His Promised Life

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, good morning. Oh, it's good to see you. Yeah. Give the Lord a hand. Come on. This is a good day. Wonderful. It's not so hot yet here in Texas. Bill had my son in to speak to you about three weeks ago, and he came back and he said, dad, he said, my goodness, it's everything you said it would be. He said, that is a great church. He said, those are wonderful, sweet, kind, fun people to talk to. And you guys are that way, too. You're a lot of fun. You. You enjoy church. You got great sense of humor. And my son was just saying, man, what a great. He said y' all made him, as a guest, feel like. Feel like family. And that meant a lot. So thank you for that. Thank you for just being who you are. This is my favorite place to go and speak. Other than up in Colorado, where it's 60 degrees. This is a great place to come and to speak. And quick shout out to Pastor Bill. Hey, we're going to be having lunch here with him in a little bit. He's doing good. Yeah, no, he's doing good. Listen, your pastor is one of the strongest men I've ever known. He is strong spiritually. He is strong physically. He is strong mentally, and God knows he is strong emotionally. He takes it to another level in that area. And thank you all for loving him. Thank you for praying for him, praying for his family. Let me tell you. I can tell you from experience, a pastor and his family are under a different level of spiritual attack than most people. And so the extra prayers are so important, so needed. And, you know, and not only is he a strong man, he'll be back here hopefully in a couple of weeks. He's not 30 years old anymore. Like, he thinks he is in his head, so it's taking him a little longer. But he's also kind and nice to everybody. Everybody who does that all the time in this day and age, if you're kind and nice to everybody all the time in this culture, that's annoying. I'm coming into the Met Church this morning. I pull into a McDonald's restaurant. I want a cup of coffee. I pull up to the speaker. The person in the speaker says, will you be using your mobile app today? I don't know what that is, I said. She said, that's all right. Can I help you? I said, well, I want a large coffee, black. And she said, will there be anything else? I said, yeah, let me get a. Let me get a breakfast burrito. I have a breakfast burrito. And she said, will there be anything else? And then I thought about Yalls praise band. I thought, how early they get here on Sunday morning. And I thought, well, I could bring them all back a breakfast burrito. They'd probably appreciate that. And so I'm trying to count up in my head how many were up here on the platform. And as I was doing that, the car behind me honked their horn. I look in the rearview mirror, and it is a college age girl driving, being all animated and stuff. Apparently she thought I was slowing down the line. Well, three things came to my mind. Number one, the first thing, I'm going to have to park here now till Jesus comes back. Number two, I thought, you know what? She could be driving into the met this morning. That'd be really awkward. So then number three, I thought, well, what would Bill do? What would Bill do? So I just eased on up to that first window. I pulled out some money, and I said, I paid for my order. I said, I'd like to pay for the food for the car behind me, too. And so. All right, good. Okay. And so anyways, I'm pulling up just a little bit now between the windows. The girl behind me, she pulled up to the first window, and I saw her talking. Then she looked up at me and started waving, you know, thank you. And evidently she felt a little embarrassed that she would be so rude and it would be responded with rewarded by an act of kindness. So she thought. So then I pull up to the next window, and as I'm pulling up to the next window, I show the person there both receipts. And then I took her food, too. As I was driving off, I saw her sitting at the second window having a conversation. And I thought to myself, who's slowing the line down now? Okay, I really didn't do that. I read that somewhere, thought it was hilarious. And I just wanted to hear y' all laugh. You know, when you love people, you care about them, you like to see them smile, you like to hear them laugh, you like to know them, to know that their life's going good. So let me ask you that, that question. If you don't Mind how. How is your life going? Is it going good? Do you still laugh a lot? You still have fun? When things are difficult, do you still kind of make the best out of them? Do you realize that God can always change something in a minute? So therefore you go for it? You remember the old song, girls just want to have fun? Is that still true? Because I'm telling you, after you women get into your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, I don't see that reflecting on your face a lot anymore. Why not? Well, because you ran into reality, didn't you? You realize that, you know, life isn't as easy as what it was maybe when you were a young girl. Now, same thing's true with us guys. I mean, we want to have a good time, we want to provide for our family, we want to take on the challenges, we want to be successful, all those kind of things. We want to love a woman. But sometimes life can be really tough. So I asked the question, how's your life going? And we'll roll back to it. So let's let this rope represent a timeline this morning. Life. Life. This is today. Today. May. What is it? 18th. May 18, 2025. Everything to your left represents the past on the timeline already came and gone. So right back in here be the early 1900s and the 1800s, important dates like 1776, 1492. Yeah, too slow. Then you go all the way back several hundred years more than that, and you get to. You get to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest event ever to take place in human history was Jesus Christ taking power over death, hell and the grave and walking out of it now. Why is it? Because it answers some questions for us. It answers this question. If I die, will I go on living? If I die, will I recognize my loved ones that have died before me? Will they recognize me? Will I be touchable? Will I be huggable? Will I be able to travel at the speed of thought? Will all those things happen? It answers those questions with a yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. The most important event to ever take place in human history is that of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's go 33 and a half years before that, down the timeline, we get to the birth of Christ. Then we've got to go into the B.C. b.C. We get back down a little bit further and we hit. We hit which one for David and Goliath. And then after David and Goliath, we hit Moses and the party of the Red Sea. The children of Israel going On into the promised land. And getting kicked out and going back, and getting kicked out and going back. Then you go further on down the line, you get to Noah and the Ark. Further down the line, you get to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. And then past that, you go on into eternity. Past goes forever and ever. Because God never had a beginning. Let's come back up through the B.C. now we enter into the ad all the way back up to today. By the way, a little lesson for you. You guys remember what. It's been a while. Maybe, but it's simple. The first one anyway, what BC and AD stand for? Remember that? BC stands for what? It's an easy answer. Before Christ. Before Christ. Now, AD gets a little bit more complicated. I think I got it on the board behind me. Do I? It's coming up somewhere. AD is a little more complicated. You know what AD stands for? You would think it's after death, wouldn't you? You would think that. But if it was after death, that means there's 33 and a half years that are not on the timeline at all. AD actually is a Latin derivative that means Anno Dominique. Anno Domini means in the year of our Lord. So AD kicks in actually on the birthday of Jesus Christ, the very first day, covering all of his life, all the way up to the day. And today is May 18, 2025, in the year of our Lord. Now, if you work with the public school system, you know that they're trying to change the BC and AD to something different. Don't do it. It's stupid. Just stay with it. Because that's the Christian derivative of our calendar, our Gregorian calendar. So today, here we are sitting in the Met Church. Oh, by the way, this is not just today. This is also you. This mark represents you. It represents me, it represents us. And right here is your birth date. This is when you were born, and you were born as a result of a purpose. Right here is when you're going to be leaving here and you're going to die as a result of a. Of an assignment of time that God said you would no longer be here. So here you are in Met Church. This is you. And you're whatever age you are now. So right here would be, say, your 20s and your 30s, then your 40s and 50s and your 60s, your 70s, your 80s. Now if you're in your 80s, you're kind of getting ready to wrap things up down here, and you say, well, wait a minute. Is that a very nice thing to say? I didn't Say it. God said it. See, many years ago, God let people live on this earth for hundreds of years. And then in the Psalms, the Bible says that God changed it. And he said the number of days that man now will have on this Earth will be 70. Now he's talking about time, it's talking about all the population that would average 70. And then he added to it. He said, but if you're strong enough, if you're tough, you can live to 80. Well, now, how many of us have family members that are over 80? Come on, come on. How many of you, though, have had family members or friends that died and never made it to 70? Would you raise? Okay, so therefore what God is saying is not that each and every individual here would have 70 years or up to 80 if you're tough. What he's saying is that the lifespan of mankind would now be 70 to 80 years. Well, let's take a look at what some of the couple of the secular organizations say about that time frame. Well, you take, you notice the WHO, World Health Organization, out of 193ish countries in the world, with some doing a little better than others, United States doing a little better than some of these third world countries. But the average lifespan on the planet according to who is 73 years. Now, if you take a look at what the CDC says, and we all know we can trust what they say, the CDC says 70 years and two. Two months. 70 years and two months. So God tells us that there is going to be a time when you are born, a time when you die. So you're born as a result of a purpose. You die as a result of an appointment that you will keep. And God knew where on this timeline you would come. You're not back here in the 1800s, 1900s, and he did not choose for you to be out here. But everybody needs to know that this timeline, it keeps moving. And everyone that you and I know will one day no longer be here. Throw in the Rapture factor that Jesus Christ, the next event on God's prophetic calendar is the rapture of his people. All the Christians are going to be taken off the planet in an instant. And then every child will be gone. Every person who has a mental capacity is unable to understand the plan of salvation will be gone. Although that could happen before you get to your car in the parking lot. So we now know that here we are in this time frame. We could leave here based on an appointment, or we could leave here based on the Rapture, and it could take place at Any time. That's why understanding God's promise lives two of them is so very, very important. Now, God also said that when he created you, he formed you in your mother's womb. Your mom and dad may have conceived you, but he formed you. He made you. It was God who decided when you'd be born and exactly what you would look like. Notice with me if you would, in Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born. I set you apart. There's that whole purpose thing. So God. God knew you because he formed you. You're not a cosmic coincidence. You're not some kind of relational accident. You are here right now because God designed you to be here. He knew you. He knew you'd be cranky before coffee. He knew you'd rather watch a sunset than a sunrise. He knew what your eyes would look like. He knew what your personality and temperament would be. He knew what would make you angry or what would make you smile. He knew what your hair color would be, your original hair color, not the one now. He knew it. And he knew you'd be in this room right now. And he knew there'd be some older bald headed guy sitting up here with an assignment concerning you. And the assignment would be that you don't miss this one promised life called eternity. But you'd have it with him. You, your kids, circle of your family would go unbroken because every one of you would be saved. And he knew if you weren't saved and you were questioning it, that you'd have the opportunity to do right now. And I'm asking a favor. Nobody leave here lost today. Nobody leave here lost. I'm gonna ask everyone in the room if you would, because this is one of my assignments God gave me to bow your head with me for a minute. And I'm going to not have you pray a prayer of repetition after me. You guys are smarter than that. And you know the Lord, you know the Bible, you know what God says about how to be saved. But I want to just coach you through it. And listen if you are not sure, because this date's coming, this meeting is coming where you're going to leave this earth. All of us are. So make sure that when you do, you have that promised life of eternity ahead of you. Makes life so much better living. So let me coach you. And you might just say something like I'm saying to your heavenly Father. Forget anybody else who's in the room, but here we go, Our Father and God. I want to be saved. I Believe that Jesus is the only way that I can get to heaven. And I want to know you through him. I trust you Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And I'm sorry for waiting so long. Forgive me where I failed you. And I pray Father, that I would have a home forever in heaven because of your son Jesus. I would have a relationship with you on this earth where I could talk to you about anything and everything. And I'm asking this in the name of Jesus, that today would be my salvation day. In Jesus name, Amen. Well, if you just prayed that prayer, the Bible says whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. There's salvation and no one else other than the name of Jesus. And if you didn't get saved, nobody else got saved because that's the only way you can have a home forever in heaven. Mark it down that this is the day in the year of the Lord that you accepted Christ as your Lord and as your Savior. Now that's his first promised life, eternal life in heaven with Him. Second promised life goes like this. In John 10:10, Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and that you might live it to the full. Now back to how's your life going? You feel like your life is full of joy? Cause he said joy unspeakable and full of glory. How about God's peace in your life in all circumstances? Cause he said he would give you peace at that. Passeth all understanding doesn't even make sense with what you're going through. So back to how your life going, Jesus, I've come that you might have, according to nlt, a rich and satisfying life. Is that how you as a born again child of God would call it? Well, maybe some days. I mean the truth of the matter is we go through times where things are really good and then we kind of think in our mind, I'm not sure they're going to stay this way. And then we go through a little bit of up and down roller coaster stuff. Things are good, then they're not good good in a relationship. And then, you know, then he's a jerk or she's not talking to him, whatever. All those kind of things happen. And then Jesus said, in this life you will have what? Trouble? But then he said, be happy anyway. Good cheer, happiness, you can still be happy in this life, you will have trouble. Sure we will. We're gonna bury loved ones, we're gonna get looked over for a job situation. Think things aren't always going to go the way we want them to go. Somebody's going to act stupid or say something dumb, whatever those things are going, people are still going to be peopling and life's still going to be lifeing. But Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and you might, it might be full and satisfying. Well, in the Old Testament, the children of God were on a quest. They were on a quest to the promised land. And if you remember, when they got to the promised land, they had to drive out inhabitants, they got pushed back, they had a fight, there was war going on, people's lost lives. But God said, go into it, it's yours. They went into it, they fought to get in, they had a fight to stay in. And when they got kicked out, they had a fight to get back there. And the promised land in the Old Testament is a metaphor for the promised life in the New Testament. You and I aren't trying to pile into Israel, we're not trying to fill up Jerusalem. You and I are going for a quest today called his Promised Life. The reason why he came and he was talking to Christians in John chapter 10, verse 10. But if we're going to have the promised life, then we are going to have to do similar to what the children of God did to be able to take on and stay in the promised land. And the first thing, let me just put it this way. I see people all the time who are living this incredible blessed life and they're a born again child of God and they got all kind of blessings. And the Bible says whatever your hands touch will prosper. The Bible says we're more than a conqueror. So I see him with this attitude and I see him with this demeanor, and I see him with, with just this whole mindset of I'm going to have it no matter what. Now Moses had the mindset, if I don't want to go into the promised land, God, if all these people can't go with me. Joshua had a different temperament. His was, I hope all of y' all go with me. But I'm going whether you go or not. Moses and that whole generation missed out on it. Joshua went in. Why? Because he had a different mindset. I'm going no matter what. And today, if you are a born again child of God and you're going to live the kind of life where the ups and downs kind of smooth out a little bit, and you see God's hands of blessings on you and whatever you're doing is prospering, the relationship's good, it's Going to always get messed up because our minds aren't saved, our emotions aren't saved, our bodies aren't saved. We're going to screw it up on our own. But at the same time, it can be a little more consistent if we just line our life up the way God wants us to. Now get this. One life, eternal life, comes from asking for it. The other life, a blessed life, are you ready? Comes from fighting for it. Now I lost half the room on that. Because some of you have temperaments and personalities where you're like, I don't want to start in any trouble. I just want everybody to get along. If God doesn't reach down and just give me a blessed life, then I guess I'm just not going to have one. And you won't. 48 years experience. If you don't fight for a blessed life, you are not going to live a blessed life. Well, Pastor Hoover, I'm not a fighter, you know, I'm just kind of more laid back than that. Want to bet? Want to bet? Well, you don't know me. Don't need to. Let me just raise the stakes for you a little bit and see if you got any fight in you. So say you're a mama. You come to the Met church. You're sweet, you're petite, you sing worship songs, you teach back in the classrooms. You go to a ladies Bible study, you love Jesus. You are a Jesus lover. Met goer. There you are. But you go into Target one day and you're standing back in the back of the store with your 8 year old daughter and you notice a kind of a creeper dude hanging out back there and you got your head on a swivel, you're watching your six, you're feeling pretty good about it. Now let me ramp it up a bit. Somebody comes over the loudspeaker and says, there is a predator in the store at this moment. That predator has a long successful history of kidnapping, of destroying the person's life whom they kidnapped and then killing that individual. So be aware now, we've ramped it up. Sweet little petite Christian, loving Jesus loving mama. Now turns around and sees that very man staring her in the face, grabbing hold of her 8 year old daughter's arm. You got any fight in you? No. I bet you do. I bet you look at them and say something like. Say something like this. If you don't let go of my daughter and back away from us right now, I'm gonna grab everything I can find in the store and start hitting you about the Head with it until you're not breathing anymore. Say I won't. Say it one time. Go ahead, say I won't. See what happens. Say I won't. I mean, you turn into a whole nother level of crazy if that man started heading toward the front door, the exit door, without your child in his arm. Your daughter's looking at you with terrified look on her face. You start screaming at the top of your lungs, you'd holler out, kidnapping. Somebody come help. Mamas from all over Target would come running to your aid. They'd pick up anything. Several grandmas would start pulling out that concealed weapon that they've had in that purse, that big old giant purse. Start pulling that concealed weapon out and bringing it your way. Every man in the story, if there is a man in target, will be running toward the exits to block all the exits with shopping carts and everything they can do so that man doesn't escape. And listen, you scratch an eyeball, you'd bite a finger completely off a man's hand if you had to. You don't even know that kind of crazy's in you. And why? Because that child, that's your child. That's not the school system's child, that's not the state's child, that's not the government's child. That's your child. God gave you that child. And you will do anything and everything. And if you had to borrow an old grandma's gun and lay him out, you'd do it. You stand before a jury of your peers. And when you did so, every one of those mamas would be in there going, good job, good job, mom. Because that's. That's your child. So the fight in you. Jesus said, ah, hey, I come that you might have life, rich, full satisfying. I'm not going to give it to you. You're going to have to come with me and get it. And you're going to have to fight for it. And it's not going to be easy. And when you get it, you're going to have to fight to keep it. Because the enemy is there to steal, kill and destroy your life, the good life. And when you lose it because of something somebody did or said or just life be lifen, you're going to have to fight to get it back again and again and again. Now that's where you've got to realize that whatever you've done to this point, you can still have that life. And the enemy will get in your head and go, yeah, you've messed up enough. You probably don't even deserve it anymore. At one time, you probably did. But you know what you did? You know what you said? God's not going to forgive you for that. You had it, you lost it. You can't get it back. You blew it. And then God reminds us of this. Anybody under 40 know what this is? This was like our first iPad. Incredibly hard to work. Buddy the Elf, I think, is the only one that can work one of these things, but it just makes little lines. And you guys know what it is. And you can make a crooked set of stairs. You can make a really ugly looking house. You can do that. And you could make it all messy. You go, I tried. I tried my very best, but that is awful. The coolest thing about one of these things is this. You just blank again. So what God said is this. When you mess up as my child, just bring it to me. I'll forgive it just like that. I was driving in Fort Worth traffic yesterday. I had to hand this to God twice. God, you see, when I called that guy, I called that guy that. That guy over there that wanted to pass me at 90 miles an hour on my right side. Almost clipped the rear end of my car. I called him that twice. I tried to mark it out, but I. And God says, hand it to me, okay? He goes, okay, try to make it to the airport tomorrow without doing that. Father, I messed up. I'm sorry. Really screwed up a relationship with a really good person. I damaged him, and I wish I hadn't have done that. I've held a grudge now for something somebody said to me a long, long time ago. And I'm so sorry that I did that. God goes, let's go again. So, Father, I really want a good life, and I want it blessed. I want to live the way you want me to live, but I'm not sure I deserve it anymore. God says, how about a fresh start today right here at Met Church in the year of our Lord. Come on, take it and go again. I could probably come up with, because I'm a pastor. 5 anchors for your soul to have a peaceful life. 10 points to a happy relationship. 7 keys to being able to have joy and happiness and a good job. And then, yeah, I could come up with all the points in the world. And we all do. Pastors do that. It's what we do. We'll keep. We'll still do it. We'll do it. Oh, by the way, some of you out there looking at me going, you. You got a. Like a scripture verse for this. Well, I got Bible. I got Bible. Don't think I don't got Bible. Take a look at Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 17. I will forever wipe the slate clean of your sins. That's an applause line, everybody. I was. Yeah, I could give you all kind of points, fill up a screensaver. Truth is, I leave here and I don't remember any points. I remember it. Or I can tell you just one little. One little paragraph in the back. Change your life, reset your mindset. Turn you into a fighter for the kind of life God wants you to give. And you won't have it without it. And turn you into a great apologizer because your mind's not saved, your body's not saved, your emotions aren't saved. And you're going to need to do this over and over again. And it goes like this. Let time alone with God be the highlight of your day. And let everything else flow out of you spending time alone with him. You see, when it comes to starting over, I like this quote. My past helps explain me that my past will not define me. Time alone with God. One psalm every morning. One psalm. Just one psalm every morning. Billy Graham did this his whole life. One psalm every morning. And then talk to him. Bring your request to him in the morning, the Bible says, and then wait expectantly for him to answer. Well, that's a big paragraph, but I wish I had just three little words that maybe could explain it even better. You see, God's not on your payroll. We're on his. Time alone with him every day be the highlight of your day. Reset your mindset, get the fight back in you and realize you hadn't done anything wrong he won't forgive you for. Would you stand with me? Are you all authentic people? You keep it real. I feel that. Could you stand for your life to be a little better, be going a little better living out the kind of life God wants you to live? You put your hands on, it's going to prosper. You have a more than conquering attitude. Weapon formed against you is not going to make it. You fight a little bit harder for a relationship to work. You fight a little bit harder for that, that job to play out better. A little more income coming into your family. I'm tired. We're all tired. We're all tired. But the enemy's not going on a vacation concerning you. And today can be your starting over day, your mindset reset day. So with every head bowed and every eye closed for a second, if you would say, pastor, I want you to pray for me because I do want my life to be better than the way it's been going. I still believe my dreams can come true. I want to be a happier person. I want to be the person and live the kind of life God wants me to live and not believe the lie of the devil, that I don't have a chance for it anymore. Would you raise your hand please? Just high all over the house. Father, God is in the powerful name of Jesus that we just come to you this morning knowing that you can do all things, first of all, forgive us of our sins. We're so sorry when we mess up. We don't take it lightly that you forgive us so easily. You're just our Father and you want to forgive us. You love us and thank you for not being mad at us. And then Father, I do pray that you help us to line our life up with what you want for us. We spend a little time with you every morning, just talking to you, reading your word a little bit and then just talking to you about what's going on in our world. And Father, we live our life out the way you want us to. We love you with all of our heart. And Father, today I pray that it would be a brand new fresh beginning for everyone that is in this room who desires to have a life so much better than what it's been in the past. For every single adult in here, I pray you bless them. Make their dream come true. I know they say I don't like men anymore. Don't I hate men? No, no, no. They've just been hurt. I don't trust women. I'll tell you what, but the man has just been hurt. So I pray in Jesus name that you would bless, soften us, make us who you want us to be. Keep us walking close to you. Father, we love you. In Jesus name, amen. [00:32:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.