(Sermon Clip) Time is Short - Discipline Yourself

So now we go to these questions. There were a number of questions about which Santosh already answered on social media. But I want to say a few words about that before moving on, about Facebook. If you find my name on Facebook, that's not me. That somebody else put a call, they have a thing called a fan page, where you can put the name of somebody and call it a fan page. I don't even look at it. Somebody told me there was something like that, so I saw it once. But I think there's nothing evil written there. Somebody has put some of my messages and all that. But I do not correspond with people on Facebook. We have no time to waste for that. I'll tell you, even after 58 years, I know the Bible so little. I know the Bible so little, I don't have enough time for God's book. Where do I have time for Facebook? I want my life to count for eternity. Time is short. And I said that when I was 20 years old, and I say that now when I'm nearly 80 years old. Time is short. Attend on the Lord without distraction. It's a verse I wrote in the front of my Bible when I was 20 years old. It is from 1 Corinthians in chapter 7. Two words which I put together. 1 Corinthians 7 and verse 29. The time is short. And so at verse 35, give your undistracted devotion to the Lord. I put those two verses together in the front of my Bible and I wrote it. The time is short. Give your undistracted devotion to the Lord. I've tried, I can't say I've always been faithful. It's not that I don't read the newspapers. It's not that I don't see the news on the internet. But it's in its proper place. It's like a little pickle, not the main meal. If you make the pickle your main meal, you'll get sick. You can have a little bit of it, but keep it in its proper place. But don't read things which are going to fill your mind. The reason why many people have bad dreams is because they fill their mind with a lot of rubbish. And it's a good thing to read the word of God before you go to bed at night instead of seeing everything on Facebook before you go to bed. So, and the other thing is, you know, we can be friends with the wrong type of people. Do you know that there are thousands of divorces that have taken place because of Facebook? There are divorce lawyers in England who have said that many thousands of divorces have taken place because on Facebook, they link up with some old flame they had in school. I don't know whether you all know the meaning of flame. I don't mean a literal fire, but something that stirred their hearts, a young girl or something who is now a grown up married person. And then they link up and it destroys the marriage. It's happened again and again. You have to be very, very careful. There are people, you know, who chat with you and who pretend to be girls and they're not girls. And you're as a girl thinking you're talking to a girl and that's a man who's trying to get at you. This has happened many, many times, particularly in the West. So you have to be careful in Facebook and also be careful what you appreciate. You know, this, I don't know whether you know the meaning of thumbs up. I said, I want to be sure. So I looked up Google to the Collins Dictionary. What does thumbs up mean? Thumbs up means encourage it. I'm encouraging you. I approve of you. I accept you. Everything's all right. I encourage you in that way. I approve of you. I accept you. I indicate everything's all right. Collins Dictionary on Google. So when you are on Facebook with somebody who has rebelled against the church and left the church, or who's been disciplined by the church, and you look at some picture he has posted and you put thumbs up, you know what you're telling him? Even if the elders don't accept you, I accept you. Even if they don't approve you, I approve of you. Even if they don't say everything's all right, I say everything's all right. There are stupid, foolish, rebellious people sitting in CFC who are doing that. Okay? You don't have to answer to me. I'm not your judge, but I believe. One day when those people who've gone away and never come back to the Lord, you will be answerable to the Lord because you are not faithful in telling them the truth. You just encouraged them when they were going astray. You went to the pig farm and encouraged them instead of telling them to repent and come back to the Father's house. One example. The other thing I want to say is, in all these things, the important thing is discipline. I believe discipline is the one thing that Christians need the most but want the least. Let me read to you in 1 Corinthians, in chapter nine. The Apostle Paul, the great Apostle Paul who accomplished so much in his life, the reason he accomplished so much was not only because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, not only because he spent time in prayer and read the word of God, but also because he disciplined his body. Verse 27, 1 Corinthians 9, 27. I discipline my body, which means my eyes, my tongue especially, and I make it my slave. The living Bible says, I make my body, I don't allow my body to do what it wants to do, but I make my body do what it should do. You know the difference between what your body should do and what it wants to do, what your eyes want to see and what your eyes should see, what your tongue wants to say and what your tongue should be saying? I make my body do what it should do, not what it wants to do. That is discipline in very simple language. And if you don't have discipline, I don't care what experience you had about speaking in tongues or being filled with the Holy Spirit, I can tell you, you will not make it in the final day because Paul says, and he's, Paul was far better than all of us. He says, I, if I don't discipline my body, 1 Corinthians 9, 27, like this, if I don't make my body do what it should do, I will end up preaching to so many people and finally, when I reach the finishing line, I'll be disqualified. He's talking about a race in verse 24 onwards. Take time to read it. That there are people who violated the rules in an Olympic race and when they come to the finishing line, they think they are first and finally the judges say, no, they're along the way, you were disqualified. Sorry, everybody thought you were first, but disqualified. You don't, you're not even third or fourth or anything. You're not even last, you're out. And Paul says, that's gonna happen to me. I've read that and I'll tell you, that brings a healthy fear, not an unhealthy fear. I don't have any unhealthy fears in my life. I'm not afraid that God will punish me or hurt me, but I'm afraid that I may hurt myself. I'm afraid that I will ruin myself. Not that God will ruin me, but I will ruin myself. I'm afraid of that, I'll tell you that. That's why I discipline myself. So, it's important to understand these principles.