Guest Speaker -Pastor Josh

All right, well, good morning. Can you hear me right on.

I am so excited to be here. I'm excited because I'm in

Virginia. I'm I'm from here.

Like, like he said, the reason why we probably didn't know each

other is because I was the kid that when, when I would

misbehave, you know, they always sent the bad kids to the back

row. So I was probably in the back

row while he was still remaining in the seat.

And so that was probably why we, we just, we didn't cross paths

as much. But anyway, so again, my name is

Joshua. And with my wife and our three

kids, we serve in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador.

And so we're really thrilled that we get to do that.

And I, I'm glad that I get to be here because this is a missional

church. This church has been supporting

us, you know, I, I think a couple years now, but it means

so much to us that, that even I get to come here and I get to

share with you. So my wife and I, as we grew up,

my wife is from Minnesota and she grew up in a small church in

a rural community there. But as I grew up in Lighthouse,

the pastors, these churches, they allowed missionaries to

come and share. They allowed them to come and

talk about what God was doing around the world.

And the interesting thing that I think about now is while they

were coming, many of them were coming to raise support and they

were sharing about the country where they were serving.

But what they didn't know, little did they know that while

they were preaching in the United States, they were

starting something else somewhere else and somewhere

else in the world. Because little did they know

that that as I sat in my chair and I listened as my wife, as

she sat in her Pew in in southwest Minnesota, that God

was beginning to stir up the waters of a similar calling that

that God was placing. And that was to go and share the

gospel with the nations. And so today, I'm not here to

convince you of anything, but I am here to do for you what was

done for me 30 years ago. And that is to stir up the

waters of calling that God may be placing on you.

And so I know, and my wife knows that that as we're going around,

it's worth sharing that as we're sharing about what God is doing

in Ecuador, in South America, God is starting something else,

somewhere else. And that'll be done through you.

It'll be done through you, through this church.

And so we pray that you would embrace the, the purpose, the

call that God has for you as individuals.

So I'm going to pray, Oh Lord, my dear heavenly Father God,

today I ask that you open eyes. I ask that you open hearts, that

you open minds that love would abound within each of us.

It would abound in such a way that we would not be able to

stay idle. I pray that as we read your word

today that you would reveal your love for us and how you desire

to use us in that love. Help us to surrender to your

will, O Lord, Amen. Well, today's Scripture, all

right. Today I want to share a theme

from Scripture that's very near and dear to our hearts and

ministry. And these are the words of Jesus

in Luke chapter 10. And it's about loving one's

Luke 10 · chapter mention

neighbor. And so my wife is from the

Midwest. And I don't know if any of you

know the Midwest, but they, they have all these little things

that are like Midwest is best. And I don't think they're true.

But my wife is from Minnesota and they have this thing called

Minnesota nice. And it's a real thing.

Like the people from there are very nice.

They say things like you betcha. And don't you know, And that's

kind of how my wife is. And so my wife, she is probably

one of the most neighborly people that I know.

And I don't know whether it's just her Minnesota niceness, if

it's a natural gift or she didn't grow up with cable.

She was really salty about that. She she had to watch PBS.

But there was a patron St. of of being neighborly that was on PBS

and his name was Mr. Rogers. And I think maybe because she

meditated on his words, maybe maybe that's how it got there.

But for me, we had cable. So I'm I'm not as neighborly,

but today I want to read this is Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

We're going to start in verse 25, but I'll summarize what's

happening is there's a discussion that's going back and

forth between this religious teacher of the law and Jesus.

And here we go, verse 25. One day an expert in religious

law stood up to test Jesus, asking him this question.

Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus replied, What does the law of Moses say?

How do you read it? The man answered, You must love

the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your

strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself,

right? Jesus told him, do this and you

will live. All right, this is interesting.

Look what it says here. It says the man wanting to

justify his actions. He asked this question.

So the man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, and

who is my neighbor? Going on verse 30 it says this.

Now Jesus told this story. A Jewish man was travelling from

Jerusalem down to Jericho and he was attacked by bandits.

They stripped him of his clothes, they beat him up.

They left him half dead beside the road.

By chance a priest came along, but when he saw the man lying

there, he crossed over to the other side and passed him by.

A temple assistant, a Levite, walked over and looked at him

lying there, and he also passed by on the other side.

Then a despised Samaritan came along and when he saw the man he

felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan

soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged to

them. Then he put the man on his own

donkey and took him to an inn where he took care of him.

The next day he handed the innkeeper 2 silver coins,

telling him take care of this man.

If his bill runs higher than this, I'll pay you the next time

I'm here. Now, which of these three would

you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?

Jesus asked. The man replied, the one who

showed him mercy, Jesus said, now go and do the same.

All right, So I don't have three points in a poem for you today.

I instead have two introspective questions I want you to ask

yourself. But it's because the Gospel, it

doesn't condemn us. It doesn't put a heavy burden on

us. And so today as I talk about

loving your neighbor, loving one's neighbor, I don't want you

to look at yourself and say, wow, I'm not measuring up in

this area. I'm not good, but I want you to,

to see in light of the gospel, I want you to ask this question of

yourself, this this thing that your, your pastor told me that

he's been talking about surrendering.

Surrender has been a theme that has been here in the church.

And this is this is this idea I want to bring up.

But this question I want us to ask ourselves is Holy Spirit,

where are you working and how can I help?

So that's the first question. It's really simple.

Where is the Holy Spirit working and how can I help?

So the truth is, if you're sitting here today, it's because

Jesus is head over and heels in love with someone that you know,

and He's asking you to collaborate with Him to capture

them in His love. Do you get that?

If you're sitting here today, it's because God is in love with

someone that you know, he's in love with you, but he wants to

use you to capture them in his love.

So in Luke 10, Jesus, he doesn't give this simple direct answer.

Instead, he tells a story. And the, the, the question was,

who is my neighbor? And So what this religious

expert, what he seems to, to be doing is he wants to put these

groups of people in categories, neighbors, not neighbors, right?

And so he's, he's probably like, OK, here's the group I like.

This is a group of people that are like me in religion.

They they look like me. They eat like me.

They have a similar value system.

You know, maybe they, they know etiquette for text conversations

with groups. They don't send 100 emojis all

in separate messages, right? They roll their toilet paper the

same way. These are the people I should be

a neighbor to like these. This is my group, but then the

other group, the non neighbors over there, these are the people

I don't have to be neighbors to. This is what he wants to to come

to, thanking God that he doesn't have to be their neighbor.

They probably don't have the same religion, they don't have

the same political views. They eat weird food, and if he

invited them over, what would he even say?

They would probably change his toilet paper around the other

way. Monsters so here are the people

I deem worthy and these are the people who are not and so he

asked this question who is my neighbor?

He wants a very simple answer, but instead Jesus asked him out

of the three, who was the neighbor?

OK, now this man, when he asked his question or when Jesus asked

who was the neighbor, he now has to re evaluate his perspective

as he's hearing this story because he was identifying

probably with this, this priest, right?

This was the person that was probably most closely related to

him and mindsets. This was a religious leader, a

teacher of the law. And yet as he sees himself now

as the victim, it was the person that was like him that abandoned

him. It was the person that, you

know, he had respect for that kept going and walked by.

The other person that was a Levite, you know, a person that

would have also worked in this religious arena where he was

probably working, was yet again the other person that passed him

by. And then what does the verse

say? It says then a despised

Samaritan came along. All right.

Do you know why they were despised?

It's because they were from a completely different culture.

They had adopted false gods. They had been, they, they ate

food that was completely different things that were not

holy. And so this man, he saw himself.

He saw the Samaritan as something depraved, something he

didn't want to be associated with.

But then instead Jesus said out of the three, who was the

neighbor? The man had to acknowledge the

one who showed mercy, because showing mercy is an outward sign

of being a good neighbor. This is a hallmark of

Christianity. Christ shares this story, I

believe is a mandate for us. I think about my friend who is

he's Muslim. And when he was growing up, he

was never around Christians. He didn't have any context of

Christians other than than what his parents had told him.

But when he moved away to university to go to College in

another country, his parents gave them this advice and they

said eat with Jews and live with Christians.

And he went on to explain that, you know, the the Jews have very

similar eating habits. There are things that they

they've refrained from eating and it's equal with the Muslims.

So because of that, his parents said it's OK eat with Jews.

But they said live with Christians.

And that was because Christians were known for being people of

moral character. They were known for being

neighborly. They were known for being people

that would accept you for whoever you were, that they were

kind and loving and compassionate.

And this was something his his Muslim parents told him.

This was what predated his experience with actually meeting

a real Christian. And so our highest calling is

Christians is first to love God. That's what was referenced

there. And then to love who your

neighbor. And so Jesus, he sets his

followers apart. This is in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 5 verse 46 and 47.

Matthew 5:46

It says if you only love those who love you, what reward is

there in that? Even corrupt tax collectors do

that much. If you are kind only to your

friends, how are you different from anyone else?

Even pagans do that. Interesting.

I'll go to Romans 12 next, but Romans, Romans 12, verse 9, the

Romans 12:9

book of Romans was written by Paul and this was a letter that

he sent to the Roman church for instruction.

And I saw an animation that was funny.

He's talking about these epistles.

These are letters sent by Paul to the different churches.

And this animation was the guy reading the epistle and it was

Paul's hands slapping him in the face.

And that's that's kind of what we feel like happens in some of

these things because Paul is giving instruction and he's very

direct. But this is what he's saying to

the Roman church. This is Romans chapter 12, verse

Romans 12:9

9. He says don't just pretend to

love others, really love them. Hate what is wrong, Hold tightly

to what is good, love each other with genuine affection.

Skipping ahead to verse 13, it says when God's people are in

need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice

hospitality. Wow.

So repeat this. I'm not a Roman Christian.

I'm not a Roman Christian. I'm you fill in the blank.

I'm, I'm a, I'm an American Christian.

I'm an American Christian. What does that mean?

What would the letter be written to us?

What would that be about? Think about that now.

I love this idea again of surrender.

And those of you, many of you, you don't know me and I'll, I'll

tell you a little bit about our, our first term when we moved on

to the field, we left to be missionaries in 2018 and we had

to go to Costa Rica for language training.

And while we were there, my, my wife got pregnant and this would

have been our second child. And shortly after the pregnancy

occurred, we found ourselves in a hospital because she was

having a miscarriage. And so the language was, was new

to us. I remember like everything being

in Spanish and being in the hospital and the doctors like

telling us what's happening and what's going on.

And just this feeling of saying, God, where are you at in this

moment? I don't understand.

You know, I, when I was before we left, I had all these these

people say to us, you know, the safest place you can be is in

the right will of God. And little did I know that that

was a total lie. But I remember being in the

hospital and just this thought of saying, God, why are we here?

Well, we gave up our lives. We left the states.

We we left everything like, why am I here in this situation?

And for, for my wife, her hearing like this, this strong

voice of should we go? And it was the enemy saying, you

should leave, you should, you should just quit.

And we, we faced many obstacles. And I remember it was time, time

we we completed our language training.

Kerry became pregnant again. We were really excited when we

finally arrived to Ecuador. But we were living in a, a

jungle community. That's where we arrived.

And there was no housing available for us originally.

So we lived in where we're renting a room that just had a

bathroom. And it was just one room and

three beds. And we were there for a month

and a half. And it was above this little

place. It was like a hostel.

And it was called the Hotel Romanza, which means romantic.

And I think that's a joke because if there was, there was

nothing romantic about it, you know, no air conditioning, wife

being seven months pregnant, there's no romance happening in

the Hotel Romanza. It's, it was, it was hard, but

we gave this thing and I was like, God, why am I here?

Like, why are we in this situation?

And, and just are we supposed to stay now?

So then after a month and a half, we moved into a home.

And it's actually our second night in our home that we had a

gas explosion. I was burned really badly.

The the hardware store sold me a broken regulator for our oven.

And so I was left with second and third degree burns covering

my legs. And we were, we were six hours

from a real hospital, from a city that had a real hospital.

So I was taken to a jungle clinic.

And as I was in this, this jungle clinic, I woke up with

cockroaches on me in my hospital bed.

And I remember just this feeling of saying, God, why am I here?

And I'll say that the voice of the Lord was very, very quiet,

but the voice of the enemy was really, really loud saying you

should just go. You're not cut out for this.

And it took me quite some time to recover.

I couldn't walk for, for a month without pain.

But, and shortly after that, after my recovery, we had a, a

group of men come into our home and they robbed us.

They took our money, they took our belongings.

And the, the morning, the next morning, as, as Carrie and I, we

sat on the bed together. I, I cried as a grown man.

I, I did the, the ugly cry thing.

And I remember us saying, Lord, we know that you call us to this

country. We know that you call us here,

but why are we here in this moment?

And Carrie just again feeling like, are we supposed to go?

Are we supposed to stay? And so it was all these things

that lead to a culmination. Our son was getting ready to be

born and we decided we needed to move six hours away to a city

where they actually had a hospital.

And it was when we were were in this small city that we began

encountering people from from other countries, including

Middle Eastern countries. They were Muslims that were

there. And we saw this little mosque

and, and my wife said a prayer just as we were passing by

saying, Lord, if you give us the opportunity to share with a

Muslim, we'll do it. And so fast forwarding, we've

seen over the past five years that our our city has grown in

Muslim population, population from people of Palestine, of

Iran, Yemen, many places like this.

And they had one small mosque and now there's three.

And across the country there there's even more Islamic

training centers. But as we were there, we saw

that the church who we were working with, many people were

very afraid. They were hesitant to even go

and talk to these people from other countries.

But there was one group that was very zealous.

And this group was used to having doors slammed in their

face as they would try and evangelize.

And this was not a Christian group.

It was a faux Christian group that doesn't believe in the

deity of Jesus. But they would stop these Muslim

men and women on the path and because they were willing to

talk to him, these men and women that were from other countries

seemed very excited that they would have anyone that they

could engage with, that they could be acknowledged.

And this broke my wife's heart. This broke my heart.

We on our first little prayer card, it said building churches

for the unreached and overlooked.

And we didn't know what the unreached and overlooked would

be at that time. But as we found these these

scattered groups from the Middle East, from Yemen, Iran,

Palestine, Syria. That they were waiting in South

America for someone to share the gospel for the first time.

We decided this is this is what we want to do.

So as we were there for the delivery of our son, we're

actually in the hospital and a Muslim couple walks in.

It's a man and a woman. And I see that they are are

struggling because they don't know the language.

But because of my time in the hospital, I learned some very

technical things that I was able to translate for them.

And I ended up inviting them over to our home.

And this this man, his name was Muhammad.

And Muhammad as he is at my house, he said, so why are you

here in this country of Ecuador? Are you here for work or

something like that? And I'm thinking, oh, this is a

very lonely question. And I said, well, actually, I'm

a Christian pastor. I'm here as a missionary, and

I'm planning churches because Jesus changed my life.

And I want people to know who Jesus really is.

And then there was this moment of silence, you know, like where

you hear crickets, where I'm like, oh, what is he thinking?

And he said, you're the first Christian I've ever met.

And so I thought about all these moments where I I said, God, why

am I here? I don't understand.

Should we go? Should we stay?

And it was in that moment that the Lord was not quiet.

He was very loud saying, This is why you're here.

And answering these questions of This is why you're here, just to

be here. I, I thought about this whole

situation of these difficulties that happened to our family.

The hardship that we endured had put us in that hospital for that

specific moment for us to meet this couple.

As he shared about all the things that he had gone through

that, you know, being a refugee and now coming to Ecuador, that

God had aligned it for that moment that just being there or

try something like a good neighbor.

That's crazy. What what is implied by this?

A neighbor to be a good neighbor, what do you have to be

there, right? So my first question that you'd

ask yourself is Holy Spirit, where are you working and how

can I help? And then the second question is

this, am I there for my neighbor?

Am I there for my neighbor? Sometimes that that looks

difficult. I think about this story the,

the good neighbor in this, he was the one that was willing to

sacrifice. It said that he put the person

on his own donkey. He was the one that surrendered.

I I was cracking up because I was thinking about through

surrender, like what we were talking about that I don't know

how many of you are like old school that you know, hymns and

all that kind of stuff, but you know that song I surrender all.

What if it was some to Jesus? I surrender some to him.

I'll freely give. I will mostly ever love him and

his presence. Sometimes daily live.

I'll surrender some, I'll surrender some.

I'm just, I'm just playing it off of that.

But do you understand, like the commitment that this man made

this, this Samaritan is that he was willing to give up his time.

He was willing to give up his money to take care of a

stranger. And so are we there for our

neighbors. It can take away your stability.

It can take away your resources on the, the thought of

stability. I think about how Ecuador has

changed a lot in the past few years of volatility through some

of the turbulence of things that have happened with the cartel.

And we've had many of our Ecuadorian friends come to us

and say, are you going to leave? Why would you stay if you can go

back to the States? And I, I just remember one time

saying, you know, the question that we asked ourselves is will,

are we willing to go? God told us that we were

supposed to go. But then the question that came

to is, will you remain? Will you stay?

And so maybe that's a question that you have to ask yourself.

If some of you, if you've faced some hard things, you know,

you're in the thick of it. There are relationships around

you that are difficult. Are you there?

Are you there for your neighbor? There was a pastor, he once

wrote about this, this parable of the Good Samaritan.

It wasn't that the priest and the Levite didn't feel bad for

this man. It wasn't that they didn't feel

pity for him. But the question they asked was

what will happen to me? What will happen to me if I help

this man? You know, maybe this priest, he

had, he was wearing his ceremonial robes or whatever

that he, he couldn't get dirty. He thought, he thought, what

will happen to me. But the Samaritan, he didn't

merely just pity the man. He acted.

He said, what will happen to this man if I leave him?

Acts of mercy are what we have to have.

This might mean going, it might mean again staying.

And so I'll be honest, it, it's been my experience that some of

the, the things that we've encountered, whether it be the,

the smells or the filth of things that we've encountered.

I, I just started volunteering at in a prison facility there in

Ecuador and it's ministry there can be very unappealing.

It's to say it's filthy is an understatement.

But being there for these young men, they're an incarceration

who've been spiritually dead, who've been abandoned.

They're worth it. Their souls are worth it.

I again, I still do frequent trips to the jungle and the

jungle you've probably seen shows it's not really

comfortable. You know, people struggle to

survive in the jungle with the bugs and all these things.

There's there's something that when we arrive, they, they'll

give us to drink and it is yuca root that they have boiled and

chewed up and then they spit into like a a bucket and they

allow it to to cure. And this is how they purify

their water. But it's, it's a lot of spit in

it. And when you after walking eight

hours hiking to this jungle village, this is the welcome

that they give you to the village.

Thank you. And the ramifications of like

what that does to my digestive system that goes on for weeks

probably. And so I say that there's a

certain level of discomfort. But when I got to take a group

of Ecuadorian pastors on their first missions trip from the

mountains where they live into the jungle where they got to

share to their fellow countrymen and women about how to be a good

father, how to care for others, what it looks like to have a

safe and secure family. That made all the comfort, all

the stomach issues worth it. And so will you surrender in

that there's a woman, her name was, her name is Rosaria

Butterfield. And she's a Christian writer.

And she was radically saved out of a life of sin.

She was a part of that LGBT community.

And she was saved because the faithful hospitality of her

Christian neighbors. And it was that the the wife

always had a pot of soup on the stove, like always had a pot of

soup on the stove so that whenever someone came over, they

had a meal, there was conversation.

And she shares about just them being kind, just them showing

the love of Christ, how that changed her life.

In her book she says this God has placed us in our

neighborhoods for a reason. God never gets the address

wrong. He has given you a specific or

given you specific neighbors that you are the bridge to the

Lord for those neighbors. I love that.

Yeah, five years ago when I I shared and and he was there, I

asked this question. The sermon was what is in your

hand? And it was this idea that that

Moses, he had led the people out of Egypt with just the staff,

but that staff had this history of him being a shepherd with it

and all, all these things like the the drama that had come from

his life. And I think with all of us, we

have things that are hand that God has given us.

We all have experiences that God can use.

And for me, I think about some of the jobs, the, the, the

things that I grew up here in the area.

My, my dad, he has an apple orchard in Gloucester.

And he, he decided that, that we would plant this orchard and he

could have bought an auger or rented equipment, but he didn't.

He instead he gave me a shovel and said, you know, plant these

trees. So we planted over 1000 apple

trees. And by the time it was all said

and done, I was really good at digging.

And but during that time, you know, I was 1516 years old.

I was hating life. But fast forwarding, I was on a

short term trip. And this is like a trip where I

felt like God was calling me to Ecuador.

I was in the jungle and there there was this village where

many kids were dying from parasites from the water.

And so we had to dig a well and we didn't have equipment, but we

had a shovel. And so we dug a well by hand and

it took five days. And as I was digging that well,

I was thinking about man, God was preparing me back then for

this moment, right now, in a moment where I was unhappy, in a

moment where I was frustrated, God was preparing me for

something for his purpose. Another job that I had that was

that was not good was I was working with electricians.

And I even I did some work on Gwynn's Island with these guys

specifically. I remember this, but I would be

the guy that would be underneath the the house in the crawl space

pulling wires. And so they would drill holes in

the floor and feed the wire through it.

But they would also drill additional holes in the floor so

they could pour things on me, things like tobacco juice or

worse. And I remember being underneath

the house like with tobacco juice on me and being very, very

mad and saying, God, why am I here in this situation?

I'm trying to serve you. I feel very angry.

But when I was interning and I was actually working in a home

for young women that had gone through sexual exploitation, I

was installing a circuit for a washing machine.

I was thinking about where I learned to be an electrician.

It was during a time of difficulty, during a time of of

pressure, where I was unhappy that God was preparing me for

something for that moment. And so I believe that these

situations that that many of us have faced in our life, God will

use for his purpose. There's a more that we need to

offer for our neighbors. And sometimes that's difficult,

but I believe that God is calling more out of each of us.

So with this thought, perhaps, perhaps you've been healed.

Perhaps you've had an encounter with Christ and you think back

about your past and who you were back then.

And it's, it's amazing, it's great, but then you forget about

the, there are still people that are living that same life like

you used to live, but you're not near him anymore.

People that still haven't had that encounter the same way that

you have. So what is God calling you to

do? Maybe you find yourself in a in

a similar place where you see the, the problems in our

country, in this world, and it seems very overwhelming.

You know, the, the thought is, again, we've, we've had a huge

level of escalation of crime and drug trafficking in our country.

And like, how do I share with someone that might have

connection to the cartel when I know that pastors that I'm

overseeing have been kidnapped? And so there's uncertainty, but

there are three, there are three groups that we've identified.

Now. I want to share about this

really quick. The, the Muslims that we're,

we're working with, the majority of them have never had a

Christian friend. And when we we talk to them and

they talk about having like a physical pain in their body,

they're stunned when we ask, can we pray for you that in Jesus

name that you'll be healed and God does things.

But they're stunned that we ask. And when they say yes, that's

something even even more amazing in my opinion.

We have again, many people that have come from Muslim background

where they've never met a Christian.

And my wife said the sweet thing to me that as she was praying

for her friend whose name Miriam, that she realized that

it was probably the first time that Miriam's name had been had

been spoken in the throne room of someone praying for this

specific Miriam. And I think about that as who do

you know that doesn't know Christ?

Will you be the first person to say to bring that name, to bring

that person to the throne room of God, ask God to do something

in their life? We, we're working with them, but

we're working with men and women in the incarceration and they,

they don't have the physical freedom to leave, but

additionally, they don't even have the spiritual freedom, many

of them. And so I've been very thrilled

and excited as I've had an opportunity to share with them.

And then it was, it was in the video.

I'm just hitting on, on these things is that we, we felt it

very important to, to work with people that have physical

disabilities. There are many people in our,

our city and just in the culture, if you have a child

that has a disability, it's very shaming on your family.

People think bloodline is very, very important.

So if a child has a disability, they're often hidden away.

The, the family won't talk about them.

They might send them away, but for this reason, many of them

don't come to church and the families don't have the support

system. But what we have tried to do is

we tried to communicate that God, he values that person that

he created, that he loves them, we love them.

And so we're, we're doing lots of things to, to create an

environment where the families can come and experience God,

that they can bring their child or their young adult and that

they can experience the true love of Christ.

So I, I mentioned, you know, the, the uncertainty and these

are things that we feel here in the United States.

There are things that we feel there.

We, we don't have snow days. Sometimes we have cartel days

where they, they call off school because they say, all right,

this is going on. It's virtual today.

And we've, we've had people ask us, how do you raise your kids

in that environment? And people ask themselves here,

how do I raise my kids in this environment?

You think about the complications of schools here

and here in the United States, things that it's just different.

And the thing that we've come to, to realize, the thing that

we've come to share is that our kids need to know that Jesus is

enough. They need to know that Jesus is

enough That our kids, they need to see us boldly sharing Jesus

with others, others with different viewpoints.

My friends that are struggling, that are wavering, they need to

see me confidently and boldly sharing the love of Jesus with

others in a kind way, in a loving way.

And so, you know, I, I've referenced those things of that

insecurity that we feel. And I, I'll, I'll wrap up with

this, this story. I'm sad that Carrie's not here

because she's the better speaker, she's the better half,

she's the good one. But this is this is something

that's been very key for us is that as we have encountered,

we're not the first missionaries to go in the field, but as we've

encountered hardship, we've said it, other people have, how do we

get through this? And so my wife has really dug

into missionary memoirs. And so she she wrote down or

copied the story that I'm going to read to you.

But this is about this is in 1950, there was a a missionary

from the she went to the Belgian Congos, what it was at that time

and her help name was Helen Rosa Veer.

And she was a doctor and worked there in the Belgian Congo.

And there was one night that there was a mother that was

giving birth to a baby. And despite all their efforts,

the mother passed away. This newborn child survived

along with her two year old sister.

And so Helen, she says in an interview, the difficulty was

keeping and keeping this baby alive said they didn't have an

incubator. It was a premature baby and they

didn't have electricity for an incubator.

And so it would be a struggle just to to keep this baby alive.

And so she told the nurse, go start, you know, start a fire.

Like, we're going to try and keep this baby warm, Fill a hot

water bottle. And then the nurse came back

frantically saying the hot water bottle ruptured.

It was the only one we had. And so during that time, we know

that there were there were no drug stores on jungle pathways

in the Congo. While rubber comes from trees,

they're not water bottles growing on trees.

And so Helen instructed the nurse to just do everything she

could to keep this baby warm. But the following day, next to

the hospital, they had a home for orphans.

And Helen would go and do devotionals and prayer with

these orphans each day. And she gave suggestions to

these these kids of things that they could pray about and talked

about this tiny baby, talked about this this 2 year old

sister that had been left behind because the mother had passed

away. And Helen said that there was

110 year old girl, her name was Ruth.

And she began to pray with the usual bluntness that orphans

had. She said, please God, send us a

hot water bottle today. It'll be no good tomorrow as the

baby will be dead. So send it this afternoon.

And Helen recalls while while she gasped inwardly at the

audacity of this prayer, that this little girl, she added on

to her prayer and said, and while you're about it, would you

send a little doll for the little girl so she knows that

you love her? And so Helen had this, this

thing where this internal conflict of saying, God, I

believe you can do anything, but can you really do anything?

Can you really show up? Are there limits?

And there was only God could answer this particular prayer

and and how would he do it? It would have to be through a

package. She was from England.

Their whole time there in the Congo, she had never received

any parcel, any package. But halfway through the

afternoon, a message came to Helen that there was a box on

her front porch. And then she walked over to it.

She said that the tears were prickling her eyes, and there

was already 30 pairs of eyes watching this box of the

children that were around. And so she opened up this box,

and in it, she found some knit shirts.

She found some bandages, some boxes of raisins.

But then as she put her hand in again, she said, I felt what I

couldn't believe. She pulled it out, and it was a

brand new hot water bottle. This little girl, Ruth, who's

right front and center, said, well, if God sent the hot water

bottle, he must have sent the doll, too.

And she starts rifling through the box and pulls out a small,

beautifully dressed doll, just one.

And Ruth said, let's go give it to the girl so that she knows

that Jesus really loves her. And so The thing is, is that

package had been on its way for five months for five months

packed by a former Sunday school classroom that the leader obeyed

the Holy Spirit when God said put in a hot water bottle to the

Congo where it's hot. OK to put in just one doll in

answer to a believing prayer of a 10 year old girl that singing

same afternoon. Isaiah 6524 says this.

Before they call, I will answer. Before they call, I will answer.

And guys, you might not know this.

You didn't know this until today because you just met me.

But this church sent a box. It sent a box and it didn't have

hot water bottles, it didn't have dolls, but it had our

family in it. And we got to be the ones to

share the love of Christ with people in situations that were

desperate. I think about again over the

past few months how there was opportunity after opportunity

where we saw that God had aligned us for this, this

perfect moment. It was this church and many

others that that you sent us to again share.

And So what did that look like? You know, for some of it was it

was the healing mercy of my, my wife has a very dear friend.

Her name is Steffi. And Steffi, eight months after

her, her daughter was born, she was in a very bad car accident

where she was left paralyzed, paralyzed, unable to walk,

unable to speak, having to have a trach put in.

And her husband left her because she could no longer take care of

him. And so it was in the dark room

of of this woman's house that my wife got to pray with her when

she was saying, does God even care about me?

Does God even love me? Like when she was thinking about

would there be a way that she could lose her life, that she

could take her own life, that God sent a box of mercy to meet

her in that very moment. And it looked like just

conversation and love. And so again, God uses us, us

uses you. We are sent as boxes of people

that need it. We are the answer to prayer.

I again, for me, I'll just, I'll close with this.

You can if you want to play some music or something like that.

I'll, I'll wrap up with this. But another situation is this

this church, you guys, you support us.

And it was because of that that that I got to go and start

working in this Correctional Facility.

And the last week that we were there, we did a discipleship

training is what we we, it was a leadership training.

And I had 18 young men that they have come from all walks of life

from some of the most violent crimes as some of them, even

some of them has just been sold out by other gang leaders as an

escape goat. But as I got to share the gospel

this last day that I was there, 15 of these young men, they

said, I want Christ to change my life.

I want to serve God. And they wanted their identity

to to come from no longer this this thing that they had done in

the past, this thing they were part of, but now identifying as

a son of God. And so my question for you guys,

so you sent us, you sent this one box.

Where are you going to send the next one?

Where are you going to send the next one?

Where do you do you pray and say, God, what am I to do?

Where am I to go? Where am I supposed to send to

what? What am I supposed to do?

What is my response? Maybe you feel that you're

supposed to be the one in the box.

Maybe God is sending you. It doesn't have to be across the

world. It can be across culture.

It can be right here. Again, this idea of surrender.

Will you be willing to put yourself in the box?

Will you be willing to step out, ask these questions of Holy

Spirit? Where are you working and how

can I help? And am I truly there for my

neighbor? I'm going to give you some real,

so real practical steps. You know, these are big ideas of

like, oh, I want to do something.

But what does that mean? Will you invite someone over to

your home for dinner and cook a nice meal?

And maybe there's someone of a different culture.

Maybe they're from a different, maybe they have a different

political background. Maybe they even have a different

sexual identity. Will you show them the love of

God? Will you show them kindness?

Will you be a good neighbor? Will you partner with God in

this again, Isaiah 64 verse 65 verse 24 says before they call,

I will answer. I believe the people in this

church are the answer to people's prayers that haven't

even called out yet. They're the things that you've

encountered in your life, the experiences that you've that

have shaped you that God will use for his purpose.

And so I, I'm out of time. I want to end with prayer, but

this is what I want everybody to do.

I want everyone to to just stand and I'm going to, I'm going to

pray for you, but I am, I want you to bow your head and close

your eyes and I just want you to think for a moment.

I believe that when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, that

requires a response. And I can't tell you what that

response is to be because I don't know he's speaking to you.

But I believe that there are some people in here that maybe

you're saying, God, I, I haven't loved you like I should.

I haven't connected with you. And for you it might be this is

the moment of you saying, I surrender for the first time.

Thank God, I surrender to your will As I, I hear you speaking

to me as I have my eyes closed, as I am just thinking about you,

maybe some of you saying, you know, again, I want to surrender

my life to you. Maybe as I've shared, the Holy

Spirit has spoken to some of you who say, I want to make a deeper

commitment, not just to God, but to be more outwardly focused, to

not think about myself, but to I want to step out.

And maybe it's the third group. If you feel that you're supposed

to go, I'm to surrender my life in, in a way that that looks

very, very different. And so in your heart as, as I

get ready to pray, I just want you to think about that thing.

And if you want to make that commitment in your heart to

yourself, you can say that's me. God, I surrender.

I surrender my life to you. Maybe that's what it is.

Maybe that deeper commitment and hourly focus, or maybe I, I

surrender to be fully committed to this call.

So I, I'm going to pray for you, Lord, I love you.

I thank you for this church. I thank you that you're doing a

mighty work in hearts and lives that are here.

I believe your Holy Spirit has spoken to many and God, I just

ask that you anoint, you deepen the mantle of anointing that

that is on these people that feel a call to to share your

love. For those that feel this desire

or the calling of you pulling them in close, God let them

sense and understand the depth of love that you have for them.

God, let them encounter you for who you really are, a loving,

kind, compassionate God that when they are beat up, you are

the one that cares for them. God, I thank you.

And so God, I just ask that you use this church, you use these

individuals to impart love and truth, not just here in this

county, not just here in the state of Virginia, but far

beyond God, that this church, that these individuals will

impact a nation and beyond. God, I thank you.

I ask that you bless them in your precious name, O Lord,

Amen.