How To Value People | John Maxwell

thank you very much todd julie good morning it is so good to be with every one of you today i'm very excited about our time together whenever i get a whenever i get a share at my own home church christ fellowship it's just very special to me i get to literally speak around the world but again as i shared with you before there is no place like this place anywhere near this place so this must be the place huh so look at your neighbor and tell them you're in the place go ahead and tell them that you're in the place you are the message i'm going to teach today is one that weighs very heavily on my heart i love sharing with you but there are some occasions and this would be one of them that as i share with you um what i'm going to what i'm going to give is is very important to me and i'm quite passionate about it because i know that that it's the answer to reaching people for christ and um in fact i was i was up at 2 30 this morning one more time working through this teaching and asking god to help me to help you and help myself if you really um if you know that you have an answer for something that is very important i think there's a a sense of of being very uh committed to it and very passionate about it and uh it's a little awkward for me because i'm going to talk a little bit about my journey a little bit more than i really like to but it's the only way that i know how to kind of transition you through what i consider to be a a potential life-changing message for you and i'm delighted to be with all of our campuses at christ fellowship today but i'm going to talk about how i learned to value people and the reason i this message is heavy upon my heart is i feel that at this time in our life and in our country in our culture instead of valuing people we devalue people instead of coming together we're divisive and i think it breaks the heart of god and i also think it's not christian and so if you'll let me today just talk to you from what i have learned in my life and what i've learned from god i think that i have a a goal and the goal is at the end of our time together you will feel valued by god and valued by others and that you will go out and be a value connector with others and and that you will and that you will instead of dividing you will begin to encourage people to come together and we're going to learn right out of the scripture today let me pray first father thank you for this opportunity to share and you know what is on my heart help me to do it in a way that would be pleasing to you and helpful to all of my friends they are precious people they love you and i just love them and it's great to be back with family so i give you myself i give you this lesson i give you my friends and we just asked that you would do a work within me and within all of us today that has potential to be life-changing for us and for others we ask in your name and everybody said amen i love you let's get going on the screen is is the scripture john 3 16 probably the best known scripture uh of any person that knows anything about the bible it's read out of the message and and i start with that as the foundation so let's look at it here we go this is how much god loved the world he gave his son his one and only son and this is why so that no one need be destroyed by believing in him anyone can have a whole and lasting life god didn't go to all the trouble of sending his son merely to point an accusing finger telling the world how bad it was he came to help to put the world right again i'm sorry it wasn't on the screen was it okay what a way to start okay but but you got the you you heard that you heard the the passage and the the thesis today of the lesson is that valuing people is essential to helping them find god in fact if you don't value people it is impossible to help them find god do not miss what i'm about to teach you see we have a choice in this culture that we live in today we have a choice to either curse the darkness and that's what most people do but we have a choice to turn on the light and we got to ask ourself where am i going to be in my life am i going to talk about how difficult this time is and am i going to be divisive in my life or am i going to am i going to be salt and light and we have two challenges and the challenge in in our culture today we have two challenges i i see it so clearly that the first challenge is is that we've lost our way in the area of values um we have probably now at least one if not two generation that hasn't grown up in in in learning and and living out good values in their own life and then we have another challenge and that is because we have lost our way with values we cease to value people i mean we cease to value god's created race i was in a conversation with a good friend of mine kevin myers recently and he said john you're known for valuing people and he said how did you come to that place how did you come to the place where you value people when i talk about valued people i'm talking about valuing everyone okay see we have no problem with me teaching that it's important for us to value people as long as it's the people we value but we have a horrendous problem valuing people who are not like us people who do not have our values at all it's kind of like you know what john this is a good message if you talk about valuing people i like but if you're going to talk about valuing people i don't like just remember as i teach this lesson my name is john and i'm your friend so here's my journey it's a little bit more about me i'm going to get to jesus as soon as i possibly can trust me and by the way when i give you my journey i'm uncomfortable with because it's about me a little bit but i'm also uncomfortable because it makes me look a little better than i really am so as i talk about it just say he's not that good and that'll make me feel better and that'll make you feel better and because i'm not that good okay but but my journey in valuing people it's it's a legitimate journey and it begins first of all with my father's example my father passed away last year on july 4th at 98 and my father valued and loved everyone in fact when he was 90 we were having a conversation one day and he said john isn't it wonderful that that as i get older as people get older isn't it wonderful as people get older how how much more they love people and i said that's not true i said i know a lot of people they're getting older but they don't love people more i know a lot of people they get older and they're grouchier i i know a lot i mean the reason that you do is because you value people your life and here's what happens as you get older everything exaggerates and if it's good it exaggerates in a positive way and if it's bad it exaggerates in a very negative way and my father was living a life of valuing people of which it was natural for him as he grew older to even love them more and the greatest advice he ever gave me was when i graduated from college he said john if you will value people believe in people and unconditionally love people he said you will always have people that want to follow you and that grid of valuing people believing people and unconditionally loving people has stayed with me all of my life every time i write a book i write it because i value people i believe in them i believe the best in them i i unconditionally love them every time i teach a lesson i take i go through that grit and it's my father's example and the values lesson i pull from that is very simple how i value people determines how i view people don't miss that my value of people determines my perspective of them another way to say it is how i view things as how i do things how i view people is how i value people my second time experience in valuing people was what i call my evangelism awakening and that was in my first little church in southern indiana and there was a man in the hospital that didn't go to our church but his two sisters did his name was jim and i visited him in the hospital the sister said when you visit jim he doesn't come to church and i did and i liked jim and jim liked me and we had a wonderful conversations over a couple week period time every two or three days i'd go see him i liked him in fact i liked him so much and he liked me so much he said he said john he said well when i get out of the hospital i'm going to come to church and i told i told jim's sisters jim's going to come to church hey jim's coming to church it's just so good jim's coming to church and we got all excited but there was a problem jim died and i was the last person to see him before he died literally about an hour after i visited him in the hospital he passed away now this was an awakening in my life because i realized that my priorities were wrong i i had put the church which is a wonderful place to come i put the church above sharing my faith and come to church and come to church and come to church and and we know coming to church doesn't change a person's life coming to jesus changes a person's life and and i i put i had my priorities all messed up and and god took me through a a six-month wilderness experience of was i going to was i going to value people and share my faith wherever they were at the moment that i could or or was i going to constantly just kind of kind of mess up my mess up my priorities i can still remember standing between the two sisters and that day there was a custom in indiana of viewing the the body and and so the two of us are just there and here we are and i'm doing that and and i'm crying and they think i'm such a compassionate person i'm not a compassionate person i'm weeping and repenting because i didn't value him to the place of sharing my faith with him and he was lost it was life-changing it was gripping to me in fact i only made one request at that time that i've honored for my gosh now almost 50 years i said god if you'll just help me to to be able to win people to christ if you'll just help me to be able to effectively share my faith i'll never ask you to have a great church i'll never ask you to i'll never ask for anything else just help me to constantly see people through my life and influence come to help me value people enough to to help them and to help find them and keep them from being lost and that was the only prayer request i ever ever asked god in in the area of my pastoral ministry i mean by the time i was 29 i had the 10th largest church in america but but i never asked for a large church all i asked was to value people because it's it's all about people some people say to me john what is your um first love is it is it leading is it writing is it speaking and i love all that but that isn't my first my first love is is sharing my faith you that are here today on all of the campuses i i just want you to know that there's nothing more important to me than to let you know how much god loves you and how much god can change your life and how much beautiful it is when you give your heart to him but it all begins by the fact that god values you and i want to be god-like and if god values you i want to value you and i don't want to i don't want to miss this i don't i don't want to miss this so the values lesson here is just very simple value people like god values people my third journey in valuing people is what i call my zig lesson and i call it my zig lesson many of you would know this if you're especially a little bit older but zig ziglar was a a great motivational speaker writer and and and i was when i was young i i heard zig one time say if you will help people get what they want they'll help you get everything in life that you want and and i remember it was a paradigm shift for me because as a young leader i was trying to get everybody on my team and and here's my vision and join me and all of a sudden zig says you know what if you'll just turn that around and if you'll just go value people and help people and help them be successful they'll help you be successful and it was a it was an incredible change it was it was the moment that servanthood and serving people and and placing people first became a huge priority in my life and i went from people adding value to me to to me adding value to them it was a it was a total change and through my life i've had many what i call servanthood surprises but maybe the greatest servanthood surprise i've ever had was this i knew it was right to serve people but when i started serving people is when i started valuing people okay stay with me if i see you as hurting i'll help you if i if i see you as broken i'll fix you but if i see you as valuable i'll serve you you see in the first two paradigms i see you as hurting i help you i see you as broken i fix you i have the upper hand i mean honestly i'm the guy that came in and i kind of rescued you it's kind of like almost a oh here i am to save the day [Music] but i have the upper hand you look to me and say you're awesome but you know probably without you i'd still be lost but do you see how it changes when i see you as valuable when i see you as valuable i serve you and i not only serve you but i i relation and just enjoy the fact that i get to serve you and why is it because i see you as valuable and so the zig lesson basically taught me just always put people first always it's it's not like a question just put them first and then another lesson that i had was what i call my okay i'll have to explain this but my hot stove lesson mark twain said if a cat sits on a hot stove that cat won't sit on a hot stove again and then he said that cat don't like cold stoves either that cat just stays away from stoves why a bad experience and in my younger years as a pastor i had a young man that had such potential and i loved him and i equipped him and i trained him i poured my life into him and i was naive of course i was naive i was young and i would look at him and i'd say you and i will do life and ministry together all of our life and i was just giving everything i got only to find out that i got betrayed literally had to fire him lost a relationship and i said to myself i don't like this and and i honestly i said i think what i'll do is instead of embracing people and and and giving them the benefit of the doubt i think i'll hold people at a distance and i think i think what i'll do is i'll hire staff but i'll say you know that's your job this is my job we'll meet at the christmas party and for about six months that's exactly what i did and then then i discovered something i discovered something that really helped change my life again i discovered the good news is if i help people if i didn't value them if i if i didn't think the best of them if i if i somehow because i got hurt by them kind of isolated myself from that here's what i found the good news was that if i kept myself isolated and protected and walls etc the good news is they couldn't hurt me but the bad news is they couldn't help me so i made a conscious decision let them in let them in take the walls down value them right where they are and the values lesson i learned in that period of my life was don't allow a bad experience to become a lifetime experience how often i see people who they've had a bad experience we all have we all have our stories but instead of letting it be a bad experience and moving on it becomes a lifetime experience and we build walls and instead of embracing and valuing others we have a tendency to to keep them away the the next lesson i learned on values was my enron lesson and all i've got to do is say enron and many of you that are old enough will think about 20 years ago 2001 when the corporate scandals began where big companies were taking advantage of their employees and all of a sudden the house of cards began to fall and and i was called to new york city by time warner who was our my publisher at the time they said we want you to write a book on business ethics because the businesses aren't ethical and i looked at them and i said i can't write a book on business ethics i said why not i said because there's no such thing as business ethics there's just ethics you either got them or you don't hey and if you have them they work in business oh happy day oh happy day [Music] you see leaders the advantage leadership has is leaders see more than others see and leaders see before others see and if i can see more and before other people around me it puts me at a distinct advantage over other people now the question is when i have that distinct advantage am i going to add value to people and value people and make their life better or am i going to add value to me and make my life better that's the question am i going to motivate them and move them for mutual advantage or am i going to manipulate them and move them for personal advantage and out of the enron experience i wrote a book ethics 101 in fact it's the of all the books i've ever written it's the book that got the most awards and the way the only reason i can figure that out is no one else writes about ethics but but but here's what was powerful i wrote it based on the golden rule treat others as you would like to be treated yourself it's a value it's a beautiful value and that's when i realized that values wow are above the law again i i don't know if this is going on the screen now just maybe it will be and maybe it won't surprise surprise galatians 5 the fruit of the spirit the fruit produced by the holy spirit within you is divine love it ain't gonna happen [Music] i'm sorry just give me a moment i'm my sense of humor is wanting to take over right now and you have to understand you know some people said yeah i cannot believe what you say you'd be more impressed if you knew what i didn't say trust me that then you would really be impressed okay okay here we go the fruit of the spirit pro the fruit produced by the holy spirit within you is divine love and in all of its varied expressions here's what i want you to catch here's what divine love looks like the fruit of the spirit in your life this is this should be within us as believers friends this should this is the fruit of who we are as christians joy that overflows peace that subdues patience that endures kindness in action kindness in action faith that prevails gentleness of heart and strength of spirit never set the law above these qualities above these values for they are meant to be limitless the values lesson is simple great values are greater than any law that could be passed let me tell you something you could make a law in the land but if you don't have good values you'll still break it we don't have a law problem in america we have a values problem and it starts on the inside it starts on the heart don't don't force it don't force it don't force it number six my sixth lesson was the crossover lesson and experience and this is when i've been writing books for many years and and my publisher in nashville told me that my books were being read by the secular and business community more than the christian community and i had no idea i had never planned that it was a surprise to me but the point that i want to make here in this lesson is that the moment that i realized that i was influencing lost people that i was influencing non-christians i felt immediately called to that world i said i'm going to cross over and my model was the apostle paul who so beautifully said i entered their world and i tried to experience things from their point of view this is powerful paul said i want you to know i entered the world of lost people and i tried to experience things from their point of view and that was my commitment to take christ to people that would never come to church to share the love of god to people that are never going to be in this type of a surrounding that honestly if somebody doesn't reach them they're just going to be lost and here's what i discovered here's what i discovered the closer i got to those people the more i love them don't miss this the closer i got to them the more i love them you said my job that that seems a little surprising it shouldn't be when jesus and mark when mark tells about jesus going from the cities and the villages what did it say as he went from village to village as he saw them sheep without a shepherd he had compassion on them when did when did jesus be moved with compassion when he went when and and hung around with lost people you see you don't get compassion for lost people in church you don't get compassion for lost people in a prayer meeting you get compassion for lost people when you go out and live with lost people [Music] and it doesn't happen we don't we don't kind of mystically pray this stuff in but the moment you see them and you see they're hurting and you see their brokenness and you see their lostness all of a sudden you just begin to fall in love with them i i had a wonderful experience right before covent a year ago in february i i took some leaders some business executives to to israel with me business executives that that i had helped share my faith and many of them i have helped lead to christ and when we went to the baptism and when we went to the jordan to baptize and i built the jordan many times baptized a lot of people but on this day i was an emotional wreck as i was in that water and then comes um becky who was a mormon that i led to jesus christ and then in came diana who was a buddhist that led to christ and then came roddy he came into the water and i baptized him he was an agnostic and susan was a jehovah witness and then there was john who was a jewish brother and i'm just baptizing these people and i'm just saying it doesn't get any better than this it doesn't get any better than this we have a coaching company called the john maxwell team and we have thousands of beautiful muslims in our organization and they come to orlando for the training period there'll be three four thousand people because we do it twice a year for new coaches that are becoming part of our organization and we just love them and we just have open arms and we just care for them and we just serve them and we just let the love of god be in our life and inevitably inevitably at the end of the conference they'll come to me and they'll say we just i can't get over how much you love us i can't get over how much you value us as people and we have seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them come to christ but they come to christ because we value them if they don't like you they won't like your god what part of this teaching do you not understand [Applause] and if you're kind of on that deal i'm trying to set the world straight as if you're perfect i go back to john 3 16 in the middle god didn't go to all the trouble of sending his son merely to point in an accusing figure telling the world how bad it is he came to help get the world right again and by the way if you want to straighten other people out good luck about yourself you ain't so hot either you see the closer i get to them the more i love them the farther i am away from them the more i judge them when you're far you judge when you're close you love and the values lesson there is just be intentional in developing relationships with lost people now let's go to the main thing the main one it's my jesus walk if you want to be jesus-like if you want to be christ-like it begins with valuing people if you want to be like jesus value everyone i mean when jesus saw zacchaeus he said zacchaeus let's go to lunch today everybody in the town of jericho was absolutely appalled because zacchaeus was a crooked man zacchaeus took advantage of people zacchaeus stole money from people and they're looking at jesus and saying why would jesus have lunch with a crook because jesus said that's why i came to this world understand this the only people that had a hard time with jesus valuing everyone was religious people religious people because he wasn't hanging enough around them the reason he wasn't hanging enough around them is because he came for lost people let me explain something to you when you go to heaven you got to hang with jesus for eternity and you get to hang with christians for eternity we're only here for a few years on this earth not long here's a thought hang with lost people now share your faith now when you get to heaven you get to hang with christians quit being so oh i gotta get to my group of christians one more time my name is john i'm your friend see the town couldn't understand jesus saying with zacchaeus the disciples couldn't understand jesus hanging with a samaritan woman it's a thief on the cross that looks at jesus and receives grace in his last dying hour i mean the woman caught in adultery hey the religious people were trying to write her off and jesus and jesus wanted to write her into his story you see religious religion places lost people on the outside and we build walls relationships place lost people on the inside and we build bridges self-righteous people are seldom aware of their judgmental spirit i i brought this alone if i can find it yeah maybe this will say it better than i can say it i haven't pulled out a laminated card for a long time you have to understand when something's important i laminate it okay if i would have been moses at mount sinai i laminated the ten commandments and i'd have found and stuck them in every jewish pocket that i could find i just this will probably teach what i'm wanting to teach better than anything else i could say a man fell into a pit and he couldn't get himself out a subjective person came along and said i feel for you down there an objective person came along and said it's logical that someone would fall down there a christian scientist came along and said you only think you're in a pit the pharisee came along and said only bad people fall into a pit the news reporter came along and wanted an extensive story on the pit a fundamentalist said you deserve your pit a calvinist said if you were saved you had never fallen in the pit a wesleyan said you were saved and you still fell in the pit a charismatic said just confess you're not in the pit a realist came along and said oh now that's a pit a geologist came along and appreciated the rock strata of the pit an irs man came along and asked if he was paying taxes on the pit county inspector asked if he had a special permit to be in the pit a self-pitying person said you haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit the las vegas gamblers said chances are anyone could fall into the pit optimus said things could be worse and a pessimist said things will get worse and jesus seen the man in the pit reached down his hand and he took him out i would hope i would hope that god is talking to your heart and i would hope two things are happening in this lesson today one is i would hope that we who are christ followers we begin to see the big picture that we value everyone every person god's creation we value everyone but if you're not a person of faith if you don't have a relationship with god i would hope that today as you're listening to this teaching on all of our campuses i would hope today that you would feel valued because i want you to know god loves you so much he gave his only son jesus [Music] he said son i want you to go and i want you to live in their world encounter all the things that they have to encounter teach good lessons but the reason i'm putting you on earth is you have to die because the only way that sin can ever be taken from the lives of people is if i give my son my only son for their salvation that's what he did that's what he did you may say well john you have no idea who i am you have no idea what i've done you don't have any idea the messiah my life has become i have no idea you're exactly right but i do have an idea of what god could do for you and i do have an idea what jesus wants to do in you he wants to forgive you of every sin he wants to claim you as his own he wants to give you life more abundantly than you've ever experienced and what it gives you wants to give you the hope of heaven and i want you on all of the campuses including here to bow your heads now with me would you please you're a such a tremendous audience you have been so receptive to this message that i've shared i wonder how many of you on all the campuses including this one right now i wonder how many of you would raise your hand and say hey john i feel that god loves me and god values me and i think i could trust my life with somebody that cares for me as much as he and i would like to know god in a personal way i would i would love to to know that every sin is forgiven and i would love to know that i have a relationship with jesus and heads or bowel and eyes are closed all over this auditorium all over all the auditoriums and you'll just raise your hand up real high and say i'm going to raise my hand i'm going to ask by that that you would just pray for me and you'd raise your hand all up all of the auditorium do it right now raise them high for me would you please all over the auditorium there are literally on this campus dozens and dozens of hands being raised there are i'm sure hundreds of hands being raised on campuses all over christ fellowship territory now you that have your hands raised here on this campus and by on the other campuses pastors go to the front now and your pastor's at the front there and he's looking at your hands being raised in a moment he's going to invite you to pray with him in fact i'm going to turn the service over to those camps pastors now and i'm going to just talk to the main campus here you either have your hands raised every one of you look at me would you please if you have your hands raised just look at me i'm coming down to this main floor right now and here's why i'm coming to the main floor in a moment i'm going to ask you to come and join me here and i'm going to ask for the privilege of praying for you and introducing you to my best friend jesus and so when we stand together in a moment you that have your hands raised dozens of you you have your hands ready i want you to step out and come and join me on the main floor and let me have a closing prayer with you and introduce you to god let's stand together and as we stand all of you just step out that raise your hands right now come on that's it just come on down with me i'm here on the main floor that's it come on that's it come on now [Music] [Applause] they're coming from all over folks they're coming from all over come on come on down come on come on down come on [Applause] this is beautiful wow that's it come on we're waiting on you come on they're still coming they're still coming they're still coming come on down come on oh this is beautiful this is incredible that's right they're still coming we're waiting come on come on there's time there's room there's room at the cross here there's room with the cross for you my friend wow oh this is so beautiful this is so wonderful now i want you to repeat after me i'm going to pray a prayer and i want you to say these words out loud to me because you are about to enter in to a relationship with the god who created you you are listen to me friends you're coming home today you're coming home to the father who loves you repeat after me lord jesus i'm a sinner i'm lost i need you i need you i'm in the pit have to bring me out but you can you love me you died for me you died for me and you have forgiveness for me so right now i open my heart and i ask you into my life as my personal savior thank you jesus thank you for hearing my prayer thank you for coming into my life from this moment on i'm going to love and serve you in jesus name amen welcome

Channel: Christ Fellowship Church

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Length: 41min 6sec (2466 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021