Help God! I Want to Change, Part 2 — Eternity in the Hearts of Men

Help God I Want to Change, part 2, teaches that God has placed eternity in your heart, and that real change begins when you stop making excuses and start drawing on what He has already put inside you. In this message, Dr. William P. Hohman explains why the natural mind cannot grasp God’s plan, how Noah kept his integrity in a corrupt world, and how the seed of God’s Word makes us brand new creations.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a word study table, a timestamped outline, and practical steps for planting eternity in your daily life this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries in Merrill, Wisconsin, and posted on July 27, 2021. It runs about 82 minutes and closes with a time of prayer and ministry. Pastor Hohman picks up where the first week left off: God created us with the ability to change. This week’s title is that eternity is in man’s heart, and the whole message unpacks what that means for ordinary believers.

His central contrast is between corruption and eternity. This world is an earth-cursed system that corrupts whatever we let in through our senses; eternity is what God has placed in us, released as we sow His Word.

Help God I Want to Change: Make Changes, Not Excuses

Pastor Hohman opens with a simple definition: maturity comes when you stop making excuses for your life and start making changes. When an excuse becomes a person’s go-to plan, it turns into bondage. The greatest bondage, he says, does not come from the devil but from our own minds. Every one of us can look in the mirror in the morning and wave to our greatest problem. Yet what is impossible with man is possible with God.

The anchor text is Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time,” and He has set eternity in the hearts of men, though they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. He notes that the King James Version renders eternity as world. In the middle of this cursed and corrupted time, God put in the heart of mankind everything needed to live above the corruption and fulfill His plans and purposes.

The natural man cannot perceive it. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9–16). Pastor Hohman explains that heart here means our comprehension, our soul. But we have been given the Spirit of God and the mind of Christ, and He reveals these things to us.

There is a process, though. We have to work with Him, which is why Scripture says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12–13). He warns against sitting in a service wishing a spouse or relative were there to hear it. You are the only one you can change.

That does not mean keeping it to yourself. In Revelation 22:17 the Spirit and the bride say come, because people are changed by the Word and in God’s presence.

Staying Too Close to Where You Got In

Man was created in the image and likeness of God and given dominion over the works of His hands. There is a time and a season for every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1), yet many people miss God’s timing. Pastor Hohman says the greatest potential for this world is lying in graveyards: unfulfilled dreams, unrealized destinies and unfathomed hopes. It would be tragic to be placed in a specific time and place and never help anything grow or become better.

He illustrates with a story about a little boy who kept falling out of bed, adding a memory of his own son Paul tumbling from a dorm top bunk and sleeping right through it. Asked why he kept falling out, the boy answered that he was staying too close to where he got in.

That, Pastor Hohman says, is a lot of Christians. They stay close to where they got in. They have Jesus, they are going to heaven, and they see no need to change. Some even reason that God is in control and simply makes everything happen. He calls that one of the most foolish statements he has heard, because God would not have given man a free will if that were the case.

In Deuteronomy 30:19 God sets life and death before His people and tells them to choose. He has plans, but He will not force them. It is like a family vacation that everyone goes on except the one who stays home alone because he did not decide to go.

Those plans are good. In Jeremiah 29:11 God’s thoughts toward us are of peace and not evil, and Pastor Hohman says there is an expected end in every area of your life.

Here he makes one of the key points of the message. You do not enter eternity when you die or are raptured. You enter eternity when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and He comes into your life. Time itself was created and became corrupted, and Jesus invested Himself into time to redeem us out of it. If God has placed a desire in your heart, he says, do it, trusting Him and committing your way to Him (Psalm 37:4–5).

Noah: Integrity in a Corrupt World

Pastor Hohman turns to Genesis 6:9–13. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations, and he walked with God, while the earth was corrupt before God and filled with violence. Jesus said the last days would be as the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37–39), and he sees corruption and violence filling up again today.

The word perfect, he teaches, means Noah was a man of integrity and truth. In other words, he was a man who would take God at his word. It had never rained, and Noah did not know what an ark was, yet when God said rain was coming he built one. God saved him, seven members of his family and many animals because one man believed.

Who corrupted the earth? Not Satan, Pastor Hohman says. All flesh had corrupted its own way. When Adam fell, mankind became a slave to the five physical senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell. These are the gates of Psalm 24:3–10. The one with clean hands and a pure heart ascends the holy hill, and when the gates are lifted up, the King of glory comes in.

Lifting the gates means submitting your senses to God. Otherwise corruption comes in through what you see and hear. He describes a new employee who arrives eager the first day, then after a few months of listening to grumbling coworkers calls it a rotten job. The job did not change; corruption came into the person’s mind and stole what God wanted to give.

The kingdom of heaven, he says, is all about gifts. God’s first act in fellowship with Adam was a gift, and after Adam gave it away, God answered with another gift: His only begotten Son (John 3:16). Those who receive the gift of righteousness reign in life (Romans 5:17).

Like Noah, believers are placed where they are to bring life. God put you in that job, that marriage and that church not because they are perfect, but so you can bring life into them.

Living From Eternity, Not From Corruption

After corruption filled the earth, God destroyed it, but with Noah covenants began, sealed by the rainbow. A flood washes away the dirt, Pastor Hohman says, but the next time the earth will be burned up, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. For six days God worked in creation and rested; when Adam sinned, the work of redemption began, and we will see it fulfilled when this corruptible puts on incorruption (1 Corinthians 15:51–53).

Each of the six days of creation ends with evening and morning, but the seventh day does not. That, he says, is the place of eternity, the rest we labor to enter, and eternity is ready to be revealed in your life now, not one day.

The feeding of the multitude shows what this looks like. The disciples looked at their own strength and the money they lacked. Jesus asked what they had, gave thanks for five loaves and two fish, and fed thousands from a place of rest (Matthew 14:15–21). Twelve baskets were left over. It was not by might nor by power but by His Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).

Pastor Hohman then tells how the ministry’s FM radio station came about. The Lord told him to build one, though he knew nothing about radio. An engineer helped with the application, and then the church simply prayed and thanked God for the station. Seven years later a letter came: the license was theirs, with a year to build.

They had nothing saved. Then a man who did not attend the church said the Lord had told him to give ten thousand dollars, and money kept coming. Over 750 churches had applied for that permit, he says, and theirs was the only one granted.

Like Abraham, who hoped against hope (Romans 4:18–21), they let what was eternal matter most, and that, he says, changes your marriage, your job and your home.

Made From the Soil: Seed, Time and a New Creation

How did God make man able to change? Pastor Hohman reads Genesis 1:25–26 and notes two Hebrew words for earth. One means the globe; the other, adamah, means the ground or red soil. The word for man is Adam, rooted in adamah. God made us like soil, so whatever we sow into our lives we will reap. Whoever sows to corruption reaps corruption, and whoever sows to the Spirit reaps everlasting life (Galatians 6:7–8).

Animals creep on the ground in herds, and people without God, he says, live the same way, following fashion. All creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God because it is in bondage to corruption (Romans 8:19–21). To deliver it, we must come out from among them and be separate (2 Corinthians 6:17).

What you sow will one day benefit or hinder others, so time matters. Ephesians 5:15–16 says to redeem the time because the days are evil, and he warns that idleness is a terrible tool of corruption.

A barren patch of weeds can be tilled and planted until it feeds the neighborhood. What grows is not determined by the soil but by the seed. We are born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever (1 Peter 1:23).

Jesus said John the Baptist was the greatest born of women, yet the least in the kingdom is greater (Matthew 11:11). We carry the potential for eternity to be expressed through us, as God’s prized possession. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17),.

Transformed, Not Conformed

Romans 12:1–2 brings the message together. Paul begs believers by the mercies of God to present their bodies as a living sacrifice, which is reasonable worship. Pastor Hohman says real worship means doing the Word like Noah: being responsible and trustworthy. Then comes the command not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of the mind. Peter adds that true value lies in the hidden person of the heart (1 Peter 3:3–4).

The table below collects the Hebrew and Greek words he explains in this message and what each one means in his teaching.

Pastor Hohman applies this to marriage. If there are problems at home, he plants Scripture’s promises of a good marriage in his mind, because he cannot change his wife but he can change himself. Corruption, he says, reveals that we are unequipped for a problem, but we do not have to be equipped, because God’s intervention is available. Lean not on your own understanding, and He will direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5–6).

Our faith cannot be in our own work but in God’s finished work; otherwise we never enter rest. If we continue in His word, the truth will make us free (John 8:31–32), and God’s thoughts toward us outnumber the sand (Psalm 139:17–18).

The closing text is 2 Corinthians 4:6–11. God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, and we have this treasure in earthen vessels. We are hard-pressed but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Christians face what the world faces, he says, but the corruption does not have to stick.

The light here, he says, was never kindled, so it can never be quenched, unlike the moon’s borrowed light. Troubles will come again and again, but a believer who sows only seeds of eternal life eats the fruit of eternal life.

Living It Out This Week

Pastor Hohman points the church to written Scripture confessions at the entrance, covering the mind, marriage and deliverance, then prays over everyone listening. These steps come from his teaching:

• Trade one excuse for one change. Name the excuse that has become your go-to plan and replace it with a step of obedience.
• Guard your gates. Lift up what you see and hear to God, and stop taking in the drama, gossip and grumbling that corrupt your thinking.
• Plant the Word daily. Choose promises for the area that needs change, such as your marriage or your mind, and speak them over yourself with your own name in them.
• Redeem your time. Replace idle hours with time that builds something, because what you sow now will bless or hinder others later.
• Offer compassion, not just sympathy. When someone shares a hard story, do not answer with your own; pray for them and believe God for their release.
• Get alone with God. He suggests taking five, ten or fifteen minutes during the day in the Word, because rest comes from His presence, not from a vacation.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:01 Maturity: stop making excuses, start making changes
• 2:12 Ecclesiastes 3:11: eternity in the hearts of men
• 5:17 Dominion, timing and unfulfilled dreams
• 6:33 The boy who kept falling out of bed
• 8:11 Free will: choose life
• 10:17 Entering eternity when you believe
• 12:33 Noah, a just man in a corrupt earth
• 14:42 The five senses as gates: Psalm 24
• 18:02 The kingdom of heaven is about gifts
• 26:01 Feeding the multitude from eternity
• 27:06 How the radio station came to be
• 30:50 Abraham and Genesis 1: made from the soil
• 35:17 Redeem the time: Ephesians 5
• 40:29 The seed decides what grows: 1 Peter 1:23
• 45:34 Romans 12: transformed, not conformed
• 56:05 Faith in God’s finished work
• 1:00:31 Treasure in earthen vessels: 2 Corinthians 4
• 1:13:21 Closing prayer and ministry

Help God I Want to Change Series

This message belongs to a short teaching series at NTC Ministries on how God created us to change. Continue with the next message:

• You are here: Help God! I Want to Change, Part 2 — Eternity in the Hearts of Men
• Next: Help God! I Want to Change #4: Entering God’s Rest With a Soft Heart

Frequently Asked Questions

Does “come out from among them” mean avoiding unbelievers?

No. Pastor Hohman says it does not mean you cannot have unsaved friends or talk with people, and he calls the idea behind withdrawing into monasteries a lie of the devil. Coming out means separating from the corruption, not the people. He gives examples: refusing to listen to the jokes, the lies and the drama, and not filling your mind with horror films. Stay among people so you can bring life to them, but keep their corruption out of your own heart.

Why do some people not keep the healing they receive?

Pastor Hohman recalls Roberts, from the era of the healing revivals, estimating that perhaps forty percent of people healed in the revivals kept their healing, because many went back to living like the world. Healings and miracles are wonderful and everyone needs one at times, he says, but they are not God’s best. God’s best is planting seeds of the Word so consistently that you walk in the good things and become a living miracle yourself.

Will a vacation restore me when I feel worn out?

During the closing prayer he speaks to people whose strength is gone and who hope a trip or time away from work will re-energize them. A vacation, he says, only helps you refocus and forget the problem for a while. The only thing that truly re-energizes you is the Word of God. Take time each day, even five to fifteen minutes, to open your Bible, rest in His presence and ask Him to fill you with His love and Spirit.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Ecclesiastes 3:11 — eternity in the hearts of men
• 1 Corinthians 2:9–16 — revealed by the Spirit, the mind of Christ
• Deuteronomy 30:19 — choose life
• Genesis 6:9–13 — Noah, just and perfect in a corrupt earth
• Psalm 24:3–10 — lift up your heads, O you gates
• Galatians 6:7–8 — sowing and reaping
• 1 Peter 1:23 — born of incorruptible seed
• Romans 12:1–2 — transformed by the renewing of your mind
• 2 Corinthians 4:6–11 — treasure in earthen vessels

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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