Video Transcript: Focusing on the Seeds of Abundant Life (Dr. Raimondo)
Welcome back to coaching, the golden years. And this is video seven. And your homework was to be asking the Lord, for the proper soil, to plant your seed of time, talent and money. So you should be working on that right now at the present, maybe you've even have a possible place. Maybe the Lord has already provided you with something where he wants you to place your seed of time, talent and money. But in this video, we're going to look at some another gift that the Lord provides another seed, and that one is life. Now, the Lord said He will provide us with abundant life. And there are a number of people who when they talk about abundant life, they talk about prosperity, having abundant of things in your life. Well, I want to just deal with life itself in abundance. Because here we are, we're retired, some of you are over 55 and 60. Maybe you're 70 like myself. So when we think about it, we don't have much abundant life left. I mean, some people died very early in life. So we can't think that we're going to be living another 70 years, we may only have five or 10. Now, what if you died today? And you were standing in front of the Lord? And the Lord Jesus said to you, what did you do with your life? What did you do with the amount of time, talent and money, if you had some, if he blessed you with some. What did you do with it in your life? What did you use your life for? Now, what are you going to say? What response could you give the Lord? What would be your answer if he asked you, what did you do with the life that I gave you in order to provide a better kingdom? What did you do with the life I gave you to be a citizen of My Kingdom? What did you do with the life I gave you in my to be in my kingdom, helping fellow citizens, males and females? What did you do with the life that I gave you? Now how are you going to answer that? What could you possibly say to the Lord? Now, Would you be saying, well, Lord, I, you know, I read and I was taught that abundant life meant to accumulating wealth. And I don't think the Lord would agree with that. Because you can't take the wealth with you. Because then he would say, Okay, you accumulated wealth. Well, what did you do with the wealth? What would you do with the blessings of the money I gave you? What did you do with it? Did you did you donate money to any really valuable Christian cause? Or did you hoard it? Did you buy yourself a very expensive automobile? When you could have purchased something for less and donated the difference? What did you do with your time did you only spend time going on vacations and cruises and lounging around just to enjoy the beauty that you could afford? Is that what you did with your time? Did you watch TV all day long? What did you do with your time? What did you do with the talent I gave you? Did you only use it so that you can become wealthy? Or what did you do with the time the talent? Excuse me, that I gave you? And from what I see you didn't do anything with it. Now, wow, what kind of a position would you be in? If you died today? And you met the Lord? And he started asking you those kinds of questions. What would you say? So now, here we are in the golden years, we have time, because we're retired. We have a talent, hopefully, of some
kind, whether it was a hobby, or was the job we were in, that we were really good at. But now we're retired. And maybe we have some money, and maybe we don't, maybe we just have a pension and Social Security. That's okay. I do. That's all I have. But I can still manage to donate money to different causes. I can still help someone in need. Okay, so what did you do with your time, your talent, your money in your life? What are you going to say to Jesus, if he said, What did you do with the life I gave you? Now I'm bringing this up, because we've been moving along, right? And where are we going to plant our seed? What kind of seed are we going to plant? We're asking the Lord, where do you want us to plant the seed? time, talent or money for all three? So that when the Lord says to you, what do you do with the time, talent, and money? Oh, Lord, you know, I retired. And thank you so very much for the blessing that you gave me because I had a nice pension. And I had some money saved up, I had an IRA, and I had a few dollars, and that talent that you gave me, you know, I really enjoyed doing it. So I wanted to share it with young people. So I joined the club. And I was helping young people develop that talent, and they went on their own way. And I got letters from them, I got phone calls from them, that they're doing very well. And it was really great to hear that. Thank you for the opportunity to be able to do that. Thank you, Lord, for giving me the time, talent, money and a life in which to do it in. That sounds a whole lot better on it. What about this? What about the fact that right now, when we look at our society, a lot of it is very wrong. We have politicians that want to destroy the Constitution, we have politicians that are constantly wanting to change Christian values. The Constitution was written based on Judeo Christian values, but they want to destroy that. So now you have time, talent and money. Maybe you were pretty smart at the job you were doing. Maybe you were good at marketing, maybe you're good at promoting. Maybe you maybe you're a lawyer and you're retired. Have you ever thought of supporting a politician who is a Christian, a Christian politician? We need more politicians, in Congress, especially and in the Senate that want to maintain Judeo Christian values in America? Are you going to do something? Do you have the resources? Do you have the talent? Do you have the time to either run for office? Why not? We need more Christians in office, support someone who is a Christian, help them to get into office? Because we need more Christians in office. How about supporting businesses that are Christian based? How about doing business with only Christian based companies who support Christian values? That's one way to spend your money. Maybe, you know some Christians who would like and you have background in business who wants to start a business and you could get to help them get off the The ground, there's so many things we could do to change America to be the Christian nation that it was designed to be. Let's make America Christian, again, let's make sure that those God given rights, not people given rights, God given rights continue. So if you have a time, talent and money that could support
those things, well by all means do so. By all means do so. Maybe you're a former teacher, maybe you could start helping parents who are sick and tired of the indoctrination of the public school system. And they want their children to really get a Christian type education. And maybe you're a former teacher, and you say, You know what, I'm going to down, I'm going to donate some of my time, to parents who want homeschool. And I'm going to help them in certain areas, that maybe they're not that proficient in. Maybe you're a retired administrator of public schools, and you know what it was like, and you really want to see a change. And maybe you get together a group of power teachers who go out and help and support homeschooling, there's so many different things that we could be doing. So what are you going to do with the rest of your life? So that when the Lord says, What did you do with the life I gave you, you have a good explanation. All right. So now you have another question to ask the Lord, as you're praying, for where do you want me to plant my seeds? Where do you want me to put my time, talent and money? Lord, how do you want me to spend the rest of my life? Lord, see, now you ask him questions, Lord, how would you like me to spend the rest of my life? Lord, what do you want me to do with the rest of my life? Lord, how can I best serve you with the remaining life that I have? Lord, how can I best serve the kingdom? With the left with the life that I have left? Lord, how can I best serve the kingdom for you? With the gift of life that I that I have? Lord, how can I help you insert in serving in the kingdom with the life you've given me? So we have, we can ask that question a number of different ways. Until finally, we get a revelation. God reveals to us, the Holy Spirit speak to us reveals to us what it is that he wants us to do. Now, let me also provide a word of caution. The enemy isn't going to like you asking those questions. The enemy is not going to like you serving the Lord and serving citizens of the kingdom. So he's going to tempt you to do other things. He's going to try to lead you down a path where your seeds won't grow. He's going to try to lead you down a path where you scatter your seeds and no harvest. And so that you are a failure, because that's what he wants. He wants you to fail. In God's kingdom. That's what he wants you to do. Now, here's how you know the difference between when the Holy Spirit speaks and where the enemy speaks. When the Lord speaks to you, it's pretty much a command a statement. I want you to invest your money in x, y, z. I want you to use your talent over here. straightforward, plain and simple. The enemy on the other hand goes, you don't want to spend your money on that. You don't want to spend your money you want to hang on to it. Let's not spend that money, you know, wouldn't you rather have a better car, you know, right now you need a car. So let's put the money into a new car, we can always save some more money for that cause but right now you need a new car. See the difference? That's the difference. One, the statements lead to temptation. The other one leads to fulfillment of doing something and and the voice is a command. Don't eat from the tree. If you do
you die, simple. Attack. Charge, go here, go there. Watch out, you might lose your wallet. You left your glasses on the table. Statements that give us direction, that's the Holy Spirit. So be very careful as you're praying because the enemy is not gonna like it. He's not gonna like you working for the Lord. He's not gonna like it, he's going to want to steer you in another direction. So be sure to also be asking the Lord for discernment. To really know when he's speaking to discern his voice, thank him for giving you this the gift of discernment to recognize his voice. That's what you want to do those are things to protect you from going down the wrong road, choosing the soil that you want, rather than the soil that he wants. be careful. You want to be able to use your life for the Lord. But you want to be able to use the life for the Lord the way the Lord wants you to use it. Keep in mind and you guys we're retired, we've had bosses. The Lord is the boss is the King of kings, the Lord of lords. So ask the Lord, what do you want me to do with the rest of my life? What do you want me to do? With my time, talent and money? Keep asking that question.Thank him for an answer to that question. Thank him for listening. Thank him for revealing. Thank him, thank him for giving you the time, talent and the money. Thank him for the life that you still have. When you wake up in the morning that you can still serve the Lord. That's your homework. Your homework, till next time is to want to know from the Lord, what do you want me to do with the rest of my life? How can I serve you best in this life? So that if he should ever asks you, what did you do with your life? You could say, Lord, you gave me instructions. You gave me an order and I fulfilled it. You told me you wanted me to do this, and that's what I did. That's what you want to be able to do if the Lord ever asks, until next time, God Bless you