Grace, Vision, Action — George Verwer

A Global Vision for the Gospel

They had a big mission fest here, it was awesome. And George Verver spoke last night. Amazing guy. He'll go to any part of the world and share the gospel with anyone. He has been in the ministry for over 50 years, I believe.

There's a little bio in your bulletin there. The guy's got lots of energy, I love it. I always see people that are a model of when I get older. Not saying you're real old there, George, but a little older that I want to be able to have that kind of energy.

He gets up in the morning early, he goes for walks, he prays. He gets on his computer, he's writing people, he's praying with people and imparting the gospel. His ministry imparts the gospel to millions of people, they've been touched by this.

You know, we Alaskans like our boats. We all have either river boats or we all head to Valdez, but we love boats. Well George doesn't have boats, he has ships. And these big ships go around the world, they go to different places where the gospel is needed.

They've been to as many as 140 countries, 1 ,100 ports, and had over 35 million people visiting their ships. They sell books on the ships, they send teams out, it's fantastic. It's just one of the missions throughout this world.

There's all different ministries to reach everybody. Everybody has their own way to reach somebody. And this is the vision that was implanted in George. He's an advocate for worldwide globalization of the gospel of Christ.

George is a picture of a man with a vision for Christ, and wanting to impart that on all of us and all around us. And we're going to bring him on up. George, come on up.

Amen. Jesus said, go into all the world, preach the gospel to every person. This meeting this morning is not about George Verwer. Yeah, I've been at it for a long time, and so God has been merciful, and he's used me for his kingdom, and it's okay to talk about that.

God uses people. The Bible is all about people. Did that finish at the end of Revelation? No. And one of the greatest joys in my life is to meet amazing people, and I've met some right here in Fairbanks.

And you can be sure all over the world I'll be talking about Fairbanks. We've already done a blog of me on a dog sled, mushing. Is it called mushing? I'll have to come back and try that again, at least pronouncing it.

And we're just aware that this is a Jesus thing. Just before he ascended into heaven, he said, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, even the uttermost part of the earth.

Seeing God's Work Beyond the Small Picture

By nature, we're naturally small-picture people. We've got to do little things in the morning and take care of our health and make sure our car is going to start, and it's okay to be a small-picture person.

It's a matter of balance. But we also need to be big-picture people. We need to see what God is doing around the world. We need to see the greatness of God, who created all these galaxies and black holes and supernovas and all these things that we read about, and who's doing great things in the world today.

In fact, in the world today, we're in the midst of the greatest harvest of people to Jesus the world has ever known. More have come to Christ in the last hundred years than the previous 1 ,900, because partly due to a population explosion.

In China alone, there are probably 70 million worshipping Jesus. In other countries like India, where we're working among the untouchables, we work among many groups in India, but especially among the untouchables, 200 million untouchables treated worse than slaves in America a hundred years ago.

Great cover-up, if this is not really a problem, has been exposed. And now hundreds of thousands of untouchables are coming to Jesus in Operation Mobilization. We're only one of many agencies God has raised up.

People sent out by their local churches, that's the sending agent, work in fellowship with OM to get a specific job done, and then birth other churches. And in India, we've birthed 2 ,500 new churches in three years.

We want you to have a big picture this morning, and I think it will help you in the small picture. You know, I've never had a non-motivating day. I meet people who are boring. You know, I just look at them, maybe try to get their autograph.

I've never had a boring day since Jesus came into my life. Now, I've had boring hours and boring minutes, and at my age, my wife and I are actually appreciating a few boring hours, especially her. And I have to confess, I have met a lot of boring people, and it should not be.

And how is it that the church is often filled with non-creative, boring people who are not willing to take risks, who are not willing to get out of the box? So many want to stay in the box, stay in their comfort zone.

God wants us to get out of the box, and to trust Him, and to believe Him for great things. A verse that God especially put on my heart this morning, maybe it's for me, because I do, if I'm honest, have a lot of things that are burdening me.

I talked to one of my closest friends who's going through real deep problems right now, and I have a son who just walked away from everything he's ever been taught. And I have a lot of burdens, and I guess I have had them most of my life.

Casting Every Care on God

But God gave me that verse in Peter, and I just love it. It's just helped me through many a crisis. Casting every care upon Him, because He cares for you. Some of you, you're carrying burdens this morning.

Be honest, you don't have to tell me, you can just tell God. Something's bothering you, maybe in the area of money, or romance, employment, maybe family. You need to lay that, lay that at Jesus' feet.

Casting every care upon Him. He cares for you. He cares for you. The God of creation loves you, and He wants you to cast that burden upon Him. I answered the phone one morning and discovered through that phone call that our ship, the first ship that I ever purchased, that I lived on, fortunately we had had it for 17 years.

But that phone call reported that the ship was lost as it hit a rock way down in the southern part of the Beagle Channel. There it is, right down here, Lagos 1. I began to weep, especially after the news came that no life was lost.

I couldn't believe that we'd lost the ship, and the ship sunk, and no one was injured. And I guess the joy, the collision, do you ever have that when you watch a film? The collision of sadness and joy, and you end up weeping.

Casting every care upon Him, because He cares for you. How many were able to be with us at the banquet last night? So, this isn't the first time you've heard me. A number of you. And if I repeat one or two things, those banquet folks won't mind, because I did feel I should share a little of my testimony.

Our time is limited together, though probably I'll give a different message in the second service in case you're into doubleheaders. But we want to give every one of you a book as a gift. I don't get to Alaska much, and I've fallen in love with Alaska.

And I hope to get back here as soon as possible. And I don't know when that will be. So, meanwhile, we'd like to get a book in your hand. And I'd like to give you my latest book, Out of the Comfort Zone, as a gift.

Just take it. If you read it, or read even part of it, and email me. I'll personally read that email and pray for you. But Out of the Comfort Zone came as a result of, when I wrote it, 45 years of ministry in about 60 nations around the world.

Grace, Vision, and Action in Mission

And it's an appeal, and the title of my message this morning is Grace, Vision, Action. It's an appeal to have more grace, more big-heartedness, more forgiveness, less phariseeism, less legalism in mission work and in our witnessing.

Because even missionaries can become legalistic and judgmental. We have a lot of tensions on the mission field, because instead of representing Jesus, they represent their distinctive or their denomination.

And the enemy gets in, and mission teams fall apart, and people get discouraged, and immorality takes place. And a recent survey showed that many missionaries are dabbling in pornography, which is always seemingly one click away, as missionaries are very dependent on email.

So I'd like you to take that book as a gift. And if that book runs out, or you'd rather have a different book, pick up Why Pro-Life by Randy Alcorn, or pick up this fantastic Skeptic's Guide to HIV-AIDS, two areas of ministry that I'm very involved in.

All the other books are just on a donation basis. I learned it from a guy who influenced me named Keith Green, who used to sell his music for whatever you could afford. Just blew the minds of the music industry.

And so the books this morning are available on that basis. And if you're broken in debt, be sure to take two or three, and may the Lord bless you. Maybe you could take that one. That's my other book in which they put three of my books into one.

Revolution of Hunger for Reality, which brought me 25 ,000 personal letters, and no turning back. But this is the book that really counts. By the way, no one has ever put this cartoon on a church bulletin.

There it is, your avant-garde people here in Fairbanks. Some character in England did this cartoon, and I guess it ended up on my website. And maybe you can take that and I can explain a few things. Number one, I love double-decker buses.

As a senior citizen, I travel all over London, and I hope you'll visit me in London. I got a free place for you to stay. Then you can go over on one of our ships and stay there free of charge as well.

Got 70 cabins or beds just for visitors. But I travel all over London and do my office work from the top section of a London bus. So I guess that's how it got in there. I distribute literature and books, and up to now our distribution figure, we stopped counting 10 years ago, went over the one billion mark.

One billion pieces of literature 10 years ago. Things exploded and we lost count. So that's why I have all those books. But what are these golf clubs doing here? Well, I picked up a book, Midlife Crisis, many years ago.

I was feeling fine until I read that book and started to get worried about this midlife crisis supposed to come on us, especially on us men, sort of a male menopause type of thing. So there were a number of reasons, but I decided to take up golf.

I used to preach against golf as a waste of time. So I took up golf and I developed a whole new way of playing. I usually go to the end of the day when most people are going home and I jog between the holes and I make up my own route.

And it's just it's sort of out of the box golf, but it's a lot of fun. So occasionally I do it the Orthodox way if I'm playing with a good golfer. So there's my golf clubs. I live in London, England. There's the British flag.

My burden is to reach the whole world with the gospel. There are 5 ,000 on our staff now. Started from nothing. No major money, no major church. Just three of us teenagers went 6 ,000 miles to Mexico City and back in a short term mission.

One summer in an old truck that actually blew up 200 miles down the road. We prayed for a new engine and some business people. And the story has never been told of what business people have done in terms of world evangelism.

Just it's just amazing. And they put a new engine in that old vehicle. And we continued to use it for many years. And there's Big Ben. And there's the American flag. I was born in America. My grandfather came over from the Netherlands.

He was an atheist. My other grandfather was Scottish, Irish and English blood on my mother's side. He's probably toxic. He was a drunk. My grandmother divorced him. I only met him a couple times. The final time he was dying of alcoholism.

So there's that little cartoon. And I hope you'll put that maybe somewhere in your little Holy Ghost scrapbook and pray for me. Because I am one needy, semi-dangerous kind of guy. And if God doesn't meet me every day, somehow in the Word or out when I walk.

I've been walking along this beautiful river this morning. And you know, it was funny as I walked out to look at the water. It sort of started to crack underneath me. So I decided to walk back in the other direction.

I wonder if you ever lose any people this time of the year where they can't figure out where the water ends and where the land begins. What an exciting country to live in. So that my wife could relate to it.

I talked to her on the phone in London this morning. They've had a major blizzard in London, England and freezing cold temperatures. Unheard of in April. They call it the Alaska factor. Of course, it's all part of Global Warning.

The Warning to the Lukewarm Church

Turn with me now in your Bibles to the book of Revelation. I'm sure that's one of your favorite books. How many of you read the book of Revelation in the last 12 months? You read the book of Revelation.

Let's have another honesty survey. How many of you believe this is God's Word? You love it, but you've not yet read it through once. Just once. Take 66 hours. Raise your hand. You haven't read it through once.

That's about 30 of you. Hey, this is a good question. This is your moment of destiny. If you read it through once in the next year, one year. And I suggest you read it. I'm doing it again myself, by the way.

I suggest you do it in four different places. Because then you won't get bogged down in Leviticus or Deuteronomy. Just have a little of that. Jump to Psalms. Jump to Proverbs. Jump to the Gospels. Jump to the Epistles.

Jump to Revelation. Jump back to Genesis. It might be confusing, but you'll get through in one year. Send me an email and I'll send you ten fantastic, life-changing, mind-bending books worth over a hundred dollars.

Now, I know you don't need that false motivation to read through the whole Bible in one year. So just let that be the cherry on the top of your cupcake. But we need to read the Word of God more. And one of the reasons I got set free from a lot of mess in my life, even as a teenager, is because not only did I get into the Word of God, but the Word of God got into me.

One of the verses that's disturbed me the most is there in the book of Revelation. So turn there to chapter 3. Revelation chapter 3. How many of you brought a Bible or a New Testament this morning? Raise it up.

That's great. It's good to carry that. I did that before I was even saved. I joined this group, Baptist Testament League. So I carried a New Testament before I even knew Jesus. Revelation chapter 3 verse 14.

Write this letter to the angel of the church in Laodicea. This is the message from the One who is the Amen. Who's that? The Lord Jesus. The faithful and the true witness. The beginning of God's new creation.

I know all the things you do, that you're neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other. But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. You say, well, I'm rich.

I have everything. Everything I want. I don't need a thing. You don't realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. That's a little blunt, isn't it? So I advise you to buy gold from me.

Gold that has been purified by fire. Then you will be rich and buy white garments for me so you will not be shamed by your nakedness and ointment for your eyes so that you will be able to see. Listen, I correct and discipline everyone I love.

So be diligent and turn from your indifference. Look, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I'll come in. I will share a meal together with you as friends. Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne just as I was victorious and sat with my father on his throne.

Anyone with ears to hear must hear or listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. What he is saying to the churches. And God is still, through his word and his servants, speaking to his churches.

Salvation and Reality in Jesus Christ

And one of the most basic, bottom line, simple principles for every believer is that there is reality in Jesus. There is salvation in Jesus. There is reality in Jesus. There is peace in Jesus. There is fullness of joy in Jesus.

There is the promise of eternal life in Jesus. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me. And if you haven't yet come to Jesus, you're searching, you've got doubts, you've got questions, maybe you've got a little bit of a cynical streak like me.

I pray that this morning you may come to Jesus and believe on him with all your heart and put your hands in the hands of the man of Galilee and be his servant and his disciple the rest of your life. It wasn't an easy road for me as a teenager.

I was from a totally different background. At 16, I was moving into the jungle of pornography. I was on about my 32nd girlfriend. I was big into wild nightclub dancing. I was about to become the president of the student council as sort of a radical student.

I had an ego the size of the Grand Canyon. And as Chris Rhea, the pop singer, said, I was on the highway to hell. When a little old lady, didn't even talk to me, put my name on her Holy Ghost hit list, not only prayed I'd become a Christian, she prayed that I would become a missionary.

Without even talking it over. I don't know if any of you, if you've got a grandmother or an auntie or somebody, maybe somebody doesn't like you praying you're going to be a missionary. You need to get that sorted out as soon as possible.

You don't want to end up like Jonah in the belly of a whale and that wasn't as pleasant as it might seem in a movie. She kept praying for me and not much happened. Somehow a guy rolled into New York City named Billy Graham.

This guy was sort of a combination of Clint Eastwood, Madonna and E .T. Of course converted. I almost didn't go there. There was such negative stuff about him. This is emotionalism. Somebody said he's a hypnotist.

But I went. A business person gave me a free seat on a bus. I got this girl who I thought could maybe use some of this. And we went and sat as far away as we could in Madison Square Garden with 20 ,000 people.

Not a crusade, a one night meeting. And I heard the gospel. I heard about Jesus. I'd become quite involved in a local church where they didn't really believe the Bible. It was sort of a social club. I don't know if you have any of those in Alaska.

You get even non-Christians go to the guidance counselor in high school. And the guidance counselor after whatever interview says, I think you should be a minister. The guy doesn't know Jesus, you know, from a truck.

But his guidance counselor said you should be a minister. And so he goes off to Theological Cemetery. He comes out dead. And they're pastoring churches around America. One of the greatest tragedies is Christianity without Christ.

Men and women who are in religion making money. They've never been transformed. They've never been born again. And this is the kind of church I was in. I became president of the youth fellowship. Teach a man a rock and roll right in the church.

Then the pastor made me his assistant. He's the lord of the blind leading the blind club. And I thank God for Billy Graham who said the Bible is God's Word. And he preached from the Bible. This little gospel I've been reading.

Thanks to that little lady who prayed for me. It added up with what Billy Graham was saying. And so when Billy Graham gave the invitation to believe on Jesus, I went forward in this huge meeting. I started to weep and the Holy Spirit invaded me.

And I was saved by His grace. And here's the powerful thing. That's been a reality every day ever since. Why do I say that? I'm not boasting except in the grace of Jesus. But a lot of people give the idea you come to Jesus.

Then you have some problems and you backslide. I don't know if you ever heard that's an old-fashioned term. You drift away. You sort of lose it for a while. Usually a broken romance will do that. Or going broke sometimes does that.

Or you feel the Christians don't love you enough. That's always really difficult as if everybody else does. And so you get away from Jesus. And then somehow you go to a Christian camp or you bring somebody to town who preaches and you come back to Jesus.

I talked to a guy once. He had been away and back, you know, about 30 times. And some people go away and back and go through several wives, two, three, four wives and then come back again. Well, praise God for His grace.

Grace, Truth, and Perseverance

I don't want to give you the wrong idea. We're the first mission agency in the world to pioneer recruiting divorced people. There's no second-class citizenship in the kingdom. Well, people said if OM preaches that, we're going to be strung out with divorced people.

We're compromising. We've got 50 years ministry. We've got 5 ,000 people. We're almost totally divorce-free throughout the entire world. So you can preach grace and you can have prevention at the same time.

You can preach grace and you can have truth at the same time. That's, of course, what the Bible talks about. But the best way, especially if you're like a young believer, you've still got that first love.

You're still praising that He ever saved you. You don't have to lose that. You can be hot for God every day of your life. Not in the absence of tears and mistakes and stupidity. I got such a stupidity gift thing.

I mean, we could write a book. I don't think we'll do that. Let me just give you one example. When I moved to Europe after Mexico, of course, I got saved that night. And a lot of things happened in my high school, in my hometown.

I went to Mexico. This work was born, but it was very tiny. And then I went to Europe. My vision was Muslim countries, closed countries, and communist countries. It was like ridiculous. And I went into the Soviet Union in the summer of 61.

Have you ever heard of Brother Andrew, God's smuggler? He's quite well known. He's got a book and maybe even a film. He's a close friend of mine. He's 100 Dutch. I'm only half. And I tried the same thing.

And due to a stupid mistake, some butter got on the gospel. John, the guy who was with me, just two of us, he said, we can't distribute that. We're going to send it out through the mail. We had these addresses.

We weren't going to give it out. We knew they'd arrest us on the spot. We had this plan. We had used it in Spain to reach hundreds of thousands of people. We thought it would work in the Soviet Union.

And he said, well, don't. We don't want to give this gospel or send this through the mail. It's got this big smudge of butter on it. Do you know what he said? He said, let's flush it. We were in a hotel.

We thought we were being watched. He said, let's flush it down the toilet. I reacted, we can't flush the word of God, the gospel of John down the john. How can we? We can't do that. And so instead, the next day as we're driving along, I thought we'll throw it out the window in the countryside when no one is looking.

No one is looking. Soviet Union. We're already being followed by the KGB. It went out the window. I'll never forget just seeing the gospel flutter out the window. Within 10 miles, major roadblock. KGB, regular police took us out of the car, brought us in the police station.

Guess what? The head of the police already had the gospel of John. Is this yours? Headlines, American spy arrested in the Soviet Union, the city of Rovno. Two or three more days of interrogation. They found our printing press.

They found other literature. They were a little upset. They did decide, however, after a couple of days, and I didn't even have my global jacket on, that I was a religious fanatic and gave me a submachine gun escort to Austria.

That's called failure. And yet God worked through that failure. There's a book by that title, by the way. Have you seen that? Erwin Lutzer's Failure, The Back Door to Success. Isn't that a good title?

I never, it's a great book. I recommend it, really. I've never actually read it. Just the title touched my heart. Seriously, you know, some of us who are busy, it's hard to read these books, isn't it?

And I want to urge you, busy guys, you don't read a lot, get into the titles. Yeah, just read the titles. And then maybe the back page. The back page is usually good. And of course, if it's got pictures, you can look at the pictures.

And then someone later asks you, hey, have you read that book? You can just say, hey, I'm into that big time. Failure, The Back Door to Success. And I'm trying to drive a point across here that we must not live with a fear of failure.

God, because of that failure, brought me back to Austria extra early. My wife was in Spain wondering what was going on. I lived in Madrid, Spain at the time. And I went for a day of prayer. Our work up to that time was known as Send the Light.

It was very tiny. This vision, Muslims, Communists in closed countries, it wasn't really grabbing that many people. And God gave me a new vision. I was actually in the top of a tree, praising God and worshipping.

One of the few places I can sing without bothering people, as I don't have much of a voice. And I was just praising God. I thought of the war. My wife had been killed in the war. And that name out of the war came in my mind, Mobilization.

And God gave me the new name, Operation Mobilization. The vision, Europe. Work with the church. Work with the church in Europe. Let the church in Europe reach out, like Brother Andrew, with their European passports into Communist countries, and Muslim countries.

And within the next few years, that was to happen. I went back to Madrid in a weekend of prayer in the mountains. I shared this with my few Spanish full-time workers. And they agreed to go ahead with Operation Mobilization.

I moved to England. And God opened the doors at Cambridge and Oxford. Almost every university in Great Britain. By the next summer, we had 200 people. By the next summer, we had 2 ,000 people. And soon we had 150 to 200 vehicles crisscrossing the entire world, giving the Word of God to tens of millions of people.

Because one woman prayed. Because one needy, struggling, natural, backsliding, doubting, promised school kid somehow discovered the reality of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God. And by the power of the cross and the resurrection, never lost that first love.

Living With Holy Spirit Big-Heartedness

I want to ask you this morning, are you on fire for Jesus? Are you on fire? So that it's experience in your witnessing. It's experience in your prayer life. It's experience when you're criticized. How do you handle criticism?

How many for you? Raise your hand. Criticism is really your favorite thing. Whoa! Just love to get criticized. Knives in the back. Whoa! Anybody, raise your hand. I don't think so. If you raise your hand, you need counseling.

When we experience the grace of God, when we get focused on the Lord Himself, when we experience what I call Holy Ghost big heartedness, we begin to love those that criticize us. It doesn't mean we can always work together.

That's a whole different planet. We can't work together unless we're agreed. I remember a real extreme Christian guy coming to me that had some strange doctrines. I really loved him. But when he sat down and wanted us to work together in some evangelistic campaign, I knew it just wouldn't work.

But we can let love cover. Paul Bilheimer wrote a book by that title. Send me an email. I'll be happy to send it to you. It's a little hard to get now. He's gone on to heaven. And shows how we can graciously disagree and press on.

Charles Swindoll talks about that as well in his book, Grace Awakening. Another book I'd love to send you. So my testimony is that God saved me there in Madison Square Garden and I've experienced His grace every single day all these years.

It's a miracle. I still am stunned that God could use me at all. I still have some of my same problems. I have to watch out for pornography. I have to watch my bad temper. I get huge doubts, even doubting whether God even exists.

Why doesn't He do something in the Darfur? Why isn't He settling this Iraq thing? Millions are praying about it. What is God doing? And so I have a lot of struggles. I have a lot of questions. Once I was going through a time of doubting the Bible and I was traveling to India before we had our own ships.

I was traveling on a ship and I was feeling seasick. And when I lay down, I don't get seasick if I'm laying down. So I lay down and I listened to these tapes by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, a brilliant philosopher who was a wholehearted follower of Jesus.

And in this series of tapes, he gave the problems of the person who doesn't believe the Bible. I was dwelling on some of my problems because certain verses seemed strange and I didn't understand them.

And I couldn't understand the ways of God, even among some of my friends. When I heard that series of tapes, the problems for the guy who doesn't believe the Bible, I was just filled with faith. This is God's Word.

There are mysteries. There are things we don't understand. One of the passages that's helped me in my pilgrimage through struggles and doubts and many other things are those words found in the book of Romans.

I was always preaching from Romans 12 .1, the great chapter calling people for commitment. We touched on it last night when about 200 people in this room at the banquet stood up after we talked from Isaiah 6 and prayed a prayer of commitment.

Here am I. Send me. This was a God thing this weekend. A hundred thousand people around the world follow me in prayer. I'm very committed to the Mission Fest movement, a global phenomenon that especially exploded in Vancouver, Canada, where I preached at their 25th anniversary a few months ago.

And 30 ,000 people were involved in that Mission Fest event. And I hope if somehow you missed it this year because your discernment antenna is broken, that you'll get involved in Mission Fest next year because it's a God thing.

Different people from different churches coming together for a weekend and exhibits and prayer and seminars. And I believe that God is wanting to make Fairbanks a great Antioch. We read about Antioch in Acts 13.

We touched on that last night. And He sent out Paul and Barnabas from Antioch. God has already been sending out workers from Fairbanks. We've had them on our ship from Fairbanks. But I believe He wants to do greater things at Mission Fest.

Not in any way in competition to your own local church missions conference, but in symphony, moving together to touch the nations of the world from this unique part of God's great globe. And so we often looked at Romans 12, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God you present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

The Mystery of God's Wisdom and Ways

But I was especially helped in moments of struggle and trying to understand what God was doing from the last verses of Romans 11. Look at these words. Romans chapter 11 is sometimes referred to as the doxology.

Verse 33, Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand the decisions He has made or His ways. Did you get that? That helped me to incorporate more mystery into my faith.

When five people you're praying for have cancer and one gets healed and you're jumping up and down and praising God about it, and the other four die. Some people don't like to talk about that. But I'm into reality.

I believe we got to talk about both the positives and the negatives. And there's times in your life, as my wife and I, in the disappointments we've had in our lives, we leave it with God. It's a mystery.

We are not God's advisors. We worship Him. And someday, as it says in the Word of God, we will see face to face. For who can know the Lord's thoughts? Who knows enough to give Him advice? And who has given Him so much that He needs to be paid back?

For everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory. All the glory to Him forever. Amen. If God can take a character like me, with my struggles and my doubts, and somehow use me and keep me on fire, not the same level of emotion.

Listen, this might be the most important phrase in my feeble sharing with you this morning. No matter how filled you are with the Holy Spirit, you're incredibly human. And our humanness, especially characters like me, very idealistic, large major goals, our humanness can intimidate us and sometimes almost paralyze us.