Living a Life of Significance || Victory Church [The Church #5]

If you have a Bible, turn to Mark chapter four. I'm gonna talk to you about something that the Lord began to speak to me years ago and he reminded me of it not too long ago. About two months ago, I was in a board meeting with Equip, which is a missionary organization that we support, led by Dr. John Maxwell. And we're sitting in this board meeting and it's all the who's who around the country who pastor some of the greatest churches, lead some of the greatest businesses. These are some really big time leaders. And he's doing a lesson on basically what really makes him tick. And one of the things he said is he had just recently met, was talking with a billionaire, a man that he had known for years that was a billionaire, not a millionaire, a billionaire. I mean, there's a difference between a billionaire and a millionaire. There's a very few billionaires. Anyway, he's talking to them and this guy is telling him, he's saying, you know, John, he says, I don't wanna be the richest person in the earth. And then he's paused for a moment and then he looked at John and he goes, I wanna be the richest person in heaven. And there's a difference. There's a difference between the richest people in the earth and the richest people in heaven.

And he said, when he said that, it got him thinking. And when he told us that, all of us in the room, just, it just got silent. Because we were all just sitting there thinking, are we living our life to be the richest person in the earth or the richest person in heaven? And what does it mean to be the richest person in heaven? Does it mean money? What does it mean? Could it mean other things besides just money? And then I realized as I'm sitting there thinking and I told Pastor Johnson this, I said, I think the Lord gave me this message because this message I'm gonna share with you this morning is a life message. So I want you to listen, as Jesus would say, if you have ears to hear, then listen to this. Because this will change your life. If you get this, what I'm gonna share with you today, if you get this at another campuses, you'll understand why we do what we do here at Victory and what this church is about. Because this is a little different church. Every church is, I think every church has its uniqueness. And I think this is one thing that we started at the beginning of the church that created a uniqueness about Victory that made us sort of a different church. Not better church, not greater than other churches, just different.

And here's what the Lord began to talk to me about. He said, to be the richest person in heaven, you have to stop focusing all your life around success and focus your life around significance. Now we're driven, I grew up driven by success. I wanted to be a successful business person. I had started a business when I was 21. I had set a goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30 and I was just on that track. And then I got saved about a year into this journey with God. And I got saved and the Lord began to kind of redirect my affections. And he said, you know, it's not wrong to want to be successful. Success, you need to be successful to be significant sometimes. Sometimes success is a part of that. But success, if you look at the idea of success, ultimately, ultimately success is about you. Whereas significance is about others. And that's the difference. That's the critical difference. If you're living for success, then it's all about how successful you become, what attributes come to your life and the benefits to your life. And that's, God wants us to be successful. He's not wanting you to not be successful. But eventually you transition

from just wanting to be successful to wanting your life to matter. To wanting your life to be a person that makes a difference. So that when your life is over with, it really mattered. I remember reading this quote years ago. It was by Russell Russenbog. He says, you and I live in an age when only a rare minority of individuals desire to spend their lives in pursuit of objectives which are bigger than they are. In our age, for most people, when they die, it will be as though they never lived. We've all been to funerals where, Bobby Jew, he did a great job at feeding them pigs and he was a great farmer and he did this and that. But we try to find things that positive to say about people when we ask, what did they do that actually mattered? That had significance to it? Most people that I've done funerals for did not live lives of significance. I grew up in a whole family of success. My grandfather was a corporate lawyer in Pennsylvania. Made millions of dollars. Had a yacht, had a house on the country club. Drove Cadillac and a Lincoln. He was a very wealthy guy. Died at 63 of.

lung cancer, never really did anything to help other people. And when we went to the funeral, it was just the family, we just stood around and nobody knew what to say. And I went back to the grave site, and I remember saying to the Lord, I was about 19 or 20, somewhere in that neighborhood, and I remember saying, I didn't even know, really, know God, but I was trying to talk to God, and I said, God, I don't wanna end up like that. I don't wanna have the whole world and lose my own soul. Can I get a bigger amen? Can I get a bigger amen? So the Lord said to me, when we started this church 36 years ago, build your church on teaching people how to live a life of significance. When we transitioned to Pastor Johnson in the summer, the Lord spoke to him in a similar way with a slightly different take on it. You were made for something great. You were made to do something bigger than you, greater than your capacity to do it in your own strength. But most people never do it. Most people never achieve it because they're too busy just trying to provide for themselves, trying to live their life for them and their four family members or whatever. And they don't realize that life is much bigger than just us four and no more. So we started on this journey, and I remember as we started the church,

it didn't always go that well. In fact, the first three months we had six people that we started the church from with Scratch, and three months later, we're still six people. And I remember one of the Sundays in the process, I think this was our first service. Let's bring these pictures up, I want you to see this. That was me casting vision for the church in my apartment in the end of 1989 for 20 people. And I remember as I looked out across those 20 people, I realized that when we start the church, these 20 people aren't all gonna be there when we start the church because they're about to hear what we're trying to do. And I mean, it's exciting to think about going to church until you find out what you gotta do to start a church. So it boiled it down to the first service we had, put up the picture, there's four of us in the first picture. That's our first service. And the other two are our children's ministers, and I think they were taking the picture. In the center is Billy Humphrey. Billy Humphrey was our youth pastor for 11 years. He now pastors Gate City Church up in Lawrenceville. Started as an IHOP, which they're celebrating this week 20 years of 24-7 prayer around the clock for 20 solid years in their church, 20 solid years. To his right is, that's his brother Bobby and Leanne. They were in our church at the very founding. I married both of them, I married Billy.

And then the other guy is Ted Meehan who married a woman in our church. He lives up in North Carolina. All have participated in the ministry in some capacity, including the couple that's taking the picture who went on to become missionaries. None of them are here anymore, but they're still a part of our life. We still love them. This is the foundation of what started this church. When we were six people, I'll never forget, one weekend, we had to come on Friday night to set up the daycare center, which is right across the highway from here. And it's pouring down rain. And I got, this is back when we used to, y'all remember when we used to wear suits to church? Some of you are old enough, you remember this. We used to actually wear ties and suits. And I just wear the sport coat just to remind you sort of what it looked like. And it was just, you know, we were dressed up a little bit. And I'm wearing this suit and I got a raincoat on and I'm carrying these chairs from this shed down the hill to the daycare center. My wife's in there setting up all the stuff for the service. It's just the two of us. We didn't have a setup crew back then. We were the setup crew. And I'm carrying these chairs and I'm walking down the hill

and all of a sudden my feet slip out from under me because it's really muddy. And I go up in the air and land on the ground and all those chairs come landing on top of me. Now picture this. I'm laying in the mud, chairs on top of me, in a suit completely covered in mud, praying that somebody will show up for church tonight. This is Friday night service. Only two people came that night, two people. I preached in a suit covered in mud. And I remember, but I'm laying there and I'm thinking to myself, what is going on, God? What are you doing? And I remember thinking to myself, and for just a moment, this is the devil trying to get me to give up. He's trying to get me to give up. And then the Lord said, sometimes, listen to me, the worst thing that can happen to you is the best thing that can happen to you. Sometimes, sometimes the worst thing that happens to some of us as we're going through it, it's not fun, is the very thing that drives us even closer. closer to God. When I stood up to preach the first sermon I preached this message it came out of Mark chapter 4 and I'm going to read the scripture to you because it's Jesus talking and it's what he says he says and again he began to teach by the sea and a great multitude was gathered to him so that he got into a boat and sat it on it in the sea and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea and then he taught them many things by parables and said to them in his teaching listen behold a sower went out to sow and it happened as

he sowed that some seed fell by the wayside and the birds of the air came and devoured it some fell on stony ground where it did not have much earth and immediately sprang up because it had no depth of earth but when the Sun was up it was scorched and because it had no root it withered away and some seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and yielded no crop but other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up increased and produced some thirtyfold some sixty and some a hundred and then he said something to them that I want to say to you he that has ears let him hear he that has ears to hear let him hear now listen to me not everybody in this room I know we would like it but not everyone in this room necessarily has ears to hear right now not everybody watching us online or at the other campuses not everyone has ears to hear because they're too busy listening to other things not everyone but as those of you that are here I'm just gonna say it to you all the campuses if you have ears to hear listen to what Jesus just said he then goes on to say something in Mark 4 verse 13 he says do you not understand this parable how then will you understand all the parables in other words if you don't understand what I'm saying to you you're not going to understand anything I'm saying to you because at the very core and the root of your relationship with me is found in this parable the sower sows the word and these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown and when they hear Satan comes immediately takes away the word that was sown in their hearts in other words you could come in church and hear the word but if you don't really have ears to hear you just walk out and it's gone you'll never remember it and that's literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people that hear the word they don't pay attention they're not care about the word and it just it's just wayside seed and then he goes he says likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who when they hear the word immediately they receive it with gladness but they have no roots in themselves and so endure only for a time and afterward when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake immediately they stumble something bad happens in their lives some something

hard it's going on maybe they start blaming God for something or they don't they're going through trouble in their life as soon as trouble happens they give up on God they just give up and they and they walk back into their normal life again that's the second group the third group he says and these are like one he says and he said these are ones they're sown among thorns they are the ones who hear the word and the cares of this world the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things outside of God's will enters in and chokes the word and it becomes unfruitful and he says but these are the ones sown on good ground those who hear the word they accept it they bear fruit some thirtyfold some sixty and some a hundred listen to me listen to me these are the people I'm after right here this fourth category these are the folks I'm after these are the ones about I'd love all of them to do bear fruit but I know that not everybody's gonna bear fruit in the church I know that not everybody's gonna go after God I know that not everybody's gonna be happy about how things go in in their lives but I do know this that there's always a remnant in every church that will eventually take the seed of God and they will use it and they'll bear thirtyfold they'll bear sixtyfold and some will even bear a hundredfold and I'm after you this morning I'm after you because you're the ones you're the ones who make the church strong you're the ones who build the church the church is not a building the church is not a place we assemble on Sunday morning the church is a gathering of people that live the life of Jesus bearing fruit All right, so let me ask you a question. How are you doing with that? How's your fruit-bearing going? Where are you in this category of people? I told this to our church on the very first Sunday of victory. I challenged our six people. They were looking at me like, I can't believe you're challenging us on our first Sunday to bear fruit. Yes, because the Lord said, when you build the church, do not try to build a big church. Build a strong church. If you build strong church, you're building strong people. They build the church. They will do the work and build the church. But if you try to build a big church, you'll compromise. You'll

make it all about you. You'll make it about entertaining people. You'll make it about the flash and the bang. And look how great we are. And certainly we have a great church. Look at this church. Many churches would would love to have this kind of a church building or the buildings that we have. By the way, all of them are paid for, debt-free. We own them all. Praise God for that. The church is not about the show on Sunday morning. The church is about people that say, I want to be a fully committed disciple of Jesus. When we used to do membership, and this sounds so foreign today, but we did it for about 10 years, for the first 10 years of our church, you would go through four classes. Each class was an hour. One was on the vision. One was on serving. One was on small groups. And one was on giving. And each one of those, you'd have to come back to the church in the afternoon to go through. So we made it kind of difficult. We said, we equate membership with ministry. We don't care how many people join a church if they're not ministering in the church. They're not really a member of the church. So we said, we want people that represent membership to be ministers. You're all called to be ministers in some capacity. So we took them through those four classes. And then Colleen and I, for several years, about five years of those ten, we interviewed every single new member for one hour. We would sit down with those members and talk to them about their life. We talked to them, are you ready to tithe to the church? And if they said no, we said, well listen, we love you. You don't have to tithe, but you just can't be a member. You can't be a member. Membership is equated with commitment, and where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. If you can't commit in that way, and I have one guy say to me, I make too much money to tithe to this one church. And I said to him, I said, can I just pray for you? And he said, what do you want me to pray for? Can I just pray that God will make you poor so that then you can tithe again? Because obviously money has got your heart more than God. Then we asked him, are you ready to serve in the church? We asked him this point-blank. It's hard to look a senior pastor in the face and say no. But we had people that would say, I'm not ready to serve yet. And we said, listen, everything is cool. You can come to this

church. You can be a part of this church. You're just not going to be a member of this church. Because membership means you're serving, you're giving, and you're in a small group. We asked every member to make that commitment for the first 10 years of our church. He said, didn't that kind of thin it out, thin out the crowd? Yes, it did. It made the church actually tough to join, difficult. It wasn't easy. And I went back to study the life of Jesus, and I came across this whole idea of living a life of significance. And here's what, the Lord began to show me that there's a process of moving from success to significance that is somewhat painful in your Christian walk. But when you do it, you'll reach a point where someday you'll be standing in the middle of your life, your vision, and you'll realize, I'm bearing fruit for the kingdom of God. When my life is over, it actually mattered that I live. So let me take you through the process, the first step. Here's the first step. You begin to view your life as not your own. It's no longer I that lived, as Paul would say, but it's Christ Jesus who lives inside of me. I realized that one of the challenges we have in church today is most people go to church based on what it does for them, instead of going to church to learn what they can do for others. How can I move from that? So when Jesus comes on the scene, the cool thing about Jesus, Jesus was not a mega church pastor. He wasn't. Can I just tell you something about myself, and I tell you this about Johnson too, we are not mega church pastors. We aren't. None of us wanted to be a church pastor that was a mega church, because we knew as soon as the church got really big, it would start to dilute. It would be hard to care for all the people. I remember one Saturday, I was in here praying, God grow the church, add more people, and the Lord said, can you take care of the people you already have? I said, no. He said, then why are you praying for more? You need to build your leadership core so that you can take care of all these people before you start asking me for more people. But then what would happen with Jesus is he would have this crowd following, this big crowd. He was drawing a mega church crowd because he had fed them with fish and chips

miraculously. He had healed them. He'd raised dead people. So they're fine. Come! I'm coming to you Jesus. Give me, give me, give me, give me. Lay hands on me. Pray for me. Give me some fish and chips. I want to follow you. And Jesus, instead of like what happens today, look at the crowd. Look at the masses. Look at all the people. He turned to these people and look at what he said in Luke chapter 14 verse 25. As massive crowds followed Jesus, he turned to them and said, when you follow me as my disciple, you must put aside your father, your mother, your wife, your sisters, your brothers. Y'all right out there? It will even seem as though you hate your own life. This is the price you'll pay to be considered one of my followers. Anyone who comes to me must be willing to share my cross, experience it as his own, or he cannot be considered to be my disciple. And then he tagged on this line in verse 33. Likewise, unless you're surrendered all to me. Everybody say all. All to me, giving up all you possess, you cannot be one of my disciples. That sounds like a cult leader. Does it not? They actually called that Christianity a cult back in those days. Because people were leaving their fathers, their mothers, and following Jesus. They were not letting even their own family stop them from following Jesus. They were willing to forsake their family. Both Colleen and I had to forsake our family. Her father looked at her and said, if you leave and you follow this guy and you go to this church, you're dead to me. You're not even a part of our family. He didn't speak to us for five years. He didn't come to our wedding, didn't participate in any hit. The whole family, her whole family disowned her. My grandmother looked at me and she said, if you stop doing this business with your dad and you go and do this Jesus thing, you are no longer, don't ever come back and see me. I'm no longer a part of your family. And I said, Grandma, I love you, but Jesus is more important to me than you. He's more important to me than you. I found that a lot of times when people start to follow Jesus, their family sometimes becomes their greatest hindrance. Pulling them back. I didn't have to forsake my wife because my wife was going forward. I had to catch up to her. That's the kind of wife you want to have, amen? And so I'm thinking to myself,

isn't it interesting how Jesus spoke to the masses? There was no celebration of the masses. There was no TV, no internet, no social media platform, no look at what kind of clothes I'm wearing, look at what kind of watch I wear, look at the kind of car I drive, look at the masses of people that are following me. There was none of the social media personality cult thing that we have today in church today. This was just Jesus and his church. And what he was trying to do, he was trying to build a church that would last, that would endure through trials, through tribulations, through persecutions, through all the things that he was about to go through before he went to the cross. And the Lord said to me, build that kind of a church. He says, you're gonna have to go through hundreds of thousands of people to get to the people that will become a part of victory. We've gone through hundreds of thousands. This church on a given weekend has maybe 14,000 in physical attendance in our campuses, and maybe sometimes a little higher, sometimes it's a little lower, and then maybe another eight or nine on lunch. So 21 to 24,000 people that are participating in our services on the weekend. That's a massive church. That's a lot of influence. And you think, wow, how did you get that big? Because we decided to go small instead of big. We decided to go, okay, if we're gonna do this, we've got to have an army, not just a group of people that come to church on Sunday morning. We don't have a church built around entertaining you. We just don't have it. And we decided, okay, we're gonna keep this word strong. And you know, if you've been here for any period of time, let me just ask you this. How many of you, how many of you are 36 years or younger? Let me see your hands. You're 36 years. So you were not even born when we started this church. And God knew someday you would be born, and that you would be a part of this church, and he prepared this place just like he's prepared a place in heaven for you. He knew before you were ever born what he prepared for you so that you could do something that would be significant in your life. If you stay with it, listen to me, if you stay with it, your life will never be the same again. So Jesus is trying to weed out the crowd. to get to the core. Isn't that funny how the weather weeds out the crowd and gets to the core?

When you start to preach discipleship, that's why I wrote the book 10, Moving From a Believer to a Disciple, what does it take to be a disciple of Jesus versus a believer? You cannot build a great church with believers. You can only build a great church with disciples. And the more disciples you have, the more people who are disciplined followers of Jesus to say, I'm living for God. I know it's no longer my life that I can choose and pick or whatever I want to do. I think most Christians choose their path and then ask God to bless it. Instead of saying, God, what do you want me to do? So the first thing is your life is not your own. It belongs to God. So let me ask you a question. How much of my life is fully surrendered to God's will over my own? How much of my life is fully surrendered? Second thing, you begin to invest your life in things that have eternal value. Colleen and I are both 68 years old. And when you get up to that age, you're in what they call the fourth quarter of life. And we're thinking about, I'm sorry for those of you that are 68 years old, but it's a good place to be. And we're thinking about what do we want to do for the rest of our life? We're not retiring. We'll never retire. So we started a ministry called Future Church. It's a subsidiary of missions for this church. A lot of your mission money, some of your mission money goes into that to help support us to plant churches, do missions, train leaders, and stuff like that. And it comes from just being around people like us that are older, that are saying, I want to give my life away for the rest of my life, because I want to do something that matters. When Maxwell asked the question about who's the richest person in heaven, he made this comment. He said, you know, there's really, what it boils down to, and he's probably one of the most successful ministers, businessmen, leaders that I know. He says, when it comes down to it, he said, there's only one number in my life that matters. And I said, what is that? He says, how many people I lead to Jesus. How many people come to Christ? The main thing is the main thing. Because we all know that whatever cars we're driving, houses we're living in, 403 B's, 401 K's, investments, this, that, and the other, whatever we have, none of it goes to heaven. The only thing that goes to heaven is what we did with that to bring people to heaven with us. The reality is so many people are living just for today. So here's what Paul says in first Corinthians three, verse 12. Anyone who builds their life on the foundation may use a variety

of materials, gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value. If the work survives, the builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames. In other words, there's going to be a lot of people that'll barely get into heaven and their backside is on fire as they go in. Now, I don't know about you. I don't want to be one of those people. I don't want to just slip in at the backside and nothing mattered here on this side. I don't know about you, but I want to take as many people to heaven as I can take with my talent, with my time, and my treasure. What am I going to do with my time? What am I going to do with my talent? What am I going to do with my treasure? Regardless of what you do in life, make sure that it's built around something that has eternal value, not something that's just temporal. So many people, so many Christians just live for the temporal. And then when something upsets the temporal, like the economy gets upset, or something happens in society that gets them upset, or something hurts them, they just fall to pieces. Your life is not built around the temporal. It's built around the eternal. When we started this church, as we got going, I knew one of the first things we had to do was build a team underneath us as leaders that could carry this church, that carry it forward. And eventually, I hired three people with the key hires of this church that took our church forward behind the scenes. One was over all the financial investments of our church, the banks, all the things we had to do with buildings. The other one was over all the operations, the helps ministries, the serving ministries, and the other one was over all the pastors. I call them my three amigos. Can we put the picture up here of my three amigos? These are the three people. These are the three people that Really built this church For 20 years at least 20 years Pastor Darrell Mims on my right He was over our finances He just stepped aside a few years ago When I did He saved us millions Of dollars

On loans and banks and he got us out of debt He helped manage the finances He knows how to pinch a penny I'll just tell you that right now All the time and for several years Battled cancer, overcame the cancer While he was doing that I knew When I put the finances in his hands I didn't have to worry about it anymore I didn't have to think about it anymore Dave Nowak And by the way he left a top corporate job Working as the CFO Of one of the top construction companies In the country He left it making many many dollars more Than I could pay him I paid him $80,000 when he came to work for us He left all that To work for us Dave Nowak left Honda Corporation He was also a corporate guy I don't know that I've ever met a man In my life that works harder than that man Right there He was the backbone Of everything that we built in this church He doesn't live here anymore He lives in Dallas near his daughter and granddaughter

But Those two right there, they were with me For a long time And then a few years later we hired that one over there From far right From Hewlett Packard He was working for Hewlett Packard I said I used to have breakfast with him For three years and trying to talk to him To come on staff He said no no I'm calling the corporate world I said no you're not you're calling to work for me And someday you're going to leave that company And he did And he's still on staff Would you stand up all of you Let the people see you You're still on staff Applause Why did I point these three out? They all left The world Where they were making a lot more money And they came to work for the church And I'm not saying everybody needs to do that But they did it because they wanted to matter They wanted Life to matter One of my dearest friends Who just did that a few years ago

Gary Price Who's now taking Darrell's place on staff Well really he's Taken all of their He left a job Making so much money I don't even want to tell you how much money he was making And came to work for us I don't know if you're here Gary Are you here in the room? He's probably not in this service but Gary Price He's now our executive pastor did the same thing Did the same thing Why am I saying this? Because they understand that what's more important In life is not the temporal But what's eternal Amen Alright so let me ask you a question How much of your life is making an internal difference? Think about that The third thing You begin to value loving people More than loving yourself Jesus Was the ultimate example of that Paul would write about it in Philippians 2 He says do nothing out of selfish ambition Or vain conceit

Rather in humility Value others Above yourself Not looking to your own interests but each of you To the interests Of others When you think of the life of Jesus You begin to realize that what drew People to Jesus was they He always valued people He didn't care what economic life you lived He didn't care what race you were He didn't care about what sin you had in your life What he cared about was you He values you People have asked me many times How did you get a church of over 140 nations? How did you get all these people to come together? And I said I don't know I think somewhere along the way I realized That Jesus values people Not based on their race Or their economic level Or their achievements Don't go after those kind of If you value people Then all kinds of people Will be in your life Well I decide God I don't

I don't just value white people In fact be honest with you Growing up in the white church It's rather boring It was just You know it was okay but I didn't really like it because it was just Everybody liked me And I didn't realize How great it would be when Black people started coming to this church Instead of just How are you doing? Good to see you sir It was hey bro what's happening? Come on give me a high five Give me a hug Then you latinos Started coming in You just got that thing inside of you that's always moving. And then finally, some of you Asians slipped in here, quiet, reserved, sort of like white folks. Sometimes I forget you're Asian and I go up to hug you like a black folks do, and you're like, whoa, wait a minute now, we aren't hugging now. We're just, let's keep honoring each other, but let's don't hug. What would life be like if we didn't have all you folk from all over the world in this church? Come on, it would be boring. You're here because people in this church love you, value you, listen to this, more than they just love themselves. We're living in a selfie world.

Something shifted in the mid 2000s, 2007, 2008, 2011 when the iPhone came on the scene and social media kicked in. They said in 2011, if you were under the age of 30, depression skyrocketed in 2011. It went straight up a straight up line where suddenly all these people were getting depressed, having identity crisis, having all these challenges with who they were, what they felt like, all these kind of things. They market to the fact that they now are looking at social media. They were gauging the value of their life based on social media and what's going on in what people say about them, how many people like them, how many people comment to them. It depressed the community now. We live in a life where there's just suicides through the roof, depressions through the roof. These people, even in the church, they're having to take medication to manage their emotions because their life is so built around me. Look at me. Look what I'm doing. Look what I'm going through. Look at my boyfriend. Look at my girlfriend. Look at my clothes. Look at my food. Look where I'm at. We don't care. We don't care where you are. We don't care what you're wearing. We don't care what you're eating. We don't care who you're with. The only person that cares is you. What if you got outside of yourself? What if you shut down social media for a season?

See once we got into this information age where now we can learn everything about everyone and everything. I mean you can Google me right now and find out all my life. You can sit there and check me. What did he say? Is that scriptural? And you can check on your phone right now. Everything it's kind of like the apple, you know, when they had the apple icon with the bite out of it. It's very similar to what happened to Eve and Adam in the garden. Once they got information that they weren't ready to handle, it messed them up. It totally destroyed their image of God and who God was and what God wanted out of their life. I got to be in the know. I don't want to miss out. And so many of you believe everything that's on social media. People are just sitting there laughing, making up stories on AI, making people say things that they never said, do things they never did. And you believe it whole hog because you've already formed an identity around those things. Once you start identifying with stuff like that, it enters in and it chokes the word and it makes it unfruitful in your life. So you begin to value loving people more than loving yourself. Every week we have hundreds, if not thousands of people volunteering. People got up this morning when no one wanted to go to church and drove in right here to Victory at Norcross at Midtown and North Cobb, not at Hamilton Mill yet, but at North Cobb and are serving in children's ministry, standing out in that parking lot with 20 degree weather. And cold take trying to get you to park, ushering, greeting, doing these things. What kind of people do that? People who love others more than themselves. That's the word that Jesus is.

How you doing with that? If you were to look at your life and you were to evaluate your life, how much of my life am I living for others versus just living for myself? Then finally, you shift from how much can I acquire to how much can I give away? When I was talking with one of my friends, a business guy who, he was the, He's the founder of Synovus Bank. His name is Jim Blanchard. Very wealthy guy, multimillionaire. Lives in Columbus, Georgia. And I met him playing golf. I played golf with him one time and we just became good friends, him and his wife. He's 85 years old. He's long retired from leading Synovus Bank, but he's still working. He's got a whole financial group. They're investing, they're making money. He's very involved and engaged. He's flying here, flying there, speaking here, speaking there at 85. He shoots below his age on golf at 85. And I told him, I said, you and sis are like my role models. I'm like 20 years behind you, or not quite 20 years behind you, but this is the kind of life I wanna be living at 85. I don't wanna live past 85 if I can't live like this. If I'm all decrepit and falling apart, I'm gonna get my health engaged, I'm gonna get my life engaged. But I do know this, what keeps you alive more than anything

is being in the purposes of God. Amen. And we both agreed, and I said, what are you thinking with money, time, because he's a big investor? He says, I'm just trying to give everything away. Years ago, about three or four years ago, I was blessed to participate in a little golf thing with Jack Nicklaus, probably one of the most famous golfers of all times, you've all heard his name. After the round of golf, we went to his house for dinner, several leaders, and somehow I got seated right next to him. I didn't ask to be seated, I just got seated right next to him. And so for two hours, I got to sit there and talk to him. The greatest golfer, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, of all times. As he's talking, he's got this gold watch on, and I just said, oh, that's a beautiful watch, and he goes, yeah, I'm gonna sell it. I said, what? He tells me the story about this watch and how years ago when he was a young man, he was in a golf tournament by Rolex and they gave a watch to all the players, and he said, Arnold Palmer took me over to this watch, he said, this is the one you want because it's all gold. And he said, it's the only watch I've ever owned my entire life.

And I've worn it in every golf tournament and everywhere I've been around the world. And he says, I have a hospital that I'm building down in Miami, or he's not building, but supporting down in Miami, for all these children that don't have healthcare. And he says, all I think about is how can I make a difference in their life? So I'm gonna auction this off. He says, I think I can get a couple million dollars for it. I met him, I just saw him about three weeks ago at another event, and I ran into him in the bathroom and I said, hey, did you auction the watch off? He goes, yes, I did. And he didn't have the watch on anymore. And he told me, he said, that night at dinner, he says, I'm just trying to give everything I have away. I'm gonna sell my house, I'm gonna do all these, he says, because I just wanna simplify my life. I don't need all that. I need to make a difference. When I get around people like this, this challenges me. How are you thinking about money, possessions, gifts to the Lord, and I'm realizing, that's what I want, God. I wanna give everything away before I die. I don't wanna have a big, whole, big old thing left in the bank with a bunch of money that I'm gonna leave to a kid that will probably misuse it. I wanna use it for God.

I'll give her something, but I'm not gonna give her everything. And here's what I said to the Lord. Lord, someday, I don't know how I'm gonna do it, I wanna pay for a campus. I wanna pay for a campus. And I, no, don't clap for that, because it means I'm gonna have to go through some pain to get there. I wanna do it. And the Lord said, okay, where are you gonna start with? I said, this year, this year, this is your, I want you to double what you've been giving. Try to double what you've been giving. And I give a lot. And I thought, how am I gonna do that, Lord? He said, well, you're gonna have to make some investments, you're gonna have to do some things in the world that makes money, in order for you to do that. But remember, when you start to make money, don't forget me. Don't forget the reason for money. The reason for money is so that you can build the kingdom of God here on the earth, not so you can build your kingdom here on this earth. Amen. This is why we ask all of our members to become tithers and givers. You say, that's so foreign today to do that,

to ask people, because we see all these charlatans that are, you know, that make a big thing about giving money to get stuff, and they live the high life and fly in private jets and do all this kind of stuff. You're not in one of those churches. So quit using them as an excuse for you not to give. You're not in one of those churches. This year, I think last year, we gave 100 million a couple years ago. I think it's now almost 120 million that we've given into missions. 120 million. not thousand, in demissions from this church and we're our goal their goal is to give at least 200 million and during their lifetime they'll probably far surpass that because the giving is accelerated in this church and I want to tell you something if you're not a tither and you're not a giver can I just tell you why because money controls you that's the whole reason God gave us the commission to give and tithe so that money wouldn't take charge of our heart so that when every time we give our heart follows where we give your heart is what you do with money wherever your money is that's where your heart is when you start investing you're looking at the stock market and every day because your money's in there whenever you're working your job how much money am I making what can I do with this money what can I do with that money and the bottom line is if you can't give at least 10% if not more to the Lord then money is your God you've traded off God for money that's why Jesus said this and I'll close with this I'll wrap it up with this last scripture Matthew 6 19 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and vermin destroy where thieves break in and steal but store up for yourselves treasures where in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break

in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also and then he says this in verse 24 no one can serve two masters either you'll hate the one and love the other or you'll be devoted to the one despise the other you cannot everybody say cannot you cannot serve both God and money how y'all doing with that you say well pastor you this is gonna make some people leave the church this something well who would leave the church over that people that don't give people that don't serve people that just sit in chairs we're not trying to build a church like that we're trying to build a church that does something significant that makes a difference that changes the world you cannot change the world with people in chairs you change the world with people who are fully committed disciples going through a value transformation that's how you change the world if you know me if you know me you know I'm not afraid to lose people I've gone through hundreds of thousands of people over the years I'm an equal opportunity offender I don't just a family one group I'm a pretty good offender but here's what I you know they call Jesus the rock of offense because he was saying stuff that nobody wanted to hear he nobody wanted to hear what he just said about money right there nobody wanted to hear oh you mean my life is not about building up treasures on the earth no it's about building up treasures in heaven it's about going ahead and doing what you know to do with money to make a difference instead of just heaping it up for yourselves I've learned this you've got one hand to receive one hand to give as the money goes through there's always plenty for you God wants you to be successful he wants to bless you but he needs to get it through you you're a river not a reservoir when you become a reservoir that's when you stop making a difference that's when life becomes all about you so we decided 36 years ago fast-forward to today we want to make people in this church the richest people in heaven we want to make you the richest in heaven and you'll thank me for it when you get into heaven you'll thank us for it when you get into heaven thank God I went to that church that challenged me to stop being greedy and stop being selfish and stop being all about myself and challenged me to come

out of myself and live for Jesus all the way everything you you own me God you are everything to me you are my Lord what would happen Midtown North Cobb Hamilton Mill and here at Norcross what would happen on our line illness if every one of us live like that oh my gosh oh my goodness the next time a snowstorm comes through you couldn't hold all the people in the building because nobody's sitting at home watching it on TV if they could have got here to church physically got here they're here they're here because they want to learn how to grow and get stronger with God and love God and live for God and live for the eternal not the temporal and give away everything they have as much as they can once you start to go down that life that's when you start to bear fruit sometimes 30 sometimes 60 and sometimes 100 I don't know about you I don't want to settle for 30 or 60 I want a hundredfold come on how many of you want a hundred times what you're doing in your life you're looking at a country guy I grew up in the country on a dirt road in McDonald's Georgia. I didn't wear shoes most of the time. I was barefoot most of the time. I talked like this most of my young life. I was Southern as they get. We ate Southern food. We talked Southern. We live Southern. I still love Southern food by the way. That's God's food right there. I'll tell you right there. Never in my wildest dreams did I see myself participating in something like this. Never in my wildest dreams did I see this. This is how God works. With a seed. He sows a seed. I'm sowing a seed in you right now. Which one are you gonna be? The one that immediately forgets what it was and you go about your business and it didn't do anything to you? Are you gonna be the one who gets excited about it for a moment but then a little trouble comes along and you stop serving God? Or are you starting to get caught up in the thorny things of the world? The cares of the world? The deceitfulness of riches? The lust of other things? Which one are you? Are you gonna be the one who's gonna stand out? Are you gonna be the remnant who's gonna come out and say, I'm not gonna blend in. I'm gonna stand out. I'm gonna go after God with all of my heart. With all of my soul. With all of my strength God. And I'm gonna love people as much as I love myself. That's what

we're after. 36 years into it. We're just getting started. Just getting started. Come on somebody. We're just getting started. Oh we're just getting started. I want you to take a moment bow your heads and close your eyes. I want you to take a Selah. I want you to think deeply about this. Sometimes we don't allow enough time in our church services to think about this. Think about what we just heard. What applies to me? Where do I need to change? What challenges me? What takes me to a different thought process with God? And sometimes God will ask us to make a decision about these things. Will I fully surrender everything to you God? You're not just my Savior Jesus. You're my Lord. I'm not here on the earth to just do my thing. I'm here to do your thing God. If you're here today and you say, I have never really fully thought that deeply about it. I've never fully considered that. But I know what you're saying. These are the words of the Scriptures. These are the words of God. These are not just words. These are life words. What will I do with those words? If you say, I need to do something. I need to start somewhere. So today I'm asking you, will you surrender to a life of significance? Will you surrender to a value transformation? Will you ask God to help you do the things you need to do to change in your life the way you need to change? To change the way you think, the way you live, so that your life going forward matters. If that's you, I want to pray for you all across these campuses online here in Norcross. I want you to just lift your hand to God and say, that's me God. You're speaking directly to me. I'm gonna lead us in a confession and if you want to make this confession, don't make it lightly, but if you want to make it, say it with me. Jesus, I lay down my life so that I can pick up your life in me. I surrender everything. I surrender my body. I surrender my soul. I surrender my spirit. I surrender all the resources of my life, all my choices. I surrender it to you. Jesus, you're the Lord and I just repent right now for living a life outside of this. Forgive me Lord. Help me now from this day forward to start the process of a value transformation. Come Lord, take over everything in my life. In Jesus name. I just lift your hands to him. This is an act of humility and surrender. Lord, we humble ourselves right now. We're not prideful. We're

not prideful. We're humble. We recognize we don't always do the right way. We just surrender to you Lord. Take our heart right now, our surrendered heart and take over in our heart. Take over in our heart Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit now. Burn out anything that's in us that's not godly, that's not holy. that's not righteous, and help us to be pure before you, Lord, to live a life that makes a difference. I pray that over us, in Jesus' name. And everybody said, Amen and Amen. God bless you. Thanks for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app. We hope this content was a blessing to you, but we want you to know that you're not done yet, because we want to hear from you. So send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life, how we can pray for you, or even content that you would like to see us create in the future. We just want you to know that we see you, you're important to us, and we'd love to continue to create some things in the future that will bless you. So send us a letter and we hope to hear from you soon.