Seeing is believing, right? Maybe not. Let's talk about it. 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One. Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast and our 601st episode. Thank you very much for listening and supporting our ministry and sharing these podcast episodes with your friends. 

Today, we want to talk a little bit about John 20, 29, and we're also right in the middle of a Marketplace Mission Trip.

And our message today in the Marketplace Mission Trip is about delivering excellent work. And I want to talk about living in accordance with our beliefs and the title of today's message, which is Belief Without Sight. Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, but in his first appearance, Thomas wasn't there. As a result, Thomas refused to believe.

So Jesus reappeared a few days later and spoke directly to Thomas. And Thomas was blown away and worshipped Jesus. 

"And Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.'" John 20:29. And that's from the New American Standard Bible.

We're tempted to think that seeing is believing. When we see something, we have our proof. Then we will believe. But Jesus operated on a totally different level. Our faith works that way too. We must believe, or we will not see. We talked about this a little bit in yesterday's podcast as well. In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he said the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. That's 2 Corinthians 4:18. 

When we live our lives, according to what we believe, especially when we believe things that we can't see, we send a message. If you walk through a crowd, talking out loud to a friend who couldn't be seen, people would think you were a bit crazy or a bit off. But when that person does something and others see the work of that other person, but they don't see that person specifically, it causes them to pause. When we allow Jesus to cause us to live differently, others see the work. They see the results. Others begin to see the tracks that Jesus makes in our lives and our performance at work. The way that we live starts to look differently because of who we know and what we believe.

Over time, those tracks become visible to some, and maybe some of those people will even ask and come to a belief in Jesus. The more we believe, the more we see. As Jesus said, "Blessed are those who believe and who haven't seen." That's the comment that he made to Thomas here in this experience, but it's also a word for us because we haven't seen. We can see the results of spiritual life in our friends and our coworkers.

And that's what we challenge people to do on Follower of One. We want to encourage people to live their life as if they follow Jesus 24/7. We want to go to work like we're going on a mission trip because we are. We're on a mission with Jesus. 

Will we live today like believers? Can we trust Jesus and deliver excellence even when no one is looking?

We don't do it to get ahead in our career because really, if we do, if we just did this extra work to get ahead in our career, then we would have our reward. But if we aren't rewarded in any other way then Jesus rewards us. He uses us in the lives of others and the things which are not seen the things that we experience, but we don't see, those are eternal.

Can we deliver excellence and live differently today? Our actions make our Eternal Savior visible to those who will believe. We need to live following Jesus. And I want to challenge myself and you today to live and deliver excellence. Live a life that is fully grounded on the Lord Jesus Christ, so that other people can see the results of that life and see the difference that it makes.

He will become visible to some because of the way we live. We won't need to talk or try to convince, we just simply need to live as if we believe that following Jesus matters.  We know it does. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. Thanks for being on the Marketplace Mission Trip, if you are. And if you'd like to try this out, why not join us at https://community.Followerofone.org?

You can sign up for a profile in our online community and then go to our Courses Page and select the next Marketplace Mission Trip. Join us. They're free. You can try this out for two weeks in your own workplace and live your faith. And see about producing some evidence that proves to your coworkers, that Jesus is real.

Thanks for being a marketplace minister. And thanks for making a difference.

Today, many assert that knowledge is common.  Let's talk about common knowledge for a moment. 

Hey, I'm Mike Henry Sr. With Follower of One. Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. And thank you for joining us for episode number 600. This is a landmark for us.

And so thank you for joining us on this podcast. It's also day three of the second week of our Marketplace Mission Trip, and our message today is to listen; to think about and listen to other people and appreciate them. And that brought me to first Corinthians chapter two, verse 14, "but a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised."  That was from the New American Standard Version of the Bible.

The English Standard Version of the Bible says that they are spiritually discerned. We talk about common knowledge often and common understanding. I thought that was commonly understood. Often you will hear people today say, well, you know, it's, it's settled fact that there's climate change going on or other things like that happening in our world.

And what I wanted to talk about a little bit today for us as believers in the marketplace, is how we interact with people who don't have the same knowledge that we have when it comes to spiritual things. "The natural man does not accept the things that are of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him."

Paul has been talking about how there's a difference between what's foolish and how certain things look foolish to some, but they're smart to others. Most people we know, especially those who don't claim to follow Jesus, can't discern the truth of scripture. I don't see how we can expect them to live according to the Bible. 

Because there are many laws in the US that parallel laws in the Bible, we sometimes assume there is some correlation. But for most of our current world, this is no longer the case. Most people who don't follow Jesus eventually depart from his laws in one place or another, or maybe more. Does this mean that we don't vote or that we don't take part in our culture? No, it means that we still are involved, but we can't expect them to behave according to what makes sense to us.

What makes sense to people who believe in Jesus, will be different than people who don't believe in Jesus. When people don't believe in Jesus, those spiritually appraised things look different. They look foolish. 

We can't expect the things of God to continue to be the rule in our land anymore, especially in a nation that's ruled by a majority or in a democracy. What then should we do? What can we do today? Well, we must live our own standard to the extent that we can. Listening to others and appreciating others comes from our knowledge of who created us and who saved us.

And as we stay close to Jesus and pray to him and ask for him to give us direction, then he will guide us. At work, we don't have to worry about convincing others about the truth of our scripture. We simply live trusting Jesus. He's in charge. We can pray for our coworkers, like every prayer matters because it does.

And we can appreciate and serve others too. The keys that Jesus has given us to make a difference in the world are serving others and appreciating others and loving them. And that's what we've been called to do: to go into our workplaces and do that today. We must know what we believe and be able to live that answer for ourselves and to be able to give that answer for ourselves too when we get a chance to speak. 

Today, I want to encourage you as a marketplace Christian, let's go into the workplace, trust Jesus, and live according to our beliefs. The rest of this is the world's problem. We want to love people in such a way that they can't understand what's different about us. And then let Jesus open their hearts and their eyes to what's going on. Because they have to learn spiritual things from the Holy Spirit. They can't learn them from us necessarily. 

I hope that makes sense. I'm thinking off the top of my head today and doing this podcast because I'm so excited about what's happening in our ministry. Right now, there are people on a Marketplace Mission Trip.  That's an exercise that we take that puts us on a mission with Jesus in our workplace.

If you'd like to learn more about that, you can check out our website, at https://followerofone.org, learn more about the Marketplace Mission Trips, and join our online community. Thanks very much.

When things are going well, do you start to wonder when they're going to go bad or when something bad might happen? Do you often dread the future? 

 I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One. Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. I want to quote a verse from the first Thessalonians chapter four, verse one.

And I'm reading from the New American Standard version because I want to concentrate on a phrase that the very end. "Finally then brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more." 

What does it mean to "excel still more?" Other translations actually say  "that you do so more and more." The English Standard Version and the New International, for example, say that.

Or "that you do this even more," is another translation. How do we walk even more or excel still more? That's our challenge in the workplace today. If things are going well for you at work, sometimes I get tempted to think, "Oh, well, I wonder what's going to happen bad." I wonder what bad thing will happen next.

When does the next shoe drop? When we think about our spiritual life, this is our job: to excel still more. To walk in our relationship with Jesus a little bit more each day. Let's stay in our relationship with Jesus. If you're out of it, or if you've dropped the ball, if you're feeling depressed or negative, remember that Jesus is right there.

He's with you at work today. He can help you with your circumstances and your situation. And all we need to do is remember that he is calling the shots. Our work life, our businesses, everything about us, it's really owned by him. He's the one who's in charge. And our relationship with him is one that we can re-enjoy anytime we want.

I want to challenge us today to excel still more. To walk in our relationship with Jesus more and more and more. Wherever you are today, ask God to show you the next thing. Ask him to show you what to do next. Today, we can depend on Jesus and trust him and let him use us in our place of work.

You see no answer or there's nothing for you to do today, but your job? Do it very well. If you come across an opportunity to be a blessing to someone, take it. If you get an idea that you ought to do something that seems a little silly, figure out how you can take that action. Every day in our workplaces is an opportunity to excel still more. To step into our relationship with Jesus Christ to live our full-time eternal life, instead of just reveling in our part-time temporal lives. Our physical life will end, but our relationship with Jesus will extend into eternity. I can't really explain that, but I can remind us to step into our relationship with Jesus Christ and experience that joy and that peace that he gives us we are his instruments in our work workplaces.

That's our job. Let's do that today. Thanks very much for being a marketplace minister. Thanks for considering how you can excel still more in your faith today. I want to encourage you to get around other people who are trying to do the same thing. Join us at https://community.followerofone.org. You will find a group of people who are trying to excel in living their faith in the workplace on a daily basis.

Thanks so much for being a marketplace minister. And thanks for making a difference with your faith. Everything we do because we trust Jesus matters forever. Let's walk in that relationship with him and excel still more. Thanks very much.

What is real life? What does it mean to really live? How do we experience this life? Let's talk about that today. 

Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Henry Sr. And I'm grateful to be here. I've struggled a little bit with COVID for the last several days, and I'm catching up in my podcast recordings and I wanted to talk about 1 Thessalonians chapter three, verse eight.

From the New American Standard, it says, "for now we really live, if you stand firm in the Lord."

I thought this was a fitting place to kind of restart my podcasting efforts.  It's interesting how drained I felt when I was experiencing the symptoms of COVID. It was like a really bad cold. But I got to thinking about this because this passage, which is one that I like to come back to from time to time, challenges me a bit. 

I don't know if you ever saw the movie Secondhand Lions, but there's a play on this phrase at the end of it. 

"So they really lived?" "Yes. They really lived." 

It's like we get to live two different lives. We have a temporal life, the one that's going to end. And we have this eternal life. The one that we're given. We were dead to it, but we're given that life when we trust Christ as our Savior. We re-enter eternal life. We become alive to God. And this real-life, this really living, becomes something that takes place on this plane, where we interact with the Holy Spirit and with Jesus and with God and with fellow believers. 

This real-life is what we get to experience when we know that our friends are standing firm in the Lord when we're encouraged about the relationships that we have with fellow believers. It's a different level of life, a different kind of life. People who don't have that life don't understand. And part of our job is to live in such a way that they might see that life and want to take part in it.

That's part of the idea behind the Five Daily Activities for Follower of One. We want to challenge people by praying for them and appreciating them and serving them. And we also want to be able to challenge them by being able to explain the difference between this real life that we have that's eternal, and this temporal life that we have that will pass away.

Paul is actually celebrating the Thessalonians here. Timothy had brought a letter to Paul from the Thessalonians. And Paul is celebrating that. He's saying  "We're glad to hear that you are standing firm in the Lord." 

And therefore I'm drawing a parallel here. I'm going to challenge us to remember that our real life is growing in Jesus. It's standing firm in Jesus. Real-life is what we communicate and what we live when we can operate in our eternal life plane and not just on our temporal life plane. 

Life is much more than what we eat or drink or even the experiences that we have by being a tourist or by going someplace or traveling. Those are all great things. And you may experience the blessing of God through nature or through friendship. But as we stand firm in the Lord, as we rely on our relationship with him, that's when we experience real life, the real-life that never ends. 

Today, I want to challenge us as marketplace Christians. Let's live that real life. Let's be those real living people in and around our friends and in our workplaces. As we stand firm in the Lord, as we pray for others, and as we give away pieces of our life because we trust Jesus, we stand firm in him and we experience this real life.

I would like to encourage you to join us in this real life as well. We've created a community called FollowerOfOne.org. You can join us there. Go to https://FollowerOfOne.org and click on the community link and join us in the online community. And there you can take part in the next Marketplace Mission Trip. Thanks very much for living your faith and for making a difference with your faith. It matters. Everything you do as a follower of Jesus matters forever. Thanks very much.

On day five of the Marketplace Mission Trip, we talk about Speaking for Ourselves. Most of us spend the bulk of our lives in a world that doesn't want to be told what to believe. Let's talk today about how we speak when we're given the chance to relate to our faith. 

Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. I'm Mike Henry Sr. Thanks for joining me. Today, as we talk about this statement made by the apostle Paul in second Corinthians three, two. "It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God."

And that's from the Christian Standard Bible. I tend to talk like I'm right all the time. If you disagree with me, you're not thinking, or you're missing some facts. My kind of default mode is that I'm right. Whether you agree or not, and I've had to learn over the years really, that I'm generally more wrong than right.

Yep. There it is. I said it.  In fact, as you listen to me, you may be more wrong than you think simply because you're listening to a guy who's generally wrong. I can get things often, very wrong.

Everything I know about my faith and most of what I remember about what happened to me, all of those things have a perspective. Now that I'm aware of my perspective, I've learned to speak for myself. I only talk about the things that I can with my own perspective. Even now, as I speak to you about the Bible, you're hearing my perspective in my learning, but even those things came to me through others, and at the hand of God.  Those things come to me from the hand of God. I'm not competent in myself to claim anything as coming from me, but my adequacy comes from God. In second Corinthians. Paul's defending himself a bit. And in this verse, he's reminding the Corinthians that what he knows and what he has done have all come from God. 

God is our adequacy. He's the foundation of what we do. Some other translations use words like sufficiency instead of adequacy. God operates his plan, and even our own degree of error is factored in. And that's why we talk about speaking for ourselves as the fifth daily activity in Follower of One. We can talk with some degree of certainty about the things that we've experienced and the things that we chose to believe. But to tell someone else that they must do something that they have to live a certain way to get to heaven, or that they have to do certain things to be Christians, I'm not so certain about many of those things.  I'm not suggesting that we make our own Bible or make our own religion, but fortunately, our faith allows for a degree of error.

We each have a degree of error and that's why it's important. My degree of error is unknown to me. I'm certain it's there. We're all, some degree wrong. Romans 3:23 says we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all come up short. That's the degree of error that I'm talking about. And I believe that degree of error is what challenges us to speak using the first person or to speak for ourselves.

Today, if you get an opportunity to speak about your faith, try and limit your words to statements that begin with I, or me. Let's talk about what God has done in our lives so that our coworkers and our friends can choose how they process that information. In the end, their salvation and their life with Christ is dependent upon choices they make while they're interacting directly with him, not things they say to us or how they behave.

Those factors don't matter. What matters is their relationship with Jesus Christ. And we want to challenge them to have a relationship with Jesus because we have a relationship with him and we experienced certain things. So let's try and limit things to the first person today and speak for ourselves. That way we avoid violating proprieties. And we are making a way for people to hear about our faith, without trying to tell them how to live. It's a necessity in our world. 

 Thanks for listening to me, stumble through some of this as we figure it out. Our job is to be witnesses, to do what we do because we believe who Jesus is and then tell others why. 

Thanks so much for being a marketplace minister and thanks for serving other people in the workplace because you follow Jesus. Our actions matter.  Today, let's focus on activity number five and speak for ourselves. Thanks very much.

Have you ever thought something was one way and you were 180 degrees wrong?

Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Henry Sr. Thanks for joining us today. Today is day four of the Marketplace Mission Trip. And we often talk about the importance of serving others. Today's passage is Mark chapter 10 verses 43 and 44.

"But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all." That's Mark chapter 10 verses 43 and 44 in the English Standard Version.

Jesus is responding to the then-current view of authority.

You know the secular version of the Golden Rule, "the person with the gold makes all the rules." Much of our world operates on that basis even today. Jesus was responding to the disciples who were angry because James and John had asked to have positions number one and two in Jesus's new kingdom. Everyone else was upset.

They wanted those positions too. Jesus responded with these verses. Do you want to be great? Would you like to get ahead; succeed? The great person is a servant, Jesus tells us.

I spent much of my career trying to be great, but without looking like I was trying to be great.

What about you? Did you ever do anything like that? The great person is a servant, Jesus tells us the path to greatness goes down through servanthood, not up through success and conquest. But then Jesus adds more. He says, if you want position, number one, you must serve everyone else. Actually, he uses a different word here than serve.

He used a word that meant being a lowly slave, not just a servant, not an appreciated hired hand. No. This is a drone, robot, someone you didn't notice. You may be even didn't know their name. Can we go there?

Can we hear the world talk about servant leadership? Whether or not someone presented the idea before Jesus, God built servant leadership into each one of us. We lead best when we serve others. The world took Jesus out of the equation, but he's actually the proof. Without Jesus, the idea of servant leadership is only a theory. But with Jesus in the picture, we know the world was created to operate on servant leadership. Our world is servant-leader operated to the core and Jesus is the example.

God made us, all of us, to appreciate being served. Therefore people could make him known to just about anyone simply by serving them, because that's what Jesus did. When we serve others because Jesus said, too, we make his kingdom visible. We bring his kingdom to light. We bring his realm and his world into our world.

Others see Jesus when we live like we obey him. So today on the Marketplace Mission Trip, we want to remind you to serve others. When we start praying for people earlier this week, Jesus always responds. To the Holy Spirit, starts giving us ideas of other people that we can serve so that he would become visible.

Today, can we take the role of slave, even if it's only for a day? Try it. We're doing that on the Marketplace Mission Trip too, by serving others. If you've never been on a Marketplace Mission Trip, that's not a problem. Head over to https://community.followerofone.org and join our online community. And you'll get invited to the next Marketplace Mission Trip too. Thank you for being a minister in the marketplace.

And thanks for making a difference in the lives of the people that you interact with today. Everything you do because you trust Jesus matters forever. Thanks very much.

We often think we know the future. We forecast the weather. We imagine we will follow the same path as the people before us . But some things we just don't know.
Welcome back to the Follower of One Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Henry Sr. Thanks for joining us again today. I was recently struck anew by a verse: first John three, verse two.

"Dear friends, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we will see him as he is."

That's from the Christian Standard Bible. And once again, that's first John chapter three, verse two. John's reminding us that we're uncertain about the future with Jesus.
We often try to avoid uncertainty. But if we consider what we're certain about, we find something else. We don't know what he will be like, but we've been told that we will be like him. In Philippians three we were told that.

If we focus on what we don't know, we might become paralyzed or we might jump to conclusions. I can fall into a trap for both of those. But if I focus on what I do know, things change. We will be like, Jesus. We don't have to worry about the future. We can focus on today. We will be like him and we will see him as he is. Are you confident in the grace of God? Are you able to live with the uncertainty and trust Jesus? Trust is my word for the year 2022. Today, I want to be fully present. I want to be right where I am. I want to live my life at the moment, trusting Jesus. He has my future.

Now I'm not telling us to disregard, save, or to be responsible family people, or to make a positive difference in the world.

That's not it at all. This is not live for a moment type of stuff. The Holy Spirit may warn us about the future. He may tell us to consider our retirement, tell us to save more and to be more healthy. I believe he's often telling me those things. But in everything, I want to focus on what I can control.

I need to avoid worrying about things outside of my control, like what eternity will look like and what will happen to me. I want to trust Jesus and do what he has for me to do today. I don't even have to speculate about what eternity will be like. I can trust that Jesus has that covered too.

The context of this passage is that we're to love others. We can actively make a difference in someone else's life today. Look for that opportunity. Your circumstances, your fears about the future, or any concerns about what's going on in your life, don't necessarily preempt the opportunities that we have to serve others and to love others. So let's look for an opportunity.

Let's ask Jesus. He will put us to work in the lives of someone other than ourselves. We can step into his calling in the moment and look for ways to help every one else that we meet today, move one notch closer to Jesus.

So today on the Marketplace Mission Trip, we're also talking about knowing what we believe.

Let's remind ourselves that Jesus has a job for us to do today. And that job is to love God and to love others. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. If you've never been on one of our Marketplace Mission Trips, there's one going on right now, as you're hearing this. And there will be another one going on sometime in the next few weeks. You can check it out at https://marketplacemissiontrip.com and request an invitation to join the next Marketplace Mission Trip.

Thanks very much for being a minister in your marketplace. And thanks for letting God use you in the world to make a difference. Your life can make an eternal difference. Thanks for trusting Jesus and following him at work. Thanks very much.

How often should we forgive others? That's our topic for today.

I'm Mike Henry with the Follower of One Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. As we talk about how we forgive others, I want to read from Matthew chapter 18 verses 23 through 27.

"For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, one who owed 10,000 talents was brought before him. Since he did not have the money to pay it back, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt. At this, the servant fell face down before him and said, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.' Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan."

And that's from the Christian Standard Bible. I want to talk for a moment about 10,000 talents. This man had owed the king 10,000 talents. There are varying degrees of understanding with regard to talent, but often a talent of gold or silver was the equivalent to multiple years' wages.

It was a great amount of money. Imagine 75 pounds of gold or 75 pounds of silver. This was more money than any person could have spent almost in a lifetime. And there were 10,000 of them. And so this, this is an unbelievable amount of money and I believe Jesus is making this point to make an exaggeration. He's speaking directly to Peter and to others about how many times we should forgive others. And he makes this illustration. Can you imagine that you've been forgiven 10,000 lifetime's worth of income? That's an awful lot of money. And if we've been forgiven that much, then what should we forgive? This story goes on.

And this person after being forgiven, that amount of money would not forgive someone who owed him a hundred days' wages. So this massive comparison is taking place. And as a result, we find out further in the story that the king ends up not forgiving this man, his debt, but having him thrown in prison.

It's an amazing story because what Jesus is saying is we've been each forgiven 10,000 lifetime's worth of money. And we therefore should go forgive everyone else. So what's the number? How often should we forgive? It's way more than I tend to forgive. I don't know about you, but I don't forgive nearly enough and I don't forgive nearly as freely as I should.

And my challenge for us today is to be forgivers. Let's forgive like we've been forgiven 10,000 lifetimes of income. Imagine finding out one day that you owe a debt that you could never repay. That's exactly what happens to us when we become Christians. We've already created enough debt through our sin and our selfish lifestyle.

We've already been forgiven so much debt by Jesus at the moment that he saves us that there's nothing that we can't forgive someone else. And that's an interesting challenge. And I believe only Jesus can make that command of us because of what he has forgiven us.

So today I want to challenge us as marketplace Christians. Let's forgive. Look for opportunities to forgive others. Look for a way to give away a little more, to forgive a little better. As we're praying for people today, and as we're trying to appreciate our coworkers on our Marketplace Mission Trip, let's forgive others.

It's one of the ways that we show appreciation for others - that we freely forgive. Thanks for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for considering how your faith shows up in the world every day. Join a community of us who are trying to bring our faith with us everywhere we go. And we connect together at https://followerofone.org.

You can join our online community at https://community.followerofone.org. Thanks very much.

What do you do when God gives you a job and it's not what you wanted. You know that the work came from him, but you know, you didn't want to do it.

Hi, I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One. Thanks for joining us on today's podcast. We do the short devotionals so that we can challenge ourselves as we go to work.

How can we live our faith on a daily basis? Some days, God asks us to do things that we didn't want to do. Today, I want to read one verse, but talk about a story in Matthew 14. Matthew 14:10 says "He sent and had John beheaded in the prison."

John, the Baptist had been in prison by king Herod. But Herod got drunk at a party and made a promise to his stepdaughter, and in order to keep his promise, he had John the Baptist killed.

Do you ever feel like God puts you in situations where you don't want to be? Sometimes I believe God calls us to unpleasant tasks and to difficult things.

He called John to prison and now he calls John to death. I don't believe Jesus is calling any of us who are probably listening to this podcast, to die physically today. But he may be calling us to let go of something that we're holding on to, so that we can serve him better.

That's one of the challenges, and one of the questions I ask myself, when I read a passage like this. I would like the Holy Spirit to remind me that everything's not rosy, that all of my days are not in all my strengths, and that I don't get to live the life that I choose. I'm living the life that God chose.

God created a life for me and he gave it to me so that I could live it for him. Today, as marketplace Christians, what's God asking you to do? Is he asking you to do something hard? Is he asking you to do something challenging? This story's interesting because it goes on and Jesus and the disciples don't even get a rest. They don't get to grieve this loss.

As soon as they hear about this loss, they go on to try and get away. They try and get away from the crowds, but the crowds chase them down. And that's when the feeding of the 5,000 happens. It's interesting how this just all is backed up one upon another.
Are you buried and covered up doing things you didn't want to do today?

I want to challenge you a little bit, but I also want to encourage you. I pray for the people who listen to this podcast. And I'm excited for you in one regard, and that is: God's working his plan. We have to remember that people in heaven celebrated John's arrival.

We grieve John's loss, or we grieve the loss of something that we wanted to do, or even the loss of a life of a friend. We grieve that loss, but heaven celebrates.
Let's ask God to give us his perspective on our activities today.

"God, what would you have me do? Some of it won't be fun. Some of it won't be easy. But I do know there's joy and there's peace trusting you. As I do the hard jobs."

Today, particularly I'm praying for each person doing a hard job, each person doing a job they don't like, each person praying for a boss they don't particularly care for, each person working for frustrating and irate customers or dealing with stubborn vendors.

We have a ministry. And often that ministry means that we give away little pieces of our lives so that God might be glorified. Today, let's remember, we won't always get to do the things that we enjoy, but we do get to glorify God in everything that we do.  And in the end we can rejoice in that.

Thanks for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for making a difference with your faith today. Doing the hard things or the easy things with joy so that you glorify God, it all matters. Your actions matter forever. Thanks for being a marketplace minister and check us out over https://followerofone.org, where you can see other resources and talk with us.

We want to pray for you. We want to help you live your faith on a daily basis. Head over to https://followerofone.org and check it out. Thanks very much.

What are you worth? Do you ever think about your net worth? It's something that I've thought about before.

Hey, I'm Mike Henry with Follower of One. Thanks for coming back to the Follower of One podcast. Today I want to talk a little bit about net worth and our possessions and I'm reading from Luke 12:15 in the New American Standard Bible.

"Then he said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions."

Our life does not equate to our possessions. I pick up some of these verses from My Utmost For His Highest because it's something that I read on a regular basis.

And I really appreciate that devotional. Our stuff tempts us and separates us from God. It does no matter what. We're not good enough to manage our stuff well. "Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed." When we start thinking that our stuff is even ours, it creates a problem for us.

Money is tempting. It tempts us to compare. We're tempted to believe that it will solve our problems and help us achieve our goals. If our goal is the vision God put in us, then let God accomplish his own goals. Our stuff is part of the resources. It's like we were building our own warehouse and our own storehouse of things, and God came and took all that over when he said we were bought with a price. Christ died on the cross to pay for us. But he also then wants us to use our stuff for his glory. If our vision has been given to us by him, let's put our stuff to work for him. And if our vision hasn't been given to us by God, then we can expect God's agenda to run opposite our own.

And we'll be frustrated and disappointed from time to time. Beware because every form of greed looks like something that takes us away from God. It's my own desire to use my stuff, my way. That's a form of greed. That's one that I run into the most. I think I have this problem on a regular basis and I wonder often how to deal with it.

And today I want to challenge us. Let's ask God how he wants us to use the stuff that he has given us. Every day, we need to remind ourselves that the stuff that we have was given to us by him. It will all be gone one day. But we won't. We'll still be around. We'll be with God wherever he is, and we'll be able to bask in our relationship with him. Our stuff won't have been an obstacle.

Today. I want to encourage us to fight against this temptation by giving something away. As usual. I'm talking to myself, trying to tell myself I need to let go of the things that I have. I often see my own energy and my own resources as the answer to every problem.

But if the vision is from God, then I want to let God solve the problems. I want to be patient and wait for him. Listen for him to tell me what to do, and then act.
Today, if God gives you action, do it. If he challenges you to give away some money or if he reminds you that there's something that you need to do today, he's been bugging you about it for a while, let's do it. Let's figure out a way to do what he has for us to do today.

Today, ask God, what do you want me to do with my stuff? And then give it away. Because even when we have an abundance, our life does not consist of our possessions. Thanks for being a marketplace minister.

Thank you for giving God your life and your stuff to use for his goals and his objectives. Let's punch in today. "Here I am God!" And let him put us to work so that we can see his glory in the lives of the people that we work with.

Also, please share this podcast with a friend. And check out the Marketplace Mission Trip. You can find out more about it by joining the online community called Follower of One. Head over to https://community.followerofone.org, and create a profile there. Join us and check it out. It will put you to work, living your faith every day in the marketplace. Thanks very much.