Speaker 1: Take out your message notes. We're in a series on
Speaker 1: the ten Great Tests of life, and we've been looking
Speaker 1: at the life of Daniel, who lived about twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. At fifteen years of age, he was
Speaker 1: taken as a prisoner of war to the Babylonian Empire
Speaker 1: with about twenty five percent of the Jewish nation. But
Speaker 1: there he just continued to pass every test of life,
Speaker 1: and when he was eighty five, seventy years later, he
Speaker 1: is the second most powerful man in the most powerful
Speaker 1: empire in the world. Now we don't have time to
Speaker 1: review all of what's happened. But in Daniel chapter five,
Speaker 1: where we are now King Nebekonezar, who was the most
Speaker 1: famous king Babylonian king, built the great hanging Walls of Babylon.
Speaker 1: He's died and he reigned for forty five years. And
Speaker 1: now his grandson, a guy named bel Shazar, is the king.
Speaker 1: Bel Shazar was a terrible leader, an absolute terrible leader.
Speaker 1: He was a party boy. He was a spoiled royal brat,
Speaker 1: and all he liked to do is drink party with
Speaker 1: his friends. And so, sensing weakness, I'm setting up where
Speaker 1: we're going. The two biggest enemies at that time, the
Speaker 1: Meads and the Persians joined together, Darius the Mead and
Speaker 1: Cyrus the Great, and they came to besiege this great
Speaker 1: walled city of Babylon. Now it's pretty safe city. You
Speaker 1: were fraid. These river runs through it. It's got walls
Speaker 1: fifty to eighty feet in depth. It's a pretty fortified city.
Speaker 1: But at this moment that we're going to look at
Speaker 1: this weekend, these two armies are camped around the city
Speaker 1: of Babylon waiting to attack. And Belshazzar the King, this
Speaker 1: young kid, he's not worried about it. He's over confident.
Speaker 1: And so what does the party boy do when he's
Speaker 1: under attack. He throws a party. And in this chapter
Speaker 1: he invites a thousand of his friends to the royal palace,
Speaker 1: and he has and they all get drunk. They all
Speaker 1: get drunk. They're having a really fun time. And then
Speaker 1: the king gets a very bad idea. And here's what
Speaker 1: he says. He says, and he's drunk. He said, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys, when my grandfather was the Emperor of Babylon,
Speaker 1: and when we sacked Jerusalem and destroyed it and took
Speaker 1: over Israel, he said, we stole all of the temple utensils,
Speaker 1: all of the goblets and all that stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: been in storage here in Babylon now for forty five years.
Speaker 1: He says, how about this, Let's get out the temple
Speaker 1: goblets and we're gonna drink in them and toast our
Speaker 1: pagan gods. Bad idea, bad idea. This is called being sacrilegious,
Speaker 1: and it's making fun of somebody else's religion. It's taking
Speaker 1: something that is created to honor God and instead misusing
Speaker 1: it to dishonor God. And you turn something sacred into
Speaker 1: something profane. And let's look at this story and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna draw some lessons out of it. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: what it says. In the Bible Daniel, chapter five. King
Speaker 1: Belshazer gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles,
Speaker 1: and they all got drunk. When bel Shazer was drinking
Speaker 1: his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold
Speaker 1: and silver goblets that Nevakandezer, his predecessor, had taken from
Speaker 1: the Temple of God in Jerusalem. Now, he thought it'd
Speaker 1: be fun to drink using these goblets intended to worship God.
Speaker 1: And so it says, so they did. They used the cups,
Speaker 1: laughing and making toast all the pagan gods and idols. Now, suddenly,
Speaker 1: it says, a finger of a human hand appeared in
Speaker 1: the Royal Banquet Hall and began writing supernaturally, writing on
Speaker 1: the plaster walls of the Royal Palace and the king,
Speaker 1: it says, and all the guests watched this hand as
Speaker 1: it wrote. Now, now this is a hand without a body. Okay,
Speaker 1: anybody remember the thing in the Adams family. I don't
Speaker 1: know if thing was around then, but you know he
Speaker 1: could have. You know, he was detached. It certainly was
Speaker 1: one of those giant foam fingers that have the angel game.
Speaker 1: You know, we're number one, But evidently this is a
Speaker 1: kind of a freaky Friday thing. A hand shows up
Speaker 1: and it starts writing on the wall. By the way,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard the expression the handwriting is on
Speaker 1: the wall. It's from this story twenty five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: this idiom that we use now the handwriting is on
Speaker 1: the wall, which means that's a warning bad news is coming.
Speaker 1: You're about to get fired. The handwriting is on the wall.
Speaker 1: Anytime you use the handwriting is on the wall. It's
Speaker 1: from this story in the Bible, and I could give
Speaker 1: you four or five hundred other phrases, expressions, and idioms
Speaker 1: that actually came out of Bible stories. The handwriting on
Speaker 1: the wall is referring to the fact that Belle Shazer
Speaker 1: is going to be warn he's going to die that
Speaker 1: night because he has been sacrilegious and he's disrupted a
Speaker 1: god and he hasn't been humble. Now, this is a warning,
Speaker 1: but this is the origin of it. Now, in verse six,
Speaker 1: it says this, when the king saw this, this hand
Speaker 1: writing on the wall, it scared him to death. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess so, said. His face turned pale, and he
Speaker 1: was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his
Speaker 1: hips gave way. Now I love this last phrase, his
Speaker 1: hips gave way. That's just a polite ways saying he
Speaker 1: soiled his pants. He was moved, if you get my drift. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: the guy got diarrhea. Now I don't know about this one,
Speaker 1: but it might that may be the source of expression.
Speaker 1: It scared the who out of him. Okay, but that's
Speaker 1: exactly what happened to this game. He just messes himself. Now,
Speaker 1: a thousand guests see this handwriting on the wall. Nobody
Speaker 1: can read it, nobody understands it, nobody can interpret it.
Speaker 1: So they call for this guy, Daniel, who's been serving now,
Speaker 1: first as a prisoner war, then his interne he gets
Speaker 1: and now he's an administrator and he's moved up. And
Speaker 1: by this point Daniel, in his life, has developed a
Speaker 1: reputation for being the smartest guy in the empire. He's
Speaker 1: the best educated, he's the wisest man in the empire.
Speaker 1: And he Daniel is the go to guy when you
Speaker 1: don't know what to do, when you don't understand it,
Speaker 1: when there's a mystery that needs to be unraveled, you
Speaker 1: couldn't explain something, you call on Daniel. So they call
Speaker 1: on Daniel and he comes to the banquet hall, and
Speaker 1: Daniel reads the message and he translates it and he
Speaker 1: interprets it. Now here's what the message was, Daniel five
Speaker 1: twenty five. Now this is the message of the handwriting
Speaker 1: on the wall, men named Minnate Tekel Parson. Well, nobody
Speaker 1: understood that because that happens to be ara Make. It's
Speaker 1: the only ara make phrase in the entire Hebrew Scriptures,
Speaker 1: the Old Testament. Everything else is written in Hebrew. This
Speaker 1: is the only phrase in the entire Bible, in the
Speaker 1: Old Testament written in Aramic, which by the way, was
Speaker 1: the language that Jesus spoke. Now he not only reads it,
Speaker 1: he translates it, and then he Daniel interprets it and
Speaker 1: he says, okay, King, He said, man eight means numbered,
Speaker 1: and it means your days are numbered. God has numbered
Speaker 1: the days of your reign, and they're going to end.
Speaker 1: Your time's up. Your number has been pulled. He said,
Speaker 1: Tikel means weighed, wade, weighed in the balance like an
Speaker 1: a scale. He says, you've been weighed on the scales
Speaker 1: of God and you have not measured up. And then
Speaker 1: he says, parson means divided, and he says, your kingdom
Speaker 1: is going to be divided tonight between the kings and
Speaker 1: the Persians, and you're going to die. And the word
Speaker 1: parson to a Hebrew mind or Chaldean mind, it's a
Speaker 1: play on words. It's parson and Persian sound real similar.
Speaker 1: Now this is not exactly good news in your kingdom,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna die tonight. But Daniel, because he always
Speaker 1: does the right thing, he gets promoted again. Look at
Speaker 1: this next verse. On the screen. It says, then the
Speaker 1: king commanded. King Belshazzar commanded that a royal road be
Speaker 1: put on Daniel and a gold chain was put around
Speaker 1: his neck because he had interpreted this, and the king
Speaker 1: named Daniel to be the third highest ruler in the kingdom.
Speaker 1: It's another promotion. Those of you been studying this with us
Speaker 1: for seven weeks. Now, okay, he's the third ash ruling kingdom.
Speaker 1: But that very night bel Shazar was slain and Darius
Speaker 1: the Mead took over his kingdom at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty two. Archaeology now tells us how they actually invaded.
Speaker 1: They didn't try to tear the walls down. What they
Speaker 1: did is the Euphrates river ran through the city under
Speaker 1: the walls. They actually diverted the river and the water
Speaker 1: went down low enough that they could crawl under the
Speaker 1: wall and they came in. And this is a historical fact.
Speaker 1: That the Means and the Persians then took over from
Speaker 1: Belshazar that night. He only had a two year reign. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of lessons in this chapter we
Speaker 1: could look at. I debated which way to go, like
Speaker 1: how to not lose a kingdom. The principles are in here.
Speaker 1: But what I want to focus on is why they
Speaker 1: called Daniel for the crisis when they didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do, they didn't know where to turn. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of crisis in the world. We need Daniels today.
Speaker 1: We need women and men who can go This is
Speaker 1: what this means. This is what this means. We see
Speaker 1: this out here, this is what this means. And as
Speaker 1: I said, Daniel had developed this reputation as being the
Speaker 1: go to guy because he was the wisest man in
Speaker 1: the empire. In fact, let's go back and let me
Speaker 1: show you what the Queen and the King said about
Speaker 1: this guy here on the screen. The queen said this,
Speaker 1: this man Daniel has a sharp mind, and he's filled
Speaker 1: with knowledge and understanding, and he can interpret dreams. He
Speaker 1: can explain the meaning of mysteries being solved difficult problems.
Speaker 1: So call for Daniel and he'll tell you what it means.
Speaker 1: And so they put out the call, SOS, bring Daniel in,
Speaker 1: And when he gets into the banquet hall, this is
Speaker 1: what the king said the next verse. I have heard
Speaker 1: Daniel that the spirit of God is in you, that
Speaker 1: you possess brilliant knowledge and extraordinary wisdom, that incredible reputation.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about that. Note those three things. He says,
Speaker 1: You've got God's spirit in you. You are You're brilliant
Speaker 1: in your knowledge, and you're extraordinary in your wisdom. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: you like to have people say that about you? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if you would, you picked a good weekend to come
Speaker 1: to church, because that's what we're going to look at.
Speaker 1: How do you become wise? Like Daniel? God used this guy,
Speaker 1: Daniel because he was wise. But wisdom is a choice,
Speaker 1: and you can choose to become wise through learning and
Speaker 1: through study and dedication and prayer. And the Bible's got
Speaker 1: a lot to say about wisdom and learning. We could
Speaker 1: spend an entire six months on this one, but let
Speaker 1: me just show you one verse. Here's the verse up
Speaker 1: here on the screen. Proverbs chapter four, which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, the Book of Wisdom in the Bible, says
Speaker 1: this verse thirteen, Always remember what you have learned. Your
Speaker 1: education is your life, so guard it well. Your education
Speaker 1: is your life, so guard it well.
Speaker 2: If you want to live a life full of purpose
Speaker 2: and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.
Speaker 2: And to help you do this, mister Rick created a
Speaker 2: brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand
Speaker 2: selected verses from his series Rethinking Your Life. These verses
Speaker 2: will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose
Speaker 2: and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to
Speaker 2: overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word
Speaker 2: to transform your mind, you'll see your life through his eyes,
Speaker 2: apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose
Speaker 2: and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help
Speaker 2: you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when
Speaker 2: you need it the most. And today, when you give
Speaker 2: a gift to help daily hope, take the hope of
Speaker 2: Jesus to a world in need. Will send you the
Speaker 2: Rethinking your Life scripture card set to say thanks.
Speaker 1: Let's look at what God says with the five ways
Speaker 1: to become wise in life, everybody, there's benefits to love,
Speaker 1: there's benefits to wisdom, and when you do the things
Speaker 1: God says to do, you're going to just become a
Speaker 1: wiser person. All right, let's look at them. The first
Speaker 1: thing the Bible says is this, make a commitment to
Speaker 1: never stop learning. Make a commitment to never stop learning.
Speaker 1: Now it all starts with a choice, and nobody can
Speaker 1: decide for you. You've got to make this choice yourself.
Speaker 1: You have to realize how important learning is for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life. Proverbs twenty three, verse twelve, and
Speaker 1: the Bible says this, commit yourself. That's making a commitment.
Speaker 1: Commit yourself to instruction and tune in your ears to
Speaker 1: hear the words of knowledge. Now your education. You know
Speaker 1: this does not stop when you graduate. I've actually heard
Speaker 1: people say, well, I'm glad I finished my education, so
Speaker 1: now I can start my career. I want to go, buddy,
Speaker 1: You're never gonna finish your education. Tell that one to
Speaker 1: God and he'll laugh at you. The rest of your
Speaker 1: life you're gonna be in education mode. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of things God wants to teach you that you
Speaker 1: have not learned yet. Learning is not a stage of life.
Speaker 1: Learning is your life. Learning is your lifestyle. And God
Speaker 1: wants you to learn something every day, and so he says,
Speaker 1: commit yourself to instruction. Commit yourself, make a commitment you
Speaker 1: never stop learning. What new skill are you working on
Speaker 1: right now that you didn't have last year? What new
Speaker 1: skill next year you're gonna work on that you don't have? Today,
Speaker 1: are you going to be any different? You're gonna be better,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be any stronger, You're gonna know more, You're
Speaker 1: gonna be wiser. You make the commitment because you're never
Speaker 1: finished with your education and lifelong learning is actually the
Speaker 1: key to being a leader. All leaders are. The moment
Speaker 1: you stop learning, you stop leading. You can never take
Speaker 1: a person any farther than you are yourself. And so,
Speaker 1: for instance, a church, a growing church requires a growing pastor.
Speaker 1: In business, a growing business requires a growing businessman. In
Speaker 1: the classroom, it requires a growing teacher. In any area
Speaker 1: of life, all leaders are learners. If you're not learning,
Speaker 1: you're not a leader because you've got to keep moving
Speaker 1: further and further ahead. As I said, it's not a stage. Now,
Speaker 1: why should you never stop learning? Because it's in your
Speaker 1: best interest. I could give you forty fifty things that
Speaker 1: the Bible says learning does in your life. Let me
Speaker 1: just mention a couple. It brings success, and it brings profit.
Speaker 1: Success and profit. You want those in your life, then
Speaker 1: you need to be a continuous learning person. The more
Speaker 1: you learn, the more you earn, the more you grow,
Speaker 1: the more you become effective in life. Let me show
Speaker 1: you a couple verses. One of them is he's asked,
Speaker 1: he's nineteen ten ten. This is one of my life versus.
Speaker 1: I memorized it early in life, and it says this,
Speaker 1: If an axe is dull and its edges unsharpened, more
Speaker 1: strength is needed. But skill will bring success. Now it says,
Speaker 1: if you've got to axe and you're chopping wood, if
Speaker 1: the if the blade is dull, obviously it takes a
Speaker 1: lot more energy to chop the wood. If it's if
Speaker 1: your axe is sharp, which represents skill, then then it
Speaker 1: doesn't take as much effort. He's simply saying, here, work smarter,
Speaker 1: not harder. Work smarter, not harder. You're never wasting your time.
Speaker 1: When you're sharpening your axe. Right now, when you come
Speaker 1: to church, you're sharpening your axs. You're spiritually sharpening your
Speaker 1: axe to be more effective in the world. When you
Speaker 1: take a seminar, when you read a book, you're sharpening
Speaker 1: your axe. And the Bible says that skill will bring success.
Speaker 1: Notice it didn't say desire, it didn't say it didn't
Speaker 1: say okay. It says skill will bring success. And you
Speaker 1: can pray all you want, and you can have all
Speaker 1: the desire all you want, and you can write down
Speaker 1: all your dreams all you want, but if you don't
Speaker 1: have the skill, you're not going to be as successful
Speaker 1: as you could be. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: have who desire to be a success. They desire to grow,
Speaker 1: they desire to be effective, they desire, but they're not
Speaker 1: willing to learn the skills. Go back to school and
Speaker 1: get a new skill or whatever skill the Bible says
Speaker 1: will bring success. And not only that, the Bible says
Speaker 1: it brings profit. Look at this verse on your screen.
Speaker 1: The Bible says in Proverbs nineteen, verse eight, do yourself
Speaker 1: a favor. Let me see it's self serving really to
Speaker 1: grow in wisdom. Do yourself a favor and learn all
Speaker 1: you can. Then remember what you learn, and you will
Speaker 1: what prosper. Okay, you'll have a better life if you
Speaker 1: the more you learn, you'll just have a better life.
Speaker 1: Now here's what I've done discovered. I've talked to tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people in one hundred and sixty four countries,
Speaker 1: and what I've learned is this, you can learn from
Speaker 1: anybody if you know the right question. I could if
Speaker 1: you give me five minutes with you, I can get
Speaker 1: you to teach me something because you know things I
Speaker 1: don't know. I know some things you don't know, and
Speaker 1: the person sitting next to you knows some things that
Speaker 1: neither you nor I know. That's why we need each other.
Speaker 1: That's why it takes humility to be wise. Humility asks questions.
Speaker 1: Pride says, oh, I don't want ask question because it
Speaker 1: look like I'm dumb. There are no dumb questions in life.
Speaker 1: The dumb thing is not to ask a question. And
Speaker 1: so in humility, you'll actually learn more because you ask questions.
Speaker 1: His verse in the Bible, it says, counsel in the
Speaker 1: heart of man is like a deep well, but a
Speaker 1: man of understanding will draw it out. Daniel was a
Speaker 1: man of understanding. How do you draw it out of
Speaker 1: people by asking questions? You might want to sit down
Speaker 1: and make a little list and keep it in your
Speaker 1: way your purse. Every time you sit around with somebody
Speaker 1: who you think maybe they could teach me something, take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. Whenever I meet a stranger and I've
Speaker 1: got a period of time I'm sitting on a plane
Speaker 1: with them or whatever happen to be waiting, and we
Speaker 1: start talking, I have two questions on back of my mind.
Speaker 1: One of the first is how can I help them?
Speaker 1: How can I serve them? Is there anything I could do?
Speaker 1: Maybe they need an encouragement. Is there anything I could
Speaker 1: assist them in? Because we're here to serve. And then
Speaker 1: the second question is what do they know that I
Speaker 1: don't know? And I'll start asking a few questions, probe, probing,
Speaker 1: and I go, well, I don't know anything about that,
Speaker 1: and I'll ask about it. And that way anybody can
Speaker 1: teach you something. But the secret is you have to
Speaker 1: pay attention. Look at this verse on the screen, Proverbs
Speaker 1: twenty three to twelve. Pay attention to your teacher and learn.
Speaker 1: All you can point is pay attention. And if the
Speaker 1: more you pay attention, that's part of the commitment to
Speaker 1: never stop learning. All right, here's the second key that
Speaker 1: the Bible tells us to be wise. Learn the lessons
Speaker 1: of the prior generation. Learn the lessons of the prior generation.
Speaker 1: And the whole reason I wanted to talk about this
Speaker 1: is because this was the mistake that this king Belshazer made.
Speaker 1: He could have learned the lessons that would have prevented
Speaker 1: his kingdom from being overthrown because his grandfather had made
Speaker 1: all these mistakes, but he didn't listen, he didn't learn,
Speaker 1: and as a result, he lost it all. You learned
Speaker 1: the lessons of the prior generation. Actually, this concept is
Speaker 1: something that God commands us to do. Let me give
Speaker 1: you an example of it in the Bible, in the
Speaker 1: Book of Job, chapter eight, verse eight, verse nine, it
Speaker 1: says this, ask the former generations and find out what
Speaker 1: their fathers learned. For we were born only yesterday and
Speaker 1: we know so little. He says, I want you to
Speaker 1: go out and ask the former generations. You need to
Speaker 1: learn the lessons of people who came before you, he said.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you're being prideful. If you're humble, you
Speaker 1: will learn. Now what does that mean in your life?
Speaker 1: If you're going to be wise, you're going to need
Speaker 1: four kinds of people. I want you to write these down.
Speaker 1: There are four relationships you need to become wise. You
Speaker 1: need mentors, models, partners, and friends. This is not on
Speaker 1: your outline. Just write it down in the corner. Mentors, models, partners,
Speaker 1: and friends. If you're going to be all that God
Speaker 1: wants you to be in life, if you're going to
Speaker 1: succeed the way God intends for you to succeed, you're
Speaker 1: going to need mentors, models, partners, and friends, and these
Speaker 1: will help you from lessons from the past. First you
Speaker 1: need mentors. Now. Mentors are your coaches. They're the people
Speaker 1: who help you along in life. In my life, I've
Speaker 1: had nine different mentors. Why because nobody can teach you everything,
Speaker 1: So you don't need one mentor for your life. You
Speaker 1: need somebody who teaches you this. You need somebody else
Speaker 1: over here who teaches you this, and somebody else who
Speaker 1: teach over this and this. Nine mentors in my life.
Speaker 1: Only one of them still living. His name's Billy Graham.
Speaker 1: Then he's ninety six. Some of my mentors were famous,
Speaker 1: but some of them were just normal. You would never
Speaker 1: even know who they were. Probably the most famous mentor
Speaker 1: I had was Peter Drucker. Peter Druckcker was the father
Speaker 1: of modern management, pretty much invented the modern corporation, and
Speaker 1: for the last twenty years of his life, I would
Speaker 1: go to his home and he mentored me from age
Speaker 1: seventy five to ninety five and died at ninety six,
Speaker 1: and taught me stuff that I didn't know about. How
Speaker 1: do you organize a very large you know, complex system.
Speaker 1: So you need mentors in your life. Second thing you
Speaker 1: need is you need models. Now models are they're already
Speaker 1: doing what you want to do with your life. We
Speaker 1: learn fastest by model everything. You learned, all these skills
Speaker 1: in your life by other people modeling it for you,
Speaker 1: like how to talk. So you need models in your life.
Speaker 1: I want to recommend, if you're going to have a
Speaker 1: model for your life, that they be dead, and say why,
Speaker 1: because the jury is still out on people who are alive.
Speaker 1: The jury's still out on me, on you and everybody else.
Speaker 1: And some people start off well, but they don't end well.
Speaker 1: And so you might want to choose a model from
Speaker 1: history because then you can see their life from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. You can see the arcs in the ups
Speaker 1: and the downs, highs and those the problems and the pitfalls.
Speaker 1: But you don't want to choose as a model somebody
Speaker 1: who you think, Wow, that's my model, and a few
Speaker 1: years from now they really crack up and burn out.
Speaker 1: And you've bring climbing this ladder of success and you
Speaker 1: get to the top and you realize it's leaning against
Speaker 1: the wrong wall. So you need mentors, you need models.
Speaker 1: I would have live mentors dead models. Then you need partners.
Speaker 1: Partners are the people in your life who row the
Speaker 1: boat with you. They're your coworkers in your profession. And
Speaker 1: partners can help you and challenge you, can support you.
Speaker 1: Everybody needs partners. And then of course you need friends.
Speaker 1: Now friends aren't helping you with your goal. They're just friends.
Speaker 1: And friends love you no matter what you do. You
Speaker 1: can really mess up, and they love you. They say, hey,
Speaker 1: you're a good egg, even if you are a little cracked.
Speaker 1: And friends, what is a friend? A friend walks into
Speaker 1: your life when everybody else walks out, Then you know
Speaker 1: who your friends are. You know they're there when you
Speaker 1: need them the most, when you don't deserve a friend.
Speaker 1: But you need to have in your life always somebody
Speaker 1: you're building into and somebody who's building into you. You
Speaker 1: need a mentor. You need a pall, and you need
Speaker 1: a mentee, you need a timothy everybody. You need to
Speaker 1: have somebody who's pouring into your life, and you need
Speaker 1: somebody you're pouring into their life. And usually they are
Speaker 1: older and younger. But you need to learn the lessons
Speaker 1: of the prior generation. Now, it says, ask the former generation,
Speaker 1: how do you ask them if they're dead. Well, biographies
Speaker 1: read biographies. I tell my staff here at Saddlebachschurtch, I
Speaker 1: have five hundred and thirteen staff, paid staff, and I'm
Speaker 1: telling them all the time. I'm telling them all the time.
Speaker 1: All the lessons are in the past and all of
Speaker 1: the opportunities are in the future.
Speaker 2: If you want to live a life full of purpose
Speaker 2: and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.
Speaker 2: And to help you do this, Pastor Rick created a
Speaker 2: brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand
Speaker 2: selected verses from his series Rethinking your Life. These verses
Speaker 2: will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose
Speaker 2: and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to
Speaker 2: overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word
Speaker 2: to transform your mind, You'll see your life through his eyes,
Speaker 2: apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose
Speaker 2: and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help
Speaker 2: you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when
Speaker 2: you need it the most. And today, when you give
Speaker 2: a gift to help daily hope, take the hope of
Speaker 2: Jesus to a world in need, will send you the
Speaker 2: rethinking your life. Scripture card set to say thanks,