I was playing flag football right and my body was saying- What are you doing? And I would try to run like you know go over there right now and I would like, my brain would say – go! And my legs would say - nah I think I’m gonna stay right here. I like it right here so my legs are hurting right now so we, we, it was a bunch of old guys. It was you know most of the guys are 50’s and 60’s. 1 guy was 70 something right? And ah it was, it was, it was sad. It was, let me finish the sentence, it for me it was sad what I couldn’t do anymore and it was so sad. I was just like walking to the car like this and what was really sad about it, on the field were these young guys who are gonna go into the NFL draft. So they were working out and I’m looking over there going – I used to be able to do that. It was so much faster and I was like – No way! And it was just like, I mean guys today are so much bigger, stronger, and faster but it was just, it was just said so my legs are going like – You have to take off for like 6 months.
Let’s see your bibles, let’s see your bible. Oh that’s weak. One more time say word. Very good. Let’s see your pens, lesson plan, lesson plan. Let’s turn to Matthew 19, Matthew 19, Matthew 19.
Lord we thank you for your word. Thank you for your faithfulness and thank you for the, to hear pages in bibles turning. We pray you bless us today and may we be a blessing to you. In Jesus’ name, amen!
How many of you by a show of hands hate to wait for things: people, phone call, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah? Ok. I think most of us don’t like to wait but we all wait differently according to your personality. Now I’m gonna categorize this in 2 categories but there’s probably a whole lot more but just for simple, to make it simple some of us are sharks and sharks have to keep moving to make water go over their lungs. So they’re always moving, always (ehhhhh sound) you know and, and some people got to go-g- go. They’re like busy bees. Ah they’re action people. They like stuff always going on. They‘re like the kind of person that if you call somebody up and leave a message and say call me. You don’t really wait a whole long time before you don’t call them back again. Are you following me? How many of you all know what I’m talking about? Ok you, you don’t like to wait. You know um you always got to be doing something: texting, emailing, on the phone, walking around, you‘re fidgety ok? My wife and by the way people who are go-go people and people who are be-be-be people, be is that some people are just content with being. I call them koala bears. They could just, they hold onto their little bamboo stick and they’re good. You know chew a little leaves, they’re good. Then there’s shark people they always got to go and they always got to be doing something. Now I’m not talking about ADD. I’m just talking about people who are busy, that’s different. And by the way do people who are active and be people God made both. The, not one’s right or wrong, they’re just different and they wait differently.
So my, I asked my wife – when are we gonna be eating dinner? My wife’s a be person so she’s kind of you know content with taking the long way out, the long route to tell me answers to my question. Well I got to thaw the meat, and then I got to make the salad, then I have to make the salad dressing. It’s gonna take 20 minutes to do this and….. It’s taking like forever to just answer what I think is a very basic question. When am I gonna be chewing? When am I gonna be doing that? When is food gonna be going down my throat? That’s what I want to know. So she’s a koala bear. Matter of fact my wife’s a koala bear and I’m a shark. A lot of the couples friends we have the wife is the shark and the husband’s the koala. So we get together, me and the wife go ehh, they’re the wife talking her and the other husbands they just hold onto the bamboo.
How many of you all got a koala, how many of you are koala bears? You all just can chill. You could just be – Hey it’s gonna be an hour. Ok. Other people it’s gonna…. How many sharks out here? Ok yes got to go.
So how many of you all are waiting for God on something? You’ve asked God for something and you are waiting. I’ve been waiting for God to do something for a long time and I don’t, I, I’ll preface what I’m gonna tell you by saying this – God doesn’t owe me anything, doesn’t owe me anything. I could, I could play the ministry card on God. Come on God, I’m a pastor. I work for you every day all day. You know I do this for you. I do this for you. I do this for you. What’s up with my prayers not being answered on time. I could do that. I mean I could say they wouldn’t work but I could say that but I tell God with this specific thing that I’ve asked Him for and I’ve cried out to Him. I’ve cried tears in anguish and pain several times over many years for this thing. It’s not a physical thing. It’s someone’s soul. It’s a person. And I said – God you know what? and I’ve said these words to God – You don’t owe me anything but I do all this, you use me to do all this for all these people and all I want is this 1 person. Is that too much to ask for? This 1 person’s very close to me. And so I, we, I’ve been going through this battle with God for a long time.
And so God said something very profound to me about 6 months 6-9 months ago. I cant’ remember how long it was. He said to me – Miles, He said these 2 things – I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. The good news is that I got your answer. It’s already, it’s already lined up. I got everything in place.
Now before I get to the bad news let me say this. Whatever you’ve been asking for God for He’s already to answer your prayer. He’s already, He’s been ready. He’s born ready even though He wasn’t born. He created the heavens and the universe and there’s nothing He can’t do. He has all the resources anyways so what you’re asking Him for He is completely ready. That leads to the bad news. The bad news is He said to me which I’m gonna say to you. He said – Miles I’m waiting on you. I’m waiting on you. When you do what I’m asking you to do then we can talk about what you want from me. This is true, this is a true story by the way. He says – You, you, you’ve been asking me for this, and by the way there’s some other things I’ve been asking Him for but I’m just focused on this one thing but He says – All this stuff you’ve been asking me for if you will get, if you will start addressing the things I’ve been asking you to address in the way I’ve been asking you to address them then all of this will take care of itself. So I’m waiting on you.
So I would say this to all of you that God is saying to all of you – I am completely ready and willing to do and to address your concerns but you first have to do what I’m asking you to do. Now what a lot of us have done is that we have created our own way of worshiping God. We created our own concept of who God is and how to worship Him and we, and we do it our way and He said – No.
Now before I get into the message let me say this. I’m not saying if you do these 4 or 5 things or whatever it is that God is gonna give you what you ask for. I’m not saying that because some of what you’re asking for is the wrong prayer. You’re asking the wrong thing. Dear God, I just need, I just need to make $100,000. Not necessarily, you may not need any more money. Matter of fact you may need to be bumped down in salary but you need to change your lifestyle. Maybe you’re asking for a 10% bump and God wants to give you a 100% bump. You’re asking Him for a wife. Why do you want a wife? Well I want to have sex. That’s not a reason to get married, it’s not. You, you, you need, you need to, you need to know that sometimes we’re asking for stuff that’s the wrong prayer. If we do what God tells us to do, a lot of times our prayers will change. We’ll get more accurate in asking what He wants to give.
So I’m not saying at all if you do these things what you ask for you’re gonna get. What I’m saying is that if you do these things you’ll get what you need. And so God’s gonna deal with the real core of what you’re asking.
And so let’s read this story. Matthew 19 rich young ruler, a guy who has a lot of stuff and by the way in this particular story this rich guy has possessions. Rich can mean rich in contacts, ah contact. When we say rich we mean someone with an abundant amount of resources. Ok? So it doesn’t have to be money. It doesn’t have to be physical things. It could be relationships. It could be power, influence, personality, anything that you trust in, anything that you have an abundance of that gets you certain things. It gives you options to do things. That’s what we, when we talk about riches. Ok?
So let’s read the story. Behold one came and said to Him, to Jesus – Good teacher what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? Ah before I start I go any further does anybody in here want to go to hell? Anybody want to go to hell? You want, God I want to go to hell cuz if you do you don’t need to be here. You can go home. We’re trying to help you go to heaven. So I just want to make sure this guy’s asking eternal life, that we’re on the same page. Everybody good? No one wants to go to hell. Everyone wants, how many want to go to heaven? Ok very good, very good, ok. I figured that, ok.
So he says – good teacher what good thing shall I do that I may enter into life? And He says – Why do you call me good? No one is good but one that is God but if you want to enter the life keep the commandments. And he said – Which one? Jesus said – You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And the young man said – All these things I have kept from my youth. What else do I lack?
Ah #1 in your notes-One of the first things you need to do is God, one of the things that God is waiting for is for you to correctly to acknowledge Him for who He is. I did, what that means is that you need to really acknowledge that Jesus is God the creator of everything that there is. Why is this important? Well for 1-He, in this story He says to the man, or the man says to Him – Good teacher. Jesus says – There’s none good in so many words. If you’re gonna call me good I’m God. Call me God. Just don’t think I’m some wise teacher walking around telling people wise things. I am God.
Now why is that important? I mean we all would say Jesus, God or most of us would or whatever but, but the reason I’m, the reason I picked this as a point is because a lot of times we have a mechanical relationship with God that we think if we do a few things God says then we can ask for anything we want and He should do it. So God because you’re a divine sucker here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go to church every now and then. I’ll put a little few dollars in the, in the plate and I may say praise the Lord once a year and I think those are pretty good because you know I’m a sinner and I’m weak so that’s about all I can muster out right now.
But really what I want is I want a house. I want a fine wife that’s more beautiful than I deserve and a whole lot smarter than me and I want a job that pays me ten times more than I’m worth. Do you think you can hook that up in the next 6 months?
My point is this. Let me, let me break it down another way. You go to church every now and then. You do a few good things, and you think God owes you all this stuff, and when stuff doesn’t go your way you complain, and when God doesn’t answer your prayers it’s like – Well forget God. I’m gonna go do it myself. And God’s like – What is that? What, what is the, what is this relationship that you concocted in your mind? Cuz that’s not biblical. This is God talking to us. So just you need to acknowledge me for who I am. I am God. I created you. I can take you out right now and be righteous about it. I’ll say it a different way. I can kill you right now and be righteous, not be wrong. There’d be no fault of mine because you’re a sinner. You deserve death from a long time ago. I can do anything I want.
And so I am Lord and you are my servant. You have no leverage over me and everything you have good I gave is/ I gave you: the sun I gave you. The ocean, the place where you live, the place where you want to live, all that stuff your, you’re your body, everything you can do I gave all that to you and you are, you are serving me at my request. I am not serving you. It’s not Burger King where you can have it your way. It’s Home Depot. You can do a whole lot and I’m gonna help you. So we have, we have to put Jesus back up where He belongs and put us back where we belong and we have to do/start doing what He wants to do.
Now let me a question by a show of hands and by the way you can raise your hand and leave it up. Raise your hand and leave it up. Just leave it up. Ok. How many of you by a show of hands know God wants you to pray more? Read the bible more? Serve more? Tithe more faithfully? All that stuff, thank you very much. I can keep going but we all know that. So let’s, let me pray God for a minute. I’m God you’re not and I’m saying – Hold up, hold up. I’m asking you to do all these things and you’re like – Yeah God I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. And by the way to know what’s right to do and not do it the bible says is sin. I’ll say it again. To know what’s right to do and not do it is sin. So you’re saying – Yep I’m sinning in that. I’m sinning in that. I’m sinning in that. I’m sinning in that. So here’s God going – So you got a, you’re full of sin and you’re being impatient with me? If it was fair I would just kill you right now because the penalty of sin is death but because I’m a gracious God and I’m patient I’m kind of waiting for you to get your act together.
I have this theory that people die for 1 of 2 reasons. Either they finished doing what God called them to do or God figured they’re never gonna get around to it. Oh-ho-ho now I may be wrong but it sure sounds good. So here’s God, God’s saying – I want you to pray when and how I tell you. I want you to read your bible when and how I tell you. I want you to serve in the ministry I tell you. I want you to give of your resources based on my prescription because they’re all my resources anyway. Let’s do it my way and, and we can keep going down the row. I want you to stop watching pornography. I want you to stop yelling at your wife. I want you to stop cursing, stop cheating on people. I want you to stop bending all my rules to fit your agenda. Stop! And I want you to start loving people like I say. Do what I’m telling you to do.
Now let me tell you you, if you committed your life to doing that your prayers would change. Your prayers would change because here’s what was gonna happen. You’d be like – Man I got to, I got to, I got to read my bible today. Lord can you free, give me the discipline to have the time. Turn the TV off. Lord I got to go serve in a ministry. Give me the discipline and the humility to go find out what that is and go serve. I got to give faithfully. Give me the wisdom to budget. You are, all your prayers change and all the stuff you’re asking for or get all – Man what am I, what am I doing asking for that? And then all of the sudden your start thinking like God wants you to think.
So let’s first thing acknowledging who He is and establishing a right relationship with Him. Now if you don’t want to do that news flash. Walk away from God and go live your life your way but don’t do both. Don’t try to, it’s called, it’s called being a hypocrite and also playing God for the fool that He’s not cuz He’s, He knows. It’s like forget trick Him. And so #1-Let’s acknowledge who He is. And just imagine just that, you just taking care of that.
Look at #2 in your notes. #2 it says-God is waiting to know how you’re gonna honor Him with your answered prayer. In other words if He gives you what you want how are you gonna make Him look good from it? What relevance does it have with His call in your life? In other words let’s go back to the wife/husband and wife thing. Dear God I want a mate, I want a soul mate. I want a wife. I want a husband and I want to look like this bham-bham-bham you know. Ok so God’s gonna go why? What is that bham-bham-bham woman or bham-bham-bham guy have to do with what I called you to be? Well Lord I don’t even know what you called me to be. Exactly! Because some of you all are gonna marry somebody and hang out with people or date somebody that is not going to encourage your faith in Jesus. Therefore at that moment they are the wrong person. That doesn’t mean they can’t become the right person but if you’re sole purpose in life is to worship God and be who God called you to be you should surround yourself with people who enhance that. It doesn’t mean that they have to be some bible theologian but what, but what business do you have hanging out and being influenced by people who don’t, who pull you away from God. Why?
Now let me clarify. Does it mean you shouldn’t have non Christian friends. Abso, I’m not saying that at all but if your non Christian friends are pulling you away from God and negatively impacting your relationship with God then you need to limit your time with them. But especially dating someone, marrying someone, being united as one with someone who is going in the opposite direction of your heavenly Father, I would never ever encourage anybody to do that. Now does it mean a Christian should marry a Christian? No it’s even worse than that or more restrictive I should say. You need to marry someone who is going to work together and agree to work together to walk with Jesus because not every Christian has that commitment. And by the way they say they’re Christian I should say. Oh I’m a Christian, but they don’t read the bible. They don’t do all the stuff we just said we don’t do. So you’re back to square one.
My point is this when God says, if you’re saying – God I need this. I need this. I need this. Or I want this. I want this. I want you to tell Him – God here’s how I’m gonna honor your plan for my life with that.
When I first got saved I was playing football and I had never spoken in public in my life, at least and enjoyed it. They may have put me up there to speak and I was scared to death. So when I got saved God said to me, and through different circumstances – You’re gonna talk for me. And I was like scared to death, to death. Matter of fact in the very beginning of my Christian walk I went on a prison tour to 5 prisons to share my testimony. Now it’s one thing to share your testimony in front of you know a classroom or high school kids, or adults. It’s another thing to go to a prison and I went to Terminal Island in L.A. Friday night we went to the prison, chapel. Then we went to, I don’t remember the order but Lompoc, Tehachapi, Chino, Norco. At the time it was a women’s facility and every time I was scared to death! And we would pray. It was always, you know the devil’s always trying to prevent you from going in. There’s always a complication with people’s I.D.s and we would be outside praying and, the group would pray – Dear Lord we, we bind Satan in Jesus’ name and we pray you open the doors of opportunity for us to get in the prison. We pray you know, and I’m, I’m a new Christian kind of, relatively speaking. I’m like you know I’m just kind of going on for the amen, amen, yeah. Get us in there Lord. Yeah open the doors. I’m scared to death. I’m like – What’s going on? What’s the devil doing? I’m just, I’m just trying, I’m just trying to play football. I just want to say hi to the inmates. That’s all I want to do. I don’t want to get no trouble.
So we pray and then I would go over in the corner and pray my own little prayer and say – Lord ah if you don’t want me to go in that’s perfectly fine with me. You don’t need to go out of your way and make any special arrangements. I’m good. You know. I was scared. Straight up, straight up. Every single one was absolutely incredible, absolutely incredible and I’d walk out of there and go – God that was, that was so much fun. I mean I only speak 10 minutes. I wasn’t the preacher I was just a you know the, this football player. I was playing football at the time so it was a Charger player coming to prison. I would do my 10 minute testimony then the other guy would preach who was the pastor of New Venture up in Oceanside Sean Mitchell and God said to me during that and a lot of other things – I created you to talk about me. There’s a lot of other things I do, there’s a lot of other things He’s calling me to do and gifted to do but my, in a real estate term…. Anybody here in real estate? Ok when you’re doing an appraisal of a property what’s its highest and best use, the highest and best use of your mouth this man, just talk about me.
You need to know your highest and best use. You need to say – Lord ok, so now I’m praying all these prayers. How do these prayers, how do these answers/prayers enhance or not take away from the highest and best use for my life? If you don’t know that what are you asking for?
I had a pastor come up to me and he says – I want a plan, I want to create, I want to get a thousand people in my church. Can you help me get a plan together? I says – Why do you want a thousand people? Ah. You need to ah that. Come back… And we talked about reasons why he should but I said – If you don’t have a reason why should God give it to you? Why? Why should God give you a new car? Why should give you a new house? Why should God give you a wife? Why should God give you kids? Why? Do you know why? Why should God give you anything? It has to be all according to His plan for your life why He put you here in the first place.
I just put my car in the shop. You put your car in the shop you want to get parts that have to do with that car. You don’t want to get parts for another car. So when you go to God and say – God I need some parts. He says – Well it’s gonna have to do with you and your purpose. You need to know that. If you don’t know your gifts, you don’t know your purpose, then what are you asking God for stuff for? But imagine if you said – Lord, I’m gonna do everything you ask me to do. I want to be surrendered and I’m gonna, and I want everything you give me only to be according to your plan. Why would you ever want something that God doesn’t want you to have according to His plan for your life?
I was talking to a lady when she was a non Christian and I was trying to get her saved, she was my neighbor 12 years ago or so and she said – I don’t want to get saved cuz I, I don’t, I want to have fun. And I was like, cuz people think if you walk with God you can’t have fun. You kidding me? Jesus has the most fun because when you have fun with Him you don’t have to worry about who’s gonna be laying next to you when you wake up in the morning. I mean you’re gonna know that person. You don’t have to go to the clinic when you have Jesus fun. Yeah, yeah! You don’t got to worry about the po-po coming to get you with Jesus’ fun. Who the po-po honey? Who the po-po? What’s that? The police.
Look at verse 21 – If you want to be perfect go sell what you have and give it to the poor and you will have riches in heaven and then come follow me and the man walked away sorrowfully cuz he had great riches.
Ah let me tell you this. There’s nothing wrong with being rich but there’s everything wrong with trusting in that. Solomon was rich. David a man after God’s heart was rich. Abraham God’s friend was rich. There’s nothing wrong with being rich. It’s a matter of trusting in your riches and when God said – Go sell and give it to the poor, He wasn’t advocating and, and saying as a rule – If you have stuff you got to sell it and give it to the poor. Uh-uh what He was telling this guy was that this guy’s prideful. He’s all about his stuff. Let me, let me get to the core of what’s going on with this dude. Sell what you have cuz I know that’s your hung out, hang out. That’s what you’re trusting in.
Sometimes the very thing you trust in the most God takes from you and, and because He wants you to trust Him. God can bless you more than you can ever imagine. He protects you more than you could ever imagine and He, we, we need to get to the point where that’s what happens, is that we open up our hands and we say – God here’s my life.
Matter of fact what does this say? #3-Did you write #3 yet? #3-God is waiting for you to let go or release your grip on worldly things. Worldly things are not just money, or car, or a thing, or, or, or, or material possessions. It’s even trust in yourself. A worldly thing is a concept of yourself, a concept of relationships, a concept of how to conduct relationships, of how to conduct business. Let go of that stuff and let God dictate how you treat people, how you treat yourself, how you view yourself.
When I was in St. Lucia I was on a radio program and the, and the radio host kept asking me about people with low self esteem. What would you say about people who want to kill themselves? There was a guy who hung himself in a building right on the main street there. People saw him hanging there.
We got to let go of the lies in our head about who we are and who the devil says we are and to know this that God loves all of you and He has all the blessings in the heavenly places assigned to you and He would love to give them to you like a father wants to bless his child but he has to do it His way. And all He’s saying to you is just work with me, work with me. You, you have the list of things that you’re not doing. Start doing them. You can, you can get your job done. You can go over there and get a woman and sleep with you. You can go over there and get money. You can do all this stuff, you got all these talents and when you want something you can go get it. What about putting all that to what I want? After all I’m God. And if you start doing that, oh your prayers would completely change. It would because you would start to realize what God wants for you, and who He is, and you are. And a lot of the turmoil in your life would all of the sudden start to dissipate. It would go away.
James 4:1-3 tells us that bad things happen and conflict comes in our life when things happen that we don’t want to happen. In other words if your car gets stolen and you really want your car then you’re like upset. Excuse me. If you car gets stolen and you don’t care about your car, you’re like – fine. Go to the insurance and get some money. Your girlfriend leaves you, you were gonna break up with her anyway. Hey she just saved you the hassle.
The point is this. One of the ways to minimize bad things happening in your life is to not want anything. What I mean by that is stop saying – I have to have this. I have to have this. I have to have this. I have to have this. Matter of fact when I was a kid you know we used to say – Well you better do this, and you got to do this, and you got to do this. And we said – Listen the only thing I got to do is be black and die. How many of you all remember that? All the brown people in here – Yeah I remember that, I remember that. You could say – I be white and die. It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing. I mean don’t feel like you’re left out here. I don’t want to leave you out but, but the, but the point is that’s not gonna change and I’m gonna die. So, so the only thing you got to do today is – Lord I just want to obey you. If, if you get up every day and say – Lord I want to obey you, this is a dare, double dare, you will see miracles happen in your life. The bible says the eyes of the Lord run to and afro around the earth. The eyes of the Lord run to and afro around the earth looking to show Himself strong on behalf of someone who is loyal. What does that mean? Is that God is looking for someone who’s loyal so He can just ba-boom to their life. How many of you all want to be that person? Yeah. So here’s how. Stop making God wait and do what He says. Ooh.
Lord we thank you so much that you love us. We thank you so much that you’re so good. We thank you so much that you’re patient because we don’t deserve your love and your patience. And Lord there are people here, and watching online, they’re in, they’re in our satellite location, people on TV and they know they need to stop making you wait. And I pray Lord that we can stop making you wait and start doing what you called us to do.
So if you would like to commit your life to God, you would like to commit your procrastination to God and Him remove it, you would like to take your commitment to God to another level, stop having a predictable controlled self led verses Spirit led relationship with God pray this prayer with me. In the privacy of your heart pray:
Dear God, I know you love me. I know you’ve made provision for all my needs. Please forgive me for doing it my way. Jesus please forgive me of my sin. Fill me with your power and the desire to obey you. Purify my mind and my heart. Thank you Jesus. Thank you.
As our eyes are closed and our heads are bowed if you prayed that prayer and you, you know you just say – I’m ready. I need to be sold out. In a minute I’m gonna ask you to stand up but before I do that let me say this. There are some of you in here that you’ve been coming and coming to church you’re maybe a Christian for a long time and God is, you’re good with God but it could be so much better. God can get so much more out of you if you would just surrender.
I, I want you to consider this altar call for you as well. If you’re online ah we want you to respond right there on you screen. If you’re in the north county someone there is gonna pray for you. So right now if you’re saying – Lord me, I, me have prayed that prayer and I’m making a commitment to you today, just stand to your feet and acknowledge His ah movement in your life. God bless you. Stand to your feet. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.
