 And all the time, amen, we had a privilege this morning to come from Yelm, Washington There's a I went with four girls and I wasn't sure what I was asking and Tuesday morning had a home group So I was asking my home group to pray for the trip. They were asking to pray for the sermon I said no for the trip And so but the girls I didn't drive there and didn't drive backwards and we all came in one piece Girls can be trusted with driving amen And we've seen we've seen a man of maybe about eight to ten people got healed last night over there in that service It was a Ukrainian very traditional church In stuff and so we had a really good time and arrived very very early in the morning and stuff And so but to God be all the glory for the things that God is doing through our ministry I met some people there who I guess I was speaking in Portland a year ago And they still have the message on a replay about the Holy Spirit and they still were touched And so we give all the glory to Jesus Christ. Amen Some of you know that this weekend we have a creation fest in tri-cities Fair Childs assigned a 20-year contract with the creation fest that means for next 20 years There's gonna be a creation fest a week after the boat races And so it's gonna draw about 10,000 people into tri-cities who will come not just to get drunk walk around get naked and get kidnapped But who will come here to worship the king of kings and the Lord of lords can somebody say amen So it started tonight It's gonna continue tomorrow and Friday and on so just really want to encourage each one of you to Take opportunity of those events and to go in especially those of you who paid and it's a lot cheaper than the boat races and Stuff and it's gonna bring you a lot more benefit and a lot less temptation and if you're single you might meet someone there And nine days we have our conference nine days Amen, some people may ask, you know, why we have a conference. We just had a conference I want to remind you that typically in churches they have these things called summer camps and I usually go to a lot of them and after I guess going to so many of them You know, we wanted to do a summer camp as well for our church and the feedback We've received from a lot of young adults is that for most people they've said you know with when it comes to summer camps You know, we're like, hey, we rather have just a conference We're Friday night Saturday morning Saturday evening and Sunday morning We're just gonna come together to serve and seek the name of Jesus Christ And so instead of a summer camp where we will spend $200, you know We will have a summer conference a young adults conference next weekend every single person you have to be here It starts on Friday at seven Sunday morning at Saturday morning at 10 after Saturday morning There's gonna be a free lunch here to get a free lunch and then we're gonna have right there in the lunch area We're gonna have a little talk show a forum and then the service at 6 p.m On Saturday the final service and then on Sunday morning as well. And so I just really want to encourage each one of you Let's plan for that weekend next weekend. We're gonna see the kingdom of God come. Amen Let's put our hands together for the Lord Jesus Christ one more time And so with that said let's open our Bibles to 1st Kings chapter 12 verse 7 and verse 8 Last week we talked about the last scene legacy We talked about a king named Jeroboam and today We're gonna talk about another king who was at the same time as the king Jeroboam and his name is Roboam So just a few little difference to his letters to his name And he was the king of another part of Israel And so let's read from verse 8 into verse 7 till verse 8 and they spoke to him Saying if you will be a servant to these people today and serve them and Answer them and speak good words to them. They will be your servants forever and verse 8 But he rejected the advice which the elders had given him and Consulted the young man who had grown up with him who stood before him I want to preach to you or present to you a small topic that will be called the practical guide to Good decisions the practical guide to good decision-making Every single day you make decisions and these decisions have consequences and many times we make poor decisions And today we want to bring up from this story of the Bible few simple nuggets few simple Principles that would help us to navigate through life better by making better decisions I would encourage you to take notes Maybe something that will you will learn is something that will stand out to you and it could make your life better for the glory of God Let me give you just the background first of all to this story King Roboam comes on the scene What his dad is Solomon and his grandpa is David? He comes on the scene of a kingdom that's already inside had a crack because of Solomon's idolatry and He gathers people up his consulers He gathers his friends and he gathers his father's Mentors as he gathers older people and he's asking them You know how should I proceed because people came to me and they're asking me to lower down the taxes They're asking me to do less construction projects because see Solomon he was very wealthy But he had a lot of construction projects Solomon was building a temple then Solomon was building his own house Solomon was building different cities Solomon was building a lot of weaponry and all of that required money all of that required work source and all of that required higher taxes and People paid for those taxes so his son comes on the scene and people came to him and saying you know what? I know you're probably gonna be as smart as your dad as powerful as your dad Can we cut the construction projects? We got the temple. You got the house. We got the cities Let's stop building things. Let's lower down the projects so that we can lower our taxes So he had this dilemma he comes to his friends and he asked them what should I do his friends like dude You're the guy in charge. You got to prove them. You're in charge double the taxes Like I know you don't got any projects going on find them create projects make those people pay You're the king you do what you want He's like sounds good He comes to the other group which were older people gray hair people people who pay taxes the dude Got the taxes your young guy Be nice to people lower down the taxes just a little bit and you will see they will be your servants for the red They'll die for you. They will serve you for the rest of their life and here is a king He needs to make a decision Which decision would you make? Well, he makes a decision He makes a decision to go ahead with the advice of his young people and Comes up to people a young stud a rookie He just became a king and he says hey guys I'm gonna increase the taxes. I'm gonna create new projects So you all expect you got to go make some more money because I'm gonna take them and People said amen. No Ten tribes gather together and say you know what? We're not gonna be a part of your kingdom and they created a rebellion and now instead of getting 12 tribes who bring taxes and money He only is left with one main tribe of Judah and ten left and those ten tribes Never ever in the history of the Old Testament came back to be a part of a nation called Israel such a small decision and it broke a nation For its complete future right down number one First principle when it comes to decision-making is this best decisions in life are those that lighten people's burdens The best decisions in life are those that remove people's burdens You must understand as a Christian or as those maybe who are coming and you're exploring Christian faith Is this is the decisions that you make? How you know whether decision is good or bad by looking will this decision? Remove someone's burden or will it increase their burden? Every decision you take is either increasing someone's pain or removing someone's pain Every decision you take is either saving someone's soul or destroying someone's soul I remember talking to a one man who already has a who has daughters and He's not married now and and he's he was talking about smoking weed He says you know I struggle with smoking weed and I I smoke weed in my garage And and he's like I always tell myself that my smoking weed is not hurting no one and I said Does it really not hurt no one? And he lifted his head down and he put his head down and he says you know what when I smoke weed I become dumb I become it not responsive. I become closed down. He said my daughters call and I ignore He says good people call and I ignore instead of going to the gym. I lock myself in I lock myself in my garage And he says I ask begin to avoid people. So yes, he says smoking weed does not just it's not just my own circle It's not just affect me. He says it affects anyone who is in contact with me and so is every sin Every bad decision you take no matter how much you tell yourself. It only affects me it affects people around you What makes decisions bad is when they increase the pain in people's lives The filter through which we have to look at when we make decisions in life is this one is that people? Always have to be a priority when it comes to decision-making Not your popularity Not your power not your prestige and not your not ability not prosperity Because see this king Rebaum what he was making is this he wanted to become richer. He wanted to become bigger He wanted to make more money. He wanted to prove something That was his main thing in life. I want to prove I'm in charge But every person who starts their life and this kind of foundation will soon find not only people Will not follow you people won't like you people will leave you Anytime you don't value people you won't have no one around you I'm gonna say that again when people are not your priority. Don't be surprised if you're always alone If you're always pursuing your prosperity if you always want to make more money If you always just your main goal is just to become more famous and just to have more fun But people are not the most important thing in your life cars are Clothes are houses are degrees are but not people you will be left alone and it's not God's fault People will leave you when they're not important We live in a generation today where humans where people are not priority We go into other planets to find life and if we find bacteria We celebrate because there is life and when you go into a womb and there is a heartbeat we call that a tissue and sell those tissues Why explore life on other planets and kill the life and hear that has a heartbeat Because that's the generation we live in today and let's not just blame the culture that doesn't value life Let's look in deeply into a religious culture if you look at the days of Jesus and in today's days Where Jesus is not the most important where people are not the most important guess what happens in the religious circles People are not important rules are in The world people are not important money is more important power is more important But many times in the religious circles and you all have been a part of that and I have been a part of that and some of us Unfortunately can't contribute it to this theory where you come into a religious circle and you recognize one thing that in this circle The most important thing is the rules not people That's why when you saw in the days of Jesus people, you know eating during the Sabbath or now washing their hands and Pharisees got furious During the Sabbath the men got healed and Pharisees became angry because the Sabbath was broken They had this idea that God created Sabbath and had nobody to keep the Sabbath. So he created people That somehow Sabbath people were serving the Sabbath instead of the Sabbath was serving people It's good to keep rules. But remember the rules were given for people not for rules itself You know, I grew up in a very, you know Our family the one we grew up in it cares a lot about our family name and rules and everything and I saw I've learned this from my parents First in a negative and then in the positive when my brother just graduated from high school My brother Andre and he wanted to go to to military He wanted to go to you know to to serve our conscious military and you know in my family the way we grew up Nobody went to military and so that was kind of discouraged stay home. Don't go there You're gonna get shot and tada and they discouraged him from going there and partial was like, you know This is not good for you, you know, and they didn't value, you know His decisions and and I saw this sad picture for next two years where he was supposed to go to the military He played video games on the computer for two years And I'm thinking what good did it do to keep him away from that that he did exactly same thing on the computer It's just only got fat and let's disappoint him And then when my brother grew up, you know, and you see, you know in my family everybody has, you know, crazy hairs I had crazy hairs for the half most of my life and continue to do so now it's my wife's fault, but My sister and then and then my brother he decided to grow his hair now in the traditional Russian Pentecostal culture that is abomination on steroids That's just horrible You know now remember my parents were very upset with him You know, they were not upset with his long hair Because it is morally wrong, but because it puts this light on the family that says, huh What kind of family are you guys and I remember a few times my mom's Mentioned it and it kind of came to my mind. I'm like is that what's really important to our family? She says what will others think? And I was like since when do we care and my brother start changing before before God start changing his life I saw a change in my parents What a day to one of my relatives who made fun of my family and my brother and who were saying oh look at your son and They're judging him based on his hair while their own children were doing nasty things that they didn't know about and my parents They defended my brother. They say you know what? Yes We might not might not be our favorites and most best choice for him to grow that hair But he is our son and that is not the most important thing in our family What kind of hair you have but what kind of heart you have and whether you serve God and when I saw that in my Parents and I said, you know what if my parents put a value on the person above the principal That's when the person gets changed and that's how it's changed the heart of my brother You know in the younger years when I when we just started our ministry and there was this young man who got saved he was the first person who got saved in our ministry and He was a good friend of mine and he became my disciple and we were in the younger years We were a little bit more strict like if you were in high school and you were thinking about dating not dating But thinking about dating you will be condemned to the eternal damnation without any hope of redemption and reconciliation That was just how it was and partially that came from me trying to not date and so I kind of spilled on another people and And this particular gentleman he comes from American culture, you know, he came from a culture where dating was a sport, you know dating Let's face it it is today and so it's just something you do on Fridays It's kind of like drinking coffee with us and I was gonna come from my culture where you know This was abomination and I remember when you know and this that's not the problem which cultures we come from The problem is that when he found a girl that he liked it was from our own ministry. He only liked her. They didn't go out he liked her and This is I remember what I did is that I valued my principle so important that to me It was more important that this young man would follow the principles Then this young man He tried to follow that principle. He tried to kill his feelings I remember looking he was like a poor martyr walking around trying to kill those feelings and they kept spurring and spurring and spurring And I got angry. I'm like, you're not being obedient. You're not being you know, he didn't do anything He just liked her and after a while, you know, he felt judged He felt the problem wasn't judgmental The problem wasn't even the right was teaching what I was telling him the problem was that in my mind my rules our rules was more important than people Because even since then I've done it to many people and people have done it to me Well, they brought the line and say, you know what? This is the line and this is you can't cross but when people bring that and they have you as the priority not the line You feel it you respond differently And I'm saddened to say but this young man he left our church He eventually started today this young lady and my prophecy of course came to pass She left him and when she left him he wanted to come back But he felt so disappointed that he couldn't come back Because he was afraid that in here rules are more important than people and Sadly at that time it was but you've come to a place today We value rules because rules are meant for your good not against you But people are why Jesus came and died on the cross not rules for God so loved the world Because somebody say amen If you ever want to make good decisions in life remember people are more important in principles People are more important than anything else in life if you put as a foundation of your life serving people Even if it will cost you your time even if like Roboam It will cost you a little bit of your personal because see if he would put people above his own ego He would have to kind of maybe trim his lifestyle on the most Richest people in the world he might have fallen from the number one who had three hundred billion dollar of income to maybe number three Who had a hundred billion dollar of income? Yes, it might have cut his pride Yes, it might have cut his little bit of reputation But what it would have done to him is it would have given him a lasting Legacy and it would have given him people who loved him When you put power Prosperity prestige and other things above people There's nothing wrong with those things. They just cannot be above people. You will be left without no one But by yourself if you look at King Saul and you see in the beginning of King Saul's reign He put people above even his own life where he went to protect a city Risking his own life Risking the lives of other men because that's how good success is founded on the foundation of people matter You look at King David when he went to kill the Goliath He put his life on the line to protect his people and then ran as a fugitive for more than 15 years Just to protect his people and then God gave him the honor and the respect and people followed him Because he served them You look at our Lord Jesus Christ. He could have easily rode into this world with a limo seen from heaven He could have easily brought angels on this earth and make every living thing including ants and spiders To bow to him, but he didn't he came as a servant He let himself be walked and carried and he washed people's feet. He served people You know what Jesus's label was a friend of Sinners He loved people. He was always around people. He wasn't somewhere in the cave hiding and talking to God He was always loving and serving and bringing people to salvation and then we know Jesus is coming back and People will worship him The Bible says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess why because that's exactly what people do when you serve them They will follow you They will love you and they will respect you But if you lift yourself up if you make yourself first the number one priority Don't be surprised if you're gonna have to attend your own celebration and No one will be there to do it. Life is like game of tennis those who serve well seldomly lose be a person who Loves other people be a person who saves other people be a person who is not in such a hurry in life That doesn't take time to pause and Take somebody up pick somebody up be a person who makes a goal to be a home group leader Because it's about people you may be so successful You may say I don't need to mentor or help or raise other people the greatest commodity on this earth is not cars diamonds and gold It's people It's not dolphins and it's not trees though. I love them both. It's people and It's not your beautiful cat that you post snapchats every single day of its people Because somebody say a man That's why next next week's conference is about people. I want to encourage each one of us Let's bring people to salvation, you know when when we focus on people when we bring them closer to God God does such incredible miracles. I heard actually right before the service a young lady named Nicole Who you know, she came last if I'm not mistaken last Sunday is probably one of the first time She came to our church and yesterday she gave her life to Jesus She was trying to find a job for the last nine months. She's studying in the beauty school She was trying to find a job for nine months and today she got a job When we put people as a priority God will always back up with his miracles You know why a lot of people come here even if you look at this sanctuary right now Because when one thing that people will tell you when they come here is this is they feel accepted Now we don't water things down we call hold our standards But our standards are for people are not for standards sake because somebody say amen when we create the atmosphere Even without God listen to me carefully even without God if we create an atmosphere where people are loved and accepted The largest stadium in our city Will be empty will be completely full and will not be enough for our gatherings Because there's a deficit. There's no other place in this dry cities where people are more important than anything else You may say well my buddies gather together and they drink. No, they only care about the drink remove the drinks and they won't be there Well in the hospitals stop paying come without insurance and you will see every place has some kind of a thing behind it Church has to be a place where our intentions are you? Our intentions are your well-being your salvation and you serving God you becoming successful Because somebody say amen We make best decisions when we make people as our number one priority number two decisions have consequences and consequences and Decisions are the consequences so decisions have consequences and decisions are the consequences Let me explain that to you This is actually very simple and you have to keep that up front of your mind about every decision that you make in life The King Robom what he did is he made a decision to listen to his friends and not to put people as number one in his life and right away he had repercussions the Consequences for those decisions were he experienced extreme loss financially He extremely lost in the area of his social life in the area of every area of his life was affected by his decision because every decision you make will have consequences But what this King did not know is that this decision that he made Not only this decision has consequences this decision was also a consequence of some other things that happened in the past One of the reasons he made that decision was because there was a prophecy That was said that the ten kingdoms will be removed from his life One of the reasons he made this decision was because his daddy at the end of his life Instead of worshiping God he worshiped gods and worshiped idols and he provoked the anger of God thus Unleashing some not really good vibes into the next generation So here is a king making decisions seeing bad consequences bad decisions But what he does not know is that his decisions are also a consequence of Something else that is coming from before Well, I first when we first got introduced to the Ministry of Prophet to be Joshua from Lagos, Nigeria We all knew that your decisions have consequences That's that's pretty normal every self-help book and Barnes and Nobles every speech You probably have heard will tell you that if you make a decision you will have a consequence If you take a left turn you're gonna end up in there if you take a right turn You're gonna end up in there if you marry this person That's exactly what's gonna happen if you drop out of school and you know and just play video games There's gonna be consequences if you go to gym and you work out, you know regularly There will be consequences if you pray there will be consequences if you fast There will be good consequences all of these things have consequences and we knew that we teach that in church But going to the Ministry of Prophet to be Joshua I found the other side of the coin that I honestly was completely unaware of that sometimes our decisions that have consequences are already consequences over spiritual force Pushing us in the wrong direction So here you are trying to control the wheel not realizing that the wheel is broken And so you are pushing it and you are being pushed by some other power. That is not You're not aware of I remember talking to a young lady she gave her life to Jesus in our ministry and Talking to her she was in a lifestyle of lesbianism and she started to mention and how she I asked her how she entered into the lifestyle How did she go into the lifestyle and though this is not the story of every person practicing homosexuality? But for this young lady this was the case and she said that at a very young age that one of the Relatives would come into her room and would take advantage of her sexually and this continued and continued and then is stopped with One person and continued with the other person and then she says it threw me into a very big spiral of Of this lost living so I was very sexually promiscuous in school And I just kind of slept you know with a lot of guys and then she she had few children and then you know Some other unfortunate things happen with one of her boyfriends And then she was pushed into that lifestyle and she says when I was in that lifestyle I knew in the back of my mind, you know the right way the biology our bodies how God created things I knew the right way, but she says I couldn't stop it and she said people judged me based on that But nobody knew why I did what I did and I remember looking at her and telling her actually you don't even really know why you did that You know why you went into that lifestyle. You think it's because of the abuse But we can go deeper and realize why the abuse happened in the first place Why is it not no other people didn't experience the abuse and when we start talking about her family? And we started to actually she said oh my goodness I realized this is an epidemic that it happens in my whole family. This is not just an isolated case She says this happened to this and to this and to this person. And so the very abuse also had a reason If you make decisions in life and you do only blindly looking at the consequences of decisions But you don't open your eyes to the spiritual world. You will always live your life with your hands tied I liked how Brittany explained on Sunday about freedom She said when you have a live a life where you don't know There's a spiritual world and you only judging and basing yourself and judging yourself and letting people judge you because you made A decision and now it has bad decisions bad consequences But you don't open your eyes to the fact that there is powers in the spiritual world that pushes in the wrong decisions Just like this king then you are actually making a decision with only 50 information in your mind and with your hands tied behind your back You will never be successful in your decision making effectively Jesus comes to one place and the Bible says there was this man who was running around naked He was Yelling and he was roaring and he was chained up But he would break those chains and he lived among the tombs Now that is a bad consequence when you get kicked out of the society When you're running around naked when your house is among the tombs and people are terrified by you You look at that man and you say man this guy is crazy when you to put him in a mental institution and Jesus doesn't come to this man and says you know what? Hey, you were acting crazy. You should have stopped acting crazy You should repent for acting crazy Jesus doesn't judge that man He comes to the man and he realizes his decisions had consequences Consequences, but his decisions are consequences of another force that is pushing those decisions and Actually this force was a combination of 6,000 demons that was pushing his life and our Lord Jesus Christ Unlike religious people unlike typical people. He doesn't judge that man He deals with the source of his decision making which is the power of the enemy He removes that power and this man starts to make good decisions. What's the first decision? He makes he puts on his clothes Before he always tore it down. I wonder which other spirits cause people to remove their clothes Well, we leave that for another day It's not the demons kind of like people on clothes and then Jesus comes in and the first decision He makes he puts on his clothes and the Bible says his mind returns He begins to speak normally and then he makes other decisions. He says Jesus I want to follow you Why he makes good decisions because now instead of evil force pushing him there is the Holy Spirit Influencing him. Let me ask you a question. Every decision you are making Who is influencing you? And I'm not asking about your friends Who is influencing you? Which spirit? Which curse? Which family are bringing What is influencing you? You may say nothing. That's just me Don't be a fool because we're bomb. He also thought he was just making a decision He was not aware of another side of the coin where there was a prophecy That pushed that decision. It's as though he was just a slave of Superiors superior spiritual world that was controlling him and bringing devastation Our world is The son the spiritual world is the father you and I we are not superior There is a superior world that controls this world If you look at one of the followers of Jesus Judas who betrays Jesus sells Jesus for 30 shekels and we know that is a bad decision that he makes But in reality we know why he makes the decision because the Bible says Satan put into the head of Judas to betray Jesus and then we go a step further and we see another thing is that Satan enters Judas and that's how Judas carries out bad decisions So we can stand here and blame Judas and say he was so greedy. He was such a mean man But in reality Judas was influenced by the spiritual world that made him to make decisions Which had bad consequences That's how all decisions are really are you're either influenced by the Holy Spirit or we get influenced by a spirit that are not holy the demon spirits This happens with people all the time that the clip that we saw right now of a young man from Romania or Or a lady from France They received prayer and they came here for prayer. Why because they've seen the decisions They're making are being influenced by something that's not of their own and during prayer It was exposed that some that force that lived there and when that force of the devil was removed these people now are not just Free to live their life, but they're free to make decisions. They're a good The reason why you and I need freedom in their life is so that you can be truly free to make decisions That you need to make that God wants you to make instead of making decisions Influenced by the devil because somebody say a man and lastly write this down And I'm just gonna end it is that you cannot control what gets passed on, but you are responsible for what you activate This king they couldn't control what his dad did, but he could have controlled what he did with that My friends the friends you choose will determine the genes and the habits that you couldn't choose See we all get passed on with genes. We all get passed on with habits We all get passed on with certain Iniquities from our families and we cannot control that You know, you can't control for example, you know the the color of your eyes You can't control the color of your skin unless you Michael Jackson You know, you can't control the the color of your gender Well, unless you that lady or men who became that lady is that but most of us normal people We can't change these things these are within our DNA But there are things like anger things like lust things like divorce things like poverty things like, you know hate things like constant immorality can't things things like Proversion things like constant judgmentalism these things lay dormant until activated What are they activated by the kind of crowd you choose to surround yourself with? This king how did he activated that prophecy when he switched from fathers to friends When he chose a wrong crowd to connect himself when next thing that happened is that curse that bad Vibe that bad power became activated in his life something so simple as Surrounding yourself with the wrong crowd could have such a profound effect on your future People don't record recognize that today and many people don't surround themselves with good crowds for only one reason Because to be in a good crowd is not free. There's a price It's a price not up front. It's the price where you walk in and you recognize You're gonna have to change few things not because they're saying you can't be with us unless you change It's that when you're coming to recognizing certain things need to change if you hang out like I started to see when I Hang out with people who constantly work on their fitness There's a price. It's this unknowing price where almost makes you feel bad for not going to the gym And none of them tell me say hey, you know your weight or Vlad come on You need to work out, but it's just that like pressure that exists within that group that you need to work out You meet with people who are outside of the who are out of debt who are working hard And let's say you're a person who never works. You don't like to work You just like to you know kind of you just like take it easy you meet with those people There's that pressure. There's the price you have to pay. You actually have to need to get a job Same thing happens with group who smokes or who doesn't smoke Let's say you're a smoker and you meet with a group of people who they don't smoke and after a while You know they accept you but you feel that kind of a price that hey if I need to be with these people I gotta put away the cigarette and many times We don't like to pay the price and we rather stick with the group that is free you come in the way You are nobody judges you they're just like you but we remain the same way. I Saw this happen with the one young man who received Deliverance from drugs in our ministry who came and got saved he got such on fire for God his death He passed away just recently for very unfortunate accident that happened in jail and it's all over the news now There's still lawsuits there being filed and I knew this man more intimately and more closely and our ministry knew him a lot Way way way before when he just got saved out of high school here And he got saved he got so on fire for God. It was about six to eight months He was free from drugs free for smoking doing great things Evangelizing every Friday night. He was like a firecracker. He was such a fire for God It made me feel insecure Like he would like always make even attack me. It's like what why are you not evangelizing? How many people did you bring last month? I was a two. He's like, well, I brought 20 I was okay. And so he was like very on fire for God until one day. He says I want to visit my family in Seattle Now a little background his father Unfortunately done a lot of bad things and his mom he comes from a really broken family His grandpa took care of him and poured a lot of Finances and life into him and he says I'm gonna go visit my mom Now we all knew our leaders knew that if he's gonna go visit his mom in Seattle We knew what his mom was doing, which were not good. He says I'm gonna go evangelize to her We said this is now your time to evangelize you're just free from drugs You shouldn't be going to those places stick around because negative company will corrupt whatever God's been doing He says no, no, no, I'm stronger than this and we pleaded with him. We said, please don't go there Stay here wait a little bit longer He said no, you guys don't know I'm already free and God's gonna use me plus I bring more people than you guys I'm like, well, that doesn't make you an expert He goes there and yes, he was doing good for three days and after three days another friend from his mother came He had sex they introduced drugs and he went back into drugs and ever since that day Until his passing which drugs made him go mental He started developing schizophrenia starts develop other diseases and a lot of other children that he couldn't take care of and he could never Recover ever since that fall he tried he would go a few weeks and go free without drugs He would go to different rehabs, but that tripping point and it seemed like such a small decision I'm gonna go to Seattle for the week and hang out with the wrong crowd and that one small Weekend turn into a lifestyle for more than 10 years Until because of that many drugs that did so much damage to his mind. He had a seizure in jail and he died and He passed away And it was so sad He's a good guy comes from a good grandpa and everything great and I love the guy and we prayed for him But when I like what I take out of his life for myself is this don't ever underestimate The damage that the wrong crowd will do to you Don't be a fool the Bible says if you can pull up the verse where it says that don't be deceived that it says the last verse First Corinthians 1533 it says don't be misled bad company corrupts good morals. It means don't be fooled Don't think to yourself. I'm stronger don't think to yourself when you go to a party You know people are drinking and that's exactly what you're walking from. You're like, well, I just I'm not go in there and not drink Come on. How many times people have said that? Don't go in and simply say well I know they're going to a bar to watch a football and I'm gonna go in there And but I'm not gonna do this and that but that's exactly what you've been struggling God is saying to you don't be deceived No matter how strong you think you are right now Evil company corrupts good habits those people might be good But because of the evil they have when you surround all of them together you develop an evil company They can destroy everything you've been building up So your good decisions that you make they depend on valuing people they depend on understanding good decisions have Consequences and they are consequences and understanding the people you surround yourself with they activate Either blessings in your life or curses in your life You can grow bananas In Jamaica, but you cannot grow them in Alaska for one simple reason atmosphere Certain things cannot grow in your life if you are in a bad environment No matter how much you pray no matter how much you believe and do all of these religious things If you are in a bad environment and you want to grow bananas and you are in Alaska my friend You will not grow bananas. You will grow cold in Alaska But if you want to grow success in your life cannot be surrounded with people who are not Where you want to be you got to pay the price or being surrounded by those people you got to begin to adjust your life You will not be comfortable for a while some of you are coming for the first times in our church You're like I like this place, but this is strange place. They pray out loud They raise their hands keep coming and in a matter of months you will see your hands going up You will see your mouth opening up and you will begin to pray why because you will be under influence of a good company You will see yourself looking to golds Jim and signing up for membership And you will see yourself coming to morning press why because that's exactly what happens in the world and in here You come under influence of a good company and that is good for you can somebody say amen It may not be a comfort comfortable in the beginning, but it will become normal Eventually because you will stick around for the glory of God and somebody say amen. I want you to rise to your feet right now We are going to come to prayer Okay, can you have every single person stand up and just come to the front