Last week we discussed a basic characteristic of high-impact people—they discern the times, the present situation, their audience, and their message is relevant to all three. To do this, we must also be good listeners, but as Jesus once warned, we must be careful “how we listen.”

      For example, one of my bestsellers was The Final Quest, and it continues to spike up the charts and occasionally. Recently it rose to number four again. I circulated the first chapters of this book in our newsletters and The MorningStar Journal, which I often do with my books....

      If you are reading this, you are likely an educated, high-impact professional, which is the profile of the people who tend to read this Word for the Week, as well as attend our conferences and churches. I did not choose this profile for our audience, but I’m happy with it. I did not know this until a few years ago, and had never fashioned my message to fit any particular group, but have mostly addressed what I felt the emphasis of the Spirit was on. Even so, knowing this profile does help.

     Of course, Jesus is...

In Matthew 12:28 Jesus said, “But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

As we discussed last week, every Christian is called to be the light and salt, and to occupy until the Lord returns. We all have a responsibility to help fulfill the mandate of The Great Commission and to preach the gospel of the kingdom throughout the world, which must be done before the end of this age can come. However, for the kingdom of God to come upon the world, we must...

          “You are the salt of the earth” (see Matthew 5:13).

           “You are the light of the world” (see Matthew 5:14).

          “Occupy until I come” (see Luke 19:13 KJV).

          The above three Scriptures are the great mandates Jesus gave to His people. What does it mean to be the light of the world? What does it mean to be the salt of the earth? What does it mean to occupy until He comes? These commands are basic to fulfilling our purpose. We must understand them if we are going to obey them.

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     A friend of mine is a chemist, and when he heard about the chemicals that were being used to disperse the oil in the Gulf after the BP oil disaster, he thought that the dispersants were more toxic than the oil and probably were being used to make the oil disappear from sight. He said this would ultimately do more damage than the oil to the Gulf ecosystem. Just a few weeks ago, they discovered a huge plume of oil sitting on the bottom that was over six hundred feet high, over a mile wide, and over twenty-two...