Gateway Church's Podcast
Peter Daniels - Part II
And he says these words in Philippians, "Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected, that I press on, that I may lay hold of that which Christ Jesus has also laid on of me." Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us, as many as amateur, have this in mind, and if in any think you think otherwise God will reveal even this to you, nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, and let us be of the same mind. If we go through that very carefully where Paul says, "I press forward towards the goal, mark on my high calling," forgetting those things behind, if you study the ancient Greek, you find it talks about a distinction that you put away the things of the past that you remember God's goodness. It's a discerning, putting away of the past, and you press forward towards the goal. As well as that, he says, "All who are mature should have such a view of things." So if you want to measure your maturity quotient, ask yourself the question, "How's my goals program done?" Now I often wonder what I should share with people when I come to a meeting like this. You know, sometimes I speak to 20 or 30,000 at a time, and all you can see is a toes on the front, but I can see your faces, and so I can see whether or not you're responding. And maybe if I go to the whiteboard and do something to get your attention. When to get home this evening, I'd like you to consider doing an evaluation on your economics. Add up everything that you own, ladies, the shoes that you got on the bottom of the wardrobe and you haven't shown your husband yet. Come in the power tools that you have put on the credit card slip and hide in the garage. I want your jewelry, your money, your shares, your boats, your motorbikes, your motorcars, your linen, your crockery, everything that you own, every sink, your spectacles, your expensive fountain pens, everything that you own. If you did this, this is going to change your life. Put a price on everything you own. And when you come to the final amount, take off 10%. Why? Because you're lighter yourself. Christians always think evangelistically. When you get to that figure, I then want you to take off what you own. What happens there, that will leave a net figure. Let me pop this up, whatever this amount is, it will leave a net value. That's what your life financially is worth, ensuring policy is everything. Now what I want you to do, bearing in mind that you live in the greatest economy and the history of the human race. I want you to divide this here, your net value, by a peculiar figure. And that is the years you have worked. So I've worked for 10 years or 18 years or 22 years or 50 years. Whatever years you've worked, you divide by the years' work. So if you've worked 18 years, you're going to divide your net value by 18. The amount that you get at the end, whatever that amount is, is what you've sold your life for per annum in the greatest economy in the history of the human race. And on the basis of that, ask yourself the question. When I go through the portals of heaven when I expire, am I going to be proud to face my savior and say, "Lord Jesus, because of your goodness to me, because you didn't allow me to be born in Bangladesh, because you didn't allow me to be born during the Black Plague, because you allowed me to come to this country, the greatest economy in the history of the world, because of that. This is my response, and this is what I paid my ties, my gifts and offerings on, if you feel good about that? Let me tell you, we did a survey on Christians around the world. It wasn't a major survey, but it was significant. How much Christians spend on their brains over a ten-year period? It was just about $10 per head. Now I know some of you have taken computer lessons and all sorts of things, but wait for the qualification. How much of is spent on your brains? It shows an upward mobilization of your income allowing for taxation and inflation. For our survey had shown that all Christians, just about, 99.9% spend more on their shoe leather than they do on their brains. They spend more on underundee odorant, and your brains are not there. Now if you want any evidence for a devil, there's some profound evidence for you. Also, I'd like you to consider getting involved in another policy in your life called the good policy. Very simple, get out of debt and stay out. Not one of our corporations had an overdraft or loan or a mortgage anywhere in the world. There's an awful lot of power in being debt free. Now let me shift gears again. I put up here leadership. As Christians we ought to be leaders. Leadership for a Christian is not optional, it's mandatory. You are either leader in effect or you are leader in self-imposed exile, but you are a leader. Many of us couldn't lead a group in silent prayer, we've never really let anything with being managers or with being given a role, but we've never independently gone out and let anything. So what I want you to do is interact with me and tell me what your principles are on leadership. Just call some out, I just want ten of them. I mean I traveled ten thousand miles, you're not going to talk to me? Confidence in them, man. Next one. Ready for your pardon? Integrity. Integrity. Integrity, keep going, service, communication, communication, character, what was that one? Focus. It's just your accent, that's all you know, I think George Bernard Shaw said the thing that divides the American, the British, is a common language, accountability, discipline, work, knowledge, that's it, we've got, okay, we've got ten of them. I would like for the sake of an experiment, just to warm us up tonight, for the sake of experiment, would you be prepared to accept that they are all the principles necessary for success for an experiment, would you be prepared to do that? Hello? Okay, well if we accept that as that, we're giving it a hundred percent mark. So if we're going to give that a hundred percent for the attitudes, the principles of success, what percentage are we going to give for confidence, call out a bigger? Ten percent, the lady said, over here, ten percent, okay, what are you going to give for integrity? Hello? Twenty-five. Twenty-five. Twenty-five. Twenty-five. Twenty-five. Okay, twenty-five, what are you going to give for service? Fifty. Fifty for service, what are you going to give for communication? Eighty, oh well we can't, now come on fellas, get your act together, come on, get your act together, a bigger button, a hundred percent all the way, and then we put another zero on the bottom, that still makes ten percent of the whole, now come on, let's get your head together. What are we going to put for confidence? Ten for each. Ten for each. Rolomay the great philosopher spoke about the cowardice and conformity, what are you doing? You're conforming, the bible says, do not conform to this world, but be transformed how by the renewing of your mind. Come on, what are we going to do here? Well you decide what's important, that's what I'm asking. Well you tell me what you want there, I'm open, I'm just a facilitator here, seventy-five percent for knowledge, okay, seventy-five percent. Now what are we going to give for character? A bigger button? The women don't agree, let me tell you they've got a very clean mind, they're changing it all the time, okay, what do you want to make knowledge? Well you said you disagree, you must have a figure, well let me tell you something, the word sin comes from Anglo-Saxon word that was created in the archery contest in Great Britain when they drew the longbow to aim at the targets to find the greatest bowman in England. And when they actually missed the target, there was a pit in front of the target and the men huddled down and when it missed the target they waved a flag and called out sin, asking any theologians, sin is missing God's target, so we can't have a variable here. You see sometimes we have a meeting and we expect five hundred people and twenty-five turn up and we say well we were encouraged, that's sin. You see some people say well God's not interested in numbers, he wrote a book called Numbers for Growing Out Loud. You know what, okay, yes a man from Chicago, okay you just want to be a follower, you want someone to blame, okay there's no answer to that, I just did that to try and get your head together a little while so we could warm up a little bit, you know, so often the speaker out the front speaks all the time and knowing gets their head together, so let me give you a couple of things that will kind of start you up before we get warmed up. Whenever I go around the world people say to me their greatest problem, their greatest fear is change, middle-aged men can't cope with change, women are concerned about change because they wonder what's going to happen with their children and their grandchildren. Change is almost on the lips of the leaders, the peasants, the business people, the academics, the theologians, wherever I go right across the world, the politicians are frightened of change, you see change in our lifetime is one of the greatest challenges that we have. You know there was an unusual impact of change for a Russian cosmonaut called Sergy Krikoloff on New Year's Eve as 1992 the great bells of Moscow rang out to signal the end of communism and the feared Soviet Union in the beginning of the new Commonwealth of Independent States. Sergy Krikoloff had blasted off seven months earlier from the famous Brackenaw Cosmodrome as a prestigious card-carrying member of the Communist Party with the initials USS Alan East Helmut and his spacecraft proudly bore the hammer and sickle as a national symbol. Sergy Krikoloff returned on that New Year's Eve of 1992 to a non-existing country and the Communist card that he was carrying was now illegal. He experienced what we call the challenge of change and many people, many Christians are uncertain about the future but as I said last night, the thing that we learn from history is that we do not learn from history, you see change is not new the shift that took place where they were startled as a fountainhead of wisdom, Joanne Gatensberg printing press, Martin Luther's Reformation, the Renaissance in Florence and Venice, the adoption of the Arabic numerals in the West, James Watson's Steam Engine, the Industrial Revolution, communism, capitalism, World War I and II, change is and will always be part of the human events. The difference tonight is that change can be and indeed must be swift to survive but it also must be wise to sustain if we are going to be prepared for this New 21st century. You see the major economic and political changes of the world today are similar to that of a kaleidoscope where all the parts are the same but as the sphere turns so totally new passions emerge as the passions and the patterns of the past take on new forms and creators we believe will be spirited model of genius or catastrophe so gigantic it's hardly conceivable to the human mind. We are once again at that pivotal point of a new dimension in our world. The biggest contest in the history of the world has already commenced. The contest is for the world markets. The main players will be Japan, Germany and the United States of America. The Cold War has finished and the cold peace has begun. Well let me tell you, you will soon see it on your television screens. You'll read it in your newspapers, you'll hear it from your politicians, you'll feel it through your taxes, it is inescapable, incalculable, indiscriminate. The winners will be few, the losers will be many and this economic battle will last for at least 20 years, it will also set the balance of power for many years to come and could make the possibility of individual growth stagnant and may even lower the standard of living in the western world. And the need, the desperate need of this hour in history is vision and leadership. We see before many of us can lead, we must do that which we all avoid and that is to change. But before chaining our beliefs, most human beings will spend long periods of time pretending that the facts that conflict with their long-held theories do not exist, hoping that somehow such facts will magically go away. You know as we meet and meetings like this across your nation and mine and other nations around the world, it could be a promising moment in history of Christians who could get their act together and with a bold, imaginative plan we could as Bible-believing Christians world together the sturdy threads of hope to a hurting and a lost world, but there's a long hard road ahead as we unite under the goodness and providence of God to provide hope and direction where it is needed most and point the way clearly ahead. I had an interesting time today with one of your famous businessmen in this town. As I walked into his corridor and I saw some of the things of history on his wall and some of the statues. For the rest of the afternoon, my mind was turning over in stories of batan and kurigador, Iwo Jima. You see, I've studied your history and while the great pioneers of the past pledged even under death to preserve the great society of wealth and freedom that you have thus far enjoyed. I believe at a church meeting like this that we ought to create it as a solemn hour and pledge ourselves a fresh to the next generation and pass on to them this great gift of a nation that is strong, prosperous and free. I believe the key to the future leadership of this nation is in the hand of Bible-believing Christians and to turn this nation around requires a great plan, great people, great numbers and a great commitment and so I want to place before the leadership of this church young as it may be a great and worthy challenge that will take all the resolve that you can muster, all the energy you can deliver, all the capacity that you have and it could once and for all time unite the citizens of this nation under a Christian banner in a common bond with an idea that has come with a force too powerful to subdue. My challenge to you tonight and the leadership of this organization is to create 1,000 Christian leaders for this nation within the next decade, which I believe would build a giant wave of optimism that cannot be contained by people's army of 1,000 Christian leaders that can never be fitted, by the marching sound of 1,000 Christian voices that will never be silenced, by the financial power of 1,000 Christian incomes that cannot be ignored and the genius of 1,000 Christian minds to sustain this new century and the hopes and aspirations of 1,000 Christian dreams to ensure victory and the way that you can do that is to follow the example in the words of Paul the Apostle when he said I pressed forward towards the goal, the mark of my high calling for getting those things behind is to have a discriminant forgetfulness of the past, for getting the hurts, the disappointments, the brokenness of remembering God's goodness. And to do that you've got to create a mindset. Some years ago my son and I were in the restaurant of a building we owned and I saw someone come across the park and towards our building and I said Graham, I said I want to tell you about that man, he said Dad do you know him, I said no I've never seen him before in my life but I can tell you exactly what's on his mind, he said what is it Dad, I said well he's concerned about paying the mortgage on the house, he's concerned about paying the loan on the motor car, he's concerned about getting the kids through college, he's concerned about creating some sort of financial stability for the rest of his life, I said Graham they are important issues but if that's all you're going to think about you'll never create empires and we need some empire builders in the Christian church, boy we need some empire builders, I was talking to my second son who manages our companies worldwide about two hours ago and some say he has one of the 10 best brains in the world on global economics, he said Dad the week after next I'm going to Malaysia and I'm addressing a whole forum for the world on the economics of the future, Christians, acting as a pivotal point around the world, you've got to create a mindset, you've got to clear away the debris of the past, put an extremely high value on a lifetime commitment but there's some fallacy about setting goals, you don't have to lose your family, that's a lie of the devil, you do not have to become a cold robot, you don't have to be ruthless, you can help others while reaching your goals and you can enjoy a life that's organized, well I suppose some of you think wow wait a minute, wait a minute, am I now captain of my soul, can I do anything I want to do, where is the God factor, do you know, God never robotized the mind of man, in the beginning he gave us a free will, you can do anything you want to do, as long as you don't violate the laws of God in the right to your fellow man, anything, some people are waiting for God to show them in black and white with you know, lightning and some what they do, hey you've got to make choices, I have no chance of the choices, and it's interesting to me, in biblical times, when God gave goals to his chosen servants, he up and endowed those goals with the southerly of permanence, those who have given a life goal to the children of Israel, to the promised land, at the point of the livery his goal and his life has finished, Samson had a life goal as a conqueror protector for his people, although he departed from it several times, when he played the fool with the lotta, in the end when he pushed those pillars out, he reached his life goal, John the Baptist had a life goal to proclaim the coming of the long away to Messiah, he was faithful to that charge, fearing no one, and announcing the coming and the results of the coming, even into the king's palace, which finally entered in his own decapitation, but he reached his life goal, our Savior, Jesus Christ, the greatest of them all, had a life goal, the finale was the cross, the result was to shake the earth by his immaculate birth, his perfect life, his miraculous resurrection, in an effort to free all mankind from the change of sin and the boundaries imposed upon us by the adversary called the devil, you search the scriptures, you'll find that their God gave to many people life goals in biblical times, life goals controlled the life and life goals are a biblical pattern that we could apply in our own lives today, and the interesting thing is that the annals of commercial history are dotted with famous and the rich who set life goal to achieve what many thought was impossible. Now I was talking with a gentleman before we started tonight whose son is doing something on Australia, who is that gentleman? Right, okay this is for you. Australia's most famous would have to be a man called Sydney Kidman, who has a 13 year old boy with almost no education in the late 19th century left home for a parallel journey into the formidable app back of Australia, where only 10 years earlier the famous explorers, Birkenwald's parish. This young boy had come from a large family and have worked in the cattle yards since he was 10 years of age and now here he was a 13 year old age with a one-eyed age horse he purchased called Cyclops and a half dollar in savings he set out to learn the cattle business on the big cattle farms of Australia. Sydney had a dream and their dream is a focus itself into a life called a breed and market cattle in the cheap unpredictable wild area to Australia and through a string of his properties stretching from the north to south Australia going through three states following the waterways and keep the new colony fed and expand markets around the world. This was a man that has a farm bigger than the entire state of Texas. Sydney Kidman became the biggest property owner and the biggest cattle owner on the face of the earth and he was affectionately known as the cattle king. Sydney reached his life goal. W. Clement Stone from Chicago said on a board of directors with him for 18 years. As a young boy he lived without a father and was blessed with a remarkable mother and from his humble beginnings became by choice and by plan life goals one of the most respected life insurance men in the world today. I've asked him many times about those early days and he speaks with confidence of still reaching his life goals today and he's known throughout the world as Mr. PMA, Mr. Positive Metal Attitude and ten minutes with him will literally change your life forever. Ray Clark, a paper cup salesman of 54 years of age developed a magnificent obsession to buy a hamburger franchise from two brothers called McDonald and today it's by far the biggest takeaway food franchise in the world. So what are we saying? We're saying the world of business abounds with stories of real life situations where life goals have catapulted ordinary people with seemingly limited experience and ability in the giants of stature and achievement. Super business achievers are life goal setters who have no limitation on their dreams and will not tolerate the disturbance or distractions of little dreams and occasional goals. Higher achievers plan long keep short accounts with their own ability increasing it coaxing it upgrading it and progressing it all to fit into the context of their life goals. There are other people that set life goals explorers. They have an incredible track record towards a life goal commitment and any explorer worth his soul commits a life to danger discomfort and disability in an endless search to discover first all the deep and often hidden things in this earth and beyond. Christopher Columbus he had a dream that the earth was round everyone there all said it was flat they said if you go out away from the side of land you'll go over the edge in the fires of hell itself he faced mutiny, mountainous seas scurvy he popped up the other side and he proved that the world was round and he discovered the country that you live in. James Cook the navigator set out from England to discover the southern continent. His life has been immortalized by the country that he discovered called Australia and it was said of him by his friends and about his life he left nothing unattempted. I mean here we have explorers. I mean the late comers on the scene are the astronauts who under international view trusting scientific theory write their testimony as they are thrust into the outer atmosphere and beyond seeking to reach their life dreams and in the focus and in the process fulfill the dreams of scientists and nation to like. And of course scientists have life goals. I don't know how much you read but the animals of history are full of great discoveries produced by scientists who were originally laughed at and frequently imprisoned for the effort to dedicate a life to the discovery of something new. The lives of Pasteur, Newton, Galileo, Madame Corrie they seem tamed today against the modern leaps in scientific technology would seem to produce something new every morning we pick up the newspapers and let me tell you that scientists today are still dedicating their lives in totality to bring to the people of this world relief from pain, antidote for disease and advancement in medical apparatus. And on the basis of our history and on your history and the magnificent achievements of humanity we must look at the many areas of inactivity and dullness in our own generation and ask the provocative question what has happened in our life that would create that kind of historical and personal heritage. Just recently I had to speak to a Bible college in Sydney and they asked me to be very frank. They said we want we want you to create business people for the Christian church. I said well don't let anyone else come unless they're prepared to open a business and I spent the time with them and they shared with me some of their pain as they meet the boneless wonders in the church who have the face of piety but never produce anything. One man said I went to the table to learn about my God and I left the table hungry. Frightening, frightening, terrifying. What's wrong with us? What's happened to us? Not only your country, my country, Great Britain, Canada, the whole English-speaking world, what's happened to us? I'll tell you what's happened with turned off our dream machine. Dreaming is not a waste of time when you dream you're on the periphery of God and likeness because you're creating something out of nothing but some people claim they're too busy to dream or are they too frightened. Ask yourself the question how long has it ever been that you've taken a day off, 72 hours off, a week off, two weeks off just to sit alone and dream. Your life is surely worth that sort of investment. We need to spend prime time dreaming, dreaming, illustration, hidden capacities and your unwakened abilities. There's nothing capricious in God's nature. God will not give you a dream without giving you the ability to fulfill that dream. So dream big. My wife said to me, she says, "Can you do something small just for once? Do something small. In our country property we have an area where we walk up to the house and she wanted a couple of steps to go up there and I'm a stonemation and bricklayer. I still got a fair bit of energy and she says too much." And she said, "I just want a couple of stairs there." And I dug the stone out of the ground and washed it and blew her a stairway, you know, balustrates and everything. You see, I just wanted a couple of steps up there. But we need to dream big. I said to my wife, "It will be there for a thousand years unless someone comes and blows it up." We need to dream believing, dream with a purpose, dream on paper, then nail down the dream and remove the nightmares. You know, we need to live the dream, put life into our dream, work the dream, plan the dream, expand the dream and then break out of the dream cocoon and give it the permanence of planning. For those that weren't here last night, I lost everything three times. I failed three times, paid it back and started getting each time and people say to me, "Well, how did you hang on for goodness sake? You had kids, you had a wife, you had a responsibility, you were a leader of the youth work at the church and so on. How did you hang on? I learned to lean on my dreams at times of disappointment, lean on my dreams at times of frustration, lean on my dreams at times of failure, lean on my dreams at times of reassessment. How could I do that? Because my Bible says Joseph was a dreamer and he became the Prime Minister of Egypt. My friends, we have to turn back on our dream machine and do not treat your dreams as community properly. Dreams are the birthplace of goals. In Hebrews, it tells us, "See that you make everything according to the pack and shown to you on the mountaintop and what happens, God gives us a mountaintop experience and we wait until we get down the valley before we start to document it." The full realization of individual human potential, I believe, irrespective of background, circumstance or status quo can be experienced by a directed goals program that is stimulated with imagination and followed through with consistent and dedicated effort. Goals are dreams that come true. The unreachable that becomes a reality, the future that becomes a present, the youth that you really ought to be. And this time with it together tonight is for people with big dreams, high ideals and a life ready, willing and able to be spent. It's for those rare individuals who are prepared to open their lives to excellent by planned achievement through goal setting. Goal setting is a logical, fulfilling approach to dynamic living. However we go to London, where Veen and I walk the streets of London and unfortunately she has to put up with a history lesson. Every step we take, I tell her what's happened in this area and then we move somewhere else and one day she said, "Enough. There's just walk quietly and enjoy the view." I said, "One more." A little bit like the last book I wrote, someone said, "You read Peter's last book?" She said, "I hope so." I said, "Right at this place, there was a beautiful, beautiful banquet room." And men had met there in the early part of the 19th century, at 20th century, for one purpose. They had a huge painting on the wall, covered the whole wall of Mount Everest and they said, "We want to be the first people in history to scow Mount Everest." They got together a team, they pulled their finances, they did training and they went to try and scow Mount Everest but they failed. They came back and looked at the painting of Mount Everest, they said, "That's what we want. We want to be the first people in the world to reach the summit." They got together another team and better equipment and more training, more finances. Off they went to try and conquer Mount Everest and they failed. And then realizing that they needed more help, they contacted Mallory, the greatest explorer of the world had ever known to that time. And they said, "And that's what we want. We want Mount Everest." And they got together a team and they had high power binoculars to find a way up to the summit, but they wiped out and they had a lunch and just two years ago they found Mallory body millie to the top. They met with those that were left and had another banquet, eulogized those that lost their lives, honored those that had returned. And finally, each one had something to say. The last speaker asked him to charge their glasses for a toast. But rather than talking to them, he looked at the picture of the mount and he said, "Mount Everest, I'm talking to you." He said, "You know, we tried to beat you once and we failed." But we got together another team, Mount Everest, and we tried to beat you the second time and we failed again and we called out from Mallory. We believed the greatest explorer in the world. And we gave him the finest equipment, the finest young men. And we wanted him to conquer you Mount Everest, but you wiped him out with never lunch. Mount Everest, I want to tell you something, there were 10,000 young men and women coming up after us and you're not going to get any bigger, but we are a friend. God has put the parameters that devil himself. He's not going to get any bigger, but you can. You see, it was by goal setting that Ray Crock developed McDonald Hamburgers. I know we had him on the hour of power and as a director of that, we had a little bit to do with him. And selling cheap hamburgers, he reached a gross annual turnover of $1 billion in 26 years. You compare that to a growth company like IBM to them 47 years to do the same thing and they had a high-unit value article. If any of you have been to Australia, you would have heard of Surface Paradise or the Gold Coast. Sir Bruce Small, knighted by the Queen, built the city. He was a close friend of mine, a little man with a smile on his face. If he knew something, he wasn't about to tell you that. He was salvation army man. Incredible. At 72, he didn't look like what the government were doing, so he decided to go into parliament and become a parliamentarian in his spare time. The two major parties, one of them said, "This whole guy, I never make it," so he challenged him to a danceathon. At 72 years of age, the guy was only 40. And he accepted challenge. He said, "Look," he said, "Bruce," he said, "I beat you, you got to bow out and not run anymore." That's right, as long as you do the same. After two days of dancing, the guy collapsed on the floor. Bruce did another circle to the floor with a young lady, out about eight ladies. He could dance with him. The band played the song of Australia and he gave a bow and went home with the guy on the floor, collapsed. So he had one out of the way, but there was another contestant in the free enterprise system was going to go against him. He said, "Well," he said, "that guy," he said, "with overweight," and so on and so forth. He said, "He wouldn't do it to me." So Bruce gave him a challenge at a walking race, up-surface paradise, 18 miles on the sand. Bruce was just a little man who carried a sign. His name was Bruce Moore. No big, much more. He walked the 18 miles and left the guy gasping for breath at the end. He built a city goal setting, W be clement stone, goal setting. Dr. Norma Vincent Peele, goal sing, "How do I know?" because I worked intimately with each one of these people. Dr. Robert Schuller built the Crystal Cathedral. I was there all the way, 21 years. I worked with him. I mean, can you see Bob on television? This is the day the Lord had made. Let us rejoice. Yeah, I've seen him in a different situation than that. I mean, when we were building the Crystal Cathedral, I mean, he had some problems and he ate cream buns. When I met him and put my arms around him, I could feel how worried he was. On one day, we saw him sitting on a pile of bricks and he looked so for long, and we said, "What's the matter?" And Bob said, "You know what's the matter?" He said, "Some of these TV evangelists have lost their moral compass." He said, "Everything's going crazy." We got christened out here with signs protesting about building the Crystal Cathedral. He said, "We've got water coming in. We've got engineering problems. We've got donations that are falling off." He said, "I've had it. I'm aborting the Crystal Cathedral." He said, "You can't do that." He said, "Why not?" He said, "Well, you're the guy that wrote the book called Possibility Thinking." He said, "You know what I'd really like?" He said, "What?" He said, "I'd like a good old-fashioned heart attack so I could fail with dignity." But let me tell you the Crystal Cathedral today, the hour of power, echoes around the world where many of the other Christian television programs have finished that still going around the world and expanding around the world. And so Winston spent a Leonard Checho. I shared something of it today. Maybe I should just share this with you. I think he was the greatest human being in the 20th century. This man, the mobilized English language and sent it into battle. And he said, "We will fight on the beaches. We'll fight on the landing grounds. We'll fight in the fields. We'll fight with growing confidence in the air. We will never surrender." Wow. How did this happen? You want to hear his own voice? I have it on tape recording. His own voice telling me how he became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He said, "I received a message from the King. He bid me come to the palace. His majesty received me most graciously. He looked at me quizzically. He said, "Winson, I suppose you have no idea why I have called you." He said, "Adopting his mood." I said, "Your Majesty, I have no idea at all." He said, "I want you to form a government. I want you to be Prime Minister of Great Britain and lead the British Empire and lead the world to victory." Nine months earlier, the newspapers said Winston Churchill has a great future behind him. They wanted him to retire. And yet when he was in his early 20s fighting a battle in India, they were out on military exercise. One day as a young man, he was on horseback. They were ambushed. His friends fled in terror. He spun his pony around. He rode straight into the face of the enemy. He withdrew his revolver. He dispatched two of the enemy. He spun his pony around. He dispatched two more. He wrote a letter to his mother that night. I've seen the letter. He said, "Dear Mother, we were ambushed by the enemy today. But rather than flee with my comrades, I turned my pony around. I rode it straight into the face of the enemy. I withdrew my revolver. I dispatched two one-size spun my pony around. Dispatched two more. I was as cool then as I am now right in this letter to you." Nerea Bullet touched my pony, my tunic or my person. I believe I was preserved for higher things. There are people here tonight who God has preserved for higher things and you're playing the full. You're not stretching, you're marking time, you're maintenance seekers. God has protected you from illness, from divorce, from all manner of things. Maybe you've been bankrupt or whatever, but God has preserved you for higher things. How did he win the battle of Britain? Goal setting. Goal setting. Yes, we need goals to prevent us from subsidizing incompetence. We need goal to help us to develop standards of performance. We need goal to reach our best and to beat it. We need goal to develop our God-given talents and fuel fulfilled and there are many kinds of goals. There are desperation goals, opportunity goals, circumstantial goals, forced goals, imposed goals, subconscious goals, tentative goals, guilt goals, but plan lifestyle goals. Don't let other people set your goals for you. If you do that, you're linking your God-given freedom and choice. When others set your goals, you destroy your own personality and objectively. Now, I'm trying to give you about two days in an hour and a half. So let's see if we can put something up here and allow you to sort of absorb something and maybe a two-dimension. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]