Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's Word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day.

Speaker 3

This Bible teaching program on today's edition.

Speaker 2

Of Pathway to Victory, what Solomon is saying is the most important choice we can make is to build our life around God.

How do you do that? How do you choose intimacy with God over isolation from God?

Let me just share with you four practical principles for making God first in your life.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. Have you ever felt distant from God even though you're going through all the motions of the Christian life? Or maybe something feels missing in your relationship with the Lord?

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shares how to move from spiritual isolation to genuine intimacy with God. But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

Speaker 3

Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. We all want our lives to matter and to find genuine satisfaction. Perhaps you've worked hard to build a career, create a comfortable home, or enjoy life's pleasures. But if you're honest, you've probably noticed that even when you achieve what you're after, something still feels incomplete. Solomon, the wisest and wealthiest man of his time, experienced the same frustration, and what he discovered changed everything.

Today, in our final message from my teaching series, "Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life," I'll share Solomon's most powerful discovery: that choosing intimacy with God is exponentially more productive than choosing to isolate from Him. And then, on this last day of my teaching series, it's important to remind you that it's one of your last occasions to request my book by the same title. Many have chosen to use this practical book to spark meaningful conversations in their small group Bible study. Let me send you my book, "Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life."

Plus, I'm going to include a book that opened my eyes to the power of Christian legacy. It's written by David Green, the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby, and is called "The Legacy Life." Many of us are wondering how we might pass along our Christian values to the next generation, especially our families. For that reason, I sincerely recommend David's book. Both books, David's and mine, are yours when you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory.

Okay, let's open our Bibles together. I titled today's message "Choosing Intimacy with God Over Isolation."

Speaker 2

In this series, choose your attitude, change your life. We've been talking about biblical decisions, biblical attitude choices that are absolutely crucial in life. But as we close out that series today, we're going to end by talking about the most foundational attitude choice of all, the only one that will give you a proper spiritual map of life. And that is the choice to choose intimacy with God over isolation from God.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Ecclesiastes, Chapter one. You remember, thousands of years ago, there lived a man named Solomon. He was the king of Israel. And yet, as he surveyed the endless cycle of seasons and of nature, he came to the conclusion that there was no purpose to life whatsoever. Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless.

But before he came to that final conclusion, he decided to set out on a personal pilgrimage to discover the right map that would give him direction in his life. Look at verses 12 to 13 of Ecclesiastes 1. "I, the teacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the sun." And so he tried three different maps to see if he could find meaning in his life.

The first map he used was Pleasure. Chapter two, verse one. He said, "Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good." Well, if that doesn't work, what would he do next? Solomon thought to himself, you know, I've always been more of a thinker than a playboy at heart anyway, so maybe I'll try something else. Maybe I'll try the pursuit of wisdom.

But then he came to this conclusion. Verses 14 and 16: "But I came to realize that the same fate overtakes the wise and the fool, both. Like the fool, the wise man too must die." Having found no meaning in pleasure or in wisdom, he tried work itself. Maybe if I throw myself into my work, that will provide meaning.

Verses 18 and 19: "I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun."

Speaker 3

This too is meaningless.

Speaker 2

Life under the sun is meaningless. But there's the key under the sun. That's a phrase Solomon uses 29 times. It refers to life from a horizontal perspective; if we just look at what is around us instead of looking up, life does seem meaningless, futile, and useless. But there's another way to look at life: to look at life above the sun. For the first eleven chapters of Ecclesiastes, the focus is on the meaninglessness of life under the sun. However, when he gets to chapter 12, he provides the above-the-sun perspective.

Look at what he says in chapter 12, verse 1: "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, 'I find no pleasure in them.'" Remember your Creator. How do you do that? How do you choose intimacy with God over isolation from God? As we close out today, let me share with you four practical principles for making God first in your life.

First of all, realize that true fulfillment is impossible apart from God. I believe Solomon had reached the same conclusion. He had built the most powerful nation in the world at that time and became the wealthiest man of his day. Yet, he realized he wasn't fulfilled.

Secondly, to gain intimacy with God, honestly evaluate your relationship with Him. What is currently the center of your affections? What are you building your life around: the temporary or the eternal? A good way to evaluate your heart is to ask yourself how you would respond if suddenly you lost all of your material possessions, your health, or your children. Would your life completely spin out of control?

Did you know there was a person who actually experienced all of that? His name was Job, and we find his story in the Old Testament. Job was heartbroken after he lost his kids in a freak windstorm, after all of his possessions were taken from him, and after he began to lose his health. But it didn't undo his life. In Job 1:20-22, it says that Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell to the ground and worshiped. He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Through all this, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God. Job's life was built around something more than what could be taken away from him. Is yours?

What a contrast to Solomon. When we get to the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes, we see an old man whose life is beginning to unravel. His health is breaking down; that's what all those images we read just a few moments ago refer to. He talks about the windows growing dim, which refers to the eyes, and the sentinels beginning to tremble, which refers to the arms and legs. He was starting to lose his health. Not only that, his power in the kingdom had diminished, his wealth had been passed on to another, and even his wisdom was being called into question.

He comes to the end of his life and says, "Don't make the same mistake I did. Remember God. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." Have you ever been on a road in an unfamiliar place and made a wrong turn? Not long after, you realize you made a wrong turn, and you face a decision point: Am I going to admit my mistake, turn around, and go the opposite direction? There's something inside of you that doesn't want to do that because, after all, you've gone a little way in this new direction. You'd have to retrace your steps, and it would take longer to get back on the right road.

It seems idiotic when you think about it, but it makes sense at the time. So you keep going further in the wrong direction, hoping that somehow it will magically become the right direction. The further you go, the harder it is to turn around and admit you've made a mistake. I see some ladies punching their husbands right now. We're all like that. The further you go in the wrong direction, the harder it is to turn around. But that's what the word "repent" means, literally. It means to turn around, to acknowledge you're headed in the wrong direction, and to start going in the right direction.

There are some of you that are ready to do that. I think you're ready to admit that what you've been chasing after hasn't provided the fulfillment you've been looking for. You're ready to acknowledge you've been going the wrong direction and want to go the right direction. Unfortunately, that didn't happen to Solomon. He waited until it was too late. First Kings 11:4 says, "For it came about when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart away after other gods, and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been." Remember your Creator before it is too late.

Number three: How do you build intimacy with God? Remove any barriers in your life to intimacy with Him. You know what the biggest barrier is between us and God that keeps us from having a relationship with Him? The biggest barrier is a little three-letter word: S-I-N, sin. In Isaiah 59:2, the prophet said, "But your iniquities, your sins, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear." He was talking to God's own people, the Israelites.

Now let me be clear about this: When we're born into this world, we are born separated from God. The wall is already there, caused by the sin we inherited from Adam. We are separated from God. You might ask, "How do you remove that wall?" You can't remove it; I can't remove it. But that's why Christ came to pay for our sins. He's the one who removed that wall and made access to God possible. When you trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, God takes a sledgehammer to that wall. He knocks it down and welcomes us into His presence.

However, after we become Christians, we can try to erect that wall ourselves, brick by brick. When we build our own walls, sin after sin, it's not that God changes His attitude toward us, but we change our attitude toward God. We grow distant from God the more sins we pile on, building that wall until we can no longer stand our Creator.

You know, the biggest brick that blocks our view of God is not adultery, murder, or theft—though those are certainly sins. The one brick that blocks our view of God more than any other is idolatry. Some of you might think, "That's the one thing I'm not guilty of." Well, you might want to think again. Idolatry is not just bowing down before a wooden statue in Africa somewhere; it is loving anyone or anything more than you love God. That's what it is to have an idol: to be obsessed with, to think about, to love anything or anyone more than we love God.

If we're going to have intimacy with God, we must be willing to let go of those idols in our lives. I'll never forget a number of years ago when I had lunch in another city with a well-known Christian leader. You would know his name immediately; he's taught millions the word of God. After we finished lunch, we were walking outside, and next to his office door was his automobile—a 1968 Oldsmobile. I was kind of shocked by the car, actually. I said, "Well, that's an interesting car. I mean, it was like a tank." I asked him about it, and he said, "Yes, there are some great things about this car. First of all, I never have to worry about being hit by anybody on the freeway; everybody steers clear of me. Also, nobody wants to steal my car. I never have to worry about anyone stealing it; I can leave it unlocked, and nobody takes it."

He lived a very frugal lifestyle, even though he was a major Christian leader. So I asked him what led him to live the way he does. He said, "It all happened when I was 10 years old. I had a paper route. I used to get up at the crack of dawn before school, go out and throw my papers, and I started earning money. I would go down to the bank every week and deposit my money in my old savings account. It started to grow and grow and grow, and before long, that bank book became my obsession. All I could think about was how much money I had and how proud I was of it. I realized it was a hindrance in my relationship with God. So one day, I took that bank book down to the bank, withdrew every dollar I had, and went out and bought Bibles for all of my classmates. Since that time, I've never had a problem with materialism or money. By letting go of it, I broke free."

Speaker 3

Its hold over me.

Speaker 2

You know, if we're going to have intimacy with God, we've got to be willing to let go of whatever idol it is that is blocking our relationship with God. Finally, how do we have a right relationship with God to continue to nurture our relationship with God? If we're going to have intimacy with God, we've got to continue to nurture our relationship with God.

Here's a formula that's absolutely guaranteed to destroy any relationship you have. Don't ever talk to the other person, don't ever listen to the other person, and don't ever spend any time with the other person. That will destroy any relationship. Now, you may think, well, I've got a great relationship with my wife or with my children or with my lifelong friend. You may think you have a great relationship; you may have a great relationship, but quit talking to them, listening to them, or spending time with them, and that relationship will shrivel up overnight. It's the same in our relationship with God. You know how to destroy intimacy with God? Don't ever talk to him. Don't ever listen to him. Don't ever spend any time with him. We have to nurture our relationship with God if we're going to be intimate with him.

You know, even Jesus, the Son of God, understood that. You've heard me many times reference Mark 1:35. To me, it's one of the most amazing verses about the life of Jesus. The day after the busiest recorded day in his entire ministry, when he ministered until late, until the evening, the Bible says on the next morning, in the early morning, while it was still dark, he got up. I had to get up at 3 this morning for Fox and Friends. I was miserable. It was dark out there. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to roll over, but I knew I had to do it. Jesus got up not just one morning, but every morning in the early morning while it was still dark. He got up, he arose, and he went out and departed to a lonely place and was praying there.

Think about it. If spending time with the Heavenly Father was essential for the perfect Son of God, how much more essential is it for you and for me if we're going to have a relationship with God? How do you spend time with God? You know the answers. We talk with God through prayer, tell him what's on our heart. We listen to God through reading His Word. We spend time alone with him as often as we can.

You know, I found in my own life, one of the best ways to develop intimacy with God is by keeping a journal. Not a diary, but a journal. Not every day, but just writing down things that God is teaching me, that I'm learning from him, and keeping a list of prayer requests and the answers that do or don't come. As I reflect back over those journals, it is such a refreshment to me to see that God really does exist and he's at work in my life in a lot of ways. Ecclesiastes was Solomon's spiritual journal, and he left it so all of us could read it and learn from his mistakes. Solomon said, don't be like me. Remember God. Make him first in your life before it's too late.

You know, one of my favorite fables is about the dog that was carrying the bone in its mouth. As it went over a bridge, it happened to look down into the pool of water beneath the bridge. The dog immediately saw the reflection of the bone it was carrying in its mouth. The dog actually dropped the real bone and dove into the water in pursuit of the reflection and ended up going hungry. That's really Solomon's story. He gave up his relationship with God that had started out so strong. He gave it up because he was distracted by the reflections, by the gifts of God, rather than the giver of the gifts, God himself. And he ended up dying spiritually hungry.

Don't make that same mistake, Solomon says. Choose intimacy with God. Make it a priority in your life instead of isolation from God. Maybe you sense that barrier is between you and God. If you're not yet a Christian, that barrier is very real, and there's nothing you can do to remove it. Nothing at all. But God can. All he asks you to do is to trust in Jesus as your Savior, to believe that he paid the price for your sins on the cross, and to trust in him, not your good works, but in him to forgive you of your sins. The Bible says the moment you acknowledge your sin to God and trust Jesus to be your Savior, you become a child of God. The assurance you have is that you'll be with him forever in this life and in heaven. That's what it means to trust in Christ.

If today you would like to put your faith and trust in Jesus as your Savior, we invite you to come. Finally, there may be some of you who are already Christians, but you would say, you know, Pastor, lately I've taken a detour in my life. If that's true of you, I invite you to come and just say, pastor, I'm ready for a new beginning. That's all you have to say.

Father, we thank you that you're a God of mercy. We thank you that you are able to fulfill every need we have. And I pray for those today who are ready to trust in Christ for their salvation. For the first time, I pray no one would resist your Holy Spirit's invitation. Give us the power, the courage to stand up, coming and responding to your invitation. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Speaker 3

Back on Monday, January 5th, we started this teaching series that concludes today called "Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life." And this is one of the very last days to request my book by the same title along with audio CDs and DVDs. So be sure to get in touch with us right now. Allow me to send my book to your home when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory.

But that's not all, because I'm also going to send David Green's brand new book, "The Legacy Life." As the founder of Hobby Lobby, David articulates what it means to think with eternity in mind, especially as it pertains to the legacy we leave rather than working hard to amass a huge savings account. David urges us to see the joy and value of working in cooperation with God to bless generations long beyond our own.

Look, I'm sensing that God's spirit is moving in the hearts of men and women all across our country. He's working, and I believe our time is growing short. We don't know when Jesus will return, but the signs are evident, and now's the time to ramp up our efforts to share the Gospel. Would you join me in telling the world the good news about Jesus Christ when you give generously today?

Say thanks by sending you both "The Legacy Life" and my own book, "Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life." Here's David to tell you more.

Speaker 1

Today, when you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the Legacy Life. In addition, you'll receive *Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life*. That's the book by Dr. Jeffress that served as the basis for this series. To request your copy, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org now. You could also make a donation by texting PTV to 78800.

And when you give $100 or more, you'll not only receive these two books, we'll also include the audio and video discs for this month's series *Choose Your Attitudes, Change Your Life*, plus a personal or group study guide. Call right now at 866-999-2965 or go online. Simply go to ptv.org. You could also send your gift to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. Financial people will tell you how to invest your money, but do you know how to invest for eternity? Hear a message called *Investing for Maximum Returns*. That's Friday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Alaska's pristine wilderness showcases God's glory like nowhere else on earth, and you're invited to experience it firsthand on the Pathway to Victory Cruise to Alaska.

Speaker 2

Enjoy daily Bible teaching, teaching, worship led.

Speaker 3

By Michael O' Brien and laughter with Dennis Swanberg. All aboard Holland America's five star Koningsdam.

Speaker 1

So reserve your cabin today. Call 888-280-6747 or visit ptv.org. You made it to the end of today's Podcast From Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast From Pathway to Victory. Oh, and one last thing before we go. Have you reserved your spot yet for the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska? You've been hearing me and Dr. Jeffress mention it, so what are you waiting for? Just picture yourself on the deck of Holland America's elegant Koningsdam and stepping out on deck to witness nature's grandeur. It's beautiful. These moments in God's creation will deepen your faith in powerful ways. It really will.

Experience five-star dining, luxurious staterooms, and visiting iconic ports like Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway. We're also bringing along our own Christian entertainment. You'll love it. Seats are filling up, so book your spot today at ptv.org.