The Work of an Evangelist | May 5, 2025

Okay.

I've had a special request to do

announcements during the middle of.

Is Susie in here?

Hey, pay attention, you're interrupting.

Just 'cause you serve coffee doesn't mean

that you get to just wander around during,

okay?

So to do the announcements this

morning, instead of doing them at

the end, we have to do something

special.

So I need two coaches to get

up here and I'm looking right

at one and right at the other.

Yeah, quit looking around

over your shoulder.

You guys come on up here

and I need one referee.

Grab him on your way by right there.

Okay?

So unless

if we have two coaches do it,

we're gonna need a referee to

decide who's doing the best.

Is this what you had in mind?

Not at all.

Not at all.

Okay, good, good.

See now Ron knows all this stuff.

Ron knows that all.

You can't trust me at all.

Can you, Ron?

Okay.

So they're gonna do the

announcements, okay?

And I want you to judge if now

if they mess up, why you just

call a call a technical right on

'em, right in the middle of it.

So Russell, didn't you welcome everybody?

Yes.

Okay, next.

You get the first one.

All right, thank you.

I generally have a problem with referees.

Just a heads up.

So zebras tonight, several people do.

Several people.

Uh, tonight, ba bam, six to seven

30, youth and teens tonight.

And then college ages is at six.

Cookout at the Darnell's.

Does everyone know who

their Darnell's are?

Okay.

If you're new here and you don't

know where they are, good luck.

Good, good, good.

Well, I want to confess,

ascend to the referee.

I wasn't supposed to eat any of that cake

at the mission meeting the other night.

It was just too good though.

It was too good.

This Wednesday at 7:00 PM Men's

Group, so if you're a man, you're

invited to that group and please show

up and, uh, enjoy the fellowship.

Good job.

Uh, ladies retreat.

Yeah.

Uh, May 16th through the 18th.

If you're a lady, show up to that men.

Show up to the Men's Ladies.

Women's Show.

Up to the Women's Retreat.

Okay.

Mighty Moms, this is an

invite to All Ladies.

Ladies Night at Applebee's.

Tuesday, May 22nd, 9:00

PM Better call Time.

Time.

Sorry, I wanna add to this.

So this is for all women

of all ages point at me.

Uh, so you older ladies who are

like, oh, that's my bedtime.

Guess what?

It's my bedtime too.

You can come.

Okay.

Um, it's one night for the whole month.

Just stay up late a little bit.

So older ladies, you're invited as well.

Uh, Robin's not here.

I would pick on her,

but I'll pick on Susie.

Susie, you can come to this.

Okay.

All right.

That's it.

Was that, is that my, no.

Was she still?

It's your, is it?

Okay.

Um, let's see.

2025 summer study created.

Join us for a 10 week adventure

through the scriptures.

The age range is quite substantial.

Uh, five to 18, so that's

gonna be interesting.

Who can ne navigate

those ages really well?

It'd be incredible.

Thank you, Debbie.

Knights of White Rock.

This is White Rock's Annual

Vacation Bible School.

So if you like to serve and you

want to represent Jesus, welcome,

come help and serve, uh, the pastor

and the staff serving the kids.

July 21st, 22nd, 23rd.

I think you better have the, uh,

referee say, I think she's fine.

I think we have an overtime and they

should help you with the service.

You need help in preaching.

Okay.

Uh, you can't see all of this,

but I think the word behind it is

retreat, is what I would say there.

So 2025.

Yeah.

Youth retreat, uh, June

28th through July 2nd.

Um, sounds like a great time.

Finn, will you be there?

Yes, Finn will be there.

Okay.

So that in itself is a

selling feature for everyone.

Yeah.

Love you.

White Rock.

Good job.

Good job coach.

Good job coach.

Good job.

Good job.

Thank you.

Good job.

Good job.

Well, that was really good.

Nobody yelled at Verla.

And by the way, how many

years did you referee?

11. 11 years.

Okay.

Well, they got me to turn up the heat.

Is anybody warm enough?

No, I'm dying up here.

So

I helped install that system, but I

don't remember how to make it work.

So if we'll open the

doors if it gets too bad.

Okay.

Susie, did that meet

with your approval here?

I thought they did a great job.

Okay.

Okay.

Well you guys are all used to me.

I'm very, very formal and

so that fit in just fine.

Okay.

Um, now I've, I've told a few of you to be

on the edge of your seat because you might

get involved in the service this morning.

And

so I've got a lot of techniques after

50 years of passing pastoring, excuse

me, that, uh, I have found ways to keep

people awake, especially who, uh, who,

uh, have a tendency to fall asleep.

So if you find me looking right at

you in the middle of the service,

you may be thinking, oh my gosh,

he's gonna call on me to come up and

do something, which could happen.

Uh, but don't worry about it.

So I have been given the privilege of, uh.

Staying home from men's

retreat and sharing.

And the last time I was up

here, I referred to it as kind

of somewhat of a fireside chat.

Those of you who know history,

why that's a famous thing and

I

am kind of gonna keep

that same theme going.

I have

the longest history of our church because

we started the church in our living room.

We did a lot of crazy things starting out.

It became a joke when we were trying

to find places to meet, and the joke

was, if you can find us, you can come.

Because we would go.

We, we rented at the four H Fair

or Grounds here in Noblesville.

And so we would show up and they

would say, oh, we're sorry, but we

gave your building to somebody else.

And so it's like, well, what,

what are we supposed to do now?

Well, we've got another one over here.

So we'd go around and get in that room and

have, instead of greeters at the door, we

had people standing out the parking lot

saying, are you coming for White Rock?

No, we're here for the Reptile Show.

Okay, well after the show if you

wanna come over, you know, you

can, you can go to church with us.

There were a few mornings when we all

got there ready to set up and they had

something going all three of their venues,

and it's like, what are we supposed to do?

Well.

We went back to our house

and we crammed everybody into

our house and we had church.

And so it got to be absolutely nuts.

But we're here.

We had, uh, we started then when

we could finally have a service

somewhere, we got Sunday night.

Now, if you're a preacher, what do you do

on Sunday morning if you're not preaching?

That was the weirdest five,

six months of our life.

I mean, you get up on Sunday

morning and you gotta go to church.

Except it was like,

what do we do?

So we had people in our church who would

say, you want to come over for brunch?

And it's like, okay.

It was just weird.

And, uh.

We had a Friday night, Laura.

We had a Friday night meeting in

our home and it was for people

that we had led to the Lord there.

Most of 'em were in our cul-de-sac and up

and down the street over in North Harbor.

And uh, there was only one stipulation.

If you weren't a new

Christian, you couldn't come.

So we had husbands and wives that

had been praying for their mate for

a long time and their mate got saved.

And so they'd say, what time is

our Bible study on Friday night?

And I said, well, no,

that's for your husband.

You can't come.

What?

I can't go to the Bible

study with my own husband.

No.

We had one lady who was very, very pushy.

It ended up being a really

important part of our church,

but yet this is just not right.

She said, I'll get saved

again if I can come.

And I said, now, I finally

said, okay, here's the deal.

You can come but you can't talk.

Boy, that was probably the worst

punishment you could ever put on her.

But she loved to talk and she

would just sit there all night.

You know, she just squeezing

off every word that she could.

But I said, this is so they can

learn and ask whatever questions

they would you are gonna give your

idea of what's going on or this.

I said, I want them to be

free to ask what they would.

So we did that.

We did that for probably three months

in a row, and for half those people,

every Friday night, they were out.

Going and doing.

But every Friday night we'd start at

seven and we quit somewhere between

11 and midnight when they got tired.

We were tired before then,

but we'd just keep going.

Well, one morning at, uh, at brunch at

one of the neighbor's houses, we were

sitting there with the vice president

of Red Gold Corporation and he had one

of those guys that his wife had prayed

for for 15 years and he got saved.

His wife was the one who kept

badgering, made him wanna be

able to come to that Bible study.

And it wasn't really a Bible study, it

was just Marty and Pam, the answer men.

And we would just answer

questions and talk.

And, uh, we're sitting there

and they went to one of the mega

churches here in, in the county, and.

Her husband said, uh, Marty,

we want to join the church.

And I said, we don't even have

a church yet for you to join.

He said, well, that's all right.

As soon as you have all that

legal stuff taken care of, so you

can be a church, we wanna join.

Now, the interesting thing about

that was they had one son that was

in junior high and one that was

daughter that was in grade school,

and they went to a church that had

everything that you could ever imagine,

every program, every, every piece.

And so right there at dinner I

said, okay, I gotta understand this.

Why do you want to come to a church

that on Sunday night when we set up.

Over at the fairground, we turn tables

on their side and have a place back there

so you can watch the little tiny kids.

And we have a portable sound equipment

thing that sets up there and we set up

some folding chairs and you want to take

your kids out of that and bring 'em to

that along with the other 25 or 30 people.

And I said, yeah, why?

And he said, well, I guess simply

put, I think it's our time to give.

And they did.

And they did everything they could

to help establish the church.

And you know,

I am not an evangelist.

I'm a soul winner.

How many of you guys

remember the difference?

'cause boy, I've taught on this for

so long that somebody should, every

one of you should be an evangelist.

No excuses.

An evangelist is somebody who

is pointing people to Jesus,

okay?

If you're a Christian and you're

not pointing people to Jesus, then

you need to go back and question the

first statement about whether you're a

Christian, because all of us are either

pointing people to Jesus or away from him.

Very simple, okay?

A soul winner is somebody who just has

the privilege of being able to partner up

with God and get people into the kingdom.

Okay.

People say, I'm an evangelist.

I think of an evangelist as Billy Graham.

He's good.

Okay.

I'm not an evangelist, but I've

had the privilege of leading so

many people to Jesus who don't

know a thing about the church.

In fact, our famous one and only

billboard that we put up starting

the church, and I've said this

enough that some of you will remember

that even you knew her folks.

It said, do you hate church, but love God,

white Rock Fellowship, the alternative.

Okay.

That was put up there 23 years

ago, no, 25 years ago, and

about 13 months ago, I still got

a call from somebody who said.

Are you the people that put that

billboard up out on Highway 13?

Said, yeah, because people who don't

know Jesus really connected with that.

They thought, this is church.

Go and set in someplace

and get bored for an hour.

They didn't realize that

was where you found Jesus.

So at any rate, I digress with

all of that, but we had so much

fun because we had people from all

walks of life who didn't know a

thing about etiquette in the church.

Okay, stand up back there, Melissa.

You're hiding behind.

Pete and I. I figured

you were drifting off.

No, that wasn't it.

Okay.

Not.

Okay, so every, everybody

turn and look at Melissa.

I want you all to take a good look.

Okay.

You can sit down.

Now.

She's the oldest member

of White Rock Fellowship.

When we did get to be legal,

she and Jerry, her husband,

were the first members.

They're not the oldest people in the

church, but they're the oldest members.

Long time ago now, we had people

from every background, every

messed up situation you could.

I grew up in a church

where he had an altar call.

At the end of the service, you'd invite

people to come forward and accept

Jesus if you had stuff that you needed

to get right between you and him.

You know, it wasn't just

about accepting Jesus.

Well, you could come forward and

pray, and obviously they don't have

an altar at the four H building.

So I took folding chairs and turned

them around so that they faced out

into the, into the crowd and thinking,

well, that would be pretty obvious.

People could come and kneel

and pray if they wanted to.

And remember I said nobody knew

a thing about etiquette This,

this is the DNA of the church

that you're sitting in right now.

So one of the new people, one of our

neighbors that accepted the Lord very.

Well to do family well

connected in Hamilton County.

She came up to me after the

service and she said, you know,

I would really

like to do that.

I think I need to come and pray.

And she said, and if it's the way

it needs to be done, I'll do it.

And I was like, waiting for

the little punchline here.

And she said, but we're just supposed

to come up and sit down and face

everybody out there in the, in the crowd.

I said, no, no, you don't have to do that.

She said, well, I'm willing I would do it.

And see, that's the kind of spirit that

you need for Christian people to have.

It's, it's what we need to be and.

Man, I have had so much fun with that.

I asked Pete and Susie if they

remembered me telling the story of

one of the young couples in our church

from years and years ago, probably

close, getting close to 50, who, uh,

led a guy to the Lord over the phone.

Did I tell that recently?

Anybody remember?

Does anybody remember that?

I preached some time ago?

Oh, well, okay.

There's one,

you know, people often say, why do

you tell stories from so long ago?

And I said, it's so that I don't

embarrass people that are sitting

here, but I could do that.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay.

But I won't, I won't do that.

It's my gift, but I won't do that.

Pete and Gina were this couple I had

led, ah, I had led the brother-in-law.

I. Both brother-in-laws and a

sister-in-law to the Lord in this

little old town, and Pete and his

wife were pretty rough folks, and

Gina left Pete and moved in with

another construction worker

over in the the next town over.

Lived there for eight months and it got

so bad that Pete took drugs, got drunk

and took a gun, and shot himself in the

chest, missed his heart by just who knows

how much, fell down on their kitchen

floor and laid there for three hours.

Woke up enough.

To grab the phone, you know, the old

hang on the wall phone and called

Gina and said, help and collapsed.

And she finally figured out where

he was called the ambulance.

They came over and they had a

12 by 12 kitchen floor and there

wasn't a spot on it that wasn't

covered with blood, just pooled.

He was just moments from bleeding

out, got him to the hospital, they

gave him a shot of some sort that

was supposed to get his heart to keep

pumping and hadn't realized that he'd

taken drugs that almost killed him.

But he lived through it and, uh, you

know, everybody thought, well, this,

this is gonna bring his wife around.

No, didn't do a thing to her.

And, but it sure opened the

door for me to talk to Pete.

And I got the lead, Pete to the Lord.

And when he finally got well enough to

get out of the hospital and move back

home with his sister and brother-in-law,

and he said him over one day and he said,

Marty, I want you to pray with me that my

wife will accept the Lord and come home.

And by this time, it's been almost

a year she's living with this guy.

And I said, okay, we'll pray in all,

in all honesty, I'll try to

believe that with you, but

you're better off without her.

I didn't say that, but

that would've been true.

So Pete and I prayed

and one day he shows up.

Over at at the house and he

said, man, I got great news.

I got a letter from my wife.

She

is coming home.

I said, that's great.

I said, she found Jesus.

She said, no, but we're going to,

you and I are gonna meet with her

and we're gonna help her find Jesus.

And I said, well that's great.

So when is she coming?

I said, oh, it won't be for two weeks.

And I said, she's not come for two weeks.

She said, no.

She said her boyfriend took two weeks off

vacation and he didn't, she didn't wanna

ruin his vacation before she came home.

And I'm like, oh, give me a break.

You know, two weeks later she came

home, we met, she gave her heart

to Jesus and they're still married

to this day, which is great.

Which leads me to the first point that I

wanna make in my sermon, and I know all

of you are sitting here saying, well, if

that's the first point, we are in trouble.

This is gonna be long

over in Acts chapter one,

verse eight, very famous verse.

But you'll receive power when the Holy

Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my

witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea,

in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Now,

someone who has spent his life

helping people to tell others

about Jesus, what do you suppose?

The first response when I say, mark,

you need to tell people about Jesus.

You know what Mark would say about

99% of everybody else would say,

oh, I don't know how to do that.

So again, I have a really.

Good question.

I just need to find the right person

who wants to help me with that.

Scott, come here.

He's been bugging me.

He said, next time you get up

to preach, he said, I want to

go up front and say something.

Okay.

I wore my duck shirt.

Yeah, you should have, but you didn't.

Okay.

So Scott, do you know where you live?

Where I live?

Yeah.

Yes.

It's not, it's not a hard question.

Yes, I do know where I live.

Okay.

Can you tell me how to get to your house?

Yeah.

Okay.

Are you a Christian?

No, I'm an evangelist.

Yeah.

Ooh, I learned.

Ooh, ooh.

I'm impressed.

Are you a Christian?

Uh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't like that word because, okay.

Can you tell somebody how to become one?

I think so.

Yeah.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Uh, I would probably start by telling

'em my history and how I became one.

Wow.

That would be good.

Okay.

You can sit down.

That was really hard, Scott.

Okay.

The first thing, see, Scott's been around,

that's why I picked on him long time.

Okay.

Most people will say, well, I don't know

how to tell somebody how to find Jesus.

And I start with everyone by

saying, do you know where you live?

Well, yeah, I know where I live.

Can you tell me how to get there?

Well, yeah.

Are you a Christian?

Yeah.

Can you tell me how to get there?

I. I if you don't know how to get there,

if you couldn't tell me how to get to

your house, are you sure you live there?

If you're a Christian and you don't

know how to tell somebody else how to

get there, are you sure you live there?

Simple, stupid little

questions, but the truth, okay?

The first thing that you have

to get over is looking stupid.

Okay?

Now I am really good at that.

I, I can look stupider than

anything that you've ever seen.

I can make people laugh at me and when

people laugh at me, they don't feel

embarrassed about themselves very much.

Okay?

You don't have to make

people laugh at you.

But you just have to not be

worried about how you look.

You know, most of us don't, don't have

that much to, to be excited about.

You know, I look in the mirror and I think

what happened to me, I used to be in that

mirror and I look there now and I was in

the hospital, you know, a few weeks ago

and a young gal came in to take care of

me that morning and I was upsetting in

a chair waiting to go to the bathroom.

'cause they had me tied down to an IV

and up on the thing and gown in there.

And I said, she said, can I help you?

And I said, yeah, I, I really

need to go to the bathroom.

And I, I would love to get the IV out.

It went off 10, 15 minutes

ago and she said, well.

Do you need me to help

you get to the bathroom?

I said, no.

She said, do you need help

to get back in the bed?

No.

And then she said, uh, ask something else.

It was pretty strange to me.

And I finally said, you know, 10 days

ago I was laying cement block for a week.

And she looked back at the

chart and she said, Hmm,

you don't look anything

like what your chart says.

And I always wanted to know what,

what did my chart say about who I was?

'cause they all thought

I was some old man.

It was like, how did they figure out?

I'm an old man.

I don't get that.

You know, I don't worry about that.

The other thing that you have to do.

Is you have to get brave.

It's really important.

You know, we watch all kinds of movies

on TV that have the heroes out here

that are doing all these things.

And as you, as young men, and as

men, we want to be that person.

Okay?

But in Christianity,

why do we get so afraid?

But we do, we don't want offend anybody.

And you know, over the years

I've learned that that's not

really a very true statement.

We don't wanna look stupid.

We don't wanna, people let people

think that we're, we look dumb.

When I walk into Menards, which

is my second church, I walk

in there and I find somebody.

Kneeling down, taking care of

the stuff on the, in the aisles.

I just walk up to him and I put my hand

on their shoulder and said, oh Lord,

help this man while he is on his knees.

And they look around at me and you know,

they think, what kind of a nut is this?

And then they'll go talk to a bunch of

the other guys who know me there and

they'll tell 'em what kind of a nut I am.

And they don't think I'm a nut.

I will turn around

anywhere I get a chance.

How you doing Marty?

I, oh man.

If I was any better I'd be dead.

And everybody what?

I said, yeah.

I said, man, I know the Lord.

And it's gotta be better than this.

If it isn't, man, we're in trouble.

Okay.

Anything I can do that just

cracks the door just a little.

You'd be surprised how often

times people really, really

aren't afraid to talk to you.

Over in Psalms 1 44, I got stuck in

Psalms for a long time and when all of

a sudden I got outta getting outta the

end of Psalms, I found tons of stuff.

Here it says, praise be to the Lord

my rock, who trains my hands for war.

Now, my fingers for battle.

He is my loving God and my fortress,

my strength and my deliverer,

my shield in whom I take refuge,

who subdues peoples under me.

The one thing that I know besides

the fact that we don't wanna

look stupid is that we're at war.

We don't accept that.

Okay.

Our church was built on the fact that we

were going to make a difference and we

were gonna fight for the souls of people.

And no matter what it took, we were gonna

do whatever it was that we needed to do.

And we were gonna stand with people.

We are gonna help people

get off the floor.

We are gonna help people get back

on their feet, and we are gonna help

people with a relationship with Jesus.

That was more than setting in church

on Sunday morning and checking

that off your list and going home.

That wasn't always easy.

Still isn't.

And most of us as Christians

have not prepared for battle.

You know when when soldiers go to war,

they train, they go to bootcamp, they

do all the things that they've gotta do.

You can talk to Scott about what it's

like to go through training for special

forces and do all the stuff that they

have to do, and they do that, that so

that when they face the enemy, they are

able to do everything that they need to

do to counteract what the enemy is doing.

Okay?

Most of us don't prepare that way

because it's either too hard

or it's somebody else's job.

Okay?

Ron?

You know what it's like to have

a basketball team that doesn't

have enough players and doesn't

have a place to practice?

Okay.

Down at MCA, you got a

gym, they can practice.

What a difference that makes.

Okay.

If you don't practice, you're not ready.

It doesn't make any

difference how good you are.

You're just not ready.

If you are not practicing as

God's people, you won't be ready

when the opportunity comes.

I was reading through Psalms

and I came across his verse.

It really meant a lot to me personally.

It says, when I called you talking

to the Lord, you answered me and

you made me bold and stout hearted.

That's what we need,

Christians who are bold,

okay?

The world is bold.

Look at the, look at the news media

and all the things that they're

covering with on the campuses and

the the place that people are willing

to go to jail for things that.

Maybe aren't even worth going to jail for,

but they're out there and they don't stop.

What about the church?

What about us?

What are the people that know us

think about us and who we are?

Over in Psalm one 19,

verse 42, we have 41, 42.

May your unfailing love come to

me, oh Lord, in your salvation

according to your promise.

Then I will answer the one who

taunts me for I trust in your word.

When I read that, I thought,

okay, I don't have people

coming after me and taunting me.

You know who taunts me?

The devil.

He's the one who sits there.

Shut up.

You don't have anything to say.

Look at how you have failed.

Look at the mistakes that

you've made in your life.

Look at the failure that you are,

and the Lord has given me what I

need to shut up the taunt of my soul.

Now, before you get to the point

of feeling like, oh man, we

need to be doing more and more.

You do,

but you do that because

God loves you incredibly,

just incredibly.

And what he wants you to do is love him.

It's hard not to show

your love to somebody.

You love whether you've been married

60 years or whether you've been

married for one, or whether you're

looking forward to the event.

If you love somebody, it shows

if you love Jesus, it shows

if you put up with Jesus.

It shows if you're bored with Jesus.

It shows

if you're looking for fire insurance

for Hell, it shows if you have

the love of God in your heart.

Man, it shows.

There was one verse that I read and

I could not remember where it was.

I scribble all over my Bible

and the closest one I could find.

Was again, Psalm one 19.

He said, A man

is known by his heart,

and I thought I had to think

about that for a little while.

But where your heart

is, what did Jesus say?

Where your heart is there, where

your treasure be also, but where

your heart is, it just shows.

Now I'm stuck in the book of Proverbs and

you know, it, it doesn't do any good under

underlying proverbs because you might

as well just start and under underline

the whole verse and then you can't

find the verses that you want anyway.

But as you go through this, I, I

discovered something about me that at the.

The end of the day, he's talking about

all the wisdom and all the things that

young men put this into your life.

And another spot where

he says, risk everything.

You have to obtain wisdom.

And as I was reading through this, I

thought, man, well I failed at this

one and failed at that one and did

that, and all of a sudden it hit me.

I said, from little on up,

my parents instilled in me that God's word

is absolutely true and our God never lies.

If it's in there, it's true whether

I match up to it or not, it's true,

and I've never had to waiver from that

because I realized all of a sudden

that's how I lived my whole life.

I don't have to question

so many different things.

Well, what should I do here?

I already know because I

know what Jesus would do.

I know what God said to do in his

word, and that is a powerful thing.

You put that to work,

and when I read that I'm

supposed to be his witness,

then I need to go be his witness.

Lord, show me, guide me.

Give me the words to say

because I'm too dumb.

Lots of times, you know,

I said, I can act dumb.

I can talk dumb.

I can say the wrong thing at the

wrong time, better than anybody.

You know?

I've just learned how to recover from

that very, very well, and people let you.

It's amazing.

Years and years ago, I asked everybody

to come up with a top 10 list,

not of my sermons top 10, list the 10

people that they wanted to see, find Jesus

more than anything else in the world,

and then go to work on that list.

Whether you started by praying and

saying, God, give me the opportunity.

Open the door and when I get

it, help me to walk in it.

Help me not be afraid.

And the easiest people are on to

get on that list are the people

that you care about the most.

And if they're not on the list,

then be honest with yourself and say, I

guess I don't care about him that much.

The ones you want on that

list you will fight for.

And God will help you prepare

your hands for battle.

He will give you strength.

He will give you the power to do

what it is that you need to do,

and he'll give you the words.

I don't know how many times I've

used the verse where it says, you

know, when you have the chance to

testify, open your mouth and I'll put

the words in there and he does it.

You know, he's crazy.

He's a crazy God.

He does incredible things,

and that's where the fun is.

You think it's fun

sitting here for an hour.

This isn't fun.

This is trying to get some inspiration

to go back and play the second

half of the game and do better.

Let's win the thing.

The fun is when you go out there

and God does something and he makes

you a part of it, and you realize,

wow, the God of the whole universe

came along and said, Marty, I want

to, I want to work with you on this.

Come on, let's go over here

and talk to these people.

And if you're like my wife,

she says, huh, you go ahead.

I'll wait right here.

She's not quite as bold

as I am, but I'll go.

She'll pray for me.

It's fun.

That's where the fun is.

Ron, how many games

you guys win this year?

Three.

Were they more fun than all the losses?

Okay.

How many did we win on MCA?

How many we have.

Okay.

You always want a coach who doesn't know

what, what they won or lost, you know?

That's important.

Okay.

We had a winning season.

The wins were much more

fun than losses, right?

Okay.

When we aren't in the game,

we're losing all the time.

We're losing.

You start praying for your friend and

God opens the door and they don't find

their way all the way to Jesus, but

they find their way in just a little

bit, and you begin to see that door open

up and it's like, man, you're winning.

We're coming back.

We may have been behind,

but we're coming back.

We're gonna get there.

We're gonna catch 'em up.

Catch up to him.

Like the Pacers the other night

and come back, win from seven

down with 40 seconds left.

Say, what would they say?

It's the first time that's

happened in 1,300 and some games.

In other words, nobody's ever done it.

Okay?

They were a bit elated.

If you got a friend that doesn't know

Jesus and you've been praying for 'em

for years and you see them come to Jesus,

let me tell you, it's better than coming

back in that little amount of time.

And my message to you this

morning is pretty simple.

I want see that spirit come

alive in our church again.

We've recovered from

COV, we're coming back.

They've got 43 men over

there on Men's retreat.

God's doing some really

neat things in their life.

I wanna see God work in us.

I wanna see our church full of new faces.

I. Full of people that think we're nuts,

but they're willing to give us a shot.

Besides the normal ones of you who all

think I'm nuts anyway to start with.

We want new ones to do all of that

as well because Jesus died for that

opportunity and he made it through

the surface without having to come up.

Woo.

Okay, Lord, thank you for what

you have done in our lives.

Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for caring about me, and

thank you for this later stage of my

life where people think that I need

help to get out of a chair, that I

can tell 'em that I love you and that

you love me and you care about them.

And thank you.

That you're helping me to love you

better than I ever have before, and

I pray that you do that for every

person in here and bless them in

as they're closing out right now.

Do everything that you need

to do in Jesus name, amen.