Launch 2026 Night 3

Amen. Praise God for the worship. Let's give Matt and the team another big hand. Just did an awesome, awesome job tonight. That was my first time being with Matt Gilman and wow, what a blessing he is to the body.

And such a blessing to be home tonight. Amen. We've been blessed, my family and I. Darla's here and my daughter Hannah, my son in law Sully. And we've been here for now for about a year, maybe a little over a year now. But about a year ago we really felt like the Lord was transitioning us.

And you saw Tyson Coughlin up there. Tyson was actually one of our former students and he grew up in my brother in law's church, my wife's brother's church up in West Virginia. Now he pastors a vision church, but we were working with him, some helping them, some with our traveling schedule. But we really felt like the Lord was leading us here. So we met with Pastor J and Pastor Melissa and just knew that it was a God thing.

And we're just so honored to be here. Such a blessing to base our ministry out of the refuge. And we've met some of you amazing people. Look forward to meeting more of you in the days ahead. I travel quite a bit, but I'm usually here on Wednesday night.

So I see the Wednesday night crowd quite often. But anyhow, just such an honor to be here. And I tell you I'm really humbled and I come expectant. I just came out of Australia about a week and a half ago and just saw the Lord do some amazing things up in Upper Queensland where he's moving among the people of God there. So I'm just really humbled and honored to be here with you tonight.

And again, I come with expectancy. I believe the Lord has placed something upon my heart. You know, sometimes I get a question from my mom sometimes, but different ones. And that is, you know, are you ever afraid to stand in front of a crowd to preach? And you know, I still preach in churches with 20 people.

I preach in churches with 2,000 people. And you know, sometimes we're in much bigger venues, preaching outside in evangelistic meetings in different parts of the world. And I never really have a fear of people, but I always have a fear. And that fear is just knowing that I've heard from the Lord and that I'm going to deliver what's on God's heart. So I'm going to pray once more.

I'm going to ask you just to pray with me and we're going to ask The Lord, to speak to our hearts tonight and to do what only God can do. Amen. Father, we thank you for your presence in this room already. We thank you, Lord, for what you've already done among your people, Lord. And Lord, tonight we come with hungry hearts.

We come with expectancy. We come knowing, Lord God, that you are in control. And Father, there is nothing that the enemy can do that can stop your plan, that can stop your strategies. And Father, we ask tonight that you would just show forth your power and your demonstration. We've prayed for signs and wonders and miracles.

Father, we read in the New Testament that as the gospel was preached, that signs and wonders followed the preaching of the gospel. I pray tonight that supernatural power that your glory, that your fire would be present and resident in this place, Lord, that every life would be so impacted by the power of your love and the power of your glory and the grace that you provide through your holiness, Lord, that none of us leave this place the way that we came. But, Father, further conform us as your people into the image of Christ. And Father, I pray if there's one here tonight, even one may be listening by livestream that does not know you. I pray that tonight would be that night that they would come to know you as their Lord, their savior, their best friend and their God.

Have your way now. Anoint your word and be glorified in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Well, you know, Darla and I were just in the Maryland area over the past weekend.

We just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Amen. This past Sunday.

So the Lord blessed me with the ability to preach on my 40th wedding anniversary. But it was. It was a blessing. And, you know, the Lord put something upon my heart that I felt like that I need to kind of continue that theme because it was just so. So real to me.

And how many of you know, I've been preaching now for 40 years. And as Pastor Jay said, we've pastored, I think, four churches over the years and oversaw Bible colleges and just done a lot of different ministry. But I've often found that the messages that you preach from where you're living and from where your experience is are oftentimes the most powerful and the most penetrating, not only to you, but also to those that are hearing. So I want to share something. Not the same exact message that I preached Sunday, but some of those same themes that the Lord has just kind of kept into my heart or kept in my heart.

And I believe God wants to share them with you tonight if you'll Go with me to James. If you have your Bibles or your. Your phones or your iPads or we have the screens here as well, this is an awesome time. I remember the days when if you didn't have your Bible, you were just lost. But it is a different generation.

But James chapter 4 and verse 14, tonight I want to take my primary scripture from here, and then I'm going to read some other verses to you tonight as well. But James 4:14 and tonight, actually, I usually read from the ESV, but sometimes different translations kind of fit with your message. And if the context and the meaning is not changed, then I'll use a different translation. So tonight I'm going to use the new King James version. If you have that Bible or again, it's on the screen.

But listen to the apostle James here. He says, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow, for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then it just vanishes away. As you know, I've read this scripture so many times, but as I read it again over the last couple of days and just kind of meditated upon that, as I was going to deal with a certain theme, just something kind of came to my heart and I felt like the Lord wanted me to share something that I'm going to entitle tonight. Don't waste your vapor, not your vape.

That's the first thing that came to my mind. I said, well, you know, what if I read that? I mean, we didn't know what a vape was when I was a kid, but now it's pretty popular. But anyhow, but don't waste your vapor. So one translation says that it is even a mist, a vapor, which basically means it's just something that appears and then, poof, it's just gone.

So James said that, listen, it's important to understand that you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, next week, even tonight. We really don't know. And he said, it's even like your life is this mist or this vapor that appears for a little time, and then that small increment of time on earth is just over. So I want to implore all of us tonight, don't waste our vapor or our life. There is so much that God wants to do in us and through us.

And, you know, I don't know who prepared the. The video before, if it was the Refuge team or Matt. But anyway, I really love the video. And one of the things that was pointed out is how easy it is to get distracted. Listen, I've known people that, I mean they were on fire for Jesus.

I mean, going to the streets and witnessing and all these type of things and in the prayer rooms and all this stuff, but somewhere along the line they got distracted by life. It didn't mean that they don't, it doesn't mean they don't believe in Jesus or even, it doesn't mean they don't even love Jesus. But they got distracted and they began to live with roots deeply in this present world. And how many of you know, this world is so transient, it's so temporary. Some of you know that we stood in this room back in January and somewhere here in this room and we, we ushered our grandchild into the presence of the Lord.

He was already with the Lord. But we had an official homegoing service for our Grandson Jude, our 11 year old grandson who went to be with the Lord. One of our eight grandchildren, our oldest grandchild actually. And you know, I've been around death, my entire ministry as a pastor. I've sat with people that were going into eternity.

And I have used to even work in a funeral home when I was young, when Darla and I first got married and you know, would deal with death and picking up bodies from wrecks and stuff like that and funeral homes and different things, but hospitals and things. But you know, whenever it impacts you in such a way to where it's someone in your own family, then eternity becomes much more real. And you know, at this season in our lives, I'll be honest with you, I mean, we know that the Lord still has us here. We're on this earth. God has planted us here for this season.

We've got a work to do. At the same time, our hearts, our heart homesick for home, if you know what I'm saying. And to be honest with you, when I got saved on January 24th of 1985 down in Florida, where I'm from. And during that time you would hear a lot about the return of Jesus. Jesus is coming.

Jesus is coming. I remember a brother in our church, he was like a Sunday school teacher. He gave me this book that said 88 reasons Jesus is coming in 1988. Remember that one? I believed it, man.

I'd only been saved for three years. So I'm like, man, I got just a little bit of. This was like the beginning of 88. So I had just a few months to win people to Jesus. But my point was there was an expectancy.

Well, can I tell you something? In the first century, with the Original apostles, they expected Jesus to return. And they lived in such a way that they were owned by eternity. And their hearts were not so settled in this present world. They refused to.

To get drunk on carnality while they pursue Jesus. There was a depth of intimacy that they had with the Lord that kept them focused. And let me say this, and then I'm gonna read some more scripture. I'm not saying tonight that we can't have a good, blessed life. I enjoy my life.

I really do. I enjoy my family. I enjoy my friends. Darla and I just again went out for about a week and celebrated our anniversary. And we got to visit Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello in Virginia.

We went over to Mount Vernon and visited George Washington's home. And that was interesting, and it was fun, and it was neat. And there's nothing wrong with being blessed. I consider my life to be blessed. And I've been.

I preached in 40 nations around the world. I mean, I've seen the world. I mean, the Roman runs, the Grecian runes. I mean, you name it, I've seen it, friend. It's beautiful.

It's amazing. I've enjoyed it. I'll tell you what else I enjoy. I love SEC football. God bless you.

Hallelujah. And it's coming soon, and I enjoy it. I'm praying the Gators are going to be back on track with this new coach this year. But anyhow. But at the same time, I realized that that's just a fraction of life.

And the thing that really captures my passions is more and more of Jesus. And once you ever experience him, none of those other things, even though they're not so much sinful, sometimes they can become distractions if we're not careful. But even those things that are okay and even allowed, and some things that are even wholesome for families to be a part of, even those things lose some of their brilliance and beauty whenever you see the glory and the beauty of Jesus. And when eternity becomes real, your life changes, friend. You just can't live the way that you used to live.

Let's hear some more of what the New Testament says about what it means to understand that life is a vapor, it's a mist. Look at Acts chapter 20 and verse 17 tonight. Acts, chapter 20, verse 17. For context here. Paul is at the end of his life.

He has been faithful in his missionary journeys. He has peppered the Mediterranean Sea basin with church plants. The history of Paul is phenomenal. I mean, he was a man that was persecuted. I mean, on and on and on.

But he comes to this season of his life and he's going to go back to where it all started for him. He sets his face back towards Jerusalem and he calls the elders from the church at Ephesus to this place called Miletus. And listen to what he says. From Miletus. Luke says this from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church.

When they had come to him, he said to them, you know from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. How I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ. And see, now I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But listen to what it says here. But none of these things move me, Paul said, nor do I count my life dear to myself so that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you my the whole counsel of God. Now, can you imagine, as a human, I'm thinking of this in my own life? Here is a man that had already been through so much.

He was beat five times with 39 lashes by the Jews. He was in prison. He was under house arrest. He knew what it was to be cold and naked and hungry. He was shipwrecked.

He said, everyone in Asia has turned their backs on me. And we could go on and on and on. He said he bore the scars of the Lord in his body. I mean, here is a man. I can only imagine if Paul walked in here tonight without a shirt on.

I mean, just the layers of scars on his body, his torso and his back from being beat. And here he is at the end of his life. He's not a young kid. He's not a young man. And he has set his face by the Holy Spirit to Jerusalem.

And he said, the Holy Spirit warns me that there is greater tribulation perils ahead of me. And he didn't say, God, why is this happening to me? He said, these things do not move me. Now, I want us to understand. Paul is not Superman, right?

He's not Spider Man. I know there's a new movie out that everybody's talking. He's not the new Spider Man. I mean, he's a human with emotions, with feelings, with nerves, with human understanding. However, there is something that has appropriated him in such a way that he counts his life as nothing compared to fulfilling the call of God upon his life.

His connection and his love for Jesus was so radical that it took him beyond sheer discipline and commitment. Those are good words. But he was more than committed and disciplined friend. He was owned by something far greater than just love and commitment. He was owned by this reality of the price that Jesus had paid for him to set him free from sin, from Satan, and even from himself.

He knew where he had come from. Matter of fact, in his latter years, he calls himself the chief among all sinners, probably referring to, as most scholars believe, the time when he had persecuted the church and oversaw the first martyrdom of the church. Stephen, who was stoned to death. And here he comes to this place in his life. And at the end of his life, the Holy Spirit is telling him, there's more tribulation, there's more trouble.

These things don't move me. Paul said his life was consumed with things of eternal value. This we used to sing the old song. At least the churches I grew up in down in Florida in the 80s. This world is not my home I'm just a passing through My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. Remember that? Well, I'm concerned that a lot of people feel very at home in this present world now that we've learned to invest deeply in things that are fleeting and passing very quickly. Listen, I used to actually drive the hearse to the funeral home when I worked at the funeral home. And I never pulled a U haul behind the hearse on the way to the graveyard.

My point is this, friend. Only things that have eternal value live at last, forever.

What are we living for this night? Let me read a few more scriptures. 2nd Corinthians 4, 16, 18. The apostle Paul said, therefore we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing. How many of you know, no matter how much you put on or take off, no matter how much you put in, whatever you do to make yourself look good and preserve yourself.

We're all perishing. We are all decaying. You know, I'll be 58 in what, September 14th. So that's like a month. A little over a month.

I'm not the same man I was when I was 25. I mean, I still travel well and stuff like that and try to take care of myself. But I can promise you, like, I slept the other night on my left shoulder, right? Well, in the 10th grade, I had a football injury and I had three surgeries on this left shoulder. And usually it doesn't bother me, but, man, I've been praying for a miracle since I slept on my left shoulder in West Virginia four nights ago.

That didn't happen when I was 25 and 30, you understand? In other words, Paul's very clear. Listen, we are not made to live in this world forever. Therefore we don't lose. Even though outwardly we are perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.

Why? For our light. One translation says, our light momentary. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen hold are eternal.

What is Paul trying to get us to see and understand? Listen, friend, only those things that never fade, that never rust, that never corrode, really matter in the light of eternity. I mean, people listen. We stress about so many things that next week won't even be around to stress about anymore. There is something about living with eternity in view.

There's something about coming to the place where Paul could come to. And I'm not saying I'm 100% there. I mean, if the Lord would say, listen, Keith, I'm sending you to whatever, maybe to the Arabian Peninsula, maybe to Yemen or something. And I'm telling you that there is persecution and you're going to be beat and all this kind of stuff. I mean, I hope I could say that.

Yes, Lord, I will go. Whatever your will is, Lord, but I'm not going to say that these things don't move me. Hallelujah. You understand? Now, maybe if the Lord, you know, appropriated me and that was my mission, that there is a grace.

And I. And I'll share a story at the end here tonight, where I believe there is a grace in certain seasons like this. And I believe Paul had a grace, but the grace that he had was not just connected again to his commitment. It was connected to the fact that he was owned by things of eternal value. That his life was not about comfort and ease.

His life was not about, you know, the next speaking engagement. Matter of fact, speaking engagements for Paul was life and death. Little different. Everybody wants to be called apostle. I always tell people, just call me Keith.

Listen, listen. Everyone wants to be called. Listen, if you were an apostle here, your head was on the matter of fact. Paul. How did Paul die?

Church history says that Nero decapitated him, had his head cut off. So you want to be an apostle? You want to be a prophet, you want to be a pastor? Listen, friend, there was something that Paul understood. It wasn't about his position or his title.

It was about this radical relationship that he had with Jesus that gave him the ability to see beyond this present quick, temporal existence called life. This vapor of time that goes by so quickly and it's just over. And all that matters was not your stock portfolio or your investment portfolio. It's not the size of your house. It's not how many diamonds you own.

It's not even about the levels you achieve in the workplace. And listen, I'm all about the blessing of God. And one thing I love about Pastor J, I love the way he prays over that you'll get raises and more sales as salesman, I've done the sales things for years. Listen, I'm all about that. But listen, at the end of the day, we even do that for the furtherance of the eternal purposes of God, that we might even be better equipped to fund the kingdom of God and to give into what God is doing.

That everything has to come with an eternal paradigm. Or it gets messed up and it gets carnal and it gets fleshly. Paul lived in such a way. Or he could say in Colossians 3:1,3. If you then were raised with Christ.

How many of us have been raised with Christ tonight? Then you seek those things which are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. My prayer for my life, My prayer for our life.

Listen, I believe God. I know. That's why we're here. I know God has planted this church for eternal purposes right here in this part of North Carolina. That we're not just another nice, really nice building sitting on the side of the road in Kannapolis, North Carolina.

But there is something supernatural. What is it? It's the eternal Purposes of God that are connected to the house, to the people, that are a part of place, that listen, that even from this place lives are transformed and changed. And not only are they transformed and changed, but they're changed to even go out of this house and to change our community, to impact our region for the eternal purposes of God. That we live in such a way that we realize everything that we are as the people from the refuge, everything that we do has eternal impact.

And we listen, we become responsible. Paul in Ephesians said, to live worthy of the call of God, to live in such a way that we don't allow ourselves to get distracted by the things of this world, that we refuse to allow things like lust and all these other things to pull us away from intimacy with Jesus. Why? Because when we get into that place, we become spiritually dull and we become ineffective and we learn to go through the motions of church life. But we lose our passion and our zeal and our prayer life.

We lose a hunger to reach the lost. But when eternity is in view and when we live with an eternal paradigm and mindset, then something happens to our lives. We realize that we are on mission. And that might be at the school, that might be at the Walmart, that might be in my case, sometimes preaching or meeting with other elite, wherever, but friend everywhere that we're at. If we are truly born again of the Spirit of God and eternity is real in our lives, we're on mission every day.

There are souls that are lost without Jesus that we come in contact with every day. We have opportunities to share the gospel and that's why we have to be very deliberate. I'm going to share some points about this in a minute. Be very deliberate about the way that we live. Very deliberate.

This is not an easy thing sometimes. You know, Darla and I just celebrated 40 years of marriage. And our marriage is a covenant. It's not just an idea that we just kind of say, well, we'll try this and see if it works, and if it doesn't, we'll try something else. And unfortunately we see that a lot even in ministry these days, unfortunately.

But we knew from a very young age that this was a covenant between us and between the Lord. And it's not always been easy. It's probably been easier for me than for her because I've been a little challenging at times, especially hearing from God all the time. Right. I think we moved like 20 something times in our first 10 years of marriage or 12 years of marriage, and finally we settled down a little bit and, you know, weren't so easily moved because, I mean, we love the Lord, but, you know, you're young and you're just going for it.

But we knew that it was based on covenant and commitment. And when it comes to the Lord, listen, our relationship is not based on just a feeling tonight. Thank God. Listen, I felt him tonight. I feel him right now.

But listen, it's not about feeling. It's about who he is in our lives and what he's called us to. And even when our flesh doesn't feel like it, we live for Jesus. Even whenever we are at a place to where maybe we don't have those, you know, liver shivers or whatever we pursue to worship him, we continue to pray. We're faithful to the house of God.

We are. We're faithful to share our testimony of how Jesus set us free. Why? Because eternity is more real than my feelings tonight.

His eternal purposes are more important than my circumstances tonight. See, eternity is not meant tonight. It's not meant to distract us from today's responsibilities. It's meant to define our responsibilities. You've heard the saying that, you know, he or she is so heavenly minded to know earthly good.

I kind of understand where that comes from. But I believe with all my heart that whenever we really have an understanding of heaven, then we prioritize things in a heavenly way and eternity. Understanding that we just have this vapor, this mist of time helps us to appropriate our responsibilities and our priorities of people of God. You see the believer tonight, and if you're a child of God, if you ever lose sight of eternity, then you will inevitably overvalue the temporary in your life. If you ever lose sight of eternity, in other words, the things that really matter, then it's very easy to begin to overvalue temporary things in our lives.

And again we get dull spiritually. We lose our passion for revival. We lose our passion again to see the lost, saved and to pray. And sometimes the Lord, his faithfulness will come and he'll awaken our hearts again. I've always thanked God for the life of revivalists because throughout history, revivalists came in seasons of dormancy and spiritual lethargy.

Matter of fact, we've had two Great Awakenings. Some scholars believe three with the Jesus movement in the 70s, but definitely two. First in the colonies in the 1700s, then in the 1800s, we had a great awakening, especially Pennsylvania, New York area. But the reason they're called Awakening is because the church had become stoic and dead and dormant. They'd become very dead in their Religion.

So God brought an awakening. And what would he do? He would oftentimes just begin to breathe fire into different individuals, like Jonathan Edwards or Charles Finney or different ones. And they would come with this message of the glory of God, the eternal purposes of God, the fire. And it would cause a stir, and then oftentimes it was accompanied by the weight of his glory.

And hearts were so radically impacted. Listen, Darla and I, we were blessed. We were pretty much in the entire Brownsville revival. Pensacola is actually my hometown, but we showed up early into the revival days and hundreds and hundreds of meetings I was in and went through the school, then eventually became the dean of students at the school and then eventually the president of the school. But listen, night after night, just watching the fire of God touch hearts and people running to the altars, and with all the challenges that come with revival, I can tell you tonight that there is still fruit around the world because of what God did there as the fire of God.

I'll be going to the Philippines in two weeks, and I'm going to be with people, many of them impacted by the revival back in the 1990s that are still planting churches, they've got orphanage, they're taking kids out of human sex trafficking in Asia. In other words, God moved in power. And throughout history, God would stamp eternity on the hearts of these revivalists. And they would come and they would burn among the people, and they would bring this message, oftentimes seasoned with repentance and the beauty and the holiness of Jesus Christ. And hearts were awakened to the reality of what it meant to know Jesus in an intimate and a personal way.

And out of those movements, we saw missionaries, launched, churches, planted, powerful moves of God. Listen, my cry for America and the American church is not bigger churches, not more polished professional preachers. But my cry is, God, awaken our hearts to eternity. May we become a people that are so fixated on things of eternal value that the things of this world do grow strangely dim in the light of your glory and your grace tonight. That Jesus becomes the center of everything for us, that there is such a hunger and thirst to know him and to make him known, that we are willing to say, lord, if there's anything in my life, even if it's not a sin, but the word of God speaks about weights and sins that can.

Whatever it is, if there's anything in my life that distracts me from seeing how beautiful, how glorious, how worthy you are and keeps me from seeing things on an eternal paradigm, then God remove it from my life. That we get radical in our relationship with Jesus, and it's about love and intimacy. I understand all that. I taught here for three weeks on the love of Jesus and all that. But at the same time, it's also about us coming to the place, to where we're saying, lord, through your love, expose any idols in my heart.

And if they need to be toppled and taken down so that I can live with an eternal mindset and do the works of Jesus in my generation, God, then let those idols that be taken out of my heart and out of my life. Whatever the distraction, whatever the hindrance, whatever the problem, whatever keeps me from prayer, whatever keeps me from worship, whatever keeps me from loving people like you love people, Lord. Whatever keeps me from sharing the gospel. God, remove those things in my life. Why?

Because you got one. Vapor of time, friend. I'm old enough. I'm old enough to remember the eight tracks in my stepdad's. Remember those have a Chevrolet Monte Carlo with an eight track.

I remember those, but I'm definitely old enough to remember because I had a bunch of them. The cassette tapes. You could rewind a cassette tape. You can't rewind your life, friend. You got one life to live, yet you can't relive yesterday or the day before.

Now, thankfully, the Bible says that the Lord can restore the years that the caterpillar and the cankerworm have eaten. I understand that, but you can't add or you can't rewind to your life. In other words, you've got one shot at this. And what is that shot? To bring glory to Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, that's all that matters. That's really all that listen. All the trophy cases, as neat as they might be. And listen, I love sports. And I. I still believe that we should give trophies to kids that win.

Forgive me, but anyhow. But listen to me. Listen. As much as I love all that, there's gonna come a day when they want a mount to squat. You understand?

There's a day when those things are just gone. They're just burned. And all that matters is what we can lay at the feet of Jesus. We sang that he was worthy. Do we live what we sing?

I heard Leonard Ravenhill say one time on a recording, he said, there's three persons in each of us. There's the person we think we are, there's the person others think we are. And there's the person God knows we are.

Listen, I'm not talking about being completely perfect. I understand we're growing in grace. And I have a pastoral Heart, don't miss anything. But listen to me. There has to come a time where we prioritize Jesus and eternal things.

There has to come a time when you say that, listen, I can't allow my eyes to watch something like that because I know it violates my intimacy with Jesus and maybe even with my spouse. There comes a time when you have to say, I can't allow my ears to hear just. And I know sometimes just walking through a mall you'll hear, but I'm talking about deliberately allowing filth into our ears and into our minds and into our spirits that violate that ability to see eternally. We've got to come to a place to where we say, jesus, my relationship with you is more important than this temporary desire I have to fill my ears or my eyes with something that is not godly. Some might think I went to meddling instead of preaching.

But, friend, you want to have an eternal mindset. You want your life to count for eternity? You got to live like he's worthy. Leonard Raymond also said, are the things you're living for worth Christ dying for at the end of the day, as uncomfortable as it might be? And it is in Corinthians, Paul told us that the believer, the Christian, will stand at the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for our words and our deeds, our actions.

It doesn't mean you're going to hell, but it means that, obviously, and I don't have time to teach this, there's rewards in heaven in my mind. I don't understand at all. Paul said his ways are past. We see in part, we understand a lot. But listen to me.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to stand before Jesus knowing that I wasted part of my life because I was so fixated on carnal things, maybe not even demonic, but things that distracted me from intimacy with Jesus to where I could have lived in such a way that maybe I won more souls to the kingdom, or maybe I made more disciples, or maybe I prayed more effectively and birthed things in the spirit realm as the Lord through the Holy Spirit, According to Romans 8:28, through groanings and utterance, birth things in a supernatural way, through my obedience. I don't want to live so distracted that I am so owned by the things of this world. I want to be able to. And I'm not telling you I'm perfect in this, friend. I'm telling you I'm preaching to me like I'm preaching to you.

But listen, we know too much not to be Faithful and not to be consecrated unto him. And it's out of that intimacy that eternity becomes real tonight. Listen, a generation captivated by eternity will never settle for comfortable Christianity.

Can I say something? We should be the most loving, hospitable, compassionate people in the world, but we can't compromise the gospel. Just can't do it.

Another why? Because he turned it. Listen, they asked Charles Finney, Charles Finney was this. If you don't know who Finney is, most of you probably do. But this revivalist in the 1800s, the Second Great Awakening, he was one of the primary voice.

There were others, but he was a primary voice. And they asked Finney, and I'll paraphrase this, but this is basically what they asked him because he was a very passionate preacher. I mean, they said he was just very passionate. And they asked him, Mr. Finney, how is it that you always preach with such passion? And Finney's response was something like this.

I'm paraphrasing. He said, when I preach, I see the glory of heaven and I behold the reality of hell. And I preach in that vein. In other words, he was consumed with the fact that tonight, as I stand here, this is what Finney understood. There might be souls that are weighed in the balance tonight.

We never know. We never know. Listen. There have been a few, not many, but a few times where I had preached, and I knew that the person that heard me preach, it was the last time they ever heard the gospel again, that they went out into eternity in some way or another. Finney had this understanding that, listen, eternity was so real that people are dying lost without Jesus.

And he had to preach with passion. He had to call people to salvation, to repentance. He had to call the church to an eternal understanding. Because why? Because life is just a vapor.

And it's just here for just a moment and then it's gone. There's a lady in our neighborhood. We live up in the settlements near the. Near the speedway, right over in the Charlotte line. And she lived to be 106 years old.

She's pretty old in this present world. And our neighbor kind of looked after her some and went down and checked on her and sometimes spent the night with her. And she said her mind was still very good. She was very lucid and very cognitive. And I think she told us that, like, when she was.

When her. When she was like 101 or 102 or something, her kids in their 80s took her driver's license away from her because she had lost peripheral vision.

But My point is this. I mean, her name was Miss Pearl. Miss Pearl. Up to 106 years old. But friend, in light of eternity, that's just like if you were to take a grain of sand from the Atlantic Ocean, walk all the way across the continental United States and drop it to the Pacific Ocean and go back, and you could take every grain of sand off the Atlantic and take it to the Pacific, and you still would not even scratch eternity.

You see, whenever that becomes real to us and we realize how brief our existence is on this earth, then we have to ask ourselves, what are we truly investing in? Do you know how fast 58 years has gone by in my mind? I'm still little Keith Collins. I saw a picture the other day with my quick shop with the name of a little store, T ball hat on. And I'm sitting there playing T ball at Brent Lane in Pensacola.

I still remember. Somehow I got from like 6 years, 5 years old, 52, 53 years later, and it went by so fast. When Pastor J asked me 58 years from now to speak, I'll be 116 years old.

That's funny. But listen to me. This first 58 went by so fast. I don't have long on this earth. If I have 30 years, 40 years, praise God.

But what is that? We've been here how long? Almost over 16. I can't believe we've been in Charlotte for 16 years. Where is.

Listen, you got one life, you got one opportunity, friend. What are you really invested in? What really matters to you? Let me ask you this. What do you stress about?

Because oftentimes the things that we stress about are so temporal and so transient, but yet they occupy so much of our passion, our attention and our energy and our heart. My heart tonight is God. Give us a true view of eternal things tonight. Take us to that deeper place of intimacy with you, Jesus, that we realize that we are part of this amazing eternal plan. In the midst of that, we're blessed.

We enjoy family. But listen, at the same time, we always, always acknowledge that we've got one real reason for being here. That's to love Jesus and to make him known to a lost and to a dying world, to encourage his people to keep on going forward. That's why I'm here. I want to give you three quick points, and I'm going to close.

There's something unique about a church. In Revelation, chapter three, as I taught about our first love. On those Wednesday nights here in the month of first three weeks of June, I talked about the church of Ephesus. The church of Ephesus left its first love. The church of Laodicea exchanged its first love for the things of this present world.

And would they claim that they are rich and they've become wealthy? They have need of nothing. They do not know though the Lord said that you're wretched, you're miserable, you're poor, you're blind and you're naked. And the Lord said, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich in white garments. And listen to what he said and anoint your eyes with eyesalve that you may see.

That's the part that stands out to me. What is the Lord that telling the church of Laodicea? Listen, you've become rich in the temporal, but you've become impoverished in the eternal. Can I tell you that I believe a lot of the American churches like Laodicea, they've become rich in the temporal. They become rich in their abilities to do church even.

But oftentimes they are impoverished when it comes to eternal things. Praying until heaven is moved, taking authority over demons. Listen, friend. Realizing that this is also spiritual warfare. And it takes spiritual people who know Jesus to fight these types of battles.

Can I tell you something? We've got to fight for our children and for our grandchildren and people that are fixated on the present things of this world. They are impoverished spiritually and they lack the ability like Laodicea. Laodicea said, we are increased with goods and have need of nothing. Lord, he said, I beg to differ with you.

You got everything you need externally, but on the inside you are poverty stricken and there is nothing of legitimacy and power on the inside. You see, when eternity becomes real, that spirit of Laodicea just breaks off of us and we realize why we're really here.

I want to close with these points quickly here. And we're going to pray for people tonight. I believe the Lord wants to touch hearts in here tonight. That you're going to leave here different, that everything changes for many of us tonight. Number one, we must deliberately live for eternity.

Listen to what Paul told Timothy. I love this fight, the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life to which you are also called and have confessed. A good confession, the presence of many witnesses. The Greek verb there, it literally means to seize or to grasp firmly or to take possession of in a radical way.

So what is Paul telling Timothy? He's telling Timothy, son, you've got to be deliberate about the way you live your life. Life lay hold on eternal life. Realize that you have been called for such a time as this. Remember your grandmother and your mother, Lois and Eunice, and the spiritual heritage that's inside of you.

Remember that I laid hands on you and imparted gifts into you. Now let those things be fanned into flame as you lay hold of eternity and. And eternal life. I want to challenge us tonight, friend. We got to be deliberate about eternal life.

What I mean by that? There's things in your life that maybe need to be taken out of your life. Because, listen, you can't flirt with filth and lay hands on eternal life at the same time. It's impossible, you understand?

In other words, there has to be a reckoning that we have sometimes with ourselves. And we've got to get honest before the Lord. And we've got to say, God, if there's anything in my life that's doing what that's hindering intimacy with you, Jesus, then, Lord, as painful as it is to my flesh, get it out. Matter of fact, Jesus is radical. Sometimes he would speak in radical, exaggerated, the scholars call it, hyperbolic ways, hyperbole.

He would say, if your hand offends you, then just cut it off. If your eye offends you, just gouge it out of your head. He said, you are better off to enter heaven maimed than to enter hell with a whole body, is what he's saying. That's radical, right? But I think his point gets across.

What is he saying? Let nothing hinder you from seeing eternally. Let nothing hinder prayer and intimacy with Jesus. Let nothing hinder the call of God upon your life, upon your marriage, upon your family. Let nothing stop what God has called you to do and who he's called you to be.

Number two, we've got to walk in the Spirit, because walking in the Spirit aligns our vision with eternity. Paul said, Second Corinthians, chapter 5. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan earnestly, desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

Now he who has prepared for us this very thing is God, who has also given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are all always confident, knowing that we are at home in the body. We are absent from the Lord. So what do we. Do we walk by faith and not by sight?

We are confident, yes, well pleased rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to what? To be well pleasing to him. Why? I already said this.

For we must all stand or appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or whether bad. You see, whenever we walk in the Spirit, we are able to see with eternal eyes. And we live for this place of standing before Jesus one day. Can you imagine? Heard one man say, when you get to the judgment seat, you don't have time to make up your prayer life.

When you get to the judgment seat, you don't have time to love people correctly or forgive people fully. In other words, it's not that we have this, like, unhealthy fear, but we have a healthy fear of God knowing that one day, that, yes, he's the lover of our souls. He's got a fathering heart. At the same time, he's holy, holy, holy. He's the judge of the universe.

And the fear of God, the awe and the reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom. So we live with eternal vision, knowing that one day we stand before Jesus and we give an account for the way that we lived our lives. God, take us to that place of obedience. My last point is this, and I'm going to close. This is a little challenging, but it's.

It's important for us to understand, especially in this generation, we must live as a holy misfit in a world that is not your final home or our final home. Listen. Some of the most challenging New Testament verses. Come here. John 15, 18 and 19.

Listen to what Jesus said. Don't get mad at me. He said it. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own.

Yet, because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Now listen to me. I want to reiterate. We are loving. The doors are wide open to anyone.

We understand that. At the same time, there's something that makes us misfits. I remember my dad, my biological father, told me one time he died at age 51. Did drugs and all that. I shared his testimony a little bit on Wednesday night here.

But I remember before my dad died, I'd been saved maybe, maybe two or three years. And he was Catholic. He was Trying to get me to go into the priesthood and to become a Catholic priest. I'm like, dad, it just ain't going to happen anyhow. I remember one time he told me, he said, keith, he said, I know you think you really have the truth, but he said, I want to tell you something.

He said, going to heaven is like this. He said, it's like train cars. He said, there's a Buddhist cart, there's a Hindu cart, there's a Protestant cart, there's a Catholic cart, there's a Mormon cart. So they're all on the same track, going to the same place, and they all get there. And of course, he's my biological father.

And I just said, dad, I just have to disagree with you. And even as a young kid that had been saved recently, I was thinking, well, Calvary would be a big waste of time if that was true. Why would Jesus come and be tortured and suffer so much if all those other ways were a way to get to heaven? And I knew because of what had happened to me that he is the way, the truth and the life that no one comes to the Father but by me. That Acts 4:12.

Neither is our salvation in any other. But there is no other way unto heaven given among men such that we should be saved. In other words, there is no, there's not a plan B for salvation. Well, let me tell you something that makes you a misfit in a world of confusion, intolerance, and even hate. Jesus said, why did the world hate me?

Because Jesus came claiming to be the only way, the truth and the life. You know, when I was finishing up my master's degree years ago, I'll never forget, I had to, had to study atheists. Isn't that fun? I was doing an apologetics class and they made us study some of the renowned, mainly these guys that lived 100, 150 years ago, different atheists back then than we have today. They were much more, I guess you could use the word tolerant.

They would be willing to sit with theologians of the time time. But I, I, I, I noticed over the years that some of the modern atheists have gotten like, angry. In other words, I'm so my thought is, why are you angry about something you don't even believe in? But, but I began to kind of look at the way they pro. And what are they angry about?

I'm going to tell you what they're angry about. God says he puts eternity in the heart of every individual, every man. And I believe when the gospel is preached, whether they like it or not, or claim to believe it or not believe it. There is something on the inside of them that recognizes there's something to this. And they've got to either humble themselves or they've got to resist and stiff arm Jesus.

You see, when you come saying there's only one way to heaven, you're a misfit. But when eternity becomes real, friend Paul said, I am not ashamed of the Gospel. Why did he say it? Because he had the opportunity to be ashamed of the gospel. I'm not ashamed of the gospel.

He said, it's the only way to heaven. May we not be ashamed of the gospel. It's going to cause us to live. Like Paul told Timothy, if you live godly in Christ Jesus, you shall suffer persecution. Peter said, don't think it's strange, these fiery trials, these even demonic spirits that will fight you.

And I've had them. Sometimes the battle is so egregious, it's almost like the claws of the enemy run down our soul and we run red with blood in the midst of the battle. But even there, he is the bread of heaven. He's the table in the presence of our enemies. And we know that he's worthy of every pain, every trial, every battle, every temptation, every everything.

And we also know, as Paul said, nothing can separate me from the love of God. Eternity becomes our native air. This world is fleeting. Don't waste your vapor, friend. Don't waste your life.

I want you to stand with me. I'm closing with a brief story. We're going to pray several years ago, been probably eight, nine, back before, a couple years before COVID So maybe eight years ago, I, along with a dear friend of mine, a pastor, we're doing a pastor's conference in Bulgaria, outside of Sofia, Bulgaria. And then I was preaching the night. We were doing probably 200 pastors or so, maybe a few more in the day services.

And at night I was preaching as well. The last night I finished preaching, I prayed for all 200, me and Pastor Wayne, this dear brother of mine. I was tired. It's probably 11 o' clock at night. The next morning we were scheduled to fly to Sofia, back to back to the States.

And I just wanted to go lay down and rest and get ready to go to the airport. A brother came up to me and he said, brother, he said, would you please come to my church and preach for me, please? And in my mind I'm thinking, the next time I come to Bulgaria, I'm going to go preach in this guy's church. So I said, well, listen, man, let me connect you with Sasho. He was the leader we were with.

Sasho has my information. If it works out, I'd be honored to come and speak in your church. He said, no, can you come now and speak in my church? It's 11 o' clock at night. We're flying out the next morning.

I look at Wayne. We were just at his house a couple nights ago. Wayne Stotler. And Wayne's like, brother, if you're going, I'm going. He's ready.

So anyway, I mean, even though my humanity didn't want to do it, I agreed to go. We get in his car, we start driving 30 minutes. We're still driving 45 minutes or so. He says, now we've entered my country of Turkey. I'm like, well, wow.

No visa for Turkey. We're in Turkey at this time. It's like midnight or maybe a little later. So we drive maybe 15 minutes more into Turkey, and he stops the car in the middle of the woods. No lights, no street lights.

We're like, this is a. If you look on a map, it's where Bulgaria and Turkey meet, and it's very mountainous. It was freezing, probably maybe 25 degrees Fahrenheit that night. It was freezing. We get out of the car and he said, brother, we have to walk from here.

We start walking. He's got like a little pin flashlight. We get behind him and we're walking through this little wooded area. Five minutes or so later, we come to the place where he said, this is our church. His church was like one of those Maersk cargo containers that fits on a ship that they ship overseas.

Like the back of an 18 wheeler with no axles sitting on the ground. That was his church. I walk in this church. There's no electricity, there's no heat. The doors had, like, curtains.

The door in it looks like they had maybe taken a cutting torch and cut a door in this steel container. So I walked in there and I remember it was so crowded that Wayne and I and the pad, we had to walk sideways because the people were just. No seats sitting on the floor. All that was in there is three little. Little House on the Prairie kerosene lanterns, 1, 2, 3, scattered throughout the little part of the building there.

And just very dim light. So I stand there and he looks at me and he said, brother, just start preaching. To be honest with you, man, my mind is in the bed, getting to the airport, packing. I'm just being honest. Spiritual giant here.

I begin to share. He's Interpreting. I'm just really encouraging them in their walk with the Lord. Well, I'm maybe five or a few more minutes into my exhortation and I begin to hear these loud bangs against. And it's a metal containers.

I begin to these loud, I mean, like piercing noises against the side of this building. I looked at the brother and I said, what's going on? Here's what he told me. He said, brother, they know we're here. Keep preaching.

I'll be honest with you. You know, I'd spent years teaching about the persecuted church and the martyrs of the faith in my humanity. I really thought this could be it. Or at the least we might not get out of here without being really injured. Bad.

I wish I could tell you that the spirit of Superman came on me that night. But I'm glad to tell you that the spirit of the Holy Spirit came on me that. That night. Here's what happened. As I stood there and I looked into the eyes of these people again, just these little lanterns.

And most honestly, most of the people were older women with scarves. All you could see was their beautiful little faces. They weren't flinching. They weren't even. They weren't startled at all.

Something happened to me that night. As I stood there, I. I literally felt as if someone poured a warm vat of oil over me. And I could almost feel it, like, I could feel like going down on my nose. I mean, it was a supernatural experience from the Lord. And I'll just say this, I've never preached like that before or after, but it was almost like I just had word of knowledge and I just began to exhort and share.

And God moved in such a beautiful way and we prayed with people and it was just such a glorious supernatural experience. But I'm going to tell you what I saw in the eyes of these people. I saw eternity in their eyes.

It was real to them. This commitment that they had made to Jesus living in a Muslim area, Muslim village was so real that death did not cause him, or the thought of death or the fear, fear of death or torture did not cause him to even flinch. And it messed with me in a very deep, good way. And I saw eternity in their eyes, in their faces. And I remember as we finished, I was there probably two hours and it's very late now.

As we finished, we began to leave and the pastor told me this. He said, brothers, he said, put your hand, put your face in your hands and cover your eyes and put your head down and just follow me. We thought Wayne Myself, even he thought that they would at least throw rocks at us that night. I don't know why. I mean, I could see out my peripheral a little bit through the cracks of my fingers.

Looked like maybe seven to nine young men there. I don't know if the Lord stopped them, if an angel stopped them, or it's just not my time, or I was supposed to be here tonight, maybe. But anyway, for some reason we got out of there and the pastor was even surprised. And we found out the next morning before we went to the airport that twice a Muslim cleric in this village had had this pastor's two children. One was 11 and one was 7, had their shirts removed and tied them to a pole and cane their blacks, their backs bloody, because their dad preached the gospel.

In other words, these people were counting the cost, an eternity. And Jesus was worth it and he was worthy. I don't say that any of us will ever go through that in this building. I'm not saying you're not. You don't know where the Lord might send you or what you might go through.

But I do know that around the world tonight. Listen, I've got a radio program that plays every Saturday at 6:30pm and this signal through shortwave enters into places like North Korea, China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. Lester Sumrall put three towers on the island of Guam in the late 1970s, and we've accessed those towers through a friend of mine in North Virginia. And we send shortwave messages into these parts of the world. And sometimes I'll hear from these little North Korean pastors and they'll tell me that they have a group of people that meet on Saturday night secretly, and they listen to the world and the Word and he interprets the Word to the people that are in love with Jesus.

Eternity is more real to them than their comfort and their safety and their protection. Friend, what is it tonight that would hinder us from seeing Jesus as he really is and for living for that that really matters? I'll ask you the question of Raven here one more time. Are the things we're living for worth Christ dying for tonight? Bow your heads tonight.