01. Introduction

0:03 thank you so much pastors Jasper and Alicia for opening your home allowing us to come in and to meet the king here the great Westminster catechism asked the question what is the chief purpose of man and the answer is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever and one of the mysteries of human history is that it matters so much to God that we as humans glorify him in the context of our pilgrimage we know from the scriptural record that In Heaven There are assembled choirs

0:51 Beyond number in Heaven There are Elders cherubims seraphim living creatures probably beings that are not even described that are largely devoted to the celebration of the Majesty of our King why then do our lives matter I can't answer that from the theological perspective but I can say that from God's perspective from the record of scripture it is so very very clear that it does matter to him that how we live our lives and more importantly how our lives incarnate the nature of Jesus

1:39 Christ how we live out the principles that he has established for time in history matters to him so we're going to begin this teaching tonight by celebrating some people who did it well some people who did it well in the context of their Redemptive gift and then we will proceed to see how we can emulate their skill and weaving together inherent design of our gift together with strategic principles to produce transformation our calling is threefold one it is to conquer two it is to build and

2:26 ultimately it is to form community that incarnates the nature of God above and beyond what we do individually I've been deeply moved for many years by the story of Lyman Stewart many of you here probably do not know the name he was a Scotsman obviously his family came to the United States He encountered the oil industry in Pennsylvania briefly then moved to California eventually he and some Venture capitalists put together an oil drilling Venture in the San Joaquin Valley to the south and west of Bakersfield

3:12 they drilled and they drilled and they drilled and the hole remained dry Lyman and the other Venture capitalists put up money and more money and eventually with a hole still dry they met in desperation One Night in Los Angeles and made the decision to stop the drilling to declare bankruptcy because they had no more money to invest shortly after midnight they sent a messenger North through the tejan pass to let the oil drilling Crews know they should just stop leave everything where it was the company had folded

3:58 and after the decision was made before the messenger arrived they hit a gusher that was so stupendous that the oil slick across that dry desert area in the San Joaquin Valley was over a quarter of a mile long before they managed to control it and begin pumping oil in the weeks that followed Lyman and his associates became fabulously wealthy they formed a company that is known today as Union oil still in existence very prominent in California Lyman was a man of God who whether he understood the Redemptive gifts and the principles by language he certainly lived in them he was Redemptive gift of

4:44 giving and he understood the principle of stewardship that his wealth was not for himself but that he was to live a life preparing those around him to work the kingdom better and so he positioned himself for the remainder of his life as an investor Beginning to Look far and wide to see who the change agents were and where the greatest vacuum was where he could get the greatest return on investment in terms of transformation for the kingdom his eyes turned to the Philippines this was shortly after the

5:30 Spanish-American war and we had taken the Philippines away from Spain he commissioned a survey and discovered that the Spanish government had been very concerned about the potential of the scripture causing Insurrection so they had done what they could to eliminate the presence of the Bible in any form in the Philippines when he commissioned the survey there were just a handful of Bibles to be found in all of the Philippines so he used his wealth to publish hundreds of thousands of copies of the New Testament and then he hired people and distributed those New Testaments throughout the Philippines as seed to empower those that were spiritually open

6:17 and hungry to be able to find the God that he knew closer to home in Los Angeles there was a man by the name variatori a fiery preacher that had a vision for raising up a generation of preachers with a new passion for the word of God it established a school called the Bible Institute of Los Angeles that's now known as Biola University and Lyman looked at the finances saw that it was a school that was well managed and so he invested of his wealth in building dormitories and classrooms in the early stages of the Bible Institute giving it a major lift during the Inception he looked at the nation and saw a great many Bible teachers that were playing

7:04 their heart outs that were hearts out that were teaching that were ministering but were not well equipped and eventually he ordered the printing of tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of a Bible study resource called the fundamentals and did what he could to distribute this to every Pastor every Sunday school teacher every missionary and every other Christian worker in all of the United States and these were just a few of his many many Ventures always looking as a strategic investor for where he could sow the resources of the Kingdom in order to best equip

7:50 the god Seekers to know their God and to reproduce he had a generational world view and made an immense impact in the body of Christ in a single life when I think of the Giants among the exhorters in the world I think of William Wilberforce the great English parliamentarian who did not know Christ at the beginning of his walk met Christ when he was involved in politics and for a Time felt that he needed to leave Parliament and to enter into the ministry in order to more effectively serve the king some wise man came alongside of him and appealed to him to stay in government and to serve the king there

8:35 and so over the years he embraced the incredibly unappealing and undesiring issue of slavery in the British Empire and through his efforts across Decades of work he managed to shift public opinion one tiny inch at a time at the Grassroots level and at the level of government until unbelievably the British Empire to its furthest extremes emancipated all slaves and reimbursed slave owners for the Lost capital and did it without a civil war here was a man who understood what it took to bring about change it was not just a fiery-eyed idealistic individual such as

9:24 those that we bred by the dozens here in the United States that polarized people and eventually precipitated great violence on our Shores he was wise incredibly wise tenacious and skillful in his lifetime stands unparalleled in the history of transformational people who are able to work within all of the corruption all of the bizarre nature all of the variables of the culture to bring about an incredibly impressive uncommon stupendous transformation another man who shaped my life deeply was a man with a Redemptive gift of Prophet by the name of Dr Alexander white that's spelled

10:09 w-h-y-t-e he was the premier preacher in Scotland in the Presbyterian Church during part of the 1800s a man known for his passion known for being articulate knowing for the known for the incredible spectrum of illustrations that he used he could move easily from Shakespeare to Dante to any other classical illusion to the common things of daily life as he ministered to his people one of those who knew him well articulated the Majesty of his ministry and said no man has more often dashed me to the ground and no man has more often or more tenderly gathered me up and

10:56 taken me to a place of restoration it was said that his preaching was like a mountain and there was Stern and precipitous and immense and yet it was also like a mountain and that there were clefts and Hollows with healing bushes and streams of water and restoration was readily available this man wrote a classic book entitled Lord teach us to pray series of his sermons that were reprinted and over a hundred years later it is still being sold wisely it is public domain now and yet many Publishers have picked it up and reprinted it because there's such power in his preaching and I have pondered a prophet who is transformational a prophet who touched his entire culture a prophet who was

11:41 able to transform those who sat under his ministry and not merely raise a high standard that was alienating and polarizing and I've been shaped and moved by Alexander White there's another man a contemporary of yours and mine not nearly as well known as these three but an illustration of somebody who is walking in his Redemptive gift because of the principles and is bringing about transformation his name is John walquist and he is one of the entrepreneurs in our business class in California he's Redemptive gift of Mercy with a fragrance anointing that allows him to

12:27 do things to food that you and I can't I want you to go back to the days of Cain and the Judgment that God placed upon Cain he said the Earth will no longer yield its strength to you and it is just not just the Earth that has been locked up there have been vast portions of God's creation that are locked up that have Treasures that do not release those Treasures to us and one of those things is food and yet John has that anointing to be able to cook he goes down to the grocery store gets quality ingredients that you also could get and when he cooks there is a fragrance to his cooking

13:13 there's a taste there's a difference between his cooking and just about everybody else because of that anointing fortunately he runs a restaurant it is not a restaurant on a prime strip of land it is what he calls a Class C building and yet he has used his giftings to create an Ambiance there that is appealing to the eye comfortable to the body yet it is also a spiritual Ambiance John is Big spirited and because he has created a spiritual business that pretends to be a restaurant God draws from around the world big

14:01 spirited people and brings them to that restaurant in tegrals that by and large have seen Christianity and deemed it as far too small the religion that they saw would not fit within the immensity of their spirit so they walked away from religion assuming that at the same time they were walking away from God these are men and women who come from around the world drawn to his restaurant they know not how it's not a marketing program it is The Sovereign God who is bringing them there they come in and they eat simple food because John's Forte is what he calls street food he travels the world and he finds the food that the poor people make

14:49 and sell and their little carts on the street to other poor people who wouldn't eat in a proper restaurant and he brings these simple rest simple recipes back home basic food and he prepares it in a way that they never learned how to prepare so big spirited people come to his restaurant they eat beautifully presented simple food that has an uncommon flavor to it and they leave messed up [Music] and John came to me and said how can I serve the king better how how can I make this a a spiritual a more spiritual

15:39 Place how can I and I said wait wait wait wait wait a minute wait a minute more spiritual than what and we finally peel back the layers and realize that he still had some some contamination from religion and he thought that the only legitimate way to serve the King was to be a midwife and to be delivering babies there to be leading people to the Lord to actually be the fruit picker to take people that last step from one Kingdom into the other and I said John what if God has designed you to allow people to take the first step instead of the last he said what do you mean I said John I want you to Envision a 12 year old boy

16:27 ordinary kid who has spent several years quite convinced that girls are a total absolute complete nuisance in the world he's a guy's guy and he meets this cute little thing in pigtails who manages to get past all of his barriers and his firewall and he falls in love with her and on that day that she gives him his first kiss something is awakened within him that will never go back to sleep even though the little girl with

17:13 pigtails moves to another town and he forgets about her and I said John what if God is searching the world over for big spirited people that have an appointment with Destiny and he is bringing them to your restaurant and while they are there in this Mercy season ambiance the bridegroom gives their Spirit its first kiss and wakes up their Spirit to something that they had no idea ever existed in them creating a hunger that

17:58 the Devil Himself can never put out [Applause] what makes these people different they were born like we were in sin fully ignorant incompetent and yet they grew and they made choices and they have made an impact in the world hugely disproportionate to the size of One Life what made them different why are they

18:47 fulfilling the command to glorify God through their lives through their work to enlarge the hegemony of the kingdom of God why are they more effective than most of us the answer I believe is a central reason that we are here tonight if we asked that question to a traditional Evangelical audience the answer would be they had character and they had a high calling and they were willing to live sacrificially and I will concede all three of those these four people were individuals of extraordinary character far above average these four people had a calling

19:33 and they walked out their calling these four people had a significant willingness to sacrifice profoundly for Kingdom purposes but I don't believe that's the whole answer and if I ask the same question to a Pentecostal or a charismatic audience the answer would be they had the anointing the power of God was resting on them in an unusual way and I don't begrudge that either but I bring both of these mindsets both of these paradigms to you and I say why is it that that doesn't explain the whole story there are so many individuals that qualify in both camps there are so many

20:19 individuals that clearly have a huge anointing on their life from God a supernatural anointing there's individuals that have a calling and they have character and they sacrifice and they do not make an impact as large as these four made there has to be another piece to the puzzle anointing character and sacrifice don't satisfy the evidence that we have around us are you with me all of us know people with anointing that are frustrated unable to possess their Birthright bumping up against a stone wall all of us know people of impeccable character

21:06 living sacrificially from hand to mouth not even able to meet their own needs much less be transformational the kingdom there has to be another answer and I believe the difference with these individuals is that in addition to their character in addition to the anointing and the power that was on them that we can see in their lives that they lived according to the key principle that unlocks their Redemptive gift there are seven of these primary gifts and there are seven principles that match them exactly and each principle

21:51 is a specific key for unlocking that gift and it is my belief that one of the most effective strategies that the enemy has to blunt the work of our King that was begun so gloriously at the cross and at the empty tomb is to cause us to develop extraordinary skill sets and extraordinary Authority in the areas that do not apply to us in the areas that do not unlock our Redemptive gift there is no wrong area to learn it is not wrong to master any area of scripture it is not wrong to grow in any

22:36 area whatsoever I'm not talking about right and wrong I'm talking about good and strategic and when you look at Lyman Stewart The Giver we see that he understood stewardship and walked in stewardship and there was an unleashing of his gift when you look at William Wilberforce he was an exhorter in the principles the principle of reality and he knew that this was not a two-week or a two-year or two election cycle he understood that it was going to take a hundred million little steps and he did many many things throughout his life they were based on the harsh realities of the political system the harsh realities of the culture and the business world and the

23:22 economics and all of these other variables he walked in the principle of reality and leveraged that to be a world-class emancipator if you look at Dr Alexander white he understood the principle of design the design of his Nation the design of his heart but more than anything else he understood the design of how God answers prayer he did not just beat on the door of heaven and say I need there forgive me when he wrote his book lord teach us to pray it was a series of sermons preached across years every so often he would discover a new facet of the nature of God and how God's design contributed to his answering a particular kind of prayer and so he would bring that sermon to his people he understood the design

24:10 of God and it made him a formidable player in the kingdom of God and John like the men before him didn't have language she didn't understand the principles but he was walking in the principle of not being so heavily minded he was no earthly good John is not a man who is lost in another world he's not a man who is just a worshiper he's not a man who is his so present in heaven that he's not useful here on Earth he is a man who's tasted of the hardships of the marketplace he is a man who understands economics in the bookkeeping and meeting payroll and schedules and synchronization and building code and all of those things and it is by walking in the reality of the world and erasing

24:57 that line between the secular and sacred that the mercy finds the power of God flowing to them and through them to the world around in a transformational way now I have taught this for many years and many different ways and different contexts and it is always resonated in my spirit but I've never had the transformational impact in other people's lives it's as though people haven't gotten it it's as though it's a key but it's not unlocking the treasures within them and I've pondered that for years and said why what what's so hard about this what's so mysterious about this I use a simple illustration for the

25:43 principles suppose we had six people in this room we had the world's greatest scientists we had a world-class artist a world-class musician the world's greatest parent a wonderful educator and the greatest Statesman that ever lived if you have these six people in the world but what you need is the world's greatest brain surgeon to do surgery on your two-year-old daughter everything that you have is essentially irrelevant even though it has great value I present that illustration and yet by and large people do not lean into pursuing the one principle that will unlock their lives and I believe that I've gained a new insight into the principles in just this

26:32 last week that each of the principles has a tremendous scope a tremendous reach and because of that we can get lost in the vastness of what's there it's kind of like the statement go to college like which college like which major like what's courses within the major and it takes some skill set to drill down from the vastness into a course of action for you and I've come to understand that when we see the principles in a single dimension

27:18 it becomes explosive and that single Dimension is who is God through the grid of this principle if you came here this weekend looking for information on the Redemptive gifts you might be somewhat disappointed because this is going to be a seminar about God about who is God how can we see God from seven different perspectives how can we put the lens of a particular principle on our binoculars to be able to see from our innate design that facet of the nature of God because when we can see that when we can see God through the grid of our principle it is

28:03 that that unlocks the tremendous potential of our gift within us in this Mercy season that we're walking in our primary objective is to know God and to allow that knowledge of God to unlock the deeper Treasures that are in US and it is our focus our precise drilled down focus on the nature of God through the grid of one principle that will allow us to be like a Lyman Steward or William Wilberforce or an Alexander white or a John wallquist that will allow us to glorify God and to enjoy him

28:49 in our walk through crafting a pathway through this broken world that is transformational that builds that makes the world a better place that reveals the kingship of Jesus Christ the fatherhood of God the father in a way that hasn't been revealed before that is the why that's why we're here to be able to understand what key of music God wants to reveal himself to you so that you can understand the deposit that he has placed within you the key that works in your car is totally useless in the car parked next to yours so close so far each one is just a

29:35 little two inch strip of metal that's all chewed up on both edges and yet there's a world of difference from one key to the next and you need the right key to unlock the dynamic of your Redemptive gift