life. Who was before a blasphemer, talking about himself, giving his testimony, and a persecutor. and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord Jesus, our Lord, was exceeding abundantly with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and of whom I am chief. God bless the reading of the Word of God. If the Apostle Paul is chief of sinners, he can help the rest of us Indians, can't he? I mean, I think we'd be all right if we just learned to find out what he learned in those days of ministry. But he was faithful to the Lord. Father, bless the Word of God tonight. Time in the Word of God, may it saturate our lives and help us to be all that we ought to be for the glory of God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. May be seated. In a couple of weeks, I go back to the doctor to examine my vocal cords, evaluation of where I'm at and what I've got to do down the road for the future. So pray for me that I'll get a good report. The Lord willing, sometimes it just disappears on me while I'm talking. And so when I get 30 minutes in, I'm pretty well done. And you're saying amen right there. Well, I used to preach. There has been some times I preached an hour. Been a long time since I preached an hour. But this could be the night that I could preach an hour. I said, number one, last week, one of the ways you fall into pitfalls and you don't avoid them is you lose the freshness of what you have. I read that context of Apostle Paul. He sounded to me like he was pretty excited about it. He said, he thinks he commanded me and taught me in verse 11. And he talked about in the Word of God, wrong verse. Let me get back to chapter one. According to the glorious gospel. Those are just good, just say that phrase. Glorious gospel. And the gospel is the good news. He said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, which is the power of God and the salvation to everyone that believeth. That word power is the word dunamis, they say in the Greek language, which means like dynamite. The power of God. Paul said, I'm ashamed of the gospel of Christ. He who was a blasphemer, he who was injurious, he who was a persecutor, who was the chief of sinners, said it's a glorious gospel and I'm grateful that he's committed me and enabled me to be in the ministry. that He's counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry." Those two phrases go together. Counted me faithful. Say the word faithful, please. Faithful. Moreover, brethren, it's required of the stewards that a man be found what? Faithful. And then He said, not only has He counted me faithful, but He's put me into the ministry. Sometimes we lose our freshness. And I said last week, I don't think Paul ever lost his light and the wonder of it all. Gypsy Smith said the same thing as an old preacher at 85. They said, how do you stay so excited about the Lord Jesus and about traveling and preaching? He says, I've never lost the wonder of it all. He is a wonderful Savior and a wonderful Lord and a wonderful plan and a wonderful salvation that we have tonight. And thank God for it. And it is wonderful. We sang those songs about how it will be wonderful there. It can be wonderful here if we just learn to yield to God a lot more. Pitfalls come, but if you get down, they become more apt to fall in, to the pitfall. When you get depressed, how many has ever been depressed? You ever been depressed? Raise your hand, be honest. Raise two hands. Sometimes life just throws a curve at you. You say, Lord, how am I gonna make it? One of the best ways is quit doubting and start shouting broadly. If we'd shout as much as we grumbled, we'd be a lot better off. Some things ain't gonna change until the test is passed. And sometimes I had repeat classes, I think, spiritually classes, because I wasn't faithful to the Lord like I should've been. But God's faithful. And He's the God of the second chance, the third chance. I could ask a show of hands, how many of you failed the Lord? A moment ago, you raised your hand. Many of us have failed the Lord and we're ashamed of it. And yet God is willing to use us regardless. If you don't think He's used failures, you haven't read the Bible. He's used some men that failed terribly and some women who were in fallen state, but God used them and praised the Lord for that. So the message has been entrusted to us. What's the message? the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. What's the gospel? It's the death, the burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So he's committed that to us to tell the rest of the people in the world. Right now, there's 8.5 billion people on planet Earth, and they know who Mr. Trump is, but they don't know who Jesus is or matters. I'm glad for our president. I said Sunday, in many ways, in many ways, I wish he's changed some things, but I'm not looking for a perfect president. But I have a perfect God who never makes a mistake. And whatever's going to come to this world in the providence of God is on the way. And our responsibility is just to be faithful to the end, be faithful, be faithful stewards. And so shall our reward in heaven be. To see the fruit of our being faithful, you have to be faithful. Just be faithful. Do what God has commanded you to do the best you can in your life. And keep a humility spirit about you. And just be realizing you're a child of God. The good news, the gospel. Number two, the danger. Familiarity breeds contempt. Let me ask you, how do you feel when somebody gets saved? On a Sunday morning, and it's about 12, 15, and somebody's getting saved. You ever had a desire, I wish they'd hurry up so I could get to the restaurant first. I'd like to go eat. Your mind's on eating and your belly, instead of souls being saved. Does it stir you like it used to? And does it mean, is it something exciting when a soul gets saved? Was it exciting when you got saved? Your name was written down in heaven. I was reading this week somewhere in the gospels where Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice because demons were subject to it, but rejoice because your name is in the book of life. And all God's people said, are you glad to be in the book of life? That means you're not going to hell. It means you're going to live eternally with the Lord Jesus in heaven. And he's preparing a place for us. John 14 tells us, and one day by the good grace of God, we shall enter into heaven. But until then, he said, just be faithful. Sometimes you don't feel like being faithful because everybody else is not faithful. You don't judge your ministry in comparison to somebody else. The Lord is the plumb bob. He's the one you measure to. Am I pleasing the Lord? And when I'm not, I confess my sins. If we confess our sins, there it is again, faithful. Isn't it amazing how many times that jumps out of the Scripture? He is always faithful. Faith in our God. Faith in what He does, how He does it, where He does it, when He does it, and why He does it. You say, why does He do some things? I have no clue. If I was able to figure out all that God does, that would make me God. I need somebody I can trust who is faithful. He's been faithful from the day that he made man in the Garden of Eden and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He's been faithful all down through the history of mankind and all the patriots of the Old Testament, all the gospel preachers of the New Testament, and up to this point in time, in the year 2025, the Lord has been faithful to me. He's been faithful to you. We sometimes think He hasn't been, but He says He is and He cannot lie. So if He cannot lie and He is faithful, God is gonna see to it that everything works for our good and His glory if we allow Him to. I get impatient sometimes. My wife says I get impatient when I walk, just because that's the reason I fall down so much. I fell yesterday. She called me halfway down. I didn't know she was that strong when she got a hold of me and hung on. But I didn't think I'd go on fast. I just think I missed my step. And so the legs tremble and the back hurts. I was seeing Michelle here a while ago. She's really had a time with hers. And sometimes we all go through those battles and you wonder when it's going to subside or quit. And we use all the medical ingenuity we can get. I'm not opposed to medicine. I'm not opposed to doctor's advice, but I'm sure I'm getting tired of paying co-pays. If you've got insurance, you know it. I talked to the insurance company today about it. She said, just call back anytime you want to. I said, well, thanks. Sort of on a close relationship. Oh, well, another soul got saved. Let's go eat. There is rejoicing in the presence of the angel. over one soul that repenteth, more than over 99 just people." I preached a sermon here a while back, I think got the title from another preacher, but what pulls the rope that rings the bell? What pulls the rope on earth that rings the bell in heaven? And that's telling people about Jesus Christ and telling them how to be saved. I got in my notes, I'm not sure why I do. I preached this sermon several years ago along this same line, at least this one point. And I got an illustration, little Sarah Cahoon on Christmas Day is an illustration. I have no idea what that means. But at that particular time, and she did something on Christmas Day, she might've got saved. I got a Luke 15 7 beside it, but I called Sarah, Sarah's at Pensacola. Maybe her mama may know or daddy may know what that was. Anything happen on Christmas Day, Paul? You got presents? Oh, anyhow, it's in my notes. Tell Sarah I preached about her tonight. Remember when you got saved? I said a while ago, do you remember? Remember the day that you asked the Lord Jesus to be your Savior. We talk about kissing our sins away, talk about becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus, talk about being redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've been studying on Gethsemane, the Garden of Gethsemane, not my will, nevertheless, thy will not mine be done. And trying to enter into the experience that Jesus had, It's opened up a whole new thought life for me, what Jesus went through. You ever wonder why he kept going back to his disciples who were asleep? He'd pray in agony, he said he was suffering in agony, and then he'd go talk and see the disciples, and they were back there asleep. He said, watch and pray. He took the three, Peter, James, and John a little closer, and they too failed. But he'd go to praying and agonizing, then go back to his disciples. Why'd he do that? What was he trying to teach a lesson to them? Because they weren't being faithful or not staying awake? I think it was more than that. I think he was hurting so much. What he saw, he needed somebody to talk to. What he saw was horrible. What he saw was terrible. What he saw was an abomination, a desolation, the worst thing you could look at if you were trying to be righteous. And this writer said that I was reading after one old preacher. He said, I believe that God already was turning his back on Jesus in the garden. Remember on the cross, my God, why has thou forsaken me? The Lord knew he was getting ready to face something like that. He knew he was going to be facing being forsaken by the Father. And all of you know the illustration about the only time they called him God was on the cross. I always called him father, all the way through the Bible, the heavenly father, my father. I come to do the will of my father. And then in the garden of Gethsemane, to do the will of nevertheless, thou will not mine be done. But when he died on the cross, and when he was dying in agony and pain, he cried, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And God said nothing. Just turned his back on his own son. From the time that Jesus was born, and he was old enough to understand, there was a shadow of a cross over his head. He knew for what purpose he came. How would you like to live in that kind of suit all of your life? For 33 years, he lived and knew he was gonna die the most terrible death that mankind's ever died. And it wasn't the five wounds that were given to him by the enemy. of penetration and laceration and bruises and so forth. And all those were terrible. That didn't kill Jesus. He said, nobody takes my life from me. I lay it down. I just lay it down. Nobody takes it from me. But Jesus died, I believe, of a broken heart. when He had all of the sins being laid on His shoulder to take to the cross as the Lamb of God, slain for the foundation of the world. He knew exactly what He was for. He knew exactly what His purpose was. He knew what He was supposed to do. But He's in agony as a human being, weak and frail, sapped. energy until he prayed until his blood, his tears, his sweat became his blood. Imagine that could happen to anybody probably if he was under enough stress and agony. But he had so much on him, he wondered what he was going to do. Let's go back and talk to the disciples. Go back and pray with them a while. agitated, frustrated. He's facing everything a human would face. He didn't see any of it, but he was going through the travail of his soul. And when God saw the judgment that was poured out on him and the wrath, it amazes me, God was satisfied. God literally was satisfied with Jesus dying like he died. for he saw all the children, all the children that get saved down through the annals of time that go to heaven when this life is over. He makes news every time a soul gets saved. So you can get sort of familiarity, familiar with Christian living that it's no big thing. Sometimes I watch our young people and they giggle in church and sometimes have to be corrected. Sometimes folks don't want to listen. And you're thinking what their mind is on something else. It's so familiar to them. One of the dangers growing up in church and being around all your life is you get familiar with spiritual things. And God is a holy God. And yet sometimes we live our life like, you know, it's all fun, fun. I gotta have fun, fun, fun. And we get distracted. So there's a danger in our Christian life. There's a holy dread of losing the freshness and the passion of living the Christian life. The ministry becomes a job rather than a passion. That can happen to anybody. So the pitfalls are always available to us. We lose our zeal. You ever wonder why some folks keep going and others quit to get out of church and get out of serving God? I mean, I'm not a judge and juror of nobody, and God knows I'm not an example of somebody that's been faithful as much as I should have been. But I'll tell you, when you look back over your life, there's some folks just dropped out completely and out of the will of God. That doesn't mean condemnation. That means God loves the backslider. mean God cares for them. God wants them to come back and get back in the saddle, as it were, and start doing something for God. The ministry is His ministry that's been committed to us. We're talking about God Almighty, Jehovah Elohim, the great God of heaven has committed a part of the ministry to us. I've placed in my notes, when's the last time you thanked God for your ministry? or whatever it is. Everybody has a ministry. We're getting ready to meet with the rushers. We got several guys tonight who are not available to usher. They're not here because of sickness and so forth. But the usher ought to thank God he's an usher. Say, all I do at church is usher. Well, hallelujah. Now, we don't have to take up the offering. We can just live by faith not depend on works, just depend on faith. We make sure you not get the bills paid. Faith and works go together. God's always had ushers in his church, in his temple. He's always had those who took care of the temple and took care of financial business over the years. Just thank God I'm an usher. Thank God I'm a sound man. Can I have an amen up there? Amen. Thank God I'm a sound man. Sound men have a rough time. They never preach the preacher. They're either too loud, too low. Sometimes he gets... Ever seen a sound man get chewed out? What was funny, several years ago when Clarence Saxton was still living, he was up in West Virginia and he was going to preach and he kept fussing at the sound men in a kind way. Turn me up, turn me up, turn me up. And he kept on, he said, I say it, turn me up. They said, preacher, your mic's not on. So it wasn't the others, it was the preacher's fault. He laughed. How many times that's been true over the years? Thank God for good sound men. I appreciate our men who work and labor in that toil. Danny's been coming in dressing me up this new microphone. I'm working with it and it sounds pretty good. I'm not sure how it sounds to you, but Danny comes in. Danny said it tonight. He said, Preacher, I believe that looks good. He's always careful not to say, Preacher, you look good. He said, that looks good. He's talking about that stupid microphone. Looks good. He never says a word of kindness about how I look. So we're gonna demote Danny from his job You get somebody else. When's the last time you thanked God being in the choir? Now one day, all of us gonna be in the big choir. And we're gonna sing the song that the angels can't sing. I've been redeemed by the brother lamb. How many times have many of us wished we could sing? I look at our church and those who've got an ability, they can sing, what a blessing that is. Some of us are very frail at that. Larry Cox, he's in the choir, but every week when he's in the office before going to choir, especially Sunday morning, he'll always say, one old man can't be all that bad. I'm going to sing in the choir. But I'm glad he's been faithful. I had Larry testified by his brother. Brother Larry and I go back a long way, 72 probably. When I first come pastor, 71. We used to have a CB ministry. I think Fred was in there. Fred was called the Green Hornet. Larry was called Bus Man, Bus Man. I forgot what I was called. Big Ben, Big Ben. Do what? She was Little Angel? You still call her Little Angel? You still have a CB? Well, praise the Lord. Thank God for the choir members and special music. I put one down that thank God for teachers, Sunday school teachers, training teachers. Thank God for the faithfulness. Thank God for musicians. Mrs. Lewis played the piano a long time, a hundred years or more. Kid her in school, she went to school with Abraham Lincoln. But the tragedy is, we're about the same age. So if she went to school with Abraham Lincoln, I guess I did too. And then I put down, thank God for good cooks. Then I put down and repeat, thank God for good cooks. And then I put down three times, cook, cook, cook. Can you imagine cooking for somebody is a ministry? And it does become that. And there's people in our church who do it as a ministry. Not everybody's going to do it. Not everybody has that ability, gift. Some folks may not be good cooks. I don't know. But just cooking for somebody, sometimes having a meeting after church and having folks to prepare food, it's amazing to me how they can get it all together pretty quickly. But thank God for the people who cook. Thank God for those who visit and go out knocking doors. Not everybody can do the same kind. Some folks are good at going to hospitals. Some are good at going to rest homes. Some just like to go knock on doors, cold turkey. They love that. But everybody's different. And everybody can be used differently. We used to talk about having a trout line, having a line across the river, having your kind of bait all the way across. Don't use the same kind of bait. And go on talking to folks about Jesus. Just be faithful. Johnny Pike, my good friend, I talked to him the other day. Talked to him regularly. We've been friends for years. He said, Preacher, I don't go soaring because I love souls. I go soaring because I love God. And he said, God just told me to go. It's his responsibility to do the saving. My responsibility is to do the telling. I can tell somebody about Jesus and I can't make them be saved. So all I'm saying is this, we lose the freshness sometimes with the ministry while we're in it. And I can identify with that, so I'm gonna testify the way through. Sometimes in your life, when you go through long suffering, which I've been since COVID, three years past, my body trembles. It's not for sympathy, I'm just telling you what's said. My legs tremble when I walk. And sometimes I wonder, Lord, how much longer? So when I go to a doctor, I go to one more and look at my back one more time. And I'm sure I've not been as faithful as I should have been. I'm telling you, sometimes my mind gets detoured. Sometimes I can't study like I used to. Sometimes I can't read like I used to. And I don't want that to sound like a pity case. It's just simply telling you that when people are sick, the devil works overtime on them. And if you don't believe that, be sick for a while. He's a master at it. He can make you doubt a lot of things. I'm glad God made us and God can cure us. But he puts us through tests, and those tests are for a reason. Sometimes we don't know the reason for the test. Why does somebody else's loved ones live and mine dies when I pray? Why does somebody get sicker and sicker, instead of better and better, and they're just as good as somebody else, and they're just as righteous as the next person? Why do they go through all they go through? In essence, why did Job go through what he went through? I'm not a Job and you aren't either, but why do we go through things that others go through and get better and ours goes on and on and on? Some of the best blessings I've had as a pastor is being able to visit with people who had a joy in their bed affliction, they weren't able to go. Some of them were confined to the bed permanently. I can use the illustration readily. I've got her tapes in my office. She made me several. She wrote songs, sung songs. Through the life of me, I probably couldn't think of her name. But every time I go in, I go in to pray with her. I'd leave blessed of God because she was sick. Ain't that terrible? And she never grumbled to me while she was there. I'm not saying it's wrong to grumble, because most of us have a tendency to do that. At least I do. And then you sometimes, if you don't care for it, you'll get sort of down the dumps about the whole thing. Say, Lord, where you at? Psalm 13's become a very precious verse to me. Passage, Lord, how long? How long would it be? And then I've got to come back and say, Lord, until my life is over, until the rapture comes. Would you help me to be faithful? That's all I'm asking. I want to be faithful to the Lord. I don't know when my time's coming. You don't know when your time's coming. But greater is He that's in us than he that's in the world. Victory's on the way. I don't want to come to church and give you a discouraging message. I want to come to church and say it's realistic. Christian people are attacked more than the unsaved. Godly ministers in the service are attacked more than those that are not in the ministry. Deacons and leaders in churches are attacked because if the devil can get them to fall, and I said at the outset, nobody's immune to falling. Nobody. I've been around preachers all my life. My daddy was one. He started preaching when he was 13. He had six or seven preachers in our family alone. So I've been around preachers all my life. What I was thrown into when I was not thrown into, so I get a way to put it, what I found myself doing when I was 18 years of age, when I walked the aisle in Louisiana, Kentucky, and surrendered myself to the will of God, little did I realize what that would entail. After I announced my call to preach, I said, what in the world have I done? That means I've got to literally get up before people and talk to people. Scared to death, introvert, shy, backward. I can remember those sermons when I wept and cried. Lord, I want to do what you want me to do, but I'm scared to death. And the years would come and the years would go. I've been preaching in various countries around the world, various places and revivals across the country. And I'm thankful for that. But I don't want to give up and quit in the latter days. I want to be able to go as long as I can. I miss that. At the same time, God doesn't always leave you doing the same thing. The Apostle Paul finally come down to the end of his journey. He was in a maritime prison, they say, in Rome, and that he was beheaded. The Bible doesn't say that, but perhaps he was historically. Maybe it's recorded somewhere. But he was always witnessing to the soldiers in the prison where he was at. That one revival they had at the midnight hour, remember? Him and Paul in silence were singing. They sang Amazing Grace and had revival. And souls were saved. But when he come down to die, they come to get him. The soldier came and got him out of the room, got him out of the cell. Perhaps bound his hands, I don't know. He said, Paul, it's time for your execution. He said, you tell Timothy and remind him, I fought a good fight, I kept the faith, I finished the course. Henceforth, there's a crown of righteousness for me, and not for him only, but for all those that love his appearing. When Paul walked down to the middle of the square, and the potentate, the Caesar, whoever it was, stands on the balcony to give the sign, when he goes like that, or like that, and begins to sever his head, And if it be the case, the apostle Paul was faithful to the Lord all the way to the end of his Christian life. Had a few bumps along the way, had a lot of persecution along the way, but he stayed faithful to the Lord. And when he come down to die, that word faithful jumps out again. God is faithful. Moreover, brethren, be faithful. That's what God requires of us. Don't give up now, don't give in, don't give out. Stay in the battle until the Lord Jesus comes or you're incapacitated. And I don't want to go by the way of the physical. I'd rather go by the way of a spiritual renewal. But until God calls me, just pray for me. God's will can be accomplished in my life. I love you tonight. Let's stand together. Father, thank you for the truth of God that's forever set in heaven. Thank You for the victory that's been ours through Jesus Christ for salvation. We live on the victory side of life. Sometimes we forget that. We're more than conquerors through Him that loved us. Lord, we're on the winning side. We're not going down, we're going up. The best is yet to come. And yet, Lord, the devil has got an all-out attack against Christians around the world. And yet they continue to grow as it was in the days of the early church. The more they were persecuted, the blood became the seed of the martyrs, became the very fabric of the church. And Lord, many have died for the cause of Christ. We know not what the future holds as it relates to America and the world and all the prophetic things that's about to happen. But Lord, help us to be faithful to you. And may we give glory and honor to you day by day, whatever the case, whatever the case, whatever the situation. May we say, I know God loves me, and I know God will see me through.