Unshakable Faith, Humility, Strength, Wisdom, and Love

Well, good morning Crossing Church.

How are you doing today? I got a question for you.

This is how I want you to answer it.

If you believe that God is good, can I get an Amen?

You believe that God is good, can I get a Hallelujah?

If you believe that God is good, will you just say God is good?

He certainly is. He certainly is.

I want to welcome all of you today.

I'm glad to be here with you want to welcome all the campuses

that are joining with us across the region.

If you're inside and or online, We are so thankful for each and

everyone of you and I. I don't think I'm much different

than than any minister that gets up to preach.

There's, there's always some sort of thing that preachers do

to psych up to stir up the fire before they get up.

And I have a prayer that I pray. I've been doing it for decades.

And, and that prayer is God give me the faith of Abraham, the

humility of Moses, the strength of Samson, the wisdom of

Solomon, spirit of Elijah, the heart of David and the love of

Jesus. I believe that with all my

heart. And I'll tell you why I pray

that prayer because I have a problem with a hard heart.

Any of you have a problem sometimes with a hard heart?

You know, I grew up in the city. I grew up on the West side of

Indianapolis. So I'm a city boy.

And but for some reason, God had it in mind that I would spend

most of my ministry years in areas that are more on the rural

side. And so I grew up talking about

the horsepower of my car, but everybody else was talking about

the horsepower on their tractor. And so I'm kind of an immigrant

when it comes to rural things, but I've learned an awful lot

from the agricultural community. And one of the things I learned

about farming in soil is that one of the things that's a

problem with fertility of the soil, something called

compaction. See that tractor goes back and

forth with carrying implements, you know, pulling implements.

And over a period of time that constantly driving over the soil

creates compaction and there's a subsurface of soil that gets

really hard underneath. Now the topsoil, they disk that,

they cultivate that. But underneath that is something

that farmers call hard pan and they have a particular implement

to solve that problem. And it requires a lot of

horsepower. They have tines that go down.

They're made a very heavy heat treated steel.

They go down like 18 inches in the soil and they break up that

hard pan. They call it the Ripper.

Everybody say Ripper. Yeah, you said it like you mean

it. That's pretty good.

And it requires all this horsepower.

You can tell when a tractor's pulling it because all that

diesel smoke is rolling because they've got that throttle all

the way down. And when I pray that prayer,

that's what I'm praying that God would do.

He would just take the Ripper down.

When I compare myself to those people that I mentioned, the

seven I mentioned, I fall way short and I realize that the

soil of my heart can really be compacted, that I can be hard

hearted and I, I want God to change that.

So I pray God give me the faith of Abraham, Mother Teresa said.

I know God won't give me anything I can't handle.

I just wish he didn't trust me so much.

You probably feel the same way sometimes.

And that's one of the reasons I pray for the faith of Abraham,

because when God told him to go, he just went, didn't even ask

for directions. Of course, men don't do that

anyway, but he just went and he just figured that God would tell

him if he needs to turn this way or that way or backward or

forward. It says in Hebrews 11/8 by

faith, Abraham when called to go to a place he would later

receive as his inheritance, he obeyed and went, even though he

did not know where he was going. Pretty amazing when Abraham and

Sarah were both beyond childbearing years, God told him

he would father a nation and he believed God.

Pretty amazing faith. When God told him to do

something completely out of the character and the nature of God,

to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering to him, he obeyed and

he went by faith. Abraham it says in Hebrews 11/17

when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice, he would

embrace the promises, was about to sacrifice his one and only

son. Abraham was willing to obey God

against every logical conclusion.

Where do you get that kind of faith?

If you read more in Hebrews, it says that Abraham believed that

God could raise the dead, so he fully expected to kill his son

and that God would raise him back from the dead.

You know that story, how that story goes?

So Isaac goes with Abraham to this mountain, Mount Moriah.

And when they get to the base of the mountain, they need wood.

They need wood for the sacrifice to burn the offering.

They have fire and they have a knife.

They get part way up the mountain and Isaac says, hey,

dad, where's the sacrifice? Doesn't know he's the sacrifice.

Abraham says God will provide the sacrifice.

They get to the top of the mountain and they assemble a an

altar out of unhewed stones. And at some point in that

experience, Abraham must have told his son.

Now listen, we think of Isaac is a little boy.

He wasn't a little boy. He's about 2021 years old.

Abraham was 120. You might think that a 2021 year

old kid would say, hey dad, I think there's a nursing home

with your name on it, man, Did you?

I don't know what you're talking about, but he was so obedient to

the faith of his father. He allowed his father to bind

him, probably had to help himself on that altar to submit

to what his father had said. And when Abraham lifts the knife

to kill his son, God stops him. Now I know that you love me

because you are willing to not withhold your only son.

There was a ram caught by its horns in the horns in the

thicket nearby and so God gave a a substitute when it comes to

that. Wow, this, this guy has faith.

Maybe that's what I need to do. Maybe I need to pray for more

faith. God, give me some more faith.

I bet some of you have prayed. God, I need more faith.

Do you know what? That's an ignorant prayer.

It's an ignorant prayer, and I'll tell you why.

Because everyone that's listening to the sound of my

voice right now has exactly the same amount of faith.

You know that you're going. I don't believe that, Jerry, but

you do. Here's the deal.

It's not about having more faith.

It's about taking faith out of the Bank of yourself and placing

it in the Bank of God. It's about transferring faith.

Oh, we all have faith, but do we have faith in ourselves or do we

have faith in him? And that's what I learned from

Abraham is that he had faith in him.

Let me give you just three things I see reflected in

Abraham about faith #1 faith is always a response.

It's always a response. God is the one who always

initiates, not, not us. The Bible says it's not that we

loved him, but that He loved us. In Romans 5/8 it says God

demonstrates His love toward us in while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. We didn't care look about Jesus

or God. He was dying for us.

We were on His mind. He always is the one who

initiates and we respond. Secondly, walking by faith is

like walking through life backwards.

Can you just see that? It makes sense, doesn't it, that

we walk through life backwards. We can't see where we're going.

Walking by faith is about trust. Here's the good thing.

You can see when you walk through life backwards, you can

not see where you're going, but you can see where you've been

and you can see where God has been there with you.

Actually, walking by faith is more about listening than it is

by seeing. The Apostle Paul in 2nd

Corinthians 5 seven said for we live by faith and not by sight.

Thirdly, faith is a relationship.

If you want to be a faithful person, you need to be in a

relationship with God. That's why we say you need to be

in an intimate personal relationship with God through

Jesus Christ. And this story is all about

relationship. The Bible says that Abraham was

called the friend of God. Why would Abraham do such a

cruel thing to tell his friend to sacrifice his son?

You know, I've thought about that a lot and this is what I

think. I think it was father to father.

I think it was Abraham as a father and I think it was God as

a father. Why do you think God had him go

to Mount Moriah? Why do you think that God had

Isaac carry the wood up that mountain?

Maybe it was because 2500 years in the future, God's own son was

going to be at the base of that same mountain and someone was

going to put wood on his back and he was going to carry it up

that mountain. And they were going to nail him

to that wood and he was going to die alone on a cross for you and

me. And maybe father to father, God

was telling Abraham, listen, I'm here to provide a substitute.

I am here to stop you from killing your son.

But there's going to come a day where my son is going to walk up

this hill and my son is going to carry this wood, and I'm going

to have all the power to stop them.

But I'm not going to do it. I'm going to let them kill my

son because that's how much I love you, Abraham, and that's

how much I love your son Isaac. So I don't want to see them

separated from me for all eternity.

So I pray for the faith of Abraham.

I pray for the humility of Moses, Ted Turner, the media

mogul, said. If I only had a little humility,

I'd be perfect. I think humility is escaping him

there. Humility is rooted in an

understanding of identity, particularly who you are and who

God is. And until you get that right,

humility will escape you. But I love that God is in the

business of changing us. He certainly was in the business

of that with Moses. You know the back story on

Moses, right? He was born at a time when the

Egyptian Pharaoh was killing all the babies of the of the

enslaved population of Israel inside of Egypt.

Fearing their overpopulation, Amram and Jochebed, Moses mom

and dad, weren't willing to let their child die that way.

And so Jochebed made a basket out of reeds, and then she

waterproofed it with pitch and placed this priceless son of

hers into this basket and put him symbolically in the hands of

God when she set him down in the Nile River for the current to

take him away. God was faithful.

Pharaoh's daughter was taking a bath in the Nile River.

She sees this basket, maybe heard a baby's cry and pulled

him out. That's what the name Moses mean

to be means. It means to be drawn out.

And he was raised in the palace, raised as a Prince of Egypt,

raised as a child, a grandchild of the pharaoh.

Pretty interesting his human identity.

Born as a child of slaves, born under sentence of execution, and

yet raised as a Prince of Egypt, definitely a place of privilege.

And he was that way till he was 40.

And he started coming into tune with this idea of how his fellow

Hebrews were being mistreated. You see, God had put all of

these abilities inside of him, but he wanted to use them on his

own terms. We're the same way.

And So what does he do when he's 40?

He sees a an Egyptian mistreating a Hebrew and he

looks that no one is looking this way and that the Bible

says, and seeing that no one was a witness, he sneaks up on the

Egyptian and murders him and then buries his body in the

sand. Well, he finds out later that

it's become known that he did it, and Pharaoh puts out an

execution warrant on Moses and Moses flees for his life into

the wilderness of Midian. That's where he spends the

second 40 years of his life. You see that first 40 years, the

problem was even though Moses had a hype of view of himself,

he actually was a man full of pride, needed humility.

And those next 40 years, that was God's Crucible of humility.

Matter of fact, he did such a good job on Moses that when

Moses was 80 years old and he sees something off in the

distance and he goes to see what it is and he sees that it's a

Bush that is burning, but it's not consumed.

And as he comes up close to it, he hears the voice of God

saying, take off your sandals, Moses, because the place where

you're standing is holy ground. And he tells Moses that he's

going to go to Egypt and God's going to use him to deliver the

people of Israel. But by that time, Moses has lost

all ego. He's lost all pride.

And he begins to make excuses. And he made a lot of excuses.

My favorite one is I'm slow of speech and slow of tongue.

And then God answers him by saying, who made your mouth?

Moses? Eventually Moses says, please,

God, send someone else. God said, no, I'm sending you.

And you know, you might think, well, he's lost his mojo.

He's lost it all. You know, he no, he hasn't.

He's just in a place where he realizes that it's all going to

be about God and it's not going to be about him.

And that's a place where God can really use his people, because

it was God who gave Moses his true identity.

Sure, he had a human identity, had a broken identity because of

pride, but God gave him his true identity, and he led that nation

of 2 million people out of slavery into freedom.

In Deuteronomy chapter 34, verses 11:50, this is what it

Deuteronomy 34 · chapter mention

says about him. Since then no prophet has risen

in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did

all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt, to

Pharaoh, and to all his officials and his whole land.

For no one has ever shown the mighty power performed the

awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

I need the faith of Abraham and I need the humility of Moses,

and so do you. The third one that I pray for is

the strength of Samson. Now, praying for an attribute of

Samson seems out of place because so much of his life was

a failure, certainly a failure in faith and in humility.

But you know what? I think I learned a lot more

from failure than I do from victory.

And if I can learn from somebody else's failure, maybe I don't

have to repeat it myself. You know, maybe I can just take

that win instead of have to learn it the hard way.

Samson's abilities were God-given.

Notice that I call them abilities.

I don't call them gifts because abilities don't become gifts

until you give them back to God. You see, it's God who gave you

those abilities, and he gave you those abilities so that you

could see how you could impact His Kingdom with them, because

that's the purpose of those abilities.

But they don't become gifts until you give them back to God.

Well, Samson had a problem with that.

He wanted to keep those abilities for himself.

And you know, God, he had great patience with Samson.

When Samson was born, his parents made him a Nazarite,

like a it's a vow that people would take.

And so this vow was spoken over his life when he was still an

infant. Now, to be a Nazarite meant

meant to be set apart. And it was set apart in three

specific ways. There were 3 rules #1 you

weren't supposed to have anything that came from a grape

that included wine and anything like that.

You also weren't allowed to be around anything dead, and you

weren't allowed to cut your hair.

Now, we've heard about Samson and the cutting of the hair

Delilah, right? What we don't seem to think

about is that, yeah, he broke the other two parts of the vow

long before he had his hair cut. And yet God had patience with

him until he had absolutely destroyed every vow he had made.

You know, God gives us these abilities, so we turn them into

gifts because we can experience His pleasure when we use them

for God. And that's the ultimate tragedy

of Samson's life. God has an UER story plan for

all of us. We live down in this lower

story, in the difficulties and the stresses and the challenges

of everyday life. But God has this beautiful upper

story plan. If we could just walk in that

plan. And when we do walk in His plan

and He unleashes the power of those abilities that become

gifts inside of us, we feel His pleasure.

God wanted Samson to feel his pleasure.

But understand this God's upper story is going to happen whether

we contribute to it or not. It's just so much better if we

want to be a part of it. So that's why I pray for the

strength of Samson, so I can learn from his mistakes and I

can be a part of that blessing and feel his pleasure.

I pray for the wisdom of Solomon, Abraham Lincoln said.

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming

conviction I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom seemed inefficient

for the day. Solomon sets the course of his

book Proverbs. It's book on practical wisdom in

chapter 1 verse 7 where he says the fear of the Lord is the

beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and

discipline the fear of the Lord. Some people trip over that like

what does it mean to be afraid of God?

The fear of the Lord is a recognition of who God is and

who I am, and more accurately that I'm not God and Sam, not

Samson. But Solomon has that right in

his early life. In First Kings chapter 3 verses

1 Kings 3:7–9

7 to 9, he prays this prayer which shows incredible wisdom.

He said, now Lord my God, you have made your servant king in

place of my father David, but I'm only a little child and I

don't know how to carry out my duties.

Your servant is here among the people You have chosen a great

people, too numerous to count or number.

So give your servant. A discerning heart to govern

your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.

For who is able to govern this great people of yours?

He had a recognition of who he was and who God is and that he

wasn't God. After that recognition, the next

step to wisdom is to trust God. Maybe you've heard or you've

said, I need to give up control of my life.

I need to learn to turn control over.

I need to give up control. You know, I had a good friend.

He was up here on this stage a few years ago, Randy Frazee, and

he said something to me and to all of you back then that I

think is critically important. He said we don't give up control

of our life. We give up the illusion of it.

And I was confronted with a truth in my life that a lot of

what gives me anxiety is out of this idea of control.

Like, I'd like to control what other people are thinking of me.

I would like to control the state of the world.

I would like to control my health that I would like to

control my my financial circumstances.

I would like to control a lot of things.

But the truth is there's a lot of that that is completely out

of my control. So to trust in God is to rest in

God. I don't know about you, but I

have a hard time resting when my life is full of anxiety and I

need to learn to trust and rest in God.

I think it's happens when we give up our perceived right to

make decisions of right and wrong and we defer to the

Lordship of Christ. You realize when you became a

Christian, he didn't just become your savior, He became your

Lord. That means he determines what is

right and wrong, and you live in obedience to that understanding,

right? So I'm giving up that right as

if I ever really had it in the first place.

Like what I have. My opinion really matters since

God is the one who's determining that.

But just because you recognize that you're not God and you make

a decision to trust in God, that doesn't mean that you're going

to live it out in real time. You know what Solomon didn't,

you know, God told Solomon, I don't want you to allow these

three things into your life. Don't do these three things.

Number one, don't store up for yourself a lot of gold.

How did he do with that one? You know, if you if you took

Solomon's wealth in that ancient time and you like applied it

like inflated it to our time, it would dwarf what Elon Musk has.

He used gold for mortar between stones to hold stones together.

So he didn't follow God that way.

He said don't store up horses for yourself.

Horses were a symbol of power of a mighty army.

And Solomon was known not just for Solomon's minds, but

Solomon's stables had more horses and Chariots than

anybody. The third one he said is he

don't don't amass for yourself a lot of wives or women.

Well, Solomon's epic that way. 300 wives and 700 concubines.

I guess he just decided to settle on 1000.

Good round Number means that you know, if you saw a woman every

day, you wouldn't see her for about 3 years.

Crazy, absolutely nuts. And it LED Solomon to this

reality in his life. The book of Ecclesiastes is

written at the end of his life. And do you know how that book

begins? With three words.

Everything is meaningless. See, Solomon had a God shaped

hole in his heart and he tried to fill it with every other

thing in the world. And do you know what?

Nobody that you know or have ever known had enough resources

to actually try everything. But Solomon did.

And in trying everything in his life, all he could come up with

was everything is meaningless. What a sad, cynical way of

looking at life. And some of you would say, well,

I mean, there's no way I could ever attain the wisdom of

Solomon. Let me tell you how wrong you

are. There's one word that if you

know this word and you understand this word, you will

be wiser than Solomon ever was. And that one word is Jesus.

Because only Jesus can fill that God shaped hole inside your

heart that no one else could fill.

And if you know that name, you're wiser than he was.

I pray for the spirit of Elijah. You know, I've been on top of

Mount Carmel where Elijah faced off with 450 prophets of Baal

and defeated them. There's a big white statue,

Scott Elijah standing up, He's got a sword over his head and

then under his sandal he is standing on the neck of a

prophet of Baal. Just has one word on the statue

and it says Elijah. It's referring to a showdown

that happened on Mount Carmel between Elijah by himself and

450 prophets of Baal. The northern Kingdom of Israel

had a king named Ahab, but he's not as well known as his

infamous wife whose name was Jezebel.

Nobody names their daughter Jezebel because she was as evil

as they come. She brought the worship of Baal

into the northern Kingdom, and they did so many detestable

things, one of which was sacrificing their live children

to this God. And God knew that he needed to

teach his people a lesson. And so he sent Elijah.

Not only did he send Elijah, but he sent a drought lasted for

three years. All the crops failed.

There wasn't any food. People were starving to death.

He put them in a position where they would listen and maybe

learn. And so from that Mount Carmel,

Elijah's words boomed out. He said, how long will you waver

between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him.

If Baal is God, follow him. But the people said nothing.

And then it goes on to this duel that I don't have time to talk

about today. But at the end of that, God

showed himself that he was the one and only God.

But just because we're introduced to this mighty man of

God who celebrates his big victory, it doesn't mean he

isn't a man. It doesn't mean he isn't flawed

or even weak. Because after this great

victory, Jezebel threatens his life.

And do you know what he does? He runs.

He runs for his life. Are you kidding?

After three years, after this incredible victory, he runs for

his life, runs away, sits under a broom tree, and then begs God

to take his life. Well, that makes all kinds of

sense. If you wanted to die, why didn't

you just stay there? But I, I relate to that because

that's how I am as a human being.

Sometimes I'm so confused. I'm doing everything all

backwards. I'm doing things the way I

shouldn't do it. It's like, you know, something

gets messed up inside my head. So God takes him to a mountain

and there's this massive earthquake, but God's not in the

earthquake. And and then there's this, this

huge wind and God's not on in this wind or storm.

And then there's this incredible fire, but God's not in the fire.

And then there's a still small voice.

Sometimes it's hard for us to hear that voice because there's

so much white noise, so much pink noise around us all the

time. You know what I'm talking about,

Just ambient noise. I don't know about you, but I've

got an app on my phone that has a fan so that I can sleep at

night. But how in the world are we

going to hear God when there's all this noise going on in our

lives? We have to quiet down.

We have to be still and know that he's God.

And that's what God did for Elijah in that moment.

Finally, I, I really love the story of Elijah because of his

successor, Elijah. I think it's the greatest

discipleship story that we read in the Old Testament.

Elijah knew that God was going to take him up to heaven.

So he said to Elijah, look, God's going to take me to

heaven, so I need you to stay here.

And I'll. And Elijah said, no way am I

staying here. But then he said, well, get

well. They went a little farther

together and there was this town, Bethel.

The House of God is what Bethel means.

And he goes, why don't you stay here?

Stay in the House of God. And Elijah said, no way, I'm

staying with you, went a little farther and there were all these

prophets, a whole group of prophets, and Elijah was a

prophet too. And he goes, why don't you stay

with these prophets? So I'm going to go on.

And Elijah said, Nope, I'm staying with you.

And they made it all the way to the Bank of the Jordan River.

And Elijah said to Elijah, I want you to stay on this side of

the river because I'm going to go on the other side.

And he said, Nope, I'm staying with you.

And Elijah took off his cloak. He wrapped it up and he smacked

the water of the Jordan River and the Jordan River parks, and

there's dry land. And so Elijah starts walking

across on the dry land. And Elijah follows him.

When he gets on the other side of the Jordan River, Elijah

looks at Elijah and he says, what do you want from me?

And Elijah said, I want a double portion of your spirit.

Wow, Elijah said. That's not something I can give.

That's something only God can give.

And when he said that, a tornado comes down like a whirlwind.

And then there are these horses and charities of fire that come

down and separate Elijah from Elijah.

And Elijah is caught up in this whirlwind.

He goes up in the sky and Elijah is looking after me, tears his

clothes, and he says, my God, my God, the Chariots and horsemen

of Israel. And the whirlwind dissipates and

Elijah's gone. But there's something up in the

air that begins floating down. And as he gets close to the

ground, Elijah sees that it's the cloak of Elijah.

And he picks it up. And he walks over to the Jordan

River. And he wraps it up like he saw

Elijah do. And he smacks the water.

And he says, now where's the God of Elijah?

And the water parts for him. And he walks across.

And Elijah leads the nation of Israel for the next 60 years.

That's a great story. I want to have the spirit of

Elijah. And then I pray for the heart of

David. The philosopher Blaise Pascal

said the heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

I love that quote because it answers the question of why to

the statement Jesus loves me. I learned that when I was a

little kid in a song. But when I got older I started

wondering, well, why? Why would you love me?

Because he just does. I know that doesn't sound like a

great reason, but it's true. He just does.

David was overlooked by his family.

He was the youngest, the smallest.

He was ignored by his father. And when Samuel went to Jesse's

house, David's father looking for a new king, all these young

men were paraded before him, all of them Jesse's sons.

And every time Samuel thought, well, it must be him, God would

say no. God kept saying no until there

were no boys left. And he looks at Jesse and he

goes, Are these all your sons? And he goes, I have one other my

youngest, but he's out tending sheep.

Bring him in. In Acts 1322, Paul recounts

this. And this is what he says that

God said in that moment. I have found David, son of

Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him

to do. What does it mean to have a

heart like that? That God would give it such

attention, Well, David had the heart of a stranger.

If you read the Psalms, you'll see that he was more at home

with God and in the temple. That he was ever at home.

He longed to be with God. He also had the heart of a

warrior. When David fought Goliath, his

heart was turned tuned to what God would do through him, not

what he would do. And he became the warrior king

that God would use to establish Israel as a nation.

He also had the heart of a father.

You know. David was a passionate man, but

his passion got the best of him. His worst defeat didn't come

from some outside influence, it came from an enemy within.

His desire for another man's wife.

Result was multiple sins, lust, adultery, lying and murder.

And it had a ripple effect on his whole family.

The incestuous rape of his daughter, the death of his

rapist son at the hands of one of his other sons, and the

immorality and treachery of his son Absalom and Absalom's death.

All seeds sown by what David had done.

But when he received words that Absalom had died, he said this.

Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son, would God, I had died for

you. Absalom my son.

There's the heart. There's the heart that God saw

in David. See, David wished he could have

taken his evil son's place and died.

But my heavenly Father sent Jesus, who did die, to take my

place when he died on the cross. I pray for the heart of David.

And finally, and most importantly, I pray for the love

of Jesus. One of my most favorite quotes

comes from Doctor Seuss. That's my reading level right

there. You know you're in love when you

can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than

your dreams. You know, love is the most

precious, most fragile, most indestructible, most abused,

most quoted, most misunderstood reality in the human experience.

It's the one thing that fuels our hope for today, tomorrow and

eternity. Love is the word that God uses

to define himself. God is love and Jesus is the

physical representation of God and he's the embodiment of the

word love. Let me tell you a little bit

about what that love can do. It brings life.

You could ask Gyrus about his 12 year old daughter, or a widow on

her way to a cemetery with the body of her son, or sisters of a

man who'd been dead and buried for four days.

His love brings life. The love of Jesus also brings

sight. You could ask 2 blind men who

believed in Jesus even though they never actually saw him do a

single thing because they were blind and he let them see.

The love of Jesus brings peace to a woman on her hands and

knees in a crowd, touching the hem of his garment.

And a sickness that lasted 12 years is instantly gone.

Not only she healed physically, but her uncleanness that had

ostracized her from her community is gone when Jesus

calls her daughter. And the love of Jesus brings

purpose. You could ask a paralyzed man

who was let down through a hole in a roof.

Jesus forgives his sin but then heals him for the purpose of

showing the rest of the people he has the power to forgive sin.

But the love of Jesus. It comes down to just one

miracle. 1 miracle for the whole world, for all time, for all

people that has a hope as dead as some of these.

When Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead,

the effect of that love resurrected hope and a lost and

a dying world. And years ago I was reflecting

on that truth and I wrote these words.

When I need direction, He's my narrow path, and when I need

shelter, He's my cleft in the rock.

When I need a way out, he's my open door.

When I need illumination, he is my light.

When I need someone to look after me, he's my shepherd.

When I get lost, He assembles a search party.

When I'm caught in a storm, he says peace be still.

He's the fount of every blessing.

He's the Crimson flood that washes away my stain of sin.

He is the cloud from which the showers of blessing falls.

He wrote the songs that the birds sing.

He's the author of life, the giver of life, the restorer of

life and the resurrection and the life.

And he makes life abundant and joyful and purposeful and

meaningful and eternal. He is a lawgiver and the grace

giver. He is the judge and the defense

lawyer. He demands payment and then he

pays the price himself. He sees my sin, but he believes

in my potential. He has the power to condemn me,

but he chooses to forgive me. He's the source of my healing.

He makes a demon possessed man the town's only hope, heals 10

lepers even. Only one of them comes back to

thank him. He calms the sea.

He raises the dead. He feeds the multitudes, teaches

the educators, heals the masses, notices the insignificant,

restores the ruin, includes the lonely, remembers the forgotten,

forgives the condemned, lives up the humble, brings down I'm

proud, mends the broken, and sets the captives free.

His power even flows through the hem of his garment.

And who in the world could ever compare to him?

That's my Lord, that's my savior, that's my king.

I want you to compliment. Just contemplate that as we move

to a time of decision. Years ago, I was in India and I

was doing a teaching seminar with about 75 Indian pastors.

They had one pastor that was over the rest of them, and I was

trying to figure out how to build a bridge.

How do I build a bridge? Because our cultures are so

vastly different. If you don't know Indian

culture, humility is like the brightest light of their culture

doesn't come from Christianity, comes from Hinduism.

The idea of karma. So I'm contemplating that.

I'm thinking, you know, if you put Jerusalem in the center, I

am as far West of Jerusalem as they are east of Jerusalem.

As a matter of fact, you go to Chennai, India.

You can't go any farther away. You if you keep going, you are

on your way back. How do I build that bridge?

And I thought, you know, Jesus built a bridge by washing the

feet of his disciples. What if, what if that would do

it? And I went to the head of that

mission and I said, would it be OK if I washed the feet of the

pastor's? See that would kind of short

circuit them because, you know, having a white man from the West

get down on his knees and wash their feet, that would just be

mind blowing to them. And they don't want to be out

humbled. He thought about it, prayed

about it, and he gave me permission to do it.

They brought me a a basin full of water.

They brought me towels, fresh towels.

An Indian men's feet are the dirtiest feet on earth.

I mean, all their roads are dirt roads.

They defecate in those roads. They take their their sandals

off when they walk inside, but doesn't have any effect on the

dirt that's on their feet. And I got down on my hands and

knees, and these men sat in a chair before me, one at a time.

And as I began to do it, they weren't just crying, they were

retching. You know what I mean by that

means It wasn't just tears coming out of their eyes.

It was coming out of their nose. It was coming out of their

mouth. It wasn't quiet crying.

It was loud, guttural crying. After quite a few of those guys,

I looked down at the water and it was the most filthy water I'd

ever seen in my life. The towels were black, water was

black. And something occurred to me

about me that when God looks at my heart, that's what He sees.

That's what He sees. That's the truth about me.

It's also the truth about you. But listen to me.

Here's the gospel. Here's the good news.

It doesn't even slow him down, not for a second.

Even though He knows all of that truth of the filth that is in

and on my heart, His blood is enough to cleanse me of all my

sin and to make me new again. I guarantee you that all those

Indian men who had their feet washed by me, even though we had

an incredible moment together, their feet got dirty just as

soon as they left. But when Jesus washes your heart

clean, you're clean if you're here today when you don't have

an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And let me define that. That doesn't mean that you're a

churchgoer. That doesn't mean you're a

religious person. That doesn't mean that you come

from a religious family or even you know that you attend

regularly. It means that you are in

relationship with him. If that's never happened in your

life, you don't have to wait another second, another minute.

There's going to be somebody right over there by that

baptistry would love nothing more and to pray with you, talk

with you. And maybe today is the day that

you say, here I come, Lord, all the baggage, all the dirt, here

I come. What you might not hear, but you

definitely will feel is this. I've been waiting for you,

daughter. I've been waiting for you, son.

I have more love than you have sinned.

You can make that decision today.

Many of you here today have made that decision for Christ.

But it has does not mean that you got it all figured out

right. There's a lot of times when

we're doing everything but what we need to be doing.

We're not showing the faith of Abraham or the humility of Moses

or the strength of Samson or the wisdom of Solomon or the spirit

of Elijah, the heart of David or the love of Jesus because we're

caught up in everything else. Maybe you're looking at your

heart right now. And when I was discussing what

hard pan is, you're going, Yeah, it's kind of me.

Well, come on, let him put the Ripper down.

Let him break up that hard pan. Get down to the fertile soil

underneath. It may not feel good in a few

moments, but afterwards there'll be a blessing.

And that's what these steps are for.

An opportunity to you say, for you to say, Lord Jesus, have

your way. Would you stand with me in Jesus

name, Heavenly Father, I pray that we wouldn't let an

opportunity go by. There's no one standing in our

way right now, no one except ourselves.

Help us to get out of our own way and walk straight to you.

In Jesus name I pray. Amen.