Well, good morning Crossing Church.
How are you doing today? I got a question for you.
This is how I want you to answer it.
If you believe that God is good, can I get an Amen?
You believe that God is good, can I get a Hallelujah?
If you believe that God is good, will you just say God is good?
He certainly is. He certainly is.
I want to welcome all of you today.
I'm glad to be here with you want to welcome all the campuses
that are joining with us across the region.
If you're inside and or online, We are so thankful for each and
everyone of you and I. I don't think I'm much different
than than any minister that gets up to preach.
There's, there's always some sort of thing that preachers do
to psych up to stir up the fire before they get up.
And I have a prayer that I pray. I've been doing it for decades.
And, and that prayer is God give me the faith of Abraham, the
humility of Moses, the strength of Samson, the wisdom of
Solomon, spirit of Elijah, the heart of David and the love of
Jesus. I believe that with all my
heart. And I'll tell you why I pray
that prayer because I have a problem with a hard heart.
Any of you have a problem sometimes with a hard heart?
You know, I grew up in the city. I grew up on the West side of
Indianapolis. So I'm a city boy.
And but for some reason, God had it in mind that I would spend
most of my ministry years in areas that are more on the rural
side. And so I grew up talking about
the horsepower of my car, but everybody else was talking about
the horsepower on their tractor. And so I'm kind of an immigrant
when it comes to rural things, but I've learned an awful lot
from the agricultural community. And one of the things I learned
about farming in soil is that one of the things that's a
problem with fertility of the soil, something called
compaction. See that tractor goes back and
forth with carrying implements, you know, pulling implements.
And over a period of time that constantly driving over the soil
creates compaction and there's a subsurface of soil that gets
really hard underneath. Now the topsoil, they disk that,
they cultivate that. But underneath that is something
that farmers call hard pan and they have a particular implement
to solve that problem. And it requires a lot of
horsepower. They have tines that go down.
They're made a very heavy heat treated steel.
They go down like 18 inches in the soil and they break up that
hard pan. They call it the Ripper.
Everybody say Ripper. Yeah, you said it like you mean
it. That's pretty good.
And it requires all this horsepower.
You can tell when a tractor's pulling it because all that
diesel smoke is rolling because they've got that throttle all
the way down. And when I pray that prayer,
that's what I'm praying that God would do.
He would just take the Ripper down.
When I compare myself to those people that I mentioned, the
seven I mentioned, I fall way short and I realize that the
soil of my heart can really be compacted, that I can be hard
hearted and I, I want God to change that.
So I pray God give me the faith of Abraham, Mother Teresa said.
I know God won't give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish he didn't trust me so much.
You probably feel the same way sometimes.
And that's one of the reasons I pray for the faith of Abraham,
because when God told him to go, he just went, didn't even ask
for directions. Of course, men don't do that
anyway, but he just went and he just figured that God would tell
him if he needs to turn this way or that way or backward or
forward. It says in Hebrews 11/8 by
faith, Abraham when called to go to a place he would later
receive as his inheritance, he obeyed and went, even though he
did not know where he was going. Pretty amazing when Abraham and
Sarah were both beyond childbearing years, God told him
he would father a nation and he believed God.
Pretty amazing faith. When God told him to do
something completely out of the character and the nature of God,
to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering to him, he obeyed and
he went by faith. Abraham it says in Hebrews 11/17
when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice, he would
embrace the promises, was about to sacrifice his one and only
son. Abraham was willing to obey God
against every logical conclusion.
Where do you get that kind of faith?
If you read more in Hebrews, it says that Abraham believed that
God could raise the dead, so he fully expected to kill his son
and that God would raise him back from the dead.
You know that story, how that story goes?
So Isaac goes with Abraham to this mountain, Mount Moriah.
And when they get to the base of the mountain, they need wood.
They need wood for the sacrifice to burn the offering.
They have fire and they have a knife.
They get part way up the mountain and Isaac says, hey,
dad, where's the sacrifice? Doesn't know he's the sacrifice.
Abraham says God will provide the sacrifice.
They get to the top of the mountain and they assemble a an
altar out of unhewed stones. And at some point in that
experience, Abraham must have told his son.
Now listen, we think of Isaac is a little boy.
He wasn't a little boy. He's about 2021 years old.
Abraham was 120. You might think that a 2021 year
old kid would say, hey dad, I think there's a nursing home
with your name on it, man, Did you?
I don't know what you're talking about, but he was so obedient to
the faith of his father. He allowed his father to bind
him, probably had to help himself on that altar to submit
to what his father had said. And when Abraham lifts the knife
to kill his son, God stops him. Now I know that you love me
because you are willing to not withhold your only son.
There was a ram caught by its horns in the horns in the
thicket nearby and so God gave a a substitute when it comes to
that. Wow, this, this guy has faith.
Maybe that's what I need to do. Maybe I need to pray for more
faith. God, give me some more faith.
I bet some of you have prayed. God, I need more faith.
Do you know what? That's an ignorant prayer.
It's an ignorant prayer, and I'll tell you why.
Because everyone that's listening to the sound of my
voice right now has exactly the same amount of faith.
You know that you're going. I don't believe that, Jerry, but
you do. Here's the deal.
It's not about having more faith.
It's about taking faith out of the Bank of yourself and placing
it in the Bank of God. It's about transferring faith.
Oh, we all have faith, but do we have faith in ourselves or do we
have faith in him? And that's what I learned from
Abraham is that he had faith in him.
Let me give you just three things I see reflected in
Abraham about faith #1 faith is always a response.
It's always a response. God is the one who always
initiates, not, not us. The Bible says it's not that we
loved him, but that He loved us. In Romans 5/8 it says God
demonstrates His love toward us in while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. We didn't care look about Jesus
or God. He was dying for us.
We were on His mind. He always is the one who
initiates and we respond. Secondly, walking by faith is
like walking through life backwards.
Can you just see that? It makes sense, doesn't it, that
we walk through life backwards. We can't see where we're going.
Walking by faith is about trust. Here's the good thing.
You can see when you walk through life backwards, you can
not see where you're going, but you can see where you've been
and you can see where God has been there with you.
Actually, walking by faith is more about listening than it is
by seeing. The Apostle Paul in 2nd
Corinthians 5 seven said for we live by faith and not by sight.
Thirdly, faith is a relationship.
If you want to be a faithful person, you need to be in a
relationship with God. That's why we say you need to be
in an intimate personal relationship with God through
Jesus Christ. And this story is all about
relationship. The Bible says that Abraham was
called the friend of God. Why would Abraham do such a
cruel thing to tell his friend to sacrifice his son?
You know, I've thought about that a lot and this is what I
think. I think it was father to father.
I think it was Abraham as a father and I think it was God as
a father. Why do you think God had him go
to Mount Moriah? Why do you think that God had
Isaac carry the wood up that mountain?
Maybe it was because 2500 years in the future, God's own son was
going to be at the base of that same mountain and someone was
going to put wood on his back and he was going to carry it up
that mountain. And they were going to nail him
to that wood and he was going to die alone on a cross for you and
me. And maybe father to father, God
was telling Abraham, listen, I'm here to provide a substitute.
I am here to stop you from killing your son.
But there's going to come a day where my son is going to walk up
this hill and my son is going to carry this wood, and I'm going
to have all the power to stop them.
But I'm not going to do it. I'm going to let them kill my
son because that's how much I love you, Abraham, and that's
how much I love your son Isaac. So I don't want to see them
separated from me for all eternity.
So I pray for the faith of Abraham.
I pray for the humility of Moses, Ted Turner, the media
mogul, said. If I only had a little humility,
I'd be perfect. I think humility is escaping him
there. Humility is rooted in an
understanding of identity, particularly who you are and who
God is. And until you get that right,
humility will escape you. But I love that God is in the
business of changing us. He certainly was in the business
of that with Moses. You know the back story on
Moses, right? He was born at a time when the
Egyptian Pharaoh was killing all the babies of the of the
enslaved population of Israel inside of Egypt.
Fearing their overpopulation, Amram and Jochebed, Moses mom
and dad, weren't willing to let their child die that way.
And so Jochebed made a basket out of reeds, and then she
waterproofed it with pitch and placed this priceless son of
hers into this basket and put him symbolically in the hands of
God when she set him down in the Nile River for the current to
take him away. God was faithful.
Pharaoh's daughter was taking a bath in the Nile River.
She sees this basket, maybe heard a baby's cry and pulled
him out. That's what the name Moses mean
to be means. It means to be drawn out.
And he was raised in the palace, raised as a Prince of Egypt,
raised as a child, a grandchild of the pharaoh.
Pretty interesting his human identity.
Born as a child of slaves, born under sentence of execution, and
yet raised as a Prince of Egypt, definitely a place of privilege.
And he was that way till he was 40.
And he started coming into tune with this idea of how his fellow
Hebrews were being mistreated. You see, God had put all of
these abilities inside of him, but he wanted to use them on his
own terms. We're the same way.
And So what does he do when he's 40?
He sees a an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew and he
looks that no one is looking this way and that the Bible
says, and seeing that no one was a witness, he sneaks up on the
Egyptian and murders him and then buries his body in the
sand. Well, he finds out later that
it's become known that he did it, and Pharaoh puts out an
execution warrant on Moses and Moses flees for his life into
the wilderness of Midian. That's where he spends the
second 40 years of his life. You see that first 40 years, the
problem was even though Moses had a hype of view of himself,
he actually was a man full of pride, needed humility.
And those next 40 years, that was God's Crucible of humility.
Matter of fact, he did such a good job on Moses that when
Moses was 80 years old and he sees something off in the
distance and he goes to see what it is and he sees that it's a
Bush that is burning, but it's not consumed.
And as he comes up close to it, he hears the voice of God
saying, take off your sandals, Moses, because the place where
you're standing is holy ground. And he tells Moses that he's
going to go to Egypt and God's going to use him to deliver the
people of Israel. But by that time, Moses has lost
all ego. He's lost all pride.
And he begins to make excuses. And he made a lot of excuses.
My favorite one is I'm slow of speech and slow of tongue.
And then God answers him by saying, who made your mouth?
Moses? Eventually Moses says, please,
God, send someone else. God said, no, I'm sending you.
And you know, you might think, well, he's lost his mojo.
He's lost it all. You know, he no, he hasn't.
He's just in a place where he realizes that it's all going to
be about God and it's not going to be about him.
And that's a place where God can really use his people, because
it was God who gave Moses his true identity.
Sure, he had a human identity, had a broken identity because of
pride, but God gave him his true identity, and he led that nation
of 2 million people out of slavery into freedom.
In Deuteronomy chapter 34, verses 11:50, this is what it
says about him. Since then no prophet has risen
in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did
all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt, to
Pharaoh, and to all his officials and his whole land.
For no one has ever shown the mighty power performed the
awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.
I need the faith of Abraham and I need the humility of Moses,
and so do you. The third one that I pray for is
the strength of Samson. Now, praying for an attribute of
Samson seems out of place because so much of his life was
a failure, certainly a failure in faith and in humility.
But you know what? I think I learned a lot more
from failure than I do from victory.
And if I can learn from somebody else's failure, maybe I don't
have to repeat it myself. You know, maybe I can just take
that win instead of have to learn it the hard way.
Samson's abilities were God-given.
Notice that I call them abilities.
I don't call them gifts because abilities don't become gifts
until you give them back to God. You see, it's God who gave you
those abilities, and he gave you those abilities so that you
could see how you could impact His Kingdom with them, because
that's the purpose of those abilities.
But they don't become gifts until you give them back to God.
Well, Samson had a problem with that.
He wanted to keep those abilities for himself.
And you know, God, he had great patience with Samson.
When Samson was born, his parents made him a Nazarite,
like a it's a vow that people would take.
And so this vow was spoken over his life when he was still an
infant. Now, to be a Nazarite meant
meant to be set apart. And it was set apart in three
specific ways. There were 3 rules #1 you
weren't supposed to have anything that came from a grape
that included wine and anything like that.
You also weren't allowed to be around anything dead, and you
weren't allowed to cut your hair.
Now, we've heard about Samson and the cutting of the hair
Delilah, right? What we don't seem to think
about is that, yeah, he broke the other two parts of the vow
long before he had his hair cut. And yet God had patience with
him until he had absolutely destroyed every vow he had made.
You know, God gives us these abilities, so we turn them into
gifts because we can experience His pleasure when we use them
for God. And that's the ultimate tragedy
of Samson's life. God has an UER story plan for
all of us. We live down in this lower
story, in the difficulties and the stresses and the challenges
of everyday life. But God has this beautiful upper
story plan. If we could just walk in that
plan. And when we do walk in His plan
and He unleashes the power of those abilities that become
gifts inside of us, we feel His pleasure.
God wanted Samson to feel his pleasure.
But understand this God's upper story is going to happen whether
we contribute to it or not. It's just so much better if we
want to be a part of it. So that's why I pray for the
strength of Samson, so I can learn from his mistakes and I
can be a part of that blessing and feel his pleasure.
I pray for the wisdom of Solomon, Abraham Lincoln said.
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming
conviction I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom seemed inefficient
for the day. Solomon sets the course of his
book Proverbs. It's book on practical wisdom in
chapter 1 verse 7 where he says the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and
discipline the fear of the Lord. Some people trip over that like
what does it mean to be afraid of God?
The fear of the Lord is a recognition of who God is and
who I am, and more accurately that I'm not God and Sam, not
Samson. But Solomon has that right in
his early life. In First Kings chapter 3 verses
7 to 9, he prays this prayer which shows incredible wisdom.
He said, now Lord my God, you have made your servant king in
place of my father David, but I'm only a little child and I
don't know how to carry out my duties.
Your servant is here among the people You have chosen a great
people, too numerous to count or number.
So give your servant. A discerning heart to govern
your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.
For who is able to govern this great people of yours?
He had a recognition of who he was and who God is and that he
wasn't God. After that recognition, the next
step to wisdom is to trust God. Maybe you've heard or you've
said, I need to give up control of my life.
I need to learn to turn control over.
I need to give up control. You know, I had a good friend.
He was up here on this stage a few years ago, Randy Frazee, and
he said something to me and to all of you back then that I
think is critically important. He said we don't give up control
of our life. We give up the illusion of it.
And I was confronted with a truth in my life that a lot of
what gives me anxiety is out of this idea of control.
Like, I'd like to control what other people are thinking of me.
I would like to control the state of the world.
I would like to control my health that I would like to
control my my financial circumstances.
I would like to control a lot of things.
But the truth is there's a lot of that that is completely out
of my control. So to trust in God is to rest in
God. I don't know about you, but I
have a hard time resting when my life is full of anxiety and I
need to learn to trust and rest in God.
I think it's happens when we give up our perceived right to
make decisions of right and wrong and we defer to the
Lordship of Christ. You realize when you became a
Christian, he didn't just become your savior, He became your
Lord. That means he determines what is
right and wrong, and you live in obedience to that understanding,
right? So I'm giving up that right as
if I ever really had it in the first place.
Like what I have. My opinion really matters since
God is the one who's determining that.
But just because you recognize that you're not God and you make
a decision to trust in God, that doesn't mean that you're going
to live it out in real time. You know what Solomon didn't,
you know, God told Solomon, I don't want you to allow these
three things into your life. Don't do these three things.
Number one, don't store up for yourself a lot of gold.
How did he do with that one? You know, if you if you took
Solomon's wealth in that ancient time and you like applied it
like inflated it to our time, it would dwarf what Elon Musk has.
He used gold for mortar between stones to hold stones together.
So he didn't follow God that way.
He said don't store up horses for yourself.
Horses were a symbol of power of a mighty army.
And Solomon was known not just for Solomon's minds, but
Solomon's stables had more horses and Chariots than
anybody. The third one he said is he
don't don't amass for yourself a lot of wives or women.
Well, Solomon's epic that way. 300 wives and 700 concubines.
I guess he just decided to settle on 1000.
Good round Number means that you know, if you saw a woman every
day, you wouldn't see her for about 3 years.
Crazy, absolutely nuts. And it LED Solomon to this
reality in his life. The book of Ecclesiastes is
written at the end of his life. And do you know how that book
begins? With three words.
Everything is meaningless. See, Solomon had a God shaped
hole in his heart and he tried to fill it with every other
thing in the world. And do you know what?
Nobody that you know or have ever known had enough resources
to actually try everything. But Solomon did.
And in trying everything in his life, all he could come up with
was everything is meaningless. What a sad, cynical way of
looking at life. And some of you would say, well,
I mean, there's no way I could ever attain the wisdom of
Solomon. Let me tell you how wrong you
are. There's one word that if you
know this word and you understand this word, you will
be wiser than Solomon ever was. And that one word is Jesus.
Because only Jesus can fill that God shaped hole inside your
heart that no one else could fill.
And if you know that name, you're wiser than he was.
I pray for the spirit of Elijah. You know, I've been on top of
Mount Carmel where Elijah faced off with 450 prophets of Baal
and defeated them. There's a big white statue,
Scott Elijah standing up, He's got a sword over his head and
then under his sandal he is standing on the neck of a
prophet of Baal. Just has one word on the statue
and it says Elijah. It's referring to a showdown
that happened on Mount Carmel between Elijah by himself and
450 prophets of Baal. The northern Kingdom of Israel
had a king named Ahab, but he's not as well known as his
infamous wife whose name was Jezebel.
Nobody names their daughter Jezebel because she was as evil
as they come. She brought the worship of Baal
into the northern Kingdom, and they did so many detestable
things, one of which was sacrificing their live children
to this God. And God knew that he needed to
teach his people a lesson. And so he sent Elijah.
Not only did he send Elijah, but he sent a drought lasted for
three years. All the crops failed.
There wasn't any food. People were starving to death.
He put them in a position where they would listen and maybe
learn. And so from that Mount Carmel,
Elijah's words boomed out. He said, how long will you waver
between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.
If Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing.
And then it goes on to this duel that I don't have time to talk
about today. But at the end of that, God
showed himself that he was the one and only God.
But just because we're introduced to this mighty man of
God who celebrates his big victory, it doesn't mean he
isn't a man. It doesn't mean he isn't flawed
or even weak. Because after this great
victory, Jezebel threatens his life.
And do you know what he does? He runs.
He runs for his life. Are you kidding?
After three years, after this incredible victory, he runs for
his life, runs away, sits under a broom tree, and then begs God
to take his life. Well, that makes all kinds of
sense. If you wanted to die, why didn't
you just stay there? But I, I relate to that because
that's how I am as a human being.
Sometimes I'm so confused. I'm doing everything all
backwards. I'm doing things the way I
shouldn't do it. It's like, you know, something
gets messed up inside my head. So God takes him to a mountain
and there's this massive earthquake, but God's not in the
earthquake. And and then there's this, this
huge wind and God's not on in this wind or storm.
And then there's this incredible fire, but God's not in the fire.
And then there's a still small voice.
Sometimes it's hard for us to hear that voice because there's
so much white noise, so much pink noise around us all the
time. You know what I'm talking about,
Just ambient noise. I don't know about you, but I've
got an app on my phone that has a fan so that I can sleep at
night. But how in the world are we
going to hear God when there's all this noise going on in our
lives? We have to quiet down.
We have to be still and know that he's God.
And that's what God did for Elijah in that moment.
Finally, I, I really love the story of Elijah because of his
successor, Elijah. I think it's the greatest
discipleship story that we read in the Old Testament.
Elijah knew that God was going to take him up to heaven.
So he said to Elijah, look, God's going to take me to
heaven, so I need you to stay here.
And I'll. And Elijah said, no way am I
staying here. But then he said, well, get
well. They went a little farther
together and there was this town, Bethel.
The House of God is what Bethel means.
And he goes, why don't you stay here?
Stay in the House of God. And Elijah said, no way, I'm
staying with you, went a little farther and there were all these
prophets, a whole group of prophets, and Elijah was a
prophet too. And he goes, why don't you stay
with these prophets? So I'm going to go on.
And Elijah said, Nope, I'm staying with you.
And they made it all the way to the Bank of the Jordan River.
And Elijah said to Elijah, I want you to stay on this side of
the river because I'm going to go on the other side.
And he said, Nope, I'm staying with you.
And Elijah took off his cloak. He wrapped it up and he smacked
the water of the Jordan River and the Jordan River parks, and
there's dry land. And so Elijah starts walking
across on the dry land. And Elijah follows him.
When he gets on the other side of the Jordan River, Elijah
looks at Elijah and he says, what do you want from me?
And Elijah said, I want a double portion of your spirit.
Wow, Elijah said. That's not something I can give.
That's something only God can give.
And when he said that, a tornado comes down like a whirlwind.
And then there are these horses and charities of fire that come
down and separate Elijah from Elijah.
And Elijah is caught up in this whirlwind.
He goes up in the sky and Elijah is looking after me, tears his
clothes, and he says, my God, my God, the Chariots and horsemen
of Israel. And the whirlwind dissipates and
Elijah's gone. But there's something up in the
air that begins floating down. And as he gets close to the
ground, Elijah sees that it's the cloak of Elijah.
And he picks it up. And he walks over to the Jordan
River. And he wraps it up like he saw
Elijah do. And he smacks the water.
And he says, now where's the God of Elijah?
And the water parts for him. And he walks across.
And Elijah leads the nation of Israel for the next 60 years.
That's a great story. I want to have the spirit of
Elijah. And then I pray for the heart of
David. The philosopher Blaise Pascal
said the heart has reasons that reason cannot know.
I love that quote because it answers the question of why to
the statement Jesus loves me. I learned that when I was a
little kid in a song. But when I got older I started
wondering, well, why? Why would you love me?
Because he just does. I know that doesn't sound like a
great reason, but it's true. He just does.
David was overlooked by his family.
He was the youngest, the smallest.
He was ignored by his father. And when Samuel went to Jesse's
house, David's father looking for a new king, all these young
men were paraded before him, all of them Jesse's sons.
And every time Samuel thought, well, it must be him, God would
say no. God kept saying no until there
were no boys left. And he looks at Jesse and he
goes, Are these all your sons? And he goes, I have one other my
youngest, but he's out tending sheep.
Bring him in. In Acts 1322, Paul recounts
this. And this is what he says that
God said in that moment. I have found David, son of
Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him
to do. What does it mean to have a
heart like that? That God would give it such
attention, Well, David had the heart of a stranger.
If you read the Psalms, you'll see that he was more at home
with God and in the temple. That he was ever at home.
He longed to be with God. He also had the heart of a
warrior. When David fought Goliath, his
heart was turned tuned to what God would do through him, not
what he would do. And he became the warrior king
that God would use to establish Israel as a nation.
He also had the heart of a father.
You know. David was a passionate man, but
his passion got the best of him. His worst defeat didn't come
from some outside influence, it came from an enemy within.
His desire for another man's wife.
Result was multiple sins, lust, adultery, lying and murder.
And it had a ripple effect on his whole family.
The incestuous rape of his daughter, the death of his
rapist son at the hands of one of his other sons, and the
immorality and treachery of his son Absalom and Absalom's death.
All seeds sown by what David had done.
But when he received words that Absalom had died, he said this.
Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son, would God, I had died for
you. Absalom my son.
There's the heart. There's the heart that God saw
in David. See, David wished he could have
taken his evil son's place and died.
But my heavenly Father sent Jesus, who did die, to take my
place when he died on the cross. I pray for the heart of David.
And finally, and most importantly, I pray for the love
of Jesus. One of my most favorite quotes
comes from Doctor Seuss. That's my reading level right
there. You know you're in love when you
can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than
your dreams. You know, love is the most
precious, most fragile, most indestructible, most abused,
most quoted, most misunderstood reality in the human experience.
It's the one thing that fuels our hope for today, tomorrow and
eternity. Love is the word that God uses
to define himself. God is love and Jesus is the
physical representation of God and he's the embodiment of the
word love. Let me tell you a little bit
about what that love can do. It brings life.
You could ask Gyrus about his 12 year old daughter, or a widow on
her way to a cemetery with the body of her son, or sisters of a
man who'd been dead and buried for four days.
His love brings life. The love of Jesus also brings
sight. You could ask 2 blind men who
believed in Jesus even though they never actually saw him do a
single thing because they were blind and he let them see.
The love of Jesus brings peace to a woman on her hands and
knees in a crowd, touching the hem of his garment.
And a sickness that lasted 12 years is instantly gone.
Not only she healed physically, but her uncleanness that had
ostracized her from her community is gone when Jesus
calls her daughter. And the love of Jesus brings
purpose. You could ask a paralyzed man
who was let down through a hole in a roof.
Jesus forgives his sin but then heals him for the purpose of
showing the rest of the people he has the power to forgive sin.
But the love of Jesus. It comes down to just one
miracle. 1 miracle for the whole world, for all time, for all
people that has a hope as dead as some of these.
When Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead,
the effect of that love resurrected hope and a lost and
a dying world. And years ago I was reflecting
on that truth and I wrote these words.
When I need direction, He's my narrow path, and when I need
shelter, He's my cleft in the rock.
When I need a way out, he's my open door.
When I need illumination, he is my light.
When I need someone to look after me, he's my shepherd.
When I get lost, He assembles a search party.
When I'm caught in a storm, he says peace be still.
He's the fount of every blessing.
He's the Crimson flood that washes away my stain of sin.
He is the cloud from which the showers of blessing falls.
He wrote the songs that the birds sing.
He's the author of life, the giver of life, the restorer of
life and the resurrection and the life.
And he makes life abundant and joyful and purposeful and
meaningful and eternal. He is a lawgiver and the grace
giver. He is the judge and the defense
lawyer. He demands payment and then he
pays the price himself. He sees my sin, but he believes
in my potential. He has the power to condemn me,
but he chooses to forgive me. He's the source of my healing.
He makes a demon possessed man the town's only hope, heals 10
lepers even. Only one of them comes back to
thank him. He calms the sea.
He raises the dead. He feeds the multitudes, teaches
the educators, heals the masses, notices the insignificant,
restores the ruin, includes the lonely, remembers the forgotten,
forgives the condemned, lives up the humble, brings down I'm
proud, mends the broken, and sets the captives free.
His power even flows through the hem of his garment.
And who in the world could ever compare to him?
That's my Lord, that's my savior, that's my king.
I want you to compliment. Just contemplate that as we move
to a time of decision. Years ago, I was in India and I
was doing a teaching seminar with about 75 Indian pastors.
They had one pastor that was over the rest of them, and I was
trying to figure out how to build a bridge.
How do I build a bridge? Because our cultures are so
vastly different. If you don't know Indian
culture, humility is like the brightest light of their culture
doesn't come from Christianity, comes from Hinduism.
The idea of karma. So I'm contemplating that.
I'm thinking, you know, if you put Jerusalem in the center, I
am as far West of Jerusalem as they are east of Jerusalem.
As a matter of fact, you go to Chennai, India.
You can't go any farther away. You if you keep going, you are
on your way back. How do I build that bridge?
And I thought, you know, Jesus built a bridge by washing the
feet of his disciples. What if, what if that would do
it? And I went to the head of that
mission and I said, would it be OK if I washed the feet of the
pastor's? See that would kind of short
circuit them because, you know, having a white man from the West
get down on his knees and wash their feet, that would just be
mind blowing to them. And they don't want to be out
humbled. He thought about it, prayed
about it, and he gave me permission to do it.
They brought me a a basin full of water.
They brought me towels, fresh towels.
An Indian men's feet are the dirtiest feet on earth.
I mean, all their roads are dirt roads.
They defecate in those roads. They take their their sandals
off when they walk inside, but doesn't have any effect on the
dirt that's on their feet. And I got down on my hands and
knees, and these men sat in a chair before me, one at a time.
And as I began to do it, they weren't just crying, they were
retching. You know what I mean by that
means It wasn't just tears coming out of their eyes.
It was coming out of their nose. It was coming out of their
mouth. It wasn't quiet crying.
It was loud, guttural crying. After quite a few of those guys,
I looked down at the water and it was the most filthy water I'd
ever seen in my life. The towels were black, water was
black. And something occurred to me
about me that when God looks at my heart, that's what He sees.
That's what He sees. That's the truth about me.
It's also the truth about you. But listen to me.
Here's the gospel. Here's the good news.
It doesn't even slow him down, not for a second.
Even though He knows all of that truth of the filth that is in
and on my heart, His blood is enough to cleanse me of all my
sin and to make me new again. I guarantee you that all those
Indian men who had their feet washed by me, even though we had
an incredible moment together, their feet got dirty just as
soon as they left. But when Jesus washes your heart
clean, you're clean if you're here today when you don't have
an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And let me define that. That doesn't mean that you're a
churchgoer. That doesn't mean you're a
religious person. That doesn't mean that you come
from a religious family or even you know that you attend
regularly. It means that you are in
relationship with him. If that's never happened in your
life, you don't have to wait another second, another minute.
There's going to be somebody right over there by that
baptistry would love nothing more and to pray with you, talk
with you. And maybe today is the day that
you say, here I come, Lord, all the baggage, all the dirt, here
I come. What you might not hear, but you
definitely will feel is this. I've been waiting for you,
daughter. I've been waiting for you, son.
I have more love than you have sinned.
You can make that decision today.
Many of you here today have made that decision for Christ.
But it has does not mean that you got it all figured out
right. There's a lot of times when
we're doing everything but what we need to be doing.
We're not showing the faith of Abraham or the humility of Moses
or the strength of Samson or the wisdom of Solomon or the spirit
of Elijah, the heart of David or the love of Jesus because we're
caught up in everything else. Maybe you're looking at your
heart right now. And when I was discussing what
hard pan is, you're going, Yeah, it's kind of me.
Well, come on, let him put the Ripper down.
Let him break up that hard pan. Get down to the fertile soil
underneath. It may not feel good in a few
moments, but afterwards there'll be a blessing.
And that's what these steps are for.
An opportunity to you say, for you to say, Lord Jesus, have
your way. Would you stand with me in Jesus
name, Heavenly Father, I pray that we wouldn't let an
opportunity go by. There's no one standing in our
way right now, no one except ourselves.
Help us to get out of our own way and walk straight to you.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.