Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church

Guest (Male): You are now listening to an inspirational message from Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church where Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr. is the pastor. Please join the service in progress.

Guest (Male): Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry. While on others you are calling, do not pass me by. I'm calling you, Savior. Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others you are calling, do not pass me by.

Let me at the throne of mercy find a sweet relief. Kneeling there in deep contrition, help my unbelief. Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others you are calling, do not pass me by. Savior, Savior, hear my humble cry. While on others you are calling, do not pass me by.

Don't miss us today. Don't pass us by. We know you're in heaven. We know that you're doling out blessings. We know that you're healing sick, you're raising people, you're opening doors, you're opening new ways, you're just changing circumstances. Lord, while on others you are calling, don't pass me by.

I'm crying out to you today, standing in need of recognizing that without you I can do nothing, but with you I can do all things through Christ. Guide us now and direct us as we come to your word. As we open it together, speak to us and through us in this moment of sharing. Allow the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart to be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, you are our strength and you are our redeemer. We ask it all now in the name of your son, Jesus. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

I'm so thankful and grateful for our pastor emeritus, for our young pastor, and his leadership. If you missed him this morning, you missed a treat. Young man preached a great message this morning, and he's coming along just fine. I wanted to build off of something he said, and then at the same time, thinking about the Memorial Day veterans, I was gripped as I watched the video. I saw many of those men whom the Lord gave me the privilege to serve as the eulogist in their funerals, and two of them were my brothers.

I'm just gripped by that, and it reminded me of these young kids one day. We were doing something like this before we got video. We would put up pictures of veterans sometimes. One little boy asked his mother, "Mama, who are all of these people?" She said, "These are men and women who died in service." He thought for a minute and said, "Mama, which one? The 8:00 or the 10:45?" I just hope it wasn't one of ours.

Along those lines, I want to look this morning at two passages of scripture in two places. I want to look both in the Old Testament. The first is the book of First Kings, Chapter 11, and it's verses one through seven. Then I want to look at Daniel, Chapter 1, and verse 8. This will be the application of what Reverend was talking about.

First Kings, Chapter 11, verses one through seven. "But King Solomon loved many strange women together with the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, 'You shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you. For surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.' Solomon clave unto these in love.

And he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon." Now I want to turn over to Daniel, Chapter 1, and look at the A section of verse 8. "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself."

This is the word of God for the people of God. I want to talk about the landmine of compromise. During the height of the Vietnam War, many men in my era served in the armed forces of the United States. Bodies were being brought home in body bags more than we ever care to even imagine. More American soldiers were lost during the Vietnam conflict than almost any war on foreign soil that America has fought.

I had three brothers in Vietnam at the same time, and often the one that was in infantry talked about his greatest fear was stepping on a landmine. For those of you who don't know, a landmine is a device that's hidden just beneath the surface or covered with bush. If a man or an animal or a vehicle stepped on it or triggered it, it would immediately explode. Many of the men who were brought back to the United States in body bags happened because of landmines.

Even today in the war with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, the body of water that is being defended by the United States and closed down for shipment of all of those people who would love to travel, is being littered with landmines. America is busy trying to stop any of the small speedboats of the Iranians who want to continue to put down those mines. When those big ships begin to come through and they touch one of those landmines, immediately lives are going to be lost.

What I came to say to us this morning is that one of the deadliest weapons that Satan uses is not straight-up in-your-face warfare, but it's the subtlety of landmines. The landmine that he uses most dangerously against all of us is the landmine of compromise. Compromise is not always out front, and most people don't even recognize it when it is occurring, but it can destroy your life.

I want to submit to us this morning that we have to understand that it's the small compromises that lead to the spiritual defeats. It causes us to lose our saltiness so therefore we become good for nothing but to be cast under the foot of men. What I want to say to you today is that what we tolerate today can control us tomorrow. You have to be careful about compromise. Our nation is sinking because of compromise.

Our churches are not effective because of compromise. Preachers can't preach the truth because of personal compromise. Christians won't be witnesses today like they need to be because somewhere in their lives they have compromised the truth and the standards that are necessary to be able to stand flatfooted and tell the truth. I've never been interested in politics, so don't worry, I'm not running for nothing. That's why nobody is going to buy me.

You've got so many black leaders today who can't stand up in the face of all of the foolishness because they have compromised. I submit unto us today that it goes deeper than that. Don't you think that you're outside of the realm of the ability to be able to be compromised. I want you to understand today that compromise is like a bridge. Bridges don't just collapse with one crack, but bridges collapse because they ignore the small beginnings of those things until they deteriorate to such a point that it's too late.

So many in our life feel that way. The enemy rarely says to any of us, "Leave God." That's not what he says. What he says is just bend a little bit. Just miss this Sunday. Just miss next Sunday. Nobody is going to miss you. You don't need to be there. You don't have to sing. You don't have to deacon. You don't have to preach. You don't have to pray. You're not on for the day, so just lay back. Slowly but surely, you'll find yourself in a compromised place.

So today I want to talk about two men, two different men from two different periods of Jewish history. I want to talk about King Solomon who lived in the 10th century, about 900 BC. I think 907 was about Solomon's date. He was the second king of all of Israel. He wasn't a slouch either. He was David's son. He was the wisest man to ever live. He was the wealthiest man to ever live, and yet he found himself compromising.

In the process of compromising, he destroyed literally his legacy and all of the good that God had done with him over the course of his life. Don't misunderstand. If the devil can get in that kind of guy's head, what makes you think he won't get in yours? But then I also want to talk about a young teenage boy who was about 16 when he was carried as a prisoner of war, carried captive to distant Babylon.

Yet there he made up his mind that no matter what, no matter who, no matter what the offer is, I am not going to compromise my values, my beliefs, and my morals. So you can choose to either compromise to get along or you can decide early on that no matter what the world has, it's not for me. How many know that everything is not for everybody? Every style of dress is not for everybody.

I want you to understand that compromise is real. So let's talk about it for a moment. What is compromise? Compromise is the surrender of your biblical purposes or your biblical principles, your moral principles, your spiritual standards in order to be accepted by other people, in order to receive some level of advantage or some comfort or some type of recognition. People all over this nation are selling their souls.

However, I should add that there are some things called healthy compromises. Sometimes in a business world, it's necessary to make reasonable compromises in order for some other circumstances for the greater good to work out. How many know in families there are periodic times when we have to make compromises and alliances? We have to go along sometimes to get along. The scripture is really clear about compromises. For the most part, they are dangerous.

Just a few examples of what creates these dangerous compromises. When we get to the place where we start calling wrong right, you're in trouble. When you start lowering biblical standards just to fit the culture. Do you understand what has happened in this nation? We have gone away. How many weddings have you seen lately? Church weddings?

Do you understand why that happened? When America set up same-sex marriage as a legal entity and preachers and pastors and justices of the peace decided that they were not going to compromise and marry people that the Bible said should not be married. Then the law stepped in and they created a compromise where you don't have to go through the process no more. All you have to do is get a license and get it notarized and it's on.

That was designed to go around the biblical standard of what marriage is. Sometimes when we remain silent when we should be speaking, you're beginning to compromise. You're beginning to not be light and not be salt when we act like that. When we begin to trade convictions for convenience, when we begin to value popularity over obedience, we're setting ourselves up to compromise.

Every compromise that really gets people in trouble has something to do with people-pleasing. How many know it's the truth? So when we think about not only what compromise is, we look now at the nature of compromise. The first thing I want to tell you about compromise, and we're going to look at Solomon and see it, is that compromising is gradual. Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides today I'm going to just mess up my life.

That's not what people do. They gradually slip down the slippery slope. Solomon came to the throne at his father's beckoning. He was in line. David had several sons who could have been king, but he had made a promise to Bathsheba that the son, Solomon, would be the one who would sit on the throne. David stockpiled gold and silver and everything because he himself had wanted to build a house for the Lord.

But the Lord said, "David, because you are a man of war, I won't let you build the house, but I'll let your son Solomon build it instead." Solomon comes to the throne and when he becomes king, he started off right. He went to Gibeon and he prayed. He said, "Lord, I'm young. I don't know how to come in and I don't know how to go out. I'm not sure how to handle myself with this massive responsibility of being king over Israel."

God said, "Because you didn't pray for your enemy's head and because you didn't pray for destruction of other people, I like what you prayed for. Therefore, I'm going to make you wise, wiser than any man who had ever lived. And not only that, I'm going to make you wealthy, rich, filthy rich, more than any man up to this point in human history." He had a great start.

But gradually he began to make deals. I'm using that word on purpose because that's a favorite word of somebody. He began to make deals with foreign dignitaries. He made a deal with Pharaoh and he traded horses with the Egyptians. As a result, Pharaoh said, "I tell you what I'll do, I'm going to give you my daughter." Here comes an Egyptian into a Jewish family.

You do know from biblical history that all the way back from the beginning, God told the Jewish people don't mix and mingle with other people. When Solomon became king, God told him specifically don't have nothing to do because if you do, they're going to turn your heart. Solomon brought Pharaoh's daughter in. They tell me the Queen of Sheba came to see him. You know she was black because she was from Africa.

She came and she said concerning Solomon, "The half had not even been told." Before he knew it, the Queen of Sheba was in his harem. He just kept accumulating, just trophy women from everywhere. He ended up with a thousand: 300 concubines, 700 wives, people that he officially married. But when the Sabbath came, he couldn't take them to church. Foreign women were forbidden from worshipping with the Jews in the tabernacle and later in the temple.

Are y'all hearing me? Guess what? The ladies began to cry, "Solomon, since I can't go to your church, why don't you build one for me?" Solomon began the slippery slope of compromise. Before long, not only do you have this accumulation of people from all of these different nationalities, but now you've got all of these different brands of religion.

What's the problem with that? Somebody says, "I don't see nothing wrong with that, pastor." Well, the Jewish people were to be the representatives of Jehovah God. They were to demonstrate to the rest of the world who the one true God is. Do you understand that that's a problem today and why we can't compromise our faith? Because we are to be the representatives of Christ. We are to be the salt of the earth. We are to be the light of the world.

We are to point people to the one true God. But when we start compromising, then we set ourselves up for spiritual failure. I think of another guy in history that maybe you can see it better there. If I talk about a guy whose name was Samson. Big, strong he-man, but he had also she-weaknesses. Somebody said nothing wrong with a he-man if he's got she-weaknesses as long as he's not a he-man with he-weaknesses.

He couldn't stay out of the Philistine territory. Going down in Philistine, he wanted to marry a girl over there. His parents didn't even stop him. They said to him, "What, you can't find a girl among your own people that you can marry?" But he went down there anyway and after she messed him up, he found this hooker. Her name was Delilah. The Philistine lords wanted to pay her money to find out his secret of his strength.

Samson played and he began to compromise. First, he started flirting with the temptation and then he got so good he started tolerating the temptation. He told her, she said to him, "Samson, tell me the secret of your strength." He said, "Tie me up with new ropes." Something was wrong with him. He liked to be tied up. "Weave the locks of my hair, then I'll be as weak as any man."

He saw it as a game. He did not recognize the danger of the compromise. He continued to flirt and play with it until he found himself a captive of the Philistines and his eyes were finally gouged out. How many know the devil doesn't work by miles, but he works by inches? He doesn't take you all at once. He just takes you down a little bit at a time. That's how it happens.

Yes, it does. It starts with a little social sip. Come on here, y'all don't want to hear it, but I'm going to tell you anyway. It starts with a little sniff. It starts with a little puff, a little vape. Not much, don't seem like no harm in it. Before you know it, people got a Jones. Oh, I know I'm talking this morning. I've seen it too many times. I've been around it. I understand.

You can pretend that you've been in church all your life. Maybe you've been in the building. All I'm saying is what begins as participation can end up as bondage. Things you thought were fun can end up trapping you and you could be hooked and you won't even recognize it until it's too late. Not only does compromise begin gradually, but compromise often at first looks harmless. I don't see nothing wrong with it.

There was another guy in scripture in the Old Testament. His name was Lot. Lot was the nephew of Abraham. Both of them were wealthy, but their herdsmen got to the point that they couldn't get along with each other. Abraham said, "Look, Lot, we're cousins, man. You're my nephew. No need in us fighting. I'll tell you what, look, let's separate. You look out and see which land you want and you take the land that you want and I'll take whatever is left."

Lot looked and he saw Sodom and it looked good. At first, he just looked at Sodom. But then he moved a little closer to Sodom and he lived outside of the city gate. Then he moved inside of Sodom. When he stayed there, he became a Sodomite. He got hooked on all of the fun and things, even married a girl from Sodom, and she didn't want to turn loose.

When the Lord sent an angel down to tell Lot he was going to destroy Sodom, Lot didn't want to leave. His wife certainly didn't want to leave. First she left for a little while, but she looked back. When she looked back, she turned into a pillar of salt. Her salt is there for us to taste, to help us to understand that compromise will eventually wear you down. What at first looks like fun, you'll find yourself wrapped up in it.

What I want you to understand is what we expose ourselves to eventually will influence us. Sodom got into Lot and Lot got into Sodom and it almost destroyed him. It destroyed his family. It's crazy. I'll talk about that another day. What you can't do is you can't ever underestimate the power of proximity. You hang around where it's happening, some of it's going to get on you.

You lay down with dogs, you're going to wake up with fleas. Proximity, that's what he means. You play in the mud, some of it is going to get on you. Proximity, what you hang around will eventually confound you. The third thing about compromise: not only is it gradual and not only does it look harmless, but compromise is contagious. Don't think you could compromise and it don't affect nobody else around you.

When you compromise, you also put everybody else around you at risk. Let me just give it to you straight from a historical standpoint. When America and Russia were in an arms race to want to decide who would be the world's greatest superpower, America said, "We should be the superpower because we have a democracy." But the Russians fired back and said, "But you can't be a superpower because you don't even know how to treat your own people. You practice racism."

So the Supreme Court of the United States got involved under Warren Burger. They began to sign legislations and the Supreme Court became the champion for the civil liberties to make sure that America would not be branded in that way. All of the division, inclusion, and equity stuff started happening and black people started getting promoted while white people were crying that this is another form of discrimination.

The Supreme Courts from that point all the way for the next 50 years or so began to champion the social justice issues. Things that came before the court were upheld or either struck down if it went against integration of schools under that situation. Promotions, admissions in colleges and universities began to happen under that situation. Then Barack Obama got elected.

When Barack Obama got elected, Rush Limbaugh went on national radio and said, "We can't let that happen no more. We have got to take this country back." As a result of that, there were always a group of people over here who did not like what was going on. They decided now it's time that we are going to make America great again.

Look at what has happened in this last year and a half that this man has been in administration. I'm just telling it like it is. What he has done, he has set back the nation more in a year than what has happened in the last 100 years. Because the first thing, okay, let's get rid of all of these black top people in the military. I don't care who sacrificed, I don't care who died, get them out of there.

Let's overturn the government. Let's take away tens of thousands of jobs because we know how you got there and so we're going to take you out of them. We're going to take down the colleges and universities because none of them now can practice diversity, inclusion, and equity. We're going to take away the grant funding and everything like that. We're going to attack the heart and soul of the African-American community and we're going to attack the family.

Who was the architect? Not Donald. It was another man whose undergraduate degree was to study slavery and he earned a master's degree and a doctorate degree in slavery, understanding how black people made moves through the church, through social organizations with women at the center of the family. Now the reversal is on. You need to understand that this stuff is contagious.

What's on the head, the Bible said, goes down on the beard and down on the skirts, and it's contagious. When you compromise, when you start a trend in your family, you can mess up next generations. There was another man in the Old Testament. His name was Achan. When the children of Israel were coming out of Egypt and they came into the promised land, they got into Jericho.

God had told them don't take anything. Anything that's supposed to be gotten is under a ban. But Achan saw a Babylonish garment and a wedge of gold and he took it and he hid it in his own tent. It ended up costing not only him, but it cost him his family. It cost him his whole tribe. They were all burned and punished.

When a parent compromises, the children will follow. When a leader compromises, followers will stumble. When a church compromises, generations are affected. When we stop teaching, it impacts the next two or three generations. It happened in the African-American community. We grew up, all of us, in church. We were drug to church. Door open, you had to be there. We start saying, "I ain't going to make mine go."

Consequently, we don't make them go, and guess what? They don't go. Compromise never remains just personal. Compromise also always costs more than you expect. Yes, it does. Look at Solomon, look at poor Solomon. He never believed that having all of these girls in his harem... he was Epstein before there was an Epstein file. He never imagined that that stuff would come back to haunt him.

All of the rich and the famous guys were playing and going on the island and they were doing their thing, and they never thought this stuff would blow up. Unfortunately, the only person who has really paid a real price on the Epstein file is the King of England's brother. The rest of the American criminals are still free. But it still cost more than they expected.

Listen, what did it cost Solomon? It cost Solomon first God's favor. I don't know about you, but you can have the world, just don't let me lose God's favor. I need God's favor. I need the mercy of God every day. If you lose that, what do you have? He lost the kingdom. Instead of being in history as Israel's second king and most prominent and professional king, he lost the kingdom.

His brother Rehoboam took it and the kingdom ended up splitting and it was never a United Kingdom since. He lost it. He had it, but he lost it. Compromising. I can think of a lot of people in today's history that have lost what they had legitimately gained. I think about Old Tiger, Eldrick Tiger Woods, y'all know him. Tiger had command of the golf world, but Tiger got too loose with his caboose.

Urban Magic Johnson, great basketball player of all time. 6'9", could drop the three across half court, made famous the no-look pass. Magic was bad, but he got involved in some compromising things and it ended his professional basketball career. I can't tell you about the number of boys that went down to Alabama and played ball. I think of Danny Woodson, probably about the second, third black quarterback to start for Alabama.

But Danny had a drug problem. Under Gene Stallings, the year Alabama won the championship, eight games Danny had started as quarterback. Then they tested his urine and found out he had been using. In the game that would have led them straight on, Danny was put on the bench and Jay Barker was put in as quarterback. The history of the University of Alabama now shows the starting quarterback in the championship quarterback Jay Barker, not Danny Woodson.

Compromise will cost you more than what you expect to pay. Cost Solomon his influence, cost all of these pastors and preachers their influence, it costs family members your influence, it costs churches' influence. When a church gets a black eye, it messes with everybody in the community. So you got to be careful. This is serious stuff I'm talking today. I don't preach to entertain, I preach to tell the truth because I want your life to change.

Compromise has its consequences and compromises will weaken your spiritual authority. It really will. You can't stand and tell it. You may still have a position, but you'll lose power. You understand that? When I look around, Trump has been dominating, but he's losing his power because he's losing his influence because all of these compromise, underhand, illegal, unethical things are coming out.

Slowly, one by one, they point the finger back and they talking about it and they're going to tell on him. Eventually, he's going to take the whipping before the whole world. Not only do you lose your influence, you lose your credibility. Your character is robbed and you can't be. You lose your peace. You can't sleep at night. That's why he be up writing at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning on social media. He can't sleep.

You lose your peace. The songwriter said it best, "Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pains we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." And you lose God's best. God had a great plan for America, great plan for you, great plan for Solomon, great plan. But man, he lost it all. So you've got to ask yourself why then do people compromise when they know it's going to cost that much?

Well, I think people choose to compromise to become like, to become accepted. They value that more than obedience, and I think that's a tremendous, tremendous price to pay. I think people compromise because they desire immediate gratification rather than long-term benefit. Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of soup to satisfy a temporary hunger and he gave up what he could have had as being the first in Israel's spiritual family.

People compromise when they become tired of standing strong and standing firm. How many people have compromised? "Man, I'm just so tired. Just do whatever you want to do." That's a mistake. Don't say that. Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. You've got to stay in there.

How do you avoid compromise? We come back to Daniel because he's my man. Daniel understood something. He understood that you have to establish your convictions before the crisis moment. As soon as Nebuchadnezzar came down on Israel and he began to swoop up all of the young captives, Daniel decided when he got there that I'm not going to compromise. I'm not going to take the king's food, I'm not going to drink the king's wine.

He understood that if I eat at the king's table and if I drink from the king's wine, I'm going to have to bow when the music plays. What a temptation that would be for a 16-year-old to be offered food at the king's table. Which one of Pookie, Nae Nae, Ricky, and ReRe and them wouldn't have taken it and then to be able to brag that I had a glass of wine with the King of Babylon?

The rest of the boys were over in slave quarters. That would have been too much. But Daniel decided beforehand that no matter how big it may look, I'm not going to compromise. You've got to decide what you will do and what you will not do. All of my college students going away to college, you're going to be tested. This is going to be more about you than what you're going to take in those classrooms.

Those classrooms you can already handle. It's you that you don't know. You don't know what you will and what you will not do until you're tested. How late you will stay out and whether or not you will get up and go to class even when you have to screw it on straight to make it. So what you've got to learn to do: you've got to stay strong in your convictions and make those decisions early on.

Then you've got to stay close to God's word. David said it best, "Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against God." Then you've got to surround yourself with godly people. You can't hang with everybody else because everybody else ain't talking this talk. Daniel had three boys. Their Jewish names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, but their names were changed to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

After talking to a preacher last week, I heard him preach. I said, "Boy, they said Shadrach was a good guy and Meshach was a good guy, but a bad negro you are." You've got to be around godly people, godly influence, somebody who's going to tell you the truth. Some homeboy, some homegirl who's going to say, "Hey look, I don't think that's wise. I think you ought to pray about it."

Not somebody who's going to tee you up, go on, get you in trouble, and before you know it, then they're "Oh too bad, so sad, so sorry." No, you need to be around godly people. Then you need to practice immediate obedience. When the situation come up, you've got to decide right then and there, I'm going to do what I know is right. I don't have to waver on it.

When God speaks to you, he speaks almost immediately. Either this is the right thing or it's not. There ain't no grey in it. It's either the right thing or it's the wrong thing. When you decide right away that this is the right thing I'm going to do, then you do it, you'll be on the right side. So you've got to practice that. Then you've got to keep this eternal perspective in mind.

You've got to know that this world is just temporary. This is not where you're going to live forever. One day you're going home. So you've got to decide that you want the reward. You want God's favor, you want God's wisdom, you want God's protection, you want God's promotion. So let me give it to you as I sit down now.

Compromise is seldom one large decision. It's usually a series of small decisions: one excuse, one shortcut, one rationalization, one surrender. So what you've got to do, here's what I want you to do today as you leave here today, I want you to ask yourself, "God, what's the one act of disobedience that's in my life right now? What truth are you speaking to me that I need to stand firm on?"

"And what is the one faithful decision that I need to make today regardless of what anybody else thinks about it? What do I need to do to keep me from compromising what I know is of you?" My brother and sister, I'm going to leave you with that. I'm not going to shout at you, I'm not going to holler at you. I'm just going to say pray about it and make up your own mind.

What are you tempted to compromise today? Doors open, doors of the church. I'm through preaching. But you've got to ask yourself, what am I tempted to compromise? Somebody might be here today who knows you need to make a decision for Jesus. You know you want the Lord in your life, but you're apprehensive, you're still looking around, you're still worried about what somebody else going to say.

What conviction have you allowed to weaken you? What example are you setting for those who follow you? Whatever you decide, I want you to know you can make a better decision by accepting Jesus as your Savior. And you can leave here free. Doors open, any time during the song. Walk in the light, beautiful light. Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright. Shine all around us by day and by night.

Jesus is the light of the world. Walk in the light, beautiful light. Come where the dewdrops of mercy shine bright. Shine all around us by day and by night. Jesus, he is the light of the world. Yes, Jesus is the light of the world. He is the one true Savior, and we cannot compromise our understanding, our faith, our testimony, our desire to please other people, and we give all of that up. God calls us to be his witnesses, to be the truth. He is the truth. I love you, I thank you, I appreciate you so very much.

Guest (Male): Hope you enjoyed the broadcast. You have been listening to a message from the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church where we are reaching the world for Christ. Located at 2135 Jefferson Avenue Southwest, Birmingham, Alabama, 35211. For a copy of this message, you can reach us at 205-925-9750 or 925-9751, or visit us on the web at www.greatershiloh.org. For another uplifting message, we invite you to join us for our next broadcast.