Gen 11:1-9 (Johnson's Missionary Update)

Genesis 11 is a very familiar story, but I have been living with this the implications of this story this year.

The Tower of Babel.

And then I'm going to give you a pretty in-depth update of what we've been up to.

In Calvary, Abide is a very special church to us, the Vinolis.

They've been carrying the Johnsons for a long time.

So they're sweet, dear friends of ours, and it's a privilege to be here.

Out of respect for God's word, can you please stand with me?

Let's pray, and then we'll jump into Genesis 11.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the privilege and opportunity to be here, to be gathering in your church.

Lord, thank you for this church, the work that you're doing here in this community, in the hearts and minds of the families represented here.

And Lord, for the work that they're doing in our family, in supporting and going with us to Guatemala.

As we read your word, Father, first off, we are thankful that we get to do this.

Thank you for giving us these stories, the testimony of how you have interacted with your people from the beginning of time.

Thank you for the privilege of being able to read it corporately together.

Holy Spirit, please help me to communicate the message clearly and out of reverence for you and the work that you're doing in us and through us.

Father, bless the reading of your word.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Genesis 11.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shannar and settled there.

They said to each other, Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.

They used the brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.

Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

But the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower the people were building.

The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand each other.

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

That is why it's called Babel, because the Lord confused the language and the whole world.

From there the Lord scattered them over the whole face of the earth.

Father, thank you so much for this story.

Thank you that this is not where it ends, and you've left us in a state of confusion.

But in your grace and patience, you work with us.

Holy Spirit, work with us today.

Church, sing with me.

Take joy, my king.

Father, thank you so much.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

May be seated.

Let's go back to this text.

Notice that how it starts is that as the people were moving eastward, God had them on a direction and they came to the plains of Shannar.

As we've been exploring and discovering different parts of Guatemala, we've kind of generated a metric or matrix of looking at what is a sustainable village for our family.

Now, we're still learning how to live in Guatemala, but one of the things we look for is a water source.

It's kind of crazy, but this is a real thing down there, is we have to consider where we're going to be getting water from.

They came to the plains of Shannar and it had everything.

It hit all of the boxes.

They were comfortable there.

They had a way to produce some sort of livelihood.

It had their water source, it had the space.

They found it.

They felt like they had arrived.

Because they didn't need to keep going.

If they were lacking something, they would have kept going past the plains of Shinar.

It's important to know where we're at in this whole narrative.

This isn't too far past the flood narrative.

I haven't done two buttons before, so this is interesting.

This isn't far past this.

And God commanded Noah and his sons to go and fill the earth.

And this is that eastward expansion.

But when they came to the plains of Shinar, they had everything they needed.

We've found in our lives that we've come to places that have had everything we thought we needed.

We've kind of hedged up, we've we've bunkered down, and we've found places that have filled all of our little boxes.

But God in his grace has a way of blowing through our comforts.

And you see this in God's people is that this is what God does is he moves his people past the plains of Shinar, past the plains of comfortable, into the wilderness to fill the earth.

This is God's command to fill the earth.

From the beginning of time, Adam and Eve, to Noah and the sons, to Abraham, this is the mantra to go there.

The this is not gonna work for me.

This is gonna confuse me.

Then I can just concentrate on one.

So, but notice in the story what happens is that they had this great unity.

They had a great capability, and they're in this great comfy spot.

And they started focusing on themselves.

Because they had this great unity of language and of thought, is God needed to do something.

He needed to stir this up.

When he came down to fill them, he to visit their tower, their city that they were building.

This tower, this city, this is an affront to God.

Remember, it was just the flood.

And so, what did God say to him, to Moses at the end of the flood?

What did he promise to do?

Never flood the earth again.

Never flood the earth again.

So, what's the logical thing for the humans to do?

Let's go build the tower.

Worse yet, let's go build a waterproof tower.

Up until this point, they never used baked bricks.

This tar that it's referenced, it's only used one other time in the Bible, and that's to make the waterproof basket for Moses.

This was a natural oozing slime tar, and this is what they want to make their tower out of, their whole city.

This whole endeavor is an affront to God.

God says, Go fill the earth.

I will never flood the earth again.

And they say, um, we're good right here, and we're gonna build a a big tower in case just it gets a little out of control again.

This this whole thing was an affront to God and a lack of faith in God.

So God came down and confused their language.

This is so much more, you kind of I've been geeking out a little bit about this, but when you look into the text here, is there's the confusion of language and the confusion of thought.

It was the confusion of purpose.

Is they were all banded together, yeah, let's build a city, let's stay here.

God's gonna stir it up a little bit.

These what's crazy is that these this language explains a lot of the confusion of language.

Even the linguists today trace back some of the root languages and can't find the start of these languages.

The language in itself is divine, it just appears, the base languages.

There's not an evolution, there's we're missing those blocks in between.

But this confusion of language was not a discipline.

There's no correction or punishment in this.

Read in this, the the character of God is so they won't do this again.

So they won't continue in sin.

God brought this confusion.

Just let that run in your head for the situations in your life.

And the sweet thing about the Lord is he confused these languages, but he didn't leave them there.

Is we see in the New Testament, when God is starting the work of the church and introduces the Holy Spirit to the church, what's the first thing he brings?

Holy languages and languages of the other men.

The apostles, in this whole time there's been this tension, these limits put in place about language.

And when God's ready to break through some limits, he helps us in that.

And that is sweet.

And it's all like this.

My my professor that for preaching would just kill me right now because I'm giving away the ending.

But look at what God does.

Like, it's too exciting.

He says, you guys are gonna really mess up.

We need to put some boundaries, put some limits in this.

Okay?

You guys are gonna have to live with this tension.

Alright, we gotta start the church.

Here's a gift, here's a gift to break through those limits because it's all gonna end up one day where we are all understanding each other.

But in the in Revelations, we're not seeing a picture that we're speaking one language, is that that confusion of thought will be restored, and there's a beauty in the language of these different peoples worshiping God.

That's our God.

It's not a punishment and a discipline when confusion comes into your life.

It's a steering force to guide it to the end story.

This is to drive us into a position where our hearts, our minds are transformed and we take on that of Christ.

I'll save you reading it all, but the mind that Christ wants in us is that we would humble ourselves in obedience like Him, so that every tongue will confess He is Lord.

There's these meta narratives, these huge stories that just run all through Scripture of God's heart is to fill the earth so that every tongue, every nation will come to know him and confess that he is Lord.

And he gives us these limits.

I have felt these limits in a whole new way.

My kids, not so much.

They move to Guatemala, we go through Spanish school, it was five, six months of Spanish school, and Sarah and I are just like Caminar, Courtier, just and it just sounds horrible.

I mean, we're I have the whitest gringo accident in Guatemala.

It was ridiculously painful.

I look over at the boys, they're just doing arts and crafts, they're playing games, they're doing tours around the city, and let me go get dog.

But the limits of language is a real thing.

Gosh, just the pronunciation, understanding, but then there's the heart language of the people.

Come to find out, like, culture follows language.

You know, we want to learn the language of the people that we're serving.

You you get a picture into their culture and their understanding.

But these limits have been no joke.

This year has been no joke.

I had a really good plan, and somehow it didn't get forwarded up.

But I don't know how to tell you guys about this year.

Like Chris and Michelle have loved and served us and sat on Zoom calls and phone calls so much this year.

But I want to share with you what God has done.

I want to share with you how He's broke through those limits.

I think the best way that I could do this is using the seasons of the year.

It's been said before, spiritual maturity is looking to the Spirit to see what season you are in and what is coming next, then walking with him through that season appropriately and obediently.

This is kind of a mantra of Sarah and I's okay, God, like what are you doing right now?

What are we getting ready for?

Let's go.

This year was full of all four seasons.

The math doesn't quite add up, but I put it up there just so you know.

But it started off with a summer.

It was awesome.

I I love summers, Southern California boy, like summers are where it's at.

It was exciting.

God sold all of our junk, our household in three days, churches like you, and donors like you came on.

We were in the field within six months of making the decision to leave everything and go.

We were in Guatemala.

It was exciting.

Our church, I mean, we're from Lake Arrowhead, a tiny little rule, like similar, I guess.

But our church is like 12, 100 people or so.

Our home sending church.

There's 175 people that are sending off party.

Like the community that God brought around us, it it was exciting, humbling, and we were just riding the wave.

We were just, he was, God was pulling us to Guatemala.

But then fall comes.

Fall for us was moving to Antigua.

This is a season where we we learn to grieve, like the reality of what we just did kind of hit.

We're learning how to just be a family, live in a city, an ancient city in an apartment, bouncing around Airbnbs, trying to learn how to figure out language.

Um now we go to Antigua and it's on vacation.

Like it's easy.

But when we moved there, it was a starred reality that fall had set in.

We went through five months of the language.

The boys only did four, but I did and Sarah.

I did I had to do five and a few extra hours in the afternoons.

But it was rich, but what we saw God do was just empty of uh empty us of our strengths.

Like I I was a GM of a construction company.

Like I had 35 employees underneath me, and I couldn't do anything here.

I couldn't figure out how to get my cell phone turned on, where to get the bus or taxi.

It God just emptied us of our strengths.

Sarah burnt grilled cheese sandwiches, and like if you know Sarah, she she is a cook, right?

She just does that well.

We tried to host a mission, a visiting missionary, and we were gifted in hosting kind of deal.

And we go to serve them coffee, we don't have any creamer.

So I'm like running around this Airbnb trying to find some creamer.

This is like week two of Spanish school, so I don't even know how to say milk in Spanish yet.

And there's a little cooler, so I go to this and I just grab something.

I think it works.

I don't really, it looks white, bluish, like it's hard work.

It's hard work to do.

So it looks like it should be milk.

So I grabbed that brush back.

We only have enough for one pot, and there's four people in the hotel stuff.

Like, it's just bad.

We can't host for anything.

Afterwards, we're cleaning up the coffee, and we're I'm looking at this milk, like seeing if we should save it or something.

And it's lactose-free, fat-free, and the only English words on it, it says breast milk is better.

This is a trump in the hot dog story.

Um maybe some other time I'll show you.

But we were grieving a lot.

Then after six months, our fall was really long this year.

I told you the map didn't add up.

But we moved to El Progreso where we joined the GDM ministry, and we hit the ground running.

Like we kind of had Spanish under our belt.

We're with a thriving ministry.

These guys were rocking, uh, 14 staff, uh, 58 students, and a church plant.

Like it, we just jumped right in.

And God, this is our all harvest.

Like, we we felt like missionaries, and some of our strengths were given back to us.

I was back doing some project management.

I put into place some decent-sized contracts to finish the new building, did some design work on their septic system and stormwater.

Like it was jriving.

Um, we got to know and live and interact with the deaf community and start experiencing culture through their language and having the deaf in our house.

They asked me to speak at some of their staff meetings and it it was we're this season, this fall harvest was rich.

GDM is is killing it.

They're they have a great ministry.

Um, we love, I'm still in fellowship with the guys.

It's it's rich.

But getting to know the deaf community up close and personal was the experience here.

I shared these facts with you, and and they're just facts, and I know there's probably a little value just boring you with the numbers, but maybe maybe they'll burn, they'll they'll sink in.

In Guatemala, the death pop rate is eight to ten percent of the population.

Wow.

And that doesn't quite mean a lot, but when you look at the United States death rate of 3.5%, and you see that like any national news broadcaster is the right of their interpreting sign language, you go to a hospital, and you if you were deaf, they would bring an interpreter in.

You go to Guatemala of a population of 17.5 million, which means there's 1.7 million deaf.

And they do not have the infrastructure, the opportunities that we do, or that the deaf have here.

It's changing.

God is doing something really neat among the deaf there, but of that 1.7 million, six out of ten have no language whatsoever.

Can't read or write.

Honestly, they're treated like animals.

And they have no way to call for help, just communicate when they've been offended or abused or hurt, and they are just kept out of society.

That's over a million people, five hour, a five-hour flight from LAX, that have no way to even know the name of Jesus.

No way to call on him to communicate it.

A million people.

Among the world, the deaf is the largest unreached people group in the world.

And God has just opened a door for us up.

In Guatemala.

In most developing countries, the death rate is somewhere in that 6 to 10%.

But we just have an open door with the death in Guatemala.

Fall leads to winter.

When winter hits, you kind of sense it's coming.

You go through the drama of it, you're kind of cleaning up the lawn furniture and whatnot.

And then it hits.

For us, winter hit in January.

And as quick as and exciting as the door opened on GDM, God shut that door.

And we were we were sent down the road.

We were asked to leave GDM.

It broke our hearts.

Borderline identity crisis, like, did we get the right country kind of deal?

Questioning God's call.

The friendships we've been pouring into.

Winter just took those.

It was an extremely humbling time for us, for me, especially.

God really protected our kids.

It was really sweet.

I had to learn to be carried by others.

And that was not an easy thing for me to do.

But um God blessed us with another ministry right in town.

This guy, Jeff, up here, from Canada.

And church, I don't think I've ever met somebody that has had the gift of mercy like he had he did has.

I think he cried more for this situation than I did.

And he just came alongside him and his wife and his two adult sons that lived down there, just loved on us and included us in their ministry work and whatever we needed.

They served us.

But it we were literally being carried by others.

God in his grace also showed us just the love of the brethren.

The missionary community down there is so rich.

And another family about five hours away just poured into us and helped us out in very tangible ways and just listened to us.

Tons of talking, it seemed.

Lots of stories here.

The next part of winter was the actively waiting within limits.

Like actively waiting doesn't quite work, the paradox there, but God showed us this during the season that there's still an opportunity to love and serve.

We with Jeff and Rita, the Canadians that are there in town, we kind of teamed up with them and are working on their stove project.

If you've seen the videos on YouTube or Facebook or whatever, that's what this is, is Guatemala, this is the first generation to grow up in peace.

They had a 35-year Civil War that ended in 95-96.

So the first generation, I mean, we're talking for generations word-torn.

Except for there's a 10-year gap in 1950 to 60 where there was peace.

But a whole generation growing up in peace is a remarkable thing.

That for the first time, up in these rural areas, they can actually consider building a house.

Like there's not a threat of being chased out.

They've been cooking just on the floor in these, in their huts, their Adobe huts in our area, and they don't even like run a chimney outside.

So that's the roof of their kitchen up there.

Like the lung diseases and the eye diseases in the rural areas is horrible.

And so the Canadians are raising support for the stoves.

The residents kind of their buy-in as they make the bases, and then short short-term teams and us go in and install these stoves.

But what the the part I love about this is I think we're at like 70-something stoves that the Johnson family's installed.

Those are all the kids we've seen.

We found deaf people that nobody knew about or tracked in that.

And like that's just rich.

How many pastors and missionaries get to go in the homes of 70-something people?

So God's really opened up a door with that.

We also, well, we're still kind of winter, no vision, mission, direction.

We have been serving with other ministries, doing just help mostly helping on their short-term teams, their dental clinics.

The boys even got involved in the vet clinic.

And uh my my 13-year-old actually did a filling on a Guatemala.

So it I don't know how it's gonna go.

We'll see when the next dental clinic comes around, how you did.

But it was just, it was so great to see our family in this together.

Sometimes I'm literally following them around at the vet clinic and stuff in the medical clinic stoves.

Um it's it's been pretty sweet.

But there's the doldrums of winter winter, the dead of winter.

My low in winter, or the turning point when spring was coming.

Because this is this is kind of a while.

Like it didn't, it felt like a while, is I'm trying to figure out what's next.

Like, what did God do?

Right after the door shut on GDM, I got like six offers for other ministries in the country.

I must be pretty special.

Like come to find out there's not a lot of competition.

So Sarah, Sarah was sure to tell me.

Um we're investigating, going, interviewing, seeing these other ministry works.

Um there's just no peace in it.

God kept shutting all the doors on this, or just something would come up, and it wouldn't she wouldn't like it, I wouldn't like it, or whatever.

Something was six, six more shut doors.

It's getting kind of frustrating.

And I'm not really a missionary, so I can kind of confess this.

Somebody missed their call, and so that's why I we went down.

But my heart got really sour here.

And there was this one time where I needed to just get away.

And so I take the motorcycle and I'm going up to the hills, and I was honestly like looking for a burning bush.

That's not in the text, but is a you know those times when you just need to hear from God.

I'm riding around these little villages in the mountains and get off and hike a little bit more to another one.

Like, God, can I do something here?

Like, what are you calling me?

Well, why did you train wreck our family to bring us down here?

Nothing.

All day long.

And it this is where like I didn't have the right missionary heart.

Kind of getting mad at God a little bit.

This is like my Lieutenant Dan moment.

So I'm driving back home, all the coffee workers are coming in from the fields.

And you know the still quiet voice just kind of goes to work on me.

And that was like, what'd you it's not like audible voices, so these are just the crazy John Johnson thoughts.

I apologize.

But it's like, what do you see?

Coffee workers, man, they look happy, they they have purpose, like they got to work all day, they know what they're doing, and they know what they get to do tomorrow.

And the spirit kind of just probed me, it's like, what is it that you're so envious about?

What is it that you're so jealous of these coffee workers?

And it was that they had a business, they had a purpose.

They're doing the family business.

They've done this for generations, there's no question, tomorrow we get up and we go out to the field.

Tomorrow I get up and I what do you want?

I just wanted to go back to work.

And then I kind of have to ride home and deal with this.

This is the thought.

I'm debriefing with Sarah.

She's like, yeah?

Bernie Bush, sign in the sky, did you see it?

Did you know where we're going, what we're doing?

No.

I don't think it's coming here.

I don't I don't know what we're doing here.

Like, this is not.

We'll just get up tomorrow and let's see what happens.

In this time, God really showed me something.

I was so envious of those coffee workers because they were busy about their family business.

For whatever reason, that mantra just kind of stuck in my head.

Be busy about the family business.

And the Spirit impressed on me.

John, you need to be busy about the family business.

I don't know what it is.

Yeah.

I've told you everything you need to know.

I've shown you everything that my heart has for you.

I've shown you where the story is gonna end, what is gonna happen to these people.

It's time to be busy about the family business.

Like, what do I get to do?

What are we doing?

I don't, I didn't know, I didn't know.

But I felt a freedom in that.

That, yeah, it was exciting.

I was still hoping for a summertime experience, but I needed to go through the whole seasons of the year.

That there's a work that only happens in the specific seasons of the year.

As spring happens, it's quick, it's really quick, but it starts with small beginnings.

What we saw God do is the mayor reached out to us in the town we're in through the Canadians and said, hey, we really need to teach some English classes.

The premier job for Guatemalans is a call center.

Like that, if you can get a call center job, your life trajectory has changed forever.

So everybody wants to learn English.

I can kind of speak English.

My wife hates it because she's like a really good homeschool mom.

And she's like, you don't even know what a subject, object.

I know more grammar in Spanish than I do in English.

So that doesn't help here.

But anyway, so I'm teaching English.

Um that's it's really fun.

I have the funnest class.

Sarah gets the most done when she teaches, but um I started meeting with the village leaders in this area called Canton Valencia, and it's this mountain area that we've been installing all these stoves.

Um I got invited to preach at a church up there in Spanish.

There's more to that story.

But I did it was Easter Sunday too.

It was pretty special.

Um we found a church to fellowship with.

They meet in seven locations.

Just so happens that they have a deaf church in Guatemala City, and they do translation at their main campus.

And they have a heart for expansion and a heart for the deaf.

So we're seeing these little things come together.

This area, Camton Valencia, is special.

29 villages spread over hours of dirt roads, and there's almost 50,000 residents up in this area.

When I've talked to a couple of Guatemalans trying to figure things out, is they've referred back to it as that's the land God has forgotten.

It you they're good people, like you don't you're not dealing with the witchcraft as much and the Mayan stuff, like good people, but just poor and underadvantaged.

Hardworking farming community.

Um this is this is the area, this is what it looks like.

I've met the homeowner of this little house, it actually has a floor, it doesn't have water, but it's got a concrete floor, so that's a one-up.

Um, and it's got electricity.

So two out of three, we're doing pretty good.

Um, but it looks like I got approved right before I got here by our governing board to rent that.

So we're looking at renting a little casita up there, so that when we're doing stoves and stuff, we we get kind of more of a foothold in there.

I don't I don't exactly know what the Lord is doing, but through the meetings with the village leaders, they've given us an open door.

Um, so much so they're letting us use the community center.

June 22nd, we're starting our first family workshop for families of the deaf.

And another village leader said we could use the public schools in the afternoons to do any kind of meetings and ministry out of.

God's doing something up here.

We're there's there's some family business that needs to be taken care of up here.

Um I'm I'm I'm hopeful again.

We have dreams and visions, and it's coming, there's opportunities.

Church, you guys have supported us financially, supported us spiritually and emotionally, and the emails from the elders during the chaos of it, of the shifting of the seasons.

This isn't for everybody.

Going, train wrecking your life and moving to Guatemala is not very recommended.

But for some of you it is.

For the church, missions is this is the family business of the church.

This is where the story is going.

That confusion of back in the beginning, the confusion of thought, is going to be resolved.

And God does that through the church, through sending out people.

These are really full slides.

I I apologize for that, but it helps me stay on track.

There's like a Baptist military background in me that we've got to have an acronym for it to count.

Church, thank you, but please engage in missions.

Like, this is the work of the church.

Don't settle for the planes of Shinar, for the comfy.

Engage.

Yeah, some of you, when you start praying for missions and missionaries, the Spirit may call you to leave, to let go.

But a lot of you, he's just gonna call you to engage in another way.

There are so many ways for you guys to engage in missions and what God is doing around the world.

There's a big work in just equipping and educating.

I'm a product of the church.

I have a global perspective because of the missions program in my home church.

I understand about the Great Commission because of the pastors and the elders that have poured into me and equipped me for this.

We need to be a church that is equipping and educating about God's ultimate story all the way through.

We need to be willing to assist and accept.

The assist is helping in the going, and the accept is what you're doing now, is letting me debrief my story and tell you guys about things.

We need to be willing to accept back missionary kids.

I'm gonna be launching three kids from Guatemala.

Like, where are they gonna end up?

Somebody's gotta take care of them, somebody's gotta give them some work.

There's a role in accepting missionaries back.

Obviously, the support, the financial, but the emails, the texts, the communications are so big.

And this isn't me.

I mean, it's kind of for me, but that when I was touring these other missions, one of the biggest things I found with these ministries was how lonely the missionaries felt.

Summer is exciting, they get a great send-off, and then they're out in the field.

I haven't met a single missionary that loves putting an update letter together.

I'm forcing myself to really love it.

It's exciting.

But missionaries are pouring their hearts out, trying to summarize, trying to justify, evaluate, they're reviewing their month, their year, and behind, and they send it out to a couple hundred people, and almost yeah, oh, like far exceeding the majority, don't hear anything back from them.

What I started doing is I'm on all these missionaries' updates letters, is every missionary letter I get, and I'm uh it stays in my inbox until I'm done, is I just at least send a one-sentence, two-sentence thing back.

Sometimes I write more.

But guys, when they get that in the field, great update, great pictures, praying for you.

Like we need to support missionaries in a tangible way.

With communication, email, texting, phone calls, it's easier than ever.

Just, hey, thinking of you, have a good day.

It means the world to these guys.

Let's let's be a church that is engaged in missions, engaged in the works of the people that we're behind.

It doesn't, it's not straight up finances.

There's this whole other aspect.

And that leads to the encourage.

Equip like you guys are doing.

But this other one is encounter.

Like this is kind of fun.

Some of you need to encounter this.

I can tell you facts all day long, but when I introduce you to one of the 5,000 deaf in Canton, Valencia, and you see where they live, you see the dirt floors, they're carrying the water, like it impacts you.

Encountering missions is an important thing to do.

We need to be reaching out, engaging with ministries abroad.

What that does is it keeps us, when we're in the seasons of the plains of Shannar, it keeps us with one foot extending eastward.

We need to be aware of where God is expanding.

The kingdom, God has set limits.

He's introduced confusion and difficulty, but it's not a punishment or discouragement.

It's him directing us.

It's us putting some of that work into the family business.

But we are a part of a business that's expanding.

Our kingdom is going out to an unreached people group, and you've got them all on around the world.

We need to guard against the thought of just doing good things in the name of Jesus abroad.

We need to be intentional about going to the unreached people groups around the world.

There's great ministries and opportunities all around the world doing good things, but that's not the kingdom business.

The kingdom business is pushing out, it's moving out and expanding the kingdom.

We need to be looking like Jesus.

It's all right there.

This is for another sermon, but God has a heart for the least and the lost.

God doesn't, He doesn't aim, He doesn't work on the top, but His heart is always to go to the lowest that everybody's forgotten.

God loves the underdog stories.

We need to be looking for those that people have forgotten and going after them.

Would you please stand with me as we pray?

Father, thank you so much for this church and for the work that they are doing engaging in missions and keeping the expansion of the kingdom front and center before the body.

Father, please help them.

Give them favor.

Don't let the confusion and the chaos and the turmoil around them steer them away from that.

But let it steer them towards where your spirit is working, towards where your heart is and where the family business is, that expansion of the kingdom.

Father, as we pray and interact with missionaries around the world, we pray that your spirit would lead us in what we need to do with that.

Father, please bless these families for their heart and their engagement in missions and help them to continue in that.

We love you, Jesus.

In the name we pray.

Amen.