Missions | Jeremy Carpenter | May 24th 2026

Thank you so much. Wow. Thank you for all 10

of you that stood. You're good people. Extra blessings for

you in heaven. You may be seated. Man, I'm so,

so glad to be here. I'm honored to be here today.

And we did not make things easy for the children's workers.

I'll tell you that. We started attending New Horizon back

when we were at the community center. And my dad

worked on setup and teardown teams. And so my parents

believed that church was a good place to punish your children.

And so when we would misbehave, I ended up on

the setup team. And I'll never forget rolling out that

giant carpet. And I was stacking chairs before it was

cool in Master's Commission when I was 10 years old here,

8 years old here. But anyways, we're family. You may

not know me that well. I might be that weird

uncle who shows up for Thanksgiving that was uninvited. But

we're here and we're family. And we're so grateful for you.

Just the opportunity for me to say thank you. For

some of you, maybe just your gift was not even super,

maybe you didn't even put a ton of energy or

effort or even thinking into it. But I get to

see the impact of what you do every single day.

And I was just with our Congo team last March.

I brought them into Uganda because it's just so hard

to get into that nation. We brought their board in,

brought them in, and spent a few days just training

them to send them out. And just the things that

they've seen and experienced, just to be able to purchase

land and even build a temporary facility. I was talking

with Gotina, who is the head there, just last week.

It's amazing what God is doing there and the challenges

that our brothers and sisters in Christ face in different

nations today. And the land that you purchased in Nakapiri,

I was just there last month as well, in March.

I actually just got back from Uganda on Wednesday, so

I sort of know where I am right now, time-wise.

But I was there, and we walked the facilities with

his team and with some of our staff, and we

prayed over it. And guys, I just got to tell you,

that area is very, very poor. I know you've heard that,

but to experience it for yourself, it's mud huts everywhere.

Very little electricity anywhere. Maybe a couple of brick and

mortar buildings. Most everything is just half falling down. There

isn't clean water in the area. And so we are

local church based. Like we believe in the local church.

I believe very strongly in it. I've pastored for 23 years.

I believe the local church is a vehicle that Jesus

chose to spread the gospel to a community. I'm unapologetic

in that. And so we do a lot of things

in communities at World Outreach. We're really involved in five

different things. And one of them is water. And people

have asked me before, you know, you're not preaching the gospel.

You're just, that's a humanitarian type project. And my response

to that is, yes, that's true. But a local church

needs more than one tool. And so if you can

go into a community and say, hey, we're putting the

flag in the ground here. and we're going to preach

the gospel in this place, and then we're also going

to put clean water in. You just don't understand the

impact that that makes. It's massive. Over 300 million people

in sub-Sahara Africa suffer from water insecurity. 300 million. In

the nation of Uganda, 50% of the population is under

the age of 17, and last checked, it's 60 million people.

30 million children in that. And here's why water is

so important, because it breaks the cycle of poverty. Because

it's not the adults that go and get the water.

It's the kids. They send the kids to go get it.

And so rather than going to school, they're just going

and getting water for their daily needs. To have clean

drinking water in some places in that area because it's

so swampy. You're walking a couple of miles with five-gallon

jerry cans. And it's not uncommon to see little ones

who are four or five years old with the one gallons.

It's important. It's valuable. It's meaningful. And so I just

wanted to say thank you for that. We appreciate it.

Thank you for partnering with us to do what we do,

for partnering with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And

some of you may never go to that nation or

any of the nations that we work in, but because

of your generosity, you're participating in that. And so I

just want to say thank you. Thank you to your pastors.

We appreciate your consistency, your faithfulness through the years. I

want to honor you with that. Missions is something you

fight for inside of your local church community because everybody

always says, well, we could do something else. It matters.

So thank you for that. I appreciate it. If you could,

could just give your pastors a huge hand clap for

their faithfulness through the years. And then let's pray. And

then let's dive into the word. God, we thank you

for the opportunity that we have to be here today.

Thank you that we just open up our heart to you.

And we ask God that you would speak to us.

We ask that we'd hear your voice clearly. The Holy

Spirit would lead us and guide us into truth. God,

we want to change. We want to be who you've

called us to be. In Jesus' name, everybody stand. Amen.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Romans

Romans 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12. We're going to read through verses 1 and 2.

And last September... The New Horizons team was with us

at a pastor's conference. And so Pastor Dwayne was preaching

to our pastors. And we had, I think it was

four or five other senior pastors were there with us.

And so there was about 300 pastors, 300 plus pastors

at that conference. And then Pastor Joel took a team

from New Horizons and they went way up there. And

that video is not lying. When they said that even

in the nation of Uganda, Ugandans don't want to go there.

It's the truth. I was just there and I'm like, hey,

I'll pay your way. I'll put you in a hotel.

And they're like, I don't know. It's a nine hour

minimum drive. You leave at three, four o'clock in the

morning just so that you can miss all the traffic.

It's not smooth roads. It's challenging. And so we're preaching

to all of these pastors and leaders and it's thousands

of people represented from the senior pastors. And so we

took all the senior pastors out and said, hey, let's

just from the U.S. and said, let's just go to

a restaurant. just to say thank you, thank you for

coming and giving of your time. And so we were

sitting there, and all of us are just talking. There's

probably 10 or 11 of us around this table, ordered

our food, and Pastor Dwayne gets this text from Pastor Joel,

and it's a video. And so as we're sitting in

this nice restaurant eating this food, we get a video

of Pastor Joel and Sandy Sims and some of the team,

and they're literally wearing gumboot waders up to here, and

they're like leveling concrete. And so they're doing real missions work,

leveling concrete. And we did the most spiritual thing possible.

We sent them a picture of our food and said,

God bless you. So, good time. So Romans chapter 12,

Romans 12:1

verses 1 and 2, it says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers,

by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as

a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is

your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that

by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good, acceptable, and perfect. So the first 11

chapters of Romans, before we get to Romans chapter 12,

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Paul is telling the Roman church, which is filled with

Gentiles and Jews alike, and he explains the mercies of God.

He's saying to them, He explains justification by faith. He

explains adoption of sonship into the kingdom of God. He

works through that we're not saved by works, but by

grace alone. He talks a bit about atonement in Christ,

the blood of Jesus. He explains it's really rich in

doctrine for 11 chapters. And then in chapter 12, he

moves away just from doctrine into application. In saying, because

of the mercies of God... chapter 12, verses 1 and 2,

here's the way that you should live. Your reasonable act

of worship, your reasonable act of service as a follower

of Jesus, this is where it begins. And it starts

with being a living sacrifice. Being a living sacrifice. This

idea of a living sacrifice is so strange sounding when

you really think about it. Because they understood in that

context from the Jews had temple worship. By the time

that Jesus showed up, it was very firmly established. There

was the shedding of blood for the covering of their

sins that happened inside the temple. And then even in

the Gentiles had their own temples where the shedding of

blood took place on an altar for their own things

that they believed in. And so when Paul says, take

your life and be a living sacrifice, it probably set

off all sorts of crazy alarm bells in their head.

Because things got on the altar to die. Things got

on the altar, they died. They didn't get off the

altar alive. So when the sacrifice came in, they put

it up there. They didn't just pray over it and

send it on its way and say, thank you for

your service. No, that thing died on that altar. So

Paul is saying to them that there are things in

your life, as a follower of Jesus, you're going to

have to climb up on this altar and you're going

to have to be a living sacrifice. That something's going

to die on that altar and that you need to

do this every single day of your life. Now this

becomes important because why we live the way that we do,

the motivation behind it is super important. And so I

want to work through a couple things real quick to

help us get to the right place so that when

we work through a process of change or when we

deal with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, we come

from the right place that it's not motivated by guilt

and shame. And so the first facet of God that

we have to understand is the justice of God. The

justice of God. Justice is is getting what you deserve

right justice is what we desire for others and not

for ourselves right I'm not a seeker of justice for

myself I'm a seeker of mercy for myself but have

you ever been a person who wants to be the

dispenser of justice I have I I'm super guilty of that.

So I grew up in church. I've shared a little

bit about that already, but what you have to understand

is my dad didn't. My dad was a street kid, right?

So my dad was raised in the streets. He was

in and out of juvenile detention since he was 13, 14. Listen,

I don't know really anything about it, but he informed

us when we were younger, which I'll tell the story,

is that the rules on the street are different. than

just the rules that the church playground, right? And so

I'm raised in church. My dad had a different set

of values because he came from the streets, and he's

still renewing his mind to the Word of God and

was figuring all that out when I was much younger.

And I have a great dad. I love my parents.

They're amazing human beings, and I'm very blessed. But I

say that just so that you understand the story that

I'm going to tell. You know, when my kids were younger,

my son came running in and he ratted out my daughter,

who's his older sister. And my dad looked at him

and was like, hey, snitches get stitches. And I said, dad,

he's four. Like he's four. That's a real true story

that happened. So anyways, we were younger. We were the

way it used to work in those days. Like I

was raised, you know, I was born in 1980. Maybe

I'm dating myself here. and raised in the 80s and

the 90s and things were very different then right you

just things were done a lot different like my youngest

son said to me a couple of weeks ago he's

like dad what was it like to be raised in

the 19th century and it's like why are you gonna

say it like that that is so rude um But

in those days, like you'd go into this church, Sunday school,

and this was a small community church that our family

was attending. Not here. This was not a New Horizon, right?

But they would do the flannel graph board thing, right?

And Joseph looked the same as Moses, so you added

the coat of many colors, and now it was Joseph.

You took it off and added a staff that was Moses.

And so after about 15 minutes, they sent us outside.

They're like, that's enough Bible for you. Go outside and

go play out in the playground. So we're running around

outside the church, and there was a guest kid who

came into town. And he was a bigger kid. And

so I'm the middle child of three. And so this

kid comes up, and he starts messing with my older brother. Now,

once again, raised in church. Well, this guy turns into

a fight because my older brother starts arguing with him. Well,

he thumps my older brother. like beats them up pretty

good on the playground. I just, my younger brother and

I didn't know what to do. So we just watched.

We're like, that's a bad day for you, bro. It's

too bad. Once again, raised in church, don't understand that world.

It was shocked by it. And so we got home

that day and my dad found out about it. Now

to this day, my, my kids gave my dad a

present that he keeps in his garage that says, snitches

get stitches. Okay, that's my dad. And so we get home,

and he said, did you watch your older brother get

beat up? And we're like, yeah, it was crazy. And

he said, you didn't help? We're like, no, didn't know

that was allowed. And so my parents loved the scripture

verse that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,

and the rod of correction shall drive it far from them.

That was the second part they liked way too much.

And so we were disciplined. We were spanked because that happened.

And my dad said, never let your brother, because he's

from the streets, never let your brother get beat up

like that again. So next Sunday comes along. And me

and my younger brother, we're like, that ain't happening again.

No chance. I'm not getting spanked again. I don't even

know this kid. This kid shows up to church again.

Starts messing with my older brother. Y'all, we beat the

trash out of that kid. Dispenser of justice. Right? It

was like, oh, yeah. And then my mom was so mad.

My grandpa, who's the founder of the ministry that I

now work for, let my dad have it. We're confused.

We're like, we didn't know what to do. And so

the point is we have to be careful because our

justice is flawed. Our justice is based off what we know,

what we've experienced, and what we think is right. God's

justice is perfect. And it is a discipline to submit

to let God be the dispenser of justice and not ourselves.

It's a discipline. It is real easy to preach on

Sunday morning, right? It's like, yeah, the Lord is my vindicator.

And then you get on I-5 and you want to

be the vindicator. And we even get spiritual about it.

Somebody messes with you, you get stolen from, lied about, whatever.

You're like, may you reap what you sow. You start

quoting verses at people. You start praying those prayers of

David when he's like, grind my enemies up to dust.

Make them my footstool. Like we get real spiritual when

we're wanting God to dispense justice to other people. And

so it's a discipline to say, all right, God, not

my will, but your will be done. And your justice

is perfect. And your word says that you are vindicator.

And that's really hard to practice, but it's the life

that God has called us to live. And it's why

being a living sacrifice is a challenge. Because you have

to trust and believe that God knows what's best. That

even what you're going through in the moment is uncomfortable.

His word hasn't changed. And the best thing that could

happen is that God would be the dispenser of justice.

Because his justice is perfect. And his justice will draw

that person back to him. Our flesh doesn't want that.

Our flesh wants revenge. Our flesh wants them to feel

the thing that we feel. The pain that you've caused me,

I want you to experience so that you'll be sorry.

But God doesn't work that way because his justice is perfect.

It always brings us to a place of repentance and

brings us to a place where we come back to him.

The second facet of God that we have to understand

is the mercy of God. The mercy of God. Mercy

is not getting what we deserve. Justice is when it

is getting what we deserve. Mercy is when we get

what we is. Mercy is not getting what we deserve.

It's like when you get pulled over and you know

you're guilty is all get out. And you're just praying

and you're so kind to that police officer. Hey, you know,

I was distracted and I'm in a hurry. And they say,

you know, we're going to let you off. You're throwing

yourself on the mercy of the court. You're like, please,

I promise my heart is good. I go to church.

I'm a tither. I'm not one of those other people.

We're pleading for mercy. And so we're grateful when mercy

gets into our life because that's really what we desire

for ourselves. And the third is grace. Grace is getting

something that you don't deserve. You sinned, yet you receive

forgiveness and eternal life. Grace is the greatest gift that

we can ever get. It's God extending to us something

that we can't earn and that we don't deserve. It

means his unmerited or unearned favor. And this is a

beautiful thing. We were on the end of the most

lopsided trade in human history. We said, God, here's my brokenness,

my sin, my shame, my guilt. In exchange, God said,

I'll give you Jesus and eternal salvation, and I will

take that sin, that sickness, that disease, that rejection, that brokenness.

I will take that from you and give you something

that you can't earn and that you don't deserve. Grace

is the fuel for change in our life. This is

really important because when we talk about being a living

sacrifice and not being conformed to the spirit of this world,

but transformed by the renewing of our mind, our intentions

and the fuel for what drives that change becomes really important.

Because if it's based out of behavior modification, we'll constantly

be trying to earn something from God that he's already

freely given to you and I. And so an understanding

of God's grace fuels us to change. And why does

God want us to change? Because when we don't, the

things we refuse to lay on the altar are the

things that stop us from living our best life. And

God is consistently trying to free us from the things

that chain us. It's why he asks us to give.

I remember having a conversation. I pastored for 23 years.

Tithing is the least important, or sorry, the least popular

part of the message. It's an offering time. They're like,

here we go again. And I had a guy confront

me one time, and I said, hey, I just got

a question for you. Do you really think God cares

about your paper money? Like seriously, think about it for

a moment. He walks on streets paved in gold. He

has angels literally on both sides singing, holy, holy is

the lamb of God for all eternity. The gates of heaven,

it says one of them is carved by a single pearl.

Like precious gems or sandals. scattered into the walls like

heaven is an incredible place and we pull out our

dollar bills or your shillings or whatever it is you're

like hey this is super important and how dare you

ask me for it is it possible that god is

asking you for that thing not because he needs it

but because of what it's doing to your life And

he will constantly ask us to lay on the altar

and he will show us the things that are holding

us back. And so it's super important that we understand

the grace of God, his unmerited favor. Because when we

know God loves us, we know he's not asking us

to change because he's frustrated at us. Because he's mad

at me. Because you're viewing him through the eyes of

what your earthly parents did or didn't do for you.

He's a good father. His justice is perfect. His mercy

is perfect. His grace is extended regardless of whether you

can earn it or not. You can't. It's given to

you freely. It is the free gift of salvation. It's

the biggest tragedy is when people think to themselves, man,

I got to clean myself up. I'm going to get

my act together and then I'm going to start going

to church and then I'm going to surrender my life

to God. You're missing the entire point. You don't get

clean to come to God. You come to God to

get clean. And his grace fuels us for the sanctification

part of Christian living, which is I've given my life

to him. He's accepted me into, adopted me into his beloved.

I'm born again and been made the righteousness of God

in Christ Jesus. I'm transformed. I'm a new creation in Christ.

I'm new. Old things have passed away. All things have

become new. I'm a new creation. I'm a new kind

of thing, a new kind of person. But he says

you need to work out this salvation thing in your

life because these addictions, these habits, these poor behaviors, this

lack of generosity, this negativity, these things are destroying you

and they're making your life harder. And so you remember

the grace of God because it begins to fuel the change.

I've never thought about the grace of God and thought, man,

I'll just sin a whole bunch more. It's such a

weird way to view grace. And there are some that

that's how they view it, right? I remember my daughter

when she was much younger, she used to do this

thing and a pastor's kid, right? Like she'd come to

church early and the kids run the church when service,

before service starts. If you don't know this, volunteer kids,

all of it. They're just, they're in charge of everything

that's going on. And I love it. I think it's great.

But I remember my daughter, I was running around doing

stuff before church started and she figured out she was

obsessed with bubble gum. and she figured out that she

could go through volunteers' purses and find bubble gum. And

so this service coordinator comes to us, and she says,

Pastor Jeremy, this is just really awkward. I don't mind

that she's doing this, but I don't really know what

to do. Your daughter every Sunday comes into my purse

and steals bubble gum. And I was so embarrassed. So

we sit her down, and we say, okay. And Elise's like,

Morgan's like, my wife is, hey, you know, you hurt

Jesus' heart when you steal. And we're doing this whole lesson, right,

laying it all out. And she looks at us and

she says, well, God still loves me? And we're like, well, yeah.

She's like, okay. Wait a minute. Learned the wrong lesson there.

It's like, wait a minute. You'll still go to jail.

There are consequences for our bad behavior. Let's go to

Genesis chapter 4. Praise God for kids. Genesis chapter 4,

Genesis 4 · chapter mention Genesis 4 · chapter mention

and we're going to start in verse 3. It says,

But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard.

So Cain was very angry and his face fell. And

the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And

why is your face fallen? If you do well, will

you not be accepted? And if you do not do well,

sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary

for you, but you must rule over it. This is

a very popular story. It's the very beginning of everything.

Genesis chapter 2 and 3 is the failure of Adam

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

and Eve inside of the garden. It's creation right there.

And then Genesis chapter 4, it's the first family outside

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

of the garden. And so it's the first opportunity that

we see for sacrifice to take place. It's the first sacrifice.

And I just want to point a few things out

to you. The first is, the first sacrifice was not

brought by Abel. It was actually brought by Cain. Cain

is the one that said, I'm going to take of

the fruit of the ground. He was a farmer of

his toil, and he's going to bring it to the Lord.

And then Abel, with the most little brother energy ever,

sees what Cain does, one-ups his sacrifice, and lays it

before the Lord, and it says that God accepted Abel's

sacrifice and rejected Cain's. Now, we don't know in Genesis

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4 why it doesn't tell us, but if you

read through Hebrews chapter 11, it explains to you that

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

the sacrifice that Abel gave was given in faith and

the sacrifice that Cain gave was not given in faith.

It was not the content of the sacrifice that was

the issue. In the book of Leviticus, what Cain brought

was just called a wave offering or a cereal offering.

It was a grain offering of vegetables and it was acceptable.

And then what Abel brought was also acceptable. He brought

the fatty portions of the meat. He brought that Wagyu

steak before the Lord, right? He brought a good thing.

So it was not just the content of what he gave,

it was how he gave it. And that right there

is the rub, isn't it? We can put ourselves on

the altar and have a bad attitude about being on

the altar, right? And God says, it's great that you

did the right thing, but you did it with the

wrong heart, and so you won't get God's reward. We

know this intuitively with our children. When you discipline them

and say, hey, you need to go upstairs right now,

and I want you to clean your room. And you'd

have thought you just asked them to do the hardest

thing in the entire world. It's like, why do you

hate me? What did I ever do to you? It's like,

just pick up your clothes off the floor. But they

go running up the stairs or down the hallways and

slamming doors and somehow aggressively vacuuming. You know what I'm

talking about? It's like just like aggressively vacuuming. They're mad

about it. They clean the room, put it all back,

and they're like, I did it. Are you happy with them? No. No,

you're like, seriously? Why? They did what you asked them

to do. but they did it with the wrong heart.

They did the right thing, the right action with the

wrong attitude. And so what did it create in you? Discipline.

So now your kid did the right thing, but they're

under discipline. You know, it's so possible for us to

be in church, somewhere in your seats, and worship is going,

and you're lifting your hands, and if you've been in

church long enough, you know all the power motions, you know,

you're coming to Jesus, and the arm pumps, like you're

doing it on beat, and in your mind, you're thinking

about lunch. You're processing your schedule for the next coming week, because,

oh man, the kid's got school, and we got... after

school activities and they got jobs and what's my husband doing?

What's my wife doing? Where are we going? And you're

in the moment where you're supposed to be worshiping the whole,

the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And

we're thinking about lunch. No one else knows you have

the right actions, but not the right heart. And so

it never produces the right results. God never sees, God

never sees the worship outside of the worshiper. He sees you.

He sees all of you. And he wants you to

have your heart connected to the thing that you're doing.

And the reason why he wants that is because he's

not asking you to change out of guilt and shame

or any of those things, but because he knows the

thing that he's asking you to leave on the altar

is the thing that's destroying your family. It's the thing

that's hindering your marriage. It's the thing that's holding you

back in your finances. It's the thing that's stopping you

from getting promoted or moving forward or moving ahead and

walking in God's best for your life. He's asking you,

he's saying, connect your heart to the thing that you do.

And if you'll do that, he said it to Cain.

Why is your face fallen? If you do well, Won't

you also be accepted? For the first time ever, we

see God expressing displeasure and we see him telling Cain,

here's how you change. That's how God works with us.

He reveals something in us and then he directs us

on how to change. He doesn't leave us where we're

at stuck. That's the beauty of relationship with God is

he doesn't leave you. It's one of those prayers. I

just call it a yes prayer. I promise you. There

are dangerous kinds of prayers that you can pray because

God just answers them. One of them is you sit

on the edge of your bed, nobody around, and just

sit there and have a moment with the Lord and say, God,

what's the thing in my life? that I need to

lay on the altar? I promise you, he'll say yes

to that and he'll answer that prayer. You'll hear it

through the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. You'll

hear it in a Sunday message where the pastor says

it and you're like, how did they know? You'll see

it when you open your scripture verses in your Bible

and you go right to it and you're like, that's

exactly what I'm dealing with. He's a good father and

he knows exactly what we need. He'll say yes to that.

The other is praying the prayers that David prayed, not

the ones about justice, about God, search my heart. Search

my heart. See the things inside of me that are unrighteous.

And if you have a true understanding of God's goodness

and God's grace, his justice, his mercy, you know that

you can trust him with that prayer. Because whatever he

reveals to you is going to be for your benefit,

is going to be to set you free of the

things that so easily ensnare our lives. But nobody can

do it for you. Your spouse can pray for you nonstop.

Your mom can pray for you nonstop. Your kids can

hope for the best. But you have to be the

one that activates your will and says, I'm going to

be transformed by the renewing of my mind. I'm not

going to let the culture of this world dominate how

I'm a father. I'm not going to let the culture

of this world dominate how I give or how I

don't give. I want to read the scripture and I

want to change and only I can get on the altar.

Nobody can put me on it. Only you can do it.

And that's what makes it so hard, isn't it? But

you can do it. Because God said that you could.

It doesn't mean you'll want to. There's probably not too

many comfortable sacrifices. I think the challenge we have as Westerners,

and I'm lumping myself in this, is we pursue comfort

at the expense of almost anything else. We do. It's

an idol for us. When I have a bad day

at work, I come home and I'm like, I just

want to sit on the couch. I want to binge

watch a show on Netflix. You're pulling the ice cream out.

I'm eating the whole carton today. We have comfort clothes,

comfort food, comfort shows. We reject anything that's uncomfortable. It's just,

I don't know why, but that's kind of just how

we are. But guys, that's not how God works. God

works with holy pressure. Good pressure. He's trimming. He's knocking

things off. And it happens under pressure. And there's been

so many times where I've been in the middle of

nowhere in Africa and I've called out and I said, God,

why did you bring me here? You read the scriptures

when they're like, did you bring me here to die?

I have felt that way before. I remember one time

I was going to the middle of nowhere. It was

somewhere along Lake Victoria. We got stuck. We are hours

away from any civilization. We sunk in the mud. It

was a taxi. We got out and they asked us

to start pushing. I'm like, but I paid. Like, well,

you ain't going anywhere then. So we're pushing this thing

and we're going nowhere. And this guy looks at us

and he says, well, you'll want to start walking that

way in very broken English. Sun's getting ready to start set.

It's not safe for me to be out, especially in

those days. I'm walking. I don't have hip waders or

gumboots or anything. That stuff wasn't even there at the time.

I'm just walking through the mud. We get there late

at night, and this so-called hotel that we found, I'll

never forget it, go to open the door, and the

door hit the bed. Clink. And I was much thinner then.

And I had to scoot in, close the door behind me.

I didn't have to worry about anybody robbing me. You

couldn't get in. And it's just like I'm laying on

this bed and all night long I heard the rats

fighting above me. I said, God, why did you bring

me here? Why am I here? I want to go home.

I don't want to do this anymore. And that's not

what missions looks like all the time. But there are

moments in your life where God brings you to a

place that is uncomfortable. And in that moment, you better

make the decision. Only you can make it. Will I

be a living sacrifice? Will I suffer the uncomfortableness in

order for God to do the thing inside of me

that I so desperately want him to do? It's going

to be uncomfortable, but you have to say yes to God.

Sometimes that looks like going to your neighbor and telling

them about Jesus. Sometimes that looks like helping people that

you don't really like very much. Sometimes that's praying for

a political party that you don't like. Sometimes that's giving

money that you didn't want to give or you didn't

think you have. Do you trust God with every facet

of your life? And I'll just tell you on this adventure,

if you want to call it that, This beautiful chaos

that can be following Jesus that often looks like a

car crash but ends up beautiful. That's what pastoring is.

It really is. It's wild. It's the most incredible thing.

Our life can be simultaneously amazing and terrible all at

the same time. I'll never forget having Sundays where it

was like the most attended Sunday we'd ever have. And

then three people came to me after church and said,

we're leaving the church. And I'm like, really? Really? Submit

to the process. Do not be conformed to this world.

The world is shaping you or God is shaping you.

It's only one or the other. There is no third option.

It's it. You choose. That's why the Bible says, choose

this day who you shall serve. Who are you serving?

What are you serving? You find it on the altar. Father,

I pray for my friends. Thank you for the opportunity.

that we have to change, to grow, to be who

you've called us to be. God, I pray for those

that are here that have just, they already know the

thing that they need to let go. Maybe some that

have been struggling with an addiction and they want to

be free. that they just haven't been able to wrap

around that to activate their will. God, I pray that

your Holy Spirit would come into their life right now,

that bring the freedom they so desperately desire and need. God,

for those of our finances that you've called them to

give a gift that is just doesn't make sense to them, God,

that you would show them, that you would reveal to

them how to live by faith in that area, God,

for marriages that I know right now that may be

on the verge and they're just having, going through a

rough time, God, that we would put individually ourselves on

the altar, that you would show us where we can

serve our spouse better, how we can serve our kids better. God,

I just pray that your peace that passes all understanding

would rest and rule on their hearts right now, even

in this moment, in Jesus' name. Amen.