 Good afternoon Pastor David. Hey John. Welcome everybody to Unfiltered. Pastor my question to you today really is from last night's message and I want to encourage you guys if you'd happen didn't make it to church last night you can actually go to our YouTube channel or Facebook page and use last night's message as you were in 1st John chapter 4. We're looking at verses 14 to 21 just wrapping up chapter 4 and there were a couple points that you made last night that I thought was very interesting in terms of the earmark of a believer which obviously is spelled out in in that chapter as love and you know John's going through there as he's explaining to the Gnostics the importance of having love abiding in God abiding in his love but one of the things that you wrapped up with the kind of thought that you wrapped up with last night is and it's found in that in verse 20 I think it is where it says if you say you love God and do not love your brother you're a liar so I started thinking about how that type of that not concept but here's how I want to apply it pastor so we see different types personalities of churches you'll see churches that are charismatic you'll see churches that are that can have an come off angry you can see churches that are loving you can see churches that are political you can see a lot of the different churches operating from a personality how important is it to not be caught up with the pastor's personality but rather staying in God's word and being in love you know here's a problem with some of that it's that and not so much the problem here's the reality John you know this I'm simply saying something that you're aware of and we've spoken about in the past very often churches will take the personality of the pastor they take on the personality of the pastor so if you have an exhortive pastor an exhortive person has a tendency of attracting other exorters and so the church will be known for its exhortation if you have somebody who's caught up in any any kind of a we'll say like a political or a therapeutic whatever whatever the the pastor finds as his passion it's going to bleed through to the church so people who are are gifted with exhortation well they're going to find a place of comfort to be in while they're in that church if they like the idea of of ministry compassionate counseling type ministry they're going to find themselves at home that's just where it is and so like the like the shepherd are the sheep and we know that and so I think there's room in the body of Christ for for all of our different styles and our different personalities our different approaches there's room in the body of Christ for that the key though whether you're a John the Baptist type who preaches you know repentance or an Elijah who who who puts emphasis on on compassion and miracles or you name it you know a Jeremiah or whomever if you have a model that's similar to those in a prophetic sense or in a political mentality of how we can change whatever that may be the key is going to be whether or not what you teach is balanced and found in scripture and whether it is whether it is layered with the love of God because no matter what you know you know and it's important to have information and all that's a good thing to have to have knowledge in and all but if I have knowledge and I don't have love Paul said I'm nothing and so knowledge puffs up but love builds up we need to we need to see that in our spiritual leaders the the pastor I had in my life for many many years Chuck Smith was a man knowledgeable in scripture I to the day he died held him in high esteem for his biblical knowledge but what also attracted me to my pastor was his love his his compassion and his grace I mean he had his moments I mean you know he showed me that he was a man more than once in his attitude that he would have with me if I if I didn't toe the line in a proper way you know like a father and a son and I loved him in that fashion you know I knew the other side of Chuck I knew that but the overwhelming thing about Pastor Chuck was his love and so Chuck had knowledge of prophecy he had thorough knowledge of scripture he went through the whole Bible taught it several times but he had grace and the grace and the love that God poured into the heart of my pastor well that's the kind of thing that I wanted you know I was speaking to somebody the other day and I it's been a while now but I said to this pastor I said you need to be aware of the fact that the one whom you call your pastor is the one you'll model yourself after you're going to be like that and so you need to be aware of that because we have a tendency of being attracted to to the ones who are similar to us and I said be aware of that so when you make a choice as to who you're going to regard as your pastor be aware of the fact that over time as you model yourself you'll be like him so I've seen guys who have modeled themselves after as a matter of fact I remember one in particular who asked me who do I think is in and this is his words up and coming pastor which right away that reveals to me some kind of ambition to model yourself after a successful man and I mentioned a name well if you're asking me I said one that's kind of a that's some that's uh I don't understand that particular concept but if you're asking me who I think will make an impact and I mentioned a name I said I think this person here is going to have an impact and before you know it and it was kind of remarkable and this is kind of what solidified this with me is this guy began to model himself after the successful one that I mentioned and was very successful at transforming himself into the mere image of this other guy and you know what I mean if that's what you want now for me I wanted to and I think this is wise for any pastor I wanted to model myself because you know Paul said it like this imitate me as I also imitate Christ right in so far as I imitate Christ I wanted to use as a template as a model as a person somebody who imitates Christ not somebody who is according to the standards of the church world successful because it's an unfortunate thing John you know and I know that in the church world today people equate numbers with anointing and and that's just that's just improper there are quite a number of true shepherds love the Lord who have been placed in a position where they don't have multitudes that they can exaggerate numbers about because I taught at a pastor's conference years ago and I said how come you always round it up instead of rounding down why do you as pastors have to exaggerate the amount of people that are showing up for your services why is that it's because we have taken the world standard of success and we have used it as our model when Jesus said the greatest in the kingdom is the servant and so when you actually have a church with a pastoral staff that loves the Lord has compassion and is willing as to be a servant because they're not pushing themselves forward because they're not bragging about their latest exploits or the people they speak to or who's interviewing them to give the people a false sense of a greatness this church is great because this guy is great you end up with people saying I don't want to be a servant I just want to be successful and so I think we have to be careful with that you know what what are the things last thing to wrap up is it's to I remember what Paul says in 1st Corinthians if you don't have love it's like a clashing symbol and I started thinking you know and not all there are a handful that are out there maybe with an own agenda that they become clashing symbols when clanging I've been thinking of the clash I mean that list is getting longer since last night clanging symbol and I wonder how many are really out there clanging symbols because they are they haven't they're not loving I mean it's that's kind of like a blanket statement but what we've been fortunate enough to have a pastor again that you've learned from your pastor how to love because God did an amazing transformation work in your life and it's one of those things you always tell me pastor much forgiven much love and and so we're thankful but that's something I just wanted to share about last night I've been thinking about it is the love and again something you drove home last night from last night's message how can we say we love God if we don't even love our brother let's pray that we can love our brothers and sisters amen pastor thank you so much for your time friends and family thank you for tuning in want to remind you that we do have our church services 830 and 1045 on sunday invite your friends and family to come out uh pastor david you're in the book of mark yep and uh almost done getting pretty close we're getting close and then men a reminder that our Super Bowl breakfast tickets are on sale uh anthony munoz will be our guest speaker you can actually go online or stop by the gazebo uh we have our israel trip coming up january 19th is going to be our information we'll put that out there we'll announce from the pulpit for a representative from inspire travel is going to come out and join us and so look forward to you guys be a part of us thank you again for tuning in and god bless you