Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of pursuing 100-fold obedience to God, explaining that spiritual growth requires continuous effort and commitment. He illustrates this through the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, highlighting that those who do not actively seek to deepen their relationship with God risk losing what they have. Bickle warns that complacency can lead to spiritual dullness, while those who strive for more will receive greater blessings. He encourages believers to aim for complete obedience, as true faithfulness will be rewarded in the end. The sermon serves as a call to action for individuals to assess their spiritual lives and commit to a deeper pursuit of God.

Being here with us at this season of his life. And Lord, I thank you for that. I honor you for that. I ask you to breathe on his spirit in a fresh way. Lord, I ask you to give him those visitations like in the days of old. Renew them again. And I ask that you would renew people's hearts even now in the hearing of the word. And I thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, we're going to talk from Matthew chapter 13, the parable. And I'm calling this the wisdom of pursuing, the wisdom of pursuing a hundredfold obedience. I'm going to begin here. Oh, by the way, this document, and whenever I give a teaching, often I like to make a handout. And it's on the internet right now. You can download it if you want. And we put it on earlier in the day. And we do it on Friday nights and Saturday nights as well. So whether you're at home, you can tap into it from your, on your computer at home. You can get the notes at home. We've had, I hear reports all the time of people saying, I just stayed home Friday night and listened to it at home. Got the notes and took my notes and followed right along with it. And it makes no difference to me one way or the other. So if that is helpful for you, then that's more practical than just do it that way. But the notes are available and they're on the internet typically an hour or two before the service starts. Okay. Roman numeral one, the mystery of how the kingdom of God operates, the mystery of how it operates in Matthew chapter 13, verse 11, Jesus is calling his leaders together. And he's going to teach them a pair, a parable. And in this parable, he's going to give them the way the kingdom of God operates the secret operation of the kingdom. He's going to talk about here in verse 12, but in verse 11, he says, uh, Jesus answered and said, because it's been given to you to know the mysteries or the secrets of the kingdom. Now we want to know the mysteries of the kingdom now. So verse 12, he's going to give them one. And it's a very unusual mystery. It's a mystery that we don't normally even think much about, but Jesus said, this is one of the most powerful mysteries of how the government of God, how God's leadership works in the church. It seems a little strange, but it's really important. Here's what it tells them. Verse 12, here's the mystery. One of them, whoever has to whatever person who has something from God to him, more will be given and he will have an abundance over time. However, whoever does not have, he's talking about the person that the Lord's given something to, but he's not responded in obedience. So he's not laid hold of it yet. It's been offered to him, but he hasn't laid hold of it. He doesn't have it. It's within his reach, but he doesn't actually raise up and take hold of it. He says, whoever does not have even what he has will be taken away from him. Now that's a strange sounding principle. It's a very important one because it's how the kingdom of God operates in every one of our lives. And here's what it means. He's saying this, I'll put it in a little different way. In order for you to keep whatever God has given you, in order for you to keep the ground you have right now, maybe you've had a breakthrough of an area in your heart of obedience and you took new ground. In other words, you fought against the enemy. Your heart was raging in anger, bitterness, lust, covetousness, pain, rejection, and you broke through to a certain degree and you took new ground back from the enemy. In order to keep that ground, you have to keep taking more ground or you will lose what you have right now. The only way you can keep what you have is by getting more. If you're not going steadily forward in your obedience, you are actually going to go backwards without you even knowing it. You will go backwards and that which you have, that which you have been offered by God, but you haven't laid hold of yet, it will soon be out of reach for you. Now this is a very, very important principle because every one of us in this room today, three months from now and a year from now, you will either be, what you have in God today, three months from now, you will have lost some of it or you will have increased it. It won't stay the same. The only way you can keep the ground you have now is by taking new ground. To the man or woman that has, more will be given because what he's talking about, they have something in God, they have gifts, they have a heart of obedience, they have a certain amount of grace on their heart and they're pursuing more grace, more obedience, a deeper commitment and the commitment that they have will grow and grow and grow. But clearly, most often a person has a little bit of obedience in their life and they're not pressing for more and they lose the spirit of obedience they have now. It actually goes away and diminishes little by little. Now most believers I know don't even know that is how the kingdom of God operates. That's a strange idea to them, but it operates that way in their life and it always has and it always will in this age. Jesus is really wanting them to take this serious. I've met, you know, the folks and you know, they've been around and they had a little bit of a spirit of prayer. They had just a little bit going on in their heart in that way and they were taking their relationship with the Lord casual and the spirit of prayer they had today, they lost it a few months later and they didn't have it anymore. Somebody has a little bit of the spirit of God, a little bit of the unction of God on them when they lead worship and they don't really pursue the Lord and the unction that they operated in, they lose it in a few months or a few years. It's true of everything. Think of, I found this true in my life. I've lost ground in God before and some of the areas that were so fiery in my spirit one season, I didn't, it was hard to lay hold of them again in another season, but by the grace of God, it's happened the good way as well. Things that I had a hold of a little bit, I pressed it and a few months later, I had a deeper hold on the things of God and my heart was more alive in God. So he teaches them this principle, verse 12, I'm going to read it again. Matthew chapter 13, verse 12 to whoever has, you've got a spirit of obedience. You've got a little bit of breakthrough. You're laying hold of it. You have something and yet you're pressing in is the idea. The Lord will give you an abundance. If you keep pressing forward. However, whoever does not have, it means it's been an offer to you. You haven't laid hold of it yet. It's the promise. It's the wooing of the Lord. You haven't laid hold of it yet. The Lord says, if you don't go reach for it, if you don't press for more breakthrough, even what you do have the grace you have on your heart, you will lose some of it. If you don't gain ground, you will lose the grounds you have now. And I've been in ministry 30 years and I have watched this principle so many times. I've seen so many people, 1980 by 1985, the grace they were operating in 1980 was gone in 85. They were a different person negatively. I've seen a lot of people in 1990 by 1993, the fervency and the fresh tenderness was far gone and they were stuck into bitterness with a dull spirit. I've seen it so many times. The fiery ones today are the burnouts tomorrow because they think their fiery spirit today will always be there and they don't know that the only way their fiery spirit will stay is if they get more fiery than the fiery spirit they have now will stay and increase. But if they don't increase, they will actually lose it. I believe this is one of the most valuable yet miss, it's one of the most valuable principles of the kingdom of God, but not misunderstood, just neglected, just completely not even thought about. Now he's going to go on and he's going to tell them some more in verse 14. He says, I'm going to kind of just comment on it as I read in verse 14 goes, the prophet Isaiah, the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled which says, he's talking to the negative group, he says they hear the word of God but they don't understand it and the reason their hearts are growing dull. Our hearts grow dull little by little by little and if we don't press in the dullness creeps on and grows and gets more in more areas of our heart. Now this is Jesus talking about how the human heart works. He goes, Isaiah prophesied this would happen to you. I've watched it for many years, thousands of times operate in people's lives because they don't take it serious. Verse 16, but he says, blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. Verse 17, for surely I say to you that many prophets desired to hear the great things you're hearing but they did not hear it. Therefore, verse 18, now he says, I'm going to tell you a parable to back up this principle. The parable that follows from verse 18 on to 23 is specifically designed to give an elaboration and an explanation to this principle that if you have more you get more but if you don't press in you lose what you have. So here's the parable. Now I'm only going to abbreviate the parable. There's four, he says there's a farmer that goes out and he has seed in his hand and he takes the seed and he throws it and there's four different types of soil. Now the seed is the word of God. Most of you are familiar with this parable and the first type of ground they throw it on it's the people who just say, I don't want to hear the word of God and I don't, I'm not, I'm not going to comment much on that. The second type of soil is that they throw the seed out and the second type of soil they go, oh I love God and then a month later they're already backslidden. It didn't take at all. Then the third type of person who hears the word of God, verse 22, I'm just tapping into the third type because I just want to give the briefest thing on this parable because I'm going to get on to another point. I'm just building the foundation here. He said the third type of guy, verse 22, he received the word but the garden of his heart was full of thorns and these thorns were the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the thorns were choking the growth of the word. There's people in this room undoubtedly you've received the word with joy and you said praise God but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of money has choked the word in your heart and the word's boring to you. The thorns have choked it in your heart, can't feel the power of it. It's very very common experience because the garden of your heart is choking the word of God. That's not even really what I want to focus on. I want to focus on the fourth type of soil. The fourth type of soil is in verse 23. Now this is the good group. This is the group that's responding right but within the group that responds right there's even three different categories within that group and that's what I want to draw attention to. Now most of the people in this room here are in this fourth type of soil. You're not the first three types of soil. You're in the fourth. You want to obey the word of God. That's in your heart. You've already decided most of you you would not be in this room if you had not decided that. You've already decided I want to obey the word of God. I want the word to take root in the garden of my heart and I want to bear fruit. I want to see great things happen in my life because the word of God. Now here's what he tells in verse 23. He says this out this fourth group they receive the word and it falls on good ground which means the garden of their heart. Means their heart says yes. There's a yes in their spirit. They hear the word. They understand it. I mean in the general sense doesn't mean they understand everything but they have a general yes in their spirit and they love God. He says and indeed it bears fruit in their life. It produces something. It produces a by-product in them. Now here it is. Here's the phrase. To one guy they get a hundred fold return. To another guy it's only 60 fold and to another guy it's 30 fold. Now let's go to a paragraph a. Jesus is using a very familiar agricultural illustration to teach how the kingdom of God operates. He was teaching uh he was using an illustration that everybody that heard him understood it because it was a agricultural society. Everybody had farmers. Most everybody was a farmer nearly. He says this. He goes I'm going to parallel the kingdom of God to a farmer who went to work for months and maybe a farmer would go to work and he would plant the seed in June and he would work June, July, August, September for four months under the hot sun and in October he would get a harvest and everybody understood that kind of concept and then when the harvest would come he would cultivate his field so he would bring the harvest crops and go sell them in the marketplace so he would work all summer June, July, August, September he would harvest and then he would bring his crops to the marketplace then he would finally get his money. He would get his return. Now here's what would happen. Often if a farmer had a thousand acres of ground he would work that thousand acres of ground and very often a hundred of the acres would be bad ground. So he would not get a hundred fold return from his property. He would only get 900 acres. A hundred acres he would get a 90 fold return. 90% of his ground would bring forth crops he could sell and get a payback. He would take it and any farmer mostly would be pretty delighted to have a hundred acres, a thousand acres and to have 90% of it bear forth a crop they could sell at the harvest time in October and get all that money. That's what he's talking to him about. He says now here in the paragraph in the middle says if he neglected, if he neglected to cultivate his field maybe he got lazy. Maybe he only harvested 60%. He only worked on 60%. He's only going to get a 60% return when he goes to the marketplace in October. He's only going to get 60% of what he could have received in the Lord or could have received as a farmer. Now Jesus is taking this idea and applying it. He says even those with the spirit of obedience, even those that have a yes in their spirit, he says even some of them will only get a 30% return on their life of walking with God. Maybe they'll walk with God 10, 20, 30 years and they may only get 30% of that time actually bore fruit that God esteemed and remembered. He goes it's still good, it's fruit but it's only 30 fold. This is the good category. Some believers maybe will walk with God 20, 30 years, whatever depends on what they got saved, maybe 50 years. But only 60% of what they could have had they actually get when they stand before God. But some people and I'm telling and I'm saying this it's important to know this they get a hundred percent and it's important to know that they still have weakness. They still have failures but when they failed, when they hit their weakness, they would stumble and fall and they would repent of their sin. They would repent of their failure instead of camping out in it, they would repent of it. They would push delete, get right back in the game and they could still receive a hundred percent of their potential of what God offered them when they stand before God on the last day. They could get a hundred fold return. Now of course every one of us right now should be thinking about our own lives. When I stand before the Lord, I've walked with the Lord now 35 years or so, 35 years. Now out of that 35 years, am I operating at 60 percent of my potential in God? Am I operating at 30 percent? Am I operating at a hundred percent? Only the Lord knows but one thing is for sure that when I stand before the Lord, the Lord will give me according to the percentage of what I said yes to before him. He says Mike I gave you x amount of years up to now he's given me 30 years in ministry. 35 years in the Lord and 30 of them have been in ministry. He's saying I've let you labor for 30 years. Let's look at what percentage, what fold of return of your 30 years of ministry is going to actually last and count on the last day. So he was putting this before them. Let's look at B. Principle number one of this parable. There is a harvest that's coming. There's a payback. There's a return. Now for the farmer, if he started planning in June, the payback might be October when he brought all of his fruit or his crops to the marketplace. He got the return. He got the payback then at the harvest time. Now the harvest, principle number one, the harvest test, there's three ways you can apply the harvest. Three ways you can apply it. Number one, the primary harvest is at the end of the age. You can look at the verse right there in Matthew 13 39. The harvest is at the end of the age. The main payback time for your life and my life is after the second coming. That's the main payback time. We have to understand that. The main payback time is not in this life. It's afterwards. Number two, there is a fruitfulness that is in terms of impacting people right now, meaning you're ministering to some people. You're bearing a little bit of fruit in people's lives. I'm bearing a little bit of fruit in people's lives. There's a little bit of fruitfulness that's happening now, and that applies to this parable, but that's not mostly what this parable is about. It's not mostly about the fruitfulness of my ministry. It's mostly about the fruitfulness of my faithfulness at the heart level, because a lot of people measure whether they're going to get a 30% return, a 60 or 100% by how effective their ministry is. And Jeremiah preached for 50 years and didn't have any converts. Yeah, his ministry was utterly ineffective in the human sense. But I assure you that when he stands before the Lord, he will have a high reward because, excuse me, the hundredfold, the payback is not in your effectiveness. The payback is in the faithfulness at the heart level. That's what the hundredfold is about. The hundredfold is what God pays us back according to the measure of what he offered us. He doesn't, he doesn't ask you to attain to more than he offered you. The Lord has offered me a certain amount of grace, a certain amount of grace to be obedient at the heart level, and he's offered you some as well. He's offered all of us a certain amount, and the Lord's looking at me saying, Mike, I'm going to measure you by what percentage you've answered at the heart level of faithfulness. And the reason I'm emphasizing this is that some people get really focused in on the impact of their ministry, and they miss the point of the parable. The parable is about heart faithfulness. Okay, let's go to principle C. Let's go to principle C, I mean, letter C, principle number two. I've already said it, but I just want to lay it out again that the return that you will receive or I will receive is directly related to the quality of your work in cultivating the fields. The work that you and I, the payback, the return that we will receive is directly related to the measure of our faithfulness at the heart level. Principle number three, one of the mysteries of the kingdom is that God, which I've already said already, but I just wanted to lay it out here again to you. One, two, three. God gives abundantly more to the response. If you press in today in 2005, you will have more grace on your heart in 2006. If you press it in 2006, you end up with more grace on your heart in 2007. However, if you neglect grace today, if in May 2005 you get in a spiritual bad mood, you will and say, ah, bah humbug, I'm just going to draw back. You will lose ground that you have right now in your heart. That's this, that's, those are the three principles. If you want to get again, get those again, you can just get this off the internet and just kind of look at them again and read them carefully and slowly. Okay. E Jesus's goal in this parable was to present the wisdom of pursuing a lifestyle of a hundred percent obedience because Jesus wanted the people to get a hundred fold return on the potential of what God gave them. Again, I have had 30 years of ministry and the Lord wants the Lord's desire is that all 30 years of my ministry, I would have faithfulness in it. And when I stand before the Lord, I get a hundred percent return on 30 years. And the Lord says, what do you think, Mike? And I don't know, you know, I'm thinking, God, I surely want that, but I don't know. And I can't measure it. You know, uh, maybe you think I've thought this many times, Lord, why don't you kind of give me a tip off and maybe I've never heard an answer, but the answer may go something like this. If I told you you were doing good, you'd get proud. If I told you you'd get doing bad, you'd get discouraged and quit. So why don't I not tell you how you're doing? I'm just telling you that when I meet you, I will measure you according to the opportunity I gave you. I gave you X amount of years in the Lord, and I'm going to see what percentage, what fold of return of payback I'm going to give you for those years. But it's only based on the faithfulness, the way that you obeyed me at the heart level, not how famous you were, how obedient you were at the heart level. We've got a lot of young people and I'm, and I'm, of course I'm talking to everybody, but I'm really aiming at the 20 year olds. There's a, our culture says, if you're really going to make it in ministry, the bigger, the platform you get, the better you are. I'm telling you that is not the truth. The bigger, the heart you have of obedience. And then we stand before God because our major calling comes after we meet the Lord and the Lord's going to measure my heart according to my faithfulness, not how big my conferences are. The Lord does not care about how big my conferences are. He cares about what's happening in my heart when nobody is looking. And he's going to give me 30, 60, or a hundred percent payback according to how I pursued him through the years. If I'm in that fourth category, which I trust I'm at. F, and I trust that every, most everyone in this room, if not everybody's in that category of, uh, that fourth category of, of either 30, 60 or a hundred, but I don't want 30 fold return. I don't want to stand before God and maybe I've been in ministry 50 years and the Lord says, I'll give you 30% and you're in the good category. I go, no, I don't want 30%. I want a hundred fold return and pay back for my years of serving the Lord. And that's what you want. And many of you are 18, 20, 21, 22. This is the time to set your heart on this. You don't want to wait till you're 30, 40, or 50. And then to figure out what the, what the score is. You want to go hard now and begin to give yourself because this principle is real. F now in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus's first sermon, he tells them to go for a hundred percent and he calls it, this is a very, he does this on purpose because Jesus, you know, being the King is utterly not afraid of anybody not liking his teaching. His teachings were so politically incorrect. He would walk into town and lay out this teaching and the whole city would go, no way. And he didn't, he didn't, he didn't go, oh no, I better go pray about that. He stayed steady. He goes, if you know who I am, you know, I'm not one bit troubled by the fact this whole town does not accept my teaching. My teaching is the standard of judgment forever. And he just held, he holds his ground unmoved. It wasn't even a struggle for him. He didn't like, you know, I'll give a teaching and somebody, that's really off. And I go, oh Lord, am I right? Am I wrong? You know, up, down, up, down, in, out, up, down. Jesus didn't, didn't do any of that. So he lays it out there. And sometimes he laid it out there really in your face on purpose. And here's one of them. He could have said a different, he didn't want to. Matthew chapter five, verse 48, which is the, which is the pinnacle verse on the Sermon on the Mount. It's the, it's what the Sermon on the Mount is all about in one sentence. Here it is, Matthew five, six, and seven. He says in Matthew five, 48, he goes, be perfect. He says, be perfect. Go what? And what in our context, it means be mature, but don't dial it down. Mature is pretty serious. And what he's talking about is he said, go for 100% obedience in every area of your life. He says, don't go for part of the way, go 100% of the way determining your spirit. There's not one area you will compromise on. He says, be perfect. He presses them. Now that is so offensive in our culture. He would be booed out of town. He would never build a church on that kind of doctrine in the culture of our nation today. He's not really concerned about the culture of our nation. He's concerned about the culture of his kingdom because God has a people across the earth that won a hundred fold. They want a hundred percent return on their life on the earth. That's what a hundred fold remains. A hundred fold means God gives you a, and he's gracious. God's editing process. You, we stumble. We all stumble. We stumble often. We repent. We don't camp out of that area, or maybe we even do for season. And then we repent and we go hard. I'm telling you, we can still have a hundred fold within our reach because the hundred fold is attainable to weak and broken people. There are no super saints. They just don't exist. We imagine they exist. We read the biographies of Charles Finney and John G Lake. I guarantee you if they were part of our leadership team right here, we'd go no way. They're kind of dorky. Look at those guys. They're weird little guys because when you get their biographies, they become bigger than life. But if they were like real normal, they're weird. Like me and Stuart and the other guys around here, that was your opportunity to shout me down, but you missed it. No, I'm telling you, there are no super saints. We read their biographies. He'd get awestruck. But if we met them, we would go, you're kidding. This is that guy. You're kidding. You know, he's got all these little personality, little things. And you think, oh my goodness, my point is this a hundred fold return on your life. When you stand before God is possible to people who aim for it with all of their weakness, because the Lord edits our life through grace. And there are people that will receive the hundred full return and they have all the pain and lust and disadvantages of everybody. I mean, we all got a bunch of them. We all kind of assume our story is worse than everybody else's, but everybody's got a story of why it's hard to do it. Every human being in history has a reason why it's hard for them to do it. Let's look at G the pursuing of a hundred fold obedience. The pursuing of it is different than attaining it. I don't believe I will ever attain a hundred fold, a hundred percent obedience in this life. I don't believe I will ever have a day where I'm in total perfection before the Lord returns. And there's no real threat of that happening in the near future, but it seems kind of out there right now, Lord, how close am I? Lord says, don't worry. You've got so far to go that, that you don't have to worry about that right now. So I'm not concerned with attaining it. I'm concerned with pursuing it, not attaining it. I've talked to folks through the years and they want to know, they want to measure themselves. I go, forget it, forget it. I don't know how, how far I am or how far you are. You'll never know. Don't worry about measuring it. Concern yourself with pursuing it and God will measure it. And again, I'm not trying to be negative, but I don't think we will attain perfection in our heart before the Lord returns, but we can have a hundred percent pursuit of obedience. And through God's editing process of grace, he measures our life a hundred fold return. H, this is a principle I've been saying lately. I used to say this one all the time and I haven't said it for a few years and I just need to start emphasizing this again. I've believed this for years and years, 90%, 98% obedience has a blessing on it. Pursuing it. I'm talking about, I'm not talking about attaining. I'm talking about aiming for it in the secret place of your heart. I mean, when no one's around determining every single area of my life, I'm going to line up with obedience. 98% of obedient, 98% where we're going to hang on to the last 2%. There is a, there is a blessing on that. I tell you there is, but the last 2% has double the power on the heart. The power is in the last 2%. It really is. There's a spark on the heart. There's a radiance in our spirit when every single area, every area you can think of, you're trying to bring it under obedience. I've known that at different seasons, I've known what it means to have a hold of that kind of reality. I'm going a hundred percent. I mean, I'm not attaining a hundred percent, not even close to attaining it, but I mean it. I'm working on it. And when I, when I, when I come up short in one of those four or five or 10 areas and I'm aware of it, and half the time I'm not even aware when I come up short because that's how it is. But when I become aware of it, I would repent of it on the spot. I wouldn't try to make an excuse for it. And I would recommit myself to obedience. I've had those seasons over the years. And I tell you what it means to have those seasons. And I've lost those seasons and I've got down to the 90, 95%. And that sounds good. Maybe at a first hearing, but let me tell you, there's very little power in the 95% obedience, very little power in that. It seems like at the 95% area, it seems like we got a sin magnet. We just walk through the area and everything attracts to us. The power is truly is in the last 2%. It really is. And I've had that and I've lost it. I've had it and I've lost it. I've had it and I lost it over the years. And every time I lose it, I kind of stay at the lower level for a while. And then somehow by the goodness of God, I'll hear a message or something will happen. I'll get a dream. I'll get a word. Now it'll kind of alert me again. I go, ah, why, why did I do that? How could I have lost that resolve? I had that. I get back to that place again. And the reason I'm really calling us to this, because I'm thinking of this 21 day fast is coming ahead of it. Beloved, this is 20. This is why this is on my heart. I'm going to go to this 21 day fast. And I'm saying, I want to gain the hundred percent that I've had a number of times over the years that I haven't been walking in of the last number of months. Just a little loose over here, a little loose over there. And I'm saying, I've lost the fullness of that spark in my spirit. Got a little bit of it, but not what I've known in times past. And I'm going into this fast and I'm saying, Lord, I want to go back to the hundred percent, the hundred fold. Now the hundred percent pursuit in our life now results in the hundred hundred fold payback when we stand before God. That's how those two ideas work. It's a hundred percent pursuing. And then it's a hundred fold. The return is, is the, is the money, the farmer God on his crops at the harvest place at the marketplace. Beloved, if you aim, if you aim at 60 fold, you will only hit 30 fold. If you aim at 30 percent obedience, you will only get about 5%. The only possible way to do this thing is to aim at a hundred percent. There are so many believers that are aiming at 90%. They will only get about 40% of the aim at 90. That is a fact they will hit far lower than what they aim. The only place there's power on the heart is when you determine it's a, it's an outrageous, a gloriously outrageous determination. I'm going to do it. I got this area. I got that area. I got this area. I'm all messed up. You know what? I am just going to do it. Oh my goodness. Some of you in this room right now, you're thinking, why not? Like the preacher said, if not, if not me, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where, where are the people going to come from who do this? Why not you? Well, I'm stuck on pornography. I lie with my finances. I have bitterness and I slander whenever I get in a jam. Sounds like an average Christian. No, for real. The Bible's boring. Prayer's impossible, but somehow I ended up on the IHOP staff. So I got at least pretend to like it. Oh my gosh, this is horrible because the heart is so dull in that kind of environment. And that is how most Christians live really in our nation. Many, many, many of them, but beloved people like that can determine on a Sunday night. You know what? I'm going the other way. I mean, I get free of everything by this time next week and you won't get free of everything, but you know what? I'm going to start warring a hundred percent starting tonight. Oh my goodness. You can feel the fear and excitement. Just the thought of that is terrifying and exciting. How do I know? Because I've had those thoughts before and I thought I'm going to do it. Oh, it's exciting. I'd love it. I'd love to have the spark and the radiance in my spirit. Oh, but what if I can't? Oh, and I know the rush of the high and the low and the maybe yes, the maybe no. And I just close my eyes and jump anyway. Jump out of that airplane and the Lord catches me. The parachute I'm talking about. I don't mean go jump out of airplane. That's not what I mean. I mean, I take the big jump and I said, I'm going to do it because I remember in my twenties, I would hear messages like this and I said, you know what? I'm going to go for it. I'd somewhere in there. I don't want to go in depth on all that right now, but somewhere in there in my twenties, I determined I am going to do this thing and all of my weakness, my brokenness, all of my raging emotions against holiness. I got 10 areas that scream out. Holiness isn't agreeable with me. I says, you know what? I remember those days I said, I'm going to go for this thing. Oh my goodness. Who do I think I am? And I said to myself, I'd read these biographies. I would say, why not me? Why not me? I, I'm not going to really go into this. I'll do this at another time, but at least I'm going to give you one paragraph on it. When I talk about a hundred percent obedience, let's give you five areas. Make a covenant with your eyes. Most of you know what I mean by that bridle your speech. I'm talking about a hundred percent pursuit, a hundred percent making a covenant with your eyes, not 99. I mean, a hundred percent is the covenant you may, well, you will break it, but when you break it, you say, no, I'm not doing that. You recover yourself even within the moment. A hundred percent on the speech. You'll, you'll get out there and say the wrong thing. I've made this commitment so many times. And then within the hour, I'm saying something wrong. That's not the problem. That's okay. Because it's, it's not that I do it wrong. The Lord understands that is that I go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm in a new frame of mind. That is now something I'm at war with. So I declare war in my heart. I don't make a big fanfare about it. Everybody I'm talking to, but in my heart, I go, no, no, no, I'm going to declare war on it. That's what I mean by a hundred percent obedience. The use of time, the use of money. I don't want to go into the details. And this thing that I've referred to over the years as communing prayer, communing with the Holy spirit in our spirit, those five things I realized I haven't given justice. Those, that's not my goal today to give how tos, but I just wanted to give at least give you something out there. Let's go to a Roman new rule two on the top of page three on the PowerPoint. Let's go a good boy. You did that receiving the full reward of our inheritance, the full return, the a hundred percent return. I I've have about 25 verses here, or I mean about 15 or whatever. I'm just gonna give you a couple of them. Look at first Corinthians three. You can again, you can get this down on the internet. If you want all the rest of the verses first Corinthians three, Paul said, if anyone's work, which he is built upon, if it endures, he will receive a reward. However, if his work is burned, his time on his work, his life work under God, if it's burned, he will suffer loss, but he'll be saved. You know, there's many Christians that live before God, 10, 20, 30, 40, whatever. And they suffer loss when they stand before God. So it's not on most people's minds. They really will suffer loss for real. This is real because I'm talking, I'm talking to 20 year olds. You want to set your spirit. You want the cement to dry in the right way. The cement of your heart is still wet and you're forming it. Are you going to do the American Christianity that is so prevailing in our culture of comfort and our culture of pleasure, which is hostile to the spirit of God. The American culture is hostile to the spirit, to the true spirit of God. And in the church, most of what's happening in America is catering to the spirit of pleasure and comfort. And they're masquerading it as grace. And most people that preach on grace really have almost no understanding of what grace is or what legalism is. Legalism is basically whatever bothers our flesh. We put it in the category of legalism because legalism is such a terrible disease. If something bugs us, call it legalism and get it off of us so we can live in our flesh. We can just express our flesh. And I hear more teaching on grace and legalism. And most of it is just makeshift doctrine to enforce carnal living. It's not even real. There's so little true preaching of grace in our nation. The grace of God is that which enables us. It gives us forgiveness to enable us to pursue 100 fold obedience. That is what the grace of God is. Well, anyway, they'll suffer loss. Look at 1 Corinthians 15, the next passage. There's one glory of the sun. There's another glory of the moon. There's another glory of the stars. For one star differs from another star in glory. And the resurrection of the dead is the same way. As all the stars differ in glory, every one of you in eternity will have a different degree of glory in your body and in your position before God. There's not one of you that will be the same before God. Some of you will have a bright, glorious luster of heaven radiating through you. And others will have a resurrected body with a very diminished amount of glory in it. And it will reflect in our being and it will reflect in our assignment in his kingdom. Oh, we're everybody's happy up there. I truly, I assure you, everybody in the eternal city is beyond measure grateful. They're there, but they do understand when they're there. They lost many opportunities on the earth. They will understand that we have this idea that somehow we will forget when we're up there that we ever lived on the earth. No, you will remember you lived on the earth. You will. What we do now will impact us there in a very dynamic way. Let's go down to the second John eight. Look at this. He says, watch out that you do not lose second John eight. Do not lose what you worked for, but that your reward will, you'll be rewarded fully. Did you know as you can lose some of your reward, you can have a rewards a certain part of your life and live the next 10 years. Contrary to spirit of obedience and lose the reward you already attained, you lose ground in God. Did you know you can do that? I have a handful more versus there. I'm going to, I'm going to skip. Let's go down to a, it says many people are called. We'll wait for the PowerPoint here to it's about. Yeah, there you go. Good. Cause I skipped about a page or two. That was, that was pretty good. Cause I like to give more verses than I want to cover just for your extra study. If you want those, these documents. And by the way, you're free to use them. You're free to use them word for word. You know that our copyright is the right to copy. You could put your name on it. You can put your mother's name on it. You can sell them. You do anything you want with them. Just by all means, use them. Hey, many people here, look, look at the verse below. It says many are called, but only few are chosen. And the word few is interesting. This is a very important phrase that Jesus gave. I mean, this is a terrifying sober reality. Many are called for the word called, put the word invited. God invites billions of people to a certain place before him. He invites the whole world to salvation and a small percent say yes. And of the five or 600 million Christians that are in the earth today, it's what they conservative number. Some say a billion, but conservatively 500 million Christians in the earth of the 500 million Christians in the earth today, the Lord is offering. He's inviting all of them to a deeper place in him, a place of reward, a place of destiny. He's invited. He's called them or he's invited them. But here's what Jesus says. Look at that word. Few, only a few will be chosen, which means they will be found faithful in order to be commissioned by God to the thing they were invited to. You know, the Lord can invite you to something, but he will not choose to anoint you or commission you until he finds you faithful. So he says many are invited, but only a few end up being esteemed or chosen or evaluated by God as faithful for what they were invited to. Now, Jesus is looking at all the one or two billion people that will be in the kingdom of heaven, figure there's one or two billion or more total through history, and he's saying this, and we're talking that just picture one or two billion, three billion, you know, depending on how big the great harvest is at the end. Let's say somewhere between two and three billion is probably with the whole harvest in. He'll look over at three, two, three billion believers, born again believers, and he says only a few of them, a few of them only will be chosen or found faithful in order to be commissioned to all that God has for them in the kingdom age, in the millennial kingdom. Only a few of them will actually enter into the thing God invited them to, only a few. Now that is, Jesus didn't say that to be mean, he did that to create a sober reality in our spirits. Only a few, only a few will have a hundred-fold return when it's over. Look at the next verse, 2 Thessalonians 1. Paul's praying, and he's praised this very seemingly odd prayer. He's praying for the Thessalonians, and he prays that related to the second coming, that when Jesus comes in that day to the second coming, when Jesus is glorified in his saints, therefore, we pray God would count you worthy of this calling and fulfill all of the good, the whole will of God in your life. Now this is a strange prayer, because when I first used to read this, I used to think Paul was praying that God would count them worthy of being forgiven. I said, now aren't they already forgiven? Aren't they the church of the Thessalonians? If they're forgiven, what's he praying that they're worthy? I can only connect that with the idea worthy to be forgiven. Beloved, our entrance, our entrance into the city is free. Our placement in the city is related to our faithfulness. Our role in the kingdom age after the Lord returns on the earth is dynamically related to our faithfulness. And Paul was praying that these Thessalonians, they were being persecuted. He goes, I pray you don't give up. He goes, because the persecution was so severe. I mean, this is an odd prayer. You would think a persecuted church, you wouldn't pray they would be worthy. I go worthy of what? Worthy of receiving the full commission of authority when the Lord returns that they would have their full place of reward in the kingdom age on the earth. Paul says, I pray this every time I think about you, I pray that you will press in is what he's really praying. When he says, I pray you'll be worthy. What he's really saying is I'm praying you won't back off of a hundred fold obedience and you will stay faithful to the end. Then you will be counted worthy for everything God invited you to as a church. Let's go to B, the next one. Jesus says the same thing. He just says it the other way around. He says, many who are first will be last. Many will be many who are first will be last. He's giving the same idea. He goes, many people in this age will be last in authority and honor in the age to come. It's only based on faithfulness. It's not based on your gifting. It's not based on how big your ministry is, how good of a singer you are, how great of a writer you are. It's only based on the faithfulness of your heart when nobody's looking. I mean, it doesn't matter if somebody sees your faithfulness, but it's not the faithfulness that the leaders see. It's the faithfulness that God sees when everybody else has left and it's just you and God. That's what he measures. Look at the next passage, chapter Matthew 20, verse 16. He says at the end, he says the last will be first and the first and the first will be last, but many are called. He says it again, but only few were chosen. Many are called. It's the second time he says this. He keeps repeating this. Many are invited, but only a few of them are commissioned to enter into what they were invited to. Okay, we're going to take this the last couple of minutes on one more passage here. I just really want to make a point on it a point or two. I don't want to go through the whole thing. It's a parable. Now this is the parable Jesus ends his ministry on the parable. I mean, he began his ministry when he said, be ye perfect as your heavenly father is. I mean, his first sermon in the book of Matthew, be perfect. This is three and a half years later. He's giving his last message right here, Matthew 25. This is it. This is his last parable. He says, let me tell you something. Now that I'm going, I know that people have been upset with my teaching the last three and a half years, but let me give you my final parable. And when I meet you face to face, this parable will really matter to you. And he goes something like this, says the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 25, verse 14 to 26, the kingdom of heaven is like a man. Jesus is the man traveling to a faraway country. He goes away to heaven after he dies. He called his own service, his servants. He delivered his goods to them. He called every one of us and he gave us an assignment to do in our life. He gave to one guy, five talents. He gave to another guy, two talents. He gave to another guy, one. He's going to give to every one of us different assignments, different abilities, different personalities. He's going to give us a different setup. Every one of us have a different situation. Verse 19, after a long time, 2000 years, the Lord came, that's the second coming. And now it's the time for the judgment. He's going to settle accounts with everybody for all of church history. Every believer in church history is going to say, come on, settle accounts. Verse 20, he pulls in the guy with five talents and he says, hey, I gave you five talents and I gave you 50 years to do it. Show me what you have. The guy brought his five other talents. He doubled it. Lord, you gave me five. I gained five more. He doubled it. In other words, he was faithful. He was diligent. He cared about it. He valued it. Verse 21, the Lord says, well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful. Now here's interesting. He goes, you were faithful over a few things. Five talents was considered a very small assignment. You know, almost all of us have a very, very small assignment. There's only a couple Billy Graham's in history. You know, we see Reinhard Bonnke and Billy Graham and we forget there might be 500 to a billion Christians on the earth and only five of them out of a billion that have those kind of numbers. And we all kind of imagine that's what being anointed is about. 99.999% of every Christian in history. Beloved, let me say it again. 99.999% of everybody has only been given a very small assignment. And the Lord says, that's good news because I'm going to reward you not on how famous or awesome you were. I'm going to reward you if you just did the assignment, that's all. And I'll give you a hundred fold repayment. I will give you, I will pay you so well if you just did the little assignment. But the five was called very little. And the Lord says, good job. And he says the same thing. And I'm skipping that, uh, with the, with the guy with two talents, I don't have the whole passage here. I edited it down a little bit just to get to the point, because I want to talk about the third guy with one talent. Now, if five was very little, two was even more little than five. One was very, very little. Does that stand to reason? Yes. Let's look at the guy. That's the point. That's, I just wanted to make a point about the guy with one talent verse 24, that he will receive the one talent said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man. And here's what I watched. You were reaping where you did not. So you gathered where you did not scatter. He said, I know you, Jesus. And Jesus knows some of his servants will say this to him on the last day. You're a hard leader. You ask too much. You don't really understand how hard it is. And Jesus is going to say, Oh, is that so? I don't really understand. Do I go? No, you're a hard man. This, this is a theological, it's an air, by the way, they're in air, but it's a very common air. This thing to be perfect is ridiculous. It's out of reach. It's unreasonable. And it's hard. And the Lord's going to say, you believe that to be true. So I'm, I'm an unreasonable leader. And that accusation is in the heart of the church against the standards of true holiness. But the Lord warned us his final teaching goes, remember when I meet you, I won't buy that argument. When I sit, when you stand before me, I've told you ahead of time what I will tell you. If you tell me that. And the guy said, not only are you hard at verse 24, he goes, I know that you reap where you haven't sown. It means I know Jesus that you take more from us that you give to us. You expect too much and you pay too little. You take too much from us. You don't forgive us enough. You don't give us enough anointing to do the job. You don't pay us in eternity. Well, you just take too much from us and you're a hard man. And then he switched directions. First, he accused Jesus in verse 24, very common today in the church. And then 25, he talked about himself. He was a victim. I was afraid and I hid the talent. I was afraid you were hard. And I was afraid you were unreasonable. And I was victimized. That's why I did not produce faithfulness in the little area, verse 26. And the Lord answers. He says, well, now that we're at the judgment, I'm going to tell you the truth. You have been deceived the whole time. I am not hard and you are not really a victim. You're lazy and you're wicked. And you're covering it up with these theological arguments. He says, you have lust and sloth. You're lazy and you're wicked. That is your problem. And you think I am hard and you're a victim. But I am the judge. And I am telling you, I know the truth. And he's warning all of his servants that when they tell the Lord in self-pity, because that is all over our culture today, the standard of the sermon of Mount is too hard. It's overwhelming. It's out of reach. Jesus is too hard. I am too weak. I am afraid. And Jesus says, I'm telling you now, I won't buy any of that because my commandments are not burdensome. Matter of fact, you will have a spark and a fire in your spirit if you pursue them all the way. He's I'm telling you right now, I will be straightforward with you. If you come to me with that answer, I will tell you your problem is lust and sloth, wickedness and laziness. And beloved, what's happening? Let's go to A here, the last paragraph or so. What is going on in our nation? We got our nation is inundated with thousands of churches telling people that it's okay not to pursue a hundredfold obedience. They don't say it that way, but the leadership isn't pursuing it. So they come up with some concoction from the Bible where it's okay not to pursue it. Then all the people get all excited because the preacher gave them permission to be half-hearted, as though that's going to stand up before God. And the preacher wants the people half-hearted so he can live half-hearted and still be voted hero of the year in the church. But none of it will stand steady at the throne of God. None of it will. It will all be swept away like a flood. Beloved, if I tell you to dial down and you get all crazy and go, well Mike, the pastor told me to dial down. I have permission to dial down. I don't have the authority to give you permission to lower the standard. I don't care if a guy stands in a pulpit. He can't change the Word of God and affirm you and your carnality and compromise. They have no authority. And you don't want, as Paul has said over the years, I've quoted, so open-minded that your brains fall out. Oh well, the leader said I'm fine. I must be fine. The leader doesn't have the authority to tell you that. The Word of God alone can tell you that. We got all these kind of brain-dead Christians running around our nation living in this hype falsehood of leaders patting them on the head in falsehood and it's just delusion that well we're okay and the leadership's okay and we're all happy and it's utterly contrary to the Word of God. So if I tell you you're okay, you say this to me, Mike, do you get to vote on the last day over my life? Because if I don't get to vote when you stand before God, my words don't matter at all. Brother, you're doing great. It only, that only matters if I get to vote on your life and I don't get to vote when you stand before God. Only Jesus does. I've had many people tell me, Mike, settle down, calm down. I go, if you can promise me you can affect the vote when I stand before God, if you get a voice in it and you can assure me you'll be there to speak up for me, I will calm down. But my sources tell me you won't be anywhere close to where I'm at when this thing comes down because I'll be standing eye to eye with Jesus and nobody else's opinion will matter but His. Nobody's will matter. And what I don't want is a culture of comfort and compromise lulling us to sleep. Jesus, your heart, it's unreasonable. I'm overwhelmed. I can't live a hundredfold obedience. I'm afraid. I'm weak. And then Jesus looks around the eye and says, you know what, that was a smokescreen and you got a thousand people to buy into it because they were living in the same compromise you were. You had laziness and wickedness. You had lust and sloth. You never dealt with the real problem. Now is the day I say, Lord, shock us now. Don't shock us then. Amen. We'll just end with that. I have a bunch more paragraphs you can look at if you want to read more about that, but I'll just end it there. Let's go ahead and stand. Lord, shock us now. Don't shock us then. I'm going to ask whoever wants to, if you want to come forward and say, Lord, I'm getting ready for this 21 day fast. I want, I don't, I want to shift something in the spirit, in government, but beloved, you know what I want? I want to shift in our hearts. I would like to see IHOP go into this 21 day fast and come out with our spirit that we've shifted our place the way we live before God. We end up a different people at the end of this 21 days. Yes, I want to shift things in the spirit over our nation. I really do. I want the culture of death to be resistant and we're going to take a stand against the culture of death. We're going to pray for life, but this is the premier time for us to get rededicated because that life will wash back over our spirits. When we stand against death, life will come on us. And some of you, the Lord wants you to take a new stand. You can do it in your chair. You don't have to come up forward. I mean, more times than not when I really resolve to something, sometimes I like to be alone and sometimes I want people to pray with me. You know, one day it's this way, one day it's that way. So don't feel like the coming forward is the most important thing. But if you would like to come forward and take a stand and say, Lord, I got to make a shift in my heart. The years are rolling on. I got to make a change. I mean, my goodness, I got to get going. I would like some prayer or I just want to make a stand before heaven. I want to invite you to come on up. And ministry team, I'm going to invite you to come on right up after me.