Skip to content Open Heart Open Heaven: Faith's Reward or Folly's Regret Aug 24 · 29 min ...more
Open Heart Open Heaven: Faith's Reward or Folly's Regret
August 24, 2026 · 29 min
We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife
Series A Significant Life
Jim Graff is a respected pastor, leader, and author who loves helping people fulfill their unique
potential while finding their significance in Jesus Christ.
August 24, 2026 · 29 min · A Significant Life
We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife ...more Show the full description Show less We hope you enjoy this episode of A Significant Life. You can watch A Significant Life every week in the PrayTV App, on The Cornerstone Network or on YouTube.Website: asignificantlife.comPrayTV App: Pray.comYouTube: youtube.com/@ASignificantLife
Series A Significant Life Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Support this leader
Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Give
Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
In this video 0:00 Two Kinds of Fools and the Prayer for Salvation2:28 King Asa's Rise, Fall, and Lesson on Shalem7:31 Faith vs Folly: Leadership, Blessing, Restoration12:25 Call for Church Revolution and Deliverance26:31 Closing Book Promotion
Two Kinds of Fools and the Prayer for Salvation 0:00 Why am I here? It's a question we've all asked. And at a significant life, we want to help you find the answer. A significant life dot com offers resources that will help you grace your unique destiny.0:12 Visit us today at a significant life dot com. Are you searching for a life that means something? Most of us wrestle with our significance. Pastor Jim Graf understands, and in his book, A0:24 Significant Life, he shares extensive insight and inspiration that can help us change the course of our life and live in the purposes God placed in our heart. A Significant Life is a must read for your gift of any0:36 amount. We would love to send you your own copy of A Significant Life. Contact us today. Visit a significantlife dot com. That's a significantlife dot com.0:51 Welcome to our significant life broadcast, and thank you for the effort you're making to build a significant life. Jim, we're starting a new series that's really rooted in the truth your book shares that's helped so many1:02 nurture a significant life. It shares what David did to go from becoming a person that his own father didn't see much potential in to becoming an amazing king of a very prosperous Israel. And it was because of1:14 his ability to bring out the best in others.1:17 And today we're gonna start by studying Psalms that David and other people wrote that really help us pray bold spirit saturated prayers instead of liturgical lifeless prayers. Can't wait to1:29 get started.1:49 We've all had a common teacher in life, and you may think, well, that's kinda crazy because when I look across this congregation, I see people with a big age gap. I see people
2:00 who've been educated in places that are far away. But here's the common t shirt that all of us have had in life, and it's something called regret. And the problem with regret,
2:12 and you probably noticed this, is that regret can charge some pretty expensive tuition in life. And today, what David is helping a nation understand is the root cause of why
2:24 regret ends up filling our hearts, And then he's gonna help us understand what to do if we want to rejoice in the way that God's rewarding us because of how he loves us and because of how he
King Asa's Rise, Fall, and Lesson on Shalem
2:36 leads our life. It's interesting in this Psalm that David starts with these words. He says, the fool says in their heart that there's no God. And we're gonna see in just a minute
2:48 that David says that there are really 2 kinds of fools. 1 is the fool who lives as if God doesn't exist. And in in the Psalms, we're told to look up at creation. And when
3:00 we look at creation, it's living proof that there has to be a God. But then David says there's a 2nd type of fool and that is the person who understands that God
3:12 exists, but they don't embrace the love and the leadership that God offers us in life. So David starts by saying that it's the fool who says in their heart that there's
3:23 no God. And then he closes this Psalm with a plea. He says, Oh, the salvation for Israel would come out of Zion. Zion in the church in the scriptures is
3:35 symbolic of the church. And David is the king, scholars say wrote this during a time of great moral decay within Israel. And as the king, he recognized that
3:47 the greatest enemy that any society has is not the enemies that are on the outside, but if the if the enemy can get moral decay, it's not outside, but if the if the enemy can get moral decay to happen on the inside, then
3:59 he can curse any person, he can curse any family, and he can curse any society. So David prayed, oh, Lord, that salvation would flow out of your church. And then he
4:11 said, if the Lord restores his people or he actually said, when the Lord restores his people, he said, Jacob is gonna rejoice and Israel is going to be glad. And this morning, I wanna
4:23 share a story with you that I think, really is kind of rooted in the truth of this scripture, and I pray it kind of encourages you whatever condition your life is in this morning. When
4:35 I was 16 years old, it was the 1st day in Pennsylvania that a person can legally hunt by themselves. And my dad was an avid deer hunter. So from the time
4:47 I was 4 or 5 years old, I would be in the woods with him. I would be learning how to track deer. And he loved hunting so much that he bought a hunting camp along with his best friend
4:58 and 2 of his brother in laws. And and pretty much every year from the time I was, you know, 3 or 4 years old until I was 19, I was hunting deer with my dad. Well, 16
5:10 was the big day, right? Because now I got to do it by myself. And this may shock some of you, but in Pennsylvania where I grew up, here's how you hunt deer. You use a spotlight
5:22 the night before and you find what field they're in. And then when you find the deer you want, you wake up in the morning and you start tracking that deer until you think you
5:34 can find him. So the night before I was turning, I could hunt by myself, Muy Grande showed up in the field. And my heart was so excited. My dad looked at me and he said
5:46 to Jim, he said, remember, I want you to remember some things. He said, 1st of all, he said, when you start tracking that deer, he said, you know, we're we're in mountains. We're on about 40000 acres with
5:58 mountains that are 3000 feet high. And he said, there's a good chance that deer is gonna run over the ridge. And he said, if it starts running over ridges and you don't mark your trail, you're going to get
6:10 lost. I said, sure, dad. And you know what I did? Mister a d d pastor Jim, he took off after that deer. I forgot to mark my path and I was out in the middle of
6:21 40000 acres. And he took he gave me some other good advice. He said, I'm also gonna give you this compass. And he said, if you get lost, and he probably was thinking when you get lost,
6:34 I want you to remember that this compass, if you'll follow it, will keep you walking a straight direction until you find another camp or somebody who can help you. He said,
6:45 but don't not use the compass or you're just gonna wander around the woods for a long time. So it was about 8 o'clock at night before I finally found another camp and the
6:57 Wizard of Oz was kinda ringing in my ears. You remember Dorothy? Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. And I was looking for my way out of this difficult place in my life. And
7:09 David is writing this because he saw that sin had put some people in some difficult places in their life, and he wanted to bring them answers as the king of Israel. And he
7:21 shares with them, here's how you get out of the difficult place, recognize it's the fool in their heart who says, there's not a God who loves me and a God who can lead me into the desires
Faith vs Folly: Leadership, Blessing, Restoration
7:33 of my heart. If you recognize the love and the lordship of Jesus, he can get you through anything and out of anything because of how great his love and his wisdom is. And this morning, I
7:45 want to share a story that'll help us understand what needs to happen. There was a king named Asa, and his story is told in 2nd Chronicles that whenever he was a young man, he succeeded
7:57 his father as king. And in the beginning, the land had peace for 10 years. And we're told that the reason that it had peace for 10 years is because Asa did what
8:09 was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. But after the 10th year, evidently, God saw something that was shifting in the heart of Asa. And so he sent a prophet to him right
8:21 after he had won a big war. And this prophet came to him and he said to him, now listen King Asa, you and all of Judah and Benjamin, the the Lord is gonna be with
8:32 you when you're with him. And if you seek him, he's gonna be found by you. But if you forsake him, he's going to forsake you. And evidently, Asa received this word in his heart
8:44 because for 25 more years, Asa lived in the blessing of God. He had economic success. He had military success. The nation rejoiced in the condition that
8:56 their obedience had created. But then year 36 came and again, evidently, God saw something in the heart of king Asa because he sent another prophet. This time, the prophet's
9:08 name was Hanani. And Hanani basically told him, he said, Asa, you've lived with God as your hope and your help, but now you're beginning to rely on the wrong things. Find
9:20 your pleasure in the wrong places. And he said to him, he said, you're foolish. And he said, because of that foolishness, you're gonna live in regret instead of living in the rewards God can
9:32 bring into your life. And then he shared a moral compass that could have helped Asa get out of his problem in 2nd Chronicles 16 9. He said, the eyes of the Lord are searching
9:43 throughout the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. Isn't it touching that our God is a God that regardless what's going on in a human's
9:55 life, God has always looking to strengthen people, not just to scold people. He's looking to save people, not just to to get in people's business and and to make life
10:07 harder. The the prophet said to Asa, Asa, you you're making some big mistakes. You're you have some regrets. You're on the edge of big regrets because of decisions that you made, but I want
10:19 you to know the eyes of the Lord are looking over the earth and he wants to reward you. He doesn't want you to live in that regret. And sadly, Asa didn't listen. And the
10:31 next several years of his life were defined by a damaged kingdom, a diseased body, and at the end, he dies in regret. And the Bible is really clear
10:42 that the reason that Asa died in his regret is because he didn't seek the Lord his God. So how do we seek God and get out of regrets into the rewards God
10:54 has? Well, Asa heard from Hananiah what the answer was in 2nd Chronicles sixteen:nine. He said, the eyes of the Lord are searching the whole earth. And he says, what God needs
11:06 from us is a fully committed heart. And those 2 English words translated fully committed are just 1 Hebrew word that's the word Shalem. And
11:17 Shalem describes a heart that's undivided, a heart that isn't broken, a heart where everything's intact. In other words, if God wants to bless us, what he has to do is he has to
11:29 put our heart intact. We have to function with the wisdom and the strength and the ability that God knows is necessary to walk into a new season of blessing in our life. Now
11:41 for those who have been believers for a long time, you know, that the word Shalem sounds much like another Hebrew word and that's the word Shalom. And the reason for
11:53 that is because they come from the same root word. And scholars say that basically Shalem and Shalom are related in this fashion that if you have Shalom,
12:05 you're gonna have Shalom in your life. Now what is Shalom? Well Shalom describes a condition of inward peace. It describes a flourishing career. It describes more than
12:17 enough material provision. It defines harmonious relationships that you enjoy and it describes protection from calamity. And that's what David was
Call for Church Revolution and Deliverance
12:28 calling for in Psalm 14 as the king. He saw moral decay was destroying so many people's lives and he wanted to call them to the place where
12:40 they had shalom so that God could produce shalom in their life. So how do we do that? How do we live in faith's rewards instead of living in folly's regret?
12:52 Well, David asked us to consider 3 things. Number 1, he said, think about the fact that when you live by faith, you're receiving God's leadership. But when you live by folly,
13:04 what you're doing is you're distancing yourself from the very 1 who loves you the most and who can bless you the most in life. That's why he writes in verse 1, it's the fool who
13:16 says in his heart there's no God, whether they don't believe God exists or whether they just don't want his love and leadership to define their lives. And he said, here's what's happened. He said, they're corrupt.
13:28 Their deeds are vile. And he said, there's no 1 who does good. But then he says, the Lord is looking down from heaven on all mankind to see if any understand, if any are seeking
13:39 God, but he said they've all turned away. See, that's what had David, concerned is that whenever hearts turn away from God, what happens is you begin to see
13:51 character waste away in a society. And when character waste away in a society, what it does is it takes shalom away. And when you take shalom away, you're gonna take
14:03 Shalom away in a society. And David was so concerned about this, but I want you to hear something that if you don't hear anything else I say this morning, I want you to
14:15 know this about how God's looking at you as his eyes go over the whole earth. And that is David's son, Solomon wrote this, and we've misinterpreted this so much
14:27 as believers. In Proverbs 14 34, he said, Now righteousness is gonna exalt a nation, but he said sin is gonna condemn any people. And when we think about condemn,
14:39 here's what we think. We think about somebody who has a finger as long as a church steeple pointing at us, telling us how terrible we are, right? But that's not what the Hebrew word is. The Hebrew
14:51 word is she said and here's what it means. It means there's a loyal loving kindness. There's something that cares about us so deeply that it doesn't want us to go into a life that's
15:02 defined by sin. And the best place for kids to find this is in their church. But parents, you play such a big role in whether your kids end up honoring
15:14 God the way they should in their hearts. Do you remember what the Bible says? It says that foolishness abides in the heart of a child, but it's a rod of discipline that's to drive that foolishness
15:26 out of the heart of a child that they think they know how to make their life happier than God knows how to make their life. And so when our kids were little, I had this little paddle. It was just a little 1 and it
15:38 would sting them. It wouldn't hurt them. Right? And I would have them go to their spot, probably all the kids probably still avoid that spot to this day whenever they come to my house. But they would go to that
15:50 spot and I would say, no, don't move because God custom designed you for this discipline that I'm getting ready to give you. And if you move, I may miss and it's gonna sting worse. So stay still, be still and know that
16:02 God is God. Can you say amen? And I would take that swing and I would say, now know this that the moment I hit you here, this is God's ejector right here. And it's because I wanna eject the thought out of here
16:14 that's gonna damage your life down the road if this foolishness isn't dealt with in your life. And that's what God wants to do for us. It's not that he wants to condemn us. Listen, your
16:26 sin will condemn you enough and we're gonna see that in scripture in just a minute, but what God's gonna do is he wants his loving kindness and his loyal love to straighten out what's going on
16:37 in our heart that's messing up our life. So David 1st says, I want you to remember if you want to go from regret to God's reward, it's faith in God's leadership that
16:49 brings forth that reward. It's your folly that leads you to regret. And all of us can see in America today that there's a lot of folly. I mean, I don't care what
17:01 your political persuasion is. Whenever you hear people trying to justify abortion of all kind and and you hear about little children that people think they should have the right
17:13 to have a sex change and mutilate their body in a irreparable way and the parents shouldn't have any consent if a child who's underage does something like that? How many of
17:25 you know this world has gone crazy and we need a Psalm 14 revolution to bring people back to the goodness of God? Amen? And David tells us how to do it. He
17:36 says, you know what? It starts with how we as God's people represent God's love and God's leadership. And so you see Paul, when he's talking in Romans chapter 1 about
17:48 life, they were living in a very very corrupt and very very sensual culture that was destroying so many lives, Paul talked about how sin really takes over a culture. And
18:00 he says, it starts because people's foolish hearts are darkened. They really think that sin is more pleasurable than serving God. And he said, then they began to despise God's direction because
18:12 I want to do what I want. I don't want to do what God says is best for my life. And then he said, they start delighting in evil and they give themselves over to sinful desires. And he said pretty
18:24 soon they're degraded because of what sin talks them into doing. And Paul says it can get so bad that people start calling evil good and they start calling good evil. But
18:36 what does he say to us as a church that we should do in that that situation? He says in Romans 2, and you have no excuse you who pass judgment on someone else for whatever point you
18:47 judge another you're condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things. And he says, Don't show contempt for the richness of God's kindness, forbearance, and patience. Do you realize that
18:59 God's kindness is the best method for bringing people to repentance? Now hear me straight, it doesn't mean you don't call out sin because David's calling out sin in this passage and a society
19:11 that doesn't stand for something is gonna have people who fall for anything. Can you say amen? But it says that when we call out sin, we're to be people that listen, they know that they've
19:23 never met more loyal love than when they meet us. So David says, you want out of you want out of the regret of sin and the folly that got you there. Remember, you can either have God's leadership or you can
19:35 have folly and the pain it brings. And then the 2nd thing he talks about is how faith empowers blessing. Think about it. And your folly is gonna cause you to encounter burdens. He said, do
19:47 all these evildoers know nothing? They're devouring my people as though they eat bread and they never call upon the Lord. And it's amazing how people can devour families and
19:59 and they can devour people's reputation and the enemy can get them to do these these horrible things where they're devouring the things that matter most in life. And God says
20:11 that's that's what happens when people are in sin, but he says, then there comes a moment, verse 5, where they're overwhelmed with dread. In other words, I remember my 1st convert who came to
20:23 the Lord, he didn't want to give up sin. And he said to me, Jimmy, so I want to give up sin. He said, man, I want to I want to sow my wild oats while I'm a teenager. And I said to him, Yaki, I said, listen, you can sow
20:34 your wild oats, but you know what? You may not have a crop failure. You might be dealing with something down the road. And just the other day, I called him on the phone to check-in with him and and he said to me, he
20:45 said, man, I wish I had followed God like you asked me to when I was younger. He said, I've gone through so much pain in my life I didn't have to go through. And that's what happens is is
20:57 folly is gonna take you somewhere. It's gonna take you into pain, but God's leadership is going to take you somewhere. It's going to take you into blessing. And David says, listen, in a world being condemned
21:09 and robbed by folly, here's what God wants. He wants God to be present in the company of the righteous. In other words, God says, I can do something if I can just just get enough
21:21 people who are righteous to live with the same loving kindness that Jesus did. And that can happen in your family. God can set off a revolution of righteousness in your family. God can
21:33 set off a revolution of righteousness in the hearts of people you work with, but it'll happen as we do what's in the Psalm and we help people see how much better following God's leadership
21:45 is than living in folly. Can you say amen? See the world's a lot like this guy I heard of. He was a farmer in Kenya. And this is a true story. Back in 2009, he was walking on his farm and
21:56 he stepped on something spongy. And he thought, well, this is kinda cool. And he started, just kinda playing with this spongy thing. And he didn't realize it, but it was a python. And he ended
22:08 up wrapped up in a fight with a 13 foot python. And I didn't know a python could do this, but it dragged him up the tree. Can you believe this? This python took him up a tree. And he was
22:20 so desperate, he bit the tail of the python. And let me tell you, if you ever get in a fight with a python, alright, bite its tail because when he bit the tail, the python thought that it was another predator and it
22:32 loosened its grip. And there were there were some policemen that went by and they rescued him from this python. And, he men that went by and they rescued him from this python, and, he was okay. But listen, that's what
22:41 people do with sin. They they think it's fascinating until it is assassinating. They think it's thrilling until the moment it starts killing the most valuable parts of their life.
22:53 And David's saying the role of the church is to help people see this clearly. Listen, in our society today, all you have to do is look at commercials. All you have to do is look at things
23:05 and they make you think, oh, sin is so pleasurable. You're gonna have so much fun. Yeah. You might for a season, but how many of you know the season ends? Can you say amen? When our kids were little and
23:17 those commercials would come on, I remember I forget who it was. They they'd have all these girls dance around with nothing on during commercials of football games and and then the tagline was it doesn't get any better
23:28 than this. And my kids will tell tell you they remember their dad stressing out his hand saying, devil, I bind you in the name of Jesus. That's not life, that's death. The devil's behind that. Come
23:40 on, somebody. That that deserves a good amen this morning. Right? See, David said it's the role of the church to help people understand. Man, folly will lead you into regret, but God's leadership will
23:52 lead you somewhere great. It's the role of the church to help people see that faith can empower blessing in your life. Folly is gonna cause you to encounter burdens you don't wanna deal with. And here's the final
24:04 thing that David talks about, and he encourages us that faith can restore salvation to people Folly has robbed. I love verse 7. He says, Oh,
24:15 that salvation for Israel will come out of Zion. That's our job as the church is to bring salvation to people. He said, when the Lord restores his people, he said, let
24:27 Jacob rejoice and let Israel be glad. And this fall as a church, our theme is it's time. It's time for true worship. It's time for true joy. It's time for true faith.
24:39 It's time for true victory. It's time for the very best season of your life that you ever lived as a human being. It's time for that right now in this hour. Can you say amen?
24:51 I remember when we were building this building and we didn't have enough money to build it. We didn't have any money. And God said, I want you to build it out of what I made the world out of, nothing but faith. And I
25:01 would come here and look and I told the contractor. I said, man, put the bathroom in 1st because I get my stomach goes crazy when I walk in here trying to build this and and we'd laughed about that for a while. But 1 day
25:13 I was praying and God said, make this church a house of deliverance for an hour of darkness. How many of you know the darkness has arrived and now it's time for a whole
25:25 lot of deliverance? A whole lot of deliverance. Can you say amen? Listen, it's happened before and it can happen again. John Wesley and the the the people
25:36 that joined themselves to God's call, they saw God do powerful things because he's present in the company of the righteous. Jonathan Edwards in the 1st great awakening, he saw God do
25:48 powerful things because God was present in the company of the righteous. Charles Finney in the 2nd great awakening, they saw powerful things because God was present in the company
26:00 of the righteous. D. L. Moody and his his generation, they saw God do incredible things because God was present in the company of the righteous.
26:12 And it's interesting, there's only 2 Psalms that they're repeated in the Bible. And Psalm 14 is 1 of those 2 Psalms. You can read it almost word for word in Psalm 53. It's
26:24 because whenever David wrote it the 1st time, the nation was in chaos. And then he looked up again, and generations easily go from lordship to chaos.
Closing Book Promotion
26:36 And David said, we gotta bring it back. And listen, y'all, it's time to bring back the church at its best to a new generation in this hour. Amen?
26:54 Are you searching for a life that means something? Most of us wrestle with our significance. Pastor Jim Graf understands, and in his book, A Significant Life, he shares extensive insight and
27:06 inspiration that can help us change the course of our life and live in the purposes God placed in our heart. Drawing on biblical models, such as David, Esther, and even Jesus himself, Pastor
27:18 Jim gives us practical ways to step into our full potential. A significant light will help you understand your own worth as given and anointed by God. You'll learn to embrace the ways God has created you, experience
27:30 transformation in your own life, and Jim provides practical guidance
27:38 that will enable you
27:38 to live as a person with eternal significance, offering 5 seeds that will direct you along the way, developing confidence, being a
27:46 person of
27:46 character, concentrating on God's will, and
27:59 matters, a significant Life is a must read, and we'll show you the way into your God ordained significance. For your gift of any amount, we would love to send you your own copy of A Significant Life.
28:11 Contact us today. Visit a significantlife dot com. That's a significantlife dot com. Dot com. That's a significant life dot com.
Jim Graff276K followers