Living Waters of Grace February 25, 2026

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

There's no rules here that you have to jump through 30 hoops

before you can serve the Lord. You have to be born again.

You have to love the Lord and love people and be walking with

him and God will use you right. It's real simple, but that's the

focus of, of, of a healthy church.

And so these people also told without feigning.

And that means working in spite of seeing results.

Just keep showing up. Keep doing what it is that God

tells you to do. A joke amongst our set up tear

down team at church is that the only requirements for helping

are #1 are you breathing and #2 do you have a pulse?

All jokes aside, it doesn't take crazy qualifications to serve in

most roles at church. What it does require is a

willing spirit and love for your neighbor.

In today's message, Pastor Clark provides scriptural evidence

that God can and will use anyone who is willing to serve in His

Kingdom. We need not worry about what

we'll do. Just come with a willing heart.

Now. Here's Pastor Clark in

Revelation Chapter 2 with today's edition of Living Waters

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

of Grace. People come in and, and they see

all the parts of the body working together, someone

outside shoveling and, and someone, you know, helping with

the Lord's Supper, running sound or run, you know, singing and

worship and, and, and this sometimes a part in the body is

a, someone that comes in that's new, that you go up to them and

say, Hey, I'm glad you're here. It's, it's nice to see you.

What's your name? You might be the only person

that Sunday that has a chance to connect with someone else.

And that's the body of Christ. That's the love that's being

manifest in the in the midst of the church.

And so how does a church grow? And I'm not talking numerically,

of course, God does grow churches numerically.

But what's the purpose of the church growing numerically?

It isn't to be a big church. The purpose is that people were

being called to do ministry, right.

They're coming to the church to not sit in a Pew, but to say,

what is it that I can do? How can I serve?

How can I help? What's what's my gift?

Like this fellow that's moving in from Idaho, He told me,

Clark, I can help. I like to do evangelism.

And he says I'm an I'm an usher. And you know, he just has a

heart to serve his his son's 16. He says, boy, I hope he can

maybe, you know, be involved helping in a worship.

I said, sure, he can he can talk to Rick.

And you know, there there's no rules here that you have to jump

through 30 hoops before you can serve the Lord.

You have to be born again. You have to love the Lord and

love people and be walking with him and God will use you right.

It's real simple, but that's the focus of of of a healthy church.

And so these people also told without feigning and that means

working in spite of seeing results.

This keep showing up, keep doing what it is that God tells you to

do. And God's the one that brings

the harvest in his time. They also had this sacrificial

heart and I think of as a small church, how you guys give of

your time and how you give financially.

It's a blessing we never have to beg for money.

We never have to push about money.

The Holy Spirit is the one that puts it on your heart what it is

that you're to give. And that's between you and the

Lord. And it's a wonderful thing to be

able to give freely without condemnation or without guilt.

And as we know we can't ever out give God.

I mean, I challenge my own heart as the Lord prospers me.

I always want to advance what it is I personally sacrifice before

the Lord. And sometimes we all can think,

well, if I didn't give as much as I gave to the church, I could

be driving a new car. You ever think that the payment

I could be using for. I mean, that's ridiculous.

Don't think that way, but our flesh sometimes sinks that way.

It's just normal for all of us because we're still human.

But it's cool to be content with what we have live within our

means, actually live under our means.

My dad taught me that many years ago.

He was a president of a company. And one of the big shots from

this chairman of the board said, well, Clark, how many acres do

you have? And my dad says I got a probably

about 1/4 of an acre. And they expected my dad,

because of the position he was in, to have a big mansion and

all that. My dad lived in a very modest

home. He turned on the company

limousine. He drove a Ford Pinto station

wagon. He didn't park in the director

for the president and he parked somewhere else.

It's just my dad set that temperament for my brother and I

as an example. He was a very, very sacrificial,

humble man. And what he did with his

resources and finances was always for the sake of helping

other people and never consumed with himself.

That's an amazing individual. But anyway, Ephesus, this is the

kind of church they have. They are, but it says in verse

4, then the accusation comes in spite of all the good things

they're doing. He says, I had this one thing

against you. You've left your first love as a

pastor. I have to continually keep

myself in the love of God. I'm like you guys.

I got a wife, I got children, I got grandchildren, I got son in

law's, I got a job, I got all kinds of things that my mind can

get focused on. And those are all good things to

be focused on. But sometimes I can allow things

in everyday life to take my focus off of my relationship

with the Lord. You know what I mean?

If I don't start my day with the Lord and walk with the Lord

through that day and end my day with the Lord, my heart will not

be full of this first love. My relationship with Cindy, 38

years of marriage. There was years, I have to admit

to you people that I was not loving her the way Christ told

me I'm to love his church the way he loves his church.

And so I was inadequate in the sense of my emotional connection

with my wife. I was there, I showed up, I paid

the bills, I did whatever a husband's supposed to do, but I

was not connecting with her needs as a woman in the sense of

her emotional needs. And so the reason I wasn't, I

was focused on my job and my career and my success and my

golf clubs and my time and this and that and my Ford Thunderbird

or whatever. And, and I sacrificed some years

that I look back on. I say, Lord, it's only your

mercy that you kept us together all these years, but God was

merciful. He broke me and he humbled me

and he gave me an amazing woman that stood beside me and never

gave up on me. And so 38 years I can say to you

guys today, honestly, I love Cindy today more than I love her

when I first met her. She is an amazing woman.

I, I never tire of looking at her face when I wake up in the

morning. I never look at her and say, why

did I end up with her. Now she might say that about me,

especially now with my scar now, but but you know, that's a work

of God's Spirit. It's a work of his grace and,

and and it's nothing I've done, but it's as I've yielded myself

to the Lord and won his will, not mine.

He restores to me the joy of my salvation and to you too.

And so the the but I have to work on my relationship with

Cindy. When she asked me things and

says things, I got to listen and I got to say, OK God, how am I

to respond here? Sometimes I have to admit she

still drives me crazy. I know I drive her crazy at

times too, but that's just two people that are different living

together in the same house, being married.

We're still different even after 30, but there's so many things

that we're a lot alike. When she fell and broke her

shoulder, the Bible says the two shall become one flesh.

I noticed the next time my shoulder was hurting.

It's really bizarre. And then one day I'm like on a

business trip and I running out of Panera Bread because I forgot

my wallet and I'm wearing these clogged shoes and I was running

faster and the shoes stayed with me.

All of a sudden I knew I was falling and I started going like

this man. I banged my hand and thank God I

didn't break anything. And I called her later and told

her what happened. She's man, my arm, my hand was

hurting today. I mean, this, it's just weird

how you know that there is this element of this, this one, this

we have in this relationship. But I look at that love with my

wife and it's parallel to how my relationship needs to be with

the Lord. If my love with Christ is where

it needs to be, I guarantee my love with Cindy will be where it

needs to be. But if my love with Christ isn't

where it needs to be, I'm not going to be able to be what it

is. She needs me to be as her

husband because Christ is not the center of my life.

And so every day as a husband, as a father, the grandfather is

an employee, as a pastor, all the roles that I have, and you

have many different roles too, as men and women and children, I

have to persevere and keep myself in the love of God.

The Scriptures actually say to keep yourself in the love of

God. So my devotion to Jesus has to

be above everything else. And when I look at the church

and I pray for you guys every day, I go by the names and a

list. I think, OK, where are they with

the Lord or where aren't they with the Lord?

That's not an outward judgement. It's just like God.

I pray that they're digging deep into you and they're finding in

you everything they need. That's the heart of a pastor.

That's the heart of the Lord for all of us.

He wants you and me to be in love with Jesus.

And if we are, He knows our lives are going to be whole and

satisfying and protected from sin and destruction and stupid

moves and decisions. So my devotion to Jesus in the

Church of Ephesus, he's got this concern that in spite of all

this outward biblical stuff they're doing, they've moved

away from loving Jesus. And when you love Jesus, you're

fervent about him. You're uninhibited.

You know, you got a friend, the neighbor or relative.

You're not like, oh, should I tell him about the Lord or

should I bring it up? Man, you could care less what

anybody thinks. You just want to shop from the

rooftops. Jesus is Lord, I love him.

Jesus did this for me and he did that and I prayed and he you

don't care if people think you're nuts because you're so in

love with the Lord. But it when you find yourself a

little bit inhibited, embarrassed maybe about your

faith, wondering if it's going to affect your relationship with

people. You're moving away from your

first love. Whenever you don't have a desire

to read the word and to be in the word, not because we're

going through the Bible day by day through the Bible at the end

of the year, you can say, hey, I did it, but you're going through

it because you can't wait to hear God's voice to your heart

for today. Fresh mana for today, something

God's giving you this for your relationship with him.

As I got those verses into that surgery, boy, that was so

important. I said, Lord, I need a word from

you. I need you to give something to

me. And he did and I held it in my

pocket by my heart so I could look at it and be reminded of

his faithfulness. The relationship has to be

personal. A husband can be father on in

the Lord or the wife and and that's not good because you

can't go in the fumes of another person's relationship.

You guys can't live on the fumes of a sermon for a week.

Hopefully it spurs you and encourages you and gives you a

little bit of encouragement. You're right, but you're going

home because of your relationship with Jesus that you

had prior to even coming to church on Sunday and you're

walking close with him. It's like the couples in the

honeymoon when you first met your your spouse.

So the person you were going to eventually end up marrying, you

couldn't wait to see them. You were on the phone with them

texting. I remember Jess and Dan met each

other in eHarmony. How many hours did you guys

spend on the phone? 6A hour a day.

Plus they're emailing. I mean, I mean, it was crazy,

you know? And that is the picture of the

relationship with our Lord, that we are talking to him all day

long and we're never hearing something that we've heard

before. We're bored.

It's a it's a, this is a wonderful relationship, But

whenever you start to take each other for granted in the

relationship, or do you ever take the Lord for granted?

Oh, yeah. I'm going to go to heaven

someday. That's nice.

You know, Lord loves me. Yeah.

Eternal life. That's great, but everything

else is crowded out the excitement of what that all

means. You're beginning to take Him for

granted. You're moving from your first

love when life begins to be routine and boring and

uneventful and this a drag. You've left your first love and

then your relationship with the Lord is in danger when you're

neglecting worshipping God and worship.

This isn't here with Rick and the guys on Sunday morning.

Worship is in your car with your CD.

Worship is in your home with your Bible open where you're

just praising God and thank thanking him for how much he

loves you and all that he's done and, and how great he is and how

he's created the universe and how he has his hand on

everything that's going on in the world at the same time with

every life and every individual. It's just mind blowing.

And so you worship God and you're, you're loving God.

You find yourself serving God, giving of your your livelihood

for God's work, helping brothers and sisters, helping neighbors,

helping people that don't know the Lord doesn't matter because

you love the Lord. Dan and I were digging this

woman out yesterday and she was like I said, well, where you got

to go? She's like, how old is that

Lady? 80s or something?

Yeah, she's out there with a shovel.

And you know, we say, hey man, no, we'll, we'll do it until

we're over there helping. I said, where are you going?

She said I got to go to Mass. I said, when She said 4:00, I

said in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are

absolved. You can stay home.

She thought I was kidding. I said, no, I'm a pastor.

You just take it easy. The Lord knows you can't get out

here today. But she was so determined to go,

but we were digging her out and and she says, Oh, I can't, I

feel so bad. I'm making, I say, hey, we're

doing this because we love Jesus.

We're doing this because of him, you know, And I said, plus you

have some of those pizzelles in the house and those cookies.

And she said, all I do is she was all excited.

She went in and got him and brought him out to us, you know,

but but seriously, you know, we, we just did it because it's part

of this, what you do as a follower of Christ and you love

him. And the Bible told the church in

Ephesus, in the book of Ephesians, that they were seated

with Christ Jesus in heavenly places.

That's our position right now spiritually, you're in the

heavenly places with Christ where everything that is his is

yours, where we can't be lifted up any higher than he has us

right now. It's incredible what our

inheritance is in Christ, but where are you with that right

now, today? Where is your relationship with

the Lord? How are you doing with Jesus

Christ? He warns them that if they don't

repent, and I talked about repentance pretty extensively

last week. Repentance is the realization I

can't live like this anymore. I can't go through this

spiritual fog like this anymore. I'm done with this waste of time

and energy and things that aren't going to last.

And boy, I'll tell you when, when you, when you're dealing

with some kind of cancer, some kind of life potential problem,

you start realizing how short your life is, right?

All of us and one day all of us, I don't care how young you are

in here, you're going to be in a grave if Christ hasn't come yet

and your body is going to rot and you're just going to have

bones in there. I mean, there's nothing left.

Your spirit will be with the Lord.

The Bible says to be absent the bodies, to be present with the

Lord, everything you live for. And if it isn't for Christ is

all going to be a waste. It's all going to burn.

And I think as God gives me days on this earth, my whole desire

is for you guys and for his work.

That's the focus of my heart. I want to be around God willing

for my kids and to see my grandkids grow up and to see

them follow the Lord. That's that's the passion and

also that the days that I'm living, even though I got a lot

of things like you guys work and all these other things that can

destroy. I want my life to count for

eternity so that whenever I'm done and I stand before the

Lord, we can hear well done, good and faithful servant.

But he's warning them if you don't repent from where you've

fallen and whenever your first love isn't there, you got to

admit you're backslidden. He says repent and go back and

do the first works or I will come to you and remove the

lampstand from its place. Unless you repent doesn't mean

you're losing your salvation, and it means your ability to

influence the community as a church is gone.

This church built back in 1895 used to have 350 people coming

on Sundays, 2 services, fantastic Sunday school thing,

all that. I got the book of the pastors

and the history when they started moving away from the

truth of the Word of God, when they started changing things and

doing things that weren't about Jesus but were about the

denomination and programs and all that.

The crowd wasn't alive anymore. The church didn't have a light

anymore and it eventually church died.

It closed down the lampstand. Lampstand was removed from this

place many years ago. And God, I believe by His grace,

has put it in our midst again. The light of Jesus Christ is in

this place in the lives of all you folks.

It isn't the building, it's the people that inhabit the

building. But this church, Jesus says, is

in danger an Ephesus of losing the light.

And the judgment, he said, will come now, not later on.

He will remove the influence, the salt, the light from their

own lives and from the community, and they're going to

be in really, really bad shape. And of course, as I said,

Ephesus today is a pale image of what it once was.

These people separated themselves from false doctrine.

And I guarantee one thing for sure, we will not tolerate any

false teaching in this church at all.

Someone has some kind of weird teaching that's not Apostolic

and it's not historical Christian teaching.

I don't have time for it. You know, there is no new stuff

coming out. People are saying let's go find

this new thing and find that new thing.

All it is the Bible says is winds, winds of doctrine that

blow into the church to try to get people off the truth of

God's word. And this church was very strong

when it's it's separated itself from the false doctrines and the

false deeds. He uses this term Nicolaitans,

it says conquering the people. The Nicolaitans were the type of

people that wanted to Lord it over the people in the church.

They wanted to control the people.

They wanted to manipulate them. They wanted the the people in

the church to pay homage to them as leaders.

And the the church wasn't there to serve the Lord and the

people. These people were trying to make

these people serve them. It was all about them.

And heresy, it was the development back then of the

clergy and lady where the paid professionals, the people had

the seminary degree or the doctoral degree or all that

stuff. They were like here and

everybody would look up to them and think, Oh my look, they do

this, they do that, their robes or whatever.

The Bible never developed a, a hierarchical system in, in

regard to the body of Christ. As I said in the beginning,

Christ is the head and we're all at his feet.

We all have different gifts and abilities, and pastors or elders

have a responsibility to shepherd the flock of God in the

sense of the way the Scriptures teach us to serve the flock but

not to Lord it over the people. You're more important than I am.

The leadership of the church is supposed to be at the bottom of

the body, lifting the people up in their relationship with the

Lord. We're the least in the church,

and you're the most in the church.

That's how the Lord has developed his Kingdom.

Jesus said, if any of you want to be great, let him first be

his servant. He who is first must be last.

So how do we regain our first love?

Let's just begin to to close down here.

If you're here today and you're thinking, Clark, I hear what

you're saying about this and down deep inside me and I know

I've drifted and, and sometimes we think, why can I change or

can I change? It's all matter of your heart

and your will. If you can be here today and

just be honest and say I've slipped from my first love and I

want to be restored to it, that's repentance.

The good news is that you can repent.

I can repent. And so you repent and then you

pray and you say, Lord restore to me this first love

relationship. And you start in a practical way

this week, being the Word every day, not out of ritual or duty,

but because you want to hear from the Lord, because you love

Him by word. Have I hid in my heart?

Then I might not sin against you.

Be in the Word, and when you're in the Word, obey what it's

saying. If the Lord's been speaking to

you about something, you haven't been doing it.

Stop not doing it and just start doing it.

And that will again restore that love relationship with the Lord.

Worship Him, fellowship, get together with one another and

fellowship. Hang out, attend the activities

of the church when you can. Don't be a Lone Ranger.

Don't be aloof. Let your brothers and sisters

know you need them and they need you, and then find a place to

serve. I guarantee whenever you start

serving in the church, you start getting hot.

You just, there's a, there's a special presence of God that

comes on your life when you begin to actively do something

in the body to help others. The Lord stirs you up.

He gives you abilities and skills and gifts that you never

knew you had. And what happens to he keeps you

closer to himself when you're serving him.

Believe me, I would not be where I am on my walk with the Lord

right now if I wasn't being responsible to be a pastor,

which is what he called me to do.

I would be in bad shape right now spiritually.

And for years I quenched God because I didn't want to, you

know, sort of like, you know, let someone else do it, you

know? But I'm so thankful.

It keeps my heart close to the fire.

I don't have a choice. Each week I need to be walking

with God as close as I can so that I don't defame him and I

don't bring reproach upon him and I don't let you guys down

and pray for me. Pray, please pray for me.

I need your prayers every day in order to do what it is the Lord

has called me to do. And then he ends it up here.

If you, if you're involved this way and you're, you're living in

these ways in regard to first love, the good news is, is that

you will overcome. If you have an ear to hear today

what the spirits saying to the church.

He says to him who overcomes this means the person who's

walking in victory, walking in deep relationship with Christ.

If you're walking in first love, you're going to overcome no

matter what happens in your life, no matter what the doctor

diagnosis, no matter what happens in the home or the

family or the situation, it's not going to tear you away from

the power of God because you're living in a life of supernatural

victory and abundance. Jesus says I've come that you

might have life in John 1010 and that you might have it more

abundantly. Christ came to give us a life

that's supernatural and we all can have it despite being in

love with the Lord, right? Don't be careless and neglecting

what it is He's asked of us as His church and what He asked of

the Church of Ephesus. It's real real simple, real,

real basic. But it's real easy to drift,

isn't it? But it's real easy to repent

too, right? This has been Living Waters of

Grace with Pastor Clark. We're going through the

challenging and also intriguing Book of Revelation.

Whether you're a fan of reading ahead in books of fiction,

there's such a benefit to reading ahead in the Bible to

read about how it all ends. But in an interesting turn of

events, the Book of Revelation is not really the end, but

rather the beginning. It's the end of life as we know

it here on earth, but there's so much to look forward to.

But what comes after all? The judgement of the earth and

those who reject God. There's a lot to work through,

and it can be heartbreaking to read through the intense

judgements and wrath that will come on those who hate God with

all their might. The thing is, God has given

chance upon chance to these people.

They don't want it. So the outcome is that there are

judgements and consequences for those who've rejected the good

news and the gift of salvation that's offered through Jesus's

death and resurrection. Are you one who has heard about

these things but doesn't really want it because you want to live

life on your terms? Trust me, living for Jesus is so

much better. That doesn't mean it will be

easy, but as you listen and read through Revelation with us,

you'll come to a stark realization that you don't want

to be on earth when the apocalypse happens.

So check out Calvary Chapel online.com to learn how to come

to a saving grace through faith that will allow you to be with

Jesus for eternity. We'd also love to meet you in

person at Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.

Come join us at 400 E Pittsburgh St.

Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601. This has been living waters of

grace.