Welcome to Yankee Arnold Ministries. Dr. Arnold will be with you in just a moment, but first, we want you to know how much we appreciate your prayers and financial support. You may help this radio ministry by donating online at yankeearnold.com or by mail at Yankee Arnold Ministries, 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634.
again, that’s 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634. Feel free to send Dr. Arnold your questions or comments to yankee at yankeearnold.com, and he will respond as quickly as possible. Now, here is Dr. Arnold with today’s message.
So everybody wants to succeed in whatever they attempt to do. And so, of course, the key is finding the will of God for your life. Because not to do the will of God for your life is to be a failure.
And so I’m looking at this not in so much respect as the other areas of life, as I am spiritually. I’m concerned about a person being successful spiritually. The goal after you trust Christ as your Savior is to mature in the Lord, to grow strong.
So God can use you to find out the talents that you have, and the treasures that God has blessed you with, and the abilities that you have, and how can you use whatever God has given to you for his honor. And you know that at the end of life, we’re going to stand before the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ. God’s going to reward us.
And so you want to be successful. You want the Lord to say to you, well done, thou good and faithful servant. So you want to be obedient, but there’s things to learn.
There’s so much you need to understand of what to do and what not to do. There is a philosophy of life, an understanding that every child of God needs. So the first thing I gave you last Sunday night was the attitude determines your altitude.
Your attitude is so important about how you see things. It determines your perspective on life. Number two was have goal will travel.
In other words, you have to have a purpose in your life, a reason for living. Why do you live? Why do you just go to work?
Why do you just come home? Why do you do what you do? There has got to be an underline reason.
And it should be that in everything that you do, it can be done to honor the Lord. Even a housewife should do what she does because she loves the Lord and wants to do whatever her hands find it to do to do it as unto God. Even your obedience to your husband and the husband’s obedience to God, the children’s obedience to the parents because they want God’s blessings upon them.
There has to be an underline reason, a foundation upon which you build that is to sustain all the other decisions that you make. And therefore, you have to have something in order to relate it to. And the plan for profit.
In other words, every day should be something that helps you toward the goal that you have set. And we know that God has given to us a course to run, a race to run. And God wants us to finish our course, finish our race with joy and fulfill the ministry that He has given to each and every one of us.
We have a ministry where we serve God, but we are ministering to each other. You may minister to your husband or your wife or your children, to the people that you work with. Everybody has problems.
Everybody needs encouragement. And so you need to plan to have a profitable day. The other thing was to think big, plan big, because God is big.
In the lives of a lot of God’s children, they have a small God, a small God that can’t do very much. They don’t expect God to do anything for them. Don’t expect God to work through them.
Because, you see, they put God in a little box, and they put him aside and put him on a shelf. And he’s there whenever you want him or whenever you need him. But you don’t think he can do too much, because he’s not going to change anything.
You don’t pray because he’s not going to answer your prayers anyway. And you already believe that whatever will be will be. You think the devil is stronger than God.
You think the flesh nature that you’ve got, you can’t win anyway. You’ve got habits in your life that you won’t break because you don’t think he’s going to give you the victory anyway. So you just live a defeated life, because you think small.
You don’t think big. I believe that God is big enough to do everything he promised to do. I believe that God can take any dedicated nobody and use them for his honor and for his glory.
The other thing was fear not control will destroy. Because the Bible tells us when you’re not trusting the Lord, then fear will rule your heart. And when fear rules your heart, then the Bible says fear produces torment.
And many of God’s children live in fear. Because they’re afraid of the future, afraid of failure, afraid of health, afraid of money, afraid of everything, afraid of the bills, afraid, afraid. And they don’t take thanks to God.
And they bear these things. And God says that they will destroy it. There’s a philosophy and understanding that you have to have inside of you that you use in order to guide yourself.
It’s like having a set of glasses to help you put things into focus. It’s an understanding, basic truths from the Word of God, that you understand the law of sowing and reaping. And if you want to reap something, you have to sow what you want to reap.
And if you sow love, you can reap love. You sow peace, you can reap peace. You sow anger, you reap anger.
You sow malice, you reap that. And you sow gossip, you reap that. And so you want the best for your life.
You want peace and love and joy and happiness. You want these things. Those are the fruit of the Spirit.
And God says, Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.
So you and I are going to reap what we sow. And we know that the day will come when God says that every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. So there is a law of compensation that God says that will be in play, and every man will receive what he has done.
Enthusiasm is the interest or the excitement that you put into your purpose in life. In other words, your whole life should be an exciting life to you. You should be interested in every day.
You should be interested in the people that come into your life. You should be interested concerning the problems that come into your life. All those things are stepping stones or stumbling blocks.
It all depends on the attitude that you have toward those things. If people don’t understand how God uses problems, you’ll curse the problems. But like we said before, you don’t curse the darkness, you strike a match.
Let the Word of God be the light that shines in the midst of a dark situation. The other thing was the environment will be your greatest influence. It’s to help us to have wisdom concerning the company that we keep, the friends that we have.
And all these things are important about the places that you go, the reputation that you have, because this is what will influence you. And people, peer pressure, this is one of the strongest things that happens to the teenagers when they go to school. They want to be like all the other kids, like all the other kids.
If they wear a certain kind of baggy pants, they all want to wear those same baggy pants. And if they wear certain tennis shoes by certain makers, they all have to have this, and they got to look the same and dress the same and talk the same and be the same, because they don’t want to stand out like a sort of, they got to be cool. Well, there’s adults that also get 40 years old and 50 years old and 60 years old, and they want to look cool too.
They want to be like everybody else. I always say, don’t try to keep up with the Joneses, just wait and catch them on their way back. And so we are to share and to bear one another’s burdens, because everybody’s got some.
And the Bible says, those were taken in a fault, and everybody gets taken in a fault sooner or later. Everybody falls, not everybody stays walking 100% all the time. We all sin as a Christian.
And God says, those who are strong at that time, help that person, because you see, if you don’t, who’s going to help you when you fall? And that’s why he says in the book of Ecclesiastes, it’s good when a friend has a friend, because if one falls, then one can help them up. We need one another.
That’s the purpose of church. Churches and for all the most dedicated and godliest of saints who has no problems, it’s for the people who have problems. All of us have them.
We’re all weak. We have a flesh nature, and we need to pray for one another, encourage one another, so that we stay strong, keep doing the things that we’re supposed to do, because one day we’re going to stand before God. Well, that’s why the Bible is so important.
A preacher is important. A preacher can tell you things that your wife can’t tell you. The preacher can tell you things that your husband tries to tell you, and you’ll get mad at him.
That way, when you get mad, you just get mad at the preacher, but you didn’t get mad at your husband. You still got your wife. You still got your husband.
And you can take and listen and learn and be able to correct some of the things in your life. But it’s hard sometimes taking correction from those that are closest to you. That’s why I don’t get too close to you, because I want to be able to chew you out.
I got to be able to come down hard on the things that you do that are not wise for you to do. Now, I want you to look in the book of Ephesians in chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5 and look there in verse 15.
Verse 15 says, See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Now, a wise man will redeem the time. Redeeming the time means to buy up every opportunity you can while you can.
And the older you get, the more you realize you’re running out of time. So, when you’re running out of time, you’re running out of opportunities, because life is what is all about. And so, when you no longer live, that means you’re dead and you’re gone to heaven.
And so, you know God’s only given you so much time to live, and it is so important to keep these things in mind. So, number ten, if you’ll look there in your notes, don’t procrastinate. Do it now.
The Lord says, Serve the Lord in the days of thy youth, in the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 12. So, we are not supposed to wake up until we are 90 years old and finally I think now I’m really going to serve the Lord. It’s kind of like getting a car and you got, you know, good nice rubber on the tires and on your car, and you’ll burn them out while you’re young, and then whenever the thread starts showing, well, I think I’ll start serving the Lord now.
No, serve the Lord when you got a lot of rubber on the tires, when you got more time left. Serve the Lord in the days of your youth, because the time will come when you can’t do all the things that you’d like to do. You can’t go the speed you used to go.
You can’t remember like you used to remember. You don’t have the physical stamina that you used to have. But while you’re young, do all that you can, and then when you get older, you may not do as much, but you should be able to do things in a wiser way.
Accomplishing more only because you’re wiser, and you’ll make less mistakes because you’ve learned, you’ve had 30, 40, 50, 60 years to live to correct things and know how to make wiser decisions. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Now, I want you to look there in your notes, because underneath these points, every line, every line is packed with some knowledge.
They’re like little proverbs. Proverbs is a two words that come pro and verba, means to more than meets the eye. You can see it, but then there’s something else behind it.
But not on every one, but these are some things that I think would be good for you. Number one, some fools are quick to rush headlong, where angels fear to tread. I remember Mr. Jackson, the one that led me to the Lord.
He told me, he says, Yankee, why don’t you slow down? Slow down. He says, you’re always in such a hurry.
And I said, well, when I want to do something, I want to do it now. And when I want something, I want it now. I was not a very patient individual.
And that’s why me and Betty, after we got married, lived in five states in a year and a half. Think about it. In a year and one half, we’d been moved to five states.
Now, I will venture to say that most of y’all have not done that. Most of y’all haven’t been moved and lived in five states in your life. But we did.
Because I was so unsettled, my desires changed so quickly. And it was hard for me to get on the right road because I jumped on every road that came along. And I was always going down to see what’s down that street, what’s down that street, what’s down that street, what’s down that street.
But I didn’t have a main highway. I didn’t know where to go until I got things straight between me and the Lord. And I thought, I need to let the Lord start guiding me.
And some people are going so fast, they don’t stop, slow down. Procrastinate means that you don’t do anything. You don’t move at all.
You’re always putting it off. And I want you to look at this. Even too much gas into the carburetor can cause the motor to stall.
You try to go too fast, too much, too quickly. And after a while, it’s called burnout. You don’t want to do anything.
You’ll get to where you don’t want to go to church. You don’t want to sing in the choir. You don’t want to do anything for God.
I don’t care what it is, you just get tired of it. Burnout, had enough, up to here. And you’ll start slowly, you’ll start quitting.
Because you get burned out, the interest is gone, you forget why you’re doing it, and then becomes nothing but a burden, a drudgery, a job. Instead of seeing things as an opportunity, praise the Lord, man, look what God’s given me, an open door, look what I can do for God. And if you don’t keep the attitude right, it will destroy you.
Patience, patience, patience. Everybody wants it. Everybody knows they need it.
But you and I know what brings it. What brings patience? Tribulation worketh patience.
In other words, the result, the end result of tribulation problems is to produce patience in your life. Because it causes you not to have the answers to the problem. That’s what made it a problem.
You didn’t know how to solve it, or you couldn’t solve it. And God knows that. And so God forces you to wait and let him open up a door or to teach you something that you didn’t know before.
There’s reasons. Look at the next statement. To claim patience when action is demanded is disobedience.
Delayed obedience is disobedience. Do not squander time, for that is what life is made from. When you waste time, you waste life.
When you waste life, you waste yourself. The Bible says, and I want you to look at this verse in Proverbs chapter 13. Look there in Proverbs and chapter 13.
And look in verse 4. In verse 4, the Bible says that a wise son heareth his father’s instruction, but a scornor heareth not rebuke. But in verse 4, he says the soul of the slugger, the lazy man, the man that’s always going to but never does, the Bible says hath nothing.
He desires hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat. Now, wouldn’t everybody in this room like to be made fat? Now, we’re not talking about physically fat.
The word fat means to be made liberal, to be made satisfied, to have more than you really need or want. But it’s something that you have more because you’re diligent. But see, a lot of people, a lot of you probably in this room, often do not diligently work faithfully, consistently at the thing you really want to accomplish.
Now, the same principles can be applied in the business, can be applied on your job, can be applied to your home or anything that you’re doing. You see, a lot of people procrastinate. They’re always putting it off.
Like one guy says, I never do today what I can do tomorrow. Well, I think it’s supposed to be worded the other way. Always do today what you can, and let tomorrow take care of itself.
But always try to get as much accomplished. Use every day, every moment, and accomplish something with your life. Let it be something that you’re working toward the purpose.
You’re a reason for living. Some of you like to have more, but you waste what you have. Some of you might go to work and you make good money, but you never have anything.
Why? Because you waste it all. You spend half your money maybe on things you really don’t need.
That’s not helping you accomplish what you want. You’d be surprised how much God has given to you and I over the years. That if we would discipline ourselves, how much more we could have.
Even the quality of life that we have. Maybe even the better home that you have, or the car that you have. All these things can all go together.
But there’s things that we could do and give more to the Lord and give to missions. You realize that every child of God, every child of God should give toward missions. Every child of God.
Now, we try to do what we can here, even as a church bodied together, but individually to still give toward missions. There’s people that need help. Now, the next thing I want you to look at, shunning away from what has to be done is the biggest thief of time.
Success will never knock at the home where procrastination lives. The successful person must faithfully do what needs to be done, whether he likes to do it or not. There’s many things in the Lord’s work.
I really don’t like to do. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t like doing editing. Whether for the TV or for the radio, I really don’t care to do it.
Because it gets, most time, it’s a big headache. It’s just a lot of work. And even when we did the TV broadcast, sometimes I would work on the equipment, and it would take me sometimes 8, 10 hours doing a half-hour broadcast just to do one little half-hour broadcast.
And sometimes the audio wouldn’t be right. And then sometimes the machines won’t even work. And I would be back in, I thought if I have a stick of dynamite right now, I’d just blow it all sky high.
And I could become very impatient. I got irritated a lot of times. And I had to dedicate every Monday knowing that it was going to take that to do everything I had to get done.
But a person doesn’t always do what he wants to do. He does what needs to be done. As a husband, sometimes you will do the things you don’t maybe want to do them, but you have to do them.
So you go ahead and do it. And if you’re going to do it, do a good job. Whatever you do, you want to do the best you possibly can.
We can just try to get by. But you know why I want to have a thing tonight? I want to do better.
I want to do it better. Why? Because it represents the Lord’s Word.
It represents every person in this ministry. Every song that we have, that we put on a radio, or we put on the TV, it represents God. We do what we do is for the Lord.
And the Lord says, What’s over thy hands? Do it with all thy might. Try to do the best you can do.
On your job, I don’t care what kind of job you have, you ought to try to do the best you possibly can. When you cut your grass in your yard, I think you ought to try to cut it as best you possibly can. When you paint your house, or when you sweep the floor, or when you wash the dishes, you ought to try to do it the best you possibly can.
Make sure those dishes are clean. Have any of you ever gone to a restaurant and they give you a knife or a fork and it ain’t clean? At home?
Maybe it’s just you and your husband. Make sure it’s clean. Clean the house.
I don’t think that your yard ought to look ugly. Because you’re to be a good steward. God has loaned you whatever you have.
Be a good steward of what you’ve got. Take care of what you’ve got. Do right.
That’s all part of serving the Lord, whether you understand it or not. And so serving the Lord sometimes is not always doing what you want to do. It’s doing what needs to be done.
It has to be done. And if it’s going to be done, do the best you can possibly do it. Your future has been determined by your obedience to God today.
Look at the next statement. Let me read it to you. The road to misery and failure are paved with good intentions.
There are two ways to get to the top of an oak tree. You can climb it or set it on an acorn. Wishing for something will not bring it to you.
But the act of doing the right thing, the right way will bring you to it. Do not hope for a brighter tomorrow. Do something today that will make it brighter.
In other words, don’t just let everything go. Like it doesn’t really matter what I do. If I want a bright tomorrow, then I need to do today what will make tomorrow brighter because I sowed the seeds today that will grow tomorrow.
And if you sow the wrong seeds today, the seeds of discord, then tomorrow you’re going to reap that. If you want good things down the road, you better start sowing good things today because you see your future is being determined by your obedience to God today. I don’t worry about am I going to be in the will of God five years from now.
If I’m in God’s will today, and then tomorrow comes and I’m in the will of God tomorrow, and then I’m in the will of God the next year and the next year and the next year, well, five years from then, I’ll be in the will of God. It’s so easy for a person to dedicate their life to God that they don’t have, and withhold this moment, this day, that you do have. That’s why he says, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
In other words, whatever you need for this day, this moment, God said, I’ll give you all the strength, all the grace that you need to bear whatever is going to come up on you this moment. But you cannot borrow into the future and bring grace from the future for this moment. Because when you get there, you won’t have enough for that day and it will overwhelm you.
God will give you the strength and the grace that you need as you live each day. Number 11, adversities are God’s stepping stone to success. It all depends on your attitude.
In the book of Romans in chapter 5 and verse 3, it talks about tribulation worketh patience. The book of James chapter 1 and verse 12 says that if you, as a child of God, will endure testings, endure the testings, God says there is a reward that God’s going to give you, a crown that he’s going to give to you. So you can’t get that crown unless God allows you to have these testings that you go through, and the testings are to be looked upon as the opportunities you’ve been dying for.
Wouldn’t it be a shame to have a million dollars and no place to spend it? Women, how would you like that? What if you had a million dollars and your husband says you can spend it anywhere you want, as much as you want, and there were no stores?
Stores are opportunities for you to spend your money. And so God says, I want to use you. And I’m going to send you problems.
And these problems are designed with you and mine, different ones for different people at different times, but all of you are going to have some. And they’re designed to reveal to you what you don’t know. So that you’ll come to me and ask me.
And I will grant you the wisdom that you need. Now isn’t that wonderful when you understand? And I’m going to allow you to be tested, to have these temptations.
But if you’ll be faithful, I’m going to reward you when you get to heaven. You’ll win. You’ll win.
And the goal of life is to win, not to lose. And sometimes we prejudge people’s motives too quickly. We think we got the answers to everything.
We don’t know all that goes on behind the scenes in every person’s life. Look very quickly at verse 11. Problems are unsolved opportunities.
Remember, every problem has a solution, and a problem once solved is no longer a problem. What happens to you is not as important as your response. Problems become stepping stones or something blocks, depending on your attitude toward them.
You are measured in the eyes of your fellow man by your ability to stand up to an adversity. No man is given more temptations than he has the ability or strength to overcome. If he looks for the way out that God has made, 1 Corinthians 10 13 says so, to be knocked down is not defeat, but to stay down is defeat.
Adversities, obstacles, and problems are opportunities given by the Lord to help you grow. You ought to underline that statement in your notes. It’s a tremendous statement.
You need to understand, most people get bitter, sour, because things go wrong. God didn’t say that we ought to be faithful if everything works our way. If we get everything that we want, it doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t work that way in nothing concerning life. Your husband’s not perfect. Your wife isn’t perfect.
Your children are not perfect. Your neighbors are not perfect. Everybody’s got faults.
Everybody’s got a problem. And the thing is, is learning how to deal with those problems and keep moving ahead. Let me give you this last thing here.
Runaway emotions is a life jumping out of gear. I had a car one time, kept jumping out of gear. It happened to be that old Volvo that I had.
And jump out of gear, and I put and hold it in gear. And it would jump out of gear, and I had to pull it back in gear. And you know, if he doesn’t keep it in gear, you can’t go the speed you like to go.
A lot of people in their lives, they like to do things, but they have this problem with runaway emotions. They get run away with fear. And they see problems and they run off at the mouth and say things that they shouldn’t say.
And so they have no way sometime of a control in all these emotions that they have. Well, emotions that will run without control is a dead giveaway to an undisciplined mind. And many of God’s people, maybe some of you, are not disciplined to the point where you will control those things, and you let them get the best of you.
Let me read these to you very quickly. The greater number of dissatisfied, insecure, and fruitless lives stem from a lack of self-discipline and God-discipline. Uncontrolled emotions result only from a mind not submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit.
Because in Romans chapter 12 and verse 1 and 2, it makes the statement, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this word, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove or discover what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So, it has to deal with the mind of an individual. And many people are guilty of runaway emotions, and they won’t control their tongue, they won’t control their actions, and they’re good for about, you know, every once in a while, they’ll run along fine, and they get knocked out of gear.
And when you get knocked out of gear, you don’t have any power, you’re not going anywhere. The last statement, it is poor reasoning to lose your head when you are in most need of it. When you throw mud, you lose ground.
Have you ever heard somebody say, boy, I love just give a person a piece of my mind. When you give them a piece of your mind, then you have less of it. So, you need to be careful.
If you want to be successful as a Christian, there’s things you need to know what to do, what not to do. And all of it is designed to help you to be a strong Christian. So, you think about these things and you do right between you and God.
Serve the Lord with all your heart while you can, redeeming the time because the days are evil and time is few.
Have you ever heard that faith without works is dead? Or have you ever read James Chapter 2? Does your faith produce good works?
Some teach that if you don’t serve the Lord, you’re not saved. Is that true or false? Pastor Yankee Arnold has prepared just the right book with answers straight from the Bible.
The book is called Gospel Driven Man, and Pastor Yankee wants to send it to you free of charge. Simply write to Pastor Yankee at Yankee Arnold Ministries, 7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634, and request the book. Or request by email at yankee at yankeearnold.com.
That’s yankee at yankeearnold.com.
Thanks for listening to today’s broadcast. We pray that today’s message was a blessing to you and your family. You may help support this radio ministry by donating online at yankeearnold.com or by mail at yankeearnoldministries.
7028 West Waters Avenue, Suite 316, Tampa, Florida, 33634.
Friend, one day it will happen. The trumpet will sound. And we will be changed, caught up to meet the Lord in the air.
So live today and every day believing that the Lord is coming soon. And just keep looking up.
