1) Your Life Is a Serious Thing
Your life is a serious thing. Life is not a game.
Laws are never created to accommodate vices, but to stop them. The Ten Commandments were not given until almost 3,000 years after man sinned. So, the law is not created to necessarily stop people from sinning or getting involved in destructive vices.
The principle of law is this: when a law is created, conscience comes alive. So, when there’s no law, there’s no conscience. The Bible is very clear that when the law arrived, sin came alive—meaning you don’t know what’s wrong until right is defined.
Why does God tell the children of Israel, “Thou shalt worship no other gods before me”? Because they were already doing it. Why does God say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”? Because they were doing it already.
Laws are not to accommodate vices, dignify them, sanctify them, or even affirm them. Laws are supposed to stop the proliferation of a vice.
In Colorado, people voted for the legalization of marijuana as a medicinal alternative. A few days later, they tried to figure out how they could manage and regulate it. In other words, they made a decision before studying the consequences.
Marijuana is good—God created the bush. And God said in Genesis that everything He made is good. Everybody in this world takes drugs, but there is such a thing as abnormal use. The word is abuse.
Laws are not created to accommodate vice; they are created to stop vice or to define it—whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or destructive.
2) Consequences are More Important than Decisions
Don’t ever make a decision more important than the consequences, because decisions give birth to consequences. People normally say, “If you make a decision, you’ve got to live with it.” That is not true. You don’t live with the decision, because a decision happens in one moment—but you do live with the consequences.
Don’t just study the decision; make sure you exhaust every possible means to study the consequences. Do your research. Get information. Check all the alternatives. Study the options. Find out historical data. Check those who already made that decision and read their lives—study them, find out everything—before you make a decision.
Is it lawful to ask someone to make a decision without as much information as possible about the consequences? In my view, this is illegal and irresponsible.
No one is against decisions, but do not ask people to make them without giving them the information, not just about the decision but about the consequences. Give them real information so they can be responsible and objective.
Once you have decided that you can live with the consequences, decisions are easy. Nationally speaking, we are irresponsible sometimes—we ask people who understand nothing about the consequences to make decisions. We need to postpone until people have all the information about the decisions and the consequences.
It is irresponsible for leaders to transfer the burden of decisions to the followers who are supposed to make them.
It’s like me being a parent and telling the kids how they should run the house. All of our companies—I’m the guy at the top. I will listen to advice. I will seek the wisdom of collective knowledge. I will listen to all sides. But in the end, I have to take responsibility for all decisions in my organization.
Adam never picked a fruit. Adam never gave anyone a fruit. Adam never made anyone eat a fruit. And yet when everything was over, God went directly to him.
If I want to blame you for what happens, all I have to do is let you make a decision, just in case things don’t work out. I could always say, “You decided that.” That is not leadership—that is irresponsible ability as a leader.
We need leaders who are bold enough to implement the law, apply the law, impose the law, or make the decision themselves so they can take responsibility for not applying the law.
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3) Chance Is a Game to the Wealthy, but Hope to the Poor
Chance is a game to the wealthy, but a source of hope to the poor. Chance is a game to the wealthy; they can afford to play it. But chance is a source of hope to the poor; they expect to live on it.
This is dangerous. If I have a lot of wealth, I don’t mind playing a game. Because if I lose, it doesn’t matter. This is why, to the wealthy, it’s a game. But to the poor, it’s a life—and if it becomes your source of life, then you are a victim of chance. So, your life becomes a game.
You need to decide whether you want that culture. There is a very thin line between entertainment and habit, and sometimes we don’t know when we are crossing it.
I can go to a casino. I’ve got $3 billion in my account, and I decide to bet $100 million. To me, it’s a game. If I lose a million—“Hey, no problem.”
But if I have a salary of $500 with five children and I go to the casino, somehow I might think that because I sit next to the guy with a billion, we are equal in the same casino. Life doesn’t work that way. He loses a million, but he still has 299,000,000,000 less. You lose your $200. You’ve got five mouths that need to be fed, rent to pay, a car to fuel, and school fees to pay.
Don’t mind this guy with a billion. That’s entertainment for him. There’s a line between you and him. This can become your source of life.
I’m not against chance, but make sure it remains a game. Chance is okay. If you buy a raffle ticket because you need a car, that ain’t no game. But if you buy a raffle ticket because you already have a car, you don’t care if you win or not. That’s a game.
When you wake up in the morning, and the first thing you think about is chance, that’s not a game. Many Christians are victims of this already—and that’s why they can’t enter the kingdom properly.
Don’t get me wrong—you could play games. Are you mature enough to make sure it remains a game? If you need a chance to live, it will destroy you.
How do you know when something changes from a game to a habit? It’s when you start misappropriating funds in your personal budget. It’s when you have a light bill to pay, and you’re choosing between the light and the game.
4) Leaders Must Own the Responsibility
The people who have been given the responsibility to lead the country should oversee the practice and take full responsibility for all the consequences of that practice.
If we’re going to play the game, it shouldn’t be left up to a few groups of people who have their own private ambitions.
The government itself should take responsibility, oversee the practice, and take full responsibility for all the consequences of that decision. In other words, the state should run it.
That means if anything goes wrong, you don’t blame me—you blame the state—because whatever the state does, it can undo.
5) Personal Sin vs. National Sin
Personal sin and transgression are not national sin and transgression.
The Creator, from studying history, has an amazing way of relating to mankind. He judges humans based on the level of their vices. If you sin personally, He will judge you personally. So, keep your sin personal—and then all of us are safe. In other words, if you sin in the closet, there is closet judgment, so the rest of the people are still safe.
As long as you stay in the closet, whatever you’re doing—keep it in your private closet—and then you and God deal with that privately.
When you take your personal sin and promote it to become community sin, God has to judge the community. And if you take a community vice and make it constitutionally acceptable, God has to judge the nation.
It doesn’t matter what people are doing privately. You need to decide whether you want that to be national.
Many countries, like South Africa, passed a law and took homosexuality out of the closet and made it a national law. America slowly moved in that direction.
If you want to get involved in a behavior that people don’t agree with, we have no problem with it—just keep it in your closet. Don’t try to put up signs all over the island to convince people to accept your private activity as a public and national legal activity. All the dope dealers in your neighborhood tell them to keep it in the house.
We need to decide what kind of judgment we want: private sin equates private judgment, community sin equates community judgment, state sin equates state judgment, and nation sin equates nation judgment.
The practice of homosexuality was always in Sodom and Gomorrah. For the people who practice homosexuality, it is nothing new. Don’t walk around as if you have some new cause. It’s as old as Sodom. No trophies for you—you’re old.
The sin became acceptable in the country to the point where anyone who entered the country was attacked. God says, “I can’t judge individuals anymore,” and He judged the entire nation with everyone in it.
Have you ever wondered why some countries are now history? You would find them in the dust. When I went to visit Rome, I had to walk on broken rocks. The greatest empire in history was nothing but broken rocks. No army ever defeated Rome. Rome was defeated by immorality.
The Bible says the nations imagine vain things, and He who sits in heaven laughs. God is watching you, and soon enough, you will be obliterated by your own iniquity.
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6) Principles Are More Important Than Prosperity
You can get money from anything. Even a prostitute makes money. Prosperity can come through millions of types of activities. So don’t talk about how much money you are making if you are selling drugs to kids in school and destroying them. It’s not the money—it’s the principle.
If you use destructive measures to pay bills or to generate revenue, you are not really making money. Don’t be swayed by an extra 40 million dollars. There’s enough wisdom in you to develop projects that can bring in $400 million a month.
We don’t need to succumb to other people’s vices and sacrifice the principles of decency and ethics and hard work and honest labor for $40 million. I can’t stop you from doing something personally, but don’t put it on anyone else or publicly.
7) All Laws Produce Culture
Every law created in every country will eventually produce a culture.
When God was about to create the nation of Israel, the first thing He gave them was not power, not money, not even an economy. He gave them the law because He knew they came out of a history of slavery and oppression, where they were being trained to certain cultural norms. The word for “law” in Hebrew means something enormous—and it actually means “normal.”
Law is that which accepts something as being normal.
In Amsterdam, prostitution is lawful. You have to decide whether you want that to be normal in your country. They passed a law so they could decriminalize prostitution. One night, we went driving in the Amsterdam Red Light district, and around 1 a.m., the whole place came alive. What astounded me was how many young kids there were—naked women in the windows—showing all their bodies, selling themselves. And you just walk past and pick the one you want. It’s all legal. They even have kids there, too.
They’ve also legalized marijuana in Amsterdam. So they have shops where they sell it.
There is a man in Amsterdam who runs a rehabilitation center for hundreds of kids. And he said the greatest disturbance he has is that most of the kids who come to him for help are like 13 or 14 years old, and they have already been strangled and have no future. They don’t go to school. They smoke dope.
Is that what you want for your future as a country?
You need to study what those places are doing. How come no one shows us a study from Amsterdam about what legalized drugs are doing to their people? Don’t just talk about the money you’re getting—talk about how you spend it back on rehabilitation.
God has created everyone smart. You have a brain with 500 billion cells. You are intelligent. Don’t just make decisions—study the consequences.
You know why I never had sex before I was married? I studied consequences. I saw my friends who had to drop out of school. I saw their dreams go up in smoke. If I had a baby with a woman, I saw the complications—her calling me for the rest of my life.
I studied the whole thing. When that girl opened her leg, I ran away. I said, “You know something? I’m out of here.”
The consequences were clear in my head. The most important consequence is memories. Do you want to enjoy your memories? The problem in life is that your memories never go away. So decide every day: “Do I want to remember this? Will I enjoy remembering this?” That’s called consequences. When you live right, you enjoy your memories.
A teacher bought me a textbook from a school some time ago. This textbook was for kids ages 5 to 11. The book had chapters on social science. Within the book were drawings of two men kissing. It also had drawings of two women getting married.
When you start teaching that to a five-year-old, that is child abuse—you are imposing your lifestyle on that child before that child develops the ability to determine what is right or wrong. Do you show the child any consequences of homosexuality? They should always put at the bottom of any statement about that kind of behavior, “You cannot reproduce.”
8) Vote Your Conscience
Always vote in life with your conscience, not with a group, because you don’t sleep with a group. You sleep with your conscience. It never leaves you.
As a Christian, your conscience is the Holy Spirit. If you ignore your conscience, you live in guilt. Guilt is a heavy burden, and it causes cancer.
9) Don’t Move Until You Know the Effects
There’s one good thing I can say about the United States federal health department. They advertise a product and say, “This product will take away your pain; solve your high blood pressure; cause you to be sexually potent. This will solve all your problems.” Then they conclude, “However, your pain might go away, but you might commit suicide. You will run to the bathroom 20 times. Your belly will grow. Your eyes will drop out in two months. Your teeth will become weak. Your tongue will turn blue, and you will think your wife is your enemy. Now, take the pill.”
These are honest people. Why don’t our governments be like that? Tell the people everything. Tell the people the effects first, so that when they buy the pill, they can be responsible for the outcomes. Don’t just sell the people the pill and tell them how it will help them—include how it will kill them.
Everybody enjoyed tobacco because no one was telling them what it was doing to them. One day, the health department realized that cancer treatment was killing the whole community. So, they tried to find out what was causing all the lung cancer, and they traced it back to nicotine in cigarette smoke. Smoking was a pleasure until it became a curse. And so, they wrote on the back of every box, “This product causes cancer.”
It is irresponsible for you to vote yes if you don’t know the effects.
I’m not against gaming, but when the game becomes your life, it is self-destruction. I’m not sure our community has the kind of self-control—and in some cases, the maturity—to decide when they have crossed the line.
Do Not Play Games with Your Life
Inspired by Myles Munroe’s Sermon
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