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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] to introduce my name is john and uh let's quickly do a prayer because i'm nervous and now that we continue right but i thank you for today love we thank you for your word and this position in the bible i pray that you help us to be able to to learn from you and to know how you want us to live our lives and how we should be pursuing blessings and what blessings we should be pursuing we thank you for this interesting prayer amen okay so uh morning everyone my name is john and this is my family so just want to
00:00:52 quickly give you an introduction because this is my first time preaching i've been in fpc for i think close to five years now and so this is my wife sonia i have two kids evan and jaden they keep me very busy i'm from this life group called cia it stands for christians in action and in business in work what i do is actually i run an i.t company we provide fuel service and team collaboration solutions for companies we use so in short that's what i do and what i'm most interested in is actually in work get work
00:01:26 faith integration which means that how we can bring jesus to work and actually display and witness for him at work so that's a very good introduction myself now today what we're going to be talking about is actually the pursuit of blessings right uh the passage that has been um uh read by sister kevin thank you so much for stamina it's a very long passage uh and the reason because it's very it's a story and we need to understand the background of it now so when we talk about blessings i think all of us understand what
00:01:56 blessings are right right all of us understand what blessings are and every day we are looking for it on monday you go to work you're trying to earn money you're doing so many things so i've asked you what are the blessings in life we can easily name many many we know what they are right but if i were to quickly just go through a few of the things that are quite a prominent let's start with this one so is this blessing or not yes uh right now water is water blessing or not yes right so if i were to do this three
00:02:29 months ago none of you would say water i've done this uh before in 2019 none of you say health is a blessing but now suddenly everything is so important you know the whole world has changed and mcu has changed all of us the whole world is moving so fast and we need to adapt to it as well now if i ask you normally what do people look for what are the blessings and this photo actually pretty much depicts what is blessing what you look for you're going to fox and look forward and check what people
00:02:55 look for in life this is the first one can anyone guess what it is freedom right people want freedom you talk to anyone that works anyone under employment they tell you that i don't want to work true or not right man people say immediately it is like they will say i don't want to work okay i want to be to do anything i want to go anywhere i want eat anything i want in short is freedom people for that what else do people look for well this is another one people look for money right now in the old days before my
00:03:27 generation and previous generations you to get to mass wealth it takes a long time it's be understood you work until 40 50 60 then you get rich but nowadays the younger generation is totally different they want to become billionaires when they are in their 30s or 20s and this is happening because of technology right and so you can see all these people uh first one is facebook this kind of snap snapchat sorry the third one is actually kylie jenner i don't really know her but some of you may know her
00:03:56 uh the fourth one is actually so if any of your friend any of your family uses tick tock this guy actually is a founder of it so what they built is they built these companies that are amazingly big because of it and these are called unicorns this is a term that has been used in business for startups their build companies so big and go listing and live happily ever after that's your goal right so money people pursue money this is the second thing people look for and every day however we are always
00:04:24 looking for happiness right so now however sometimes people do having money is not enough right there are some people who actually go way more look for more than money and this is one of the guys out there who is this guy elon musk many people know him right right now why i have been over here is this guy is not really pursuing money he's looking for way more than that why at a very young age i think about 20s or 30s he actually sold paypal okay he sold his shares in paypal for 165 million dollars
00:04:59 what will you do after you get 165 million dollars you give it to church no no right right so but what he did is he actually took all the money and dumped it into two companies first one is tesla right it's not in malaysia but it's coming the second one is spacex all right what does he do exactly let me share with you this is what he's doing spacex is very famous because he did something that was thought to be undoable right something that couldn't be done before spacex rockets could not land you send
00:05:34 it out done but he managed to reuse the rockets and therefore cause of space exploration becomes very very affordable and for him this is meaning he's looking for meaning in life looking to achieve something before he dies now what does he do three things he's spending all his time working and building all these great companies and building more and more but three different things you want to do first one making humans a multi-planetary species by creating a self-sustaining city on mars first thing
00:06:02 you want to do right so i'm going to send you to mars second one he wants to accelerate the worst transition to sustainable energy and third one he wants to connect human consciousness to artificial intelligence first one is through spacex second is through tesla third one is through something new called neural link i'll explain more later right but in short he's chasing for a lot of stuff and he's looking for meaning in life and that to him is blessings now by many of us we are not so you know
00:06:27 we don't we don't need so much things we understand that at the end day happiness comes from family right right but also when you are when you have family it's not enough just to have a family you must look good or so right right you must look nice as well must be comfortable enough so we look for all things love and friends these are all blessings that we look for now i have a question to you are blessings good or bad you're right is it wrong the personal blessings no it's okay god wants to bless us as well
00:06:58 right sounds good to prosperity gospel right right however right let's try to understand a bit more so today i have three different points to share with you first one is actually how do we pursue blessings let's process this ability how do we pursue blessings right now if i ask you all of you have many many different answers you tell me if a young guy comes to you and you're supposedly your director in the company and this young guy this young chick oh uncle how can i become as successful as you what's your answer
00:07:27 work hard what else right work harder all right right uh well after that people say it's not enough to work hard you know work smart also right after that if you go higher you know what people say it's not what you know but it's who you know and what else do you hear in in the world it's not about that your network is your net worth you can go on and on and everybody has mentality in mind how do you pursue blessings right but what i share with you is this whatever you do every day we try very hard to pursue blessings true
00:08:01 but what happens if no matter how we try no matter how hard we work we still don't get what we want what do we do what happens if the thing that we want is so important to us that we cannot live without it we really want it what do we do and this is where our story comes in by if we really want something something has become so important in our lives we'll go all up to gain this thing everyone so let's look at it together now for this story there's a background that you understand and thanks for alden
00:08:35 last week he is a preacher about it already there's a context in understanding when you actually come into genesis 27 the first one is god had an oracle to rebecca saying that the older will serve the younger so esau will serve jacob and it was being mentioned over there the second thing to understand is esau sealed off his birth right so when he was very hungry he was famished he sold his birthright to his younger brother already and the thing is he saw actually doesn't really care about the bird fry and his
00:09:05 responsibility as an older brother and he actually married two hitted women and this is frowned upon by the parents they don't really like it but they but he still does it and this is what happened right this is the entire story in short if you look at it esau is not really a it's not a very godly man he doesn't really follow and obey instructions but and yet what happened is basically isaac had a plan i just said that i love my son okay i have two sons one always stays at home you know quite scrawny like me
00:09:32 right the other one is strong and he goes out to hunt in a while and i love this sun now i'm already if you see over here this is a passage i'm an old man already and he tells him prepare the kind of tasty food i like han gave me some food to eat so i can bless you before i die regardless of whether esau has soul the birthright he wants to give it to to him again right so he basically disregards everything and isaac actually knew isaac knew that god's oracle was given and it's supposed to be jacob to be chosen but no he really
00:10:05 loved his son enough that he said that this is important that he wants to do it so it doesn't matter what god says he just wants to continue and do what he wants and this is a story i'm going to be basically highlighting the main things because if i couldn't do it we're gonna be actually two hours over here so i'm actually gonna um highlight certain keywords in the passages to make it easy for us to understand now when he did this rebecca heard the story and what did rika do rebecca also remembered oracle but for
00:10:31 her the most important thing is she loves jacob okay she loves jacob and so she hatched a plan on how to actually get the blessing and pass it to jacob now if you read the passages and really pay attention what rebecca is doing you can see the instructions are very clear she actually went commando mode on jacob look at it and see she said listen carefully do what i tell you go out bring me so i can prepare right when jacob said no jacob gave some reasons and then after that they were actually hesitating
00:11:08 rebecca said do what i say get them for me and after that she did the whole thing and in short the whole mastermind of this idea is not jacob jacob is just a young chico that doesn't know what to do right but actually his rebecca actually did the whole plan now please take note when you look at it there is a keyword over here that's different from what isaac said is in the presence of the lord before i die this is being said this in the present vlog is not said bye isaac but rebecca understood the context
00:11:40 better there is something very important is being done in presence of a lot and it's before isaac dies now supposedly if you if your wife overheard that you said this before i die and you think that you're entirely what is a actual response you expect from your wife come check you all right hey how are you uh you know what's the doctor or not i know over here is let's cheat this old fool you know this all for already don't know what he's doing let me settle him for you right this is exactly what rebecca is
00:12:12 doing over here and the other thing to understand is in the presence of the lord right so it's very interesting i want to come back to this afterwards right and when jacob heard it as a fellow that what would you do you check hey how's my father no his response from rebecca's request and a suggestion is he actually said what if my father touches me right i will bring it i bring down a curse on myself which basically means that he's saying that this is a very good plan but there's a problem over here right
00:12:50 that's a good idea but how do you solve this problem that i'm not as hairy as my brother so we keep on reading it the next thing is at the end he managed to get this blessing he wanted he went and basically his parents was very straightforward go there take the food pass it to his dad and say that he said it's all and get the blessing in the end he managed to get it yes he managed to get it so after he got it he quickly left and who came in okay he so came in right he so came in and iso actually saw this what is it
00:13:25 now when iso heard it he actually was very surprised and he was very sad and angry as well right now i'm gonna give you a big context you need to understand that actually he's so so pissed but right right so if you actually saw something to somebody and you try to snatch it away so actually are you right or wrong you're not right right you're wrong right but the context is when you heard it there's no remorse there's no repentance and what he wants is this hey he took it up i want something so i must get something so i told his
00:13:59 father bless me me too my father don't you have anything reserved for me haven't you received any blessing do you only have one blessing my father bless me too right now when we read this a lot of times we see that maybe you think esau is actually the the boy to be pity over here you know this this guy he got cheated but if you look at it all these things would not have happened if esau didn't firstly sold his birthright as well right now so this very interesting thing is let's see and also in hebrews it's being stated
00:14:30 that when we describe esau he's actually stated that for you know that afterwards when he wanted to inherit the blessing he was rejected for he found no place for repentance though he sought it diligently with tears now my friends what it means is aldo is crying he's not repenting he's actually crying because he cannot get what he wants there's no repentance over here but friends what i want to share with you is it's important for you to understand that ideologies and that happen in the presence of the lord so in a way
00:15:00 you can say this is like a christian family you kind of know god and you can do all these things as well isn't it interesting so the only way i can understand that this can be done is the way we view god or whether this family views god is like this god is like a genie in the land and basically he does what he wants and you can see that even when isaac blesses jacob he actually mentions the lord's name as well so this is the same way that we actually approach god i found passage online and it's actually stated like this
00:15:35 actually there people would just say we should do that it says this you know believing in god requires action for aladdin to find the genie he had to rob his lamp for us to find god we too must do the things that lead us to god like praying reading scriptures going to church serving other people and so on so it's actually doing are we doing all this because it's just like rubbing the lamb you know you know you want blessings you want to close this business you want to do pray for us brave verse
00:16:05 right must pray true but are you doing it because you just want the blessings you know what has a end game why are we doing certain ways is someone efficient about us ourselves so how do i pursue blessings it's something for us to ask ourselves okay and pursue blessings do we put it so big that it becomes an idol in our lives and we actually chase for it so much so that we forget actually what's important in our lives first point right so a lot of questions for the partner today second point what does it cost
00:16:38 when i pursue blessings what does it cost actually now this entire story had its consequences the first thing that happened is because of this esau held a grudge against jacob and he said that the days of morning my father are near and after that i will kill my brother jacob so whatever you do whether you realize or not there's always a when you pursue something a lot of times we don't realize that there's a cost but there is always something to pay yeah so what does it cost let's ask ourselves
00:17:18 when we put super things tomorrow when you start working already everything we do whether it be in life whether it is in business that is a family whether some of you who are young dating going after the love of your life you know all these things to do what does it cost and i'll show you something that i found online now this is actually as you can see this is a knife and it's actually stuck in the snow now what is this this is a story for you to know whereby one of the hardest thing to do is to live as an eskimo you need
00:17:51 to look for food but the whole place is white so if you're trying to hunt for animals it's very hard to do that before you reach the animals can see you there's nowhere to hide as well right even chase them you can are not fast enough so how do you hunt animals so what happened is one of the most one of the things that you want to actually hunt and actually catch is the arctic roof and this move is very elusive it's very hard to catch it but what they have realized is there's a way to get it with 100 kill rate
00:18:19 100 how do you do it what they do is they take a knife and after that they dip it in blood they take it out and they let it freeze after that they continue doing it dip it take it out and freeze it until it becomes many many layers and it has a smell as well they put in the snow and after that the hunter goes to sleep at night the wolf will smell it and will come the wolf is hungry what does the wolf do it starts to lick the knife and as it continues to lick the knife what happens is he enjoys the blood
00:19:00 on the knife okay the blood starts warm and he starts looking and he starts to get it so he enjoys it and as he continues licking what he doesn't realize is his tongue is actually getting injured in the process he continues doing it and the more he licks the more blood comes out where's the blood from that's when the food was from the wolf himself okay it's gonna move itself and he continues doing it until the point went by he enjoyed so much but suddenly he realized that hey something is wrong but by the time
00:19:29 he reacts something is wrong he's too late he runs away but as he runs away blood drips from him until he dies in the morning the hunter just needs to wake up follow the trail of the blood and the wolf is there my friends when we pursue blessings in life there is always a cause if we put something above god if something becomes an idol for us whether we know it or not there is a cause so friends in this story first sacrifice that they made isaac is dishonored imagine you are an old man you accomplished a lot in
00:20:10 life right and you actually you know you you were the boy that we talked about whereby he was willing to be sacrificed by abraham but yet after all this mistakes ebay he actually was dishonored he got cheated by his family first thing second thing jacob lost everything jacob got the blessing but at the end of day he lost everything what did he need to do after this next passage you see that he runs away he has to run away because he's worrying that he so will kill him and when he ran away did he any banker check with him
00:20:50 did any caravans or camels with him no he had to run for his life alone right and after that he went to laban and get tortured over there as well to learn his next one he saw lost his inheritance and his soul basically he never repented as well and he lost everything because he was the first guy to actually make the mistake of giving away and the biggest loser is rebecca although she loved her son so much at the other day she had to give away to her son let her son to actually go away and she never managed to meet her
00:21:28 son again i can't imagine what happened if i cannot meet my kids again last time there's no skype there's no zoom so you never see your son anymore so friends when we do things in life and pursue something we need to always understand there is a course and what i want to share with you is this story that we have is something that's very very very relevant to us even today it's very relevant to us today and i'll give you an example just let me talk about elon musk you know it's actually one of the guys i would
00:21:58 say i i would say i respect because he is able to do things that other people can't do right but if you look at it his life is a mess and he's actually laid waste to many people's life as well let me share with you what has happened so if you actually read about things online about tesla and all that i have some stories for you but before that i forgot the point so how important is actually sin is a slippery slope okay now if you read the passage you'll notice this isaac and jacob had to continue lying
00:22:31 once it started right when actually jacob gave the food and said father please bless me the e dominican is blessing no he had to continue lying because his father asked who are you and after he needed to go near to actually let his father touch his hands and all that stuff so what you one thing is that you've seen his slippers slippery solo times once we start doing something wrong maybe you compromise a little bit but when you guys is he never stops at you will continue becoming bigger and bigger and bigger
00:23:03 and that's something we need to understand without you knowing we are just like the wolf that if you compromise one time the next thing will come the next thing will come and one day without you realizing it you're gone already the hunter will catch you right so talking about tesla and elon musk these are some of the things i found online this is actually a quote from a tesla technician he's seen he said that i've seen people pass up on the floor they hit the floor like a pancake and smash their face open
00:23:37 why because they are actually running on laws and they need to be very productive and be able to produce a lot of cars in order to break even so they work their stuff like that but you don't really hear this right you see the nice car but you don't see the course behind and all these things happen right and after that when someone actually faints weapons they just sent us to work around him while he's still lying on the floor i thought this only happened in china right but it happens as well i know what steve davis is a spacex
00:24:09 engineer a very smart guy he says that steve davis spent nine months to redesign a part for spacex for the rockets to use he reduced the cost from one hundred twenty thousand dollars to three thousand nine hundred after that he sent an email to elon musk telling him what a great thing he did and how they do it and what was elon's reply okay next right this is exactly what happened and friends a lot of times when we want to achieve greatness in life what is the cost that we actually pay right what's the cost of which you pay
00:24:45 and the course is not only to the staff if you see the next thing this is the wife this is what elon musk's first five as you mentioned as we dance at our wedding reception so they just got married and at the writing reception they're dancing elon told me i am the alpha in this relationship any husbands do this on the first day of wedding you tell your wife i'm the alpha in this relationship right so she shrunk it off okay i shrunk it off just as i would later shake off signing the post-nuptial agreement
00:25:19 but as time went on i learned that he was serious he'd grown up in the male-dominated culture of south africa and the view to compete and dominate that means so successful in business did not magically shut off when he came home right in the months following our wedding a certain diamond began to take hold leon's judgment over route 9 and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found me lacking i am your wife i told him repeatedly not your employee so he has actually i think three three or four partners really
00:25:57 now but the main thing i'll show you is there's a course to all these things that we do whether we realize it or not i actually wanted to delete the last portion elon's judgment over mine the part that says i'm your wife i don't repeatedly not your employee i want to delete it but my i said keep it there why because this is happening in my home as well so china main company you know so what you do you work hard and everybody must be efficient yes or no you're not supported by the government okay right but when you come home
00:26:29 weapons we must be good at what we do all right so my wife actually told me and this is not saying and i say okay she scolded me a few times she said that you think i'm your slaver and this happens as well so friends when we actually try to achieve all these things when we want perfection do we actually lead ways to people's lives on the in the process so it's a question for us to ask ourselves what does it cost us when we actually pursue the blessings we have right what does it really cost us now
00:27:00 but these are all the things we're chasing we're pursuing so many different things but i have a question for you it's something that we don't really consider and the question is this why does god bless actually why does god bless have you thought about it before if you look at it this is the blessing by isaiah this is isaac's understanding of blessing when he blessed jacob what he said was may god give you heavens to you earth's richness green and new wine my nation serve you people bow down to you all right and
00:27:33 those who curse you because and those who bless you be blessed and if you summarize it the things that is stated are prosperity power protection this is what we understand by blessing right but if you look at when actually god when god blessed abraham isaac and jacob if you look at those passages you see something that is missing inside here something is missing let's okay together when god decided to bless abraham isaac and jacob you need to understand there is a reason behind it and you look at it the yellow color
00:28:11 items are missing right i make you a blessing to others all the families of the earth will be blessed through you into isaac same thing through our spring and all nations on earth will be blessed and again again you say this why does god bless abraham true he loves him and god loves abraham but there is implicit in the blessing that when you are blessed by god you also need to serve others there's a reason behind you right it's not so they can buy all the cars and properties you have but there is something that god is
00:28:46 trying to do in the entire story what you realize is god was silent in the whole story correct you don't see god doing anything god was totally silent and yet god's purpose god's oracle actually came true and therefore we need to understand one thing god's redemptive plan cannot be derailed in life there are a lot of things happen maybe we feel that we are not happy about we are not confident in there's viruses here now there's no water there's a change of government and some of you maybe like the previous
00:29:19 government right a lot of different things or maybe you prefer the current government i don't know what it is but whatever it is there's change of government there's so many different issues but one thing we can be sure of is this god's plan of redemption has not stopped from the time of adam until now and it's something that can gives us an assurance knowing that no matter what happens in your life god is still in control if you're going through a difficult time at work your company has issues you have your
00:29:49 salaries been cut you'll be naturally removed from your job or whatever it is or maybe you're sick right but one thing we need to know is we may actually not get well we may not get back all these things we have but one thing we know is god is still sovereign and he is always already regardless whether you like it or not he has a plan for all of us and our goal is to walk right in the center of his plan so in the bible as well you see this happening god will always step in when he needs to from
00:30:19 this case the wave today bye bye at the end day jacob actually gets a blessing to joseph becoming a blessing to the family and when pharaoh didn't want the israelites to actually leave god will step in and again again god will step in to make sure that the redemptive plan is achieved now what is the most important thing in god's mind what's the most important thing in god's mind if i ask you what is the most important blessing in god's mind what do you think answers the answer is at the heart of god's
00:31:00 blessing is god's presence the entire story if you read genesis he was to tell when when genesis was written the israelites were in the wilderness moses was writing it he was to tell the israelites to know that whatever happens even though you're in the this you went through so much god has a plan and god's it god is sovereign but for us when we read the passage and we know about christ and all this happened one thing we need to realize is at the heart of it it's not about blessing israel and bringing them to
00:31:34 the promised land it's about way more than that it's about reconciliation to god that is at the heart of it all the most important blessing in life is not houses cars money family rockets health or even water it's not that these are mature things that one day will be gone right even though i have two kids with me one day there will be overseas right but at the end of the day the most important thing is reconciliation to god god wants us back god wants us to come back to him because every day the most important
00:32:14 thing to god is us he wants us to come back because we are in desperate need of him you may not reside to realize it but the world is in a mess there are a lot of things and it will continue going worse and worse but we have a responsibility as well and i'll show you a few things first one this is neural link this is elon musk's next project so he's running three companies i don't know how he does it but he's running three comments this is the third thing and this is announced about one or two weeks ago he wants to drill a
00:32:45 hole in your skull and put a chip there so that you can be connected to artificial intelligence will you want it yes or no some say yes some say no right interesting i think about it however what if he says once you get this right if it gets it right you suddenly become smarter than everyone you can access the internet directly so when people ask a question you know everything do you want it right what if your boss says that your performance is not comparable to your colleagues anymore they're all
00:33:21 using neuralink how about you link you didn't say godly but it's a good question for us to ask you know but every day we desperately because no matter how you pursue perfection you pursue the biggest car you know pursue better and better performance our internet has gone from dow up to broadband to fiber and we literally go to satellite on spacex as well but any day we are in desperate need of god this is happening in china so even improve for kids concentration what do you do you don't use a cane you put a band on
00:33:52 the head and this is actually sending the eeg signals to to the teachers so when you do not focus right when you stop focusing the teacher knows directly amazing right because why productivity is important we need to earn more we need to do more right and this is the things that we are looking to together but every day friends no matter what we put so in life no matter what blessings we pursue in life in onsen we actually have this thing in life and so blaze pascal said this there's a god-shaped vacuum in the heart
00:34:25 of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing but only by god the creator made known through jesus no matter what you pursue in life no matter how you try to get it it will never be enough whatever we have in life it will never be enough right in economics is called the law of diminishing returns you'll never be enough after a while you won't like it anymore after a while you need something bigger better faster and why because god has wires it's like a failed switch it's like a switch in our lives to know
00:35:00 that you know if something goes wrong it feels safe whereby no matter what he will make sure that the world will not satisfy us we still need god in our lives so a quick summary for all of you when you talk about personal blessings let's look at the questions again how do we pursue blessings first thing for us to always remember is we can try our best and do everything we want and pursue these things but in a day all blessings come from god and ought to be subjected to god first point second question that we
00:35:34 had what does it cause blessings that we pursue the mature blessings have cause but the most important blessing is paid with the blood of christ you do not need to do anything you just need to receive from god and third one why does god bless us god bless us so that we and our neighbors may be reconciled to god i'm going to put a message over here please take note what is being stated there it's not that you may be referring to god it's so that we and who our neighbors is not just us it's the whole world to be reconciled and god
00:36:14 wants us to do that i did a very quick check and actually every day there's about 60 million people dying and how many of these actually know christ is a question that we can all ask so therefore i have a question over here for all of us what on earth are we here for what on earth are we here for if being reconciled to god is so good after receiving christ in our lives why doesn't god just beat me up be myself snap a finger you go to heaven that's it why are we still on earth and the answer is if you read
00:36:49 the bible passages again and again you see this happening nearby in israel in israel's time you see that in exodus stated that you will be forming a kingdom of priests and a holy nation israel had a job to do be a kingdom of priests and holy nation and we fast forward to the new testament this has not moved this has not changed but the responsibility has come to us and over here peter says but you are a chosen people your chosen people a royal priesthood a holy nation god's special possession that you may declare the praises of him
00:37:25 who call you out of darkness into his wonderful life once you know people but now you are the people of god once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy friends being a christian is not just saying the sinner's prayer getting the ticket to heaven and after that we just sit at home and wait for the time to go no it's not for us to enjoy ourselves until it's time to go to heaven and continue enjoying ourselves god has given us a role to do over here and so as uh for a response i want to quickly
00:37:58 share with you a few stories a few stories for us to see the first one i will show you is actually hudson taylor and fisherman some of you may have heard of this before maybe not but let's look at it again now so many of you know that hudson taylor is a missionary in china and i think just coincidentally you know he's actually mentioned uh week as well so what was husson taylor was traveling on a boat it's called junk boat together with a friend or peter right as a traveling suddenly peter jeff
00:38:30 fell into the water right peter fed the water hudson ran out and found out i found that actually his friend is actually in the water and immediately he asked for help right people were like yeah the guy i'm dropping on the boat and drop in the water okay so he couldn't save this guy he couldn't save it this cup was drowning so what he did was he found that just nearby there was actually a group of fishermen fishing so what he told this fishman was come quickly a man is drowning the response was stunning they said
00:39:06 we have been it's not convenient hudson taylor couldn't believe what he heard so husqva said don't speak of convenience come quickly or it will be too late they replied they replied we are busy fishing forget about your fishing come only come at once i will pay you and i'll pay you well they continue asking how much will you pay me the response was 1000 data set five dollars only please don't stand there talking save life without delay continue they bargain like good will do right too little we will not come for
00:39:48 less than 30 dollars as the data said i don't have 30 dollars okay i'll give you everything i have please come now then they ask how much is that the response came that was okay about 16 for 14 after they said they decided to come on the first try they managed to get the boy the man actually up onto the boat by the time peter was dead already now friends what's the value of the soul to you and to us every single day we pass by so many people but what is the value of the soul to us we can say the fisherman was wrong you
00:40:31 know they didn't try to save this person but help us any day when we go to the throne of god publicly asked us what would god say to us the khalid that we know when he was actually not feeling well were we busy with a promotion or did we just spend time to try to help them do we actually craft carve up a portion of life to make sure that we use it to serve people to let people know god now i'm not asking all of us to go mission to become missionaries although many of us some of us may be called to become
00:41:08 missionaries but what i'm asking all of us to do is to do something don't just stand there do something because at the end of the day what is the value of the soul too we need to ask ourselves this question now in i come from business and there's something i will share with you preaching the gospel can be done by you know taking the bible and telling people about it but the best way to preach the gospel is actually as shared just now being king of praise the holy nation is to actually in our workplace when we
00:41:44 actually go out to work that is the best mission field out there because you're that day in the people can see you so i'll show you a story over here and this is a guy called stanley tam he's 105 years old and he's still witnessing for god even now it's very already and when you're so old what do you do you retire you say all right well some people some people know i still want to be a politician right however for him he's already but what he's done is he's actually started a small carpentry carpentry shop
00:42:18 and he sells furniture and also there's a sign saying that even a free bible come in and when the person comes in you tell them about christ this is when he's old but when he's young what do you do and so i this book that i should read and this actually changed my life and this book was actually recommended by a brother and my wife read it and told me about it but i want to share with you a little bit things about insight for you now in stanley times um live what he said is he said a few different things i
00:42:48 think it's important for us to understand especially if you're working he said this if you are selling products you will create brochures right great brochures and you try to sell and market it but why when it comes to the most important message the most important product in the world do we hesitate to even give up flyers and brochures to people so what he does is when he sells things he sells plastics right he's actually he started in a great depression 1929 onwards he sells plastics and what he
00:43:16 did was when you buy his product you always get a pamphlet from him talking about christ many of us will not do that because why what if people know already they don't like god you know then we actually lose the business so we keep it quiet when we pray in the lunch time how to pray that's how i pray do we actually spend the pray to let people know that we are christians i'm not asking you to do that because of that but we we intentionally keep quiet even when the things that you speak about but for stanley no that's not writers
00:43:48 and what he does is he makes sure that the whole world knows about his god and by telling people about him and he spends time doing many many things but i want to share with you a few things for you to see first one there was one time when he actually did the accounts for the company and he realized that he actually had a four thousand dollar extra in his company right four thousand dollars so when he calculated you guys oh because he charged his customers a bit too much charge the customer's a bit too much and
00:44:23 so after that he took off four thousand dollars but he has three thousand customers which effectively comes with a dollar for actual customer and it was year end already it was christmas so we thought mine is okay so what i did was at the un he actually prayed to god and asked god okay lord this is the end of the year is there anything in my life that shouldn't be there at once the lord replied yes there is you have four thousand dollars that doesn't belong to you stanley replied lord we have three
00:44:53 thousand customers and four thousand i think that is coming out at the end of the year pretty close law replied but you had four thousand that doesn't belong to you he answered that might be true but customers would all get something different it wouldn't be worth the trouble to figure out who is supposed to receive what by the day he obeyed and what he did was he told he actually hired a lady spent six months to calculate how much to refund to each of them and the smallest amount of refund was seven
00:45:23 cents the biggest amount was seventeen dollars and he did it but before he made the refund god told him and something else got to him i want you to tell them why they are getting this refund right so we type a letter to our customers explaining that we did more than 51 of the business to the lord he gave 51 percent of his whole company to god right and god told us that we had a four thousand dollars all run and we should refund our customers we mail it to the customers and the lady that they said okay i think
00:46:02 our customers be too embarrassed to reply so don't worry buy it i think place is closed really but what happened after that was he received extremely a lot of people replying saying that they really appreciate what he does one letter was from eastman that saying how they appreciate us a company who would make a small refund even so small a catholic hospital replied saying that they didn't use these products because they wanted their products only but because they look forward to all the gospel tracks that they found in each
00:46:28 of the products very surprising and this actually led to many different things one person who was actually the customer went background and he said that hey i see that your product is not being sold in this area let me try to help you do it and he actually started to sell the product on behalf of sani as well and he was not a christian and because he stanley got the whole world to know that he's a christian and so when people have all these religious problems they always come back and think hey i don't know how to solve this thing
00:46:59 at least we just think who do we look for we look for stanley and because of that many many people actually got to know christ through this and any day this news this guy who actually went bankrupt he became a christian because of the exposure and interaction with stanley just in time before he got his heart attack as well so friends even in business please do not remove god from your business in your work when you do your accounts and do a reconciliation sometimes don't just round it up like that
00:47:30 sometimes god has his ways to work and our job is just to obey him so we can witness to him as well right so any day it's not easy and i want to share with you what he said he said that being a christian and letting the whole world know about you from monday to saturday is a very challenging world because you're in a highly demanding exhibition of the real you people seem to cherish the word hypocrite and so he received a lot of messages from people for example in the service industry when certain
00:48:03 products are going to do well and we're making sure we do a good job but what happened over here is sometimes they fail because they're people as well so because like a lot of times we don't there to tell people about god because we're scared you know but we are not good testimony but for him he makes sure that this is being done and for us i think that says we can do it because god doesn't need you to defend him you can preach the gospel we can save everyone despite our weaknesses god will make himself known with or
00:48:29 without us but for example you get a lot of cause for somewhere sometimes when the deliveries are slow and the products are slowly delivered we receive calls like this hey tim robert's voice will bellow at me on the telephone god is late again you promised we have that shipment by friday it's tuesday already stan replied i'm sorry we called the supplier every day last week we're having him dropship to you as soon as he has the stock available the customer replied instead of calling him time why didn't you just pray about
00:49:01 it look we've got to have the plastic tubing you better scratch up a miracle and get it to us i'll do my best send replied and the customer reply amen friends but at the end of the day if you look at it i want to share with you because he actually gave his whole life to god and this guy is not those you know he's not he's doing he's not doing marketing campaign over here to do it but what he does is for example he actually has given an entire company to god 100 share everything that the company
00:49:33 has this given to god he has become an employee all right if you're interested i have a free ebook for the related as well okay i'll give to you later dory so because just in 2019 alone all the revenues and profits from this company goes to a lot of different missions and their 506 000 decisions in 2019 to exercise baptisms virtual game groups and so on so forth and friends any day this is true one man and by working today many many people but friends we need to understand that as we pursue blessings in life
00:50:09 what's most important blessing and this blessing that we have everything that god is so important we have to share with the people that we know and you do not share just by giving to missions you give your entire life to god so if you're interested in this vote i'm going to give you a link later to get it it's free right and because for them 100 given to god enemies or if you want you can actually read it it's very nice to read but i want to share with you for us if you want to be a blessing to
00:50:38 people you don't do it alone you do it together with the church because it's not easy you'll be disheartened and there are issues as well so for example for cia johnson actually has been leading this entertainment whereby we have a daughter and family and we've actually been going to help them and also just minister to them so whether you are an adult like cindy over here in the middle or whether a young boy like oli this is a johnson's kid you go and minister and you share the love of christ to people
00:51:10 and friends you don't need to do it alone and friends i'll share with you that every day you cannot come to church every week and that's it you have to belong to a live room and be looking for a live room because life is not easy you cannot go a day alone you cannot be a lone ranger so if you're interested you can join a live group it is it's never easy and there'll be issues in it i guarantee you but if there are problems and you are a member of the life group you solve it don't just say the leader didn't care
00:51:38 about me don't say the pastor don't give us we have a part to play as well so therefore friends i have this thing over here for you if you're interested in the in the book you're interested in joining live group you can scan this qr code okay you can take your phones you can scan this now right you can just give me about one to two minutes take a photo of this or scan this you get a link the free ebook is there and if you're interested in joining a live group you can feel the form given to you there
00:52:02 right and after that someone will be in touch with you uh or rather you actually know about it and after that they will contact you for it as well okay so i would like to end by just sharing again with all of us that i think when monday comes and we're going to pursue our blessings let's bring god with us i understand that the greatest blessing in the world does not need to be pursued it has very been given to us thank you much [Applause]
