The Ministry Of Helps

Pick your bibles up, wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I am teachable, I don't know everything.

My biggest need for change is to be more like you, and I'm willing to change.

I'm willing to let this word do its job on me.

Cut away that which is not pleasing, build into me that which is pleasing.

And faith always pleases you.

That works.

By your love In Jesus' name, amen.

First Corinthians, chapter 12, and we'll read with, starting with verse one, and this is a written to the Corinthian church who Paul said came behind in no good gift.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

They had the gifts, but they were carnal.

You read all about what he said to them in first and second Corinthians.

They were a church that came out of the occult, they knew the demon powers, they knew spirits, they knew all of that stuff and so.

But they needed correction.

They needed, you know, they needed to grow up.

They were carnal, they were body ruled.

So in verse one of chapter 12, now about Acts.

Did I say Acts First Corinthians?

I didn't say first Corinthians.

All right, now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

The word gifts there is italicized, even though he's talking about gifts in this chapter a lot, but the literal way to read the first verse is concerning the ways of the spirit.

I would not have you ignorant, or another way to say that I would not have you uninformed.

You need to be informed.

If you're not informed about the ways of the spirit, you know, then you're at a disadvantage.

That's why I took time this morning to teach you a little bit about the gifting on my life.

Whether you ever have that gift or not, you can still lay hands on the sick, you can still cast out demons.

You don't have to have the gift, I have to do it.

Okay, so we wanna be informed.

That's my job is to inform you of the ways or the things concerning the Holy Ghost.

Now let's.

And then he goes on and he talks about the nine gifts of the spirit which we commonly refer to.

We divide them in three groups.

You've probably heard me teach on this.

The power gifts, which is the working of miracles, the gifts of healings and the miracle operation of faith.

The power gifts.

There's the revelatory gifts, the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom and discerning of spirits, which manifested some today.

And then, of course, there's the vocal gifts, which is prophecy, tongues and interpretation.

Now, tongues and interpret tongues is not just preying tongues.

In our prayer language, Tongues is a message in tongues for the church and every message in tongues should have an interpreter.

So when we have Mark and Trenton Hankins, they give a wonderful demonstration of that gift and how it's supposed to operate.

It's not in order for somebody to stand up and just start speaking in other tongues and not have an interpreter.

So if you know, in the past people would do that.

I said well, you know, I don't have the interpretation and nobody else's, pray and see if you've got the interpreter.

They didn't have the interpreter, so they were out of order.

Well, I didn't rebuke them, I'm teaching them Right, you know, let's develop.

You know we have IQ.

We go to school for IQ, right, intelligence quotient.

Well, we need EQ, emotional quotient.

In other words, let's be emotionally mature, let's be mature enough to take correction and be taught something.

Amen, all right, enough of that.

So he gets into the gifts of the spirit and he said but all these verse 11, all these gifts that I just talked about, works that one and self same spirit, dividing to every man, severally or individually, as he will.

So every believer has spiritual gifts, potentially every believer.

In Romans 12.

It says don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.

Don't go to seed on just cause you've got a gift to operate, but on the flip side, don't consider yourself a runt or an insignificant.

He stresses in this chapter the body, everybody, say the body.

And he says here in verse 12, for as the body is one and has many members and all the members of that one body being many or one body, so also is Christ, for by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether we'd be Jews or Gentiles, or whether we'd be bond or free, and it'd been all made to drink into one spirit.

For the body's not one member but many.

See, there's many members but one body.

And he said if the foot shall say because I'm not the hand, am I not of the body?

Is it therefore not of the body?

And if the ear shall say because I'm not the eye and I'm not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?

If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?

If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?

See, the point is we need each other to be a complete body.

We all have a various functions in our body and the body of Christ, yes, but there is a body of glorious way, church, and if you count yourself a member then you're an important part of that body.

We're unwilling to do without your member.

Are you willing to do without your little finger?

You might not think it's worth.

You know, I used to not be very conscious of my little toe on my left foot.

On my right foot my little toe was kind of little and kind of curled under.

But one time I slipped on the side of a swimming pool and caught it on the edge of the tile coping and it bent it under and broke it when I was 13 years old.

And then I became very aware of my little toe.

And it was the day before I had to go wash my feet and work on the side of the road for the Refurio County cutting weeds, with a yo-yo standing in a bar ditch on a slant like that, all that weight on that toe.

Man, I limped around all summer.

My dad didn't want me, and I'm 13.

My dad didn't want me sitting around the house, he got me out there working for Refurio County.

We cleared a piece of property and it was Alliance Club Park.

It's still there today.

All these years, 60 years later, it's Alliance Club Park.

I helped build it.

I sawed with a two-handed one down, one in the other down the other in Whooo, whooo, whooo, saw and treased it.

We didn't have to change saw, change saw, are you kidding?

We had arm saws.

Amen, that little toe was screaming the whole summer.

Man, I'm telling you, you begin to.

You know, you start appreciating the members of the body.

We all are members, all right.

So it goes on to say, uh, let's skip all that and get into verse 27.

Now you're the body of Christ and members, in particular, everybody, say I'm a member of this body and say there's no big eyes and little youth, you're all important.

Now we don't say that to get proud.

We say that to make sure that we step into the place that we belong, because you all have a function in this body.

And God has set verse 28.

He had set some in the church First apostles, secondary of prophets, thirdly teachers, and after that miracles, then gifts of healings.

Helps everybody shout, helps Governments, diversities of tongues Again, he's talking about messages and tongues, not prayer language.

Are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles, have all the gifts of healings, do all speak with tongues.

Now again, he's not talking about prayer language, he's talking about messages.

Do all interpret, but covet earnestly the best gifts and yet show under you a more excellent way.

And that excellent way is in the next chapter.

It's called love, because we can have all the gifts and have not love, and it's profit of nothing.

So today I wanted to zoom in on one of those areas that he set in the church, and that is the ministry of helps.

The ministry of helps.

It's right in the middle of all these fancy ministry man, apostle, prophet, teacher, miracles, gifts of healings, do all have miracles, gifts.

What is that?

That's the evangelist.

He had to have that kind of equipment to travel around and the evangelist had more instant miracles, gifts of healings and that type of thing.

What's that government?

I like to be part of the.

Well, the government is the pastor, the government that word government is.

It means pilotage or steerage.

I'm the pilot, I'm to steer this church, I'm to oversee it and I'm to look at it from the perspective of the church and God's presence.

Governments.

So, apostle, prophet, you know.

The Ephesians four said God gave gifts unto men like presence, and he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saint.

So I'm a present, I'm a gift to you.

So God's big on those you can't call yourself.

God has to call you and God has to equip you.

I know men that call themselves pastors, and women too, to the state and the business realm.

They're messing up God's business by assuming that they have an anointing.

They don't have.

You can't aspire to those gifts.

Those are as a spirit, whereas God does that.

But yet on the other hand, in a church or in the body, he sets gifts in the church, and one of those is the ministry of helps, and it is not in the order of importance, the list there.

There was a teaching number of years ago where people would call themselves apostles.

I met a guy that's about 25 years old and he had this long church name, the church of the blah, blah, blah, blah, 14 names, you know and he had a big, long title I'm the chief apostle of da da, da, da, da, he's 25.

You ain't no apostle, in fact, you're not even a prophet, in fact, you're a nonprofit.

Five minutes of talking to him I knew he didn't have squat You're so print.

No, I just can't stand that kind of and the the import of our conversation was he was interested in me coming up underneath him.

Well, I come up underneath y'all right With an uppercut.

You know what I'm saying.

But anyway, that was what see they?

They interpret this to be in the order of importance.

So the apostles are most important.

So every church's got to have an apostle with baloney feathers.

The most important, if you want to go by importance the politics, the spirit, the pastor is the most important.

It's in chronological order, because Jesus started with the 12 apostles and then there was 11 after that and then they elected a guy and you never heard from him again and so he started with.

What he had was what's apostles?

And apostles are sent ones and they will.

They'll do the work of an apostle or mean a pastor.

They'll do the work of an evangelist, they'll do the work of a private prophesy and sometimes, you know, prophets have a dual ministry A lot of times that Paul was a prophet, teacher before he became an apostle.

So that meant he was an apostle, prophet and teacher.

He had those anointings on his life and wrote two thirds of the New Testament.

But those are not in order of importance, they're in chronological order.

So it took longer for God to develop the pastor's gift because he started with apostles and then they would ordain elders.

An elder is just an older man that had life experience, that was solid, that was faithful, that was, that knew about life.

You didn't want to ordain some kid to be over a church while the apostle goes and it starts the next church.

So in the beginning all that you had were elders, and all of the five full ministry are considered elders.

Peter called himself an elder and first Peter.

I'm technically an elder according to the Bible, but the ministry gift of pastor or governments was later in and it was right after helps.

Helps took a while also to develop.

Let's look at Acts chapter six.

Talk about the ministry of helps today, so important we are.

We are at a place in our church where I want to inform you of where we are in the ministry of helps and if, when I inform you and give you information about it, then I believe that you'll respond in the right way.

Amen.

I can see some of you scared already.

Eight After six, acts six In those days when the number of disciples were multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews.

In other words, the Gentiles had gotten saved and they're in with a bunch of Jews that got saved.

Now, as far as God's concerned, there's no more Jew, there's no more Greek.

They didn't know that back then.

Paul wasn't there to tell them that they didn't have that revelation.

So there's a little bit of racial disharmony in the church.

Where the, the Gentile widows were getting shorted on the food, the Jewish widows were taking their half out of the middle.

They got more of the matzo ball stoop.

Are y'all with me now?

Y'all are looking at me so funny.

And so they're complaining, murmuring and complaining.

They were neglected in the daily ministrations and the 12 called the multitude of the disciples under them.

What is a disciple?

It's a disciplined one.

Jesus didn't say go into all the world and have crusades and get people saved and check the box.

He said make disciples.

That's what we do here.

Some people say well, why don't you ever have an altar hall to get people saved?

Well, if anybody was here to get saved I'd give the altar call.

But I don't want to waste time having you look at me and say I'm already saved and we go through the 13 stanzas of just design.

This is not a Billy Graham crusade.

The place to get people saved is out there, and you're supposed to do that, not me.

This is not the place to get people saved.

This is the place to get people discipled.

And so they had made some disciples.

A disciple is a taught one, it's a disciplined one, and they call the multitude of them, and they said that the 12 apostles said it's not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables.

It's not that they were too good, it's just that that wasn't, that was a waste of the gifting that they had.

I mean, they were having to wait on tables and then still preach the Word.

They were doing everything.

They were sweeping the floors, they were putting out the chairs, they were greeting people at the door.

They were, you know, I mean, they were doing everything.

And they said hey, look you out among you, seven men of honest report, full of wisdom in the Holy Ghost, to a point over this business, and we will give ourselves continually to the Word of God in prayer.

That's what we do in this church.

I do not sweep the floors.

We hire that done.

As a matter of fact, we hire a cleanup crew to come in here twice a week and clean the church and vacuum.

But when we're in the first building, I mean we had volunteers and Dwayne come in every week and help vacuum those old sandpaper floors.

Man, those the carpet wasn't carpet, it was like sandpaper man.

If you fell on that floor you probably woke up with a strawberry.

I mean it would just embrace it.

But here he was with that vacuum clean.

I don't have any vacuum cleaners.

We wore out.

In three years we were buying vacuum cleaners about every 90 days.

Oh, I'll throw that one out, let's get the next one.

But no, we pay to have the yard mowed.

We don't ask people to come down here and mow the grass.

We pay to have it mowed.

But yet there are things that have to be done in any church and every church that we can't pay for.

We need the ministry of helps, and where does it come from?

From the disciples, amen, so so it says here.

So wherefore, brethren, look you out among you seven men of honest support.

That's really important to have people that have got a good reputation.

You know you don't want somebody that's on the sex offender list working in children church.

Well, we had that happen 10 years ago or something.

We had a.

He wasn't working but his wife was working in there and he was going and waiting in the hallway for his wife every time she worked and a visitor said did you know he's on the sex offender?

Well, we didn't check his background.

We checked hers.

Hers came back clean, but his didn't his.

If we'd have checked his, well, he wasn't working.

In fact, he was a sickly man.

He was sickly and come to find out he's on the sex offender list.

So I told them to leave.

I asked them to leave.

They were bored, they couldn't, and I had a lot of people that didn't like it.

Pastor, we're, we can't do that.

What?

What are they going to do?

I said that's their problem.

Well, we need to love people.

I said I love my kids more than I love them.

I have a sacred duty to protect them and I can't afford for him to slip up and fall back into sin at our expense.

He's out of here.

He should have told me at least.

And he didn't.

And she didn't.

She covered it up and then she got mad too in defense.

So she's an enabler.

Are y'all with me now?

Y'all are looking at me stunned.

I just want you to know we don't.

We know what we're doing around here and we have all the the, the procedures and and ways of doing business to ensure that the ministry of helps succeeds.

We have training, we have all the support for people to do well at what they're doing.

So seven men of honest report, full of a Holy Ghost and wisdom, just to be waiting on tables.

In other words, it's a supernatural ministry.

We're not interested in talent, we're interested in people full of the Holy Ghost.

Jesse the planets was a rock star.

He made a living playing rock music.

I mean, he was wild and he laid that thing down.

He laid down that guitar to preach.

You never see him sing.

I've never even heard him sing.

I guess he might sing sometime, but I never have heard him play the guitar or sing either one.

That was before Jesus and he counted that as refuse.

Yeah, he's talented.

Yeah, he's got a guitar, he can play a guitar.

But you know what, when he picked up and started preaching, that was what he spent his time doing.

See, I respect that In the church.

A lot of times I've seen these people get saved in Hollywood and rock stars and all of a sudden, before you know it, they're out on TV giving their testimony and playing, and you know that's just a bunch of bunk, it's not anointed.

They need a time where they separate themselves from their previous lives.

That's what a disciple is.

That's what we're making here.

We make disciples so, and let them serve the tables and so.

But we will give ourselves verse four to continue to prayer to the minister of the word and the saying please.

The whole multitude.

And they chose Stephen.

Everybody heard Stephen.

He did great wonders and miracles among the people.

He had a preaching gift, but he didn't wait around for the preaching thing.

Well, you know, I'm sorry, I'm just too valuable in this church to serve tables.

I'm really a preacher and I've got gifts of the spirit flowing me.

I'm gonna have.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to pass.

No, he waited on tables and then in his other time he went over there and preached to the Jews.

He preached so good and did so much good.

They stoned him to death.

But he's an usher.

But I say ministry of helps.

In this church we blended the ushers and security and call them gatekeepers now.

So there's lots of opportunity to serve.

And so then another one, phillip.

Anybody heard of Phillip.

Phillip went down to Samaria and preached Christ unto them.

He had a revival.

I mean, multitudes were saved and healed and delivered.

He cast demons out of people.

Are y'all with me now?

And what was he?

Was he an evangelist?

No, he's.

Later on, much later in acts, he's an evangelist.

But then what was he?

He was an usher, he was the ministry of helps.

He wasn't too good to do it.

Are y'all with me now?

Humble, high, e-cute, emotional quotient, emotionally mature, that's what a disciple has to be.

We're all born babies.

We're all born criers, we're all born murmurers.

That's how you come into the kingdom.

You come in natural.

You come in kind of sassy and brassy a lot of times and people just need a little space.

They need to grow up, and that's what a church should do.

A church should give babies a chance to grow into toddlers and to grow into the next growth.

That's what happened to Gladys and I.

We didn't start off at the top.

I rode in the back of an open trailer three miles to the storage place four times one Saturday, picking up metal chairs and setting them up at Lakewood for the big world convention they had Later that week.

I came drove all the way back across town to get on the main end of a push lawn mower and mow the grass.

And I'm the president of my own company.

I've got a home building outfit.

I wasn't too good to do it, I was glad to do it.

I just I made myself be glad for an opportunity to serve, and Gladys and I served and served and served, and then God would promote us.

Well, we want y'all to be counselors, which they call prayer partners back then counselors.

So we were amazed Big old church, 5,000 people, and we're one of a couple of hundred that were chosen to do that.

You had to be invited to do that.

You couldn't volunteer for that ministry.

Same here we have our life team.

I can't miss Karen's over the life team.

She's the director of life team.

You can't, you can't volunteer for that.

But you can be chosen and that's for people that lay hands on people up here.

We didn't get to use the life team today, but they're not upset, they're not going to go stomp off.

Well, pastor, didn't even let me pray for anybody.

Well, we went a different direction today.

Are y'all getting anything out of this About, to say, the ministry of helps.

And so they got these seven men, first six, when they sat before the apostles they prayed and they laid their hands on them.

So there they were, released into their ministry.

You know Stephen and Acts, the next chapter, he called the church.

He called the Israelites in the wilderness the church in the wilderness.

So after an exodus, you know, after they left Egypt, the Amalekites one time attacked them and remember the story Moses was on the hillside and he'd stretch out his raw, he said.

He stretched out his arm.

Well, his arm had a rod.

God gave him a rod.

It stood for the authority.

So he stretched out the rod of authority.

As long as he'd stretched that rod out, it went well with Joshua and the armies of the Israelites and they prevailed over the Amalekites.

But when he got weak then the battle would turn against them.

So Aaron and her saw that, observed that and they went up and got him a big old stone to sit on so he wouldn't have to stand out there.

And they got under each arm and held up his arms.

And he'd hold up his right arm for a while, then he'd switch over to the left arm for a while and they held his arms up.

The Ministry of Helps being ministered out there and as long as and so they annihilated the Amalekites Because of what?

The Ministry of Helps it.

Moses could not have done it by himself, or y'all with me now, later on, moses' father-in-law, jeffro, comes across from Midian and brought Moses' wife and kids to see him.

He hadn't seen him in quite a while.

And he rolls up into the camp and he was a.

He was a worshiper of the same God.

He was not a.

He didn't have false gods.

He worshipped the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob and he saw what Moses would from morning to night.

He would sit out there and judge the people.

They would come to him for the ever kind of minor little thing.

Sally and Joe stepped on my toe and didn't apologize.

You know that kind of things.

Back and forth, yan yan, yan, yan yan, all day long, morning to night, morning to night, morning to night.

Jeffro came up to his son-in-law and said you know, the thing that you're doing is not good.

Thank God for a meddling father-in-law I try not to meddle, but sometimes I do.

The thing that you're doing is not good.

You're gonna wear yourself out, you're gonna wear these people out.

And he said get you some men, some good men, men that hate covetousness, men that have wisdom and make them captain over thousands, captain over hundreds, captain over tens.

The Lord command you to do so.

In other words, it was like a prophetic word.

And Moses listened to his father-in-law and did it.

And so then, now he had delegated his authority, he put his hands, he laid his hands on the governors of those and they judged all the matters of the people and reserved only the most serious ones for Moses to know about and to have anything to say about.

Are y'all with me?

Now?

Talk about the ministry of helps.

It's in the Old Testament as a type and shadow of the new.

It is absolutely the way that the church is designed to operate.

So my point this morning is that we're at a place where our ministry of helps has waned, and it's not your fault, it's not anybody's fault, it's the pandemic we.

I wanna remind you of our little bit of our last two years.

I mean two years ago.

We had three full services a week Sunday morning, sunday night, wednesday night.

We had greeters at the door, welcome ministry at the door, we had ushers on the aisle, we had people working in children's church.

There were children's church at every service.

Oh, maybe once every now and so often we'd have a break and we'd have the kids in the services.

It's good for the kids to be in the main service every now and then, so we would have that on a frequent basis not a real frequent, but most of the time we had all these volunteers and youth service on Sunday night.

Volunteers on and on and you've got our worship team there.

That's the ministry of help.

They have to come for practice and then they come and they minister in the anointing life they did this morning.

The anointing they brought in opened up the Holy Ghost and I connected in to what is taking me a long time to know how to connect.

Now, I used to lead that for 25 years, you know, and then I had to quit with my heart surgery.

So it just like overnight I had to change.

It is taking me a while to be able to know how to connect in to what the spirit wants to do and it's taking them a while to get up to a place where they can provide that type of anointing.

Are y'all with me?

Y'all looking at me?

That's the ministry of helps.

I couldn't do anything without that ministry.

You think I say nothing of help anything without that ministry.

Are you with me now?

So we had all these services and so on March the 15th, on a Sunday, the Sandinista down there had closed down the rodeo and announced that the churches were gonna close and they had some businesses that were gonna stay open.

And the president got up there and said you know, 15 days, right, I need everybody to shut down for 15 days.

To flatten the curve.

Remember the flatten the curve lie?

That was a lie, flatten the curve.

So that was a bunch of bunk.

They made that up like they made up the mass.

They made up the distancing.

It was a made up number six foot.

They just picked it out of the air.

No science, I knew it.

And I said no, we're gonna stay open.

And everybody shouted they were, y'all were with me, y'all weren't gonna have to go to jail.

I was the one that was gonna have to go to jail and my heart got.

I mean, I just.

It was an emotional decision because on Monday morning early I got up and the Holy Ghost said you know, you can give your president 15 days.

You've been praying for the president all this time.

You stood with him all through this time.

Why wouldn't you do what he asked.

You can do it.

You can close for 15 days and I was forward that the Holy Ghost would want me to close, but he did.

So I had to announce that on a Wednesday night live stream.

I didn't even get to look at you in the eye, I had to humble myself.

I mean, it's all when you make an announcement and you go back on your announcement and change, I mean it was a risk.

Some people could get offended.

Some people could say, well, he doesn't know what he's doing, ba-ba-ba-ba.

You know, I just had to obey God.

That's my job.

So I did so.

Then we started for the next 15 days.

15 days.

We missed two Sundays and two Wednesday services.

We had nothing.

All we had was live stream.

We had a live stream, that's all, which basically didn't require any ministry of helps to speak of just a few to get the live stream up.

Most of them are staff.

Members had a couple of helps in here, but not that many.

So I'm just rehearsing history how we got to where we are right now.

So all of a sudden then, on that Monday morning after so it was right after the second Sunday close I said okay, I've given him 15 days and I just felt, you know, I was just really at a loss and I hadn't heard yet whether to open or not.

It was Monday.

I came out of the office, went around this corner and right in the front yard we had join us for Easter services.

The next Sunday after that was Palm Sunday.

This was two weeks and I looked at that sign and tears running in my face.

I said, god, I just can't go along with being closed on Easter Sunday.

I just can't.

I can't do it.

I will if that's what you want.

But he didn't want.

He just wanted me to have that 15 days to observe.

And I saw places like Academy packed.

How is Academy essential?

What essential thing do they supply?

Sleeping bags, fishing poles?

What about a liquor store?

Is that so essential?

It's so essential.

People, oh, they've got to have their booze, but we're one nation under God.

We don't need God.

No, no, we don't need the church or non essential.

So you know, you know the history.

So we, the very next Sunday was April, the sixth, palm Sunday.

So this is Monday.

So by Tuesday we made the decision we're gonna go forward.

I didn't know for sure what was gonna happen to pastor.

I wasn't sure what was gonna happen to you.

My main concern was whether they would mind arrest some of you, and I was not willing for that.

But I just felt like we needed to open and let everybody have the option of coming.

And so then I heard about a lawsuit.

By Tuesday afternoon I talked to the lawyer.

By Wednesday you were part of that lawsuit.

By Thursday the governor heard about it and relented and turned all of the directives into suggestions or and so forth, took the force of law out of closing.

Are y'all with me now?

That is a regional center kind of work.

And so we had started that Sunday with one service.

We had about a hundred, little over a hundred people.

On Palm Sunday we didn't have greeters, we didn't have children in church, we had really very.

We had some ushers and we had some.

You know, of course our singers didn't have youth that night because we didn't have Sunday night.

See, youth had been closed.

Youth is shut down.

Children in church is shut down.

What are we supposed to do with our children?

We're not teaching them the Word.

For 26 years back then, 25 years, we always taught our children the Word and the Spirit we gave.

We're not babysitting service and now it's not happening.

So then you know we exited that way.

We picked up Tuesday and Thursday noon encouragements Anybody remember those?

So we as a staff me and my kids and the staff, we man we started preaching more than ever because we're on live stream but our helps has just gone down, down down and not being utilized and I don't know.

And it took a long time for our attendance on Sunday morning.

We started every Sunday morning, easter Sunday we did two back to back services.

The first service about 130 people, 140 people.

The second service was not about a 90, something, as I recall.

That's way lower and it was way lower for quite a while.

And we did add back after about a month.

We added Sunday night service, but we didn't live stream that one.

That way we had privacy to say whatever we wanted to say without being spied on, because in those days we were being spied on.

We found that out a year later, just how much we were being spied on, just what links they were trying to take to shut us down.

And then we had friends in county government that prevented that from happening.

Are y'all with me now?

So I'm saying all that.

All this time we've gone forward.

We've added back Sunday morning and we are having children church, we have Sunday night, we have youth.

Wednesday night is still live stream.

Wednesday night's always been problematic because it had dwindled anyway before this, down to maybe 70, 60, 60, 60.

And many of them were ushers and how about the worship team Having to come after a long day?

They're teachers, they're administrators.

They have a hard day.

Everybody has a hard day on Wednesday.

And I think about Bryce Bryce.

Sometimes he worked downtown.

He lives in Montgomery.

He would just come by church on his way home.

He couldn't even go home before he came to church, and so we had a lot of pressure on the helps that we had to do.

We had a lot of pressure on the helps that were coming on Wednesday night and I just felt like let's just suspend Wednesday night For now, we'll just go on live stream and we'll offer Sunday morning full service.

Sunday night we didn't have enough help for first children church.

We had enough help for youth and, you know, gradually.

So this has been two years now and we suddenly find ourselves depleted in all departments, but especially children church.

And so I, you know, my job is to inform you that we should not be ignorant of the things concerning the spirit.

It's not enough for us just to get fat and sassy and have a wonderful service, like we've had this morning, and then our children not be taken care of.

They need church on their level.

You know we have other needs, almost every department.

We have gatekeeper needs.

We have.

We have, you know, people working in the parking lot to ensure that our cars are not broken into.

How many of you know this neighborhood?

There's lawlessness out there.

We have to protect you.

That's part of my job is protect you.

Well, where do I?

We have hired licensed officers on occasion, but gosh, we can't do that every week, every service.

So we have volunteers that volunteer to go out there check.

We bought a vehicle where they can ride around and cover a lot of ground Just to let you know what the ministry of helps is doing, so that you can.

I want you to consider this morning your involvement in this church.

Jesus said to Paul when he was evidently when he visited up in heaven because I can't find it in my Bible, jesus, it's in red.

Jesus said it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

Have you ever tried to look that up?

It's nowhere in the gospels.

He never said that.

So the place he said it was when Paul went to heaven, whether in the body or out of the body, I don't know such a man.

Remember what he said, that in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12?

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And so Jesus must have told him it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

It's more blessed to serve than it is to be served.

It's more blessed to minister than it is to be ministered to.

It's more blessed to help than it is to be helped.

Have you ever helped anybody?

It just feels good, doesn't it Glad?

Us and I were at the low point of our lives.

I'd lost everything.

We moved back from Corpus Christi broke.

I'd lost my business already before that in Houston, and then the company I was working for in Corpus went belly up.

Oh, and me $6,000, which they couldn't pay me, and we lost everything and we moved in with my sister.

How would you like to be, how would you like to move in, ladies, with your sister-in-law?

That's what Gladys had to face, and she was very good.

I mean, she took it.

She had to take a lot married to me, and she took it.

My kids were just amazing.

They could have been pouty.

They could have been mad.

They could have been.

I never saw any kind of attitude out of them.

And it was hard to be the husband and the father and have to be dependent on my sister and her husband.

And I started looking for a job.

People said, ah, you're over qualified, you've been self-employed, we don't want you, they wouldn't give me a chance.

And so that's.

We got back in January.

So here's it's mid end of February, brother Dearman, who was director of missions, lakewood Church, john, we're going to Mexico next month.

You need you and Gladys need to be there.

And I said, brother Dearman, I don't have a job, I've got to find a job.

He said, well, look, I just told you what God said.

Just, he didn't.

He didn't spend any time with me, pat me on the head, saying oh you, poor baby, I'm so sorry, Come here, let me, let's agree in prayer.

No, he just well, that's God, just do with it what you want.

And so it was God.

I mean, I prayed and it was God and I thought, god, I got to tell Gladys.

I did not want to tell Gladys, I didn't want to tell, but I didn't want to go by myself.

That would have been even worse.

So I told Gladys and you can imagine Gladys did not like that idea.

You don't even have a job.

What in the world, god, god, god, God, god, god, god, god, god, god, god.

I said, okay, just pray.

All I'm asking you to do all, just ask the Lord what he wants us to do, that's all.

If you say no, it's no, it's all on you.

You know there's town over there.

I how long had three, but two days when I was going by I missed God.

I'm third to everything.

Everybody's giving me them.

I just want to be, let me get out and express what I've done and treat them.

And I said, no, that's not a option.

I didn't tell them anything than us and we got to experience the help that we could give through the Word of God and the Holy Ghost.

I mean, we got into a village up in the mountains where they'd grow apples and they would shake the apple trees and the apples would fall down this valley and they'd roll down this valley for about a thousand feet and they'd catch them in a net at the bottom of the hill.

It's amazing.

And there was this preacher that we picked up in Saltillo called him the good, the bad and the ugly.

Well, he was all three rolled into one and he had this voice like this, and of course, he wasn't speaking English, he was speaking Spanish.

I'm taking a long time this morning.

I need to wrap this up, so I'll just cut to the chase.

Just, you know, it was an amazing experience.

It took us out of our feeling sorry for ourselves.

There's benefits to serving and no matter how busy you are or what your station in life, what you're going through right now, when you turn your attention because help is the undertaking on behalf of someone else.

That's what help means Undertaking something on behalf of someone else.

That's why you got baptized in the Holy Ghost.

The baptism of the Holy Ghost is for everybody else.

The ministry of help is just as supernatural as the other gifts.

It's just as supernatural as the apostle, it's just as supernatural as the prophet.

It may not be in the marquee, it may not be in the lights, it may not be in all of that, but let me tell you something behind the scenes, you get we part of like the rewards, we part of like.

When you do what God wants you to do and I do what God wants me to do, the rewards are the same.

So you're important, you're a vital part of the body and we're needed.

I'm just, I'm just telling you you're needed.

It's not anybody's fault.

I'm not taking the blame for it.

I'm not blaming you.

I'm just saying I want this to be a clarion call and I want you to really consider if you haven't been helping find a place to help us, because everywhere is needed A little while.

We're going to have a special video of something coming up in Children Church for Easter and I'm so embarrassed that I didn't get it done.

It was supposed to have been played the Sunday that Dr Avery Jackson was here.

Well, we also had a candidate here.

We had so much going on.

It just slipped through the cracks and it sent a terrible signal to our dear family that worked so hard to put that thing together.

We're going to show it again in a little bit, but that's one of those things I can't teach children.

It's not about teaching the children Sometimes.

We just need something.

We need a grandpa that can stick his arm in a puppet and go behind a curtain and do a voice and just go like this for five minutes.

We need a grandma that can go in and just help out for a few, for a little while it does.

It's not even about teaching.

I realize that not everybody feels qualified to teach children, but we train people.

We train people to teach, and the need is great.

Jesus said suffer little children coming to me, for such as the kingdom of heaven, forbid them not.

So when we don't do that, I feel like we're failing.

We're on the edge of failure.

Now we are going to hire a director.

We don't have the director yet.

We're not in a hurry.

Allison has gone to Bible school for this purpose.

She loves children.

She's worked in children.

She works with children.

She's going to come back home.

She's going to be part of our solution.

I'm not saying she's going to be the head of it yet, but she's going to work in there and she's got a lot of wonderful ideas.

We've got a lot of wonderful leaders that have a lot of good ideas.

There's going to be one head, though, at some point, but we need help in the meantime.

We need help in the department where we serve food.

I forgot the name of it Hospitality.

Of course Hospitality.

They needed that in the early church.

That was Hospitality Ministry.

Let me show you one more thing.

We'll wrap this up.

I'm not fussing.

I hope that doesn't come out Because I'm not mad.

My job is to inform.

It's kind of like when I told you we had $31,900 a month payments on our mortgage, everybody went.

But someone stepped up and paid it every month until we sold the property and now we're debt free.

We had been going to war at our own expense.

In a sense, we've been going to war in the helps at our own expense and we've seen it dwindle.

So let's get it tightened back up.

Acts, chapter 6,.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

I want to give you this last part.

Are you getting anything out of this?

No, nobody's condemned.

Nobody should feel guilty.

That's not the point.

The point is to inform you of where we are as a church.

Acts, chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

So when they set before the apostles and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them Verse 6.

And what happened after they installed them?

The Word of God increased and everything the Word says you can have increased.

That means finances increased, that means health increased.

That means everything that God said you could have increased.

Number two the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem.

They had more helpers, some of the ones that first got involved.

Maybe they worked a little hard, but it wasn't very long until they had so many more people they could just pick them out and bring them in, and I mean they had plenty of people.

We need plenty of people to work so we can rotate.

Somebody shouldn't have to be working three Sundays out of the month.

Let's get enough people involved where it's not that difficult.

I think anybody can miss a Sunday every month.

One Sunday a month is not too much.

God will double up your revelation.

God will bless you that much.

It's more blessed, jesus said it's more blessed to help than it is to be helped.

Amen, that's what he said.

So, secondly, the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem, greatly, greatly multiplied, greatly multiplied.

Well, I look forward to these red seats disappearing and just having people in all these red seats.

We have to close in the aisles another three or four feet and start adding on chairs over here and turn the lights on in the corners.

I mean I look forward to multiplication.

And then, finally, and of the pre, a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.

People got saved.

Jewish priests got saved when they saw what was going on in the church.

Jewish priests got saved.

That means religious people come to Jesus.

So let's.

I want you to look on the seat back in front of you.

There's a card and it says ready to get involved?

There's a little card right here.

If you're one of the high tech people, you can.

It's got a QR code here.

You can take a picture.

You can get the volunteer application on this one and you can get the.

I can help form on that one.

And if you're not like that and you don't want to mess with that, you can go out in the lobby and Justin and Rachel will be at a table and they'll be glad to answer questions and get you a form, talk to you about what it is you're interested in, look at the form and see what you want to do.

I'm just telling you up front we need help in children's church, and by that I mean it's not necessarily a teaching position.

We just need a lot of helpers.

There's a lot that goes on back there.

We have teachers and, yes, they need help.

As a matter of fact, some of the teachers are are my, you know, claire's teaching, selena's teaching.

That's not the best use of their time.

They love it, they're honored to do it, but that's not what God called them to do.

They need to be doing other things.

So we're so, as a staff, we've been, we've been plugging up the holes, so I just want to inform you.

So now you know there's a need, now you can rise up and make and meet the need.

Amen, let's lift our hands right now, father, we thank you for what we've heard.

Let's say this together Say heavenly, father, I am have been taught the word of God concerning the ministry of helps.

I consider myself a disciple.

I consider myself emotionally mature.

I'm not too high and mighty to find a place to serve.

I've been so blessed being served, being served the word of God every Sunday and every time I come to church, so blessed to be able to worship God in spirit and in truth.

I have a heart to help.

I have a heart to add what you've given me back into this body and to make this body strong, to make this body able to leap over every obstacle and accomplish what it's been called to do in Jesus name, amen, amen.

I'm not having an altar call for you.

Okay, I'm not going to make you come up here and ask you and put you on the spot.

I'm just trusting that you will, and it's all.

It's a step.

These are action items.

The first action item is to get that.

I can help them, get it in front of you and find where you.

You might check a number of things.

You might not know exactly where you belong, but you belong somewhere and you might.

And over the years, children's Church has been one of the areas where people are.

They think, oh, you know, they think they're not qualified.

If you remember this church, you're qualified.

You don't even have to have kids to help.

They have all kind of positions that are needed and some of you used to help and you moved on to other things and we believe in that.

We don't believe we have a limited time commitment.

We don't sign you up with blood and say from now on, this is what you're going to do and what is it?

Six months or something we try to get people signed up for, say six months.

I think six months is a reasonable commitment.

You can do anything for six months and then at the end of the six months, nobody's going to be mad at you if you decide to move on to something else.

But we have had people that used to work in Children's Church.

We'd ask you to please consider coming back in there for a while and help us to get over this need, because here's the thing I want to get our children back on Sunday night.

We've got to teach them on Sunday night.

We have to.

We're not doing the job we don't?

It's been two years since they come.

The little kids come in here and it's good for them to do it every now and then, but not every week.

They need on their level.

They need a curriculum.

We have it.

We need Sunday night and we need more help on Sunday morning, okay, and then all the other ones.

We have all the other openings.

We have lots of opportunities.

Did you get anything out of this today?

Amen, praise God.

Well, we love you all.

Thank you for all you've done.