Special Guest: Isaac Lutz (Cambodia Ministry Partner)

You are listening to the Gateway Franklin Church podcast.

To learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, including our service times here in Franklin, Tennessee, visit us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

And now here is this week's message.

My name is Chris, and I'm the executive pastor around here.

And this morning I get the privilege of introducing to you guys Isaac Lutz.

He is our ministry partner in Cambodia.

Who of you raise your hands if you have um volunteered or given to Buy a Tree Change a Life in the past?

Raise your hand.

Wow.

So Bio Tree Change a Life has uh helped uh his organization in so many ways, actually for the past 13 years.

Um we have supported orphans in Cambodia through people for care and learning and Isaac's ministry.

So I I I don't know about you guys, but I was so blessed in the first service.

I'm I'm excited to hear uh your message again.

Um would you guys bring a uh warm welcome to Isaac Lutz.

Amen.

Hello everyone.

I guess there's no Khmer speakers in the house this morning.

Um so bear with me because um my two languages are um Khmer and what used to be South Georgia, redneck, um English, and um and then I I got married cross-culturally to a beautiful girl from the state of Washington.

How many of y'all know it's different from South Georgia?

Um some of y'all know what I'm talking about.

Um, but um man, it's such an honor to be here with you guys this morning.

Um, Gateway has a really, really special place in my heart.

Um, from years ago when I first met Pastor Charlie when he came to Cambodia.

Um and God grabbed his heart to and and then y'all's heart to help buy a piece of land to build our first church in Cambodia.

And then out of that, just what the Lord has done has been incredible.

Um, you guys have been with me for a long time, um, even though I know some of you guys, you you may remember me, some of you.

This is the first time I'm getting to meet you, but man, it's an honor to be here.

Um, so before I jump in, what I want to share, I just want to um just introduce myself and my family briefly and tell you a little bit about uh what I get to do in Cambodia.

So um, first of all, this is my family up here on the screen.

I have a beautiful wife, Megan, right here, and my boys, Jedediah and Ezekiel, Jed and Zeke.

And that this picture is from earlier this year, and they already, my boys look totally different already.

It's crazy how fast they grow at this age.

Um, and um man, it's just such a blessing to be here with y'all.

Um these guys walk with me through a lot, through thick and thin, and I'm just so blessed to have my family.

Um, so I serve in Cambodia.

I first went 15 years ago to Cambodia, and God grabbed my heart for Cambodia, and I serve with a ministry called People for Care and Learning, PCL.

And some of y'all, y'all have been hearing stories throughout the years, you know some of what we do, but if you don't, I want to tell you really briefly a little bit about what we do.

So we do transformational development work.

And so what that means is we pray and we ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, where do you want us to go?

And so we'll go in a village, we'll go into a neighborhood, a town, wherever God sends us, and we'll start to build relationships.

We'll move in, we'll build relationships incarnationally, we'll get to know people, and we try to find out what are needs that they have, um, what are things that they're facing, what are ways that we can walk with them.

And then we start projects to walk with them and help them practically.

And so we work in um five main areas.

So you guys can see on the screen.

So, first of all, education, we have learning centers, started with one learning center teaching tuk-tuk drivers how to speak English to the tourists that were coming to see Anchor Wat and the temples, and that has turned into today we have eight learning centers.

We just, two weeks before I came to the States, we just opened our eighth learning center with over 400 kids coming and receiving an education and learning about Jesus.

And so education is one of the big things that we do.

Um, we also do sustainable farming.

Some of you all have heard me talk about sustainable farming before.

You've heard me talk about pig manure.

Um, I I feel more comfortable usually talking about that kind of stuff than um than some other stuff because I'm a again, I'm a South Georgia boy from a sweet potato farm.

And so we basically we teach people how to farm, how to take a small amount of land, and how to do things in a way that enables to increase the productivity of the land and how they can actually use that to pull themselves out of poverty.

And so we do that.

We do businesses missions.

So we have um two incredible restaurants, common grounds, bonfire grill.

We just started a butcher shop this last year, Big Lake Meat Company.

Um, we we make jewelry and teach widows how to do that.

We do these things to bring um to show people how that they can they can see Jesus in the marketplace.

And so we reach out to our staff, we we provide jobs, we're able to um disciple our staff, spend time with them.

Many, many have come to know Jesus through those businesses.

And we're also through that able to help sustain part of the ministry cost that we do.

Um, so we have that, we do other things, we do community development, um, everything from improving roads, digging wells, um, helping people in many different ways.

Um, and we take care of orphans and widows.

And that's that's our heart.

That's where we started at MPCO.

We start with two children's homes, and we've raised um over the last 20 years, we've raised 45 kids in our own home, um, our two homes, and then now we're empty nesters, which is cool because we made the commitment when we bring kids into our homes, their family for life.

So it's not just we have a bunch of beds and we fill beds with as many orphans as we can, but we said the the the kids God sent us, we've raised them and they're and they're our kids, and we've helped them to go on and be um able to be on their own, to be sustainable.

And so now the last we we just had last year, the last five of them graduate and they're off in college, and we have um seven in college right now.

So we're still paying their bills.

Some of y'all know what I'm talking about.

Um, and um, but it's awesome whenever we have holidays and stuff, all of our kids come home.

Um, we're family forever.

But we don't have physical children's homes anymore because we felt like God had us change that a little bit um and the needs have changed.

So instead of taking kids in our in our homes, we now work with more kids than ever.

But instead of them sleeping in our in our children's homes at night, we work with them, keep them in their families, and walk with them.

And they're attending our schools, they're attending other programs, and um, we're sponsoring them.

So now we work with literally hundreds of kids, but just in a little bit different capacity.

So that's that's overall.

That's some of the projects that we work in.

But the point of all of it is one thing is Jesus, and it's sharing the gospel with people.

It's not just giving them something that'll change their life holistically, um, just the physical part, but we want to see it holistically.

We want to see more than anything their spiritual life change.

And so we make disciples, we share the gospel as people come to know Jesus.

We make disciples, we start small groups, and as we have more small groups, that grows into churches.

Um, and so we now have seven churches, and God is continuing to work.

Um, and it's been incredible, it's been really cool.

Over the last years, we've seen God do so much.

Um, Cambodia is a tough country in many ways.

There's a lot of brokenness.

Some of you, if you know anything about Cambodia, you may have heard of the Khmer Rus genocide in the 70s, where almost a half of the population was killed tragically.

Um, and where the rest of the leaders that were in the country, anybody educated, um, anybody that had influence or had connections to the outside, they were killed.

If you wore glasses, you were taken and killed, because that meant you could probably read.

And they intentionally brought the whole population of Cambodia down to um, they wanted to create utopia, and so they said, hey, if we bring everybody down to the level of peasant farmers, they'll be easy to control, and we can actually follow the teachings of Marx and we can we can create this utopia.

And of course it failed, and it left a country full of suffering, full of pain.

Psychologists say basically the entire population of Cambodia lives in a state of PTSD today.

If you're an older person there, you survived, and oftentimes you were forced to do crazy things to survive.

And if you're a younger person, you were raised by survivors, you grew up in trauma.

Most of the younger generation, they grew up in homes with alcoholic fathers, with domestic abuse, so many other hardships.

But we've seen God do so much in this country that is over 97% Buddhist, less than 1% Christian, we've been seeing revival, and it's been incredible.

We've seen, I feel like there's so much gospel momentum right now in Cambodia, and we've seen God doing so much.

And over the last especially two or three years, we've seen growth, we've seen expansion, we've we've seen more people get baptized, we've planted more churches and started more schools in the last three years than we had before that, the last 10.

And it's been incredible.

And it's like the last even year before that, it was picking up and picking up and picking up.

And then in December, everything changed.

And what felt like a season of growth and just encouragement, and we were just trying to keep up with the growth and what God was doing.

And then on December 8th, Thailand invaded Cambodia.

It was uh an old border dispute that previously for 100 years everybody had agreed to disagree, but all of a sudden, for reasons I won't get into it all now, but it was politically expedient for Thailand to invade Cambodia.

And so on December 8th, shelling started, troops started pouring across the border, tanks started coming, drones started flying throughout the country.

If you saw a drone, you were afraid because it meant an F-16 might be soon behind dropping bombs on you.

Everything changed overnight.

Where we've had quite a bit of peace and stability over the last years in the 2000s, all of a sudden it was like we're back to square one.

It affected everybody around us.

And again, to a country that suffers from PTSD, when you hear that boom go up behind you, it's not just that present bomb, it's not just that present shell, but it's the flood of memories that comes back with it.

It affected everybody, it affected our family.

Bombs fell 40 miles from my house.

We're like, what do we do?

Started to make contingency plans.

We bought walkie-talkies and satellite phones so that we could communicate if if they cut all cell service.

People we love are suffering everywhere.

And our town became the epicenter for a refugee crisis where officially about 650,000 people fled, unofficially.

Um, government officials have told me about a million people.

These people fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Um literally no food, no water to drink, no shelter.

And overnight, a million people were camping.

Some of them went to Buddhist pagodas that opened their doors and said, You can camp out here.

And the pagodas got full.

People anywhere where there was an open spot of grass, people would camp there.

And not camping American style, definitely not glamping with an RV.

I'm talking about people fleeing with nothing, find a spot of open ground, go into the jungle with a machete if you could find one, and cut a few pieces of bamboo and hang some plastic bags over it and call that your your tent.

And as we were watching this happen, um like, what do we do, God?

So what do we do?

What actions do you want us to take?

We started feeding people and helping as much as we could, but and I'll talk more about that in a few minutes.

But honestly, more than that, I started asking different questions.

Not just what do we do, God, but what are you doing, God?

Why are you allowing this stuff to happen?

Why Cambodia again haven't these people suffered enough?

What are you doing?

Um the last six months has been a lot of wrestling with God for me, just being honest and um and asking God questions that I know in my head the answer to.

But feeling the pain, feeling the suffering of people around us.

And so today I I want to share a little bit about what I feel like God's been showing me.

Um I'll share you the answers I feel like He's given me.

None none of them are any answers you haven't heard that you don't know.

But they're things that have started to become really real on a whole nother level to me over the last six months.

Um I want to invite you to open your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 37.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

And we're gonna look at the story of Joseph.

Because I as I began to wrestle and look for answers, Joseph came to me because he's somebody that also experienced a roller coaster, pain after pain.

Um, so in Joseph, uh in Genesis chapter 37, we see the story of Joseph.

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

Um a little bit about Joseph.

First of all, Joseph, he was from a really non-traditional, broken family.

He had two moms, his dad had another couple concubines, so I don't know if that's four moms or what that is, but broken, non-traditional family, right?

Ten half brothers, one full brother, at least one sister.

His sister Dinah was raped when Joseph was young.

Then his brothers went and found the guy that did it and killed him and every man in the whole town.

They took the women and children and made them their slaves.

So these are Joseph's brothers.

When we read about Joseph and his brothers not getting along with him, these are the guys we're talking about.

His two mothers, they had major issues with each other.

One was really insecure for good reason, right?

The other one um suffered with fertility issues.

She ended up dying in childbirth with Joseph's one younger brother.

And so Joseph was raised by not his biological mom after that, a stepmom that didn't like his biological mom, a dad with major issues, right?

His name meant deceiver, Jacob, and he spent his life running from his brother, and then later on he got married and he had to run from his father-in-law.

And we could go into it, there's not time to tell of all the dysfunction and brokenness.

That's what Joseph was born into.

And then in chapter 37, verse 2 to 4, let's start to read about him.

Verse 2, this is the account of Jacob and his family.

When Joseph was 17 years old, he often tended his father's flocks.

He worked for his half-brothers, the sons of his wives Bilhah and Zilpah.

But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.

Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children, because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.

So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph, a beautiful robe.

But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them.

They couldn't say a kind word to him.

So Joseph has so much stacked against him, and then the one good thing that his dad really loves him, that gets turned against him too, right?

That becomes a liability to where everybody else hates him.

And y'all know the story.

I'm not going to go into a lot of the details of it because you know it, but Joseph is sent out to go find the brothers.

His brothers see him coming and they make plans to kill him.

They end up not killing him, right?

They throw him in a well, they bind him up, and they sell him as a slave.

So overnight, the first major pain event happens in Joseph's life, right?

His background's full of pain, but he had it okay growing up.

And then all of a sudden, he's taken from beloved son's status to slave overnight.

He doesn't know where he's going, but his captors take him to Egypt.

He's immediately forced into a cross-cultural situation.

You know, I'm a missionary.

I chose to learn a new language, to learn new culture.

God sent me there.

Joseph didn't have a choice.

He had to learn how to obey his master.

So he had to learn a new language.

Um, we don't know a whole lot about his situation, but one thing the Bible tells us in Genesis 42, 32, they tell us what Egyptians think of Hebrews.

Egyptians despise Hebrews and they won't even eat a meal with Hebrews.

So Joseph has the opposite of privilege, right?

He's a slave from a hated nation.

And yet, in all of this, in Genesis 39, 2, the Lord was with Joseph.

So the Lord was with Joseph.

He succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master.

Potiphar noticed this and realized that the Lord was with Joseph, giving him success in everything he did.

And this pleased Potiphar, so he soon made Joseph his personal attendant.

He put him in charge of his entire household and everything he owned.

From the day Joseph was put in charge of his master's household and property, the Lord began to bless Potiphar's household for Joseph's sake.

And all of his household affairs ran smoothly, and his crops and his livestock flourished.

So Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned.

And with Joseph there, he didn't worry about a thing except what kind of food to eat.

What a roller coaster, right?

He goes from normal life to being a slave.

Then all of a sudden, God lifts him lifts him up again.

He's having all of the success in his role.

He goes from slave status to he's still a slave, but he ends up being the right-hand man of his master, and everything is going good.

And then all of a sudden, major pain event number two.

Potephar's wife accuses him of trying to rape her.

And the Bible makes it clear, Joseph doesn't do anything to deserve this, right?

He's not getting what's coming to him.

Actually, he tried to do the right thing over and over and over.

She makes advances, he says, No, I'm not doing that.

He goes out of his way to avoid her, to be around other people in the house, right?

He follows the Billy Graham rules, right?

He's he's doing everything he can to keep things right, to do the right thing.

And still something bad happens.

It's the roller coaster, it's up and down, up and down.

Just when things started to feel better.

Something happened.

Some of you know those feelings.

Some of you, because of pain you faced, things seem like they're going good.

But you're waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It feels like something always happens.

So Joseph's character is questioned.

Even though he was innocent, it didn't matter.

In verse, in chapter 39, 19 and 21, Potiphar was furious when he heard his wife's story about how Joseph had treated her.

So he threw Joseph, he took Joseph and threw him into the prison where the king's prisoners were held, and there he remained.

In verse 21, but the Lord was with Joseph in the prison and showed him his faithful love.

The roller coaster.

Things are going good.

Tragedy.

Things are going good.

Tragedy.

The one constant is God is with Joseph.

And we're going to skip ahead in the story because y'all know the story.

Joseph, God sends some prisoners in.

Joseph interprets their dreams through that.

God arranges an audience for Joseph to have with Pharaoh.

He goes before him.

God gives Joseph the interpretation of the dreams.

And then God also gives Joseph incredible wisdom so that he knows exactly what to do, how to administrate this kingdom, how to get an entire empire through a seven-year famine.

Can you imagine?

There weren't refrigerators back then, right?

How do you feed an entire empire when there's no food for seven years?

God gave Joseph the wisdom.

And not only did God give Joseph the wisdom to do it, God somehow worked in Pharaoh's heart where one audience from this prisoner that tells you what your dream meant.

And Pother believed him and then sold into the plan and said, You're the guy.

You're going to be my administrator.

It's incredible, the story.

So Pharaoh makes Joseph the second most powerful person in all of Egypt.

Joseph is given a new name, a new identity, a new wife.

He has two new kids.

And he's given respect.

In Genesis 41, 43, we read: Pharaoh orders everybody that comes across with Joseph, when his chariot rolls by, everybody must get down on their knees, kneel before Joseph, and honor him.

The dreams that Joseph had that caused him trouble.

The dreams I'm sure he wished he never had.

But God is making this happen.

And again, everything is going great.

Joseph is only 30 years old when he's literally made second in command of the most powerful empire on earth at that time.

And then the next thing happens.

And some of you are like, wait, I thought that's all the bad things.

The next thing that happens, it's not an outside circumstance.

The next thing that happens is trauma from the past.

I'm extrapolating a little bit.

All of a sudden, Joseph, he's going through his routine, he's managing the kingdom.

And his brothers walk in looking for food.

And can you imagine?

These guys started your journey with pain.

The cause of your trauma.

They walk in the room and he has the power.

He can kill them, he can do whatever he wants with them.

But he faces them.

And I think the text shows clearly the emotions that Joseph starts to have.

If you read in in chapter 42, verse 9, when Joseph first sees his brothers, he remembered the dreams he had about them many years before.

Then uh skipping down in verse 24, now he turned away from them and began to weep.

When he gained his composure, he spoke to them again.

And in chapter 43, in the next chapter, verses 30 and 31, when then Joseph hurried from the room because he was overcome with emotion when he saw his brother.

He went into his private room where he broke down and wept.

After washing his face, he came back out, keeping himself under control.

Everything's good on the outside.

But just because things are good on the outside, that doesn't mean everything's good inside.

And sometimes the greatest pain we face, it's not from the outside, and it's not always from the present.

Sometimes it's from the past.

It's the trauma that keeps chasing us and coming back and coming back again.

I mentioned to you my Cambodian friends, the trauma that they carry.

When this war broke out, the fear, the questions they had, the what's gonna happen, even before it got bad.

Can you hear that sound in the distance?

It's not just the present, it's the past coming.

So I felt like God started to show me these things as I was reading about Joseph and as I've been wrestling.

God, where are you?

What are you doing?

So this is some of what God showed me.

Number one, again, these answers, they're not answers we don't know.

But they're truths that God's invited me to cling from in the season.

Number one, in the pain, when I'm asking, where are you, God?

What are you doing?

Why are you allowing this to happen?

Where were you back then when this happened?

God is there.

Again, we see in every low point of Joseph's life, the Lord was with Joseph.

In Genesis 39, 2, when he was sold as a slave, the Lord was with Joseph.

When he's thrown into prison in 39, verse 21, the Lord was with Joseph in the prison and showed him his faithful love.

We know Satan is at work, Satan's the one behind the evil, making evil things happen.

He's coming to kill, to steal, and destroy.

He's coming to destroy people's destinies.

But God promises no matter what we face, He's always with us.

In Romans 8, 35, we read, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, For your sake we face death all day long.

We're considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

But no, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced in verse 38 that neither death nor life nor angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

David said in Psalms 23, even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

He wrote that on the run.

It's not a metaphor being in the shadow of death.

He had an army hunting for him.

God promises he will always be with us.

God's with us now when we face things.

Second thing is God uses pain to draw us to himself.

C.S.

Lewis wrote, God whispers to us in our pleasures.

He speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.

Pain is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Tim Keller wrote, one of the main ways we move from abstract knowledge about God to personal encounter with him as a living reality is through the furnace of affliction.

I don't know why.

God allows pain sometimes, but I do know pain is an invitation.

The last six months, God's been inviting us into deeper intimacy with Jesus.

God wants us to fellowship in the suffering.

And he promises that these momentary light afflictions, they're working in us, an eternal weight of glory.

He is using it.

Finally, God is working even through our pain.

He doesn't waste it.

And let it be a testimony to give him glory and to free other people from pain.

Joseph, I think, says it best in Genesis 45, verses 5 through 8.

Genesis 45:5–8

After his brothers, they they finally own what they've done, they realize what they did.

They start thinking all these things that are starting to happen from them.

It's because of what they did to Joseph.

And Joseph, he lets them off the hook, he forgives them.

And he says, brothers, in Genesis 45, 5 through 8, don't be upset and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place.

It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.

This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last five more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.

God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.

So it was God who sent me here, not you.

And he is the one who made me an advisor to Pharaoh, the manager of his entire palace, and the governor of Egypt.

God is at work through the pain.

Elizabeth Elliot wrote, To God, nothing is finally lost.

All the scriptural metaphors about the death of the seed that falls into the ground, about losing one's life, and about becoming the least in the kingdom, about the world's passing away, all these go on to something unspeakably better and more glorious.

Loss and death are only the preludes to gain and life.

If you're facing trauma and pain, read some Elizabeth Elliot.

And Romans 828 is a verse probably most of you know.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.

So again, I realize these aren't new concepts, these aren't new answers.

But over the last six months, God's given me an invitation to look and ask God, what is he doing?

Why is he allowing it to happen?

What's he doing through it?

He's invited us to come close to him and fellowship and suffering with him.

So on that first day on December 8th, and the armies were coming our way.

We didn't know how to far Thailand would come.

We just knew that there were thousands and thousands and thousands of refugees coming at us.

And it was clear this isn't this isn't a joke, this isn't a small thing.

This is war.

And we're like, God, what do you want us to do?

Because again, our normal work, we do long-term sustainable development.

Um, we walk with people over the long haul.

We don't normally do relief work.

Um, but it was clear as we prayed, God invited us to go and feed people and help people.

So we started day one.

We didn't have a lot of money, but I took what we had and we bought food and we fed a hundred families.

And as we fed a hundred families, I'd have moms run up to me after we'd fed the hundred that are like, hey, I need feed too.

I need food too.

They'd say, Do you have a mosquito nut?

My kids are getting bit all night.

It was dinge season.

Had moms come and say, Do you have formula?

I need formula.

I everything that's going on, my milk dried up.

And it was like we feed a hundred people, and there's a few thousand more clamoring around the truck asking for more.

It's like, God, what do we do?

What do we do?

We're dropping the bucket.

So day one, it was like a hundred families.

Um, I went back that night and met with our Cambodian leaders, and again, it was almost Christmas time.

We were supposed to be celebrating Christmas.

We're gonna do Christmas parties and outreaches.

Um, Christmas has turned into a time that we do a lot of outreach, and we've seen many people come to know the Lord.

It's a time where there's more openness to proclaim the gospel, but it was clear there's a war going on.

We can't do a Christmas party right now.

And so we we all agreed we're gonna take the Christmas money we have, we're gonna use that to feed as many families as we can.

So day one, it was a hundred families, day two, it was three hundred.

And again, we're like, it's a drop in the bucket, and we just kept going.

And my staff, they're like, How long are we gonna do this?

I was like, I don't know.

We're as long as they're hungry people and God provides, we're gonna feed people, we're gonna help people, we're gonna walk with them.

And people started getting my phone number.

I don't know how, I didn't share it.

But I would get a phone call and it would be, hey, I'm a district chief from this province.

I've heard that you're helping people with food.

I've got 7,000 star starving families in my district.

Can you help?

So I would say, I don't know, we'll try.

Let me call you back tomorrow if I have funds and I'll see.

But the needs were huge, and it was like every day we prepare to feed a thousand families.

And by the time we got to the camp, I'd get to the camp and they'd be like, last night 300 more families arrived.

Do you have for 1300?

Yeah.

So we'd be like, okay, let's see if we can come up with this.

We saw God move so much.

It felt like the widow of Zarephath because every night we would go, and that day we would spend all the money that we had in the checking account and get back home maybe at nine, ten o'clock at night.

Try to write a little update to tell people out in the west what's happening because there was no news, almost nobody knew there was anything going on.

Say this is what's happening, and wake up in the morning and look at the checking account.

Do we have anything to help those people?

And there would be more money, and every day God would provide.

One day I'd wake up and twenty thousand dollars would appear in the account and say, Yes, we can feed a couple thousand more families, we can buy more mosquito nets, we can get more tarps.

We just saw God to provide over and over and over and over again.

Miracle after miracle.

There was always more need.

And I just started to ask God, use this how you want, do whatever you can.

We'll do whatever we can, just provide, Lord.

And part of what we're doing, I would always pray, God, I don't just want to help people get through today.

I want them to know this is from you.

But like, how do we do that?

In Cambodia, it's illegal to proselytize, right?

We can share the gospel relationally, but you have to be very careful.

Um proclaiming something publicly in large groups of people, you can go to jail really fast.

And so we would be in a camp, and there would be four or five, seven thousand people.

At first, I was like, God, what do we do?

But but then I just felt a burden.

I'm like, we have to share that this is from Jesus.

And so I start to sometimes a little bit timidly be like, hey, I just want you to know I'm a Christian, we're Christians, our team here.

And this food came from Jesus.

He loves you, he cares about you in this moment, he has good plans for you, and just little things like that.

Like, I just want them to at least know this is from Jesus.

There are Christian people that are doing some good.

But there was only us and one other organization in the whole northwest of the country that was doing this.

And so we got so much opportunity.

We started to have even high government officials contact us, say, can you come help here?

Can you do this?

Can we come see the work that you're doing?

And so we'd share more and more as we could.

And I felt like God started to give me more boldness.

And as we go back to different camps, three, four, five, six times, and we'd start to get to know the monks, we'd get to know people, some of them would start to invite us, like, you can share a little bit more, you can share more.

So we would.

We started to push the envelope more and more into share.

Because I was like, I don't know how long we have, and I don't know if we're gonna if there's gonna be an end to this thing.

I don't know if we're gonna go back to the normal stuff that we do.

I don't know what the country's gonna look like.

But we began to share more and more, and God began to work.

I'll never forget one day we walked into this refugee camp right here.

And we had put out all the food.

I think in this camp we fed 300 people, and then this monk, that the one that's sitting next to me, um, at the end, when it was gonna be my turn to say a few words, um, the the guy that was you know the MC or whatever, he invited me up.

So I get up and I start to walk up to the front to grab the microphone, and I'm praying, like God, how much can I say?

And all of a sudden, that monk stands up and he grabs the mic before I can get there.

I just thought, what's going on?

I thought, uh, he probably doesn't want me to share.

And I'll never forget what he said.

He grabbed the microphone and he said, I want to tell you guys something.

He said, It's been weeks and weeks, and nobody else has been helping us with food.

But these Christians, they keep coming and they keep helping and keep feeding us.

He said, I want to give thanks to the God of heaven, to this Jesus God, who keeps providing our people with food.

Because every time we're hungry, these guys contact us and they come and they feed us.

I want to give thanks to this Jesus God.

That does not happen, y'all.

Over the years, um, you know, if anything, monks usually don't like us very much because we're our what we're doing is we're taking Buddhists and converting them to become Christians.

We're sharing the gospel with them.

So if I hear anything that the monks are talking about us, it's always been bad.

It's always been spreading rumors.

Don't become a Christian.

They teach you to disrespect your parents.

Or don't become a Christian, they'll have you leave your culture, whatever.

I was in one village years ago, and I went there and I said I was a Christian, and people were acting really like nervous, and I'm like, what's going on?

And somebody finally said, Well, the monks told us that you Christians are cannibals and that you eat your parents.

That had been what had been said, and then this monk says, I want to give thanks to this Jesus God for what he's done, and he shared the gospel for us.

And that's a little bit of what God's been doing over the last six months.

There's been so much more, there's not time to share everything, but it hasn't been easy.

It's been a time where we've been wrestling, God, what are you doing?

You know, some days, a couple days we saw things like that, but there were a lot of other days that it wasn't like that.

That was just tragedy and trauma and trying to help people.

But God has been reminding me of these things that in that moment, in that trauma, He is here, He is with us.

And that's been what He spoke to me as my Cambodian family has come to me and they're dealing with their trauma, and those echoes from the past, they're coming up.

And what I say to them, you can't just say it's gonna be okay.

They've seen it not be okay.

But these God's promises that God is with us, God will not leave us, He will not forsake us, He is inviting us close to Him.

He is working in the midst of suffering.

So I'd just like to invite you to close your eyes right now, and I want to pray for you.

Father, I know that there's pain everywhere, and I know just like there's been so much pain in Cambodia, I know that there's also pain right here.

And God, I believe you are giving an invitation for people to run to you right now.

So, Father, I ask you for those that are wrestling with trauma, for those that are wrestling with brokenness, for those that are trying to keep their past in the past and far away.

Father, meet them there in those moments and show them where you are in that pain.

God, I ask you that it would go from our heads of knowing you're there, but to really experiencing in our hearts your presence, your nearness, your faithful love.

That just like you never left Joseph, that just like you never left me through this war, God, that you were there with them in this moment.

Holy Spirit, we ask you to do a deep work, we ask you to bring healing.

God, I ask you that you would release and bring freedom to people that are captive to the past.

Jesus, we ask you to break chains, we ask you to heal deep wounds.

God, I ask you to show my brothers and sisters what you're doing and where you are in this moment and where you were in that moment that happened to them.

So, Holy Spirit, we trust you.

We ask you to do a work.

We love you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.