Jesus' Most Misunderstood Parable

God requires many things, but one thing he lists because it's so important— that we're faithful. Yeah, 20 years of speaking to leadership teams, I've never once heard a leader say to me one of the most important definitions of faithful, and that is multiplication. Jesus defines faithful as multiplication. The parable of the talents. Yeah, now Larry maintains his gift. Yeah, he doesn't multiply it, he maintains He doesn't lose it. He just maintains it. But his lord answered and said to him, you wicked and lazy servant. Jesus, you just used the word wicked and servant in the same sentence. God views those who multiply as— Hey everybody, welcome to the John Bevere Podcast. I am joined by my son Arden. Arden, it's great to see you.

It's good to be here.

I'm so excited about today because we're going to talk about a topic that's very, very dear to my heart.

Art. I know, we're continuing on your new book.

Yes, the new book, You Are Called, and discovering your God-given gifts. You know, Art, and these are some of the most watched courses on MessengerX, and so I'm so excited just to be touching on this, because everybody knows innately we've got a call of God on our life. You know, it used to be when I was your age, if somebody said, oh, that person's got a call on their life, immediately I thought, okay, missionary, worship leader, pastor.

What we talked about is all ministry.

Yeah, but now we understand that every child of God has a calling on their life.

Yeah. And the understanding that every single one of your days has purpose to it so that you're not just seen into the sacred or the secular. And it's like, oh, I've got my sacred on Sunday and then I got my secular all throughout the week because I'm a—

God wrote out every moment of our life in a book before our life even began. That's crazy. I mean, if you haven't read it, it's Psalm 139. You got to read it.

Yes.

Every moment of our life was written in his book before a single day began. I believe with all my heart when he opens up those books at the judgment, he's going to say, this is the story I wrote about your life, now let's compare it to how you live. Yeah, which shows us the importance of seeking God. And so we, we know that there is a divine calling, and with that divine calling was— comes these supernatural gifts. They're actually his abilities that give us the ability to function and to fulfill what we've been called to do because our calling is greater than our natural ability. Yeah, it's impossible to fulfill it without the supernatural gifts he's placed on us. And those supernatural gifts don't work unless it's done by faith. Yeah, the grace of God has to be received by faith in order for it to operate. And so I look at 1 Peter 4:10, it's an amazing verse. As each one has received a gift, The Greek word is charisma. So you take grace, charis, and you put an M and an A on it, and you get the specific gift of grace that God has placed on our life to accomplish what we've been called to do. For me, it's speaking. For me, it's writing. For you, it's leading. For you, it's probably speaking in the near future, 'cause I really see the hand of God on your life to do that. Minister it to one another as good stewards. So there's that word steward. Of the manifold grace of God. So you put all of our gifts together, manifold means many-sided, it covers all the gifts. If you look at my body, my body has many different members and all my members can do things really well. My fingers can do things my mouth can't do, my mouth can do things my stomach can't do, and I can go on and on and on. And I like to say, happy is the man or woman who knows their gift and operates in it, and miserable is the man or woman who tries to operate in somebody else's gift. And so I wanna bring us now to 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, and this is so powerful. Paul said, "Let a man so consider us as servants of Christ." If you love Jesus with all of your heart, you see yourself as a servant of Christ. "And stewards." Now remember, what are we made stewards of?

Gifts.

The supernatural gifts.

The what we talked about, the gifts that God's given us and the gifts that we also don't even know about.

Yeah.

That we have to seek God on.

Yes.

Yes. So the supernatural gifts.

Okay. So my ability to write is not my ability.

Yeah.

It's actually his ability.

Yeah.

It's a gift. It's a divine supernatural gift. My ability to speak is not my ability. It's his ability. Moreover, this is amazing. This is— and I'm skipping Paul talking about his specific gift.

Yeah.

All right, he says, "Moreover, it is required in a steward that one be found faithful." Now, Arden, God requires many things, but one thing he lists because it's so important in a steward, that we're faithful. Now, I have asked leadership teams this all over the world. I've said, "Give me your definitions of faithful." And what are some of the words that come to your mind when you hear the word faithful?

Steadfast, consistent. Consistent, loyal, I don't know, I can go to the ones that I know.

You're good, you're nailing it.

Yeah, kind of going through there.

If we go to the thesaurus, we go to Webster Dictionary thesaurus, you're naming them. Yeah. Steadfast, consistent, dependable, reliable, loyal, true, trustworthy, devoted, and truthful. Yeah. Now, there's been outliers. I've had some leaders say other things, but these are the ones that most leadership teams have said. Yeah, and I'm so proud of them because if you go to Webster's, these are all the words that are listed, right? Most people who know me well know that I am extremely passionate about eating clean. Do you know what's sitting in my refrigerator right now? A New York strip from Good Ranchers. Now what I love about Good Ranchers is the founder, he felt like God called him to get food into the hands of people, but he did something He connected small farms with people.

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What I have found to be tragic is that in 20 years of speaking to leadership teams, I've never once heard a leader say to me one of the most important definitions of faithful, and that is multiplication.

Yeah. Yeah. And why is that? Why do we miss that?

Because Webster's didn't put it in the dictionary. Yeah. And it's a tragedy that he didn't, because Noah Webster was a born-again man.

Yeah.

And Jesus defines— defines— I'm using my words carefully.

Yeah.

He defines faithful as multiplication.

Okay, show me.

Okay. The parable of the talents.

Yeah.

Now, I know we've all read this parable. If you're a believer, you've been a Christian for more than 6 months, you've read the parable of the talents, which which by the way, I find interesting because it's at the very end of Matthew 24 when Jesus talks about his second coming. Getting back to what we did for a year on 2 Peter.

Yeah, well, and what we just talked about, I mean, a couple, like 4 podcasts ago, is all talking about, even with all this, is understanding our gifts and our calling. Like when we were talking about living for an end-time perspective and living for the second coming, it's good to know these things. So it's good to know what that faithfulness actually looks like with multiplication.

It's part of our preparation, remember? To her, it was arrayed to be arrayed with fine linen, and fine linen was the righteous acts of the saints. I can't do anything, anything that has eternal value outside of the grace of God. Yeah. So her doing her righteous acts was her operating in her calling. This is Revelation 19 we're talking— I say, this is Revelation 19 we're talking about. I always say Revelations. Lisa laughs at me when I say it, but Yeah, that's her operating in what God had called her to do on this earth. And that's why it's so important that we seek. So let's go to Matthew 25:14. Now I'm gonna— I'll read parts of this, I'll share parts of it. For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country. That man, of course, would be Jesus, who called his own servants. So we are definitely talking about the people of God and delivered his goods to them. Now stop right there. What did he entrust to them? His goods. Your ability to speak is not your ability, Arden. It's actually a gift that God has placed on your life. My ability to write is not my ability. It's his goods, right? All right. Now, what's really interesting is Jesus isolates 3 servants. Of course, there's millions of servants. Yeah, but he's isolating 3 because he's wanting to make a very powerful point to us. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to— I'm going to give these servants names to personalize it, because if I just say Servant 1, Servant 2, Servant 3, it's not— it's not personal.

Yeah.

So let's make them personal. I'm going to call Ashley. Come, Ashley gets one. 5 talents. Good to be Ashley. What's that?

Good to be Ashley.

Yeah, it is good to be Ashley. 5 talents. What's a talent? Do you know what a talent is?

Gifting measure. Well, back then it would be like a measure of wealth.

It'd be measure of weight. Yeah. So a talent is roughly about 75 lbs.

Yeah.

So in this case, it's normally referred to as silver, sometimes gold.

Yeah.

So it's a 75-pound bag of silver. But we all know that Jesus is never really talking about what he's talking about when he tells parables.

Yeah.

Like wheat is people, tares is evil people.

Yeah.

We see it as the word of God. Reapers are angels. I could go on and on and on. So Jesus really isn't talking about bags of money here. He's actually talking about our gifts because gifts are what he has made us stewards of. And he is— he's going on this long journey and he's giving what is his to these guys and saying, you're going to be a steward. Ashley gets 5. I'm going to call the second guy Dave. He gets 2 talents or bags of silver, or I'm going to— I'm going to actually say it bluntly. Dave gets 2 charismas.

Yeah.

And Larry, if your name's Larry, I'm not meaning to identify you. Larry gets one talent or charisma. Now he goes on this long journey. And what does he tell him before he leaves?

I'm coming back.

Yes. But what else did he say?

I don't know. I'm trying to think.

Occupy.

Occupy.

Until I return.

Until I return.

What does the word occupy mean? If you go back to the original Greek, it means do business. Yeah, work, labor. Now I want to say this because we've talked about the second coming of Jesus. Anybody who becomes idle— Paul actually rebukes in the Thessalonian church, hey, you're idle. A man doesn't work, he doesn't eat, right? So Jesus's command to us is don't sit around and wait until I come back. He's saying you are to be busy about the kingdom business. Occupy until I return. Now, what does he mean by occupy? He goes on to tell us. All right, what we see happen is that these guys begin to labor while he's gone. And twice in this parable, Jesus said it's a long trip. 2,000 years is a long trip. So now when he returns, he calls his servants to himself and he says, give an account of your stewardship. Ashley and Dave, Okay, what they do while he's gone is they multiply. Yeah. Ashley made her 5 into 10. Dave made his 2 into 4.

Yeah.

Larry maintained. So when they come before this wealthy man or this king, Ashley and Dave both say, we multiplied, we doubled what you gave us. He gives the exact same reward to both of them.

Yeah.

Okay, well, and this is actually 2 verses I'm reading from. This is Ashley's reward and Dave's reward. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now, if that's all he says, I cannot say that the word faithful means to multiply.

Mm-hmm.

All right, but that's not all he says.

Yeah.

Well done, good and faithful servant. Now listen to these next 3 words. You were faithful.

Mm-hmm.

Now wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I want everybody, I wanna encourage you, go to Matthew chapter 25, go read it yourself. There is no other action or behavior that is done by these two other than the fact that they multiplied. And I believe that's done on purpose because Jesus is directly equating faithfulness with multiplication. Yeah. In other words, when you hear the word faithful, you should hear in your brain not just steadfast, dependable, reliable, faithful, true, loyal, just all that you should hear. Multiplication. Yeah. If you look at me, Art, and you say, John, and believe me—

Which is the first commandment that God gives mankind. He says, be fruitful and multiply, which—

Wait a minute, wasn't he just saying have babies?

No, he's just everything that I give you, multiply it. Take it and multiply it. Do good work with it. Do work with it. Don't just bury it and sit on it. And then when I come back, it's like I've done nothing with this. And I think that's the challenge for a lot of people, because I do think you have a lot of people who are one, like as we've had this conversation, they've had a hard time identifying their gifts, but maybe when they've identified their gifts and just being honest, they have not, they've not acted upon it and they've maybe been a little bit lazy to fully use it because they haven't, and lazy might be the wrong word, but like they haven't connected the dots. And I think sometimes you're like, well, it doesn't make sense. Like maybe I'm very gifted in this,, but how does that connect the dots? And we're like, well, I don't know and I can't connect the dots and I'm not really getting a clear thing on it, so I'm just going to sit on it because I don't, I don't really know how I'm supposed to use it. But I feel like, you know, you need to see people, the activity that actually happens from Ashley and Dave is they actually take what they have, they multiply it, which would have been a, you know, they invested it, they done business with it, they, they actually used it in some degree or manner rather than just sitting on it. And I think you've gotta have more people that are just carrying around their faith.

What happens when we use our gifts that God gave us? People's lives get affected. Yeah. That's the bottom line. Mm-hmm. That's why God gave us these gifts, is to impact. This is why Paul said, woe to me if I don't operate in the gift that God's placed on my life, because that means that the people God intended to get what he entrusted to Paul won't get it.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and that's why he'll have to bring somebody else. Okay, so if I don't actively use, do business, multiply the gifts that God's put on my life, yeah, the people that he intended to receive through me, yeah, don't— they don't, they don't receive.

They don't receive from you.

They don't receive from me. God will raise somebody else up to get it to them, but I'll have to give an account of why I didn't use it. Yeah. And so He says, you were faithful over a few things. I'll make you ruler over many things. So you can see right now in the millennial reign of Christ, things are being set up. These guys were faithful what was entrusted to them. Now in the millennial reign, because Jesus— we're going to rule and reign with him. They're going to have positions of authority. Now, if you go over to the minas, if Jesus tells the parable of the minas and he tells it in a different way, each— there's 10 servants, each are given one.

Yeah.

And the first one multiplies it by 10. And he says, you're going to be over 10 cities. And I believe that's in the millennium. Yeah. Then the other guy multiplies 5. He says, you're going to be over 5 cities. So this directly correlates with our positions we're going to hold in that 1,000-year millennial reign of Christ. That's what's amazing. Okay. And he said, I'll make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Now, Larry maintains his gift. Yeah, he doesn't multiply it. He maintains. He doesn't lose it. Yeah, he just maintains it. And Larry, who had received the one talent, came and said, Lord, I knew you to be a hard man. What caused him to maintain his gift?

Didn't understand.

He didn't understand what?

Didn't understand the character of his master.

Yes.

So I knew you'd be a hard man.

We don't know the character of Jesus Christ. Yeah, it will cause us not to multiply. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. And I was afraid. Here's the number one reason why people don't multiply. Yeah. Fear and intimidation. Yeah. Paul said to Timothy twice, the gift of God is in you, but it's inoperative. Yeah. Because you have a spirit of intimidation. That's what he said in 2 Timothy 1:6.

Amazing.

Yeah. So fear causes the gift to go dormant.

Yeah. And fear, I mean, fear controls you. I've always heard this idea of like, Courage, it's that old quote, courage is not the absence of fear, but it's standing in the face of fear and still doing it anyways, basically. And that's not the full quote, but I love that idea and that understanding that the giftings of God that you have, the enemy will send intimidation, he'll send fear. And that could be the fear of man, that could be the fear of failure, that could be the fear of stepping out. And these fears, on the other side of them is an opportunity for you to greater experience the giftings that God has placed on your life and actually actually see those giftings come in one step where anointing meets giftings. Because I think that's, that's always something that I've actually even looked at my life and I'm like, okay God, I feel like you've given me giftings, but I'm just now actually seeing as when the anointing hits the gifting and it's completely different. And I think if you see more children of God that are in that place where we're seeing, yes, my giftings align, that's again, that's not just That's not just speaking the word of God. That's not just communication. That's not just being a pastor, but that is in your areas and spheres where God has you. And saying, God, I have my gifts. Yeah, like what we talked about with the businessman is, God, I have my giftings, but now here's your Holy Spirit. Here's the anointing. And now I'm gonna operate in both of those two things.

The anointing enhances those gifts. Yeah. Hey everybody, we'll get back to the episode in just a moment. But first, I wanna thank the patrons make this podcast possible. Your support behind the scenes is critical to sharing these messages. So thank you. To become a patron, just click the link in the show description or go to johnbevere.com/patron. Now, let's get back to the show. All right, so here's Larry. He's fearful. Yeah. He doesn't understand his master's character. He said, "I went and hid your talent in the ground. I didn't use the gift," right? Listen to what Jesus says, the master says to this guy. But his lord answered and said to him, you wicked and lazy servant. Now, Arden, this really bugged me. For so many years I looked at this and I went, Jesus, you just used the word wicked and servant in the same sentence. Mm-hmm. I mean, we got to have an explanation on this. Well, let's go to the easy one. Lazy means when we shrink from or hesitate to engage in something worthwhile. Yeah, we all understand laziness. Okay, that's an easy one. What does this word wicked mean in the original? This is what it means. It means possessing a serious fault and consequently being worthless. And I'm going to add in, in regard to our labor. So possessing a fault, being worthless in regard to our labor. That's the word wicked means twisted. Yeah, we've twisted in the way we think, looking at his character. This, it's caused us to not multiply. Remember, you're the one that said it. God's first command.

Yeah.

Be fruitful and multiply. Jesus is amplifying the first command that God gives to mankind out.

Yeah.

All right. What does this tell us? God views those who multiply as being faithful. Yeah. God views those who maintain. Yeah. As wicked and lazy. Yeah, that's good. Okay, that's crazy.

Yeah. And I mean, that sets it up because that gets you out of your comfort zone. I think everything we're talking about is even with the second coming of Christ, we talked about it like not being in this place of comfort and like where it's like, well, sitting around and waiting, just sitting and waiting around, waiting, but actually being going about the Lord's work. And I love that as that understanding of us being faithful in our callings means that we need to actively be acting them out, actively be asking God to be involved into them. And I think the big thing that people need to realize is that comes through a partnership, and God wants to reveal that to you. Kind of even what we talked about in the last podcast, we talked about it's not so much that God's just going to give you the destination, but he's going to give you kind of that compass model where it's like, God, I know I'm going this way. I know I'm going the correct direction, but now how does this play out? But I know what I'm doing is I'm continuing to be faithful. I'm continuing to put my hand to the plow and continue to work, continue to keep doing the things that I know you call me to do.

Which— where does retirement come in on all this? Yeah. Do you know there's not a word retirement in the Hebrew language? No. Because I don't believe God ever intended us to retire. Yeah. I'm not saying that we work as diligently at 65 as we did. And I know I am. I'm probably working more diligently now than ever. And I'm 66 years old. Okay, so I, I, I just don't understand retirement. Yeah, I'm energized. Jesus said my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Food energizes me.

Well, I look at your mom, it's like your mom at the later parts of her life, and for a good long while, yeah, sure, she was retired. She was not working a job. But what was she constantly doing?

Making necklaces, watches.

But then also she was constantly telling everyone about your books and was like, you need to, you need to read these books. And she would see so many So many people get saved and so many people would come and understand it because what she understood, like, okay, I'm wherever I'm at, wherever I find myself, whether that's assisting living home or in a full-time job, I'm not going to be retired in my mind. I'm going to be active.

She was never retiring. And she lived to 96. Well, she was 3 days away from 96. Yeah. But she watched her father and her father wrote 2 books after 65. He brought condominiums into the state of Florida. I mean, the man was active. I remember his last 2 years of his life. He said, the whole reason I'm in this, this adult living community is to tell all 200 people about Jesus. I mean, I'm like, he's constantly got a mission.

He loves that.

He loved it. And so this gets interesting in this parable. This, this, this verse, this verse will blow you away. So take the talent from Larry. This is the lazy one. Take the talent from Larry and give it to Ashley, who has 10 talents. Now, I remember the day I wrote this down on paper, and I'm going to show it on the screen so everybody sees it. Larry starts out with 1, ends up with 0. Ashley starts out with 5 and ends up with 11. Now, why did I write this down on paper? I'm going to give you the backstory. The backstory is this happened in 2016. I remember the year, I came in from prayer one morning, I'm sitting in front of my Bible and the Holy Spirit speaks so clearly to me. He said, "Son, the way I think." Now I'm gonna be very careful here. "The way I think." Remember God says, "My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts." He said, "The way I think lines up more with capitalism, not socialism." And I remember going, no, no, no, no, I'm never saying that publicly because I knew that would incite a riot. Right. And to be honest with you, I kind of thought the way he thought lined up more with socialism. And he had to correct me. And I remember I said to him, I am not believing that unless you give me a scripture. Yeah. And he didn't mind that. He said, read the parable of the talents. So I go over there and I read. I hadn't read it for several months. And I get to this scripture and I go, I go, wait a minute, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I wrote it down on paper and I go, Larry starts with 1, ends up with 0. Ashley starts out with 5, ends up with 11. I thought, hold on. So then the Holy Spirit, after I wrote that down on paper, speaks to me again. He said, can I show you what the hypothetical socialistic thinking God would have done? I said, yes. He said, I would have given them all 3. Not 5, 2, and 1. I would've given Ashley 3, Dave 3, Larry 3. What would've happened? Ashley and Dave are faithful. What does the word faithful mean? They would've multiplied. They would've ended up with 6. Larry would've maintained, he would've stayed with his 3. The hypothetical socialistic thinking God would've taken 1 from Ashley, 1 from Dave, and they all would've ended up with 5. I'll show it to you on the screen. You'll see it so clearly. So I'm sitting there going, oh my goodness. Ashley ends up with 11, Larry ends up with 0. And this is what I wanna say to everybody. God never told us take care of the lazy. He said take care of the poor and needy. And there is a huge difference.

Yes, yeah, that's so good. Which I mean, I think that's always challenging because you don't, like, can I say this from a standpoint of even looking around is sometimes you don't know the difference between the needy versus the lazy. And I think that's important for us because I think sometimes we could look at our life situation and those two things have almost blended so much that we're like, no, I'm actually in the needy. And God's like, no, I've given you one talent, but you think you're needy. But whatever you have, you are supposed to multiply. Even if it's little, you're supposed to multiply. Because I think sometimes people can look at this and be like, well, my calling's not that great. I don't have a lot of giftings. I don't have a lot of things to multiply. And I love that he didn't give them 3, 3, and 3 to start out, but he gave them 5, 2, and 1, showing that sometimes, yes, people might have more to give, but what he's looking for is not what, like, the end result of what you have, but what did you do with what you were given? And so it's really important for us to make sure that we're not just looking at it and say, well, I am the needy. I am the needy. I don't know what this is. I don't know what this looks like. God, I've not seen this blessing come into my life. But no, we look at it and say, no, am I being lazy? Can I be honest with myself? And can I look at my life and say, you know what? There's been a lot of things that God's given me that are small things that I have not been good a steward in it.

You know, I love, I was up in Gary, Indiana at this church and the pastor was buying up homes all over the neighborhood and creating jobs for people that were living on the streets. And literally it was mechanics, it was art, it was trades that he was actually having people teach them, and they were getting enough money where they could move out of the housing he provided into their own houses eventually. And he was just sharing that with me. And the sad thing is there were people that he offered to teach trades to that they wouldn't do it. They wanted to keep living in the bushes or in the streets. That's a lazy person. The person that were needy were the person that said, I'd love to learn a trade. And so that's where the difference is. And I like what you said. Sometimes it takes a little bit of discernment to understand the difference between the two. Now let me say this, I wanna say this. Do not walk away from this podcast saying that I said that God is a capitalistic God. That is not what I said. The way he thinks, remember, his thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways, lines up more with capitalism is what I said. And I wanna emphasize that point because I am no way saying that God is a capitalist.

Yeah, and then also that we're not for helping the homeless, 'cause I wanna make sure people don't think that. It's like, don't take care of the lazy. When we're saying that, it's understanding, no, we're called to take care of those who want to multiply what God, anything that they've been given and any opportunity that they have.

Now the next verse of scripture is the one that just blows me away because I don't think we ever really think a lot about this one. So he's just said, take the talent from Ashley, or take the talent from Larry and give it to Ashley. Ashley ends up with 11, Larry ends up with 0. This is the next verse. For everyone who has, I'm gonna read it just as the parable shows it, okay? For to everyone who multiplies, more will be given and he or she will have an abundance. But from him who does not multiply but maintains, even what he or she has will be taken away. Wow. Everyone who has, everyone who multiplies, more is going to be given. They're going to have an abundance.

And I love that. Going back to what we were saying about doesn't matter how small of an amount you've been given. Yes, you'll have God saying if you multiply, you'll have an abundance.

So I'm going to, I'm going to share a story that I tell in the book. Yeah, I have a friend. His name is Mike. And I called Mike 3 times on the phone to make sure I had the story right. I said, Mike, I heard you share your story one time in front of a crowd of people. Would you share it with me? He said, absolutely. And so he said, John, I got saved at 11 years old. He said, when I was 35, so think about it, 35. 24 years later.

Wow, I can't do that. No, it's okay. 24 years later.

24 years later. You just edit that out. No, it's fine. He said, I got fed up with being a fruitless Christian. That's his words out of his mouth. I said, Mike, what'd you do? He said, I memorized 2,000 scriptures in 6 months. Smart man. Sharpen the ax, says in Ecclesiastes. You're gonna chop down more trees with the same amount of strength. So he's sharpening the wisdom of God in his life. He's memorizing these 2,000 scriptures. In the midst of that 6 months, He goes to a conference in Phoenix, Arizona, where there's like 5,000 people at this conference, very well-known pastors conducting the conference. And the pastor says, hey, just pray, ask God what he wants you to give as an offering in the conference. Mike said to me, I went outside, I got underneath the cactus, I prayed. I said, okay. He said, and God spoke to me really clearly. I said, what'd he say? He said, God said, I want you to give $200. And Mike got really quiet on the phone. He said, my reply to God was, that's all I have. That's every penny to my name. And he said, the Holy Spirit whispered back in my heart, that's all I'm asking for. I'm not asking you for any more. I started laughing on the phone. And so Mike said, I gave every penny to my name in that offering. Yeah, he said I had to bum gas money just to get back home. He said, while I'm driving home, God's giving me ideas, business ideas. He said I started implementing them. See, this is the way multiplication always begins. Ideas. Yeah, strategic ideas from heaven. Yeah, he starts implementing. He said, John, I started making money. And he said, God put it in my heart, I want you to give $100 above your tithe every single month. So he said that year I did it, $100 above my tithe every month.

Month.

The next year God said, I want you to give $400 above your tithe. He did it. The next year it was $1,000 every single month above his tithe. He did it. The next year it went to $2,500 every single year above— or every single month above his tithe.

He did it.

Yeah. The next year it went to $5,000 every single month above his tithe. He did it. Then it went to $10,000. Yeah. And then he says this to me on the phone, Art, He says, then it kicked in. I said, Mike, I remember laughing. I said, Mike, it's already kicked in in my book. Yeah. He said, then I went to $16,600 every single month above my tithe. Then it went to $25,000 every single month above my tithe. Then it went to $35,000. Then it went to $50,000. Yeah. Then he said, to $100,000, then $150,000 every single month above his tithe. Yeah. I remember out of exasperation, I said, Mike, I said, how much of your income do you live off of? He said, it's interesting you ask that. My accountants just told me this recently. He said, I live on anywhere from 10 to 15% of my income. I said, so you give every year to the kingdom of God, you give 85 to 90% of your income. He said, yes, I do. Yeah, I love that. Not only that, Arden, he has gone around and shared his testimony with churches and conferences all over, inspiring other people to multiply. What's his gift? His gift is obvious. It's giving. Yeah. My gift is preaching and writing. Mm-hmm. Your gift is leadership and probably preaching. And God hasn't actually unfolded all your gifts.

Yeah.

He found out my gift is giving. And see, what he's done is he said, everything I give will affect people because God causes all of us to work together. Here we are. We didn't set up this, this, this, this studio. We didn't set up this studio for free. I mean, we had to invest finances to get the cameras, the lights. We have staff members that we need to pay their salaries. Here's Mike going out and he's realizing every penny I make, I can give it to missions, I can give it to ministries, and they're going to cause the finances that I've given to multiply into impacting souls forever. Yeah. So to him who has, more will be given, and they'll have an abundance. Jesus is saying the reason they're going to have abundance is because I know they'll be faithful. I know they'll multiply in lives what I've entrusted to them.

Yeah.

Arden, the happiest I ever became is when we started giving books to pastors overseas. As you know, we've given over 62 million resources to pastors, leaders, and believers all over the world. It's been the happiest 14— in the last 14 years we've done it, it's been the happiest 14 years of my life. Yeah, because we have been able to give— I'm talking about our partners, I'm talking about our, our partners who have given millions of dollars to do this, our ministry team who's done all the grunt work, our, our teams that have gone to all these different nations, Rob and Vanessa, who's gone to 192 nations in the world. Yeah, we've been able to give away these millions of resources to pastors and leaders that have nothing. Yeah. I mean, 4 million resources in Iran alone. Yeah. And why have we been able to do it? Because the people with the giving gifts, the people with the serving gifts, the people with, you know, the speaking and the writing gifts all got together and we said, let's join together to multiply what we've been able to do. Yeah. I never would have been able to reach Hardly anyone, let alone 62 million people, 62 million resources, I should say. I don't know how many people, millions and millions of people, but we never would've been able to do that by ourselves. But we joined together and through unity and through faith, we've been able to multiply what God has entrusted to us to impact millions of people's lives.

Yeah. I think about going back to what you even said of what with Mike is God gave him business ideas. I remember one of— I still think one of the more crucial prayers that I prayed back in 2017 is the start of the year, and I remember I wrote out this big board, and I was like, okay, I'm thinking through my year, God, what do I want to see? And I remember I just said, God, give me an idea. And I thought about this whole process of like, I think the greatest thing that God has given us as human beings is an idea. And I think oftentimes as we continue to sow in whatever things that it looks like, whether that's that our investment, 'cause there's people out there who are like, I would love to give, but I have no money. And it's like, well, you have other ways to give. You have your time, which is for most of us, the most precious thing that you have. You have your time, you have the ability to give encouragement. Like there's ways that you can give, but as you continue to sow, and that could be your gifting as well. I remember just praying and I said, God, give me an idea. And that was the idea that I remember God kind of started downloading some thoughts into my mind about, actually the ministry we did with Sons and Daughters, but that was the beginning of a lot of things that would unfold in my life, was just God give me the idea. And I look at like even with everything that's happened with our translations of resources, is you had just continued to be faithful with what you were doing. And what God spoke to you was, you have been faithful to the English-speaking world, now I want you to get your hands, or your resources in the hands of pastors and leaders around the world. So God's key in there of faithful to what you have right there, And then God gives you the idea of, here's this thought. And I love it because it wasn't, here's this thought, here's how it's going to happen. Here's the thousands of translators I'm going to raise up. Here's the thousands of partners I'm going to raise up. Here's this. It was, give these resources into the hands of pastors and leaders around the world. And I think it's amazing is that God gives you this idea. And I've always seen it as this, is God might say, I want you to build a chair, and you're like, okay, that means God's gonna give me a chair. And let's say you didn't know what a chair looked like, and you're like, God, I'm waiting for this chair. But yet there's a tree right here, sitting right here, and you're just like, waiting for God to give me a chair. And God's like, I've given you everything that you need.

You got a saw to actually—

you gotta go cut down that tree and start working. And that's, I think, a lot of times where it's like the trusting and actually making sure of that transition from the lazy to the faithful, where it's okay, God, I don't fully know how this is gonna plan out, but you told me to do this, and I'm just gonna be faithful with what I've got. I'm just gonna start working, and you'll tie in those things. It was not all those things downloaded to you. It began a process of discovery of you just continuing to be like, okay, well, we could do this. We could do a golf tournament, and then that would do this, and then this, and then this, Do you know what really—

do you know what really spurred the great multiplication is? The frustration. Yeah. Because I remember the first year we gave away 270,000 books to pastors and leaders in 48 nations, 44 languages. That year I was in the nation of Lebanon. I was in Beirut preaching to pastors from all over the Middle East. Yeah. And young pastor, 36 years old, from Arabella, Iraq. Said, "Pastor, can I meet with you?" And I remember he sat down with me and he said, "Pastor, I look at you as a father." He said, "I've used my credit card to download your sermons online." And I remember Arden checking out and I hardly heard anything else he said. And I remember I couldn't, can't wait to get to my room. And out of huge frustration, I went to my room and I screamed out, "God, you gotta show me how to do this." And that's when God gave the inspired idea that caused our giving to go from hundreds of thousands of resources a year to millions a year. And that one frustrating, moment of frustration led to that inspired idea. And so when you run up against frustrating moments, I want you to remember that God often is calling you to come in and cry out for the grace which is the wisdom, you know, that's what James means when he says, if you lack wisdom, ask of God and ask in faith. I went up to my hotel room and I didn't care what the rooms around me thought. I don't always do this. Matter of fact, I've done it very rarely. And I screamed out, I said, God, you gotta show me how to reach these pastors. And that's when the idea came that brought our giving to hundreds of thousands of resources a year to millions. And I wanna say this, that when I was 50 years old, that's when God came into our basement and said, you have been faithful with the English-speaking community. I want you to get your resource in the hands of every pastor in the world that can't afford 'em. I didn't even know at that time that the word faithful meant to multiply. Out of that encounter with God came this entire message, that not only are we called, not only are we gifted, But we are called to multiply. And that's what this book is all about.

And they can go to youarecalled.com. Youarecalled.com. And they can access even more resources around that book as well.

Yeah, we've got courses. They can get the book. It's gonna bring them to Amazon or other retailers to get it. I just want you to get this book. And the reason I'm saying this is, There are some people that have read this book that came back to me and they said, John, this book is a life changer. I know the senior editor at HarperCollins, one of their top editors did this book, and he called me and he said, John, I think this book might actually even outperform The Awe of God. Now that's saying a lot because this book has blown us all away, but—

Well, and can I encourage people why you really need to get a message like this is I think you look at the world right now and the reality of it is the world is not like, yes, we are desperate to see more sons and daughters of God, but we're not lacking sons and daughters of God. If you look at the population of people who are born-again Christians, it's actually pretty significant. It's like 2.5 billion around there. What the world is lacking right now, what the world desperately needs is more sons and daughters of God who are walking in the fullness of what God has called them to. And understanding is like, Yes, part of the Great Commission is actually walking in what God is calling you to do, not just making more, more converts, but making true disciples of God who are walking in their calling, walking in what it means to look like. And that's a huge part of this message.

I love it. So please take advantage of it. And I want to say this, that starting our next podcast, we may be embarking on a new book of the New Testament. 2 Peter, just 3 little chapters, took us a whole year. Let's see where the Holy Spirit leads us. I don't want to, I don't want to give any more away other than that, but I have had some promptings, and, uh, I don't want to say anything unless I'm 100% for sure. So you've got something to look forward to in the next John Bevere podcast. We will see you then.