A Mind to Work

To the work, to the work, we are servants of God. Let us follow the path that our master had trod. And I am missionary Richard Yerby in Japan, following many steep mountain paths as the Lord leads me to lost sheep, lost idol worshiping souls in the Buddhist and Shintoist religion.

What a privilege I have to be here. And this Bible sermon is titled A Mind to Work. Do you want to increase your faith? Do you want to be a giant, a strong faith to see the fortresses of evil around you come tumbling down and great victories won for your God? Perfect and upright Job said, neither had I rest.

Then make that your motto also if your desires for the Lord to increase your faith. Anyone who is a giant in faith will be one who is giving God lots of overtime. Any Christian believer who is strong in faith will be like Job by being without rest often.

May God help both you and me to be like that. Neither had I rest. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, please help me to make this matter of not having rest as important as Job made it. Please help brother Richard to do this also. I pray that thou wouldest deal with thy body of believers throughout the world to desire to be like Job and thereby to labor diligently and long in the work of thy kingdom.

Grant this dear Lord I only pray. Amen. You have only one short life on this earth during which time a fierce spiritual battle rages and God calls on you to be a good soldier for him.

Do that for your Lord and master. Make your life count to the fullest for God's glory. Work for the night cometh when no man can work.

The Lord told his disciples in John chapter nine verse four. Let's pray that. Lord Jesus, I do want to be a good soldier in thine army and fight for right with all my might.

Help me to do that please. Help me to equip myself to fight for thee by praying much and reading and meditating on thy word. By thy unlimited power please enable me to render devastating defeats to thine enemy the devil and to his crowd of followers also.

Please equip me with strong faith to see his strongholds and bastions of sin and evil come tumbling down. By thy power please strengthen me mentally and physically to labor for thee and to fight for thee long and hard without rest. I pray this prayer for all other Christians also.

Please grant all these requests in thy fullest measure and greatest power Lord I only pray. Lord Jesus without thee we can do nothing. So please help all us believers to totally yield to thee for thee to work thy great works within us.

Amen. God gave to you life, energy, strength, a sound body and a sound mind for you to use them to glorify him by serving him to the fullest during your lifetime on earth. Mainly by laboring in his field of harvest of souls seeking lost sheep fishing for the souls of men.

Don't you dare meet him in judgment having wasted that life on selfish pleasures having no sheaves no souls one to bring unto him. Let's pray. Lord God I do not want to waste my life on selfish selfish pleasures.

I want to live to please thee and serve thee to the utmost. Please fill me with a holy spirit's power to enable me to do so. Amen.

Gazing upon physically handicapped people I ponder why I am so blessed with excellent physical health. Thus I fear to waste it on self least God take it from me. The blessing of good health and a strong body is God's gracious gift to me.

So why shouldn't I dedicate it to him fully using it zealously for him without rest. Let's pray that. Heavenly Father I now want to totally dedicate my physical body to thee anew.

Thank thee for creating me and giving me life to serve thee and to glorify thee. Upon my confession now totally dedicating my body to thee for thy use. I only ask thee to have mercy on me to heal all my diseases and sicknesses and weaknesses if that be thy will.

Also please empower me spiritually to serve thee even more. Amen. Observing mentally handicapped people I pour out my heart in thanksgiving to God for the sound mind with which he has blessed me.

God forbid that I use it to rise up and be great in the world. God forbid that I use it for my own pleasure. God help me to use it to stay in constant fellowship with my creator to regularly read and study his word to pray to him without ceasing and to spread his word to every soul that I can.

Let's pray that. Heavenly Father I want to dedicate my mind totally unto thee. Please help me to do so.

Upon my confession of dedicating my mind to thee I ask thee to please heal my mind of all worries, fears, doubts, anxieties, and wrong thoughts and teachings that I have allowed to enter into it. Please completely cleanse my mind by the power of the shed blood of my Lord Jesus Christ and Savior on the cross. Make my mind into the perfect mind thou intended it to be.

May all the thoughts and words that proceed from it glorify thee to the fullest. Amen. It only stands to reason that we creatures who are richly blessed by the creator with a sound body and mind would joyfully labor for him day and night most content and even joyful that we have no rest.

It doesn't make any sense at all that you can happily spend many long tiring hours doing things that bring you pleasure such as hunting, fishing, partying, picnicking, sports, recreation trips, and all kind of hobbies and pleasures and then not be able to stay up or watch night service or to pray all night. Hypocrite! Only one earthly life to live. Make it count for God and for all eternity.

All that is consumed upon self will be lost. Don't make a spiritual waste of your life. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, please help me to get my priorities in order. Help me to be temperate in pleasures for self and be diligent in pouring out my life's energies for thee. Please give me a renewed vision of thy great glory.

Give me clear understanding of just how vain and fleeting are all the things of this present world. Help me to hate the world and to love thee. Grant this, Lord, I earnestly pray.

Amen. At any moment now, I'll depart this life to meet my Savior in judgment, the one who gave his life for me. I can't bear to think of standing before him ashamed because I wasted my earthly life on fleeting worldly vanities, empty-handed, no souls won, no rewards in heaven, blood on my hands because I failed to warn lost people around me of their approaching doom.

So tragic. We can rest in heaven. Let's be like Job now.

Neither had I rest. With passing time, my heart steadily gets fuller with joy over what God has enabled me to do for the cause of Christ. You will find that the opposite is true of worldly pleasures.

The joy derived from them decreases as one grows older. More and more, I thank God for the burning zeal he has given me down through the years to labor for him long hours without rest at times. As the return of our Lord and the end of time draweth nigh, it behooves us Christian believers to give him our all in this final stretch of the race.

Also, always bearing in mind that at any moment, death could end our earthly life. With each passing day, the opportunities to labor for the Lord on that day also pass away forever, never to be available again. God help us all to be diligent, not to waste a single day.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please perfect my labor unto my Lord. Help me to serve thee diligently each day, Lord Jesus, as if it were my last day on earth, which it may very well be.

At the end of each day, help me to pause and consider that I now have one day less remaining to serve thee on earth. Oh Lord, I don't want to waste any day of my life, so please help me not to set a fire, a burning unction within me to zealously labor for thee, ever so worthy thou art. And the cause is so great, eternal human souls.

I pray this prayer for all other Christians also. Amen. In 1983, I finished writing my first book manuscript, but I lacked sufficient money for printing it.

So similar to Paul making tents, I began to work jobs to get money to print the book. In late December of 1983, I flew from Japan to Guam, Guam Island in the Pacific to do evangelistic work there. As soon as I arrived on tropical Guam, I started looking for a paying job also.

I found a night job working from 1 a.m to 9 a.m, six days a week. As soon as I started working that job, I asked them for more hours of work when they could use me, and they gave me lots of overtime. Once I worked that job 24 hours straight for hourly wages, 24 hours of wages.

I also went to a Vietnamese friend on Guam who had a auto body repair shop and asked if he could use me part-time. He said he could use me for about five hours a day, three or four days a week, washing cars and sanding them, sweeping the floor, cleaning up the shop and such. So I gladly took that highfalutin job.

I went to Pastor Fagan at Temple Baptist Church and asked if he could use me in the construction work that he was doing on the church building, and he hired me for a few hours a week. So after working the 1 a.m to 9 a.m job, I usually went and sanded cars at the body shop or went and helped with construction at the church till 3 p.m or so. The only reason I quit work so early was because I had a daily children's evangelistic service in my apartment at 4 p.m. I would rush back there, clean up and have that service for an hour or so.

At the end of it, I usually took the children out onto the apartment grounds to sing and preach to people there, and then I sometimes went out and preached in public a while in the early evening before getting four hours or so asleep to be back at work at 1 a.m. As I had asked my employer to give me more hours of work when available, sometimes they would call me in early at 9 or 10 p.m. I had no phone in my apartment. I worked a monitoring desk at a security agency. So I told the man who worked that shift before my shift to radio their patrol car that patrolled around, and how the officer in it swinged by my place and pounded on my bedroom window.

I was on the first floor of that apartment when they wanted me to come in early, and often they pounded on my bedroom window, ending my night's sleep long before I slept four hours. I got so weary that when I was able to get just four hours of sleep at night, that seemed like such a long rest. One night, I pillowed my head dead tired and hoped desperately to get at least two hours or more of sleep before I heard a pounding on the window, and each night as I laid down on my pallet on the floor, most weary, I just about instantly passed out in sleep, and just as I got laid down on this particular night and was quickly passing out with hopes of lying there for more than two hours, there was a loud pounding on the window.

Yeah, Tom wants you to come in and relieve him now. Okay, tell him I'll be right there, and away I went to work. That night, I just got the hope of sleep.

Neither had I rest, Job, I know what you mean. Of course, no one can carry on indefinitely with little or no rest, and I do believe that God has ordained that we usually have a night's rest following a day of labor, but the gospel books in the New Testament give us accounts of our Savior going out and praying all night on occasion. That is a good example for us to follow.

Job's example of having no rest is also a good one to follow. Also, remember the servant I spoke of in Luke chapter 17, verses 7 through 10, who worked overtime without thanks for doing it, but rather considered it his duty. We Christians belong to God twice.

He made us, then he bought us. God the Son purchasing our salvation on Calvary for the price of his life and his shed blood. Therefore, we should joyfully feel duty-bound to give God our all.

Lord God, please help me to do just that. Let's pray. Help me to give thee all my all, holding back nothing.

Teach me what a joy it is to serve thee with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Change my heart so that working for thee becomes the greatest pleasure I know. That will give me greater zeal and desire for serving thee than I have for doing anything else.

I pray this for all other Christians also. Amen. From early January till sometime in March of that year, 1984, I worked like that on Guam, averaging about 16 hours a day, six days a week on those jobs that paid an hourly wage.

In addition to that, I daily did evangelistic work. Then I returned to Japan and got rested and recovered. I had earned what money I could toward printing the first book I had written, and about six months later, by the grace of God, I got it printed.

On the cover of it in large print is written, free, never to be sold, in obedience to my Savior's command to freely give, in Matthew chapter 10, verse 8. Those words are on the covers of all my paperback books. Soon after, in 1986, I started a part-time business here in Japan to obtain missionary work funds. Adding it to my missionary work has resulted in more of, neither had I rest.

And since 1986, with God as my helper, that business has provided funds to get out tons of Bibles and Christian literature in Japan, the U.S., and in other nations, all of it free to the receiver, to God be the glory for it all. Thus, God has taught me to stand with him against those who merchandise Jesus and excuse it with a sinful lie that it is just not possible to always give away Bibles and Christian literature. And if we do give such free, then to finance it, we must beg people for money and do it in God's name as if he were poor.

Some gospel merchants say they must at least recover its cost by selling it at cost, but few are non-sellers at cost. While on furlough in the States in 1985, I would check book prices when I was in a Christian bookstore at times. I had just had a 400-page paperback book printed, 10,000 copies printed.

The printing and shipping cost total, shipping cost to my place in Alabama was right at $1 per book, or that volume of a printing order of 10,000 copies. In Christian bookstores, the prices on paperback books of about 400 pages range from nine to $12 or so, average being about $10. Typically, about 50% of that is the bookstore's profit.

It costs about $1 to print that book. You paid over $10 to buy it in 1985. So above the store owner's profit and the cost of printing the book remains about $4 for the author and the publisher to share.

The publisher must promote the book in a worldly fashion, telling how necessary that book is to you and pushing you to buy it. Merchandising the great king of kings and lord of lords, crowning him with a crown of scorn and thorns, how it robs him of his great glory. But with my eyes fixed on my savior's command to freely give, God forbid that I ever consider cheapening him and dishonoring him by merchandising my precious lord and master.

I work till I drop to earn the money. Printing costs only about one-tenth of the world's retail price, and you who want to read my books get to do so for free. To God be the glory.

And I do not relate this to brag on myself. I do it to give God the glory for what he has enabled me to accomplish in his wonderful name. I tell it to you as an example of what can be accomplished when we forgo rest as Job did.

And I speak it to all of God's creation to declare that there is absolutely no excuse for any sinful disobedience to almighty God when he commands us to freely give. As these writings of mine go out, what a blessing it is to get letters from Christians who always obey God's command to freely give and also do not beg people for money to finance that. Many Christians do right in this matter and what great glory God receives from your obedience.

Keep it up by his grace. Do it. Work.

Toil. Be without rest. Glorify him.

And may God bless you in every way and pour out a great abundance upon you in reward for your obedience. By the way, telling people they can have your book, tape, CD, video, and such for an offering of a certain amount, that is not freely giving it. That is selling it.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please deal with Christians not to merchandise thy eternal word. Clearly show the ones who do it that they are entirely without excuse for their sinful disobedience to thy command.

Freely give. Cause them to cease turning thy glory into shame in this sinful disobedience. Show them that much can be accomplished by them laboring without rest to fund the spreading of thy word.

Help them to follow Job's example of not having rest and Paul's example of laboring and make intents to obtain the funds that he needed. Help me to shun the methods of the world in serving thee. Please give us a new burning desire to please and glorify God no matter how hard we have to labor without rest to do so.

Please enable us to do right in these matters. Thank thee, Lord, for the Christians who do obey thy command to freely give and do not beg people in thy name for money to fund what they give away free. Bless them greatly for this obedience and provide an abundance of supply to them so they can give away more, I pray.

Please continue to bless brother Richard as he freely gives. As for the Christians who labor long hours to fund their free giving, may the joy of the Lord be their strength. Please uphold and sustain their physical health and strength to enable them to continue their work for thee.

Please grant these requests, Lord, I pray. Amen. In Matthew 6 21, Jesus spoke ever so clearly to his disciples saying, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

My Christian friend listening to me right now, just exactly where are your treasures? Well, that's the very place your heart is. In 1985, I was on furlough in Alabama. I talked to a young Christian husband and father living in rural Alabama, not a place where many rich people live.

He told me that his house had burned down some time ago and that his family had lost all their possessions in the house along with the house. At the time of the fire, his household goods were valued at $70,000. That's in early 1980s.

That amount does not include the value of his dwelling, just the material things inside the house. That makes a lot of expensive ashes now, doesn't it? On hearing that, I thought I hadn't spent much over $700 for everything in my little house in Japan, including things bought for use in evangelistic work. Many of my few household goods were worn out things that missionaries and other people had discarded and I had joyfully received for free.

I had pulled a few of my household goods out of other people's garbage. Most of my money had gone to freely giving the gospel. Hallelujah.

That is where I love to see it go, being spent on that which counts forever. With that husband and possibly the wife also working a paying job over the years, just watch the house, garage, yard, and all their property fill up with tens of thousands of dollars worth of earthly treasures while all the time they complain they're just barely being able to make financially, giving a mere pittance to God, living for self. What each of us does with our time, talents, and money is our personal choice to make.

I do not speak this to dictate to you what you are to do with your life. Rather, I'm simply God's messenger trying to clearly show you what a wonderful thing it is for anyone to do, that which makes him perfect and upright in the sight of God, his creator. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I do want to make this a primary goal in my life, being perfect and upright before thee. Please help me to fully believe that with thee all things are possible. Help me to be totally desirous to be perfect and upright before God in order to see thee accomplish that in my life for me.

I pray that thou will give all other Christians this desire and help them to be perfect and upright in thy sight. Help us all, Lord, I pray. Amen.

I have made my own choice in this matter, and though in my weakness I fail God so much in so many ways, I am most happy in my basic choice of wanting to be like Job and labor without rest for my Lord, and I have complete confidence that I will remain happy about that choice for all eternity. You please seriously think on what choice in this matter you want to live with for all eternity as you are in your Savior's presence. Neither had I rest.

May God help us all to be like Job. Visit my website. That URL is christisall.us. Separate those three words with two dashes.

Christ-is-all.us. Read my autobiography on that website. Read my other books. Pray for me and intercede for the many lost Buddhist Japanese souls around me who are daily perishing.

Oh, how I desire to have them in heaven with us. God, make it reality, I plead. Amen.