South Shore Pentecostal Church

Tina Ouellette: Welcome to the Apostolic Truth Radio program with Pastor Craig Ouellette, a radio ministry of South Shore Pentecostal Church located in Whitman, Massachusetts. At a time when many Christians do not know what to believe, South Shore Pentecostal is honored to bring you clear biblical teaching on which you can confidently build your faith. Thank you for joining us.

J. Craig Ouellette: Again, the word of God is given to us to instruct us, to guide us, to help us in our thinking, to know who God is. A lot of people have a wrong concept of God because they're not really taking the Bible at its words, but they're applying philosophies about what God is. But Deuteronomy 7:9 says, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God." Say the faithful God. "Which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations."

So God is a faithful God. Amen. In Matthew 25:14, and I'm going to say some things that I said recently—I think I said them last Sunday, some of the things. We won't dwell on them, but I am going to repeat some things because I felt impressed that the Lord wanted us to touch these things again. But in Matthew 25:14, we have the parable of the talents.

And it says, "For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, every man according to his several ability and straightway took his journey."

So now notice, don't ever look around and say, "God's blessing them, how come he's not blessing me the same?" God gives us things according to how he's made us, according to our abilities. Now, God can increase our ability, but God gives us things according to who we are in his purpose for us. Amen. So that tells you you can't have DEI, okay? You can't have equity the way the world tells you. Do you understand that? I wasn't even thinking about that, but just as I read it, just thought about it, okay?

That shows you the world wants to give everybody equal outcomes. God doesn't do that, and he's a just God. So that's incorrect thinking. Amen. So again, he said in verse 16, "Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth and hid his Lord's money."

After a long time, the Lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents saying, "Lord, thou deliverest unto me five talents, behold I have gained beside them five talents more." His Lord said unto him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

He also that had received two talents came and said to the Lord, "Thou deliverest unto me two talents, behold I have gained two other talents besides them." And his Lord said unto him, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

Then he which had received the one talent came and said, "Lord, I knew that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown and gathering where thou hast not strawed. And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth. Lo, there thou hast as thine." The Lord answered and said unto him, "Thou wicked and slothful servant." He called him wicked. Now he's giving back exactly what was given to him, but he calls him wicked.

The Lord answered verse 26 unto him, "Thou wicked slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not and gather where I have not strawed. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received my own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which has ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he has. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Amen."

So I don't know if you see in that, but Jesus is kind of giving a parable, and he's the Lord and we're the servants. And God gives us everything something, and he expects us to do something with what he gives us. All right. Let's read the final last scripture there, Revelation 17:14. And this is the Lord coming back to deal with the Antichrist. We're only going to read verse 14, so you have to understand it's talking about kings that are coming to give their power to the Antichrist.

"These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are called and chosen and faithful." Amen. So we want to talk this morning about the Lord is looking for the faithful. Say that: the Lord is looking for the faithful. Amen. And that kind of undermines the concept of once saved always saved. Amen. Because he's looking, if I don't continue to be faithful, he's not coming for me. Amen.

So let's talk about the process of living for the Lord just a little bit here this morning. And we can probably break it down into three general areas based on what we read in Revelation 17:14: being called of the Lord, the Lord choosing us, and faithful service to the Lord. Three areas: being called by the Lord, the Lord choosing us, faithful service to the Lord.

So let's talk about being called. The Lord wants all people to be saved, so he's calling everybody. No one dies without a chance to know God that is in the—that has a mind that can understand God. Now, you may not believe that, but I believe that. He's a just God. Okay. You get people on their deathbed and they say—and you say, "Well, they need to be baptized in Jesus' name and you need to get the Holy Ghost," and they're going, "Well, what about them? They're on their deathbed." But what we don't know is how many times they have turned away God in their life to that point.

He's not trying to kill us, he's not trying to send anyone to hell. The Lord wants all people to be saved. But God talks to us in little things, little ways. Okay. And so a lot of times in our lives, we come to crossroads. "I shouldn't do that, but I want to do that." And we go down that crossroad. "I shouldn't do that, why shouldn't I do it? Well, it's not right." A lot of the roads we make in our mind, the decisions we make, put us into a place where we have to suffer consequences, and it moves us further from God.

And people end up on their deathbed not having God, not because God didn't reach for them, but because when God did reach, they did not respond. Amen. Now, again, you can say, "Well, how, you know, what if they're in a country they don't know God, they don't have the Bible or anything?" And you've got examples in the book of Acts. Okay. You've got the Ethiopian eunuch looking for God. God interrupts the revival Philip's in up in Samaria and says, "Go down to Gaza." Philip doesn't know who this guy is.

He doesn't know where he's going. But God interrupts Philip and says, "Go down to Gaza." When he gets down there, he says, "Go talk to the guy in that chariot." Now, the man doesn't know the truth, but he wants to know the truth, so God sends someone to him. Again, you've got Cornelius doing all that he knows how to do. He's fasting, he's praying, but he doesn't really know God, doesn't know the plan of salvation. But God sends him an angel and says, "Send for Peter, he'll tell you what you need to do." Now, that lets you understand that God can get the truth to anybody that wants the truth.

So we can break it down. So being called, God wants us to be saved, and all are called to salvation. We all have a conscience. But we can extinguish that conscience, we can dull that conscience. Amen. And God's Spirit will talk to us and lead us too. Listen, there's too many stories I could sit here and tell you stories about people in Muslim countries where there's no Christians and no Bibles and they want to know Jesus, and God gave them Bibles and God healed them and all kinds of stuff. I can tell you all kinds of stories, true stories. Amen.

So then once God calls and you respond, being chosen. Being chosen. When we respond to the Lord's call properly, he will choose us properly. So the Lord signifies that he's chosen us by filling us with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. That's how you know you've responded properly. Okay. You know the phrase, "Believe on the Lord Jesus and you'll be saved," is a lot like the phrase, "If you go to school, you'll get an education." Now, we all—everyone of us here understands that doesn't mean just drive over to the parking lot every day and come back, right? We all understand that.

We understand it means I've got to go to the school, I've got to go in and find out what classes I need to take, how much I've got to pay, what my schedule's going to be, what books I've got to do, you know, what I'm going to have to do. We all understand that "Go to school and you'll get an education" does not mean just go to school and I'm going to get it. It's the same thing with "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt be saved." You've got to go and read in the Bible and do what God says to do. You've got to obey. You must repent, you must be baptized in Jesus' name.

Why? Because you need the name. Amen. You don't need titles, and you need to receive the Holy Ghost. And receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost is an indication that God has chosen you. Amen. You can believe and not be chosen. See, it's important to understand that. So Ephesians 1:13-14 says this, and if you spend a little time to dig into the word "sealed," which is in those verses, and the word "earnest," you'd understand.

It says in Ephesians 1:13, "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." Now, that word "sealed" there means to stamp or to mark like a signet ring. So what does that mean? Well, in Jesus' day and in those ancient days there, they would have—the leader would have a ring, the person had an authority in the area would have a ring that had a certain mark. And they would put melt wax and press that in, or they would put ink on it and press it on a paper. And when somebody saw that, they realized they had the authority.

Slaves they might burn a mark into you. So God, when you get the Holy Ghost, God is putting his signet ring, God is putting his mark on you. He's letting you know: you are mine, I have chosen you. That's why that Holy Ghost experience is so important. You need to know that God has chosen you. And the church needs to know it. Hallelujah. Amen. Again, reading in verse 14, "Which is the earnest," which means a down payment.

So God also gives us the Holy Ghost so that we understand I can feel God's Spirit, I realize I've got a down payment from God. That means he's serious about me. He's serious about you. That means if he's paid the down payment and God is faithful, God will come and recover the rest and give me everything I need. That means when the Rapture comes, I'm going. That means if I died today, I'm going to be with the Lord. Hallelujah. Because I got a down payment says I belong to him. Hallelujah.

Devil can come and fight with the angels and fight over my body, but God says, "No, no, I put my stamp on him, I got my mark on him, amen, I've given him the down payment. Here's the legal stuff: I've bought him with my blood." Amen. Hallelujah. So again, receiving the Holy Ghost indicates the price of redemption, the blood of Jesus has been applied to that person. Redemption means we've been purchased by God. And again, a person can believe and not be chosen. Just think about it, you can understand that in your own mind, you can believe and not be chosen.

So that's being chosen. But now once you've been chosen, you're called, I respond. I respond the way God wants me to respond, not the way somebody tells me to respond, I respond the way God wants me to respond. Amen. And I can't look at other people's ideas, I have to look in the Bible to see how I need to respond to God. That's why the book of Acts is so important. You want to see how people responded when they were offered salvation, what the apostles did? Read the book of Acts. Hallelujah.

So once I've responded and God has responded by marking me, I need to start to be faithful. Say faithful. The Lord is looking for faithful saints. If you look over in Romans 1:7, and again, if you come from a Catholic background and somebody calls you a saint, you kind of go like this, you're kind of go weird because only the Pope and a big group of people can declare you a saint. But the Bible says, if you're born again of the water and Spirit, you're a saint. Amen.

You don't need to have two miracles proved and a bunch of people vote on you. God says you're a saint. Amen. So Romans 1:7, "To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints." Called. We're called to be saints. Amen. So once we're saved—saints means a holy people set apart for God—again, when God saves us, he's marking us so that we know we're set apart. Okay. So once you're saved and been called and chosen, the Lord wants us to be faithful to the calling of salvation.

So back to the parable of the talents. This is important because we're talking about being faithful. Notice that in these parables, the servants that did well are not commended for being successful, talented, clever, but faithful. Faithful. God is looking for faithful people. And it's so easy for us to get focused on talent—that's the world's way: talent. You can get a lot of people if you've got talent. A lot of people will gather around. God can give you talent instantly. Listen, I've known people that couldn't play piano but wanted to play for God and God moved on them; they could play piano.

Amen. It can happen. That's right. God is the giver of ability; he's instantly able to do something. He can give you the ability. So God doesn't need talent, because he can give it to you or take it. God doesn't need success; God can make you successful. God doesn't need you to be clever, because God's cleverer than all of us. But what he needs is somebody that will be faithful to take what God gives them and use it for the kingdom.

Right? And again, he doesn't—he's not expecting a certain amount of return from those people, he just wanted you to invest and get a return. And the one person that was judged as wicked, they gave back what they had, but they hadn't used what they had for the Lord. So it starts out that we're going to be—we need to be faithful. God is looking for faithful people. Again, the verse in Revelation 17:14, when the Lord's coming back, it's kind of like a preview of Armageddon, "They that are with him are called, chosen and faithful."

So probably in your mind you're thinking, you know, that phrase, "Many are called, but few are chosen." All right? The Lord says that a couple times in the gospels. So God calls us, but he doesn't always choose us because we don't respond the way God wants us to respond. And if we do respond and God chooses us, now the Lord is looking for us to be faithful. All right? So now being faithful to the Lord is going to require a few things. It's going to require, number one, knowing what the Lord expects or wants.

Right? It's hard to be faithful to something you don't know what it's about, isn't it? Right? It's hard to be faithful to the will of somebody if you have no idea what their will is. Is that correct? Right. So I've got to know. And again, the wicked person, he's judged because he knew what the Lord wanted. Thou wicked person, you should have at least invested the money. I wasn't saying you needed to double it or give a quarter; I just expected some kind of a return. So he knew what the Lord wanted. He knew the Lord wanted something from him with what he had received. Okay.

So that servant who doesn't do anything—the second thing we've got to know is I've got to commit to fulfill the Lord's expectation. I've got to know the Lord's will, but I've got to make a commitment. Again, we will not make it to heaven by accident. You won't be able to continue to live for God by accident. You must make a commitment to live for God. You must make a commitment. Okay. And again, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

And again, as I said before, if you read that chapter 6 there where he's saying it, people are looking for clothes, they're looking for food, they're looking for housing. Jesus says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." That doesn't mean you don't need to work, doesn't mean you don't need an education, but you put God first. And when you put God first, God blesses your work. When you put God first, God blesses your directions. God opens doors for you.

And God will start to supply for you. Amen. When you put God first, God now is going to take care of you. If you decide, "I want to live for God and I'm going to seek God, his righteousness," that means I'm going to try to live right myself like him, right? I'm going to do that. God now is going to start to take care—he realizes, hey, they're human beings, they need food, they need clothes, they need a place to live. God recognizes that. He made us so that we need those things. But if he says seek him, if I'll seek him, God will start to work and open up doors for what we need.

And the biggest mistake we often make is we try to get everything all organized and lined up and all in order, and then we say, "Now when I've got this all straightened out, I'll go live for God. Oh, I know I need to live for God, but I'm going to get my house all set right, and my career and everything all set up, and I'm going to get everything just all right, and then I'll go live for God." It's not going to happen, because life will take it away. Things will come up in your life. But if you decide, "I'm going to seek God first," a lot of times you'll find out the path you had planned is not really the path God wants for you.

And then you find out when you get into the path that God's got for you, it's better than the path you were choosing for yourself. And everything that you need starts to be met. God starts to take care of you. Yeah, you'll get raises at work when other people don't get raises. That's right. You'll get days off when other people don't get days off. You'll get favor from bosses above overriding your boss. That's right. God will intervene in your life when you put God first. You'll get people that are against you because they see you succeeding and they're jealous, and God will shield you. That's right. All those things will happen.

So I've got to commit to God. When you commit to God, God is already committed to us. And again, the mistake we make so much is we want God to intervene in our life, and then we say in our heart, "Okay, I'll quit doing the things that I know are bad, but God, just fix this. And I'll believe in you, but get me out of this and I'll just continue on my way." God's not going to buy that. God wants us to serve him. We've got to do it God's way. We must yield to God. Amen. And if you reach a point in your life where you say, "It doesn't matter what God says, I'm not going to yield," God will say, "Okay," he'll step out of your life.

He will. But it's going to be dark life because he is the light. That's right. He's the light. He's the light where you've got light in the darkness in the night season. So often people don't progress in their relationship with the Lord because they don't apply what God has given them in their life. You have to look at what you got. Right? And you might say, "I don't have a talent for singing or writing or reading or memorizing or getting understanding or teaching or building or speaking." You can say all those things. But one thing we all do have: time.

God has given us all time. And what I invest my time in is the beginning of where God starts to look at our life. What we invest our time in. Okay. And again, that can mean a little bit different for each one of us. Okay. It doesn't necessarily mean you've got to be out on the street 10 hours a week or a certain amount of time a week passing out tracts, but it does mean you're spending time to know God, to seek God, to understand God, to be available for God, to follow God, to be ready to lead somebody else to God.

You're praying. And maybe you're not good at talking to people, but you can spend time praying. "I don't know how to talk to people." Okay, that's fine. God can teach you how to do that. But until you get to that point, you can at least go to your prayer closet, make sure you're right with God, amen, and prepare yourself and pray for others that need to know God. Right? And again, we go back to Acts 1:8, Jesus tells them to wait. In the beginning of the book of Acts, he tells them, "Wait till you be endued with power from on high; ye shall be witnesses." God wants us to witness of the salvation we have received.

So every Christian, once you've been chosen, every one of us needs to figure out, "How can I help fulfill that picture?" Every one of us. Every Christian. If God has filled you with his Holy Ghost or God is going to fill you, you've got to figure out, "How can I contribute to God's picture of being a witness?" Amen? And the Lord will promote us based on what we do with what we have. Because a lot of people say, "Well, I don't really have anything to do now. Wait till God opens up that big opportunity, I'm going to go for that." God's looking at what you got right now.

"Oh, I don't really have time to pray right now because I'm so busy and got all these things going on in my life, but when I get this all squared away, then I'll commit an hour a day to God." No, God wants you to say, if you can find five minutes consistently, seek me five minutes consistently. Read my word five minutes daily. Amen. God wants to see, what will you do with what you've got? Come on, we can all dig five minutes out, 10 minutes out. We can all dig 15 minutes out. Amen.

He's not—he's not expecting you to abdicate responsibility. That's not what God's asking, because that's not right either. God is not asking to throw your responsibility away, but he is asking that we take what we've got, the time and the opportunities that are there, and try to start to invest that for the kingdom of God. Amen. So we see that the faithful servants, God promoted them. It started out with five talents, two talents. But when they invested that, it doesn't say how long the Lord was gone, but when he came back, he asked an account.

"Here's what I've given you, what have you done?" So God shows up in our life. What have you done with the time I've given you? "Oh, you haven't started praying yet? Okay, so I'm not going to give you anything more yet because you're not doing anything with what I gave you already." But those ones that took it and invested it, he said, "I'll make you ruler. I'll make you ruler over more." They received promotion because they invested what they had at hand. Well, what's that saying is, you don't need to go away to Bible college—nothing wrong with that—or get a theology degree online to do something for God.

You just need to start investing with what you've got right now. And we've all got time, and we all should have a Bible. Amen. Again, applying what God has got for us. So here's some areas that we can apply things. Prayer, as we've already said. Prayer is communication. Okay. Jude says that we build up ourselves in our most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keeping ourselves in the love of God. Let's read the verse because it's an important verse. So Jude verse 20 says, "But ye beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

I'm going to say prayer will help keep you in the love of God. A lot of times we grow cold because we don't pray. We expect just the services is going to carry us through. And there's times where that's all you get because things happen in life at different periods, but as a rule, we should have prayer lives. And when you touch God in prayer, that's what kindles that relationship. That's what kindles the love of God in our hearts. Amen. That's what makes you alive.

That's what makes you—when you come to church, you're ready for God to do something, because you've already been in God's presence. He's not something that happened a year ago or five years ago, he happened an hour ago. Amen. And you're ready. You're just waiting for the—for the answer to go says go. Prayer. Prayer. Amen. Prayer. So you apply yourself in prayer. You apply yourself in reading the word of God. Okay. A lot of times we have incorrect ideas about living for God or serving God or who God is or what God wants.

And when we read the Bible, we start to understand, we start to get a clear idea of what God wants. Psalm 119:105, it says, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." What's that saying? It's saying it's telling me that I can receive direction how to live and walk in this world. If it's dark outside and I've never been there, I don't know what happens if I go right, left, or if I just stay where I'm at even. But thy word is a lamp to my feet. In other words, God's word can help me see where I am standing right now.

That's why sometimes people don't like church. They come to church and God shows where they're standing and they're not ready to deal with it yet, so they don't come back to church because they didn't like that God was saying, "That's not the right way to stand, that's not where you're supposed to be standing." So lamp unto my feet, it's a light to my path. It shows me where I can proceed. What's the right way. Amen. So prayer and the word of God. You read the word of God. Even the lineages, which can seem tedious, have got a purpose. They show the faithfulness of God.

They show people in the lineage that God made a promise and down through the lineage how God fulfilled the promise. Amen. So when you read the word of God, you can start to understand how God operates. Again, you got people that the devil will tell you, "Well, they're saved and they're going to get saved, but you're not going to get saved." The devil will tell you that. Or you started out good and you're in a rough spot, and the devil will tell you that's as far as you're going.

But if I know the Bible says that God wants everybody to be saved, I can throw that lie down. If I know that God says if I'm faithful, he'll be faithful, I can throw that lie down. Amen. But where do I find it? I find it in the word of God. It's okay if Brother Stevenson says it, it might encourage me a little bit, but when I see it in here, it's established in heaven. Hallelujah. Again, honoring the Lord. Going to church and worshipping is honoring the Lord. That's honoring the Lord. You got a lot of people today that say, "Well, I can serve God from home and I can pray from home," and all those things are true.

But the church is a body. Amen. And we all know that any body that's not connected isn't going to live. So to live for God, you've got to find a congregation and get connected to it. That's right. And a person's never going to grow, just like an arm was not going to grow if it's not connected to a body, a person will not grow if they're not connected to the body. And so again, when we look at how God models everything, Israel's a type of the church, and God had regular times of meeting. They had a regular Sabbath.

They had special times of feast days and different things of gatherings, and they were called public gatherings. They were called to those things. So if we think church is just something, "Well, I can take it or leave it, or I just need to get there once in a while," you'll never be what God wants you to be. You will never grow. You're not making the commitment that God wants you to make to be what God wants you to be. It's just like—it's kind of like thinking, "I'm going to be a bodybuilder," and I go to the gym once a month.

Right? Or, "I'm going to be a musician," and I practice on the day I got my lesson. It doesn't happen. But you have people think they can be Christians by not committing to God and doing the things that are required, that are necessary to be what God wants us to be. So Hebrews 10:25 says not to forsake the gathering together of ourselves as is the manner of some. So they must had an issue where some people weren't showing up for church. But even more so as we see the day approaching.

In other words, as the coming of the Lord gets closer, church becomes more important. We strengthen one another. It's a body, the collective gathering of us together. God does things. God does special things. Amen. And each one of us adds something to it. So even if you listen to every message that we preach here every Sunday up there, you're missing something from all the other people that are here, because it's a body. Amen. So going to church and worshipping. Again, applying to what God has given us. We're called saints, so living holy.

Saints means a holy one. 1 Peter 1:15-16 says, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." For it is written, God says, "I'm holy." We're supposed to be holy because he's holy. Okay. That means there's got to be some boundaries in your life. That's right. There's got to be some boundaries. There's got to be some personal boundaries. And they got to be more than the fence in your backyard. Amen. You got to let God draw some new boundaries. Sometimes we like the situation we're in and we don't want God to do anything.

But we have to let God draw some boundaries in our lives. Amen. Again, living holy is a way of witnessing by your lifestyle. Lifestyle. So again, we get into this mind of witnessing where we think, "I've got to know so much, I've got to be able to teach a Bible study on this subject, I've got to be able to answer every question." That's not it. Your lifestyle is the first witness. I mean, God could raise a guy or a woman from the dead, but if they come up with guns and chains and try to witness to you, you're going to be suspicious. Right?

And so our lifestyle is the first place that God wants to work to witness through. How I live, how you live. Christians, when you've got a job, Christians should be the best workers the boss has got. The best. We should strive to be the best. Do what the boss says to do, even if he told you to do something different five minutes earlier. That's right. Because our life is a witness. And in giving. Malachi 3:10, in supporting the work of God with tithes and offerings. The Bible says—we'll read Malachi 3:8, last book in the Old Testament, Malachi 3:8.

And it says, "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith," saith the Lord of hosts, "if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." When people support the work of God with tithes and offerings, God starts to bless you. God'll bless you so you can bless others. When you don't support God with tithes and you're going to church, you find out your money's always short. It doesn't work out. You don't have enough.

In fact, I have a personal story where a minister I knew that him and his wife, they had an apartment she lived in before they were married and they had rented it out, and the family that was in there quit paying the rent. And it took a year to get them out of there, and they lost all this money, even though they had a first, last month and deposit. They got them out, and then they put in another couple and they interviewed them and everything, got first month's, last month's, and security deposit, and it happened again.

And he was telling me one day at camp about it and I said to him, "Are you paying your tithes?" He said, "No." They started paying their tithes and they never had another problem with it. When you pay your tithes, God'll bless your money. That's right. God will make 90% go further than 100%. That's right. God can do that. Little is much when God's in it. That's right. Amen. So God'll bless it. It's amazing, but it works. I mean, he's done it for us all these years. We pay tithes.

Even though I was pastor, we paid our tithes directly into the church, didn't pay them to us, we paid them to the church. 40 years of working, paid the tithes in. Still pay tithes on what we get on pensions and different things. Pay your tithes and God takes care of you. God is looking for faithful people. He's looking for people that are faithful. And again, trusting God with your money. I mean, that's part of having faith is when God can talk to me about my pocketbook or my wallet. I don't have a pocketbook. So God can talk to me when God can say something to me about it.

Can he get me to give extra sometimes? And again, God is not asking us to be irresponsible. As a Christian, you've got to pay your bills. If you made an agreement, you signed a contract, as a Christian, you're supposed to keep that contract. Amen. You're supposed to be honest in your business. So these are ways we can apply what God has given to us just without going to Bible college and all those different things. By having prayer, by reading the word of God, by honoring the Lord by going to church, by living holy, by giving. These are just basic ways. Everyone of us can do that to some degree. Do you agree on that?

So again, now we're talking about God is looking for faithfulness. God is not asking anything of us that he's not already done himself. God is faithful. Say God is faithful. If he saved you, you know he's faithful. Amen. But just looking again in the Bible. All right. It says in Deuteronomy 7:9, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations." The Lord is faithful to keep his word. Israel was down in Egypt 430 years, but God was faithful to bring them out like he said.

Long time, 430 years. But God was faithful to bring them out. God promised a Redeemer to Adam and Eve in the garden 4,000 years before Jesus shows up. But God was faithful to do what he said. God is faithful. So my point is he's not asking anything of you or me that he's not already doing himself. And the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the witness of God's faithfulness. In Revelation 1:5, "And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness."

How is he the faithful witness? Because he's the Redeemer, he's the seed of the woman that bruises the head of the serpent, the first begotten of the dead. He's bringing the promise back that those in Christ will rise again. He's overcoming death. Amen. The prince and kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, Jesus is the answer to the problems. Hallelujah. Amen. God is faithful. He's faithful to keep us from temptation, the Bible says. I mean, we could talk about God being faithful the rest of the morning.

But 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it." When temptation, when trials come your way, the first thing is: did I miss God? Did I sin and I got sin that's not there? If I haven't missed God and I don't have sin in my life, God is watching. God's in control.

He's not going to let a trial be bigger on me than I can bear. God's got a way out of this for me and you. Amen. They're going to come. But again, when the trial comes, if I'm following the Shepherd, I'm just walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And thy rod, thy staff, that's the word of God, they comfort me. It's a transition; I'm just going from one point to the other because on the other side of the valley is the table prepared for me. Hallelujah. The big hallelujah shout-down's on the other side of the valley. Praise God.

Again, the Lord is faithful to preserve us. 1 Thessalonians 5:24, "Faithful is he that calleth you who will also do it." Now, it says in the previous verse that the God sanctify you holy, preserve your whole body, spirit, soul till the coming of the Lord Jesus. Faithful is he that calleth you who will also do it. God is faithful to keep us. Amen. So again, accomplishing, if you're going to be faithful, this comes back to commitment. Any goal in life you're going to accomplish, you've got to make a commitment. Amen.

If you're going to make it through school, you've got to commit to finish. Right? If you're going to join a team and you get on, you've got to commit to do the work. If you're going to be a husband or wife, you've got to commit to having a family. Commit to being a unit. Commit to sharing. Amen. So being faithful to the Lord requires this type of a commitment: our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Jesus said it—it's on the screen there: "The first commandment is Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment."

So if I'm committing to God, he's got to have my heart, my soul, my mind, my strength. If I just give him my mind, I'm not really committed. If I just give him my heart or my mind, I'm not really committed. If I just give him my heart, my mind, and my soul—strength means I'm putting some effort physically into serving God. Serving God requires a commitment. And you can't be faithful if you don't know the commitment. And God is looking for faithful people. Again, proper commitment requires planning.

So just a couple examples: Solomon required seven years to build the temple of Solomon. He had to be committed to that, but the commitment started before Solomon was even king. David made the commitment. David made such a strong commitment that even when he's told, "You can't build it," he kept planning and gathering material and preparing what he could do for those that were going to do it. That's commitment. You know, some people in church, if they don't get the position or the way they want, they lose their commitment.

David kept going even though it wasn't turning out the way he wanted; he said, "It's not that I do it, I just want it for God. And if I can't do it, I'm going to help somebody else do it because I want it for God." So the commitment is you commit to have what God wants in your life and what the body is. Amen. And commitment does means doing small things. Okay. In the book of Luke 16:10, Jesus said, "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much."

So again, sometimes we think, "Well, it's just a small thing." Your five minutes of prayer every day if you've made that commitment is a big thing. It might seem like a small thing, but it's a big thing. Your dollar, if that's what you've committed to God, is not a small thing; it's a big thing if you committed it. God is waiting to see what we do with the small things. God says, "If I can trust you with a penny, I can trust you with a dollar. If I can trust you with a dollar, I can trust you with ten dollars. If I can trust you with a penny when no one's looking and you could have stolen it, then I can trust you with a thousand dollars." Amen.

So commitment means being faithful to what we have now. And again in verse 11 in Luke 16, "If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon," worldly possessions, money, "who will commit to your trust the true riches?" In other words, if I can't be faithful with what God's already given me, God's not going to give me other stuff. So I've got to commit what God's given. So a normal question would be, "Why should I commit to the Lord?" Well, and I think we've talked about these already.

Number one, committing to the Lord's going to help maintain your relationship with God. He's already committed. God already committed to keeping his word, God committed himself to come robed in flesh, to suffer for our sins, to purchase us, to send back his Spirit so we can be his, to prepare a place for us so we can be with him, so we can reign with him. God is already committed to us. He's committed to us. And so committing to God will help maintain your relationship.

Committing to the Lord helps prepare you to be a vessel for God. It helps you become the vessel that God wants you to be. Amen. Committing to the Lord will help pass the truth to the next generation. A lot of times the next generation fails because the generation, the present generation, has not made the commitment to God that was needed to pass it on to the next generation. Again, I can't tell you how many different stories I've heard about people about their mothers were praying mothers that prayed so hard that their hair pins shook out.

In prayer meetings, people were healed and delivered in houses, and those people are prayer warriors today because somebody made a commitment and it was passed on to them. Hallelujah. And commitment brings security because you know he's faithful because he's going to keep what's committed to him. Amen. So just to wrap it up, faith in God should lead to faithfulness. Faith in God should lead to faithfulness. Read this scripture here in Hebrews 11:11, "Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised."

Now, God's talking to Abraham across all these years, he's never really talking to Sara that much. She's got one transaction, and God says, "Why did you laugh?" "I didn't laugh." "Yeah, you did laugh." But somewhere between that laugh and Isaac's birth, she considered and realized, "If he said it, he's faithful and he's going to do it. I believe God." Would you stand here today? The Lord's coming back for those that are called, chosen and faithful. Amen. Again, knowing he's faithful should lead us to be faithful.

Are you being faithful today to what God wants you to do? I'm not asking are you believing in God, I'm asking are you being faithful with what God has given you? Are you being faithful to what you feel in your heart God is asking you to do? Are you being faithful to be a witness, to pray? Is your prayer time just limited to casting your problems up to God and trying to get relief and answers, or is there prayer that goes beyond that? "Lord, I'm praying because I just need to touch you. I just need to feel your presence. I just need to seek you, Lord. I just need some direction so I can do things the way you want me to do them, Lord. Hallelujah." Are you being faithful?

Again, it doesn't say he's coming back for them that are called, chosen and believe, but them that are called, chosen and faithful. The altar's open. You can pray where you're at or come to the altar. Lord God, we thank you. We thank you, Lord, that you are faithful. Lord, we thank you, Lord God, that you're giving us the strength to be faithful. If we'll commit what we can, you'll help us with the rest. If we'll commit as much as we can do, Lord, you'll strengthen us to go beyond what we can do. Hallelujah.

Because you're faithful. You're faithful. You didn't create this salvation so that we would fail, but you've created this salvation so that we can make it. Hallelujah. And if you see that we're trying to be faithful, you're going to help us be faithful, Lord God. Oh, help us today, Lord, to review ourselves, to look at our lives, Lord, to look in the corners of our mind and our thinking, Lord God. Are we being faithful? Are we using what we've got for you, Lord God? Are we using our time the way we ought to? Are we trying to invest in your kingdom, in your calling, in your purpose?

Lord, are we preparing ourselves vessels? Are we doing the things that we need to do in our lives, Lord God? Lord, we thank you, Lord, and we praise you. We thank you, Lord, that you're going to keep what's committed unto you, Lord God. Lord, open our hearts and minds here today, Lord, to receive an understanding, Lord God, that being faithful brings us into relationship with you. Being faithful opens the doors and windows of heaven, Lord God, and your hand in our lives, Lord God. Being faithful, Lord God, gives us the direction and strength that we need, Lord God. Hallelujah. To receive the good things. Hallelujah. Being faithful, Lord, helps us realize your faithfulness to us, Lord God. Helps us see beyond our moment, helps us see beyond our circumstance, Lord God. Lord, we praise you, Lord God, and we thank you, Lord God.

Tina Ouellette: Thank you for joining us today as we have studied the word on Apostolic Truth Radio. My name is Tina Ouellette, wife of Pastor Craig Ouellette of South Shore Pentecostal Church, located at 58 West Street in Whitman, Massachusetts. If you love praise and worship, you will love services at South Shore Pentecostal Church, and we invite you to come and worship with us. Sunday School for all ages begins at 10:00 AM and our Sunday evening service begins at 6:00 PM. Adult Bible Study and Children's Churches held on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM.

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