Mike Bickle emphasizes Jesus' invitation to greatness in His Kingdom, as outlined in Matthew 5:19. He explains that true greatness is not defined by worldly standards but is rooted in servanthood and obedience to God's commandments. Bickle highlights the importance of heart responses over outward achievements, encouraging believers to pursue faithfulness and a vision for greatness that aligns with God's perspective. He warns against the cultural pressures to seek exceptional growth, reminding us that our internal calling and relationship with God are what truly matter. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a commitment to living out the Beatitudes and teaching others to do the same, assuring that those who do will be recognized as great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thank you Jordan. Turn to Matthew chapter 5. Tonight we're going to talk about greatness. We're going to examine one of Jesus's many startling statements in the Sermon on the Mount. We've been working verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and this is one of the most startling statements of about a hundred of them that he makes in those three chapters. Father, I ask you in the name of Jesus that you would release a spirit of understanding. Lord, I ask you for living understanding to touch my heart, to touch your people. And Holy Spirit, we ask you to teach us. You are the teacher. Teach me tonight. And we submit to your authority as the great teacher. We open our spirit to you. We submit to the authority of your word in the name of Jesus. Amen. Again in Matthew chapter 5 verse 19, a very startling announcement where Jesus calls, he invites whosoever to greatness. Now when we think of Jesus, we think of his humility and his lowliness and we think of him as calling people to be a servant, and he does. But the paradox of his kingdom is that the great God wants his people to be great. But he's established a paradigm or a method of greatness, a perspective of greatness that's built on servanthood. And we all know that. Verse 19, he says, whoever, anybody who breaks one of the least of these commandments, and of course the reference, the context is the Sermon on the Mount. He has just gone through the eight beatitudes. He says, if anyone breaks the least of my commandments and then teaches other people to break them, now these are born-again believers. They're in the kingdom. They shall be called least in my kingdom. Now they won't necessarily be called least in the kingdom until the age to come, but they will be called least. We're talking about believers in the family of God. That's a pretty startling statement. I think verse 19 is probably one of the most neglected warnings of Jesus in the Bible. He goes on and says the opposite direction. He goes, and in the same way, whosoever, anybody, the most ungifted person, the one with the least ability, the least training, the least opportunity, the one with no network at all to work with, if they will do these eight beatitudes, or the word of God, but they're summed up in the eight beatitudes, but more than do them, if they teach them, if they encourage other people to do them, now not teach them on a microphone per se. Most people don't have access to a room full of people in a microphone. Most of the teaching ministry in the body of Christ is one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-three. It's teaching that's done in conversational ways, in the context of family, in the workplace. It's teaching that's done in friendship context, but it is teaching nonetheless. Meaning it's those that take a stand for what the Lord says in his word, and they contend, they urge people to take it seriously. Jesus said, if you do that, you will be called great in the kingdom. Now again, in the same way, you might not be called great in this age, and probably you won't be. More times than not, you'll be called a heretic, or you'll be called legalistic, or religious, or too intense, or too weird, because to take the word of God at face value, and apply it, and urge others to, in the context of the 21st century, the western world, even in the church, they'll roll their eyes at you, and say, come on, let's be realistic. Now it's important to understand that Jesus is inviting anybody to greatness that wants to respond. Anybody. This is startling. Now you can't repent of the desire for greatness. I mean, you can try, but the desire won't go away. The desire for greatness was built into your spirit by God purposefully. When the great God created the human race, when He created Adam and Eve, He built into the human spirit a longing for greatness. You can't repent of it and get rid of it. Now you can repent of seeking it in a wrong way. Now some people have an idea of humility that's opposite of seeking greatness. And actually, the truth is, they need to repent of their wrong approach to humility. God has called you to be great. He beckons you to be great at the right time, on His terms, through the right process, but He calls you to be great. The great God created us with a longing, and it's His agenda for your life to enter into greatness. But we can cut it short. We really can. And many believers do cut the process short. And though they enter into the glory of the resurrection, they don't enter to enter into the greatness that God ordained for them originally for their calling when He gave them their life assignment. And of course, our life assignment has many facets to it. Paragraph B. Jesus revealed a new paradigm for greatness. It's the only one that's real, by the way, and you know that. It's the only lasting paradigm, but it's the only one that's actually real, and therefore, the only one that's reliable. First, we're to focus on being great in His sight, not in the sight of men. And He will make us great in the sight of people in the age to come. He's not afraid of that. Some people's idea of God receiving all the glory, they have a nervous God that has no glory given to His people. And it's true. He won't share His glory with another, but those that are His children, He will exalt them even in His sight, and He will call their life choices great, and He will call them that. He will declare that even in the presence of the family of God forever in the age to come. He will declare this. So we're to focus on being great in His sight. That's number one. That's a big qualifier, but it's an exciting one, if you lock into it, if you really get the vision for it. The greatness will only be fully manifest in the age to come. It might be partially manifest in this age. It depends on how you define greatness. But it's true in this age, in God's eyes, but it will be openly displayed in fullness in the age to come. Now the Lord releases greatness to people in this age. It's in terms of their outward circumstances. It's the exception, not the rule. And the problem is that when God does an unusual thing in somebody's circumstances, it's fraught with many difficulties and many attacks and many problems. The calling is real, the greatness is real, but there's many attacks. One preacher said, new levels, new devils. If you enter into new levels of God's purpose, you will have new devils that attack you. That's a cute statement, but it happens to be true. Paragraph C. Now this greatness is based on heart responses. This is exciting. This is liberating. It's not based on your giftedness. Some of the most gifted people in the body of Christ will be least in the kingdom in the age to come. I call the judgment seat of Christ the great equalizer. When we stand before the Lord and He only responds to us in terms of our function and our place in the age to come, He only responds to us based on our heart responses, not based on our crowds, not based on our popularity, not based on our notoriety, not based on our money or how much we achieve, but purely based on our heart responses. He says in Matthew 20, he says it again. Verse 26, whoever desires to be great. He didn't say repent. He didn't say anybody that desires to be great, you better repent, you better repent now. He goes, good. He goes, that's the kind of resolve I'm looking for, but you have to do it on my terms, in my sight, in my process, in my timing, but nonetheless settle it that you want, you have a vision for greatness. Now when the interns first come, different internships, I'll talk and I'll talk on this subject and I tell them, it kind of startles them. I said, I unashamedly want to be great. That's my life vision. I want to be great. I want to be really great and I want to be really rich. I just, I just want to do it at the right time at the right place and that's in the age to come, but it's not a pipe dream and it's not a joke. It's serious. I make many life decisions based on my passion and vision to be great. It's real to me. It's not a joke. It's not poetry. It's real. I'll give up a lot of things and make a lot of choices now because I really believe in this calling. I really buy it and if you buy it, it will change the way that you process life. Now, I need to buy into it more. I'm not saying I buy into it enough, but it's something I really care about. It's something that's been on my mind for many years now. It's not just kind of a new thought that's come in the last few years. Look what he says, verse 26, whosoever desires to be great, anyone, anyone, be, have a servant spirit. Now, we know that, but it's, it's real. He means it. It's not look like a servant as long as a few folks are looking. He means in your spirit, cultivate a servant spirit. Do it in your family. Do it in the workplace. Do it everywhere. When no one's looking, by these heart responses to the Lord, he goes on and says the same thing a different way. Whoever desires to be first, be a servant. Now, you won't be seen as great or you won't be seen as first in this age more times than not. A few do, but again, if they do, they have added difficulties that go alongside it. I mean, Paul the apostle had the shock of his life. He's praying that the thorn in the flesh would leave. And he says, it's a devil. It's attacking me. And the Lord speaks to him. I mean, I assume the Lord appears to him in 2 Corinthians 12. He says, Paul, he goes, you have to understand. He says, this attack from the devil, it is the devil, but it's keeping you in a place of humility because you have a tendency to be puffed up because of the superiority of what I'm doing in you. And I look at that and I go, if Paul the apostle cannot keep himself in a place of humility without a little extra help, where on earth do I stand? Please don't answer that. But this is real. Because with a bit of that greatness being manifest in this age in the sight of people, tremendous other forces come into play forces in our own spirit that are negative. And then there's forces that come that buffet us both positive and negative forces, ones that we rebuke in the name of Jesus and those that we endure the difficulties. There's different categories of difficulty. Well, God invites us to be great without any regard to outward achievement. That's a remarkable statement without any regard to the size of your impact. Now, this is so liberating because though most people want a big impact, whether it's in the marketplace or whether it's in the church world or at the athletic world or somewhere, most people want a big impact. But you know, they the years unfold and, you know, they were 20. Now they're 60. Then they're 80. And it never happened. 99% of the people never happens. And they have this total perplexity to figure out why they were such a failure. And if they understand the word of God, the fact that they never became famous or big in any of those arenas is nothing at all about a statement about how they failed. But because of the values of the Western culture, if you're not big, you fail. And so this incredible pressure and energy from our culture that we internalize, that keeps us under this incredible anxiety to get big in whatever sphere we're in. And I believe that we should aim to increase whatever sphere we're in. I'm not encouraging anybody to look at little and say little is good. What is good is the will of God. It's not big or little. It's the will of God is what is good and what is wise. I'm just saying big is rare. And people say, I want to be the rare one. Well, you're thinking of the notoriety. You're not thinking of the difficulty in the attack. Most people who want big have never had big. They imagine big is fun and easy and they've never had it, but they think, hey, I'll take my chances. But my real point isn't that they aim at this or aim at that. I don't encourage people to aim at big or small. I encourage people to aim at faithfulness and always aim for increase, always for increase. But if the increase doesn't come, don't conclude you failed. That's the takeaway point. Aim for increase. How big of an increase? Well, try to find the will of God and that prophetic sense. He will give some hints sometimes about the increase. He'll give some prophetic hints, but know this, your glory in your greatness is not in the increase. Your glory and greatness is in the heart response and the heart response is far more difficult if the increase comes. It's far more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom than a poor man. And it's not because the rich man is more proud. The poor are sufficiently proud. The rich man has so many things to manage to keep his riches in place. So whether you're rich in impact or rich in wealth, it's not that the riches are a problem. It's that the sheer weight of time it takes to manage increase. It's a peril, but it's a peril that God calls his servants to embrace. So we believe God for increase, but we know that with the increase, there comes difficulty to manage the increase. And we know that more times than not, God doesn't give the increase people want. Now that sounds negative to some people because they're entrenched in the American dream and increases what is their God. But again, what we're after is greatness in the eyes of God, which will eventually be in the eyes of man, though that's not the goal. We want to be great in God's esteem. But in the age to come, because he's so wealthy and he has so much and he's so smart and he's so kind, he just manifests that greatness before others. He can't help but make it known in our eternal rewards are really God, Jesus making known how he feels about the way we loved him in this age. Eternal rewards is not about believers strutting in front of other believers in the age to come. It's about the infinitely rich God who's filled with kindness. He's making known the way he feels about the way you loved him in this age. And it just ends up with abundance and greatness and wealth. That's just how it works. So I've identified a number of points that part of our mandate in Genesis one, you can call it the dominion mandate. God gave Adam and all of his offspring the mandate to bring God's dominion to the earth, which says in a sentence to bring kingdom impact to every sphere of life. That's our mandate. And in that mandate, intrinsic to it is we want to increase and multiply what God gave us. That's the rule of the kingdom to multiply and increase what he gave us. So we take that mandate and we want to be faithful to multiply it. That's one point. And we want to be great. That's another point. But our greatness is not related to how much we multiply what God gave us. That's the tricky part. Those are not the same points at all. And the bigness of what we multiply is not necessarily God's goal. He wants to multiply, but he multiplies and then he prunes. And then he multiplies again and then he prunes. I remember talking to a very well-known ministry, one of the most well-known ministries in America with, I mean, a multi-million dollar budget just way out there. And he was talking about it after a couple decades, they've had nothing but increase. He says, what do you think? I said, well, I think pruning is coming. He says, what, what, what's wrong? I said, no, it's nothing wrong because he likes you so much. He goes, what? I go, John 15, you know the verse. If he loves you, he will prune. He goes, are you prophesying? I go, no, it's just a simple Bible verse. Everybody in the kingdom will be pruned. A few years later, I was with him and he was with some of his leaders. He goes, I remember the time Mike prophesied a few years ago we would be pruned. It was right. I wasn't prophesying. If I did, it was purely accidental. It's just Bible verses. So I encourage people to get a vision for greatness, lock into that. We're going to break this down a little bit more, get a vision for greatness, define it in the right way. And we won't cover all the notes tonight, but I have some definitions throughout these notes. We have to define greatness the right way. It's critical we define it right because our culture will not define it right for us. And the media, just the whole voice of culture, will give us a definition of greatness that's actually counterproductive to greatness. So that's, we want to hold that intention, the call to be great. Then we want to multiply that which God has given us. But remember the multiplying, it's the dominion mandate, Genesis 1 26, go forth and have dominion. The increase is not the same as the greatness. Those are distinctly different points. And the increase doesn't always mean exceptional growth. The increase can come in several different ways, spiritual ways, can come in righteousness, can come in finances, but whatever is an increase will be pruned in every sense of the word. But what folks do is they get locked into a vision of remarkable increase. And if they're a preacher, it's a remarkable increase of their congregation. And if they're in the workplace, it's a remarkable increase of their finances, but it's remarkable nonetheless. And the Lord might say, I called you to greatness, I called you to increase, I called you to faithfulness, I didn't call you to remarkable increase. You got that from the media. Or there are the exceptional words that God gives people, but it is exceptional. It's not the norm of the kingdom. And somebody says, well, I want it. I go, I think that's the wrong concept. I don't think the goal is I want remarkable growth. The goal is I want remarkable faithfulness and I want to be great. That's what you want, which is not the same thing as remarkable increase. Those are really different concepts. And if God has called you and assigned you to remarkable growth, understand it will be fraught with difficulties. It won't be the dream it appeared in your youth when you thought about it. If he gives you a voice to a million people, you will have many, many enemies among the million. If he gives you a billion dollars, you'll have many enemies within and without trying to take that billion dollars from you. And having interacted with a few in those spheres, whether it's the preacher world of numbers of people or whether it's the business world, I've had the chance to talk to a numbers of folks in each of those. And in the midst of it, they go, it's not exactly what I signed up for and not exactly what I was really, really dreaming about. And I say, but nonetheless, you can still lay hold of the vision to be great. Because the vision to be great, isn't that you touched a million people or that you made a billion dollars. That isn't what the greatness is about. It really isn't. So work through all the noise and through all the traffic and all the music and lay hold of what the Bible says about it and get locked into it. I mean, like a bulldog, lay hold of the vision for greatness and never back away from it, but understand the different issues that often get brought together. Paragraph D, there will be differences of every believer in the age to come. I'm talking about believer in a resurrected body. We will all be different. Now this is a new idea to some people, but it's a profoundly clear biblical principle. It's repeated over and over in the Bible in many ways, but Paul says at the clearest here, he says, there's one glory of the sun. First Corinthians 15 verse 41, there's another glory of the stars. Now there's billions and billions of stars. I mean, many, much more than billions. You know, we take the whole created order one star as one star differs from another star and glory. The same is true of the resurrected body of billions and billions and trillions and whatever number of stars. There is not one star that is exactly like another in the entire created order. They're all different. And in the age to come, though, we will be equally loved and we will have an access to the city. We will all have a different position, a different function, and a different capacity to experience and even to express the glory of God. We'll all be different in that capacity in the age to come, just like the angels are. If you've ever studied what the Bible says about angels, there's so many different ranks of angels with different privileges and different measures of glory in their being. And it's just like believers in this age. There's no believer that is exactly the same as another in their walk with God and their understanding, their ability to communicate the glory of God. It's all different. Every single person, paragraph F. Now, so you don't get into false humility, because I've taught on the biblical vision for greatness for over 30 years. And I only say that to say this. I've had many arguments about this subject and I run it constantly. Well-meaning people with false humility that don't know what the Bible says on the subject. And they have this idea, no, I don't like that. I want to be like Jesus. And when I tell them Jesus taught more on greatness than the other man in the Bible, that throws them off like, well, yeah, but who knows? I go, Jesus did not stumble when he gave us teaching on greatness. He didn't go, oh no, I got it carried away. I wish I could get that back. Now they're going to try to be great. No, he meant to say it. And it wasn't fleshly and he wasn't using carnal motivation. He didn't need carnal motivation. He was using the glory of God. This is a facet of the glory of God. Well, let me just mention a few. He's called us to have riches in heaven. This is real, not figurative. I remember the time where I said, I want to be great and I want to be rich. And I just want to be in the age to come. And I don't mind at this age, but that's not my goal. If God wants to give me a whole lot more of both of those at this age, I'll say yes, but that's not my goal. My goal is the age to come, locking into that area. And I'll take all kinds of losses in this age to keep my focus on that. And so the young people, they took that, I want to be rich, I want to be great. And they cut and paste and made a little podcast where I was going, I want to be rich and great. And they cut it off. And he thought they got me. I go, no, you're helping me. This is good. Makes me look stupid. It will be better for me. I go, I buy it. I buy into it. They thought, oh, that's no fun. I was supposed to get flustered. Okay. Jesus promised, look at this authority over cities, power over nations. This is real. It's not figurative. And there's not poetry. This is real. To sit on his throne, what? Now, we don't mean his actual chair, his throne in that sense, but an extension of the authority the father gave to him, which is called his throne. That they would be delegates of that authority. Have treasure in heaven, rewards, crowns, garments. And don't think that in the age to come, you're going to all get the standard white gown. And that's it. You know, some folks, when they think of the age to come, they think of that beautiful white t-shirt, that gown. And then the Lord goes, you know what? I thought of diamond jeweled houses and streets of gold and food that's unimaginable in its glory. But I forgot the dress code. No, he didn't forget the dress code. Oh no. Only t-shirts forever. No, you study what the Bible says about garments. There were some of you will have a wardrobe. I mean this for real with glorious garments beyond anything you can imagine. And there will be garments for every setting and they will have the glory of God in them in very different ways. And it's related to humility in this age. So if you like clothes, that's good. Do it the right way though. I mean it's okay to dress good now. But I'm just saying don't get so focused on clothes now that you forget your real wardrobe is coming. And again, this is kind of so novel and cute to people. It's poetry and humor. This is as serious as can be. It's real. Jesus warned them back in Matthew 5 19, the verse we started. He said, if you take these eight beatitudes and the commandments related to them that he's summing up in the eight beatitudes, you minimize them. Because you always get a group of guys together in the kingdom that will minimize those beatitudes. Kind of talk you out of them in the grace of God. Bring them down to where they don't really mean what they say. And then go teach them and encourage others to walk in the compromise you're walking in. Jesus said, you will be leased in the kingdom. I assure you, you will be. I take that warning so seriously. And I say, Lord, I want to see what these beatitudes mean. I don't want to dial them down. I don't want to dumb them down at all. And I want to take a stand. And if a lot of people are mad, I'll take my chances because you said if anybody will do them and stand for them, you know, in their conversations, I don't mean every conversation, but you'll teach them. You'll take a stand for them. You'll talk people out of compromise. You'll exhort them into obedience. He says, I'll take note of it and you'll be great on that day when we meet face to face. Top of page two. Now, Paul prayed a prayer that has many facets to it. Revelation, I mean, Ephesians 1, 17 and 18, there's many facets. We're only giving an abbreviated look at this glorious passage. Paul prayed, verse 17, Ephesians 1, that the glory of the father, oh, that the glory, I mean, that the father of glory is what I mean, would give to the people, believers, a spirit of revelation, insight, living understanding. Why? That they would know the certainty of their calling. The word hope, you could put the word confidence in there if you want, or certainty. They would have absolute certainty about their calling. That's what Paul's praying. Now, the reason he's asking the father of glory to give living understanding or to give supernatural insight, because we don't have insight into our calling by nature. Our natural mindset doesn't grasp our calling. I mean, we may know we're called, you know, to be involved in electronics, or to be a coach, or to be a preacher, or to be involved, you know, in insurance. You might know that, and the Lord maybe gave you some revelation, but that's only just a hint of your calling. There's so much more to your calling than what your job description is for a few decades. Out in the marketplace, it's much more than that. And what Paul's saying, in essence, he says, without Holy Spirit help, you won't grasp the dynamics of your calling. You'll only see the obvious, what the natural mind can see without inspiration, and you don't want to be stuck only seeing the obvious about your calling. You want living understanding. You want insight. So, I've taken this verse over the years. I said, Lord, and there's several dimensions that I don't have written here, but I said, Lord, I need living understanding about my calling. And I don't mean what city I go to, or how big my church will be. That's not what I mean. I don't mean what city, or I mean, I want to understand the facets, the multitudes of facets that go into my calling when you look at me. Because if you see your calling with a little bit of clarity, it will keep you anchored and focused. The reason why so many people are like a ship lost at sea with no anchor, they have no revelation about their calling. And what I mean is, I don't mean there's what city that they're supposed to be in, and what youth group they're supposed to be involved with. I mean far more than that. They don't see themselves through God's eyes, so their life doesn't make sense to them. And they're just like a ship out at sea, and they're happy to be in the marketplace, or to be in the pulpit on Sunday, or to be leading worship. But they don't have a sense at all as to the dignity of what they're doing, and how important it is to God. And the amazing thing is, what we're doing, most of it is so little, and so weak. I mean, by design it is. Not because of your failing God. What God has called most people to is little. And He wants it that way, but He wants them to be engaged in it with confidence that it matters to God. And if they get that confidence that it matters to God, I tell you, it puts dignity on every day of their life. Every single day of your life matters. Not just in that ethereal day when finally you're the richest guy in the city. That day may never come, and probably never will. And if that's what your calling is all about—having the most money of everyone, or the biggest church, or the biggest anything—I mean, there's a few guys that get in that role by the will of God, but it's really exceptional. And again, when they do, it's fraught with difficulties from within and from without. All kinds of attacks and pressures come against them. Well, when Paul talks about our calling, I like to identify three parts of our calling. There's an internal part to our calling—who we are in our heart. This is real. Our internal calling is actually more important than our external assignment is. And then there is not only just an external assignment—what we do in our circumstances—and it's not just in the workplace. Our external calling has to do with our home. It has to do with all of our relationships. It's more than just the job that we have. And then there's our eternal calling. So, our internal, our external, and our eternal. Now, the important part is all three of these facets of our calling are dynamically connected to each other. If you separate the three, they won't make as much sense. And what most people do is almost only think about their external calling and mostly only the crowd they will gather or the money that they will attain. And that is such a small part of their calling. And if that's all they see, they are going to have so much anxiety and confusion managing their heart decade after decade after decade. Well, paragraph B, our internal calling. It's to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. And you can read that. It's just simple stuff. We want to do and say what He does and said. That's what we want to do, regardless if anybody likes it or anybody applauds us. My number one calling is to do and say what He wants me to do and say, regardless if anybody applauds or any crowd has ever gathered. If I do that, I win. My calling is successful. And when I stand before the Lord, He'll manifest it and it'll be manifest to others as well in that day. Then there's our paragraph C, our external calling. Now, this is the one that most people focus on when they talk about, you know, what's your life dream? They mostly talk about their job description, their dream job description. And that's valid. I think it's important to have some clarity about our assignment in life, but to reduce our calling to that one subject is to have confusion in that subject that we're focused on our external calling. Our external calling won't make sense until we tie it to the other two. Because when things go bad, we go, oh no, what went wrong? The Lord says, no, I'm helping you. It's going good. I'm helping your other two dimensions of your calling. Don't you get it? Oh, I don't even think about those two callings. Well, you can't separate these three. Now in Matthew chapter 25, here's what Jesus will say to people on the last day. You were faithful in a few things. Now be over many. Now I want you to focus on the word, a few things. The reason why they're so generously rewarded for doing a few things, because that the few things were the only things God gave them. They were faithful with their whole life. It was just a few things. Then he goes on and says the same thing in a different language. I made different terms in Luke 19. He says, you were faithful in very little. When I look back over history, just in the casual glance of history, to me, it's verifiable, unmistakably verifiable that 99% of the entire human race, probably 99.9, 99% of the whole body of Christ throughout all of history, they have an assignment that's very small and it's few things. The problem is the culture said, if it's small and few, it's bad. And so they despise it in pursuit of something that grows real big, that has a lot of notoriety that God never called them to. And they live in frustration and depression because they can't ever get that big crowd or that big financial swirl. And they're denying their calling. They're ignoring it entirely. And they could be great if they did what they were told. They want to be great, but they've confused greatness with exceptional growth. Exceptional growth is what they're after, not greatness in God's eyes. And they're not being faithful to their calling. Now, the reason this is an extremely liberating word, this very liberating, because here's what it comes means to me in my heart, that if I do what I'm told, if nobody comes to IHOP, nobody comes, but I do the will of God, I win 100%. If the money goes bad, if the impact goes really low, nothing is affected in terms of my greatness with God, that is a liberating way to live. Because to imagine it only works if lots of people are applauding me, or a lot of money and influence is coming my way, that is an unbearable way to spend 50 years of adult life in that anxiety. And if God's called you to it, you don't have to fret over it, it will chase you down. You got to work hard. I mean, Joseph, he worked hard, had a couple prison sentences, but he ended up with all the stuff. I'm not saying he'll chase you down where you can be lazy. You still got to participate, you got to work hard and take risks, but you don't have to be fretting about it being big, because it was his idea for it to be big. I think one of the most confusing and debilitating things is for somebody to get a vision for big that God never gave them, and they chase it for decades in depression, decade after decade, and total confusion. He says, I never ever told you that. You got that off of a TV preacher. I didn't say that to you. Or you got it off from somebody who flattered you with a prophetic word, and it was their own imagination because they wanted to be your friend. I didn't even tell you that. Now having said all of this, I encourage people to aim at being faithful. I go, go for multiplication and go for increase, but don't make it the primary dream of your life. Make the primary dream of your life faithfulness. Make it faithfulness and understand that exceptional growth is very rare, and that is not what makes you great or not great. That is not the determining factor, and if he gives it to you, then you're blessed, and you'll need a lot of prayer because you'll have lots of difficulty with it, for real, but it's a good assignment if God gives it, and there are a few Billy Grahams in the earth. There are a few folks out there that touch millions. There are a few Joyce Meyers. Not very many. I mean, you know, one thousandth of one percent, maybe one millionth of one percent of the body of Christ has that kind of impact, but so many young people in Bible school, they think that's their goal, and I try to talk them out of it all the time. I go, no, go for faithful. Go for increase. Ask God for whispers about the size. Don't be flattered. Don't be seduced into some delusion. Be faithful, and you'll be excited every step of the way because if you get excited about faithfulness, you can have a little economic sphere, a little impact, and a little ministry sphere, and you can be excited because you know God's heart is moved, and it matters to him, and if you can connect with that, I tell you, your heart could be alive every single day, but if you're an abysmal failure until you get famous, I mean, what a horrible way that millions of people live. Let's look at paragraph D. Our eternal calling includes our role in the age to come. Roman numeral three, misunderstanding our calling. I've already said it, so I'll move on. It's just the fantasy that people get into about exceptional growth. Again, if God calls you to it, go for it, but with a sober mind of the responsibility and the difficulty involved in that calling, not with a fleshly kind of exuberance about how famous you're going to be and how easy life is going to be. It's just, it's a delusion. Make the primary dream of your life greatness in God's eyes. Make the primary dream of your life, your internal calling in this age, and work, make your external calling, make that important to you, but don't make it the primary dream of your life. I tell the story often that years ago in 1983, the Lord spoke by the audible voice of the Lord. I don't want to go through the story. Many of you've heard it. Back in May 1983, he said, in essence, this is not the language, but this is the meaning of it. One of these days, you're going to do 24-hour prayer with music. It was the most baffling concept. This is May 83, almost 30 years ago. I thought, why would I want to do that? I'm not a singer. I'm not a musician. I don't even like prayer, to be honest. I didn't. I did prayer because I wanted the fruit of it, but I didn't like prayer itself. I don't want a singer, musician, dancer, prayer ministry. No, that's not what I want to do. The Lord said to do it, and so we had a little sign. We put it up there, 24-hour prayer. We had it assigned for many years, right there in our prayer room. People would come and say, what's that? I don't know. We're going to do 24-hour prayer one day with music, I guess. They go, when, where, how? I don't know. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what that is. Well, that was a divine assignment. Well, 16 years went by. We had that sign up there, most of that 16 years. Finally, in 1999, God says, makes it clear, do IHOP. So we do it. So it's 13 years later, and there's been a lot of increase. And so I have folks from, lots of friends from all around the nation and all over Kansas City, they'll come and visit IHOP, and they'll say, wow, it happened. That little funny sign on that, you know, on the wall in the prayer room, it really happened. And here's what some of them will say, your dream came true. And I said, no, it didn't. They go, didn't? I mean, it's growing so much. I go, no, IHOP is not my dream at all. IHOP is my assignment. I will do my assignment. My dream is what happens inside my heart with God. I don't use the phrase, my internal calling. That's what I mean. That's my dream. That's the dream of my heart. And IHOP can't touch my dream. If IHOP gets really big, my dream isn't helped at all. Matter of fact, the bigger IHOP gets, the more threatened my dream is because the more I have to manage. I go, if IHOP gets real big or real little, my dream is completely unaffected. Nobody can touch my dream. I go, that's my assignment. And I'm happy for that assignment most days, but that's not what I want to do. I want to connect with his heart and I want his eyes to meet my eyes on that day and I want to hear from him on that day powerful things about the way I loved him and the way I lived before him. That's my dream. Now if that is where our success, our primary success, not our only success, our primary success is in our internal calling working. That I love God and God loves me and I'm walking it out. If I can connect with that. Beloved, I'm already successful. If IHOP gets real little, I'm still successful. If IHOP gets real big, I'm not more successful. I'm already successful because of the reality he loves me. It's connected with my heart and if I respond back to him with integrity and faithfulness, I'm already successful. Now here's the reason I'm saying this. That if you work for success in your external calling, you're working hard to be successful because you're not successful yet, that will burn you out and beat you up. But if you work from success, you can work in your external calling lots of hours, take lots of risks, have setbacks, you can have advancements, but if you're already successful before you've even considered your external calling, then you're working from a place of success already in your internal calling. If you work from success, not for it, beloved, you are not near so likely to get burnt out and to get all angry and to get bitter. So many folks that I know, they're working so hard in the ministry, they're working so hard in the workplace, they're trying to be successful so bad, but that's the only success that they connect with inside and it eludes them decade after decade and they're in so much anxiety and their failure and shame, but they could be so successful unrelated to that and they would steward that external calling in an entirely different way if they could see they're already successful, if they would respond right to the Lord. Again, if you work from success, that internal calling, you get encouragement in your labors, in your ministry. If you're trying to get success from your assignment from God, that's where you're getting it, that it will burn you out and you will get so disillusioned with it, you think, why am I doing this? We all ask the question and the answer needs to be because I've, that's the assignment I gave you, not because you're getting notoriety out of it because I gave you that assignment, that's why you're doing it. I go, okay, good, I can do it if that's the reason I'm doing it. If I'm doing it to have a bigger ministry than someone else, that is wearisome because there's so many setbacks in everybody's life. I mean, the richest guy and the biggest ministry, I'm talking about the pulpits since because we know the marketplace is a ministry. I'm saying the biggest ones out there, whatever sphere you're in, it has so many setbacks. The greatest story is filled with setbacks and what happens when the setbacks come, how do you manage it? If you can fall back to a place you're already successful, beloved, you are blessed. You are blessed. Let's go to page three. Now, I'm not going to go a lot longer. I just wanted to tell you what's on page three and four rather than go through it. I mean, line by line, Roman numeral five, the millennial kingdom. Most of you are familiar with that term. Some of you don't believe it. You think it's, it's figurative and and parabolic. It's a parable. It's symbolic. I believe the scripture is clear. It's an actual time on the earth that begins at Jesus's second coming and the body of Christ with resurrected bodies will rain literally on the earth with him. The new Jerusalem where we live with our resurrected body will come down to the earth to the very place of Jerusalem and that new Jerusalem will come down when Jesus returns in proximity to it. I don't know the exact how all the sequence works. We will live in the city. We will work on the earth. We will have resurrected physical material bodies. Beloved, it's going to be so glorious. Some folks think of the resurrection as mostly having in a kind of a ethereal spirit body, but the glory of the resurrection is your body's physical and material. It has all the properties of the supernatural realm, but it's a physical material body. You will actually eat physical food. You'll actually walk on the earth. You'll have an elbow. It will be solid when you hug each other. You won't go like through each other like, whoa, let's try that again. Like, whoa, you won't like pass through each other. You won't be floating on a cloud, playing a harp and waving at your friends every million years. Hey, good to see you, bro. That's not what's going to happen. You're going to be on this earth with the body as physical as your body is now, but in the supernatural qualities of the resurrection, you will be teaching, training. You will have a ministry on the earth for real, not figurative. This is real. Paragraph B at that time, all the kings of the earth, they'll be born again. I'm talking about there'll be people with natural bodies on the earth that will survive the end time scenario, not born again. They will be unsaved survivors of the end time, the glory and the terrible. They will live through it. They've not taken the mark of the beast and they haven't been raptured. They're unsaved survivors and there'll be millions of them and they will get saved and they will populate the earth and Jesus will come down and there will bring the new Jerusalem and there'll be an interaction with people with material, physical bodies that are supernatural with other people. Now, when an angel appears, we get a taste of that right now. When an angel occasionally appears, they will interact and tell you something, teach you something. You know, they'll, you know, we make a big deal because it's so rare that, but there's many, many, many stories throughout history where angels have appeared and done that, but because it's so rare, we don't think so much about it, but that's a parallel to it. But even a better parallel to it is in Acts chapter 1, and I have it on the notes, where Jesus, Acts chapter 1 verse 3, Jesus with a resurrected body, with a resurrected body for 40 days, taught the disciples who did not have resurrected bodies. That was a window into what it's going to be like in the age to come. He ate with them. I mean, my favorite story is the Alan Hood story. I say it every time that he ate fish with them. The same fish they ate, he ate, then he walked through the walls. You know, Alan Hood says, did the fish go with him? I love that question. I don't really want an answer. It's kind of a joke, not a, I've had people email me and explain, I go, I don't really want to know. But that 40 days, a man with a resurrected physical body, and he could manifest the glory at any level he want, you know, just for sake of analogy, a scale of 1 to 10, you know, when he's with the disciples on the road of Emmaus, he's hiding his glory. They just think he's a regular guy who doesn't get what's going on. Then he turns it up. I mean, and he can go to any level he wants to where he visits John on the island of Patmos with lightning coming out of his face and sun and fire. And John falls like a dead man. You know, he says, I didn't really grasp quite who you were, Jesus. I mean, I've seen you in your glory, but nothing of this level, trembling like a dead man. And Jesus might be saying, no, I'm only at about a three right now, John, I could really ramp this thing up. He's going to light up the entire new Jerusalem from his face. Well, he's got all kinds of levels he can turn, but I believe that even the saints will be able to veil their glory like Jesus does when they interact in various levels, many, many different dynamics of this. And a lot of these kinds of ideas are you find precedent for them throughout the scripture. If you study it, a lot of folks don't study the subject. I care about it because I, it's related to my calling. I want to understand my calling. I want to make sense of my internal calling, my external calling, my eternal calling. So the three of them together can help me interpret things and not lose my zeal when I face difficulty. And if I can see those three by the spirit of revelation, and I don't mean some awesome revelation, I mean just a little bit of the Holy Spirit making it alive to me. That's all I mean. I don't have some great revelation, but as the years go on, it becomes more alive to me. That's what I mean by the spirit of revelation. It seems more real. And if it, if I see those three realms, then when I am confronted with compromise or difficulty, I'm not near so tempted to quit and just give up and give in. I go, no, it makes more sense. I'm, I don't just have an external calling where things are going bad. I have an internal and an eternal, and they're all connected together. They're all one reality together. But it takes revelation to get it. That's why Paul prayed that the spirit of revelation, that you would know the hope of your calling. Turn to the top of page four. Then, you know, through the years, again, now I said that I've taught this 30 years, meaning I'm trying to be, say, I'm a hot shot at that. I mean, I've had lots of arguments about this. That's, that's the point I'm trying to make. Lots of folks will, I don't want rewards. You know, as though Jesus kind of stumbled when he offered us rewards, and we've already covered that. And what they, they, they do want rewards. You know, no, I just want Jesus. I go, well, you got a wrong view of rewards. You have a paragraph, a secular view. You, your idea of rewards is you're going to be, like, strutting in front of people. That's not what rewards are. Rewards aren't about strutting in front of people in the age to come. Yeah, I get why you don't want that. That's not what they're about. When Jesus was rewarded by the Father, I mean, as, I mean, he's fully God, but as a man in his obedience, his reward was the authority over the nations. That was an actual reward from the Father to Jesus in his humanity. I mean, Jesus, as God, created the heavens and the earth. So, I mean, they're already his. But as a man, he would govern all the nations, and that's his reward. But, that's part of his reward. But Jesus, his view of authority is that he's, he's using that authority in partnership with his Father. And our view of authority and rewards, we want to be with him where he is. I want to be working together with him. I don't want to strut in front of people in the age to come. I want to be working in close proximity to Jesus to the fullness of degree that God has ordained for me to be. And, beloved, it does make a difference what we do with our internal responses to God. It really makes a difference. The grace of God will get you in heaven for free, but your faithfulness will determine your function, your station, and the capacity you have for the glory of God in that time. So, you get in for free, that's grace. But even our works are so fraught with weakness. I mean, my works, my faithfulness is so, you know, in the human sense, I go, God, my faithfulness is so weak and pathetic. Why would you reward it? Because I'm so generous, not so kind. Even that's grace. I mean, don't think that your good works being rewarded isn't filled with God's generosity and his grace in evaluating our works. I mean, I know what I do. I go to prayer meetings. I'm distracted. I'm bored. Not every time. Sometimes. Then I go to leadership meetings and I say wrong things. Then I go and preach and get confused and feel a little bit sluggish, and then I go witness to somebody, and the guy doesn't respond, and then it doesn't work, and then I go home. I go, was that like a day of works? Yeah, good job. Great job. You're kidding. Oh yeah, this is awesome. Like, why? That's the grace of God. My point is, even our works being rewarded is filled with grace. So, don't imagine you're earning anything by going to some prayer meeting. Like, nobody would give you money to do that, but God will give you rewards forever for obeying him in the marketplace, in your home. Humble yourself to your wife. Serve your children. You'll be rewarded forever. Those are this real stuff. Well, people think they don't really care. Matthew 25, the very end of the verse, Jesus said, talking about rewards, you will enter into the joy of the Lord. You will enter into the enjoyment of that reward. You will be excited when Jesus makes known how he feels about the way you served him. That's what rewards are. Paragraph C. Read these verses on your own, but it's the idea, difficult circumstances now, if we respond right in them, actually work for us. I mean, the devil attacks us. We rebuke the devil. We resist the devil. He keeps attacking us. We use the name of Jesus. We respond right. We actually get—it works for us. We're better off. That doesn't mean you want an attack, but at the end of the day, every difficulty that comes your way, regardless what the source says, if you are in a posture of agreement with God and you walk in humility and faithfulness, it works for you. It enriches your station in the age to come. It's amazing. Well, let's—let me see. I got one more thing, and where does it go? I lost it somewhere here. Well, I'll just say it. Is that I view—I want to see where paragraphs are at. Oh, yeah. Paragraph B. I view—I'm going to end with this. I view our 70 years on the earth, 80 due to strength—that's what Moses said—as an internship. It's real. This is our internship. That when we—we do our assignment here, and when we stand before God, we get our primary earthly ministry then. This is not your primary earthly ministry. This is an important one. It is not a joke. This is not a practice game. Our assignment in this age on the earth matters immensely, but it's not your biggest or most important assignment on the earth. You are in your internship right now, and if you know you're in your internship, you steward your heart in a different way than you think this is as good as it gets. This isn't as good as it gets. You're in training right now. Billy Graham is in his internship. He's filled more stadiums than any man in history preaching the gospel. He's still an intern. When he goes into the age to come, his primary earthly ministry will be given to him, and it won't be given to him based on how many people he led to the Lord. It'll be based not on the size of his impact, but on the size of his response of his heart. So, we're all interns now. Now, you talk to a med student. You know, they'll go to four years of undergrad, then they'll go to four years of med school, then they'll go to a couple years of residency, and then they'll do, you know, more of this and more of that, whatever. You know, they'll pile up. They'll have 10 or 12 years, and they'll be in debt. I'm just making this up. I don't know the real numbers, but hundreds of thousands of dollars. They work 10 or 12 years, you know, 12 to 15 hours a day, whatever it really is. I don't know. I've talked to a few doctors over the years. They go 10 years, 10 or 12, 15 hours a day. They end up in debt, two, three, four, five hundred thousand dollars, and they don't think it's weird at all. Why? Because they have in their mind a picture of a 50-year career that's worth 10 years of difficulty. Makes sense to them. Go 50 years for this to happen. I endure 10 years, no money, long hours, doing all the difficult workout. 10 years for 50 makes sense. Well, if 10 years for 50 makes sense, and it does, why not 70 years for a thousand? It's the same deal. Let's endure a lot of things now. I'm talking about in our obedience, in our humility, in our serving. Let's do 70 years for a thousand, because it really is how we're doing it. Amen. I'll end with that. Let's stand.