Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of living a life that prepares us for the judgment seat of Christ, where our deeds will be evaluated for eternal rewards. He explains that while salvation is a free gift, believers are called to build their lives with gold, silver, and precious stones through acts of obedience and love. Bickle warns against living passively, as many will suffer loss of rewards due to unwise choices, despite being saved. He encourages the audience to pursue a life of intentionality and commitment to God, assuring them that their efforts will be recognized and rewarded in eternity. Ultimately, he calls for a shift in focus towards loving God wholeheartedly as the greatest calling.

Kids, turn to page 21. I'll give you a minute to get in your chair. Thank you, Steve Brown. It's better. And ask you to turn all the house lights on. I'm sure you are. Go ahead and push that button. Takes a minute for them to turn on. Page 21. The judgment seat of Christ going for the gold. We have a third session, but we're not going to cover that. I just leave those notes for you just for your own personal study. Let's pray. Father, I ask you to mark the lives of these dedicated young people. I ask you to give a vision for how great their life can be forever and forever. I ask you to let them see Him who is invisible, your Son. That they would live before Him even now as though He is visible to them. And I ask you, in the name of Jesus, to move by your Spirit even now. Amen. Top of page 21. The judgment seat of Christ going for the gold. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul gives us very important details about the judgment seat of Christ. This is probably the premier passage that gives more details than any other passage. However, having studied eternal rewards for some years, there's much more in the Bible on this subject than meets the eye. I've heard different ones say, yeah, there's not that much in the Bible on it. I says no. That's not true. Because if you don't have a paradigm, if you don't have a perspective to see it, you won't see it anywhere. But once you begin to look for it, you find it everywhere. Maybe that's overstated to say everywhere, but there's many passages in the Word of God that describe this. It's a very fascinating subject. It's a subject that you should take very, very seriously because it's personal to your life and your future. Let's read this entire passage, and then we'll break down some of the key phrases. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3, 8, each one of you will receive his own reward according to his own labor. Verse 10, let each of you take heed. That's the key exhortation. Be careful. Be careful. Take heed how you live. Take heed how you build your life is what he's talking about. Be very careful the decisions you make is what he's saying. Take heed. Verse 11, so that there's no confusion, Paul makes it clear, there is no other foundation for your life than the foundation which is laid by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul said don't be confused. I'm talking about eternal rewards that you build on the foundation, but you don't confuse it with the foundation. There's only one foundation, the person, the death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus Christ. The free gift of salvation is the only other, is the only foundation that exists. You can't earn it. You can't deserve it. You can only receive it as a free gift, the foundation. But don't confuse what you build on the foundation with the foundation itself. You can't earn salvation, but you can build with gold, silver, and precious stones on that foundation that will be rewarded forever. And the amazing thing is that the deeds that you do, 99% of the works that you do are small. They're very small works. 99% of the works of your whole Christian life, they are things like saying kind words, giving some money, giving some effort, humbling yourself instead of defending yourself and being, exerting yourself in a proud way. They're very simple deeds. They're deeds that every one of us do every day. Don't think of the great deeds as those, you know, very unique heroic acts. There may be a few heroic acts of obedience you make, you know, over several decades, but 99% of these works are very small things. They're attitudes that lead to different actions. You change your attitude, so you decide to serve the guy instead of attack the guy. It's just that simple. Or even ignore the guy. Very simple deeds. Verse 12. Paul says, if anyone builds on the foundation of the free gift of salvation, if anyone builds on it, he can build on it, and he gives six different types of building materials. Three of them are good, three of them are bad. He goes, here's what you can build your life with. Gold, silver, precious stones. Now he's talking about acts of obedience, acts of love, acts of humility that turn into gold on the last day. Or, you can build on the free gift of salvation, the foundation of salvation, with wood, hay, and straw. You can live in a way, after the day you're born again, where all that you're doing with your time and money, it produces wood, hay, and straw, and then on the last day it all burns up. You love Jesus, but the decisions you made with your time, your words, your money, your energy burned up. Didn't amount to nothing in eternity. What an intense revelation of life here. Paul says in verse 13, let's read it again. If anyone builds on the foundation of the free gift of salvation, a lifestyle that results in gold, silver, and precious stones in the age to come, or you can build with life choices that result in wood, hay, and straw on the last day. Verse 13. Paul says, be sure of this. Every person's life work. Every person's life work. Now your life work is the summary of your entire Christian life, but it includes all the individual acts of obedience along the way. Each person's life work, including the individual acts of obedience, the small acts, those very little acts of obedience, they will all become clear. The truth about them will become clear when you stand before Jesus. For the day will declare the truth about what you did. What is the day? The day is the day you stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The trophy center, so to speak. The gold medalist platform. The day when you stand before Jesus to receive your rewards, the truth about the way you lived will be openly declared by Jesus. Jesus will declare it. He will declare it with His words, but He will declare it by the gifts and the rewards He gives you. He will declare what He feels about the way you lived before Him. Because, let's read verse 13 again. Each person's life work will become clear. The truth about it will be clear. Because the day when they stand before Jesus, it will declare the truth about the way they lived on the earth. Because the truth will be revealed by fire. The fire of Jesus's eyes, I'm adding that in, will test every single work you did. His eyes of fire will look at your life and His eyes of fire will see the motive and the reality behind everything we did. And it will reveal and test everyone's work to reveal what sort of work it was. Was it gold, silver, precious stones, or was your works wood, hay, and straw? Now He goes on to make the final point. He says in verse 14, if anyone's work, if anyone's life work, which He has built upon the free gift of salvation, if that work endures, He will receive a reward. Oh, yes, this is good. If it endures, you receive a reward forever. Beloved, the exchange rate is really high right now. This is the time to cash in. This is the time to put your time, your energy, your effort, your money, all that you have into the invisible kingdom before the eyes of Him who's invisible, and He sees it. And then He returns it all back to you openly on that day. Oh, I love this verse. But, verse 15, if anyone's work is burned up, their life, the way they spent their time, the way they spent their money, the way they used their energy, if it wasn't doing the will of God, it'll be burned up. That believer will suffer loss. But he himself will be saved, yet as though through fire. So Paul is saying, it's possible for a believer to receive the free gift of salvation and spend their time and money and energy in such a way where they stand before Jesus, and when all of their life work is offered to Him, it's all burned, but they themselves are saved. This is what the Lord told me, and that visionary experience I said in the last session. He looked at me and said, you're saved, but your life was wasted. He was really, in essence, speaking about 1 Corinthians 3 15. There are many believers, I believe, they will be saved, but everything they did after their salvation will be wasted. Now notice the word, because I feel this, when I read this, I feel it. I mean, each time, almost every time I read this passage, I feel this word, he will suffer loss. Do you know what suffer means? It means suffer. Suffer is a bad word on the last day. And what that means is, they will have the pain of regret. They're saved. They know Jesus loves them. They love Jesus. They have a resurrected body. That's good. A resurrected body. That's pretty good. But when they look in the eyes of Him who gave everything, and He says, what did you give to me to show your love? They give nothing. They will have pain. It will be the pain of love. It will be the pain of regret. But beloved, the Bible makes it clear. It will be pain. The guy says, what about that verse that all tears will be wiped away? It's true. But that verse is at the end of the Millennial Kingdom, a thousand years after this day. And I believe that believers will have the pain of regret. For a season in the age to come. I don't know if it's the whole thousand years. I don't know that. But I know after that, it's all wiped away. But when I had that visionary encounter, I have never experienced more pain in my life than in that visionary experience. And I came out of that. I said, I am not going to live in a way to hear that from the lips of Jesus. I'm not going to. Now, I'm a weak man, just like you're a weak man or woman. I said, I need help. I'm gonna blow it a thousand times. And the Lord's answer is, hey, I work well with weak people. That's all I have is weak people. You qualify. I'll help you. If you will stay with it, don't give up. Don't give in. You win. You'll break through little by little, every issue, if you stay with it. Step by step. Decision by decision. Just stay with it. When you blow it, confess it. Don't make up some Bible verse to back up your sin. Call it sin. You're not going to fake Jesus out. Trust me. He's the one man you will never fake out. Call it sin. Well, we didn't really go all the way. I mean, we didn't actually cross the line. It wasn't sin. It was mostly just affection. Beloved, call it sin. Be honest with Him. Say, wrong. I don't want to do it. I declare war on it. Push. Delete. Stand before Him in boldness and go hard after God. I mean, don't even lose one hour. Go hard after God within the hour. And eventually, if you'll keep doing that, you won't yield to that same issue that's been dogging you time and time again. You will break through. You really will in time. Paragraph D. There will be a vast range of degrees of reward or different experiences of the glory of God in the age to come. Did you know that in the age to come, every one of you will have a unique measure of the glory of God that will be different than the person next to you? Not one of you will have the exact same measure of the glory of God as the other person. Just like in this age, there's not one believer on the earth that has the exact experience of another believer. Every one of us are unique. It will be the same in the age to come. Some people have this idea. They cross over the line, the age to come. They get a resurrected body. Then everything is the same. Wrong. That's not biblical. We will all be unique, and we will all have different experiences with the Lord and different measures of the glory of God in our experience. But the measure of the glory of God we experience in the age to come will be related not to how gifted we were, not how smart we were, but how responsive we were in this age to the will of God, to the heart of Jesus. Look at 1 Corinthians 15, verse 41. Paul said, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 41, the very important verse. He said, there's one glory of the sun. There's another glory of the stars. For one star differs from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead. What does this mean? Paul goes, look up in the sky. Billions of stars. Every single star has a different mass, a different amount of radiance, a different, they move, and all the properties related to billions and billions and billions of stars, they're all different. There isn't one star that is identical to the other star. He says it's the same way in the resurrection. Did you know in the age to come, some of you will have a glory, a capacity for glory in your physical resurrected body that far surpasses the glory of others in their physical resurrected body? Just like the angels. Some angels have a great radiance of the glory of God, and other angels have a far lesser radiance of the glory of God. We will all have resurrected bodies. Let me just talk about that for a second. I don't want to go too far off. It's one of my favorite subjects, the resurrected body. Did you know that in the age to come, you are going to have a physical, I want you to say physical, a physical body. You will be able to go, wow, physical, and it will be, you will have supernatural abilities of the resurrection in your physical body. I mean when you hug each other in the age to come, it won't be like you're a ghost. You won't like hug each other and go, whoa, and pass through and go, oh, let's try that again. Whoa, hey, give me a hug. That's not how it's going to be. When you hug each other like, boom, you go, wow, you'll feel that guy's elbow. He'll have an elbow, a real one, forever. You'll touch him. You'll say, hey, this is like really cool, because some people think of the age to come is they're going to be on a white cloud, playing a harp, kind of floating in the sky. They're going to see their best friend way over there and go, hey, bro, love Jesus, me too, see ya. You know, a thousand years later, hey, again, going, yes, it's happening, and me too, love God, see ya. That's not eternity. You're not going to float on a cloud playing a harp, being guilty that you don't like worshiping all day. That's not what it's going to be like. You're going to have a real physical body, and you're going to really be on the earth, this earth. You will do that. You'll fill the earth with your foot, for real, because the New Jerusalem, the city we will live in, is coming down to the earth. I think Justin Rizzo's leading worship tomorrow, I don't know, or maybe the next day, he has the best songs on the New Jerusalem. Man, he sings like 50 songs. New Jerusalem. He is fixated on this subject. I love it. Justin, if you're out there, sing one or two of them. They're awesome. Many believers don't have any vision of the New Jerusalem coming down to the earth. You're going to live on the earth with a physical body, and you're going to eat food, and have friends, and you're going to learn, and you're going to teach, and it's going to be a growing experience with work. Like, when you get a resurrected body, you don't get an omniscience chip. Like, some people think they get a resurrected body, they cross the line, now they know everything. Like, I know everything. No. With a resurrected body, your ability to learn will be greatly enhanced, but you will learn, just like you do now, line up online, one piece of information at a time. You will meet new people. You will introduce them to your friends. You will hear their story. You will tell their story to other people. You will teach the Bible. You will learn the Bible. You will do the work of the kingdom forever and forever, and it will be very exciting. It will be boring, I promise you. One preacher said, if you don't think about heaven rightly, you won't think about heaven at all, and most people don't think about heaven rightly. They think of it as a cloud floating in the great beyond, so they never think about it, because if you don't think about it right, you'll never think about it. Let me tell you how to think about heaven right. You're coming to the earth with a material, physical dimension and a supernatural, spiritual dimension merged together forever on the earth. Think about it that way, and it will start exciting you. Well, I got way off, but I'm glad I did. OK. Every single one of you will differ in glory from one another. Again, I've done a little teaching on this. It's on the internet, the different types of rewards, and I go into the subject on the resurrected body several places. You can get more on that, or you can search it out in other places. I'm sure many, I mean, many around the earth are teaching on this. Study the resurrected body. It is awesome, really awesome. I can't wait. It's worth everything we're going through. To press in a little bit for a few decades, and the rewards we get, the pay is so great. Beloved, it's worth it. I don't care what your friends might say. It's worth it. It's worth it. I've been pressing into God hard for 40 years. I look back over 40 years. I've made a lot of mistakes, but one thing, I've gone hard for 40 years, and I do not regret. I've missed out on a lot of money, a lot of parties, a lot of opportunities, lots of fun, lots of games, lots of recreation, lots of entertainment. I missed out on lots of that. I have zero regret at age 55. Zero about missing those things. None. Zero. If I had to do it over again, I would do it with more intensity, not less. Many of you are 21, 22, 23. Go hard. Don't listen to those voices over there, this false grace teaching that's telling you the grace of God is about chilling out, and living passive, and living in compromise, and somehow that's what Jesus died for to make us comfortable living passive. That's not the grace of God. That's a deception. Don't buy into that false stuff. It's all over the church today. All over the church. These guys say, well, I'm really into grace. I said, you think Jesus died, became a human, died, rose from the dead to make you comfortable, chilling out, and living for yourself? You're absolutely deluded. He died to make you a lovesick worshiper, and to give you the power to love God with all of your heart. That's what he died for. And that false doctrine of grace that's all over the church, it's all over young adult movements, Jesus won't buy it at the judgment seat. He will expose it as false, and as darkness. Don't buy it. It will not hold up on that day. I promise you. Since you think I became a man and died so you could live that way? Are you kidding me? I want you. I love you. I want you to love me. That's why I came after you. Not so you could chill out your whole life, and live selfish, and call it the grace of God. Oh, I love Corey Russell's message the other day. I was back there. I tell you, I was wishing I was 20 years old again to do it all over again harder. But I'm going to do it the next decades anyway, at age 55. Okay. Let's go to paragraph F. Paul said, every man's going to be rewarded according to his labor. His labor. What a word, labor. You know why he used the word labor? Because it's labor. Like he really said it right. Like, Paul, you get it. Paul goes, yeah, I know. I did it. It's labor. Our obedience takes effort. Not always. Some of our obedience flows like a river. Some of it is effort. Oh, I love the obedience that flows out of my heart with energy and love. And I love what I do. And I love righteousness in those moments. And the glory of righteousness, it fills my heart. I feel radiance. And I feel I love that flow. But I also know what it means to not love the right thing and choose it and labor with it. I know what it means to flow. And I know what it means to labor. Both of them are a part of our life. I like the flow better. But the labor, I still labor in my ministry. And I labor in my obedience. And it is labor sometimes, not all the time. It takes effort. It's costly. Sometimes it costs. Sometimes it flows. And it doesn't cost anything. It's like, are you kidding, Jesus? I would do this because I love you. And other times it's like, ah, you want me to do what? Everybody else is doing the opposite. He goes, I want you to do what I tell you to do. It's costly sometimes. It's difficult. It's inconvenient. I mean, the effort, the effort to wake yourself up and put yourself in His presence to pray, takes effort. I remember I was, I can't remember what, maybe 24, 25 years old. Again, that's 30 years ago. I made a decision when I was about 24 years old that I was going to go to daily prayer meetings the rest of my life. I thought, oh gee, I hope I do. You know, I was 24, all excited. The Lord talked to me about intercession. I didn't get it. Talked to me about being in His presence. It was really boring. I loved Jesus, but the Bible was boring, and prayer was boring, and I hated fasting. I said, I love you Jesus, but the Bible's boring, and prayer's boring, and I hate fasting. But I, you know, I liked meetings. I did like meetings. I could go to meetings every day. They were fun. Music was good. You know, flirted with a few of the girls. Showed off a little bit, you know, my high school, you know. I loved meetings. They were fun. But me and, me and Jesus, ugh. Boring Bible, distant Jesus, defiled heart. Ugh. I just said, no way. If you would have told me in my early 20s, I would be leading a 24-hour house of prayer, I would have said absolutely impossible. There's no guy on the earth that could endure prayer led that way, and certainly I'm not going to. I'm just not going to. If you would have told me in my 20s what I would be doing in my 50s, I didn't like prayer at all. Here's my point. We're all the same. The Lord changed me. He can change you. I get where you are. I really do get it. I loved Him. I just didn't like the Bible, or prayer, or quiet, or about 10 other things, but I loved Him. I get where you are. Sometimes I meet young people, and they give me the impress Mike kind of speech. I go, hey, you little whippersnapper. I was a little guy, too. I know exactly what you feel and what you do. I did it all more than you. No. I didn't even know you knew that. I go, oh, I did lots of bad stuff. Never mind. That's for another day. My point is, if God could take a defiled, bored heart like mine, and make it interesting to engage with God, He can do it to you. I promise you, I was like you. I still am like you. I'm just older. My mind is different than it used to be, and that's why my heart feels more. But I made a commitment about age 24. I said, I'm gonna go to daily prayer meetings. I remember I thought this could be more bitter than death. I mean, what if I live to be like 50? What if I go like for years, and I'm still having to do this? By the grace of God, it's been 30 years, and I'm guessing 98% of the time, I've been to prayer meeting every single day. Corporate prayer meetings, something like that. I've never calculated it, but I've stayed with it through the years. My point isn't, here's my point. My point isn't that it was fun, or exciting, or good. Just stay with it. Stay with it, and everything starts moving in its own time, as Misty sings, in its own time. He changes everything, some at this age, some of the age to come. Well, anyway, it's labor sometimes. It is labor. I know what it means to sit in boring prayer meetings, and thank Lord, reading boring Bible with my defiled heart. I know what that means, but I know what it means to stay with it, and I promise you, it changes. It changes. I've watched more people change in the last 12 years. I mean, Misty and Shelly. They were not exactly like this 12 years ago. That's another story for another day. I love what's happened, and their weak little broken hearts in the last 12 years. I go, this is a miracle. This can happen to everybody. Paragraph G. Paul spoke about six different types of building materials. Here's his point. It's possible to build with the wrong materials. As a born-again believer that loves Jesus, you can build with the wrong materials, which means you can use your time, and money, and energy, and your abilities, and invest them in things that Jesus does not remember, or does not reward. I mean, he remembers them, but he doesn't reward them. He doesn't remember them for good. I want to spend my money in a way that when I talk to him, he goes, I like how you spent your money. Not all of it, but I like how you spent a lot of it. I want him to say that to me on that day. Well, gold, silver, and precious stones. They are of great value. They are rare. They're found in small quantities below the ground. Takes work to get them. Takes work to get them, but when they go through the fire, they're not in any way diminished, but they're purified. The fire doesn't hurt them. The fire helps them. Wood, hay, and stubble, exactly the opposite. They're of little value. They're not of great value like gold. They're common. They're found in large quantities. They're above the ground. They're easy to get, and the fire consumes them. And what these six building materials are talking about, decisions you make with your time, your money, your energy, your influence, your abilities. If you choose right things, they become gold, silver, precious stones. If you choose the mediocre and wrong things, they burn up on the last day. Top of page 23, paragraph I, Paul said the fire will test everyone's life work. Your work will be tested, I promise you. The way you spent money last year and the way you spent money next year will be tested. I don't care what Bible verse that you pull out to justify the negative or whatever way that you think about it. I'm talking about the negative stuff. It won't hold up if it's not true. The reason I keep saying this, again, it's this momentum that's growing among young adults of this view of the grace of God that is really distorted. It's not true. It's this, again, this view of the grace of God that empowers them to live passive and with compromise and to feel comfortable why they do it. I'm telling you, the fire will test your work. But, if nobody even agrees with you or appreciates what you're doing, but in the secret place, your time, your money, your energy, you're trying to do the will of God, the fire will show that you were doing it for love, even though nobody else even noticed it. Jesus will say, I noticed it, and my fire will reveal that it was gold. J, paragraph I, if anyone's work endures, he will receive a reward. Number two, if anyone's work is burned, he will receive no reward. Paragraph K, this verse is so heavy. Again, I feel this, I feel this, this, suffer loss because of that experience back 32 years ago when I was 23 years old. I can still remember this. Paul said, that man will be saved. He will suffer loss. Beloved, it is possible to suffer loss of potential rewards, rewards that God wanted to you to have that you never enter into. Now, don't worry. God is not like that mean coach. He's not looking at you going, okay, I warned you, you better pay attention. He doesn't, he's not got a mean countenance. His standard is human friendly. He is kind to weak and broken people. He wants us to make an effort, and when we fail to sign back up, and when we fail to sign back up, and I tell you that he looks at that, and he says, that's good. I will reward that. He understands our frailty. So, get the idea of the mean coach, the angry father. Get that idea out of your mind. It's a kind bridegroom who is a king who says, I'm working with you. I want to reward you beyond anything you can imagine. Anything I can possibly reward you with, I will because it's in my heart to give this to you. Beloved, he has a lot of rewards. If he gives you rewards, he doesn't run out so he can't give them to somebody else. He has plenty to give everyone. He just wants it to be real. That's all. It says in 2 John 8, look at this verse, talking about the fear of the Lord. I mean, this is sober. Here's what John said, watch out that you do not lose what you worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Did you know you can lose some of the things you're working for if you don't stay obedient to the end? You will lose out on even some of that early obedience because obedience must be followed through throughout our life. It doesn't mean we can't fail, but we can't give up. We have to stay with it. So, I decide in my 20s, I'm going to be a man of prayer. I have many bad days where prayer is so boring. I sit in the room. It's like, oh, this is horrible. God, I love you. Why did you invent prayer? Can't you think of some other way to run your kingdom? This is like, doesn't make sense to me. You know everything. Why do you care if I tell you what you should do? Come on. I mean, prayer seemed weird to me back then. I'm telling you what you tell me to tell you so that you know it or so that I know it. I mean, who's knowing this? What's going on? He just says, just do it. And over the years, I began to change on the inside. I go, whoa, this is a pretty good way to run a kingdom. I agree with it now, but oh, for a while. But here's my point. We can fail and stumble. That's one thing to stumble and to sign back up and go hard again. Stumble, sign back up and go hard. Stumble, sign back up and go hard. I've done that many times. But what the enemy wants you to do is stumble. Go, uh. Stumble, uh. Stumble, give up and say, you know, I'm not gonna try no more. That's what he's after. That's how you lose your reward. Not by stumbling, by giving up. But the point I wanted to make is you can lose rewards that were within your reach in the grace of God to receive. I've heard, I've taught this over the years and people go, I don't like that. I go, why? Well, it makes me feel like it really matters what I do today. I go, good, you're understanding. It really matters what you do today. Yeah, but I don't want to feel like it really matters because then it really matters. I'd rather just kind of like go with the flow. No, forget that go with the flow thing. Get a vision. Make it your aim to be well pleasing. You are going to stand before him and go hard and I promise you, you won't regret it when decades pass. Look at paragraph two. This is a, this is a troubling one. This is from the lips of Jesus in Revelation 3 11. Jesus said this. Again, this is Jesus, the great grace teacher. How many of you know Jesus understands the grace of God? He said, hold fast. Revelation 3 11. Hold fast what you have and make sure no one takes your crown. Like what? How can you take my crown in the age to come? What are you going to like, in your resurrected body, run ahead of me, steal my crown and run the other way and you outrun me? I mean, how do you take my crown? Hey, come back here. Give me my crown. Sorry. No. How are you going to take my crown? Because he's talking about eternal rewards for sure in context. How does a human being take another human being's crown? He's not talking about salvation. Crowns and salvation are not the same thing and nobody can take your salvation. That's obviously obvious. No man can, you know, get mad at you and take your salvation from you and say, there you have it. No, he's not talking about salvation. What he's talking about is that if you buy into some man's teaching and that man's teaching causes you to lose your zeal and your abandonment to God, he's taught you in a wrong way and you kind of let go of your vision of oppression. You buy into his teaching. You live in a different way. On the last day, that man in essence stole your crown from you because you bought into his false doctrine on this grace of God. When a guy tells me, Mike, settle down. Chill out. God doesn't mind if you do all these things. I go, you know what? I'm not interested in that persuasion. I'm interested in the anointing to go harder, not to do less. You are not getting in between me and Jesus. I'm not buying your logic, your rhetoric, and you're not stealing anything from where I'm going to be on the last day. No. I'm going to walk in the anointing to love Jesus with all of my heart. And that's what I want you. I want you fiery about this. Well, the guy's got a real big ministry. He's on TV. So what? If he's famous, that means he has the spirit of truth? I don't think so. I don't care how famous they are. Is there the spirit of truth in it? Does it make you have vision to give more to Jesus? Or does it give you, make you feel comfortable giving less to him? That's the key question, plus there's several others as well. Paragraph L. He said, this person will be saved. But as though through fire. What an interesting phrase. Saved as though through fire. What does that mean? Now what Paul is quoting is Amos the prophet. But that's, you know, for another day we'll talk about. But he's quoting an Old Testament concept. But here's the idea. Paul's picturing a man. His house catches on fire. The guy gets up and he goes, ah, I got to get out. He tries to get all of his possessions. There's smoke everywhere. He's tripping over, and he drops everything. The roof's caving in, and he doesn't know where he's at. And some guy reaches in, grabs him, pulls him out of the fire. He escapes in the nick of time. He's laying on the ground. All of his possessions were burned. He escaped the burning house. He was saved, but he barely escaped coming through the flames. He said, don't live that way. A lot of people, they love Jesus. They're born again, but they live in a way that when they stand before the fire of God, they will lose all that they live for, and they will escape through the flames. They will have their salvation, but they will lose everything. This is real. And they won't say, well, praise the Lord. You know, at least I'm saved. They will suffer loss. They will go, I regret this. I regret this. Why did I live so selfish before one who loved me so dearly, who gave everything? We look in his eyes, and we say, why was I so selfish and so centered on myself? Why couldn't I see that living for him was wisdom? It was the way of life. I tell you, we will suffer loss, not enjoy loss. It won't be incidental. We will feel it. It's real. I felt it in a momentary experience when I was 23 years old. It was terrible. It's marked my life. I will never forget. I can feel the pain of it to this day. Paragraph M, coming to conclusion here. Revelation 3.18. This is an amazing verse. Jesus is speaking. He said, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich. Wow, what a sentence. Now, here's the point I want to give you. Jesus appears to John the Apostle to give him the book of Revelation, right? Revelation 2 and 3, he's giving seven messages to seven churches. This is the final exhortation Jesus gave to the church, directly gave to the church in the Bible, and he gave us an advice. Now, if Jesus is going to give the final exhortation to the churches, what do you think it would be? He said, let me tell you this. I advise you, if Jesus is giving you free advice, listen, because I got some advice for you. I live on the other side. I have a resurrected body. I know what I'm talking about. I am the judge that you will stand before. I advise you, get gold. Get gold. Refine it now, so that when you stand before my eyes of fire, I don't burn it up then. Get gold now. How do you get gold refined by fire? We make choices now. Men don't like them. We miss certain opportunities. We miss certain occasions for the flesh, and we feel the pain of it. We feel lonely sometimes. We feel the pain of drawing away from what everyone else is doing, and that's called fire. We feel it. It's refining us, but we say, no, no, I'm going to obey Jesus. I don't care what they say. Yeah, but they're all Christians. They're all doing it. No, I'm going to obey Him. They're mad at you. They're rejecting you. They're putting you down. They're mocking you. You feel alone. The anointing, you don't feel his presence, but you stay obedient. Beloved, because every single day, you're lining up your heart, making the choice again, and again, the choice is hard. That's called making choices that are refined by fire. Jesus said, that's gold. I'm watching. They don't think that you're doing wisdom, but I do, and if you get gold by making those choices and staying with them now, when you stand before me, my eyes of fire will not burn them up. My eyes of fire will prove them to be gold, because I have one advice for you. Go get gold now. Get it. Can you imagine the last word that Jesus gave the church? This is his advice. Beloved, put this on your stationary. Make this your life first. This is the greatest advice you will ever get as a believer, but look at this. Here's my favorite part. Revelation 3 to 18. Let's put it back on the screen. Here's my favorite part. I counsel you to buy gold refined in the fire. In other words, make, go through the fire now. Those hard decisions. Here's my favorite part. That Mike Bickle will be rich. I mean that you will be rich. This is really personal. I go, I want to be rich. I really do. Jesus says, well, I actually want you to be. Well, that settles it. You want me to be, and I want to be. Let's do it. Let's do it. He goes, Mike, I want you to be rich. This is my will for you in the age to come, but you have to make choices now, and you will be refined in the fire, because those choices will cause you to feel pain. You will feel lonely. You will feel discouraged. You will feel like it's not working. Again, I've made many choices through the years. I didn't feel any presence. I feel bored. I feel abandoned. I didn't feel anything. That's how I'm sticking with it. I didn't realize it, but that's what gold in the fire means, because you're realigning your heart a thousand times. You're signing back up for obedience a thousand times a thousand over the years, and you're, that decision is refined in your life, and he wants you rich, and you want to be rich. It sounds like a great deal to me. I love this. I want to be rich. I said that some couple years ago, and our young people made a video where I stood up, and I go, I want gold and silver. I want to be rich, and they cut it off right there. I said, I do. It's a fact just in the age to come. I want to get a billion dollars. The Lord promised me a billion dollars. Really? I mean, I'm not into poverty at all. I'm into wealth. I just want to give it all away. I mean, as in not 99 percent. I mean all, as in 100 percent of it. I have committed to live a simple lifestyle, and when he gives me this billion dollars, I don't even want one dollar of it. I just want to be a conduit and pour it right into the prayer movement. It's a big story. I'm going to tell a little bit about it tomorrow, because I believe some of you could be billionaires. I don't want to give him 90 percent. I want to give him 100 percent. I want to live simple, and give all of it away, and get gold forever. Oh, I can't wait. I want to be rich. Okay. I mean it. I mean it. This is real. This is what the Bible says. Do you believe the Bible? Go for it. Misty, come on up. Paragraph in. We're not left guessing as to what God calls the greatest way to live. Jesus said, love the Lord with all of your heart. This is the great way to live. It's the greatest calling. The greatest anointing you can ever have is the anointing to walk out the first commandment. That's greater anointing than a big ministry. Anointing to love God. It's the greatest possession you will ever have in your life. Success and power. I want you to read this. Success and power in your life is defined in the ability to walk out the first commandment. If you walk out the first commandment, and nobody cares about your ministry, you are dynamically successful, and you'll be rich forever. If you have the most famous ministry in the world, but you don't walk out the first commandment, it will go up in flames. Most of it. Much of it. We want to readjust the primary dream of our life, and that's how we're going to end this ministry time. I'm going to have you go ahead and stand. We're going to adjust the primary dream. Yes, we want ministry. We want money. We want all the relationships. We want the favor. We want all those things, but we want those second. We're going to consciously make them second, and the anointing in the grace of God to walk out the first commandment is my life passion. I will give everything for this. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit MikeBickle.org.