Durham Rescue Mission

You know mine who have a picture here of Ernie

and gel Mills. The Rescue Mission was founded in nineteen

seventy four by Ernie and Gal Mills. We'll see a

picture of a I think a prayer card they had

back in the seventies. You can tell by the hairdoo.

People ask me all the time how old is Ernie Mills. Now,

I think he's eighty two. I have never known how

old miss Mills was. I don't know how to answer

the question to how old she is, but to hear

in twenty twenty one was when they retired, and we

had a ceremony actually at our banquet, and he gave

me a bible and we had a big thing where

I was named a director and the CEO of next slide. Please,

if you don't mind, here we see some old pictures.

On your left side. There's two houses the top and

the bottom corners of that on the left side, the

bottom corner is the original Rescue Mission at thirteen oh

one East Main Street. They could house beds in there,

and they house twelve men and that's where it started.

And they actually lived in the house right above it.

And we've seen in the picture those two houses literally

side by side. The one on the top picture where

they lived is actually facing home, and the rescue mission

was faced on the corner of home in East Maine.

And then over time, in the providence of the Lord

full of Amore, Presbyterian Church became for sale somewhere around

nineteen seventy nine. I'm not really sure. When you talk

to them, sometimes they say seventy eight, sometimes they say

seventy nine, and sometimes they say eighty. Really on one

year we got that building. But we got that building,

and they sold those two houses and moved into that

church and they lived in there, and they lived with

the men for a number of years. The picture on

the right side on the bottom is that same church,

a more newer picture, and you can see we've added

a building behind there. We call that the Center for Hope.

And between these two buildings we have one, two, three,

four big gang norms, big rooms with lots of beds,

probably one hundred and fifty beds of guessing around there.

These are for the people that first come on the

men's side. Anyway, the first come into the mission, and

you know, they're just there for whatever reason, and we

start working with them. We won't get too much in

detail about the program, but if they joined the program,

as all of these men either have or have finished

the program, they'll be moved up into those dorms you

see on the top picture. We got three dorms there,

and all of those rooms are two or four man rooms.

And as they stay with us longer and move up

through the program, they can get to a two man room.

And there's even a few that have gotten their own

room until we've got a new guy to check in

with them. But the point being is that it gets

a little better as you go through the program and

work through the system. Next live, please, it's a picture

here of that same campus. We work really hard to

make that campus nice and to be attractive. We want

to treat people. I like to say that I haven't

forbid any of my family members would ever be homeless,

but I want to treat these folks are homeless book

as if I would want my son or my daughter

treated if they were homeless. And so we do our

best to provide a very clean and nice campus, a

very attractive campus. It looks like a school. It really

does looks like a college, small college campus, and we're

very proud of that, but we have so many people

coming through the rescue mission. I'll show you some numbers

in just a minute. It's really hard to keep these

buildings up. It literally gets beat to death. We used

to have a guy at the rescue mission. His name

was Maurice Quick, and he had had a stroke and

was very He was wheelchair bound and he had an

electric wheelchair, and he would drive that electric wheelchair and

he couldn't steer it real good, just run right down

the wall, just cutting the line in this side, cutting

a line that he tore up the elevator. I don't

know how many times. Eventually I looked at him and said,

you cannot have that wheelchair. You're gonna have to have one.

Somebody's going to have to push you around. Just doing

too much damage. But the point is is we work

really hard to keep it nice and make it look good.

If you'll turn to the next side, please, this is

our Ladies campus up in the top left corner is

what the Ladies Campus was. Me and my wife. My

wife's back here with three of our younger kids. We

have six kids, but got the three younger today. For

some reason. The older ones don't hang around us. Anymore.

I don't know why they started doing that. Getting married

and having children seems to affect them that way for

some reason. But the top picture is what we used

to call the Top the Opportunity Place, where our Ladies

program started when my wife and I came. I remember

very specifically there were four ladies in nineteen ninety five

and three girl, three children when we first came. Today,

just this past cold weather, we got up around one

seventy some women and children. I mean, we're just bursting

at the seams. For the first time in the Durham

Rescue Mission's history, we had to start a waiting list.

We always have a policy where we always have one

more bed. That one more bed maybe on the floor

on a map, but we always have one more bed.

But we literally had gotten to the point in that building.

It's hard to believe the building on the right, it's

hard to believe that building was, but that building was

full this past winter and just bursting it it seams.

And the bottom picture on the left is an older

picture of that current that more current picture. We're in

the middle of remodeling that building and he's a parking lot.

It's never had a new parking lot needs a lot

of things done to. We're in the middle of re

modeling as we speak. We want to put in a

better elevator and different things we're going to do to

that next slide. Please, here's a picture of our victory

program back in the day. There's our choir going out

to a church years ago. In the bottom left picture

you can see it was a lot smaller back then.

There's Ernie Mills of myself. I think we're giving a

guy diploma right there. Picture on the right is a

recent graduation program and the rescue mission has just exploded.

If you get the next lot, I'll show you what

I mean. This is a graph since twenty twenty one.

I believe it is, yeah, twenty twenty one, and when

Ernie Mills in twenty twenty announced his retirement, he said,

I believe homelessness is going to explode after COVID and

the way we handled COVID and he turned out to

be a profit. You can see the numbers there. Now,

that tallest graph right there is twenty twenty five of

January last year. I need to update this slide, but

just as past January, we broke that record too, So

I mean, it's just they just keep coming and just

keep coming, and it's not a matter if you build it,

they will come. They're coming reether we build or not,

they're still coming and they're all over the floor. I

bet we had one hundred plus people on the floor

and the men's campus alone this past January. It was

it was just a big, big mess. If we would

turn to the next slide, this is a building we

want to build, that's a vision of a building. However,

we will not be able to build that particular building

because we went to the city to get our land

rezoned so that we could build that building, and the

city voted us down. We want to build a career

development center. We've come to the conclusion that we've got

to open up the back door a little wider to

get people out. So we're trying to do more career

development so that they can You know, it's one thing

to build more beds. Eventually you just come to the

point you just can't keep building beds and building beds

and building and housing them. You got to get them

on their feet. So we want to develop that's some

more and we want to build a career development center.

But we just can't get the City of Durham to

cooperate with us on that. It wouldn't have cost them

a dime. Keep telling we don't take any government money.

We don't take federal, state or anything like that or local.

But for some reason they shot us down. I wish

you'd pray for that. We're going to build a building

we're in the middle of now, we're redesigning and what

can we do with the current zonning that we have

not ask their permission? Next slide please recently, I don't

know if you never heard of the Agape Corner. They've

gone out of business, but we inherited their properties. These

are some of the houses that they gave us. And

when they gave us those houses, we're now remodeling these houses.

And the idea is that when a guy comes in,

he goes into those big dorms you saw a moment,

Ago goes into the program. And then when it gets

to the point like Max or somebody you saw here,

they're through the program and we're going to put them

in a house like this, give them their own room

and a little more freedom, and you know, just just

make it a little more. Just give me a chance

to save money, work and get a job. Everybody at

the rescue mission has something to do. Some of them

may be going to school, some of them may have

a job. Some of them may just be working around

the rescue mission. But everybody has something to do, knowing

just lays around. All right, let's get into the message

this morning. Let's turn to the next place, and I

want to talk to you today about homelessness and what

is homelessness. I remember, like I said, thirty years ago,

thirty one now almost, when I was first coming to

the rescue mission. My family. I grew up near Fedwell

area called Spring Lake if anybody know where that is,

just outside of Fedwell and off of Fort Bragg. And

my people, my family, everybody knew of the Durham Rescue Mission.

Ernie Mills had been to several of been to my church,

had been to other family members' churches. When when they

heard that I was coming to work at the Durham

Rescue Mission after I finished college, so they were all right,

that's great. You know. I had one cousin he came

up to me and he said to me, he said,

he said, brother, I appreciate what you're trying to do.

I appreciate what the rescue mission does, he said, but

I just don't have any time, or someone who don't work,

and I really don't have any time. Somebody just use

drugs and alcol And I want to suggest that that

is not the only issue in homelessness, and it's something

we got to deal with, but it is something we

got to deal with, and it's a real problem. But

at the same time, there's more to homelessness than just that.

I think there's a lot of people that agree with

my cousin, but not many people have the boldness to

say what he said out loud, if you know what

I'm saying. And so we want to look at homelessness.

And if just solving addiction would solve homelessness, well we

could probably do so, but hey, I don't think just

solving addiction would solve homelessness. And at the same time,

if I could just solve addiction, probably be a billionaire,

which I'm not. But we need to think about it.

So what is homelessness. We want to think about it

for a minute. We have two definitions I want to

look at this morning. The first one is situational homelessness,

and that is defined by HUD housing INTERBRND development as

being forced to live without housing due to a life

altering event such as a job lost, domestic violence, medical emergency,

or natural disaster. What that is saying is that there's

a lot of people in this world who are who

are They got a job, maybe they got a roof

over their head, but they have something happen in their

life and they end up homelessness. They're in a situation

that has changed. It could be, you know, they left

their spouse. It could be they lost their job, their health,

who knows what it could be. Frankly, someone who is

released from prison would fit into this here. They're out

of prison, they don't have two dollars to their name,

and they just end up on the street. That happens

a lot. According to HUD when they do their annual count,

which they come up around six hundred thousand homeless a year,

various from year to year, about eighty one percent of

the homeless community is what we call situationally homeless. Next life, please,

The next one is chronic homelessness, and this is defined

as when a person resides in a place not meant

for human habitation or safe haven, or in the merchery

shelter and has lived that way for twelve months or longer,

or on four separate occasions over a three year period.

So they either in and out of homelessness, or they're

just they're out there for more than twelve months. We

call them chronically homeless. This is approximately the balance of

the other nineteen twenty percent of the homeless. I want

to suggest that these are the people that you usually

see holding up a sign or out on the street

or in the tents out there. These are the ones

you see, and I want you to realize that there's

probably eight more other people that are homeless that you

never see. There's probably people in your life that you

don't even know they're homeless. Are still working, they're maybe

sleeping in their cars, maybe CouchSurfing from family member to

friend or whatever they're doing, but they're just this close

to being on the street and they're just living, literally

living from hand to mouth and running out of resources,

and then they end up homeless. So what is the

cause of homelessness? Let's talk about that for a moment.

If you got a Bible, I'll put it up on

the screen next slide. I want to suggest there is

a cause of homelessness, and we see the first homeless

person in human history in Genesis chapter four. I'm gonna

read verses eleven through fourteen for you. You're welcome to

look at the screen. We we have to click through a

few screens to get through them all. But it says

here in Genesis four eleven and now this is talking

about Cain, after Cain had killed his brother Abel. I'm

not going to go through that whole story. But when

Cain killed his brother Abel, the Lord spoke to him

in verse eleven. And the Lord speaks to Cain and says,

and now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath

opened her mouth to receive thy of this blood from

thy hand. When now tillest the ground, it shall not

henceforth yield next life under thee her strength. A fugitive

and a vagabond, shalt thou be in the earth. And

Cain said, unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than

I can bear it. Behold, thou has driven me out

this day from the face of the earth, and from

thy face shall I be hidden. And I shall be

a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. And he

shall come to pass that everyone that findeth me shall

slay me. Stop there for a moment. I want to

talk about this passage, just for a few minutes. I

find it interesting that he says everybody's going to try

to kill me. The Lord never said anything about somebody

killing him. I think that's just the paranoia that comes

with this kind of a life and this kind of

a sin that's been in his life. But there's two

words that I want to pay to particular notice to.

It says that he will be a fugitive and a vagabond. Now,

I'm not going to take a lot of time to

try to define what all that means. But fugitive means

someone that wonders, and a vagabond is someone who is aimless.

He is cursed here to wander aimlessly throughout the earth.

It's literally what it says. That is exactly what we

see in homelessness. You people come to the Durham Rescue Mission.

Have people people ask how many people from Durham actually

come to the Durham Rescue Mission. It's not that many.

Most of them have come to this area looking to

find a job, trying to catch lightning in a bottle,

whatever it is they're trying to do. They come here,

and a lot of people come to the va and

then they don't have what they need and they end

up at the rescue mession. Who knows why they come

to this area, but you know this is a draw

to a lot of people, and they're coming and then

they don't have a place to be, and they come

here and they're just wandering aimlessly through this world. In

verse twelve of this passage, we see why King was

going to wander aimless. It's not that he just was

vexed with this this dumb thought that I got to

wonder aimless. The Lord looked at him and said, when

thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield under

thee her strength. Literally here, kin is a farmer, and

the Lord says, when you play, ain't your seed it

will not grow. You can plant a garden over here,

and he can plant a garden over there and get

the same sunshine, use the same fertilizer, and yours might grow.

His would not. Is literally what it's saying. The Lord

would no longer bless the labor of his hands. He

would find failure in whatever he put his hand to. Do.

One of the greatest challenges we face at the Durham

Rescue Mission is getting men and women to believe that

their crops can grow again. Hopelessness is huge. So homelessness

comes from a problem that is not just a lack

of a roof. Many people think that homelessness is just

a lack of housing, and that plays a role sometimes.

I'm not diminishing that. But if just building houses would

fix homelessness, then we can fix homelessness pretty quick. I mean,

we can build houses. Americans can build and build and

build and build, but that doesn't fix the problem. See.

I want to suggest that homelessness is a result of

a greater problem. It is a spiritual problem. Next flies

homelessness is the consequence of a spiritual problem, and that

spiritual problem is a lack or of affiliation or healthy relationships.

When you do not have good affiliations, when you do

not have good relationships in your life, you are very

susceptible to becoming a homeless person. God did not build

you to be alone. He built you to live in

some kind of community. Next slide, Genesis chapter two gives

us an illustration of this. Here, the Lord says it

is not good that man should be alone. I will

make him a help meet for him. And out of

the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the

field and every fowl of the air, and brought under

them Adam to see what he would call them. And

whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

And Adam gave names all cattle, and to the fowl

of the air, and every beast of the field. But

for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall

upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of

the ribs, one of his ribs, and closed it up,

and the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the

Lord God had taken from the man made he a woman,

and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this

is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, because she was taken out

of the man. Therefore, shall a man leave his father,

mother shall cleave into his wife, and they shall be

one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and

his wife, and they were not ashamed. I want to

notice a few things about this passage next s live please.

First off, you were not designed to be alone. Secondly,

God had to tell you that we're not smart enough

to figure this out ourselves. God had to make it

known to Adam it ain't good for you to be

by yourself. And I believe that's why he had him

name all the animals. Here comes the horses, mister horse,

and missus horse. Here comes the dog, mister horse and

missus dog. Here comes the monkey, mister you know. And

I think Adam starts figuring out there's a mister and missus.

Isn't it funny? There's a mister and missus for everything.

You think people today can't figure that out. But it's

just just nature. It's just the way God created everything.

And I think Adam started to figure out, there's no missus,

there's an eight, there's no no, no, it's just not

like me. And the Lord made him see that. And

then once the Lord taught him that that he was

not bit to be alone, he made a one flesh

relationship with the woman for him. What is that one

flesh relationship? We don't have time to chase that down,

but I want to look at Genesis three with you

and see how this one flesh relationship was destroyed. Now

the serpent was more subtle than any beasts of the

field which the Lord God had made. And he said,

unto the woman, yea hath, God said, you shall not

eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman

said into the serpent, we may eat of the fruit

of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit

of the trees was in the midst of the garden.

God hath said, you shall not eat of it, neither

shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said,

unto the woman, you shall not surely die, for God

doth know that in the day that you eat thereof,

then your eyes shall be open, and you shall be

as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman

saw that the tree was good for food, and it

was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be

desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit

thereof and did eat, and gave also to her husband

with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of

them were both open, and they knew that they were naked,

and they sewed fig LUs together and made themselves a again.

I want to notice something here next live, please sin

is the destroyer of relationships and affiliations in your life.

That is the problem. Think about this. They're in this

one flesh relationship. What does that mean. It means they're

one person. Is no longer his car and her car,

it's their card. It's no longer his money, her money

is there. There are one life together and they are

living in a situation where they are alone and naked.

I'm gonna turn around soading thanks. I'm looking at it.

There is nothing more righteous, there is nothing more good.

There is nothing more pure than for a man and

his wife to be alone and unclosed. But the moment

sin came into that picture, the very even before anybody

rebuked them, they begin to separate. Sin separates, that's what.

It separates you from your family, your children, your parents, coworkers,

separate you from your God. And if we want to

be reconciled to our family, we want to be reconcile

out to our God. Sin has to be eradicated, it

has to be gone. For you to be saved. You

have to become perfect without one dot, without one blemish.

Imagine with me, if you will, there's a piece of

paper in heaven somewhere. It's got your name written at

the top. And every time you sin, there's a little

mark made on the page. Every time You're gonna stand

before your maker one day with your piece of paper,

and any one dot is too many, one dot, you're

on your way to hell. Perfection is the demand. But

all of us are sin and comes sword to the

glory of God, isn't it? None of us have met

that standard. God knew that. So what God did was

God became a man. We call him Jesus Christ, Rosa Sharon,

the Lily of the Valley, the bright and morning star.

He came down here on this earth and he lived

that life of perfection. He was tempting at all points,

like as we are, yet without sin. He lived that

perfect life. And then he died. Why did he die.

He shouldn't have died. He didn't sin. He died because

what he did some two thousand years ago was he

reached into eternity and he got that piece of paper

with your name, whosoever will's name on it. He got

that piece of paper, and he stood before the judge

and he says, I'm guilty, give me this punishment. And

now he offers to you or whosoever will his righteous

perfect piece of paper. If you will, that is just

no sin. I can't speak for you, I can't speak

for anybody else. I can only speak for myself. But

I stand before the Father, not in my righteousness, but

in the righteousness of Christ, imputed to me through his

dying work on the Cross. That perfection. The problem is

that saves my soul. I'm still in this old body,

still very capable of sin, and this body won't stop

sending until the resurrection. So what's happening now is I've

got a saved soul living in an unsaved body, and

as this unsaved body continues to try to send, it's

destroying every relationship in my life. So what do you

do to help a homeless person not be homeless next life?

You teach them how to restore old relationships and build

new ones. Everybody has financial problems along the way. Everybody

loses a job, has a sickness. All of these things

happen to some people everybody. But why is it that

some people seem to land on their feet and others

seem to slip through the cracks. It's not that one

is better than the other. It's so often because one

has some kind of an affiliation. They're connected to a church,

They're connected to their parents, their their siblings, their their spouse,

their children. There's connections in their lives that help them.

We all need help along the way somewhere, every one

of you. I'll guarantee you, every one of you learned

your trade, learns it because somebody else helped you, somebody

else taught you. And this doesn't mean everybody's got to

get married. I'm not saying that. You know there are

other relationships that can help. Turning next Slide one. Timothy,

Chapter five, verses three through nine. I want to read

this passage to you. He says, honor widows that are widows. Indeed,

But if a widow, any widow have children or nephews,

and I think that should be grandchildren, let them learn

first to show piety at home and to requite their parents,

for that is good and acceptable before God. Now she

that is a widow, indeed, and desolate and trusteth in God,

and continue in supplication in prayers to night and day.

But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.

And these things give charge that may be blameless. But

if any provide not for his own, especially those of

his own house. He has denied the faith and is

worse than an infidel. Let not that widow be taken

into taken into the number under three score years old,

having been the wife of women? What in the world

is this saying? Well, I want to suggest what's going

on here is the Lord has given instruction through the

apostle Paul to Timothy of the Church of Efitubli Was.

He's given them instruction on what to do with these

homeless women. They're widows. We don't know why there were widows.

Some of them their husbands died. But you know, back

then many people were in polygamy. And if a man

and woman came to faith in polygamy, and the man

comes to the belief, oh no, I'm supposed to be

the husband of one wife, what does he do with

the other four yeas? Because the Bible doesn't say that

their husbands died, says they were bereft. They were taken.

We don't know the reason they were all taken. It

could have been for multiple reasons, is what I'm getting to.

They were bereft of their husband, and back then we

didn't have welfare like we do today. They didn't have

food stamps and couldn't just go get a job at

Walmart or what what did a woman do back then?

She was really desolate. She was really in a hard

time because generally speaking, women are just not as physically

strong enough to do the work like farming and things

like that that needed to be done some of them,

but there was a lot of women who couldn't. I

want to notice this phrase in verse nine, where it says,

let not a widow be taken into the number under

three score years old. What's going on there? They had

a number there? What was that number? I believe he's

referring to what we see in Acts, chapter six, where

there was this argument over taking care of the widows.

Apparently the church was taking care of the widows in

the church philanthropically. They were feeding them, they were housing them,

they were taking care of them. There was this group

of widows they were caring for. Paul was saying, Okay,

who do we take care of? Can't take care of everybody?

Who do we take care of? Well, we take care

of these, We take care of those. And he literally

goes on to say, if a woman's over three score

years old, we'll take her. But if she's under three

score years old, we didn't read the whole passage, you

will let her marry. But if she's raised children, she's

a grandmother. She's done everything she could do, and her

husband died, which is often the case when a woman

reaches elder agent, the man usually passes on. Even back

then first there she is alone. We'll take care of those.

And you know, the Bible doesn't give a lot of

explanation to what happened to those women, but church history

we can learn from church history too. One of the

things they would often do with these women that they

were taken into this number, these leaders, these pastors would

take that older woman who would raised children, who had

learned some things she could, she have skills, domestic skills,

whatever skills she had, and there'd be this family over here.

The young guy, he's working hard, trying to get ahead.

He's got three or four youngin's and his wife is

overwhelmed with at all. And they would say, hey, we're

gonna put you over here, and we're gonna put you

in the house. And she would help raise the children,

she would train, she would do the things, she would cook, clean, whatever,

she would help I'd like to say there were ancient

an bees. If you know what I'm saying, you know,

everything comes back to Andy Griffith, by the way, it

really does. The greatest psychiatrist that ever lived was Andy Griffith.

The only one that even comes close to being as

good as Andy Griffith was Caesar Milan, the dog Whisper.

You remember that guy is fantastic. He saved my marriage. Kidding,

I'm kidding about he saved my dog's life, though, I

will say that. But the point being, though, is that

they would take in these women and they would put

him in there they start the next life. The point

I'm making is that Christianity has a long history of

solving homelessness by teaching people and facilitating people in building

healthy relationships. It is relationships that will make you sustain.

But if you don't know how to build relationships, you're

in trouble. So how does the Durhm Rescue mission Next life?

How does the Durm Rescue mission help to him next life?

One morning? Well, we start with the strong and consistent

evangelistic presentation of the gospel. We tell people what I

just told you a few moments ago, that righteousness is

imputed by God, and any other righteousness is self works,

and it's just not going to get you there. There's

only two religions in the world, the one that trusts

in God and his righteousness computed to us, and some

kind of works. All these other religions argue about what's good,

what kind of works you should do, But they're all saying,

you got to be a good person, you got to

be good enough, you got to do this, you gotta

do that. You know. No, it's Christ alone and his

righteousness imputed to us. Then the second thing we try

to do is try to help people see how they

sin against each other. Even after salvation, we still sin.

But so many times people do not see how they

sin against each other. Turn a few with a First

John with me. I don't have this up on the screen,

but look at First John with me. I'm gonna pick

up at verse five in First John, and here are

the apostle. I wish, for sake of time, I want

to skip the first four verses. But he's talking about

meeting Jesus Christ. And well, let's start at verse three.

That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto

you that which we have seen and heard, Declare we

unto you that you also may have fellowship with us,

And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with

his son, Jesus Christ. Stop here a moment. I want

you to replace that word fellowship with relationship, that which

you have seen and heard. Declare we unto you that

you may have relationship with us, and truly our relationship

is with the Father and his Son. The two greatest

commandment is to love God and love your neighbor. Right

He's telling you here how to love God and love

your neighbor verse four. And these things right, we unto

you that your joy may be full. I want to

suggest that joy comes from relationship. I like to put

it this way. If you were to open up a

box of cheerios tomorrow and you want a free trip

to Paris, France, Hey, you got a free to You

go off to Paris, France. You see the Eiffel Tower,

you see the museum, see all this stuff. But you're

all by yourself. It's just another Motel six, if you

know what I'm saying. It's just so. But if you

were to go there on your honeymoon, Paris, France becomes

the city of love. Amen. It's not the city, it's

the relationship that makes it different. Verse five says, this, then,

is the message which we have heard of him and

declaring to you that God has light in him as

a darkness at all? How do we build these relationships?

What's he talking about? This then, is a message which

we have heard him in that God is like, what

does that have to do with anything? God is light?

If we say verse six, if we say that we

have relationship with God and walk in darkness, we lie

and do not the truth. So he's talking about walking

in darkness and walking in light. But if they walk

in the light Verse seven is he is in the light.

We have relationship with one another in the blood of

Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sins. What's

going on here? Walking in darkness walking in light? What

does this have to do with relationships? I used to

think years ago that when I was obeying God, when

I was doing right, I was walking in the light.

But when I was disobeying God, when I was living sinfully,

I was walking in darkness. That's not true. The reality

is we sin every day. Now maybe you don't, but

I do. The question is am I going to allow

God's light to see my sin. Keep your hand here

in first John. We'll come back to it. I want

to go to the Gospel of John, same author, same

guy writing it, John chapter three. You're offer me with

John three sixteen. I'm gonna go to John three eighteen.

It says John three eighteen. He believeth on him is

not condemned. He that believeth not is condemned already because

he hath not believed on the name but the only

begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation. That

light is coming too the world. And men love darkness

rather than light because their deeds are evil. For everyone

that doeth evil hateth the light. Neither cometh to the light,

lest his deeds, his actions, his words, may be revealed reproved.

He that do it the truth, cometh to the light,

that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are

wrought in God. You see, what God's light does to

us is that it reveals our sin. But when we

walk in darkness, we pretend our sin is it sin?

You see, it's real, real, easy to see other people's sin,

but to see your own sin is really a grace

from God. Let's go back to first John with this

thought and mind verse five Verse John Chapter one, verse five. This,

then is the message which we have heard of God

and declareing to you that God is light. And then

there is no darkness at all. If we say, if

we talk about our life, if we say we have

relationship with God, but hide or walk in the darkness,

we lie to ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But if we walk in the light, that has allowed

God's word to judge our actions. If we walk in

the light as He is in the light, we have

relationship with one another. In the blood of Jesus Christ,

the Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say

that we do not have sin, we deceive ourselves, and

the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins,

he is faithful and justin forgive us our sins and

decleanse us from all and righteousness. You cannot confess your

sin if you don't seal. And we are so good

at hiding and disguise and fooling ourselves. I mean, Adam,

I'm not gonna go back for sake of time. But

when God came down and looked at him and said,

who told you you were naked. He didn't even rebuke him.

He asked him a question, who told you you were naked?

What did Adam say? The woman that you gave me?

He was literally blaming God, God, if you'd have given

me a better woman, this would have never happened. That's

literally what he was saying. The woman. She blamed the snake.

We always blame everybody else for our sin. But the

Lord is saying, if you really really want to be

cleansed from your sin, you got to be honest with

your own motives, your own actions, your own words, and

allow the word of God to define that. You see,

I don't pray for men to stop drinking. I don't

pray for men to stop using drugs. I prayed for

men to see their sin. You know, there's an old

song that references a lot. There's an old song my

parents grew up. I grew up listening to the song

I Saw the Light Hank William Senior. Remember remember that song?

Was y'all too old, too young for that? You know,

it's a catchy song. It's an entertaining song. But it's

a terrible song, it really is. Why is it so terrible?

Because he's going around saying I saw the light. I

saw the you know sing now I'm so happy and no, no, no, no,

no no no. If you see the light, you're just

like Isaiah. And chapter six he falls down on his

face and says, I'm come undone because I'm a man

of miney I got. I'm a man with a dirty mouth,

is what he said. I guarantee you when you meet

the Lord one day, you will not curse you will

you will repent of every dirty joke you ever talked.

I won't want to use it. You will not have

an alcohol problem. I'm telling you. When we walk in

the light, it's because the righteousness of God texts us

and it changes us, and it brings true repentance for

our sin instead of blaming him or blaming her, blame blame, blame, blame, blame, blame.

That is so devilish another earth. So how do we

help people at the Rescue Mission a strong, consistent evangelistic

presentation of the gospel. We try to help them to

see how they're sin against each other, and then we

try to help them get some vocations. That's our program,

that's what we do. I've got one more video I

want to show you now that I'm gonna turn the

floor back over the pastor one more video of a lady.

I think she's a very good illustration of someone who

is a situationally homeless person. She's still with us. She

actually works at our three store in Roxburgh.

My journey began when I was a child.

I grew up in a household that was abusive, alcoholism, druggism,

gang violence, the whole nine yards, and it inspired me

to get married, which I did, and my husband had

four children. We were married for thirty two years. Twenty

eight of those years were domestic violence. So I endured

domestic violence for twenty eight years of that marriage, and

I decided I wasn't going to leave my husband because

of our children and the family patterns that had been

within my life step parents and things of that nature.

So I endured.

Approximately March of twenty nineteen, I told myself, this is it.

I said, I'm going to wait until my youngest daughter

was in college, so that way I knew there were

no more children in.

The house and I was going to leave.

It took me approximately a year to get that strength

to even do that, but I made a commitment to

myself that that's what I was going to do.

It was a Thursday evening he came in from work.

I was already home, and he was stressed as usual

because of whatever it is that he endured throughout his day.

And we began arguing. But by this time it's been

going on so long that I've learned to be quiet.

Perhaps that would make get a less impact on my life,

less pain, But by then the mental abuse is already there.

So I'm beating myself up anyway, regardless whether he's doing

it or not. So I told myself, Corsa, you're leaving tomorrow.

So that night, before I went to bed, I prayed

and I asked God. I said, God, I believe in you,

Please give me the strength walk out that door and

never looked back. And this strangest is going to sound.

He actually answered me. He said, fear not, my child,

for I am with the wallets. I took off my

wedding band and I left it on addressing. I left

my house at seventy twenty in the morning after he

went to work. I walked for eighteen hours from Elizabeth City,

North Carolina. I can't tell you what direction I went,

I can't tell you what cities I walked through because

it's all a daze. It wasn't until I stopped into

a convenience store and a gentleman was in there. Turned

out he was an undercover police officer who happened to

see that I was looking flushed in my face, and

he asked me, was I okay? And I said, I

don't know what's going on. I'm in pain. I'm hurting.

So he called I want.

An ambulance came and took me to Wake Med. It

was there that I found out that I had internal

really fleeting. I had a ruptured kidney from the beating

in which I suffered the previous night. One of the

nurses there about maybe three days later herself, she came

into my room and she was talking to me, and

she said, Miss Sutton. She said, I don't think it's

a good idea for you to go back to Elizabeth City.

I don't know what you're going through. I don't know

what you've been through, she said, but I don't think

you should go back to Elizabeth City.

She said, I know of a place that you can

go to.

She said, it's in Durham, North Carolina and the name

of it is a Durham Rescue Mission. I sat up

at the edge of my bed. I raised my hands

and I said, thank you, thank you Jesus. I stepped

into the doors of the Durham Rescue Mission. I was

met then by the lead supervisor and two other supervisors.

I was barefooted, I was sore, I was in pain.

I was what they call broken, and so I had

to fill out my paperwork and I'm answering the questions

and You're like, oh my god, what is going on here?

What do I do? So it was one of the

other supervisors who came outside and she said, courusy here.

She handed me a pair of shoes. I said, ma'am,

I don't have any money to paid for these. She said,

that's not what we're about. She said, we're not about

get miss Sutton. She said, you need some shoes. She said,

please put these shoes on your I said thank you.

So, approximately twenty one days later, they put my name

on the board and I was like, what is he

to them?

And he said it's the committee. He needs to go

before the committee and they're going to ask you if

you want to join our victory program. I said, what

is the Victory Program. I'm like, wow, there's more.

There's more. She said, yes, she said, it gives you

a more intense Bible study.

It allows you to get familiar with the Bible and

with who God is, your Lord, Jesus christis.

Are you see? And it made me think. I thought I.

Would see a m I saying, So I completed the

Victory Program. I graduated, and my new testimony is thank you.

Thank you to the during Rescue Mission, thank you to

the donors who support the during Rescue mission.

For women like me and all the women and children

that come through these doors like me. We need you.

I don't know what you contribute. I don't know how

you contribute. I'm not in that field.

But what I do know is that when you acknowledge

me in the store that I work in and you

say thank you, I say thank you to you because

you don't know how you impact my life just by

being you.

I appreciate you just for being you. Thank you

To