Idol Worship, Greed, and Christ (Ex. 20:3-5, Col 3:5)
Why do I live so diligently? You should be living diligently with God, and I’m a child of God, but you always must enjoy “with,” and if you’re not enjoying that, you’re afraid. If you’re separated from “with,” that’s sin, because from the moment you forget about “with,” you’ll be swept up into Satan’s stream of curses, disasters, and wrath. You don’t fail because you’re bad a studying. God never said that. People just say you’re going to fail because they’re afraid. You’re not going to fail. Children of God don’t fail, you shouldn’t listen to lies.
On the other hand, success isn’t going to make your life any better, either. If you succeed, you may be physically more comfortable, but only if you’re a child of God will God be with you, taking care of you, casting out Satan and fear.
There’s no such thing as people I like or don’t like within the church because God is with every single person and God has given us the blessing of being “with.” There’s no humanistic division here, you must all enjoy the blessing of God being with us. You cannot enjoy “with, Immanuel, and oneness” because you have your own standard and fear. “This person will ruin my life so we don’t get along.” It doesn’t matter whom you meet, it must be a blessing of meeting, so that means God has a plan of blessing for each person you meet in school. Everyone must be blessed through meeting you, and you must enjoy this.
Otherwise you’ll be afraid of studying and your dropping grades. There’s nothing to be afraid of. If your grades fall, just raise them back up slowly. It doesn’t matter because that work will be done for God’s missions and evangelism. People say incorrect things, “Your life will end in failure if you can’t study.” That’s someone who doesn’t have God. Children of God cannot fail because God guides them forward.
God guides with talents. Don’t go by yourself, but confirm it from your parents, your pastor, and your teachers. They may say you don’t have that talent, so you have to confirm it. Just because you like doing something doesn’t mean it’s your talent. Some people like doing many things but they’re not good at anything.
We don’t go into the field to make money, but automatically money will come to us, but God sends us to save lives, so you should never feel oppressed by this. “I have a talent and God gives me money,” and once I discover that, I receive the answer of specialization. You should never compare yourself to other people; God has given it to you.
Joyce has always wanted to be a nurse and she has the characteristics of a nurse. There are some people who can do the academic studies of a nurse, but they have a difficult time being a nurse. There are a lot of nurses who get really frustrated with patients, and that’s a miserable life, but look at Joyce. She’s always nice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her angry. She’s always so humble, always bowing, and it’s not just because I’m a pastor, but I think it’s right with her life. What happens if someone like her becomes a nurse? There’s a field God has prepared.
So God gave her the answer of a UCLA nurse because she discovered her talent. She went to Navajo for missions trip, she interprets for the church bulletin, and this helped her to get into UCLA, because the UCLA nursing school has a policy to admit people like this. UCLA doesn’t just want people who are academically good at studying, but they pick people from all over the world who can be good at nursing. If you have a talent, the specialization is easy because God moves you in that direction, and the field is already determined because God is sending you and bringing you forward because there are people who must be saved in the field.
Don’t listen to lies, do you understand what I’m saying? Be encouraged if you’re bad at studying. It doesn’t matter if you’re good at studying or not, because you have a talent. Do people who are talented at soccer need to study well? Does a swimmer need to study medicine or law? God gave them a talent and gives them all the answers so they can be better at swimming, but if they complain that they can’t be first place in their studies, they get frustrated. When do you think you discover your talent? Ask Joyce or anybody, when did you really want to become a nurse? God reveals it through the Word.
My daughter transcribes the messages in English during worship. I said, “This is the work God gave you, so keep doing it, and it might be related to your talent,” then strangely enough she keeps doing it, she even does it past midnight. She’s my daughter but this is the work she does in the church. If you’re a student, God will allow you to work and study, so all of these things are all used.
Look at Joyce, she went to Navajo as a teacher, and when she applied for UCLA, that helped, too. God didn’t send her for no reason. Schools think it’s great for you to teach in the church, so don’t fall into some misconception. You have to have an academic level but that’s not the only thing. You must be aligned with the school’s criteria.
There’s a 35-year old leader of the minority party in Korea and he graduated from Harvard, but he was 40th or 50th in his high school class, but Harvard admitted him because he was someone Harvard needed. He saw the leader of China was an engineer, so he went into engineering, so Harvard saw that this would be someone who would come to Harvard to receive skills and be a leader in Korea, so even though his grades were low and even though his English skills were lacking, they chose him as a leader.
Right now, the war in Afghanistan had started a long time ago, and there was another person who went to Harvard and was bad at studying, so the Korean said, “How could someone like this be admitted to Harvard?” There’s a criteria for leaders that Harvard looks for. They raised up this individual because, if they bring this person in, they can be a leader to influence Afghanistan.
When he first got into Harvard, he was bad at studying and couldn’t speak English, but within a few months, the Afghan was better than the Korean. Every school has a standard, so that’s why you have to write an essay. The essay tells whether someone is rightfully aligned with the school. If that person is aligned with the school, their skills can be raised, so they are accepted.
It’s the same with your job. Do you think companies like Samsung hire people because of their skills? That’s not the case. Samsung looks to see whether someone can be unified with the rest of the company to go together with that vision. If they bring in someone who just has skills, the skillful person complains, “I didn’t graduate from a renown school just to do this work,” and they’re not able to adapt to the organization, so they create disorder in the family and they don’t hire people like that anymore.
Don’t fall into a misconception. Even if a company does choose you because you have skills, if that’s it, you won’t last long because you have to be aligned with the company. Isn’t that right? Even in restaurants, you have to be aligned. So, what has God called you for? There’s a separate field that has been prepared.
Yes, you do have to study to some extent, but that’s not the only thing you have to do. It’s the same with God. Anyone can be called as a pastor, but God doesn’t look at worldly standards. It must be someone God chooses. When I first believed in Jesus Christ in the Philippines, there was a young adult who would do overnight prayer with a blanket over him, asking to become a pastor.
I was so fascinated because I’d just accepted Jesus Christ, so I asked myself, “Why does he have to receive an answer to be a pastor? Why not just do it?” Further, “Why would you want to be a pastor?” I was truly fascinated. He said he really needed to pray and receive an answer, “God, make me a pastor,” and I didn’t understand at the time. What did that mean?
That’s someone who lived their walk of faith for a long time, so I was at a different level as a new believer, but it turns out that you can’t just become a pastor if you wanted to, and even if you don’t want to, I’m evidence that God will make you into one. There’s something God has prepared for you as well, so don’t be afraid or afflicted by it.
If you’re within God’s Word and worship, you will discover God’s talent God gave you, and you have to bring up the skills and talent God gave you to develop your specialization, and you have to use it to save people’s lives, so God has prepared a field for you as well. You should never, ever be deceived by lies so that you’re shaking in fear.
If you don’t believe in God and you start being afraid, that’s when Satan goes in, and you’ll be anxious, but that diligent is incorrect. You must be diligent within God’s things, and every child of God has this. “Even for someone like me?” Yes, everyone, doing this. I’m a child of God. You’ll never, ever fail because God is holding onto you.
The devil comes into me through lies, if something doesn’t work out, Satan gives me fear that I’m going to fail. I was having a long conversation with my daughter last night, and she said she got 45/50. She was kind of sad and a little bit in anguish, “Why are you so upset because of that? If you got 45/50, the remaining five points are taken from you so you can study more. Getting 100% is not important, but studying to fill the gaps is what’s important. God gave you the score so you can see what you’re lacking and you can study to save lives.”
Most people don’t think that way. “Even if you get 0%, just start from there because you’re preparing for world evangelization. If you fail, just begin again because your life isn’t failure, but it’s preparation for world evangelization.” But the devil keeps putting lies into your ear and destroys you with fear, but God doesn’t do that. God has prepared a talent, specialization, and field for world evangelization.
Even if you don’t know this, God will reveal it to you. God gave you the talent so He has to be the One to reveal it to you. In order to do that, the very basic level is to ask at least three people: your teacher at school, your parents, and a pastor or teacher at church. The teachers and pastors know because they see you as you grow, ask these three people and discover your talent. Then, without a doubt, you’ll have meetings with people who are talented and specialized and you’ll keep having these talents opened to people, and it goes to your field.
This is the coming of age ceremony, the missioning ceremony, and the commissioning ceremony. This is the reason why Jews don’t fail even if they’re spiritually lacking. Physically speaking, they’ve never failed because this is the longstanding know-how that they have, and they have at least two things they’re very good at, because if they’re not able to succeed in one, they have a plan B. Because they’ve been wandering the wilderness for so long, they’re very bright in this.
Because they wandered the wilderness as nomads, they couldn’t labor, so they did things like finances and learned to carry light, valuable things like jewels. It was impossible for them to do physical labor because they were always moving around, but if there were precious gems, it was a small package and expensive, and they could use that with financial know-how. So they don’t have to create anything, but they can create finances with what they have. They had to develop in this way because they were kept away from the land for a long time.
I’ve become a child of God through Jesus Christ, and it doesn’t matter what crisis comes, so God guides through every circumstance, incident, and problem, so you just pray for God to give you the filling of the Holy Spirit, because God promised to give you power to save people. If you’re studying out of fear of failure, God won’t give you the filling of the Holy Spirit. Why would the Holy Spirit give you anything for your greed? So people who live for physical things will be bound by physical things and fear.
When you go to school, pray for your brain, “God, for the sake of world evangelization, give me the filling of the Holy Spirit and may the curses and disasters causing fear be cast out.” Of course, if this is the study done for world evangelization, Satan will afflict you, so bind that. “I’m a child of God, and God is taking care of me. I come to this church for world evangelization.” Ask for the filling of the Holy Spirit upon your thoughts, heart, spirit, and brain because you’re not that smart. “May all the forces of darkness be broken down.”
Doing this, you’re already a missionary.
Prayer
God, we thank You. Bless the remnants, may they have victory, in Jesus Christ’s name we pray, amen.