INVEST - Out Live Your Life 2

Christian when you think about investing probably pick two spiritual pursuits like studying the Bible and serving your ministry but this misrule meeting as well. Turning Point Jeremiah. She is coincides and wisdom on stewardship of the finances you been entrusted with the conclusion of his message based help with your life is.

Thank you so much isn't interesting to consider that you can do things today that will still be bearing fruit after you longer.

While we been doing some illustrations every day about that especially yesterday and will do some more today about how you can do things now that don't happen when you go to heaven. They actually continue to work on this earth in behalf of your God and in your name. Today we finish up what we started yesterday out live your life right here the work of God is eternal God's work will never go out of business will always have a job in the kingdom of God. So let's begin now, right where we are two specific ways you can invest in God's work. First of all develop a personal ministry. Life is defined by serving Jesus as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve you many ways you can serve. There's at least 7.6 billion because that's the estimated population of earth, and every person has a need.

Think of your time. Think of your abilities and ask yourself what can you do for the Lord Jesus said no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loud to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money at the same time. Jesus invested his life in service and he wants that to be the same thing that we do in Romans seven we read, so my dear brothers and sisters.

This is the point you died to the power of the law when you died with Christ and now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead as a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God Patrick Morley wrote about his friend: who has a lucrative business leasing commercial real estate for decades on has also led a Monday noon Bible study in downtown Orlando on has been instrumental in helping several new churches get started. One day someone asked him what you going to the ministry said I am in the ministry God has called me business and telling that simple story. Morley observed occupational ministry to serve God. A few are called to occupational ministry, but 99% of us will minister through our jobs, our families are church involvements and community activities. God's plan is for every believer to have a personal ministry.

You know what the word ministry means. It means service. God has a place you on this earth for a few fleeting decades so you can serve yourself. That's where most people are world today. They live every day for themselves. But God has placed us who are believers on this earth so that we can serve him and in order to serve him. You have to serve others. He brings you to the people that he wants you to serve them put you in the right situation and you have the privilege of sharing the joy of Jesus Christ with them. So you see your primary task here is to invest yourself in the personal ministry God has for you figure this everything you've ever experienced in your life, good and bad has prepared you for what's ahead. God has a unique area of service just for you and that service as part of his plan for you as you move forward. That's what Bill Brantley of Pensacola discovered he's been riding a bicycle since he was four years old. He estimates that he's put 100,000 miles on his 26 inch boy good bike and he learned how to fix it. Whenever the chain broke with the screws came loose and time to learn how to take bicycles apart repaired them, replace them, put them back together. He became a bicycle doctor and he's now seven years old and his personal ministry is bicycles.

This local church has a ministry to the homeless, and one day Bill brought a couple of restored bicycles to the church, wondering if someone might need one and soon everyone was bringing their old bicycles to him as a donation now. Bill spends hours in his garage every day. Repairing old bicycles and getting them in good shape and every bicycle goes to someone who is in need and it's distributed by the people in his church. Bill and his wife Patsy often hear the recipient say something like this but I can get back and forth to my work every day.

I love my bike.

I'm so thankful I so appreciate what you did for me… Just a silly little simple illustration. If you're like me, I wouldn't know what to do with the bicycle on my bicycle breaks down it's over till someone comes to help me but just look around at your life, what are you doing what you enjoy doing what are you good at doing.

That's the question you see, God is given to every one of us something that we do that we do well so what he wants us to do is to find out inventory of ourselves.

Find out what were gifted to do and then leverage that to the kingdom of God.

Take an inventory of everything you do say Lord you made me usable. So show me how you want to use me when you find an area of personal ministry and begin serving the Lord in the simple but wonderful way that he gives you. You will never suffer boredom and whether God gives you a ministry of prayer or writing letters or visiting nursing homes or raising grandchildren will be investing in a divine prize that will never ever filed for Chapter 11. You will be investing in the eternal kingdom of God. So develop a personal ministry.

Every one of us can do that second thing I want to tell you about is this to devote yourself to your local church in many quarters, the local churches, hard times while were each called to invest ourselves in a personal ministry were not isolated entities when it comes to the Lord's work. Listen to Romans 12 for just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not have the same function, so in Christ.

Though many form one body and each member belongs to all the other members that when Christ went back to heaven he left behind one and only one great organism for continuing his work. What is that he left behind the church and his church is eternal.

It is made of bricks and mortar but of human beings living stones were his family and he's made as part of the family business.

Trudy Smith discovered that truth about the church she grew up in a family that valued regular church attendance and even when she headed off to college. She found a church in. She maintained a habit of attending every weekend, but as time went by, she became so involved in ministries on the street that she neglected church attendance. In fact, she grew very cynical toward the church, she said.

On one occasion, I follow Jesus right out of the church and into the streets communing with homeless people over slices of pizza and hearing sermons in the words of the people who lived in the shelters on skid row.

It occurred to me that perhaps what was more important than how often I showed up for Sunday service was how often I showed up for people who are in need. Trudy grew frustrated with churches because they didn't share her passion for helping the poor but then another strange thing happened. She said I kept following Jesus and eventually led me right back to the church.

I was so surprised Trudy came to realize that the church wasn't an exclusive club for people who thought themselves superior. It was more like a refuge where all sorts of people could gather to remind each other of the story were all in the one about how God loves us and is renewing our world and our souls. In spite of all the damage we have done. Trudy said it wasn't perfect. Sometimes I felt frustrated in the church, sometimes border hurt, but it was good. And God was imminent yes church people could be apathetic, judgmental and selfish, but so could I and just like everybody else I needed to be welcomed and loved. Anyway, one day older lady came to Trudy and she was with her husband that day and this lady asked them if they would be in charge of finding people to serve communion every week. So much of a task. Not much of a calling.

You might say but Trudy and her husband decided to do it and became an opportunity and encounter became something that caused them to realize they were necessary. They were a part of his church. They needed to use whatever they could to enhance so the question becomes what you doing are you doing something you know some Christians. They just come to church and they sit in a sour and they don't do anything and they lose the joy of their faith. Everybody in a pandemic here for a number of weeks and little by little, trying to get back on our feet and get back into the church spent a whole lot of stuff being said about the fact that you can still go to church online, but I will tell you that's not true churches in the church online. The church is the church gathered the power of the church is not in the pastor's not in the building. It's not in the place where you meet not in Ukraine it's not in your dock. It's in the gathering of the people together. God created the church for us to come together and when we come together we have to serve so when you're trying to move forward and invest your life for the future. There are only two things that are eternal. That's the word of God and the souls of men and women moving forward toward God's plan for the next phase of your life means your investing yourself in these eternal ventures was to the church of Jesus Christ that Jesus said listen to these words. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.

And low I am with you always, even to the end of the age there have never been more local churches on the face of planet Earth than there are right now there's no better investment of a person's time, money, attention and energy that in the local church.

It was designed in the creative genius of Jesus Christ, and it has been the ordained channel of redemption in the world when the Holy Spirit is living and working in the church, God will bless and create evergreen opportunities to touch others with the love of Christ.

It's hard to invest your life in the work of the Lord. If you ignore that black or disdain the church that Jesus has established none of us are perfect if you looking for the perfect church to stop right now because there is one and if you go there if it was perfect. It will be anymore. Each church is filled with people of varying degrees of spiritual maturity so more cynical because of the failures of those in their lives. In the past summer bitter summer angry summer just overjoyed, just to be there.

But remember the churches of the New Testament had problems to. If you read the Bible you don't read about perfect churches. For instance, the church in Corinth was a very, very carnal church when you read about the problems they had in that church.

In the letter that was written at church about love you one if anybody ever read the letter because they were always in trouble and Paul had to chastise them in his writings because of their wickedness.

He wasn't speaking to them as if they were holier than others. If you have a negative attitude toward the church. Men and women try thanking God for the good people and the good qualities and the good work of the church you know somebody is making a difference in the church going help them give God thanks because of what they're doing. Determine that you're not can allow a negative spirit toward the church to develop in your heart every day I teach a radio program called Turning Point and when I come to the Friday edition almost every week without fail. I encourage people to go to church.

I tell them that our radio program is not a substitute for church could never be were here to encourage people and to supplement the teaching of the church, but always told to go to church. I tell him to find a church were God's word is talking Jesus Christ is lifted up and go tell your pastor you help them let him know you want to serve so invest in God's work, invest in his word. Finally, invest in his wealth. When you invest yourself in the word of God in the work of God, you have to also invest in the wealth of God.

I said earlier there were only here on this earth for a brief few decades, but heaven is eternal.

Therefore, we have to shore up what were doing with our money. We have to use our resources sort of the pay ahead and invest our lives and the things eternal, all of us who are in Christ. Have a great surprise ahead of us.

No matter how much we've visualized and anticipated heaven. It will be greater than anything we will ever have imagined by a billion miles in a billion years.

Sometimes I read the last two chapters of the Bible and I try my best to imagine what the new heavens and the new earth will look like.

I try to envision the city of new Jerusalem and its gold and its glory and its glitter meditating on things above gives us tremendous comfort but what a joy to actually see it for ourselves and the heirs of its richness.

The Bible says we invest in heavens real estate, as it were. One way we do that is by investing our money in the ongoing progress of the kingdom of God.

The Bible's primary passage about this is in Jesus sermon on the mouth.

You know this, but listen to it in the context of this message, Jesus said do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

In the simplest terms.

Jesus said the two ways we invest are in earthly treasures and in heavenly treasures earthly treasures are subject to ruin. When the moths get them there, subject to rust when they corrode their subject two robbers who break in and steal them. But when you invest in eternal things just keeps appreciating over and over. You could never give something to God and not receive a hundredfold return. That's the promise in Luke 638 says when we give God gives back and has a much better way of giving notice and it will be given to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be put into your bosom. Jesus was talking about the giving that was involved in the gift of grain so that when you give to God. God loves to maximize your investment by friend Randy Alcorn explains it. He said Christ offers us incredible opportunity to trade temporary goods and temporary currency for eternal rewards by putting our money and possessions in his treasury wall were still on earth.

We assure ourselves of eternal rewards that are beyond comprehension.

Consider the implications of this offer, we can trade temporal possessions that we can't keep to gain eternal possessions that we can't lose. This is like a child treading bubblegum for a new bicycle or a man offered ownership of the Coca-Cola Company in exchange for a sack of ONLY a fool would pass up this opportunity. So if we give instead of keep. If we invest in the eternal instead of the temporal we store up in heaven treasures that will never stop paying dividends and whatever treasures we store up in heaven will be waiting for us when we arrive.

Someone once told me that in this life were either moving away from our treasure or moving toward invest everything in the things of this earth.

Little by little we are moving away from one day will leave it entirely. But if we've invested in the things of heaven were not moving away from it were moving toward. I encourage you to understand what it means to invest in the wealth of God today. It's hard to imagine a safe place to put your money but when we tie and devote resources to the kingdom. It propels the gospel to the whole world. Souls are saved in heaven is populated when you support your local church or funds are transmuted into literature and lives in ministry and missions. You may never see the returns to you get to heaven. What a joy it will be to run into folks on the golden streets and learned that it was your gift that help bring them to faith in Christ ago there was a song written called.

Thank you. It was written. Try to imagine what it will be like in heaven when you walk in the doors and pretty soon you run into somebody and I thank you for giving to the Lord because it was your gift that made it possible for me to have the gospel and because of your gift. I am here. I have no idea what that's can be like. I don't think anybody can because we've not been there and come back to report somehow when we get to heaven. The reward for what we've done here will be so palpable. No one will miss when you give give to the eternal Word of God. You get to the eternal souls of men and women investing in a way that can never ever be taken from you, and your reward and your investment is waiting for you when you arrive in heaven. I've left the most important thing I have to say for last. As we move forward in this life. We also need to invest in our footprints.

In other words, we need to leave a pathway, a legacy of faith, leave an example behind us, that will lead others to God. Psalm 7118 says now.

Also, when I am old and gray headed all God do not forsake me, until I declare your strength to this generation. Your power to everyone who is to come. I have great admiration for my friend Tony Evans and his powerful ministry, but there would be no ministry without his parents. Tony said my father came in Christ when he was 30 years of age I was 10. Immediately, he became a passionate follower of Christ. My mother did like him as a sinner and she resented him as a saint. Many times my dad would be found praying and studying the Bible in the middle of the night. About a year after Tony's father became a Christian was studying. One night he heard the steps Creek as his wife began making her way from the upstairs bedroom. She saw her husband studying his Bible. But instead of berating him.

She had tears in her eyes.

Tony recalls she told dad how she had been observing his transformed life over the past year and that whatever it was that was responsible for that she wanted it in her life to Tony said that night my father loved my mother Christ. Our home was transformed and after that mom and dad led me my two brothers and my sister to Christ. That evening as he heard the steps Creek. Mr. Evans had no idea is simple love for Jesus would transform his home said his son on the road to ministry and touch on told thousands of people, men and women. Our days are numbered and were moving quickly from today to tomorrow. All of our pleasures and possessions are temporary, but the legacy we leave for Christ will endure forever. It's been said many times and in many ways, but never better with these simple words. This one life will soon be passed only what's done for Christ will last, our love and labor for the Lord is never in vain.

So it's not waste a single day. Let's live with eternity in mind, let's invest in tomorrow and let's outlive our lives. What a great way to work your way through life always looking at ways to invest in the only two things that are eternal, which is the word of God and the souls of men and women. Well tomorrow were going to begin two-part message on the subject of finishing love by line for this message. It's not done continued on and it's important to finish will talk about that tomorrow) Turning Point C) tomorrow. Thanks for listening David Jeremiah Mrs. today came to from Shadow Mountain Community Church with Dr. David Jeremiah serves as senior pastor. How is the Turning Point enriching place right until his point, PO Box 38, San Diego, CA 92163 visit our website at Jeremiah.old/radio ask for your copy of David's powerful discovering God's presence and purpose in your tomorrow was for a gift of any amount you can also download the free will have to be a smart phone or tablet app store Turning Point ministries in Texas have programs just as Jeremiah.old/radio decals join us tomorrow as we continue the series Turning Point on