Lecture

Welcome back to the final climactic session of “The Testing of Your Faith.” Why don’t you evaluate all of the truth that we have taught? It’s hundreds of verses. Many of them word for word, and sometimes we even looked further into the Greek, and the tenses, and the other words that, what exactly does that word mean? All to set us free, to become a person that we’ve only hoped could be true.

Well, we’ve been teaching these sessions in series of two, believe it or not. For instance, in the first one, “The Purpose of Tests of Faith,” and then how do they actually happen, “The Patterns of Tests of Faith.” Then these two were a unit, “The Stages in Test Failure,” failure and “The Steps for Test Success,” this was a unit. Then we moved away from the intermediate level, and we moved over to the advanced level. And we got two of them together, “The Tests of Belief” and “The Triggers for Unbelief,” the positive and what stops us is the negative. And now we’re finally moving to the last two, “The Catalyst for Life,” and “The Secrets of Overcomers.”

Believe it or not, this is a unit, this is how faith is meant to make a huge difference in our life. Then build on that and bring it over to “The Secrets of the Overcomers.” What exactly do the overcomers do in their life that enables them to live—I want to just say it the way I view it—at a different level? And the results over their lives are just in a different category, they have some secrets that aren’t really secrets, but they are. And they use them and they live a life that is of a different kind. Not that they’re special people, but the people use secrets to achieve amazing results. Remember, you’re created in Christ Jesus for good works, then how do they take that truth and move to it? I can’t wait to get into this final one because at the end, we’re going to take a look at that verse I’ve been talking to you about, that talks about the initiation into the mysteries, and you’ll finally understand the verse like you’ve never done that before. So let’s go over here and take a look at the passages.

If you remember from the first session where we talked about “The Purpose of the Tests of Faith,” In James 1, it talks about the fact that the tests of faith are to be a process by which God makes us perfect, complete, lacking nothing, that we become more and more like Christ as the Bible says, Be perfect as I, God, am perfect, completely developed, mature. Why? Not just because we’re to become like Christ, but as we saw in the last session, we are created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of doing good works. And those works are how we get glory to God. Do them before men, so they may see them and glorify your Father in heaven.

So now that we’re at the last session, what really is unique about the end of this course, is the overcomers. Those people that continue processing through session 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and they even go past seven into 8, they live a life that is going to be perhaps surprising to you. What they do is not what the average Christian does, and therefore they don’t have the same results as the people who use the secrets.

Well, what I want to show you in the introduction is that overcomers produce a quantity word, abundant good works, that’s what they do. You’ve been created in Christ Jesus for good works, and they do many good works. Let’s see if we can’t take a look at the Scriptures, we started in Ephesians 2, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (v. 10 NKJV). This is a subjunctive. There’s a potential of not walking in them, that’s the whole point of that particular verb form, that we should walk in them, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to or not. And many people don’t, they get off of the path that God had ordained for them, and they’re down in the ditch or they’re over here doing something that God didn’t want them to do, He wanted somebody else to be doing it. So the issue is, live out your destiny.

Now in John 15, the very famous passage, there’s a revelation about God and our good works that is core to changing our life. “By this,” said Jesus, “by this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.” “By this My Father is glorified,” that you bear fruit (v. 8). That you, the believer, does the bearing of the fruit. God does not bear fruit in this passage, you do. “By this My Father is glorified, that you,” that’s the subject of this verb, “you bear fruit.” And this is subjunctive again, it means we hope that you do, but that’s up to you that you bear much fruit. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear a quantity amount of fruit. Not just fruit, but “much fruit.”

When I was growing up, the point wasn’t really about doing good works, the point was you’re saved by faith, and your works are irrelevant to God. That couldn’t be any more unbiblical, you’re created in Christ Jesus, that’s salvation for the purpose of good works that God prepared beforehand, that you should walk in them. This is another layer of understanding that God who creates us for His glory is glorified by quantity, how much fruit. This word fruit is used in the New Testament as the same concept as good works. It doesn’t mean leading people to Christ, in specific, that’s one of the good works, but it’s a much bigger concept. If you look in Timothy and Titus, it switches the use of good works and fruit, that is quantity.

Now, there is a huge breakthrough that may occur in a person’s life. And if the first part of that breakthrough is to come to grips with, it’s extremely important to produce good works in your life. That is working, good works is striving, it’s energy, it’s action, it’s doing.

So the next part that is a challenge for people is to deal with this issue, does God care about quantity? Because when I was growing up, everybody said, “God doesn’t care about numbers or amounts, all He cares about is faithfulness. It’s quality, not quantity.” Where is that taught? Because in this passage it says the exact opposite. “By this,” let me tell you what “this” is, “My Father is glorified, that you bear much,” many, many “good works.” The more works we do, the more glory can go to God, and He’s more and more pleased with us.

Good works don’t give us salvation, do they? That’s by faith, by believing in the work of Christ. But after you’re born again, created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works, and the overcomers have a different mindset. The Lord wants much good works. Not that you become a workaholic, but that you live your life strategically, asking the question, how do I bear more fruit for God? How do I do more, the quantity of it?

Let’s go back to this passage some more. “You did not choose Me,” said Christ to His disciples. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should,” look what He says. Why’d you choose us, Jesus? I chose you “that you should go and bear fruit” (John 15:16). Put it together, why did you choose us? Well to be with you? Yeah, yeah, but is that the reason? No, I chose you to work for me. That’s it, and to bear much fruit. It’s only when this connection happens that you’ll ever, ever become a person who is an overcomer in the way I’m defining it in this session. I’m not going to the passage in Revelation 2 and 3, about those overcomers, I’m talking about it in a different context.

So the point that I’m trying to help you identify is, in some churches, good works are almost looked down on, they’re irrelevant. Don’t worry about good works, you’re going to heaven, and it really makes no difference from that point forward. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s because you are going to heaven, then serve the God who saved you, and do a lot of it.

All right, let’s go a little bit further in this big idea we’re dealing with. Now, one of the famous stories or parables that Christ gave is a parable of the soils, or the sower of the seed. And Christ told that parable because many people were having different reactions to the truths that He was teaching. And He wanted to kind of teach the response of people to His message and help them understand it. And He said, some of the seed. Now, the seed, the sower is Christ in the story. And the seed is the truth that He’s sharing, and the soils are the people. And He’s talking about, because the seeds are the same, right? No matter what soil it goes on, the sower is the same. The only difference is the response of the soil.

And He talks about four different responses, four categories. Response one, the seed falls by the wayside, the side of the road. And it says, and there was no fruit that grew, nothing. The second one, the seed falls on stony, rocky soil. And it grows quickly, and as soon as the sun comes out because there is no root system because of the rocks underneath the ground, underneath the dirt, the little layer of dirt, it withers and dies in a sense, that teaching didn’t go anywhere in that person’s life, wow. The third one is the seed fell on ground where there was brambles and thistles and weeds. And it grows up but at the same time as the weeds, and the weeds choke out the plant and it does not bear any fruit to maturity.

What’s Christ talking about? The point of the seed is that it produces a harvest of good works. It’s to change you, motivate you, bring you into results that God is honored by. And He’s showing you there’s four different levels. And the fourth level is the soil that the seed grows and produces.

If you take a look at this, why does the sower sow seed? Answer? To get a huge harvest. Was there any harvest, good works? I created you for good works. I chose you to go bear good works, that’s the fruit. Teaching so that you change and you bear fruit. Was there any results in the first group? None, zero. What about the second group? None. What about the third group? None. It’s just the fourth group, the good soil that responds.

And I compared the three Gospels where that same story is taught, and I combined them into one longer story and how Christ interpreted it. And He gave actually ten different categories of people. There was one in the first category, there was two in the second category of the seed growing with the rocky. There was four in the issue of, you’ll see it in a moment. There’s four in the issue of the weeds choking out the stalks, so it didn’t have any fruit to maturity, there was no value that came from it. And there were three in the final good soil, so there’s ten.

Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. There was ten, the first seven, people who heard Christ, in a sense, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, no fruit, none. The next three are talked about in what we’re going to read to you now in Matthew 13. “But he who received seed,” the teaching of Christ, “on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it [and] indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold . . . .” A hundred times more than the seed. One seed, a hundred seeds. “. . . some sixty, some thirty” (v. 23). Next one, this is not only in Matthew 13, it’s in Mark 4, same observations: but these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit (Matthew 13:20). Who does the bearing of the fruit? You, and it’s possible that you’re not going to bear much fruit. But this is the person that is the overcomer. The overcomer is the one that does bear fruit, thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold.

Now, think about this, the first seven’s no fruit, the next one’s thirtyfold, which is more than the first seven put together. The next one’s sixtyfold, that’s more than the first seven, which is zero, plus the thirtyfold all put together. And the last one’s a hundredfold, that’s more than the first seven, plus this thirty-, plus this sixty-, Those last three are the overcomers. And it’s all to do with what Christ taught, it’s quantity. “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.”

But what’s Christ revealing? Oh man, is this ever . . . if you can just get this in your mind and think about this. Seven out of ten in His story, bore no fruit to maturity. Wow, so Christ emphasizing these three people, and what they do are different than the first seven who hear the same message, it’s the same seed, the same truth by the same person, but the person responds to it differently.

Let’s take a look at the last one there in Luke 8. “But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart,” wow, it’s here, “keep it and they bear fruit with [endurance] . . . with patience” (v. 15). It’s not this big burst of activity where you become emotional and go do something for a week. It’s the long haul of your life, good works week after week, week after week. And you’re always thinking, now here’s, here’s how the uniqueness is. How can I as a person bear much fruit? How can I bear more fruit than I am? Because whether or not you want to deal with this yet, you can, you can. You just haven’t applied to your mind because you haven’t had an overcomer breakthrough.

What’s the breakthrough? I’m created in Christ Jesus for good works, and Christ wants a lot of them from me. And there’s different levels, there’s none, there’s thirty, there’s sixty, there’s a hundred. Which one of those people do you want to be? You have to make up your mind. Actually it’s not your mind, it’s your heart. What do you want to do for Christ? I want to be not a thirty, sixty, a hundred. I want to be a two or three. Okay, that’s what you’ll be. But when you get to heaven, how will you evaluate that?

All right, let’s move into part one. “The Overcomers Purposefully,” on purpose, “Increase Their Productivity.” You bear fruit. You didn’t choose me, I choose you and want you to go, that’s a proactive going, into the market. I want you to go and bear good works. Can you buy into this, what Christ is saying? It may be a new way of thinking because there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace about this. But Jesus Christ is not vague. It’s not vague. You’re created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that you should do them. You should run the race, lay aside the weights and the sins, so you can run the race and do the good works that God prepared for you. And by this My Father is glorified that you, not God, you bear much fruit.

Since Christ says that, then what do we do? Who are going to go on? We actually say, all right, how do I do that? How do I go from this level to this level, to this level? How do I go from, let’s say ten to twenty to thirty to thirtyfold. How do I go from thirtyfold to sixtyfold? How do I go from sixtyfold to a hundredfold? Listen, you can! Do you think God’s in heaven, not wanting you to go to a hundredfold? He wants you to get to a hundredfold because you can. That’s a great lie: No I can’t. Who am I to do that? What are you talking about? You are born again, you have the Spirit of the almighty God inside of you and the invitation of Jesus to respond to the truth in such a way that you are incredibly productive for My kingdom, that’s what He wants.

Remember what Christ said to the Father? “I have glorified You on the earth,” I finished the good works You sent me to do (John 17:4). Well, it’s the same. And everywhere Christ went, He was doing good works, everywhere.

Okay, let’s go a little bit to a passage that I’ve mentioned various parts of, but I want to try and clarify this because it’s so hard for people to get this clear, it is. There seems to be two misconceptions. Misconception one: You’ve got to do good works to prove to God you’re worthy to get into heaven and make up for the bad works and the sins you committed. But the Bible’s real clear, salvation is a gift, not of works, and God did the work and then says, you’ve got to use the catalyst of your faith and believe in My Son’s work for your sins, and that you can’t do it yourself. I give you the gift of salvation. So it’s not by works, that’s wrong.

The second half is also just as prevalent as this half. That is, once you’ve been born again, you live by grace and your works are not that important. And so what happens? If you think of this, you will not ever be an overcomer because works are not a high priority in your life. And the thought, just chew on this with me. The thought of sitting down, and praying, and reading the Scriptures with one major goal in mind: How on earth can I be a hundredfold believer for Christ? Is so foreign.

Now, this is the oddest thing, I’ve spoken over the years to thousands of presidents of companies, and every single one of them, every single one of them is trying to do what with their business? Oh, I don’t care about the growth of my business. I don’t care if it gets more sales this year than last year. Are you crazy? It’s exactly the opposite. They’re always talking among each other, and they’re getting committee meetings, and they’re going to courses, and they’re doing all the rest of it. How do I grow my company? If it was two million dollars this year, how do I get it to be three million dollars next year? And I made this percentage of profit, how do I increase the percentage of profit?

But when you come into working for God and His kingdom, I thought this is really shocking. The same people that understand that productivity is success. You bear fruit, not, God doesn’t bear fruit, I’ll prove to you in a minute, you bear fruit. We set that aside and we think, I can’t do more for God. How could you do more for God in your business, and that’s what you think about, you dream about, you brainstorm about, and you just set all that capability you have on a table, and walk away and say, I can’t, I don’t know how to do that. Why? You haven’t tried.

So I want to give you this parable that Christ gave, and here’s the situation. When Christ was here, all of the apostles, all the disciples felt He was going to have a war with the Romans, defeat them, sit on the throne in Jerusalem, be the king of the world. And all the wealth of the Gentiles would come to Him, just like the Old Testament prophesies, and that they would sit at His right and His left hand, and they’re waiting for this war to take place. And what they didn’t understand was that Christ was coming two times. First, He’s coming to die for man’s sin, and set up kind of a spiritual kingdom. Then He is going to ascend back into heaven, and later on, He’s coming back down, this time for war, for war to defeat all opposed to Him and rebellious against Him, and He’s going to rule with an iron rod in Israel over the whole world.

But they didn’t see that, they just saw one. And it was confusing to them. So Christ knew that they were still thinking about this, the war. That’s why they were arguing on the way down to Jerusalem, about who’s going to sit at the right hand or left hand. Why are they arguing? Because they think, Well, it’s time, it’s time. And Christ knew it wasn’t time, but He then wants to answer a question. And still the same question today, two thousand years ago, if You’re not setting up your physical kingdom on earth now and You’re doing it later, what do You want us to do while You’re gone before You come back? What do You want us to do? Because You’re leaving, and You said we can’t follow You now. What do You want us to do?

That’s the parable, and this whole thing is talking about those people that overcome. They think, they think about life differently and they use their belief as a catalyst to do things that other people stand back, and say in utter amazement, “How on earth did you do that?” Why? We put them in a different category. Why? They’re not. There aren’t levels of people. There are people who use truth differently, and they’re the ones who then follow ahead and produce amazing amount. One little seed, a hundredfold.

So here’s this parable. “Now as they,” the disciples, “heard these things, “He,” Jesus, “spoke another parable.” Question: Why is He telling this parable? “Because He was near Jerusalem and because they,” the disciples, “thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.” And He knew it wasn’t; He was going to die and leave. So He’s going to answer the question they’re not even asking yet. They’ll ask it after He is gone and He is ascended, what are we going to do now, go back to fishing? “Therefore He said,” okay, because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately. “Therefore He said: ‘A certain nobleman,’” talking about Himself, “‘went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. So [before he left,] he called ten of his servants.’” It wouldn’t have surprised me if the ten of the disciples were with Him at this point. “‘. . . ten of his servants,” and “delivered to them ten minas . . . .’” A mina is an amount of money. And he gave everybody the same. This is not the parable of the talents, where He gave one five, one two, and one one, according to their ability. This isn’t that truth, it’s a different truth. He gives everybody the same, “and He said to them,” watch this. What do you want me to do? “‘Do business till I come [back]’” (Luke 19:11–13). This is aorist active imperative, I’m commanding you. Now, I’m leaving, I’m leaving and I’m giving . . . (I don’t have any money in my pocket anymore.) I’m giving you money, my money. And it’s in your trust, and I want you to do something for me. In fact, I’m commanding you, you do business until I come back. There’s a time limit, you keep doing it till I come back.

It goes on and says, “‘And so it was that when he returned,’” this is the second coming, it hadn’t happened yet, “‘having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants.’” Now my question is, what does Jesus want to know? What’s important at the second coming? Oh man, I pray you get this. “Having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him,” purpose clause. Here’s why I’m calling them together, “[that] he might know.” What are next two words? How much, “how much [everybody],” all ten of them “had gained by trading” (Luke 19:15). They did the trading. It’s Christ’s money, He gives it to them.

And here’s the shocking part. When He returns, He doesn’t say, “How hard did you work?” “What was the method you did this?” Why? It’s up to you; you bear much fruit. The person bore fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundred, they don’t tell you how. Why? You’re created in the image of almighty God. And with the catalyst of faith, nothing’s impossible for you anymore, it’s not.

So the point I’m trying to make to you is, and as you know, Christ in this parable, He gave the man who took one and multiplied it times ten. He gave him at His coming ten cities to rule. You mean there’s a reward in proportion to your work quantity? Yes. The man who took one mina and made five, he only got five cities. And the person who took one and didn’t do anything with it, is just like the first seven people who responded in the parable of the seed and the sower. They didn’t get any fruit to maturity. You know what? He lost it, he lost everything. When? When Christ returns. And behold, the Son of Man comes in the glory of His Father with His holy angels. And then He rewards each in proportion to his works. It’s the same everywhere you look in the New Testament because I’ve studied this for more than thirty years. It’s everywhere. God wants His followers to follow in His footsteps. I finished every work the Father gave to me.

All right, so what goes through your mind as you’re thinking about this? This is a rather intricate little chart, but I want you to take a look at it and just begin thinking about it. There’s three sections. Stage one are the trials. And every trial is at the heart a test of faith. This is God’s process on my life, and I’m told to endure. This is a process over time, so that I, that my person now, we are His workmanship. He’s shaping us with the trials and tests of faith and other things that you know already about, so that we can become perfect, complete, lacking nothing.

This is me as a person, I’m changing as a person, I become more Christlike, my character changes. My communion with Christ changes, it improves, it deepens. My capacity, really hard tests of faith increase your capacity, so you can do more for God than you ever dreamt you could. You’re lacking nothing, lacking nothing for what? Why isn’t the period here that you may be perfect? Why is it lacking nothing? Because whatever you need to do, you got it because of what’s happened in your life. Your competence grows, your clarity grows, your contentment grows. Most people stop here. It’s all inward. It’s not. You’re created in Christ Jesus for this, you got to jump over the fence and get engaged.

This is your purpose, created for good works. This is your person who you become, but this is your productivity; you’re created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works. And He wants much, much fruit, thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold. What could you be doing? You could be sitting there saying, Okay, I could increase the size of whatever I’m doing.

Let’s say I have a Sunday school class, make it simple, of ten eight- to ten-year-old boys and I want to bear more fruit. What can I decide to do? I can decide, I am going to start strategizing with the guys on how to grow from ten to twenty, by the end of this year. Could you do this? Of course you could, nobody is stopping you. Does God think it’s great you have ten boys in your class? Of course. Does God want you to have more boys in your class? Of course. If God feels it’s wonderful at ten, by this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. If you start thinking about how, you can. You can, of course you can. You just haven’t really sat down and planned it, and thought, how can we do it?

Secondly, you can add a different scope. That’s something new, the size is more of something. The scope is this way, add something new to what you’re doing. Let’s say you decide, I’m going to start a deeper approach outside of Sunday school. And you get the permission to come to church, and have once a month on Saturday night, all the boys and their friends come for a game night and a little devotional. What’s going to happen? More ministry, people who are not churched are going to come on Saturday night, they get to know you, get to know the boys, have fun and maybe some of them will come to the church. That’s something new.

Speed, how long does it take you to grow something? Let’s say, if you got ten and you want twenty, and let’s say it’s January. You could say, All right, by the end of December, I’m going to have twenty, okay. Or you can say it doesn’t need to take twelve months for Pete’s sakes to get this done, let’s get it done in the next four weeks. We’ll have a contest, we’ll give out prizes, whatever you want to do to mobilize those boys.

The next one is your squad. That is, who are the people on your team? Like you’ve met in the previous session, the creative team. Three full-time people are making all these courses now; in the past we had more, but now we have three. That’s my squad. They’re talented, they’re unified, they’re passionate, they’re committed, they’re professional. And they want much fruit, and they’re getting much fruit, they’re doing it. So let’s say you want to deal with your Sunday school class of ten boys. And you say, What would make more of the boys that aren’t coming, come? Why don’t I get some college athletes to help teach this class? And you bring a football guy, and a basketball guy in and you announce it around, Hey, we’re bringing the captain of the football team in, he’s going to be in the class next week. How many guys can you bring with you? That’s your squad. Instead of it’s just you, it’s you and these college kids. There’s all kinds of ways to do this. We then have our little squad, and we outsource to people to do cartoons, and do some dramas, and write the music. And they’re not on our team, but they’re a part of our squad.

Number 5 is “significance.” You can begin to think, How can I do something even more significant with the lives of those boys? How can I get some systems growing? How can we, as the boys, get together and make actually a little flyer that they give out in their public school, let’s say, to invite them to come to this great big picnic we’re going to have. And they then establish, here’s what we’re going to do this year, we’re going to do the picnic, and how about in three more months, we’re going to do this Christmas party and . . . you get a system flowing four times a year. Let’s double our class four times a year. Wait, you can.

Don’t you know that businesses do this all day long? How many YouTubes have you seen of people who are marketing things on the internet and their business, because they know what they’re doing, grows like this, kaboom? And yet we think we can’t do that for Christ, how stupid is that? But the people who are doing this are really applying themselves. It’s just, we don’t think God cares much about it. Man, you are created to do that for Him, for Him.

Sustainability, to keep things going, all right.

Now, what are five secrets that overcomers practice to have an abundance of good works? Let me prove these are actually secrets to you. Secret 1, John 15 says this, “Abide” or “dwell,” imperative. “Abide in Me, and I in you.” Abide with Me, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).

I want you to picture this for a minute. A vine is, if this is the ground, the vine is the part that comes out of the ground, of a grape, it looks like this, there’s usually a little bit larger part on the top. That’s called the vine. Off the top of this are called the branches, and they tie them up, typically to a fence, or a piece of string, or a piece of wire. And these branches are the ones that bear the grape clusters. But do you know where you’ll never find one cluster of grapes? On the vine. The vine never bears fruit. It’s only the branches that bear the fruit. And Christ is saying, I am this part, you are this part. And you can’t bear fruit if this gets cut off, and your branch is not connected to the vine, you can’t bear fruit. Because the life comes through this, the sap through this.

But then here’s the secret, here’s the secret. These are five secrets that overcomers practice to bear thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold. “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him,” watch this, “bears much fruit” (John 15:5). That’s a quantity secret. What does abide mean? If this is a vine coming up, excuse my hand shaking a little bit. There’s the top of it, here’s the branch. It is the amount of space that the branch connects to the vine, because the life force comes up through the ground, up through the vine, out through the branch, down to the leaves, and down to the clusters of grape. Abide is how big of a connection do you have to the sap that makes grapes?

How much are you abiding? How tight are you in Christ? How much time in His Word? How much praying, how much? This is step 1, it’s secret 1. There’s a clear promise of Christ that if you abide in Me, you will bear much fruit, quantity. Therefore, you’ve got to stay at this thing, and increase the friendship with Christ and the participation and partnership with the Spirit. So there’s a great deal of God’s power coming through you. It’s those people who think spending five minutes reading a devotional is going to help you bear thirty, sixty, and a hundred, really? Then Christ didn’t know what He was talking about, I guess. No, He does, we don’t. You can’t do this unless you abide much, that it becomes a high priority for you.

So secret one is to “Pursue a closer personal relationship with the Lord.” Seek to deepen your relationship by using the spiritual disciplines. This is a person who’s on his knees, praying and praising. You’ve got to form that relationship, and the people that bear thirty-, sixty-, a hundredfold, they abide a lot with God.

All right, next verse, 1 Chronicles 22, “Now set your heart and your soul to seek” (v. 19). Get committed, seek the Lord your God, “Draw near,” a command, “to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). That’s a promise, conditional, if you draw near to God, keep on coming to God, He will turn around and come back to you, He will. You will not be the first exception, just don’t give up in the process. Micah, very famous verse, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8)? Walk with God. He’s in you.

It’s funny, the Bible is clear that when you accept Christ, the Spirit of God abides in you. He doesn’t leave, to the day of redemption, it’s what the text says. So He’s there and the command is, but you have to abide with Him; it’s two sided. You have to abide, and the more you abide, the more you’re going to have much fruit.

Next passage, “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled.” They marveled at these two guys, why? “They realized . . . they had been with [Christ]” (Acts 4:13). It’s the secret.

Now, here’s the other part I want you to see. This is another well-known passage. It says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Okay, why is it given to us? We can do all those things, but why? Purpose clause, “that the . . . that the man of God,” that the believer, the Bible wasn’t written to nonbelievers. It’s written for the believers. “That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for,” uh-oh, “every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). God, why did you give the Bible to us? So that you’d be equipped to be able to do every good work you want to do. Because all the secrets are in the Book, and the Spirit of God will enlighten your mind, and it’ll teach you, if you want to know and if you use the truth He gives to you, He’ll dump more of it, it’s exhilarating. But the Bible is given for the same reason, you’ve got to buy in deeply. There’s great lethargy in the body of Christ. There isn’t a clear focus. But the Bible itself was given for good works.

Now, number 2, what’s the second thing overcomers do that non-overcomers don’t do? Non-overcomers don’t abide much with the Lord, less than seven minutes a day, that’s the non-overcomers. Overcomers, they get up earlier on purpose, yes they do. They meet with the Lord, they journal. They pray, they praise. They value the relationship and their connection, the amount of sap coming in through Christ into their branch is massive.

But the second key is related to, what else does the Bible say I need to do to succeed in getting more and more good works? What else do I do besides abiding? Because if I just am pietistic and all I do is just get close to Christ, what are the good works you’re doing because you are close to Christ? It’s not just one, it’s all of them put together. This leads to this, this leads to this, this leads to this, and this leads to that, it goes together.

Here’s the next passage, 2 Timothy 2: “Let everyone,” oh everyone? Yep, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ,” believer. If you’re a believer, your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven, that’s why you can go to heaven if you died at that moment, because they’re forgiven. “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart,” which means “to leave,” it’s imperative. “Depart from iniquity” (v. 19). Wait, wait, wait, you mean there’s iniquity in the . . .? Everyone, everyone, everyone has some iniquity? Yeah, and what’s the Bible saying? It’s really quite clear, leave it, stop. Go away, leave it alone. It’s a Greek word, which means to leave this location to go to another location. It’s like, this is iniquity right here, this is sin, and I have to depart from it.

Okay, what do you mean? Therefore, let everyone depart . . . “Therefore if anyone cleanses himself.” People are so confused about this. I have to do the departing. God doesn’t depart from my iniquity, I depart. I have to leave it, and that’s why I have to cleanse myself. When you commit a sin, and you want to confess it and ask for forgiveness, could it be that you’ve still got the sin? And the next day you commit it again because you haven’t departed from it. And it says to you, “If anyone cleanses himself . . . he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master.” Read the rest of that passage, there it is right in front of our eyes, “prepared for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21). This cleansing yourself prepares you for every type of good work. Therefore, the cleansing that God wants us to do is the issue of enabling us to bear much fruit.

So the secret number 2 is “purify yourself, cleanse your conduct, character, and core motives.” This is something that I must do, and you must do. Take a look at this passage in James, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” What’s the next thing he says? That’s the relationship, that’s point one. “Cleanse,” imperative, I am told, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). Next passage, “As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:14–16). “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves,” this is something I must do, and you must do, “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).

So I want to make a point here for a minute. What’s true about the overcomers? They believe this is true, that this is a secret. That it’s my responsibility, with God’s help, but it’s my responsibility. God the Father doesn’t command God the Spirit to cleanse us, He commands me to cleanse myself. Because I’m the one who’s responsible to do that. Now, what happens here is we have the wildest ideas. I was talking to a group of guys once, and a guy said, “Man, I sin all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Every day?”

“Of course, many times in the day.”

“Really? Can I ask you a question, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Name me the sin you committed today.”

“What?”

“You told me you sin many times a day, would you please tell me the sin you committed today?”

“Well, I’m sure I did.”

“Really? What was it?”

“Well, I don’t know, I guess I should have done something.”

“Did you get convicted, you were supposed to do something, and you didn’t do it?”

“Well, no.”

“Well then, wait a minute now, tell me the sin you committed.”

“Well, I’m sure they’re there.”

“Why? You mean, you believe you have to sin all the time?”

“Well, of course, nobody’s perfect.”

“I understand, but God says, ‘Be holy as I am holy.’ So just hang with me a little bit, name me the sin you committed yesterday.”

“I can’t.”

“That’s right.” What’s Christianity supposed to be doing in your life, is you are to become more and more like Christ. So when you’re a new believer, maybe you used to sin a lot, but the Spirit begins to move in, and you start getting trained and taught, and you start cleaning your act up, cleansing yourself from certain things. And instead of having lots of sins, you start committing sins less often. Instead of having the big sins, perhaps, because not all sins are equally sinful. All sins are equally a sin, but a little sin and a big sin. God explains it in the books of the Old Testament, there’s four sizes of sins. He says, this is evil, this I’m going to show you is even greater evil. And this is even greater than that evil. And this is even greater wickedness than that. There are different levels, and as time goes on, the bigger sins should be gone.

We have this crazy idea. You can’t . . . I didn’t sin today. I’m not supposed to sin today. I didn’t sin yesterday. Did you? Maybe you did, maybe I did. But I didn’t that I’m aware of. The point is stop thinking unbiblically because God . . . salvation is to break the power of the enemy, and give us the power to overcome the flesh, so we don’t sin. So will I still sin? Yes, of course. Will I still sin all the way until I die? Hopefully not very often and not very big.

So start thinking differently because the enemy is filling your mind with lies. If you sin, you know you sinned. Okay, so how many sins do you think you commit regularly? Fifteen different sins? No way. What? Okay, did you murder anybody this week? No, no. You steal anything from the store this week? No, no. Did you rape anybody? No. Did you get drunk this week? No. Oh, you don’t commit that sin. You don’t commit that sin, you don’t commit that sin, you don’t commit that sin. You probably have two, three, maybe four sins that you’re wrestling with. It’s not this massive pile, and you are not sinning all the time unless you really harden your heart against God, and maybe you are. But the norm of believers is they have a small number of sins that they’re being defeated by. So this is not as complicated as you’re making it.

One of the guys I’ve been working with, when we first started working, he had a lot of sins, and he was still committing them. And over the months of time, one by one, he stopped this sin, doesn’t do it anymore. In fact, he doesn’t even get tempted by the sin anymore because he’s free of it, he’s free of it. That’s what sanctification is, it’s getting free, and free, and free, and free. He said to me on the phone the other day, “I don’t even recognize myself. I’m not the same person I was when we first started talking.”

“No, you’re not, it’s wonderful.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

So I want to encourage you, pick one sin that you are having trouble with, and undertake obeying these passages, cleanse yourself. Come on now, we think so backwards, God needs to cleanse me. No, He forgave you. He commands you to cleanse yourself, and we’re trying to delegate the responsibility He gave to us back up to Him, cleanse me. No, no you have to choose to cleanse yourself. I’ll be with you, I’ll strengthen you, the Holy Spirit is with you, you stop sinning. Why? You can.

I remember speaking at a men’s conference on sexual temptations, pornography, and all this. And at the break, this young guy came up and he was kind of sheepish, and he says, “I’m not doing very well at this.”

I said, “You’re not?”

“No.”

I said, “Do you have such a strong sex drive, much stronger than anybody in the room, and it just overpowers you?”

“Oh yes, you’re the first person who understands.”

“Really? If you had a normal sex drive, would you be immoral?”

“No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t need to.”

“Really? So what, the temptations you’ve got are not common to anybody else except what you are, right?”

“That’s right.”

I opened the Bible and I showed him, “The temptations we have are common to man, they’re the same. Your temptation is no different than his, or his, or his, they’re all the same. You’ve just decided you can’t stop.”

He said, “I can’t stop pornography, I can’t do it, I’ve tried, I can’t.”

I said, “Really, can I prove to you, you can anytime you want?”

“What do you mean I can?”

“Of course you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

I said, “Alright, let me ask you a question, let’s say it was 11:30 at night, tonight and everybody else went to bed. You were in your bedroom by yourself, and you opened a computer, and you’re watching some pornography. You had the volume really low, had your earphones on. And then all of a sudden you hear this knock at the door, and the door swung open, and your mother! Your mother is walking in the door, what would you do?”

“Oh man, I’d slam that computer.”

“Oh, you could stop anytime you wanted?”

“Yes.”

“So if you took one sin and said, ‘For the next thirty days, I’m going to pray about this. I’m going to repent of the times I’ve committed that sin, I’m going to find a couple verses in the Bible that teach me about what to do with that sin. And I am going to cleanse myself of that sin before the thirty days is up.’ You can.”

I was talking to another man about this. He said, “I don’t think I can do this. I wish I could, I’m just not strong enough.”

I said, “If I gave you ten thousand dollars, if at the end of thirty days, I personally gave you ten thousand dollars if you stopped sinning, and you didn’t commit that one sin one time for thirty days, your habit would be broken. Could you do it for ten thousand dollars?”

He said, “Well, now that you put it in that kind of terms, I guess I could.”

“You always could.” So you got to pull down these strongholds. You’re supposed to cleanse yourself, and people who are overcomers, they don’t tackle all their sins at one time. I’m working on one right now, I’m in my third week. By the end of the fourth week, I worked on it this morning, this morning at 6:30, I was at it again, this morning. But in one more week, it’s done. I’ve had it with it. Why? I want more glory to God and more works for Him. And I want freedom, I’m sick of guilt. I’m sick of whatever is connected to it.

You can be the same. God never tells us to do something we can’t do. Never lie to yourself, “I can’t stop this.” Yes you can. You haven’t decided to stop and obey. Cleanse yourself and you’ll be prepared for every good work. How good news is that?

Okay, these first two, [secret 1] “pursue your relationship with the Lord” and [secret 2] “purify yourself” are private. Nobody knows you’re doing that. I just told you, but nobody knows that. There is a huge break between these two and the next three. And very few people jump over to the next three. We do in normal life, but when we put it in the context of Christianity, we don’t do it, we don’t even think this way. You ready? I’m going to challenge you here. Some of you need to make that move and become a thirty, sixty, a hundred.

So let’s go up here. Is that helpful? Just kind of a straightforward conversation with you. Is it okay for you to go a full day without sinning? Come on, you mean Christ’s death can’t help you stop from sinning for more than a day? Come on, oh, maybe you are sinning every day. Stop, stop, but for the majority of people, they’re not. They’ve got a few things that they feel overwhelmed and trapped because they’ve talked themselves into it, “This overpowers me.” No, it does not. You get on the ground and say, it’s too big. Well stand back up and say, No. Your mom’s at the door. Don’t do it again, if you don’t want to, all right.

Now we come to a whole big shift in our conversation. Remember, what do overcomers do that non-overcomers, in the conversation we’re having, not do? They do not seek to increase their personal productivity for that which God wants done. They don’t realize Christ has commanded them to bear much fruit. You do business until I come back again” That it has to do with quantity, not just quality and that more is better. It can be more in size, more in scope, have a different or increased squad. It can be more significant, it could be all kinds of things.

Let me talk about the significance just for a minute. All my life I’ve stayed away from politics, and I went to Washington and spoke to senators and congressmen many years ago, and they wanted me to come back every month. And I said, “No, my calling isn’t to do that.” And I’ve stayed away from all that. And when we were working in Africa, God laid on our hearts to meet with the president of Kenya. And I said to Darlene, “I’m not sure why we’re to do that, but we’re to do this, and he can influence a country.” So we got involved in this with the president of Kenya. And then I said to Darlene, “I think we’re supposed to meet with more presidents to help them personally, and also to help them to help their country better.”

And over the years since that point I’ve met with eleven different presidents, eleven, one-on-one. Usually they would schedule the first time fifteen to twenty minutes, and it would typically go a couple of hours. And the influence that that one person had, right? Not that they’re more important than somebody else because we were working with the poor, and the people who had AIDS, and the pastors, and this group, this small group has great influence. And the significance of that amount of time in the presence of the presidents was remarkable.

I remember meeting with President Mandela in his home one time. He invited me in because he heard about what we were doing in Africa. And we were having tea in his little sitting room, and he was older and he had his blanket over his legs, his knees were a little cold in those days. And we were talking, and he is sharing, and he says, “Could you do me a personal favor?”

I said, “Yes.”

“My tribe is dying of hunger in this part of the coast of South Africa. Would you bring your never-ending gardens that I know all about, would you bring them over to my tribe and help them?”

“Yes.”

This whole issue of significance, what else can you do to increase the influence you have for Christ? Not that one is more important than another, but that’s another category like size, and scope, and squad, and significance.

All right, I want to take you now to this next issue. Secret 3, “overcomers seek to make their good works, have a larger and larger impact,” thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. What’s the first thing that they do once they’ve worked on their inner life, what do they do? What’s the next thing that they do?

Take a look at Matthew 6, Christ is teaching, and He says, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” Now, here it is, “But seek,” there it is, “first.” “Seek first.” That means first of all, the highest priority, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:31–33). Do you know what Christ is talking about? We seek many things, don’t we? At the same time or in the same month, we seek many things that we want to see come true. And what’s Christ doing? He’s identifying the bull’s-eye on the target. Hitting a target is good, hitting the next loop in is better. the next loop in better, the bull’s-eye in the middle is best, and Christ is defining something. He says, “I command you.” It’s an imperative, “I command you to seek.” You, seek, hunt, drive yourself, pursue. Like Paul said in Colossians, I strive after the working, that God works in me.

Seek first of all the kingdom of God, what is that? That’s prioritization, isn’t it? Saying, Not all things are equal, not all things are equally important. It’s not just responding to whatever comes to us, it’s instead stopping and saying, What is number one priority to me? What’s more important than anything else that I should be thinking about? Have you done that, prioritize what Christ wants done more than anything else?

Let’s see if we can’t go a little bit further with this. This is secret 3, and it is prioritize your life to focus on God’s highest goals. Self-manage your time, talents, and treasure to maximize your life for Christ. Now, let’s go back to that same parable, what stops us from bearing thirty-, sixty- and a hundredfold is what Christ taught about in that same parable, let’s look at it. “Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word . . .” You got the truth. You got it, you know it. “. . . and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). He was growing toward bearing fruit, but this pulled him this direction, and this pulled him this direction, this pulled him this direction, until he became unfruitful.

This is a big secret. What stops people from being thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold? The very things Christ is defining. Take a look instead of Matthew 13, on Mark 4, “Now these are the ones sown among [the] thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in” to your life. I want this, I want this, I’m not saying these are right or wrong, but they’re desires. What do those other desires do? They conflict with the priority of fruitfulness, they compete for your time, they compete for your energies and your talents. And they compete for the money that you have, and the energy that you may have. “And it becomes unfruitful” (vv. 18–19). They don’t get there. Why? They become distracted. They deal with second-level, third-level, fourth-level, and they haven’t decided to seek after the kingdom of God first.

Luke 8, last one. “Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked.” It chokes you “with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity” (v. 14). What’s Christ saying? Christ is saying, I, Jesus Christ, am teaching truth. That’s the seed. And it comes to you, and you are the soil. But because you have competing interests, and competing priorities, they kind of pull on you, and they tug at you, and they pull you away, and you have other desires. None of these things necessarily are wrong, the cares of life are everybody. But it says they don’t bear fruit to maturity, zero.

So what is this? They don’t have a priority, seek first and stay seeking first. The people who are overcomers are seek-first type people. Take a look how Paul talks about this in 2 Timothy, he says, “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life.” You don’t. Why? “That he may please Him who enlisted him as a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:3–4). What’s the point? Make the priority of Jesus Christ so big in your life, so strong in your life that nothing gets in the way.

Now in business, this happens all the time. This is called mission, what you’re calling to do, what you’re trying to do, what your mission of your company is. Mission drift, where you slowly over time add other things that aren’t bad, but they pull away energy and talent and resources and time and money and management time. They pull it away until you spend more time doing these other things than your real mission.

Let me give you an illustration of this. When I was going around raising funds for these crisis pregnancy centers, I spoke personally at more than one hundred of them. And I had a requirement: I will not raise funds unless I meet your board of directors and your executive team for at least two hours before the banquet, so that I have a sense of integrity that this is right to raise funds for you.

So I was at one place in Texas, and I said to them, the business people and the executive director, and I said, “What do you do here?”

“No, no, we help women who are going to abort their babies to change their mind, and value their baby, and keep it and give birth to the live baby.”

I said, “That’s wonderful, how you doing?”

“Oh, look at . . .” They had a huge center, big, big budget, all kinds of people.

I said, “That’s terrific.” I said, “I want to ask you a simple question, how many babies that were going to be aborted, did you save this past year?”

“What?”

“How many did you save?”

And they all looked at each other, and then they looked at the executive director who was sitting next to me, and she kind of looked at the table and I said, “Do you know?”

“No, I don’t know. Right off the top of my head, I don’t know.”

“Do you have records of this back in your office?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Would you mind taking a minute and go get them?”

“Okay,” she gets up, she comes back very sober, “Last year, we saved seven babies.”

Their budget was $3 million, and I went up to the flip chart, and I divided seven into $3 million. And I said, “Do you realize how much you’re investing? How do you feel about that?” Everybody in the room was shocked and dismayed. I said, “Well, you know what happened to you? You had mission drift. Why did you start the center? “To save the babies from being aborted,” that’s right. But as I walked through all your offices, and saw everything you’re doing, you’re spending a little bit of time doing that. You’re doing all this, and all this, and all this, and all this. And you have very little time and money left over to do your main mission.” And they were business guys and ladies, and I was quiet.

And the chairman said, “Wow, what do you think we should do?”

“You should go back to seeking first your mission.”

“What should we do, sir?”

“You should close this part down, close it, close it. Close that part down, close that part down, and focus everything upon saving babies.”

“You mean close it, let the people go?”

“Yes, be kind in how you do it, but that’s irrelevant now because you aren’t doing why you were started.”

So they did that and they, she called me. Her name was Charity, that’s the lady’s name. Charity called me up on the phone a year later, she said, “Dr. Wilkinson, do you know how many babies we saved this past year, since you had that discussion with all of us?”

“I don’t know, Charity.”

“We saved seventy babies. We went from seven to seventy in a year by focusing on the mission.”

Seek first the kingdom of God. Don’t let the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world, the desire for other things. Okay, okay, okay, not all push them down, focus on this.

So she said, “Everybody wants you to come back and speak again.”

And I said, “Charity, I’m not going to come back next year.”

“Well, is there no way you will come?”

I said, “I’ll come in one way. Not this next year, but in the year after that.”

She said, “What’s that?”

“If you take your seventy and you add a zero to it.”

She said, “You mean save seven hundred babies?”

I said, “Charity, you just went from seven to seventy, you added a zero. Now, I’m asking you to do it again.”

She said, “That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not, you have the ability, and you have enough smarts on your board, if you put your head to it and committed to it. Don’t you think God wants you to save seven hundred, rather than just seventy?”

She called me a year later. I could hear her dancing, that’s how it felt anyway. She said, “We did it, we saved seven hundred babies. Two years ago, we saved seven.”

Much fruit, prioritize, prioritize! You’ve got to say no to things in order to say yes to things. So let me ask you this question, the good works that God prepared for you to do. What are they that you feel is most important that God wants you to do? What is it, and how can you grow it? And how can you do it faster? And how can you add something new to it? How can you? You make number one.

When the Lord challenged us to start Teach Every Nation, I was involved in helping all these crisis pregnancy centers, and some other things. And God made it clear, that season is over; you reached your goal. It’s time to then go back to teaching and making curriculum for My church around the world. And I was writing books, and speaking a lot, and very active. And I then began to study, what can we do that really is the number one priority? What’s God’s biggest opportunity? What’s the most significant leverage thing we can do?

And because of what God’s doing around the world and starting so many new churches, just in Africa alone a million new churches are being started. But these pastors are not being trained, so we came to a conclusion, as a group of people, let’s begin to equip the pastors and give them courses that they can use to train their people if they want to. Or they could use the course and then understand it themselves, and preach it themselves if they want.

And I then said, What’s a worthy goal? You’ve got to have a goal you’re trying to achieve. It’s not that you, like the old joke, you shoot the arrow against the wall, if there is no target. And after your arrow hits the wall, draw the target around it, so you hit the bull’s-eye. No, no, no, you have to actually think it through, what is it I want to make priority number one, to bear much fruit for God?

And I spent a number of months studying every single seminary in America, 252 seminaries, that’s how many there are. And found out through all the records that there were fifty thousand students in those 252 seminaries taking at least one course, some are full-time, some are part-time, some just take one course a year. Fifty thousand, it’s a lot, and I said to the Lord and myself, and some other people, “How many people do you think we should have studying that are pastors and leaders at the end of five years?” What’s an appropriate, what’s an appropriate goal, if you take the catalyst of faith, and you ask the right question? Not, “How many do I think we can do if God helps us?” Instead is, “What does God want done?” He wants all these, a million untrained pastors in Africa, He wants them all trained.

Okay, what’s a worthy goal for our first five years? We picked a goal of fifty thousand students in the first five years. That’s impossible, that’s impossible. Everybody said, That’s impossible. But you know, we passed that, and now we’re in our ninth year as of right now, we have over five hundred thousand pastors, and leaders, and laymen involved taking these courses. Some of them have taken ten courses already or fourteen courses.

What is that? And when we decided to do that, I said to our team, I’m not speaking at any more pregnancy centers, and I’m not writing any more books. I’m focusing on the priority we’ve decided is most important for God’s point of view. So what is it you want to do? Because we don’t make up our mind, because we don’t commit to something, and we don’t say no to other things.

I remember there was this pastor and his wife coming to a conference. He said, “My church isn’t growing.”

I said, “Okay, why not?”

“I don’t know.”

I said, “All right, how much time you spending with your church? And how much time are you preparing your sermons to build the people up?”

“No, no we don’t have enough time.”

“Really, why not?”

“Well, I’m on eight boards.”

“You’re on eight boards?”

“I’m on the denominational board, I’m on the seminary board, I’m on this ministry board, I’m on eight boards.” And his wife was sitting next to him going like this [nodding].

I said, “You don’t have any time left over, do you?”

“No, I don’t, I wish I did, but I don’t.”

I said, “Let me ask you a question, did God call you to be a pastor of a church, or to be a board member?”

“What?”

“What did God call you to do?”

“Pastor a church.”

“Are all these other boards important?”

“Yes.”

“Are they your primary call?”

“No.”

I said, “Why don’t you get off of six of them?”

“Get off of them? I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. Why not? Just call them up or have lunch with the director, and say, ‘You know, I’ve realized I’m not really meeting the needs of my congregation because I’m spread too thin, and I need to resign.’ They’re not going to be mad at you, they’re going to understand.” I said to the wife, “What do you think?”

She said, “It’d make a massive difference.”

You see the difference, they’re not bearing fruit that bears fruit, they’re not, to maturity. It’s because they have all the other distractions. So this first secret is setting aside the specific goal that you believe God wants you to do for Him.

Let’s take this a little bit further. What is God’s primary goal right now? In Matthew 28, a well-known passage, “Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me.’” Right now, it’s been given to Me. I didn’t take it, it was given to Me. It was given to Me by the Father, and I’ve got it now in heaven, and I’ve got it on earth, I’ve got it everywhere. And now with My authority, let Me tell you My number one, number one thing I want you to do for Me. Wow, number one thing? Number one thing, “‘Go therefore,’” because I’ve got all authority, “‘Go therefore and make disciples . . .’” people who really follow me, and obey me, and are committed to me, and work with me, and work for me. “‘Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:18–20).

What does Christ want us to do? If you read this verse, how many commands are there in this verse? Because a command is a priority, isn’t it? Is go a command? Count how many you think there are. “Go . . . make disciples . . . baptizing them . . . teaching them . . . observe . . . ,” how many? Most people think there’s three or four. There’s one. You can’t tell that in English because you don’t know if it’s a command or not because you haven’t heard the tone of voice. But in Greek when you put a verb into a command, you change a couple letters at the end of it, and you can just look at a verb on a piece of paper and know if it’s a command or not, there’s one command.

What, wait, Jesus, what’s your priority? I just got all authority everywhere, and here is my number one thing I want you to do for me, it is to make disciples, which means, hold on to this, you can. You can make a disciple? Yes, that’s what I want you to do. And I want you to go into the marketplace. I want you to go into the marketplace, and I want you to make disciples, lead them to Me, baptizing them after they’re saved. But how do you actually do this? You teach them. You teach them to observe everything that I’ve commanded you. You teach them My content, the Word of God. But you don’t teach them to know, you teach them to do, to observe all things I have commanded you.

How then do you know if you are making Christ’s number one priority, your number one priority? No matter what your gifts or talents are, it’s got to fit under this command, make disciples. You know how you do that? You teach them to observe, that’s what this whole course is. Teaching passage after passage, after passage, and then applying it in ways that make sense to you. Okay, I can do that. I don’t have to have a trigger of unbelief anymore. I don’t have to complain anymore. I can do this anytime to build up my faith in God and not lose in the test of faith. All those things are true.

What’s happened in the church around the world? The church is leaving this clear priority, and they’re going over here into social justice. Is social justice important? Sure. Is it anything related to the importance of the Great Commission? Absolutely not. How do you know that? How much does Christ talk about social justice in compared to what He did? He went everywhere, helping people and teaching them the Word of God to make disciples. What did Paul do? He went around everywhere starting churches, teaching, writing letters, and making disciples, why? It’s the Great Commission.

We’ll get into all these other good works that we’re to do, but if you leave the main mission, you’ve had mission drift. And whatever happens if a church begins to drift off of making, teaching the Word of God, not their own ideas, not into politics, but into their own ideas, and leaving the Word and the clear mission? How many disciples did we make this year in comparison to last year? How many? That’s called much, how much? It’s because we drift off of the primary idea, we drift off the primary priority. You got that in your own mind now? So ask yourself the question, and for the next thirty days, begin thinking, begin dreaming in a journal. Lord, how can I bear a hundredfold for you by the end of this year that fits in with Your highest priority, which is to make disciples?

All right, let’s move on. Secret 4. Look at the steps up to the star or the bull’s-eye. The moment you make a goal that you want to achieve, and to quantify it. Remember when Christ comes back in the parable of the minas, He says to His servants, How much did you earn with the time I gave to you? How much? How productive were you for me? So start to feel this responsibility. It’s not God’s responsibility, it’s not anybody else’s responsibility. How much?

And the moment you set a goal like that, okay, the next question you want to ask yourself is, how do I achieve that goal? How do I do it? What is my strategy? What are the steps that I’m going to take? If you don’t, you just hope and pray, you’re rarely going to hit your goal, especially if your goal is a big challenging one.

So do you ever do that? I’ve talked to a hundred thousand professional teachers over the years, spent a day training a hundred thousand professional teachers in this country and in other countries of the world. And people don’t really think about, how do you achieve that what you want to do? How do you do this? How do you do it in half the time? How do you reach twice as many people? How do you do it in half the amount of money to get it done? How do you do it? It’s called strategy, strategy. What are the steps that you take?

Let me give you an illustration. Another one of these crisis pregnancy centers, since I’ve talked about that. I was speaking to one in the Dakotas, South and North Dakota. And it was a nice center. And the people were good, they’re nice, they were effective, and the board was really good. And I had my two hours and fifteen minutes worth of discussion with them, and I said to them, “What is the biggest challenge that you have?”

And they said, “Our biggest challenge is we can’t get a person who is pregnant and thinking of having an abortion to come in our door.”

You can’t? I said, “How do you do, how effective are you when they do come in your door?”

And they showed me the statistics, they’re very good at that. When a person came in, who’s thinking of having abortion, they show ’em a sonograph, and show the live baby inside the woman’s stomach. It changes so many of the women, and say, “Well, that’s a real child. I don’t think I want to end that child’s life,” and they change their mind.

They said, “But our challenge is we can’t get them to come in.”

I said, “Okay, okay, so what are you doing to solve that problem? What are you doing? How are you trying to solve that problem?”

“Well, we meet every week on Thursday night for an hour, from seven to eight. Our entire board and all of the people who work here, we meet in this office, and we pray an hour that God would send those people into our center.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

“Two years.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of commitment. Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been asking God for two years to do something. What has been His answer?”

“What?”

“What did He say? Did He do this for you? Did He send them, or did He say no, He’s not sending them?”

They didn’t know what to do. I said, “Wait then, no wait. If you ask me something, I’m either going to do it or not do it. And if you ask me for two years, and I keep saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no. How many more times are you going to ask me?” And I said, “Let me ask you a question. How big is your budget for the year?”

They said, “Our budget is $300,000.”

I said, “Okay, it’s a lot of budget. When a business is in a mall, a shopping center, and they don’t have enough customers coming into their store to decide to buy something, what does 100 percent of all the businessmen who succeed do with that?”

They answered me, “No, they do some advertising, they do some marketing. They give away some free gifts, they have a discount.”

“Really, they market?”

“Yes.”

“In other words, the standard approach is, if you have trouble getting new customers, it’s not the customer’s problem, it’s the store’s problem. You need to market or change what you’re doing so that the customer says, ‘I want to go there.’ Guess what, this is your business, it’s called saving babies from being aborted. And guess what you’re doing? You’re not reaching your customers, and you’re saying to God, ‘We’re doing a terrible job reaching our customers, would you do it for us?’ And God’s basically said, ‘No, I told you to go into the marketplace, and go get them and bring them in.’”

So I went up to the flip chart. I said to the director, “Would you get your financials for me?” She gets the financials, and I said, “$300,000. How much did you spend in marketing last year?”

“No, not enough.”

“That’s all right, how much did you spend?”

“No, I don’t want to tell you.”

“It’s all right.”

“We don’t have enough money for marketing.”

“Okay, how much?” And I wrote a number 2 without them knowing why, in the corner of the flip chart, top right-hand corner. I just wrote 2.

And she said, “We spent $5,500. $5,500 out of $300,000.”

I said, “What percentage are you spending to get more customers?”

And she said, “Less than 2 percent.”

I said, “I know, I knew that before you answered me, and I wrote up 2 percent.”

“How did you know?”

“Because you’re not getting customers, and you have the wrong strategy. Should you pray and ask the Lord? Yes, but if you have the wrong strategy, if you’re not appealing to the customer.” I said, “So what’s the average business spend in marketing?”

And there was a business guy in the room, and he said, “Ah, 15 to 30 percent in marketing.”

“That’s right, so let’s say that we used, since this is your biggest problem, and you exist to save babies who are going to be aborted, and you can’t get the woman to get in the door! And whose fault is it? It’s your fault. You haven’t thought about it clearly. Let’s say you spent an average of 20 percent of your budget on marketing, radio spots, newspapers, bulletins, all the rest of it. If you spent 20 percent of $300,000, that’s $60,000 US dollars. That’s $5,000 a month for a year.” And I said to them, “What would happen?”

And the same guy starts laughing, and I’ll never forget this. He said, “We would have a line out the door of these women coming.”

“Yes, you would, stop praying. Go do it.” You know what they just said.

So once you set your goal to do for God, right? The next question is, how can you do this? There’s a zillion ways to do everything. When I started Walk Thru the Bible a long time ago, forty years ago, forty-five years ago. One year I decided to jump back in operations, and I had a goal, and that was my goal. Listen to me now, much fruit. I counted how many people were coming to the seminars and getting changed, some of them coming to know Christ and all the rest. I had a goal, how can I double, double the number of people coming without spending any more money, without hiring any more people? How could I double the number of people coming?

Okay, people would say, It’s impossible to double your business like that, you’ve already got a hundred thousand people coming a year, that’s a massive number. No, that’s not enough. There’s got to be that internal desire that keeps growing in your gut that says, this is good, can we do more? And I sat down, and I got all the statistics of all these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of seminars. And I began to ask myself a question. How can I double the number in one year with no more money and no more staff? How? It’s a how question, it’s a strategy question.

So I came up with a bunch of questions and I said, “I wonder what months in the year makes the average attendance the highest? And what months of the year the average attendance is the lowest?” And I found these three months have huge attendance, and these three months have terrible attendance, and the other six months were kind of in the middle. And I said, “From now on, we will not have any more seminars in these three months.”

Next question, “Which denomination sends the most people to a seminar in comparison to their Sunday morning attendance? Out of two hundred people in a Baptist church, how many people come? In a Pentecostal church, how many people come? In a Methodist church, how many people come? In an Episcopal church, how many people come? In a Charismatic church, how many people come? In a Fundamentalist church, how many people come?” We had all the statistics, they all were there. They all were there, but guess what? Nobody had a goal to double! So nobody was thinking about it. Why? Nobody has a fire inside of them that says, “My Father wants more! More, and there’s a way to do it, and we’re going to find it.” So I found out the top three denominations, and the worst three denominations. And I said, Okay, let’s put the top three denominations, only in the best three months. And let’s put the three least effective denominations in the three worst months. We more than doubled in a year. It cost us nothing.

What was the key? What are you trying to achieve? Wait a minute, you are a person that the Spirit of God dwells within you, you are in the image of God. You have a brilliant mind, you have a heart, you have emotion, you have a will, you have choices. You have competing priorities. What are you doing with all that talent? Yeah, but what are you doing? What are you trying to do? You’ve got to start there, you’ve got to have the priority. Then you’ve got to process like I was explaining. I just told you my process of the steps I took to do that.

I could tell you illustrations for hours about this because I have learned over many, many, many decades now, five decades of doing ministry and business, there’s always mission drift. Go back to the core thing God wants done, find out how you’re supposed to make that happen. What’s the gift you want to do with that? And what’s the best way to do that? Then back away and say, Okay, how do I double this? Don’t ever say you can’t, of course you can.

Well, I’ve told you about the never-ending gardens we planted. Yeah, we did, and in the first full year we planted ten thousand gardens. There were governments we partnered with in Botswana, who said, “We have a staff of thirty-two full-time people in the agricultural department. And we can’t even plant ten thousand gardens in a year with all of us working.” And I brought our team over to their country, and I said, “I think we’ll be able to help you.” And we planted sixteen thousand gardens with them in a week, in a week! So we went from ten thousand gardens in a year, and the next year we added a zero to it, a hundredfold, then more. We planted a hundred thousand gardens the next year, and the next year we planted a million gardens. And if the Lord hadn’t called us home, we had plans and we were working with the NFL and other people to come down to help us, we were planning on ten million the next year.

Wait, wait, wait, come on. What are you trading your life for? All priorities are not equal. What’s His priority? Give your heart to it and then make a goal that makes heaven say, That’s appropriate to the size of your God, and that’s appropriate to the size of the need. And then have confidence, take a little bit of faith in God. With God anything is possible. You got it? Stop, stop your unbelief, stop. We’re all the same. Of course, we’re the same. Are you applying yourself?

All right, let’s move on. Secret 4 is, “Known to God from eternity are all His works” (Acts 15:18). He’s got this massive plan, known to God from eternity in the past are all of His works. This is process, process. “Process the methods to maximize your impact for Christ, strategize more productive steps.” How do you get up here? How do you do that? “Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the vestibule, its houses [of the temple], its treasuries, its upper chambers, its inner chambers, and the place of the mercy seat; and the plans for all that he had by the Spirit” (1 Chronicles 28:11–12). You mean the Spirit had the plans? You mean God has strategy? Yes, He has plans, that’s strategy. “‘All this,’ said David, ‘the Lord made me understand in writing, by His hand upon me, all the works of these plans’“ (1 Chronicles 28:19).

Some people think planning is carnal, it’s of the flesh. Well, then you better put God as carnal because “known . . . from eternity are all of His works.” He’s planned it all out, and believers don’t even spend an hour a month planning, how do I reach this significant goal for God with my talent, my time, my treasure? How do you do it? Plans.

Sometimes things change and you have to make new plans. If that’s not working, change it. “Now therefore,” says God, “speak to the men of Judah.” This is God telling Jeremiah. “Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I am fashioning . . .” I am fashioning right now, “a disaster . . .” because of your sin and wickedness. And right now I am, say it for me, “devising a plan”’” (Jeremiah 18:11). God, do you devise a plan? Of course I do, I devise a plan, that’s what I just said.

You want to be like God? Plan and then pray and then ask other people, I want to double what we’re doing for God in this area, and I’d like to do this, not in five years, but in six months, and I don’t have any money. How can I do this? There are some people that God will put in your path that know how to do that, and they’ll give you the ideas. Don’t react and just do it, and you’ll find out this is how it works.

Secret 5. When I was a young man, after I finished graduate school and moved, Darlene and I moved up to Oregon to teach in a college and a graduate school as a professor, as a teacher. I started Walk Thru the Bible, we were just in the earliest days, and I was wondering if it was going to succeed, and was it going to make it? And I had, one of my mentors was my professor at seminary named Dr. Howard Hendricks. And he came up to this university to give some lectures. And he and I went out to lunch, and I was trying desperately to believe this could happen. And I said, “Dr. Hendricks, what do you think about Walk Thru the Bible? Do you think it’s going to make it?” I wanted him to say yes.

And he said, “Bruce, the point isn’t if it makes it today, or if it makes it next week, or next year. The point is, where will it be in twenty-five years?” It’s the accumulation of all of this that really God’s interested in. It’s not that there’s an explosion of energy, and it lasts for a few months or a year. He wants you to pace yourself for the long-term.

Ah, that’s what we forget, we forget the real change, the real accumulation of much happens over a long period of time. It’s where you keep running your race, month after month, year after year, you run. You stay at it, and when you need a break, what do you do? You sit down and take a break, whatever it is that you’re doing for Him. It’s long-term. God doesn’t want people that become all emotional and hyper, and next week you can’t find them. He wants people that have a noble heart, like He said, and who continue to bear fruit with endurance. But you’ve got to pace yourself. God doesn’t want us to burn out, that’s a crazy thought. He wants us to burn brightly, and keep on burning and turn off the switch for a while, and get restored and then turn it back up again. It’s the long-term, it’s year after year after year.

People say to me, “Man, you’re seventy-four, and you’re still at it, why?” I want to be at it. So does my wife. Why? We’re doing it for Him. Keep at it, but do we take more breaks than ever? Yeah, we do. Why? We can’t do it at the pace, we can’t. Is that all right? Of course that’s alright. The point of it is, do whatever you need to, to keep on if you want to keep on. We want to. We love serving our King. We do. Not everybody does, it’s fine.

This next passage. “And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as He said, these forty-five years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness.” And now this is Caleb, this is so inspiring to me. “And now, here I am this day, eighty-five years old.” I’m a mere child to this guy, eighty-five years old. “Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the [giants] the Anakim [the giants] were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be,” there it is again, I love it, “It may be that the Lord will be with me,” and I as an eighty-five-year-old will take on these giants. Because with God, it makes no difference if there’s few or many, that’s the truth. “And I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord [had] said” (Joshua 14:10, 12).

What’s secret 5? It’s to “pace yourself.” Schedule your work and rest to enhance your productivity and your life. It’s long-term. Don’t be a workaholic. Remember what God said in Timothy? He says that God gave you all these things to enjoy. Keep that balance going.

Next. Look at this as you think about how God thinks about the use of time in the long-term. “And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath [every seventh day] was made for man.’” It was made for man, “‘and not man for the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath is God’s gift to man, you must stop working every seven days. Stop. “Six days you [should] do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that [you], your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed” (Exodus 23:12).

Then He goes a little bit longer out. What are we doing? We’re seeing the mind of God, man is this instructive. God, how do you think about pacing yourself? He says, “Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard” (Leviticus 25:3–4). Every seventh year, stop working, a whole year. Take a year off, let the land rest, you rest.

Then He’s got one of the ones that just blows my mind, “That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field” (Leviticus 25:11–12). What are you understanding? You’re understanding how God Himself thinks about time. Work six, not five, isn’t it interesting? Work six days, rest seven, but every seventh year, take the whole year off, and every forty-ninth year, take the year off. And by the way, take the fiftieth year off too. That means in everybody’s lifetime, at least one time, they got two years in which God said, Don’t work, take it off, enjoy yourself. Just collect the food that the land grows, I’ll make sure it grows enough for you.

Part 3: “The Secrets of Overcomers.” I just want to say how thankful, as we close this up and I’m going to give you that verse that you’ve been waiting for. Just a word of appreciation to the whole team of Teach Every Nation, the creative team, the team down in Africa, the team here in Atlanta, in Georgia, the team of our board of directors, the team of our donors, the team of our deans, the team of our partners and denominations that are using this throughout hundreds of their churches. It’s all one big movement of doing the Great Commission, not straying to the right, not straying to the left. And I want to just say, together we can do this to serve you, but none of us apart can. And it’s our prayer that these courses, as our team begins to wrap up and edit this course that you now are watching, next year we’re going to be doing Bible School on Wheels 4, which is going to be courses sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty courses. Plus another five courses from other teachers around the world.

But I want you to see this last conclusion, Darlene and I find this to be so fulfilling to be able to serve you this way. We pray, we don’t know you by name, but we pray for you, we do. And we ask that God’s Spirit would use these courses to set some of you free in ways you’ve never imagined, really. We know that the majority of people are like the seed that falls on the side of the road, or the seed that falls on the rocky soil and grows up and then withers, or like the seed that grows with thorns, grows up and then falls down, never giving fruit. But there are those three people, the thirtyfold, the sixtyfold, and the hundredfold. It is those people, my friends, that this course is made for, that’s why we spent so many hours teaching it in depth. I wasn’t really seeking to reach those people that weren’t going to produce fruit, I wasn’t. I was hunting, I was hunting, scouring the world, where are those of a noble and good heart that hear the Word, and keep the Word, and bear fruit with endurance? This course is made for the thirtyfold, the sixtyfold, and the hundredfold.

And someday when we’re in glory, and you are standing before Christ to have Him say to you, “Ah, you are a hundredfold woman of God. You bore much fruit and brought great glory to My kingdom.” That’s it, that’s it, that makes everything else worth it. It’s for the finish line that we live.

All right, let’s finish. And if you have this chart in your workbook, here’s a two halves separation. This is who you become, be perfect, be holy, prepared for every good work, this is what you do privately. And that’s supposed to lead for this, don’t ever stop here, you’ve been created and become sanctified for what you do over here. What you achieve, you’re created for good works, to produce much fruit at thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold. These are the secrets universally.

Number 1, you pursue the Lord. You keep abiding more and more because you know as you abide, the sap goes through, and more fruit comes, much fruit, in fact. Number 2, you obey the command, cleanse yourself of all iniquity. That’s the issue of purify, purify. Then as these things happen, then you begin to use who you’ve become. This is [number 3] you set a priority to prioritize your life to God’s priorities. Number 4, you process your steps of how you’re going to reach that goal that you have. Do you have a goal? Do you have a goal for God? The vast majority of everybody I ask that question is one of these, “I never thought of having a goal for God.” And [number 5,] do you pace your schedule?

The conclusion, “The Overcomers Are Initiated into the Mystery Secrets.” You’re now ready to learn where in all the Bible it reveals the initiation into the ancient mysteries. I want to show you this verse. Philippians 4:13 is a well-known, famous verse. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Do you realize that’s in a paragraph? That’s the conclusion of a paragraph. We pull it out and we have no idea what it’s really talking about. What are the “all things” that Christ strengthens me to do? I can do all things. What are the things He’s talking about?

Well, let’s take it over and look at it in Greek as we wrap up. This is the same verses, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned,” I have learned, to learn by observation “in whatever state [that] I am, to be content” (Philippians 4:11). Whatever state that I’m in, to be content. What does content in the Greek mean? This is the Greek word autarkēs. It comes from autos, which means “self” and arkeō, which means “sufficient” or “possessed of sufficient strength.” What’s the word content literally mean? Meaning “sufficient in one’s self,” I’m sufficient in myself. I am adequate in needing nobody’s assistance. It doesn’t mean I sit and have contentment, it means I am sufficient for it. I’ve learned how to be self-sufficient in it.

“I know how to be abased,” humbled. Oh terrible, I know how to be abased. “And I know how to abound,” great victory. “Everywhere and in all things I have learned” (Philippians 4:12), ah, that’s the Greek word, right there. It’s the verb m-u-e-o, perfect passive from the root word, musterion, “mystery,” to have been initiated into the mysteries. That’s what that Greek word means. Learning beyond the normal facts. In context what does this mean? I have been initiated. To learn from the adversities, he has experienced the deeper secrets, which are mysteries to those who are uninitiated. I have been initiated, and it’s passive, it happens to you on the basis of the tests of faith. All these are tests of faith descriptions. Abound, suffer, I have learned no matter what happens to be self-sufficient. I am perfect, I am lacking nothing, lacking nothing. That’s why you can be self-sufficient, you’re not lacking anything. “Both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do . . .” Now you know what he’s really talking about. I can do anything. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12–13). It’s because of all the tests of faith that no matter what comes toward him, he has learned the mysteries and been initiated into the secrets of being at peace and flourishing while God is perfecting him.

Well, I’m going to close you by a very short little clip because overcomers are people who bear much fruit. And I tried and I looked all over the world, what vine and branches produce more fruit than any other place in the world? And what does one vine and the branches that come over it or from it, what does it look like? As we wrap up, I want to leave this for you to see, this is our dream, that your life will be the longest branch and the most fruitful on the vine you get to see in Great Britain. Let’s take a look at it together.

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So today we’re going to take a look at the largest vine in the world. And guess where that is. Hampton Court Palace.

So here we are. In this building behind me, there is the largest vine in the world. And actually, the roots come under the building and lie under this plot of land here, which they basically leave completely uncovered so they can fertilize it and so on. There are no other plants here so that the vine doesn’t have to compete with other plants for moisture and nutrients and so on. So let’s go have a look inside the building at the actual vine itself.

The Great Vine was planted in 1769, so it’s over 240 years old now. It’s over four meters wide around the base, which is twelve feet. And the longest rod is 36.5 meters long or 120 feet . . . quite staggering. The average crop is around 270 kilograms, which is 600 pounds, and the record harvest was in 2001, when they brought in 383 kilos of grapes, or 845 pounds.

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Well, it’s been a delight, sharing this with you. We’re so excited about what this is going to do in your life. And someday I hope to hear from you, what this course on the testing of your faith has done in your life as God seeks for you to become and to achieve much fruit to God’s glory and honor, in Christ’s name, amen.