Investing for Life | Part 1

Life is lived in depth not merely in length.

Listen to Adrian Rogers so many people are born in this world with so much and others born with so much time to achieve and accomplish so look I want to talk to you about investing for life and what I want to use as a framework is the life one the most noble young men that I know anything about in the Bible whose name was Joseph. I want to give you some things that will help you. Best in life and to live life in damnedest not merely welcome to monthly finding the truth. The dynamic teaching beloved pastor and author Adrian Rogers as we just heard there are many people who are existing or not really living. We should desire to live lives that count for the Lord Jesus, and perhaps the most Christlike character in the Old Testament was Joseph story in Genesis chapter 37 gives us insight into how to live life in depth not merely in length. If you have your Bible turn there now is Adrian Rogers begins. Part one of investing for life. Turn, if you will please the Genesis chapter 37 number of years ago, when our boys were fighting overseas in Vietnam. I was in an airport and one of the things I do in airports is to watch people I don't know will you ever do that or not but people are well worth watching. And if you have nothing else to do. It's it's very entertaining, sometimes instructive Joss to watch people and so I I was sitting back watching and I saw a young man dressed in his military uniform and this young man dressed in his military uniform was there with his eyes supposed were his father and his mother, and the young man was a handsome young man he looked like it could've been a movie actor and he looked also. Like he could have been a football backfield star. He had a square jaw, broad shoulders technically dressed in his uniform, his mother and dad were there is little boy little girl were there and that they were saying goodbye and look like out of a Norman Rockwell magazine cover to see the old man in the old woman to see this beautiful wife see the handsome noble man in the little children get around is knees.

I almost felt like it was wrong for me to watch, but I was transfixed. I watched as they hug embrace kiss. I watched him as he kissed his wife his mother's dad embraced.

I watched him as he picked up those little children one more time and hugged them and I thought to myself he's going overseas. He's going maybe to the battlefront. He may never come home. This may be the last goodbye and I thought I wonder does he know the Lord is he saying my friend Lord let him sit by me only airplane and I got in a got my seat was preassigned and I waited and an answer to prayer that young men came set down right beside me. So I turned to him, I said Sir I was watching and I don't mean to be intrusive, but was that your mother and father always said yes.

He said I said was, obviously, and that was your wife.

He said yes those were your little children. Yes, I said you going to the front. He said yes on Vietnam's sky city expect to see combat. He said yes I do. I said well ask your question.

If perhaps you don't come home. Are you absolutely certain if you die, you go straight to heaven he said oh yes I know I'm going to have an icicle tend he said well he said I believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God and I believe he took my sins to the cross and he died for me and I have trusted him as my personal Lord and Savior.

He's very real in my heart was so dear that testimony and I said well then, are you afraid of dying. He said no sir I'm not afraid to die. But I said what about if you die young, he looked at me a heated know who I was seated know what I was getting at.

Before asking the question he didn't know I was a preacher and sometimes I try to hide that disguise that he looked at me as if to give me some instruction and it was good instruction. He said Sir let me tell you something he said to me, Christ is real in my life. I said God has been good to me. He said I made Ayana faxes plan praises name, but he said Mr. let me tell you something I have learned that life is not live in length. It is lived in depth. I've never forgotten.

Life does not live in length. It is lived in bed and he said Jesus has given me a very full rich and deep life. I wanted to witness to him, friend, God put him only airplane still witness to me.

I believe that the greatest tragedy in life would be to discover on your deathbed back to live the shallow life that you have maybe perhaps many many years but you never live in that you never lay hold of that for which God laid hold of you and in the words of another. You might look back on your life and say that youth was a struggle maturity, a blunder and old age are regret so many people are born in this world, with so little, and yet they achieve so much and others born with so much and achieve and accomplish so little I want to talk to you about investing for life and what I want to use as a framework is the life one the most noble young man that I know anything about in the Bible whose name was Joseph.

I want to give you some things that will help you to invest in life and to live life in depth not merely in length. Number one. Learn to dream dare to be a dream read with me now in Genesis chapter 37 verse one, and Jacob dwelt in the land where he and his father was a stranger in the land of Canaan and these are the generations of Jacob, Joseph, being 17 years old was feeding the flock with his brethren in the lab was with the sons of Bill and with the sons of zaleplon, his father's wives and Joseph brought him to his father. Their evil report that Israel that's another word for Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors and when this reference all that their father loved him, that is Joseph more than all his brethren. They hated him and could not speak peaceably to him and Joseph dreamed a dream and be told it is brethren and they hated him. Yet the more he sent them here.

I pray ye I pray you this dream which I dream for behold we were binding sheaves in the field, and low. My sheep arose and also stood upright, and behold your sheaves stood roundabout and made obeisance to my seat and his brethren set in the him shall bow indeed rule over us shall bow indeed have dominion over us and they hated him yet more for his brain and he dreamed yet another dream and told his brother and said, behold, I bring to Bryn Mawr and behold the sun and the moon and the 11 stars made obeisance to me and he told it to his father into his brethren and his father rebuked him and set an him.

What is this dream that I was praying. Shall I am thy mother and thy brethren indeed come and bow down ourselves to the to the earth and his brethren envied him, but his father observed the say now as you read the rest of the life of Joseph. It's obvious that this is not a mere daydream. This was not some inordinate silly ambition but God had given to him a dream. It was a God given dream that one day the world's rulers without his feet and the world's resources would be in his hands. God gave him that agreement when he told the dream he was not boasting. He was not bragging because the dream was for God and the dream was for the benefit of other people. I let me say this, that if you would invest your life you need to get a dream, a God given dream now. I don't mean something that you schemed up and something that you dreamed Jeremiah chapter 29 verse eight says neither hearken to your dreams, which he calls to be dreamed I met talk about idle daydreams. But I'm talking about finding God's will.

God's plan for your life. I love Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11 in the King James the NIV gives it even in a more poignant way. Listen to it is what God said to his ancient people, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a whole and the future and I don't believe that it would be wrong for us to take the intent of adverse and applied to our hearts, because, as God love his ancient people. God loves us and there is a sense in which there is a divine destiny for every one of us and every one of us needs to catch that dream they hear the voice of the Lord say Lord, what is it you have to my life again. If we come to the Old Testament prophet Joel Joel said in Joel chapter 2 in verse 28 and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young man shall see visions, be have a vision. Have you dreamed a dream. I guess I want to say I'm not talking about Connell ambition. I'm not talking about sitting daydreams. God doesn't promise to fulfill our fantasies. But God does want to give us a divine aspiration divine inspiration divine inclination to be what we ought to be. How can you tell whether it's a God-given dream or just a daydream or fantasy.

How can you tell whether that thing that you feel stirring in your heart is of God. Sometimes people say to do things that is not of God.

I heard about a man who thought he would be on the police force and he went down the police force to see if they would if he could join police force and I gave him a test he came back home is why Baskin said that you think they don't like to be a policeman. He said more than that is that I think they going to make Meditech to be civil. Why do you believe that he said well they gave me a test than the vastly very serious question is said who killed Abraham Lincoln is said they've already put me on a murder case. Sometimes people have inclinations that are not of God there silly and they have unrealistic expectations that are not of God. Don't live yourself and think that God has a plan for you that it doesn't have for you that you daydream prior to being the chairman of the board of General Motors or whatever tester dream when God spoke to Mary told Mary that she was below the Messiah. She believed God, she acquiesced, but generally something very interesting. Bible says in Luke chapter 2 verse 19 that Mary kept these things and she pondered them in her heart she turned them over and over in her mind. This was not unbelief but she began to ponder the say Lord is this your will, and if it is your will house again come to pass and she just turned that over and over in her heart, mind, not in unbelief but in divine are in and wise scrutiny. I remember when God called me to preach. I was a teenage boy and I have not come from a line of preachers is no reason that I should be.

Preachers medevac is very shy to speak in public didn't want to speak in public had no inclination to do so. Somehow in my heart, the germ thought God in my heart that God might want me to preach, not already told the Lord what I will do anything you want me to do and that was a sudden thing in my heart and my mind and I thank God that I had enough spiritual inflammation to know that God's will for me was good and perfect and acceptable size of Lord here I am one of you want me to do and I somehow that German got in my heart in my mind and got my woman to preach and ask the Lord, Lord, do you want me to preach because in a way it seemed a little ludicrous. Then after a while I began to pray this way, Lord. I think you might want me to preach that after a while I began to pray this way and this went on for. A minimum, Lord, if you don't want me to preach about. Let me know and then one day, Lord, I know that I know that you call me to preach neither know the Scripture that I'm about to give you what I was going through that exercise medevac.

I knew very little is medevac. I didn't know who came first, the Bible chronology, Abraham and Moses, but I felt God moving in my heart and my life. But then I discovered a Scripture that explains what was going on in my heart that Scripture was in Proverbs chapter 4 in verse 18 it says the path of the just is as a shining light that shines more and more into a perfect day. Now the shining light is the son and as the sun comes up. At first it's dark, then it is great on you can just see shapes but no colors but after a while you can see colors but long shadows. Then after a while it is high noon and then no shadows. That's the way was in my life. It was dark. It was great.

All I could just see these kind of masses, ideas, thoughts, but then finally it was high noon in my heart and my life. If you think that God is speaking to you about something. If you're wondering, is it God's will be what Mary didn't hundred and you know what I didn't say Lord if this is you just keep on speaking and say I am ready to do your will.

Whatever dance at missionary friend call me and I was already set on facing a real decision. How can I know the will of God. But I do think because we didn't have a lot of time to talk. I gave him a verse that I will give you Romans 12 verses one into I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice wholly acceptable in the God which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind and you will prove what is that good, perfect and acceptable will of God. And here is here is the formula presentation plus transformation equals realization I think about present your bodies a living sacrifice. What is a living sacrifice.

Sacrifice has no plans of its own.

It's a sacrifice you have to die to be sacrificing their living sacrifice.

You put everything only offer you say here I am Lord, I present myself. I give myself to you. Have you done that you have done that to have no right to expect in the will of God presentation when you do that with that presentation becomes a transformation beat and be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that is a transformation come about.

God renews your mind, what, when God renews your mind, what is he doing that. What do you do with you to think with.

Why would God renew your mind. If he didn't want to think with. So God renews your mind, you have the mind of Christ and you transformed you no longer have the old ambitions.

The old desires. The old standards of right or wrong you the Avenue mind I think with you this presentation. There's transformation and then there's realization, then you will know what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God in over the will of God is right between your ears and right in your heart.

The will of God is God speaking to you through the renewed mind as he brings opportunities to you and you see these things and you began to assess things in the light of God's wisdom, and as God speaks to you. It's not all that mystical, though it is absolutely miraculous. And so you need to get a green you need to let God speak to you now.

God is not God and tell Joseph that one day he was going to be prime minister. A dictated spell that specificity. But Joseph had a brain.

He knew he was special.

He knew that he was set apart. He knew that God had his hand on his life for something. I pray that you will say, dear God, don't let me just be living a shallow life. I want to live life and I want to know your will for my life number two. Not only do you need to dare to dream, but you need to remember your distinctiveness. Remember that you you see is the you you will be God made you very, very special.

Jordan different look, if you will, in verse three. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors and when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren. They hated him and cannot speak peaceably under him that Joseph stood out from his brothers. He was different. He dared to be different and there's a great contrast in the life of Joseph and the life of all of his brothers, the beautiful coat that he wore just symbolize his distinctiveness and that coat of many colors was the kind of coat that royalty would waive it was the sign of noble birth and friend. If there's anybody who ought to stand out.

I would as distinctive because of them of noble birth. It's those of us who've been twice more.

Those of us who are children of all the father in heaven, but deeply, beloved of our file and you find out that when you display your nobility, not arrogantly but boldly the world will resent that nobility and the world will try to squeeze you back into its mold. That's what Joseph's brothers tried to do to him.

They tried to make him conform, but he had been transformed and he would not come for that he got had a plan for him. God said Joseph you're going to be different to distinct God revealed it to him that his brothers resented him for I have had people to try to get me to back out of the minister.

When I was announced as a teenager that got a call me to preach.

There were those who said things like this you can make more money doing something else are you will never succeed in the ministry are you will never make it. You will lasted all of those things though that the world has plenty of wet blankets to put out your fire why why do people resent it when you go on and the things of God because your spiritual success shows them up to what they are spiritual may use coming up tomorrow will your part two of this important message ingesting for life. Maybe today you have questions about who Jesus is what he means to you how to receive his forgiveness that he's freely offering right now, go to where discovered Jesus page@lwf.org/radio will find resources there materials that will answer questions you might have about your faith again go to LWF.org/radio now if you'd like a copy of today's message. You can order one by calling us at 1877 love God mentioned the title investing for life when you get in touch to order or go online to LWF.org/radio or rightists at Leavenworth find box 38, 600 Memphis, TN 38183 Adrian Rogers said the highest place is just in the center of God's will. Where ever it is. Meditate on that today and join us next time for the conclusion of investing for life. Writing on love this of this email from the pastor we received recently. I think it will encourage you.

He says I'm writing from Kenya and it was by God's grace that I found love worth finding.

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