"Cake" or "Steak"

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Get ready, going up, live in your life, how do we do both? How do we juggle? That Christ is coming, but at the same time I need to be ready to provide for my family and for my family's family. We're going to find out next. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's Word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this podcast right now and we are going to drop this in in the midst of the ongoing conversation, the ongoing really podcasting sermons, media from all around the world. Everybody, of course, pastor, Christian context, Israel, Russia, Iran, all of this stuff. How about this? How about in the middle of all this, we drop in to you before you, with us, the reality of you've got to keep living while all this stuff's going on. So for example, if you're a young person today and you're saying, oh my gosh, I've been watching the news and I've been watching this guy's podcast, this girl's podcast, this news thing, this site, this the other, it seems like, listen, it seems like the world's coming to an end today and you just think thoughts like, I'm not going to go to college. Well, you probably shouldn't go to college. That's a huge waste of money. There's another way to be educated without giving them your money. Gosh, I was going to ask this girl to marry me. Now I'm not going to ask because it's the end of the world. We wanted to start a family, but now we're not because it's the end of the world. Listen, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, Christian, get married to a Christian. Have a family, work hard, show up on time, occupy till he comes. That's what we've been commanded to do. Live your Christian life out right now. You've got to do this. I have to do this. I mean, think about it. All of us could swallow this lie and that is, I'm not going to study for another sermon because Jesus could come back tomorrow. I'm not even going to go grocery shopping today because Jesus could come back, right? Think about it. That's ridiculous. He could come back in the next two minutes. That doesn't change the fact that we've been commanded to occupy. That means live your life in this world until he comes. So listen, young people, I want to speak to you right now. Love Jesus with all of your heart. Get wisdom from the book of Proverbs preferably every day if you can. I try to read at least one Proverb a day. Try to emulate that and live your life. I was thinking about this dream that's always been on my heart. Take dreams and nightmares to the Lord and then go live it. Whatever it is, don't stop, don't give up, don't quit because right now there are so many who are overwhelmed because they don't know the stability and the comfort that Bible prophecy brings to you brings to us that they're overwhelmed and they feel like quitting. They've got no tenacity to persevere yet. We've been commanded to persevere. They've got no desire to plod. We don't say that word much anymore, but it's a great old English word. Plodders. A plod. Not a plod. A plodder. One who plods. What does that mean? One foot in front of the other. Ever so slowly, almost like the turtle, you know, in the turtle and the hair story, just keep going forward. As a believer in this world, I am paying my bills. I'm also planning for the future and for my children and grandchildren. According to the book of Proverbs, I'm supposed to be laying up my wealth for my children and grandchildren. Did you know that? Listen, a lot of people that didn't think right or maybe they came to the Lord late and they couldn't do anything about it, but there's a lot of older people like me who are expecting their children to take care of them. The Bible says the exact opposite. Every generation of patriarch or matriarch is to store up for the next generation and for the next generation. The Scriptures are very clear. It says that we are to be saving up for the financial stability of our children and our children's children. That's pretty cool. Our grandkids. Listen to this verse. I encourage you to read it in New Living Translations, Crystal Clear, ESV, NIV, New King James. King James, it doesn't matter, but the New Living Translation puts it very, very good. That is basically this. If you obtain wealth by get rich schemes that promise you get rich schemes, I'm going to take ten dollars and I'm going to take ten dollars that belongs to God because I'm only talking to the Christian right now. The money that you have belongs to God. God gave it to you to see how you're going to manage it. So this is how you do not want to manage it. You're going to go down and you're going to take ten bucks and you're going to go buy a lottery ticket. That is not managing the resources of God. Lottery gambling is not from God. That's stupid. It's not right. And in fact, the Bible, Jesus Himself admonishes us to be very wise and frugal about how we invest our money at the very least. At the very least, he should we should be generating some form of interest. But when you go to gamble, that's a fool's delight. That is a vice that will destroy you. God will not bless that. But God does tell you to be wise and to invest, but be very wise about who and how you do this because even today where we're looking at a world that is nigh unto fire, right? We've got China doing crazy stuff with North Korea in the east or the deep west. I should say it's called the Orient in the east, but for us in California, it's west. And then in the east, we've got the Russia and Iran and Israel and down south from us. We've got very nefarious activities with Chinese operators in South America and even Mexico going on. You say, oh, yeah, I can't live yes, you can. And yes, you are because you're a believer. You're going to continue to obey the word of God. There is no opt out from obeying the word of God because we're living in the last days. So when the Bible warns, watch out for get rich schemes. Avoid them. That verse goes on to say Proverbs 13 11 that verse goes on to say, but work hard and wealth will come to you slowly. That's a very good thing because 74% in the state of California, 74% of people who win the lottery with in 10 years, why they wind up being divorced, hooked on drugs and broke. Because it was handed to them. They weren't disciplined in managing it to earn it because when you earn it, then now you're careful about it, knowing that I'm going to give an answer to God for the resources I have had in my fingertips all of my 66 years. I'm going to answer to God on, Jack, what did you do with what I gave you? So will you? So avoid get rich schemes because they're schemes. Work hard at what you do. Build a family. Oh, that's a whole another thing. You can go to PragerU.com, PragerU.com and look at their five minute videos and look under the video that it's something titled like this. Men need to be married or men need to raise a family or something. Something about men getting married. Did you know that men who are married live longer? Did you know that men who are married make more money than men who are single? Did you know that men who are married live longer and make more money and they have less psychological disorders? Did you know that? Did you know that men who are married tend to be promoted at work versus those that are single? You should watch that video that some psychologist does at PragerU. It's pretty amazing. What am I saying? Responsibility is good for you. And if you push off responsibility, you're actually damaging yourself. It kind of goes like this. You have in front of you a cake and you have in front of you a steak. Which one should you eat? If you have to think about that for a moment, that's not good. Because which one should you eat? It's the steak. Because you need to build iron in your blood. You need to bolster your immune system. You need to increase the energy levels. You need protein and you need to build bone structure and density. But I want the cake. If you push the steak away and eat cake, you're going to feel really good for 20 minutes and then you're going to feel really crummy for the rest of the day. And if you do that day after day, you're going to wake up dead. But if you take care of yourself, then you have invested in your body so that it can be used better to God's glory. Now you might say, well, post your joke. I thought all of our days are numbered. They are numbered. But it's up to you to live out those days healthy, wise, and usable so that, I mean, I want to be so healthy, wise, and usable that I live out all my days and then drop dead or get hit by a truck or fall out of the airplane or my parachute doesn't open on that day that God has ordained. I don't want to be plugged into a diagnosis machine because I couldn't avoid eating a half a pound of crispy cream every morning. Are you hearing me? Listen, if you're having Cheetos and Pepsi for breakfast, you're in trouble. You need to get away from that. Why? Because God wants to use your body. Well, if you have a wallet with 500 bucks, what are you going to do with it? I don't know. You tell me, Pastor, but it's burning a hole in my pocket. What do I do with it? Stop. You're going for the cake. Stop it. Make it the steak. If you have to spend something of that $500, ask yourself this question. What is it that you need? I'm not asking you what you want because we're really dumb. What do you need? You have 500 bucks right now. What do you need? Well, I need some t-shirts. Great. Let's be extravagant. Take $100 out of the 500 and dedicate it to your t-shirts or your underwear. What do you want to get? The other 400 goes to the bank. By the way, you can do that. You can set that up on all these apps that you guys have these days. Capitals, one of them. What are some of the others? Anybody out there behind the cameras? Acorn. There's tons of them. You can set how much goes wear and what? Man, at least then I do that in all kinds of ways. Start doing that. You mean only have $100 of your t-shirts? Yep. Make it work. By the way, $100 of t-shirts, you're going to be up to your neck and t-shirts. No pun intended. Up to your neck and t-shirts. Manage, manage, manage your food. Manage your time. Manage your money and know this. Don't rely on get-rich schemes to make up for your neglect. Simply learn right now. Stop neglecting and get disciplined. And discipline is pigeonhole. I'll call it pigeonhole. Pigeonhole money all the time. Meaning, I'm a big fan of this and I practice what I'm telling you right now. Since before I met Lisa, I have had envelopes. I have envelopes. I have envelopes like a squirrel's got nuts stored away. I've got envelopes in my office. I have envelopes at my home. I have an envelope in my truck. I have envelopes in my secretary's office and I put each of those envelopes for a certain reason. And when I have spare change or something, not to mention the envelopes online that I just mentioned to you a moment ago, a capital with a Q capital and acorn. I pigeonhole stuff all over the place and you know what? It gets to be fun, okay? And then all of a sudden, you're busy about life. Three months later, you wind up. What? I've got this much. Listen, that's discipline. You didn't waste it on cake. You invested in steak. And so what happens is that by plotting along, little put a little bit here, little bit there, little bit there, by plotting along, you'll be surprised what happens because now you have the ability to help others as the Lord has commanded us that come into our lives. When you become aware that someone's in need, you can help them. I just screened a movie that's going to be released soon. I can't disclose anything too much about it, but please go see it. The movie is called Unsung Hero. It's about the small bone family from Australia that moved to America here. It's a great true story, great true movie. You got to see it. Really good example about what I'm talking about is in that movie, you're going to see how a family that has nothing, nothing, starts to pigeonhole stuff and they wind up pulling together as a family and they have a little bucket. They have a little transparent like a can, you know, bucket, I mean plastic. And even if they found a penny on the street, they would put it in there. And it's very, very cute discipline. You need to know their family. You should have a community or family bucket in your house. Nobody can take anything out of it with permission from the others, but everybody gets to put stuff into it. What's what happens? You had to set a little goal. Make it wherever you live. Maybe it's some amusement park or maybe it's some family place or maybe it's something where it'd be fun for you guys to do it. It's just a little bit out of reach for you right now, but you guys determine, wow, we'd really like to do this. We'd like to go visit that town or do that thing. Then label the bucket, you know, for those of you, for example, I'm thinking how cool the arc experience and Kentucky is amazing. Label it. The Ark Encounter. Start throwing money in there. You know, by doing that, you're actually occupying till the Lord returns. You see, but Jack, there could be war in the Middle East tomorrow. That's right. So make sure you get a big clear plastic bucket and put the Ark Encounter on it and start putting money in because there could be a war tomorrow in the Middle East. There could be a World War today. You don't know. I don't know, but I'm ready to meet the World War. I'm ready to meet the next issue. I'm ready to meet the opportunity for the next vacation or my neighbor might have a need that I can help them with. Are you hearing what I'm saying? It's very, very end times practical living, you see? See, because we believe in Bible prophecy as God gave his word to us. It doesn't mean that we unplug our brains or our hearts from what's going on in life. We actually wind up using what God has given us as good resources. The Bible tells us a really great thing. And in 1 Timothy, chapter 6, the Bible tells us that godliness with contentment is great wealth. Timothy also tells us that it's the love of money that it is the root of all evil. Money is not evil. Did you know that money is amoral? A moral means if I have a hundred dollar bill here right now, it has no moral leaning. It's not bias. It's literally neutral. Thus it's amoral. Not immoral or moral. A moral means let's put it this way. It means yet to be determined. Can you look at it that way? If you have a hundred dollars as a believer, that money is amoral. What I do with it makes it either immoral or moral because money is neutral. It's the intent and the will behind the use of the money that is either building up my witness before the Lord in the day of judgment or my loss before the Lord in the day of judgment. Okay? Very important. I want you to start looking at your time in light of these days, your money in light of these days. And when I say your money, I don't care if you have five hundred million dollars and I don't care if you have five dollars. The answer is exactly the same for both. That your money that God has given you to govern over is managed by you wisely in the fear of the Lord. Why? Because he will multiply it. Why? Because you have found you've proven yourself to be faithful. And what he'll do is he'll give you more and then he'll give you more and then more and then more. Why? Because every time he gives you more, a little bit more goes out from you to help other people. Your church, your community, be careful by the way who you give to. There's certain organizations that always pop up during disasters. And man, some of them are the last people you should be giving to those organizations no way. But there are some that are great. My point is this, be wise, be being prayer, but always be ready. And the Bible throughout the Scripture, this ought to flip some of you out. Did you know the Bible teaches capitalism in the Scripture? You think I might teach socialism because Karl Marx used the sermon on the mount and the book of Acts to promote socialism. That's a Satan used the Bible also to promote his plan. The Bible is all about independent ownership and independent responsibility based upon your stewardship of what you want. Did you know that? The Bible is also very big on you making enough profit to be able to help those that are hurting. So the church that I pastor, we happen to live in a pretty affluent area of America, of California. And what's amazing to me is that there are church never, in 35 years, we've never lacked having at least one poor person at our church. And now being a big church, we have more poor people who are Christians who love the Lord, but they just can't, they barely make it. Why does God do that? To keep our hearts right. To keep us helping them because that's how a healthy church works. Do you have money and resources? Is there, do you have time and energy? How are you spending it? You spend it all, if, you know, all day on the golf course, spending your energy or on the tennis court. Do you spend it all day on what you want to do? Or have you ever thought about the energy level that you have that God has given that to you so that you might go about doing good? For others, it's not wrong to golf. It's not wrong to play tennis, of course not. But if you spend all of your resources of time in doing that, all of your money is, look, I'm going to tell you right now straight up. God took me to the woodshed a long time ago. Wow, I don't know, 46 years ago. I'm guessing. I was a brand new believer, because before I was a believer, all I did was I made money. And the more money I made, the more I put in the bank, the more I watched zeros. You know, zeros, the most important number in the world. Did you know that? Zero. Yep. You can have all the ones you want, but it's the zeros behind the one that make things happen. Zero is the most powerful number. The more zeros I got behind the number, guess what I did. I was not a Christian. The more frugal I lived to the point where I would buy everything that I would wear, everything that I would do, I'd get from thrift shops. And I mean, I became Ebenezer Scrooge. Because before I was a Christian, I would just look at my account and add do it like a, I mean, I literally would get so excited in those days. You had to go make a deposit in those days in person. There was no none of the stuff we have today. And I would watch it grow. And I got so fixated on it. It was an idol. I was just obsessed. And then I, listen, when that happens, you get to be so cheap. You're so stingy. You're so self-centered. And then I got saved. And man, the Lord began to rip me up. And it was a process. But God began to just change my entire world view on what we have as an individual to do with what he wants done. So are we on the brink of a world war? Is China going to cyber attack the United States in Canada? Is I don't know? Could be. Looks like it maybe who knows? I don't need to worry about it. Okay? Because I need to occupy till he comes. I need to register to vote. I need to find out what the candidates are all about. I need to vote in a way that honors God. I must never sit out of vote. That's called a coward. And you can read about cowards in the book of Revelation chapter 22. I think it's 22 or 21. I want to, you want to plan a flower in your pot in your yard? Do it. Well, it's the end of the world. Should I water my lawn? Please, your neighbors want you to water your lawn. Okay? It's the end of the world. Should I go on vacation? Do you need a vacation? Ask your wife. She might need a vacation. Do it. So listen, I hope this is clear. The Christian should be wise. Read the book of Proverbs. Know what God would have you to do at the same time. You want to, my hands are so fingers are so dry. I can help it turn these pages. It's Revelation chapter 22. I believe that it's those, those that are the first group that winds up, winds up going into hell is the cowards. Maybe it's chapter 21. So Revelation 21 7 and he will overcome shall inherit all things. And I will be his God and he shall be my son. But the cowards, the unbelieving, the abominable murders, sexually immoral sorcerers, interesting word. It's not only sorcery, but it's pharma KIs, the word hallucinogenic drug users, is what it means. Idolatures and all liars shall have their parts in the lake that burns forever with fire and brimstone. This is the second death. Top of the list cowards. Don't be a coward. Live your life bold for Jesus, plan for the next 100 years, and be ready to go up today. Right? Hey, listen, if this makes any sense, if you want to share those other people, like us, subscribe, give us a rating, and tell others that they can join in with us, let them know. And so as always, as usual, it's time. This is what we believe anyway. This is our little jingle. It's kind of cute. We like it. It's time for us to live out, right? What we believe in? It's time for real life. And that's our theme and that's our title. Until next time, God bless you, guys. Keep looking up. Stand strong.