Giving Your All for Jesus — Brian Kirik

Well, we have a special treat this morning. We just had our annual diocesan synod where clergy and leaders from the Anglican Church around this whole region come together for a time of worship, a time of refreshing, a time of discipleship.

And we met over at the cathedral this weekend. And one of the special guests there is a missionary with an organization called Gospel for Asia. His name's Brian Keurig. And his wife, Michelle, and the two of them were just married by our bishop five weeks ago.

So both Brian and Michelle are missionaries through this organization, Gospel for Asia. And Bishop Neal said, this guy's looking for a church to preach at on Sunday. I said, ooh, can you preach here? It's always good to hear about what the Lord is up to around the globe.

And God is up to some amazing things through this ministry, Gospel for Asia. So if you come up here, and I'll pray for you and bring the word for us. Father in heaven, I thank you for this brother and how he's been pouring out his life for the lost, for those who haven't heard the gospel in different parts and pockets of Asia, and for those indigenous missionaries who are bringing your word to them.

And Father, we pray that you would fill him with your Holy Spirit, that he might speak the word you have for us through him. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you very much. So it's a blessing to be here with you. As Father Taylor mentioned, I'm with a mission organization known as, called Gospel for Asia. And basically, our founder is a man by the name of K .P .O. Hannon.

Gospel for Asia and Indigenous Missionary Work

He was from India, came to the U .S. to get a seminary education, and while he was here, he fell into the trap of the American dream. But then God broke his heart afresh for his people dying without the gospel, because just the materialism here just basically sucked the spiritual life out of him.

And so, what he ended up doing was started a mission organization called Gospel for Asia, but it was very different than any other organization at that time, because rather than sending Westerners, what he did is he knew Asians who were giving their lives for the sake of the gospel, but they had no access to Western prayer or finances, and literally, one of his friends was literally selling his blood in order to finance his ministry.

You know, like, this is how hardcore these guys were. And so, started this organization that were coming alongside the indigenous people, so it was Indians reaching India, Nepalese reaching Nepal, so on and so forth.

And that grew so rapidly that we ended up having to form a church, and so that church is known as Believer's Eastern Church, and by God's grace, now we have over 15 ,000 congregations scattered throughout 14 different Asian nations.

And basically, it's people who, you know, missionaries, they're young men and women, typically, like a lot of you. I was gonna say like a lot of us, but I don't qualify for that anymore. But just going out to just tell people what Jesus did for them, because these places, they've never heard about Jesus before in their entire lives, never even had access to the information about the good news of Jesus Christ.

And so, as a church, we're actually in the process of coming into communion with ACNA and Lord Will and GAFCON, I got to spend some time with Peter in Jerusalem earlier this year, so that was at the GAFCON, I guess, conference, I guess it was really a good time.

So, anyway, it's a blessing to be here with you and to share with you about all that God's doing. So, you know, I'm gonna share on the passages, but they did such a good job, I just feel like, you know, like, I don't know if I can add anything to that.

Yeah. So, one of my, somebody I knew who taught people how to teach church said, if you can teach to six-year-olds, you can teach to anybody, so I just got to see that. But with, you know, when we look at the Gospels, you know, there's actually some pretty amazing things in these passages today, if you think about it, you know, some of the stuff that John was talking about, just, it's just devastating to think this guy shows up and just says, oh, you're gonna eat your last bit of food and then die, why don't you give it to me instead?

You know, like, oh, by the way, my name's Elijah, and, you know, it's just crazy. But Jesus, you know, we see Jesus do this similar thing where he just, he turns everything upside down all the time. You know, our God, our Savior, he's a revolutionary.

He, you know, we have our ideas in this world of the way everything should work, and we have our plans and our thoughts, and here's how God's gonna do this. And then Jesus actually steps into the picture and he goes, okay, I'm glad you have your plans, I'm glad you think this is the way it's gonna work, guess what, I'm gonna, it's not like that at all.

And so we see also throughout Scripture these statements, you know, these authoritative, these powerful statements that, you know, if God is, you know, is consistent with, you know, his character in Jesus, they also turn the tables.

Now the problem for us as human beings is we like our thoughts, we like our plans. I don't know about you, like, you know, meet somebody and they're talking, telling me about something they're thinking, I'm thinking, this guy's brilliant, he thinks exactly like I do, I love this guy.

And, but then we come across Scripture and we're like, that's not the way I want it to be. So for instance, in the book of Hebrews, there's this really powerful statement, and maybe we just glossed over it, we didn't hear it, but there's a statement, you know, the writer of Hebrews says, it's appointed once for man to die and then come.

Judgment, Salvation, and the Urgency of the Gospel

In my experience in sharing the gospel with people, it seems like a lot of times the Lord brings me like the tough nuts, like, you know, there's all these people that have all these intellectual reasons and arguments built up, and you spend all this time just dealing with all these arguments that they have, and basically what I find out most of the time is all those arguments are protecting them from the truth.

That protect them because so often, we want to be our own God. We want to have the final say. We don't like the idea that we're gonna have to stand before someone else, and they're gonna open up a book and look at our lives, and they're gonna tell us what the verdict is.

You know, there's a statistic that says, you know, you know, that death is probably likely, you know, for each one of us. 10 out of 10 people die, right? Good statistic. You can't trust most statistics.

That's a pretty good one, but there's also another statistic is that 10 out of 10 people will stand before Jesus. 10 out of 10 people will stand before the throne of God for him to say, heaven or hell, and that's one of the reasons we don't like, you know, the whole idea of judgment because there is a heaven, and there is a hell, and we don't get to decide whether or not we go there, which one we go to.

God makes that decision, and we don't like to talk about, you know, like in churches, it's one of the big things now is we don't talk, people don't want to hear about it, so just don't talk about that because it makes people uncomfortable.

I don't know about you, but Jesus was really good at making people uncomfortable, and he talked about it, and so the thing is is that, I mean, the good news, I mean, like, you look at Romans chapter 10, great news, because it basically says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

If you wanted to get in heaven, you just have to put your faith in Jesus, confess your sin, turn from it, believe in Jesus, receive his righteousness, receive salvation from him, and whoever calls upon his name for that will receive it.

We'll get to spend eternity. You know, if you want Jesus as your God, he's what makes heaven heaven, and if you let him in your life now, guess what? You'll get to spend the rest of your life with him then, but if you reject him, guess what?

If you don't want Jesus in your life now, that's fine. He won't intrude. He's unfortunately, and I think in some ways, a gentleman, in that if you say, I don't want you, he's like, okay, but just realize that carries over, but in Romans 10 and other parts of scripture, there's even more disturbing news, though, because that passage, it says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

It goes on to ask a series of rhetorical questions. How can they believe in him, or how can they call upon him whom they've never believed in? How can they believe in him whom they've never heard of? How can they hear without a preacher, and how can they preach unless they be sent?

And we have, we've built up this religious idea that there's two ways by which men can be saved, and this is another one of those disturbing things that Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me, and the apostle Peter, you know, backed it up, scripture backs it up, saying there's only one name under heaven by which man can be saved, but we have built this idea and this argument that there's two ways by which man can be saved.

One is the name of Jesus, and the other one is ignorance of the name of Jesus. If you never hear about Jesus, if you don't hear the gospel clearly, then surely you can be saved. And I've looked and I've looked and I've looked, I've gone through, and believe me, I wish with all my heart that that was the case.

I wish that was in here. But the problem is, if that is, do you know what one of the worst things we could do is? Is tell people about Jesus. Tell people about Jesus. Because then they're accountable to it.

Then it's a gospel of condemnation, as well as a gospel of righteousness, a gospel of salvation. And scripture's clear that it's not a gospel of condemnation. Jesus didn't come into the world to condemn the world, but that through him, they might be saved.

And today on our planet, there are approximately two billion people still waiting for a Christian to come to their village, their town, their home, for the very first time. And these people predominantly are in Asia.

And if you work out the numbers and the death rate and mortality rate and everything else like that, what that means is that somewhere around 80 ,000 people will die today without ever hearing the gospel.

And I think the natural response for us is to go, that can't be true. What kind of God would send people to hell like that? They've never had the chance. And I think we're supposed to have that response that goes, I don't like that.

I don't like that. But the response that's supposed to well up in us is, oh my God, how can I do something to change that? God has given his life for me. Jesus gave his life for me. He's brought me into eternal life.

The Widow’s Offering and Giving Everything to Christ

How do I share this free gift that was given to me? And the problem is is that when Jesus talks about, he's sitting across from the treasury and he sees the rich people putting in their money. And I imagine some of these people are probably dropping $1 ,000 here.

The way it was actually set up, it was almost like a tuba almost kind of setting where if you put your money in, it would clang and make all this big noise. And so people are probably dropping a lot of money so they can be impressive and all that stuff and feel righteous and everything else, feel good about themselves.

And this little widow comes in and puts in these just two pennies, these two mines. It's all she had. And this probably was not a one-off incident for her. Now the problem is that for us is that we need to realize we are those rich people.

In the history of the world, we are one of the richest societies ever. And that's not as a condemnation to say, look, people are putting in all this and you're not putting in anything. That's to help us realize how difficult it is for us to put our everything into Christ's offering.

As I mentioned, we're a national church. So we have over 50 seminaries throughout Asia. We train our seminarians for three years. And then they go out into the mission field. Like we don't train people for theological.

They're trained for one purpose and that's to take the gospel to places it's never been before. But when they go, our leaders in each seminary literally lay hands on them and they send them out with what's called a one-way ticket.

Meaning they literally tell them, dig your grave outside of the village God's called you to and give your life if need be. And working in our church headquarters in Southern India, we have our hours of prayer in our daily office.

And we'd hear requests all the time. A missionary in such and such place was killed. Please pray for his family, his children that he left behind, so on and so forth. And one morning, I was sitting there and a person leading the time of prayer said, we have so-and-so, they just died.

And silence just went on and also tears start going down because that was somebody they had sent out from that office. Being beaten for the gospel is so like commonplace. We had a, one of my friends was asking one of our leaders like, well, so have you ever been beaten for preaching the gospel?

And he looked at him like, what do you mean? He's like, well, have you ever been physically, you know, persecuted because they express purpose of actually sharing Jesus with somebody? And he kind of looked at him, he's like, well, yeah.

You preach the gospel, you get beaten. And one of my friends, a super compassionate guy, went to, you know, actually went to lay down his life literally, there's some people coming to burn down his seminary.

And he kissed his wife and children goodbye to go and die with the students in that seminary that night. And interesting story, the people who came were put off at the last moment, they weren't able to do it.

But I was sharing it, we're a missionary sponsorship organization and like we encourage, like if you're a child sponsorship, you can sponsor a child, you can sponsor a missionary with us. And I had one of my missionary profiles and I knew that missionary was someone he oversaw.

And I said, oh, do you know Soren? And he starts laughing. He goes, yeah, I know that guy. He's a super timid brother. I said, really? He said, yeah. He goes, he actually cried the first time he was beaten.

Can you believe that? And this is like an amazingly compassionate guy. But just think about this, like this is like so commonplace for them. Like he's able to kind of laugh about this. And it's interesting, you know, we have our brothers and sisters in the White Albs and we adopted Albs for our priests, like as a regular, like this is what they wear every day.

And, you know, India's hot and dusty. And I had two different of my friends who are leaders there come and say, you know, when we first adopted them, they said, I don't really like wearing this thing.

It's like wearing an oven. I said, but it's amazing because when my missionaries get put in prison, they get put in jail. I said, when we used to not wear these things, it would take me like three days to convince the people that I was actually a priest.

And he said, now I walk in and I wear an Alb and I usually get them out in three hours. Absolutely like, imagine like, could you imagine like the vestry meeting here? Like, hey, should we wear Albs or not?

Well, what are the pluses and what are the minuses? Well, I think we can get our people out of prison more quickly if we wear Albs. Okay, great, yeah, let's do that. And so, I mean, it's a different world, but they go out, they do this because they know that death was the price that Jesus paid for them.

And who are they not to follow? And I think for us is that there's a parable where Jesus talks about picking up your cross, denying yourself, and the cost of discipleship. And he talks about two different things.

And one of them is a man who built a tower and saying, before you build, basically saying, if you're gonna build the tower, if you're gonna give your life, you need to count the costs and make sure you have enough money to do it.

And I think for us, a lot of times, we get this whole idea of counting the costs wrong. You know, looking at our two mites, we don't go, you know, what we look at is, well, do I wanna give these two mites?

Do I wanna give this $100? Do I wanna give this $1 ,000? It's all that I have. Do I want it or not? But really, what, you know, the correct way what Jesus is after is if we have those two mites, we're able to look at that and go, this is, you know, or if we're like the widow with Elijah, we're able to go, this is my bread for today.

But Jesus, this is what you asked. I counted a privilege. I counted an awesome privilege to give to you the last that I have. I wanna actually look and say, this is what it actually costs and you, Jesus, are worth it.

And I do it with joy. And it's amazing because like in our, what we get to see in the mission field, you know, it's like this widow in Zephathah or however you say it. It's, you know, that she up in Sedona, where it's just amazing how God responds when you do that.

Stories of Faithful Missionaries and Sacrificial Service

I mean, I have some personal testimonies in my own life, but I think, you know, the ones from the mission field are even more so. So I remember like we had one, we had one synod, basically, where one of our leaders, so one of our missionaries walking along and, you know, he was holding his back and rubbing his legs.

It was obvious he was in a lot of pain. And so the leader just assumed he'd been beaten. He says, oh, he said, brother, he says, come here. He says, let me pray for you. He said, were you beaten? He goes, no.

He said, uncle, it's like an Indian term for respect. He says, uncle, yesterday I had to stand in icy cold waters and baptize 88 people. He said, oh, praise the Lord. We'll pray for you. God will heal you.

And you go back to your ministry. He said, please do, because tomorrow I have to baptize 133 more. So, wouldn't that be a great problem to have here in Incarnation? We had one priest and he had planted a really, he'd gone to this area, absolute abject poverty, northern India.

And these people, literally, their only way to make a living was to send their children into the city to beg. And that's how they got food for themselves. And he, you know, he got a church there, got a way for them to make income for themselves.

And basically, not only turned these people's lives around as far as salvation, but, you know, just their whole livelihood changed. Their whole world changed because of Jesus. And we asked him, he said, okay, we want you to leave there and go to this other place.

And he loved his people. He loved his church. He planted two churches in that area in very similar circumstances. And he didn't want to go. And he basically was on the verge of quitting. And our leader who was, you know, said, hey, you need to just go here and just see what happened with the Lord goodness.

So he goes to this village. He says, and I got to visit this village. And it's just this super poor place. I mean, it was known as, people known as the Dalits. I don't know if you've heard of the Dalits.

But in Hinduism, there's a caste system. And, you know, there's the Brahmin on the top. But then there's, at the bottom, there's something below the bottom of the caste system. It's like social classes.

And below the bottom of these social classes are the people known as the Dalits. They're considered subhuman. Like they're not, you know, worth. And imagine a slavery that's so powerful you don't need any chains to enforce it.

That the people themselves have bought into that slavery that they live out these chains day by day. And so this place was an absolute pit. Like the houses weren't, you know, there's open sewage running through the place.

The houses weren't finished. Because like literally the husbands, the father's thoughts were, well, my wife, my children, they're just like cattle. So what's the point of finishing the house if they get rained on a big deal?

Like that kind of dysfunctional way of thinking. And Father Hubert goes into this village and sees the desperate plight of these people. He gets some water filters in there because like their only source of water was a river about as wide as maybe two of these pews.

And just filthy, brown, nasty river. And then got a well dug there, started what we call Bridge of Hope Center for their children to help their children get access to education, things along those lines.

But he started praying for people and casting out demons and people started getting healed. And one of the people that came to get healed or came to believe in Christ was the wife of one of the members of this gang that lived in this village.

They referred to him as Guntas. And she comes home to her husband. And her husband's like looking at her like, what in the world happened to you? And finally he asks her, he says, you're like so different, like what happened?

And she goes, I got a new heart. And he said, well, how did you get a new heart? She said, well, Jesus gave me a new heart. So what, can Jesus give me a new heart? Yeah, she said, come to the missionary and he'll tell you all about Jesus and how Jesus can give you a new heart.

So he goes. The guy, Father Hubert shares the gospel with him. He believes in Jesus. And he says, you know, you need to go to your buddies in jail and share with them about what Jesus did for you. So he goes, a little bit of the same thing and they're like, whoa, you are different.

Like, what happened to you? And he's like, I got a new heart. Like, well, how did you get a new heart? Well, Jesus gave me a new heart. And they're like, well, can we get new hearts too? He's like, sure, let me bring the priest in and he'll tell you all about it.

Goes in there and literally almost the entire village came to know the Lord. When I got there, there was two people left. They were both demon-possessed that hadn't believed in Christ. And it was funny because Father Hubert's like, here, you pray for them.

Okay, I said, she is a demon of divination and she can actually tell the future so she doesn't want to give it up. But maybe if you pray for her, you know, here, go ahead, you cast it out. Okay, great, I'll do that.

Okay. But I mean, just the village completely transformed. You know, so the people, for the first time in the history, not just their lives, but in the history of their people since time began, they're hearing that there's a God who loves them and they have worth and value.

And the village gets cleaned up, houses get finished. It's funny, there's actually Bible verses and happy Christmas painted on the sides of the buildings and everything like that. And it was, the transformation was so radical that the other villages around them saw like, whoa, what happened here?

And so they literally, a village leader comes and to the other village said, well, how did you change your village? And they're like, we didn't, I didn't change it. Jesus did. And the priest, Father Hubert, he can tell you all about that.

And literally like five surrounding villages basically end up entirely coming to Christ around him. And when I was there, it was with the vicar general of the diocese, basically it was the leader of the diocese, he's not the bishop.

And another village leader found out that the vicar general was gonna be there. And so he was thinking, if I'm ever gonna get a missionary in my village, this is the guy who's gonna make that possible.

So he came, I literally saw this happen with my own eyes. This village leader gets down on his knees and before Father, anyway, before our vicar general, and literally begs, Father Reggie looks at him and says, sorry, we can't.

Counting the Cost of Discipleship and Answering God’s Call

God is just pouring out his spirit, but he's looking who will lay down their lives. Today we look around and like everything's, it's just falling apart. But this is the best time to be a Christian. We have the answers.

We have what God is looking for and it's Jesus Christ. But the question is, are we gonna take our two minds and are we gonna put them in? Are we gonna pay that price? And for some of us, it's gonna be different things.

So for some of you, that might mean you just actually come to church every Sunday, I don't know. There might be an addiction you have and you gotta give that to Jesus. That's keeping you from giving your whole life to him.

Maybe there's something between you and your spouse. Maybe it's an aspect of forgiveness and you won't give it to Jesus and it's keeping you from living your life entirely for him. Maybe some of you, you have this guilt you're carrying around.

There's something you did and you don't believe Jesus will forgive you and you just won't give it to him. But for some of us, it's a bigger question. Is Jesus calling you to live for him entirely? And that doesn't necessarily mean becoming a clergy.

Maybe it does. Congratulations, Morgan, by the way. Morgan got ordained as a deacon. I hope I'm not ruining anything. Let's congratulate him on his demotion. You know, he's more of a servant. He's lower on the Christian food chain, if you will.

But for many of us, maybe you're an IT person or a web person. Those are actually the skills that are needed in missions today. You know, in our situation, we're just chomping at the bit to get the word.

We got so many ways, like in our US office, that we wanna get the word out to the Western church. But we can't because we got all these things stacking up because we're short on IT and web people. You know, Michelle, my wife, she's our lead writer and we're short by about, I don't know, three writers maybe and two editors and whatever else.

And I mean, like every single department we have, I mean, Jesus of the harvest is tonful in the laborers. And that's true everywhere. That's true in almost every church. And so I wanna encourage you to consider, however that is, maybe it means you volunteer here.

That's what the Lord's asking you. But whatever your offering is, I wanna encourage you, give it all. Give it all to Jesus. Be like that widow with Elijah. Don't be afraid because whatever the Lord asks you, he will repay it.

And I, you know, I personally don't know of anybody who's been obedient and sacrificing something to Jesus who doesn't have a testimony of Jesus being faithful. That's right, that's right. And so I wanna encourage you to do that.

The Offering as an Act of Worship

And I'm gonna, I didn't ask Taylor about this, but I wanna encourage, you know, if you're at that plate, we're gonna pass the offering around today. Is there an offering? Do you guys have an offering?

So when the basket goes around, you know, consider doing this. Because the idea with the offering, like in our church, you're encouraged to give something every Sunday. Because the idea isn't to give to fund the church, but it's an act of worship.

One of the ways you worship is to give, and the idea is that you are giving of yourself every time you put something in that basket. I wanna encourage you, maybe what to do is if you wanna give yourself to the Lord today, in some, however he's gonna call you, and maybe you don't know what that is.

I wanna encourage you, maybe, you know, find a piece of paper, write your name on that piece of paper and put it in. Maybe there's an issue in your life that you, nobody else knows about, or you just can't give up.

You can't offer that to the Lord. I wanna encourage you, write that on a piece of paper. You don't have to put your name on it if you don't want, and put it in the offering. And ask, you know, the Lord to minister you in that.

Prayer, Missionary Resources, and the Call to Obey

I'm out of time, but I wanna encourage you, I brought some world maps. And the reason why is I wanna encourage you, will you please, as one of the things, will you make a life of prayer a significant part of your walk with the Lord?

As I mentioned, 80 ,000 people are dying every day without the gospel, two billion people on planet Earth still have not known. Will you get a reminder of, somehow, in your home, that your life is not about you, but your life is about helping the world to know the good news of Jesus Christ, and that the world is waiting.

And begin to pray every single day for people who never heard, you know, maybe during your family prayer time, or at dinner, or something like that. And then, I have two books. One is Revolution of World Missions.

This book is the reason I'm in missions today. Basically, it's kind of the autobiography of our founder, in a way. You follow him as he goes from the least significant person in a village, small Indian village, that nobody thought anybody would do anything with, nobody could do, or God couldn't do anything with, to actually being the leader of one of the most rapidly growing Christian movements in the world.

Right now, we're seeing over 10 churches planted every single day in places previously on the issue of the gospel. And so, it's a powerful story. I always encourage people, just read the first three chapters, and if you can put it down, go ahead.

It's absolutely free. We got some back in the fellowship hall. Michelle will be back out that way, if that's your path. But it's absolutely free. We just ask, if you pick one up, just read the first three chapters.

And then, another book is Road to Reality. Maybe you're at that place where you said, hey, I know I wanna give my life, but how do I actually do that? How do I live out day by day, putting my two mites in the offering every single day?

For me, Road to Reality is the best book I've ever read on that. I'll start with your heart, and walk through your life, and show you each day how you can give your life entirely to Christ, just like he gave it to us.

And, as I mentioned, we're looking for all kinds of staff. We're looking for anybody who's just dumb enough to serve the Lord. And so, we have, if you're interested in that, or just remotely, let us pray with you, and go through the discernment process with you.

But there's some leaflets we have on the table in the fellowship time, the coffee hour time, you can fill out, and we can begin praying with you about if the Lord might be calling you to do that. But my brothers and sisters, I just really wanna encourage you.

You can probably tell this reality of 80 ,000 people dying today is very real to me. And it's very real to the Holy Spirit. And I just wanna encourage you. Our time on this planet, the Lord's called you to do, don't delay, don't wait, just obey, trust him.

Don't worry about the details. But whatever that next step is, I wanna encourage, faithful, he will be faithful to you. Can we pray? Oh, Father, we just stand before you and just say, Lord, you are worthy.

Lord, there's nothing we can give to you that would outgive what you could. Man who came to Jesus said, I believe, help my own mind. In those areas where we struggle to believe and trust that we can give you everything.

Lord, I pray for all my brothers and sisters, Lord, that when we, each of us stand before you,.