The urgency of living for God by highlighting the brevity of time, as stated in 1 Corinthians 7:29. It challenges listeners to move beyond passive reception of knowledge and to actively apply what they know, urging them to be "God-sent" individuals rather than merely man-sent or self-sent. The message uses the life of Moses as a primary example, illustrating that true service to God requires attending "God's school," which involves humility, sacrifice, and a willingness to be shaped by divine purpose, often through difficult circumstances, rather than relying on worldly education or personal ambition. The ultimate call is to be transformed into Christ's image and to actively serve, recognizing that God's work requires a mature, obedient response to His calling.
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I've got a little extra duty here to do, so I need you to be turning there, if you will, please. First Corinthians and chapter seven. Hey, that's a beautiful sound to hear the rustling of the leaves of your Bibles here this morning. Something else that kind of amazes me. You know, I came up to steps with like the fella in the scriptures whose knees were smiting once one against the other, you know, I felt like that my legs were made of rubber. And suddenly, when I turn around and I look at this beautiful audience, all fear is gone. Feel quiet at home. And that's another amazing thing about being in the family of God. Though some of you I've never seen before, may never see again.
And yet, after just a few moments in your company, you feel, hey, I'm at home. I'll take off my coat, sit down to the table, and we'll have a meal together. And I trust that during the conference, that's what it will be. It will be a meal from the Word of God that we share together. So you see, I have no fear. And I'm going to do something that I wouldn't ordinarily do this morning, though, because it's been many, many, many years since I was last here. Some of you are looking with a start and saying, well, we've never seen you here before. Milo has. And it's all his fault because many years ago, more than I like to say in the early sixties, I was riding with a very risque preacher. by the name of Tom McCullough and his sidekick.
Let's see. Milo, can there be a name like Van de Kroll? Anyway, I think there is. But we came up here, and I was a listener that day, and I really enjoyed it because some mighty men of God were here I feel like. Supposedly there had been invited two or three speakers, but wound up Tom McCullough got up here and he spoke to you, and then little Davy Lawrence got up here, and he spoke to you, or I should say to us. And I don't remember how many more. I lost count for old Leonard Linstead. He was standing over there against that wall in fear and trembling. Can you imagine Leonard Linstead in fear and trembling? I can't. But he was here that day and it was a good time. And that's what I remember about the so-called Lyman Conference that's held in Atlantic Iowa.
That's what I remember about it. And I remember the rich spiritual food. And I pray, God, that today, as each one of us stands to minister His Word to you, that your hearts will be enriched but let me tell you something let me preface again what i am just going to say after this with fear and trembling there are no people like god's people and i'm going to put that to the test today and tomorrow you'll see what i mean a little bit later but i want to make that statement because when you stone me i want you to realize i love you and i want you to realize i said there's no people like god's people and that's why sometimes we take liberties that we might not otherwise take.
And so, hey, I want to tell you something. And again, I'm taking a little extra time, but I won't go over time. I want to tell you something today. I'm tired of preaching sermons. As a very young man, I'm really very old. Methuselah is my name. But I remember that when I first began to preach, it was all I could do to get a sermon. I would work for weeks and days to get a sermon and agonize over it. And you say, well, that's what you should be doing today. I still do, but in a different manner. I don't worry about what you think now. I worry about what God thinks. I don't want any more sermons. I'm tired of sermonizing. I want my ministry to be very practical. In fact, if you notice you're sitting in metal chairs, see the wires running out here, you think Harold and Bill are recording.
Those are attached to your chairs. I'm going to give some of you a hundred and ten. You younger people only need a hundred and ten. Some of us older ones are going to push that two-twenty switch. I'm going to give you two-twenty because you see, as I speak today, and forgive me if I go fast, but as I speak today, I do not any longer want my audience to be comfortable. Isn't that terrible? I want you to be most uncomfortable. I would to God that this morning the chairs would seem to become on fire and you'd have to rise up and listen to what God would be saying to us from His Word. Because now turn your eyes to First Corinthians chapter seven and verse twenty-nine.
We'll look at just a portion. Again, this is all preface to what I really want to be sharing with you during these times that I will open the Word of God with you. But First Corinthians chapter seven and verse twenty-nine. But this I say, brethren, the time... is short. My God, my God, if the Apostle Paul, in his day, under inspiration of God, the Holy Spirit could say, the time is short, how short is short today? How near is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into the air today? If it was short then, how short is it today? The chairs should be most uncomfortable as we think about that.
We become a nation and above all a group of Christians that are at ease. In the service when they said at ease, I enjoyed that. But Christian, you never march when you're at ease. And God wants marching Christians. He wants Christians who are vertical, not horizontal. And today I think we're a nation of people and above all, even as Christians that were horizontal. Didn't I tell you it's going to make you mad? Didn't I tell you I wasn't a nice guy. I didn't come here to be nice. I came here to stir you, to make my ministry very practical so that when you go away, you might say, I don't like what he said, but I believe what he said, and it stirred me, and God has changed my life because if I'm just going to preach a sermon today, we'll let the other two brethren come.
I should be holding their coats anyway. I have no real right to be here. I'm a whippersnapper, as it were. But yet God has given me a message, I believe, today, and it's burning in my heart, and I don't know how to give it except in Texan terms. I'm going to let you have it right between the eyes. And I make no apology for that. If you want to get me later, wait till after the conference. Give me full time of meetings with you and then take care of me late Sunday evening after the Gospel meeting. You can drag the body away. I don't care if you bury it. I'll be in heaven if you get rid of this breath in my body anyway. So you see, we're starting off together. We've got to realize that the time is short. We've got to redeem God's time. And so...
As I look at these beautiful faces, my heart again in these preface remarks has to say, oh, Glenn, are you really going to give it to them that away? And again, the voice from within me comes back and says, yes, because you see, I believe that I may never see some of you ever again. And I truly believe that maybe we're losing something of what, to me, a conference really should be about. It should be straightforward. It's a time when Christians that may never come together again or come together. We need to be very direct with one another. We need to have the Spirit of God really working in our hearts. We don't need to mince words.
I believe we need to be exhorted. I believe we need to be challenged in such a way that you cannot leave those doors like you came in. If you go out those doors even after lunch and you're not changed, I will have failed. the Lord because he's the one that changes through his word and you must not come to a conference and want to be pleased and have your ears tickled hear nice little things the little prophecy this and prophecy that we're on a craze of prophecy today I love it I teach it I do it often but I'm saying we can become balloon sized on different things rather than balanced and trim for God by having this balanced outlook upon life.
Don't want to be pleased. I'll tell you, let me say this again. I've said it in lots of places, but I've got to say it again. If I were an artist, I would draw a picture of a Christian today named Glenn Lightfoot, and the picture would be one huge head. Just a big head with little beady eyes, little teeny mouth, and great big ears just ballooned out like this. And somewhere down along the bottom of that huge balloon head would be two tiny little toes sticking out. Can't even see the hand because you see Christians, we come to conferences, oh, teach me, teach me, bless me, feed me, fill me, and all of those are good things. But you know, if we just balloon up with knowledge, it's like the stagnant pool down in Texas.
The water running in, but nothing going out. The moss grows on top. The cattle can't even drink it. It's no good. It's always taking in. We as Christians, you know, we want to take in, but it's time, beloved, to give out. It's time to be fresh and from heaven by letting the Spirit of God open your heart and letting things roll out. Young people say, I can't witness. Open your mouth if you're saved and let the Spirit of God witness through you. Let some of what you've come and got this huge head, you know, but we're the hands of service. And the feet of walk that testifies to the fact, I am a Christian. I'm a sanctified Christian. I want to live for God in a real way. I don't want to just go on like I was when I first walked in to that building, the Four H Building, or whatever this is in the Atlantic Iowa.
You see, too often we want to come and we just want to get bigger heads. It's not heads we need so much today, beloved. Listen, let me challenge you with this word. How much are you putting in to practice of what you already know? Maybe it's just me. Maybe God's just preaching to me. Maybe God is just speaking to me. But if that's true, that's all right. That's all right, too, because I needed it. And I need to be stirred to realize that I don't need to just know more. I need to do more. And I need to do it for God. I need to do it for God. So I come to you with that preface this morning. Because you see, I want you to now turn to John chapter one for my key verse.
my platform verse, if you please, the verse that has so stirred my heart as I looked upon it, and God challenged my heart from it. Back to John, the Gospel according to John and chapter one. John chapter one and verse six. Again, I love the rustling of the leaves, but I want to wait for the wind to settle it a little bit, too, because We won't be reading just a great deal of Scripture this morning. I love to read the Scripture. But I feel like if I don't make plain to you where I'm trying to take you and tell you how we're going to get there, I will have again failed. I want you to understand what the message is if I don't preach but one.
I want you to understand what I believe God is trying to speak to me and to you this morning. You see, I'm not as inhuman as some people think. You teach me and I'll say, ouch. Some people think Glen Lightfoot is very inhuman and very unfeeling, but I've got feelings. I've really got feelings. And God has touched them in this verse. He's touched them. And so I want to pass this along to you. John chapter one in verse six. There was a man sent from God. There was a man sent from God. Dear Christian, if there's Anyone we need today, we need God-sent men.
And that's the core of my message, my sharing with you during this conference, will be God-sent men. You know, today a lot of men are going, but I challenge are they being sent of God? The world is full of preachers, me included. But the test is, are you God-sent? Are you God sent? We need God sent men, not men who come up and want to preach, but men who are God sent and they must preach. The Apostle Paul could say, whoa is me if I preach not the gospel.
And so it is today, which brings me to a little touch here. Young men in this audience today, I dare say every one of you, when you get up at the chapel, you get up to teach. It seems we are again on a craze of teaching, and I'm all for it. I'm all for that. We need that. But we need the gospel. Where's the gospel gone amongst the assemblies of God's people? Where are those young men who are being raised up in sin of God with passion in their hearts, fervency in their life, cleanest, and a direct message, you must be born again. You must be saved if you want to be in heaven. Where are those young men? We seem to grow up in, it's the fault of men like myself who have tended to push the young men as they begin to teach, teach, teach.
And you're going to go away and you're going to say, oh, Glenn is hard on teachers and he don't believe. And I do. I love to teach the Word of God. But I believe that one of the best places for young men to start in the assemblies of God's people is to start by preaching the gospel. Learn. to preach the gospel, to tell others how to be saved, and then go on if God has called you to be a teacher. But I believe you need that basic foundation. But listen, above all, don't get up unless you're sent of God. There's a lot of talk about school today, and we're going to be getting into that a little bit later. A lot of talk about school. But I am going to give you a school during this meeting that everyone who is going to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in any capacity must go to.
The others are optional that we'll be speaking about. But there is one stool that every child of God must go to if he or she is going to serve the Lord and be God-sent. Now you can serve and be man-sent. You can serve and be self-sent. I remember many years ago, I had a little dab of that. I thought, well, now I've heard these guys come down to Waco, Texas, and I'm going to be a preacher. But I tell you what, you know, I thought I was so smart. I said, well, but I better give five years to the study of the Word of God.
So I went five years. At the end of the five years, I kind of scratched my head and I said, well, I believe I better go another five years. So I went another five years, and at the end of that time, I scratched my head a little bit, and I say, hey, another five years never hurt anybody. I go another five years. And so it goes on till this very day I'm standing before you. I think I need to go another five years. I believe I need to be more in the Word of God. We cannot be enough in the Word of God. And that's what we must be if we're going to be God-sent men. You cannot go somewhere and have it plugged into you. You know, today for some of you technical people, I know there's an AT&T man here, and I kind of speak to him, I suppose.
But this is the day of the card, the push-in and un-pull card, you know, the circuit card. Today you don't find the trouble. You just know generally where it's at and you pull a card and stick another one in. You don't know what part went bad. You just plug it in. It's quick replacement, you know, quick fix. And Christians today are looking for a quick fix to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll tell you, twenty, thirty years and better now, and I still don't think I'm really ready to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. But you know the time is short, and so I've got to be about the master's business. We don't need quick fixes. Today it's pop the pill. Are you hungry, but you don't want to have the front like Glenn likes with Scott? Get a pill and go on a vitamin thing or something. I don't know.
But you see, we need the Word of God is what I'm trying to say. Are you getting a little bit of a drift of what I'm trying to say? I'm going to really be bearing down and sharing with you from the Scripture about God-sent men. I want to read this verse again, and I'm going to put in a name that's not there in this particular verse, but it's the first life we're going to look at, and I trust desire to emulate, to imitate. It says there was a man sent from God whose name was Moses. Turn with me to Exodus chapter two. Moses will be the first character in the scriptures that we'll be looking at that we want to see some examples of.
And, hey, these are practice. When I say to see examples of how to live for God, how to be a God-sent man, how to be a God-sent Christian, I'm not just puffing smoke in the air, dear child of God. I mean for you to take this seriously. Though we'll be looking at this man's life as it were off the scenes, What we see in Him is good for today. It's viable for today. You know, we say in so many parts of the Scripture today, and I don't know how we got around to being this much of an authority. We get around to it and we say, well, really, that's not in the original. That was for a day gone by. I believe that every jot and tittle of this word is for today, if used correctly and kept in context.
I believe we can read the Word of God and get the answer to any problem. I see some faces. It may not be the answer you won't, but you'll get an answer. You see, our problem is we go to the Word of God and we begin to look for an answer that we won't, not for an answer that God is giving. Let's be satisfied with what God is giving. So as we look at the life of Moses, sure, I'm going to be making application in some of these verses. I want you to know I understand that. I understand exegesis. I understand interpretation. I understand context. But also understand that when I look at a beautiful face in the life of a Christian and I see that person, I can say, that's a godly person because of what I see.
Though I don't know all about that person, I can see them in their walk, if you know what I mean, in their talk, if you know what I mean. And I can say, that person is a Christian. That person is godly. I'd like to be like that person. And I hope this morning... as we begin, that you'll really apply this to your life in a real way. And when I make mention of these things, make them practical. If they worked for Moses, what makes you think that they won't work for you? It's like I've told so many audiences, don't knock it till you've tried it. I've had Christians come up and say, oh, that won't work.
That won't work. That won't work. That won't work. I said, well, how do you know it won't work? Well, I just know it won't work. Have you tried it? No. Well, then don't knock it. So I'm saying to you as we approach this study this morning, don't just look at it and say, oh, that happened to so many hundreds of years ago, and that was Moses, and my, he was something special. He was a super-duper Christian. What? No. He was a man, even as Elijah, of like passions, just like you and I. These Bible characters are real people in what worked in their lives, all worked today. And let's look here as we begin in Exodus chapter two and verse eleven. You can tell I'm excited. I am excited. I believe God is calling people today and they're not listening.
I believe God is moving on hearts today and they're sitting still. I don't believe that the workers are out in the work of God that should be. There's a lot going, but very few God sent. I would dare to say, I'll be audacious. I'll even be risque. And I'll challenge you to say, are they really men sent of God? Or did they decide upon preaching as a profession? that they decide that if they got the proper education, that then that would make them preachers. Education, and I'm not against it, I have college. I'll tell you, education is not the answer. It's being God-sent, after having gone through God's school.
And we'll look at that in the life of Moses. So read with me verse eleven, if you will, please hear. Verse eleven says, And it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown that he went out unto his brethren. For the sake of brevity and the sake of time, I'm going to challenge you this morning, this being such a familiar story. You know what transpired when Moses went out and looked upon his brethren. He smoked the Egyptian and he buried him in the sand. Now this will shock you, but there's nothing wrong with killing Egyptians. Nothing wrong with killing Egyptians. Now I don't mean the natural race as we know them today at all. I love them. I have a very good friend who's an Egyptian.
I do not mean that. But in the typical sense here, the first thing a Christian needs to do is slay that part of the world that's in his life. It doesn't belong there that's hindering him. So it's all right to slay the Egyptian in the right way. It's all right. But I want you to notice, what does it say again? Look, and it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown. We learned, if we were to go to the book of Acts in chapter seven, we would learn that Moses was no whippersnapper. Moses was a full forty years old. Beloved, it's easy to get up in the heat of a message when the missionary is here and he's showing the slides and the call is coming, when the atmosphere and the adrenaline is rushing, when the music is playing and the warmth of the Christians around you has you all aglow to get up and say, I'll serve God.
I'll go out and be a missionary. I'll do that for you, God, in the heat of youth. But I want you to notice something. Moses was not in the heat of youth. I challenge you, Christian, when you make a decision for God, when you're about to do something that's really going to change your life for God, count the cost. Count the cost. Make a mature, wise decision. Don't go in the heat of the moment, in the flare of the band, when the drums are rolling. Don't let that be the motivating force, but rather let it be. that God has moved within your heart through the maturity of having been in the Scriptures, been under the sound of the Word of God.
Moses had heard his mother. Moses knew his heritage. I'm convinced. I believe Moses knew, and this was a decision that he made in full facility. I believe this was a decision, as we read in Hebrews chapter eleven, that when Moses was come to years, he refused. And that's one of the first things we need to learn if we're going to be God-sent Men, we need to learn that there's a time to refuse. I tell young people, and this is directed to the young people who go to school and go into the restrooms and there's a little short thing in there, kind of funny looking, and they're smoking it. And they go in there. Listen, one of the best defenses, not only is to turn around and leave as Joseph did, even if you have to leave your coat, but you've got to learn to say a very simple little two-lettered word, no.
Just walk up, face them, look them in the eye and say, no. And then turn around and get out of there. The better part of bravery is to run in that case. But learn to refuse, Christian. Learn to say no. We don't have to say yes to everything, do we? Some of us today think that if we don't fall in line, we won't grow. And we're going to be touching on this growth factor a little later in the meetings that I'll be sharing with you. We're so afraid we're not going to grow. But if we don't get the basics, we're not going to grow. We don't stick with the Word of God. We're not going to grow. If we go outside the limitations of the Blessed Word of God, we're not going to grow. Oh, you may grow in numbers. But you won't grow in quality and God wants quality, not so much quantity.
He wants them, but He wants them in balance and they must be in God's order. But you see, beloved, quality must come first. You must have your full facilities working for God and not be in the heat of the youth again, but rather in full control. You need to face it and under the inspiration of the Word of God, be able to say no or to say yes. Oftentimes get accused of being too negative in my preaching. And I want to tell you something, again for you technical people, is there only one post on the battery? Is there only one post on the battery and it's called positive? You try that. Cut off the negative post and see how far you'll go. You've got imbalance. You've got to have both the positive post on the battery and the negative post.
Or when you turn the old key, nothing's going to happen. It won't even grasp. And we need both that in our lives today from the Word of God. We need both the negative side, as it's often referred to, and the positive sides of things that we might be charged up for God, that we might be in balance so that when God touches the key, his hand reaches down and you in full maturity and he touches your heart, you can say, I'll go. I'll go. And I'll go today. I remember many years ago, some people who said, I will go. But they said, tomorrow. And tomorrow is too late. When God touches the heart, the time is now.
But Moses was in full control. You know what happened, though? He fled down into what? The wilderness. Now read with me in chapter three. Chapter three. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Median. And he led the flock to the back side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here am I.
And he said, Draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the Lord of thy Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt. Now I want to drop down again to verse eight and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large unto a land flowing with milk and honey and so forth.
Again down to verse ten. Come now therefore and I will send thee. You see that? I will send thee. Already we see that Moses is to be a God-sent man. But from the first time of, if we can say this, at forty years old, his youthful enthusiasm, he had to go to school. He wasn't ready. He was to deliver God's people. He knew the mission. But he had to yet go to God's school. God's school. And so we come to this first school. And where did Moses go to school? You see LA? No.
It says here, that he went to the desert. That's sometimes God's school. It's the desert. But I want to get back as you keep that in mind to verse one. Keep in mind now we're looking at God's school, not man's school, not the school that Moses would have chosen because you see, he was second only to Pharaoh. He already had the silver spoon. Again, I learned from the book of Acts he was probably one of the greatest engineers of his day. What do you think about that? It tells me in the book of Acts that he, meaning Moses, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And let me ask any mechanical engineer or physicist who should be here today, or anyone else that cares to think it out.
Do we really know, do we really know how they built the pyramid? To my knowledge, we don't really understand how they built the pyramid. Moses did. Moses was a step ahead even in his day. You think these are antiquated times in which Moses lived? Not at all. Abraham's time, I believe they had hot water. I believe they had the saunas then. I believe the water was running under their houses. And there's lots we could learn from Genesis twelve and other places about the day in which these great men lived. It wasn't the times of the cave men as we picture them. These were men of great intelligence. So we're dealing with a man of great intelligence. He'd had all the learning that the schools of Egypt could offer.
But was that enough for God? Did God say, oh, well, I see you've got your Ph.D. and everything that goes with that. Let me stop right here because I see some places and I don't want to get anyone angry, but I make no apology. School won't get it in God's work. Now that may be a route that God will take you as he took Moses for his purposes. but for the being sin of God and for God's work, God's service, you've got to go to God's school. And like my dear brother Ray Routley said last night, not only does worship cost you something, but going to God's school cost you something.
We just had a son that graduated from WSU in Wichita after four years. We know what the cost is monetarily. But I'm not talking about money today, friend. I'm talking about something that gets to you a lot quicker than money. Your hip pocket is not so close as your heart. When it begins to take into your life and cost you something that's dear to you, that you just hug every morning and that's yourself. You know, I used to look in the mirror and say, oh, you're a great person. I love you. No one else would do it. I thought I had to. We're all in love with ourselves. We love ourselves. We pepper, we patty, we do-y-do-y, and we do this, and we do that, and we pop a pill to live longer and everything else.
But you see, God is able to deeply cost us much more than that. And if you're going to be God-sent, if you're really going to serve the Lord as the Scriptures would have us to serve the Lord, it'll cost you far more than five thousand dollars a year to go to school. And it goes beyond four years. Moses went forty and forty, as we'll see a little bit later. You think your school was long. You think being a doctor is tough. Try being a Moses. Try going through God's school. It's not always a pretty school. It's not a school of your choice, beloved. You have no choice in this.
I remember you'll pardon the personal expression and remarks, but that's the only way I know how to identify it. I've only lived with me and my wife, and maybe she doesn't, well, anyway, that's another subject. But nevertheless, the thing that happened to us years ago, we suddenly decided, God's called us in the heat and enthusiasm of youth. God has called us to be missionaries. So we sold everything in our house, sold our bed, slept on the floor, moved out in the middle of the street, partly because of the enthusiasm of listening to the preachers. We moved down to the middle of the street. God, we're ready to go to Africa or South America or wherever you want it. You know something? He just smiled and he said, I don't want you to go anywhere like that.
Thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech or in hard language, but thou art sent to the house of Israel. We had to learn that God wanted us to serve here in the United States of America amongst God's people. But what he wanted to see was a willingness and a readiness to give up everything and step out for God. Today we won't guarantee. God will not guarantee that in that way. He'll only guarantee you one thing. I will go with thee. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. I've got to say this. And Milo will appreciate this again. I'm sure Ray will too. But there was a dear old preacher. His middle initials are Tom McCullough and he's in heaven. So I talk about him and Leonard. I don't usually talk about living preachers too much.
They're mostly bigger than me. But nevertheless, Tom McCullough told me one day, he says, Glenn, that's a beautiful promise and you can take it either way. Thie leave, nor thee forsake, never will I. You see, you can say it backwards and it still means the same thing. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Thie forsake, nor thee leave, never will I. God's promises are good coming and going. It's the only thing you can trust in this quicksand world in which we live. If you're going down for the third time, Christian, just reach up to God and give it all to him. He's ready and willing, and he's waiting to do that, as he was in Moses' case, but it wasn't exactly the way Moses wanted it. Moses had to find out that he had to go to God's school and not to prep school.
That is, you know what I'm saying, being a little facetious here. He had to go to God's school, and it was not of his choosing. From Pharaoh's palace, the silken satin pillars, down to the shepherd's crook, and the rough desert floor for a bed, a stone for a pillow, perhaps, or whatever it may have been. Anyway, from the silken sheets to the sheetfold was the way of Moses. I want you to notice something that really made it tough. Some of you will appreciate this, maybe, and I may be stepping on some toes. But look at verse one. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law. Have you ever worked for your father-in-law? Hey, that couldn't be right away. Moses had to really, God got tough with Moses right away.
He not only had to work for his living, and that's what I tell young men who want to preach. I tell you, the first thing to do is go get your job. Go get your job, punch the clock, learn what it means to have a boss over you, and someone you've got to report to before you learn the self-discipline. If you go out in the Lord's work, I'll tell you that much. If you want to serve the Lord, go get a job. Get a job and learn what it is after twenty-nine years at the slave pit. And then God lifts you out of that. Learn what it is to identify with the men whose bosses are ugly and the day is rough. And I used to hike poles for a living. Many years ago, I was a pole climber. Would you believe it is skinny and... I keep using the wrong words. I'm not skinny now, but I was then.
I used to hike the poles, climb the poles, lift the cross arms, dig the rock holes with an iron idiot stick, we called it, a big hexagon-shaped digging bar, and all of those things. And believe me, when the blisters come, after I became a Christian, you know, by receiving Christ, I thought, God, is this what you've got for me? And it really was, because now when someone comes to me, I can identify with them. I can identify with them. Before I drown you, let me say that this young man that's here today that works with AT&T. He and I are AT&T Christians. Do you ever hear of an AT&T Christian? At least I want to be an AT&T Christian. He probably is an AT&T Christian. But I want to be an AT&T Christian.
I want to reach out and touch someone. I want to reach out and touch with someone for God, though. I want to reach out and touch their lives and see a change. This is a burning desire of my heart, is to see young men, old men, ancient men, because it's never too late for God. It's never too late for God. I want to see reach out and touch their lives for Christ's sake. I want to see Christ spawned in them to the point that others will see them and say, that's Jesus Christ. I want them to see it. I want them to see Him. There's a man here today from an assembly, and I hope he won't jump up and down and slay me too quickly. But it thrills my heart and raised them where I'm about to mention.
The first time I ever went there, I went striding up to the platform like, you know, I was going to conquer everything. I was ready to preach, man. I was fired up and ready to go. Grab the old pathway. And suddenly the wind went out of the sails. Because there's a little plaque on that platform and it says, Sir, we would see Jesus. Took the wind out of my sails. Suddenly realized I need to be preaching Jesus Christ and everything. That's what I'm trying to do today. because I want you to be conformed to His image. I want you to be molded to what Christ wants you to be. And God has a pattern. And you know, it's like the snowflake. God has a pattern for each Christian, and there's no two alike.
You can't do my job for God. I can't do your job for God. Not like God wants it done. We're unique as the billions of snowflakes. Never fear, Christian. God's work will go forward. If you fail, God will step over you or go around you. But you'll be the loser. God's work. I'm not saying God's work won't be done if you don't do what the Scriptures tell you to do. It will. God is a winner. God's a winner, and it's going to be done. But you're going to be the loser if God has to step around you and use someone else when he purposely intended. His direct will was to use you. And I think I'm speaking to someone as I close this morning. I think I'm speaking to someone here. And I believe God has been moving upon your heart and you're a little stubborn.
We're going to get back into the life of Moses this afternoon. I had hoped to go through about five lives. I see I'm not going to do that. But I want you to notice something here in the life of Moses right away. No, I'm going to say that for this afternoon. What I want you to think about now is that God is talking to your heart. God is speaking to you, not to the fellow or the lady sitting next to you, but God's speaking to you. And he has a work for you. But you've got to go to God's school. It might be the wilderness. You may have to work for your father-in-law. That's tough. That's where it began. I can't think of anything worse unless it would be working for your mother-in-law. Can you? But anyway, you know how God can do things. He puts us down where we need to be to humble us a little bit.
Well, I'm going to give these bread in good time because they've got a message. I want you to bow your head. I'd like to just close in prayer. And you pray that this afternoon God will give help to bring out some of these things I'd like to challenge you with. I don't think you need to come here and not be challenged. I think you need to come here and be challenged even if it's smart. Even if it's smart. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, in Christ's name, we thank you so much that you have a message. You have a son, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Make it real to his Father. Help us to listen and to do in Christ's name. Amen.