Becoming A Child

0:00 Some things were just said that if we're not careful, they'll just pass by and we'll move on to the next thing. And I don't know about you, but it's like when I first heard about that ministry, it really, it just felt so much like what I'd read about in Scripture, right? You go, wait, this is the way it's supposed to be, and this is so like God to use children to do this. Because so many of us in our mind can think of all the reasons why it won't work. and I've talked to the pastors before I go you think about it you know the Bible says we've got to become like children and I said if I were if I were dying of some disease right now man who would I want to pray for me I think I would grab my my 11 year old son before I'd grab a 40 year old man because he would believe he'd have the faith to believe that God's actually in that room and actually has faith that God could heal.

0:57 And it'd be easier to convince a 10, 11-year-old child about God's faithfulness and his power than a 40 or 50-year-old man. And I thought, have we been wasting like the greatest resource that God's given us as a church because of people like me who have an attitude of, okay, keep the kids over there. You know, someone just keep them busy so that we can do the spiritual stuff here. and that's the way I used to do church man someone just play with the kids so I don't care what you do and then just put on a video whatever and meanwhile let's do the work of the ministry as adults and so when I heard of what was going on in Africa I mean these numbers just last year in one year, 169 unreached people groups heard the gospel. And people are becoming, like, most of us dream of one group. Maybe. Maybe all of us together could reach one group.

2:00 And now we're talking about a group of kids that have reached 169 of these groups in one year, and this year they're shooting for 150. But last year they shot for how many? yeah, you shot for 52 and you got 169. So this year they're shooting for 150 and just saying, you know what, let's get to these nations. And two things I want to say about that. One is when I heard that stuff, my initial response is, that is so amazing. But honestly, in my head, I just thought that's great for Africa. but I didn't think about us here, right? Because honestly, does it enter your mind that, wait, could it be possible that God could use the children to reach a city like San Francisco?

2:57 Like sometimes we think, well, this is now, it can't happen here, that's great. See, this is what kills it, is when people like me start thinking with my logic and start looking at the obstacles and say that's not possible. You know? But yet you've got these kids that are going to villages where the adults are getting stoned for trying to share the gospel and miracles are happening. I mean, she just has story after story of kids that don't know any better, just hear that they have the power to heal, and they'll just walk up to total unbelievers, totally the people that would persecute them, and they will heal them. Like real healings, like miracles, supernatural things. I mean, everything we're reading in scripture, isn't it about faith? I mean, isn't it about God looking at all these people that were just trying to figure it out on their own? He says, I'm going to make sure you fail. But the people who trust in me, right?

3:51 Wasn't that the story of King Asa? You know, when you trusted in me, I delivered you. But now you can trust in other things. I'm going to make sure you fail. It's over and over again. That's why he says, you know what, Saul, why did God have Saul die? Why did he have him leave his, you know, remove him from the kingship? It's just because he didn't seek God for guidance. He used his mind. He didn't seek God for guidance, but David did. And then the one time when you read about David starting to muster his army, you know, in 1 Chronicles, I think it's 21, where he, you know, it's a Satan got into David's mind and he starts numbering his people. He gets this census going like, okay, I've got an army now. Let's figure it out. And what does God do? He sends a plague on them and he kills 70,000 people. God kills 70,000 people.

4:49 What does that tell you about the sin of self-reliance? That God's pretty serious about that. And when we don't seek guidance from him and we just believe like everyone else, Well, that's not going to work because in my mind it won't work. Let me just use this nonstop, day and night, and come up with some strategy, some plan. It's going to get us nowhere. It's the faith. It's the faith that you see in Scripture. I mean, all through 1 and 2 Chronicles, which we just read. It's when the people had faith, great things happened. And there's that verse where it says, I think it's 2 Chronicles somewhere, towards the end, 20-ish. About King Uzziah, it says that he grew strong because he was marvelously helped. He was marvelously helped, he says, until he grew strong.

5:48 But when he grew strong, he became proud to his own destruction. Wow. He was marvelously helped until he was strong. But then when he became strong. he became arrogant. He became proud to his own destruction. This is why we're having this month of prayer. It's like we don't ever want to be a group of people that says, okay, we've got some energy now. We've got these groups. We've got like 14 churches. A lot of them are looking real strong, getting ready to multiply again. Man, we've got to get away from that. And say, God, everything ends in a second. We've seen it happen. unless you're in it and we want to see you do something in San Francisco. Yeah, I mean, to believe that God could do something through the children in San Francisco, you know, with San Francisco, we always think, OK, let's get some really intelligent people to debate the other really intelligent people. Let's get some really good communicators because there's some great communicators the other way.

6:56 And it's just flesh, flesh, flesh. Let's battle it in the flesh rather than saying, you know what? Let's just get on our knees and believe that there are strongholds that can be broken down. And let's pray like these children do in Africa and believe for these miracles. And so that's what we're seeking as a church this next month. but it's got to start with us in some ways to believe that we can release our kids and to believe that they have power you know we got to stop this idea that i think has been passed down for generations of man here i am i walk with god i hope my kids do too I walk with Jesus. I hope my kids keep the faith.

7:51 Look what I'm doing. I love Jesus, and I hope my kids keep my faith. We're hoping for a step down. We're hoping, okay, I hope they still love Jesus. I hope they still, rather than saying, you know what, I love Jesus, and I hope my kids, like, just go and take it to another level. I hope they have this passion for Jesus. I've done some things in the name of Jesus, but I sure hope my kids experience the Holy Spirit far more than I do. Man, I did some things when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. Man, I hope my kids, I'm going to pray for this and expect this. Like, see, this is what's been happening for years. People go, oh, you know what? My grandparents are real strong, and then my parents are kind of strong, and so I still believe.

8:39 And it's going to be another generation, it's going to be done. Like, that's not the way it was supposed to be. The idea was to see this next generation just jump off of our shoulders, right? Going, man, let me teach you everything God's done. And I'm praying for you that you can start understanding this at a young age. You know, like that candle illustration. Man, you've got your whole life ahead of you. Man, I'm at the end. I'm turning 50 this week. Man, my candle's like right there, you know? And it's just like, wow, I'm just trying to keep it going. And in the same way, it's like, man, these kids, to fill them up. So we're going to be pursuing that as a church, the prayer and this faith. But, man, I'm just begging you, get on your knees and ask God to help you believe in what these kids can do. And I want to see them start contributing in all of our church. When I heard about that, that's when I grabbed Zeke.

9:35 I go, Zeke, you and I are going to lead worship today. you know, get on that go and just start hitting the box to a decent beat. I'll get a guitar. I'll try to, you know, play it and sing it. And we're going to lead and we're going to start using the kids and having them share. And it's transformed our church. You know, this whole idea of separating the kids from those who are older and everything about your age group, man, I think it's killing the church because we need to learn from them. There's a faith, the Bible says, and there's a humility that Jesus says, if we don't have the humility of those little children, we won't enter the kingdom of heaven. Okay, so if they're the model of this humility and this faith, then shouldn't we have them in front of us teaching us and learning from them? And at the same time, the Bible does talk about those who are older and to respect them. And so this family that God's creating, this generation thing, that's what we're trying to implement as a church, saying, wait, God designed this really well. And so if you get a bunch of 20-year-olds out on their own, you know, all fired up, like, yeah, we don't want to put up with the kids crying, and we don't put up the old people telling us, you know, what to do, you know, we just want to create our own group, that's not what God intended. No, because there's so much that those 20-year-olds can learn from the 50-year-olds, and say, no, let me explain, you know, what life is like. And there's so much that they can learn from the five-year-olds and the purity and the faith that you begin to lose the older you get. And so as a church, we're just pursuing this. And man, but again, nothing happens outside of that faith and that trust in God. And so be praying. Please pray with us this month.

11:24 I'm just excited to get in the presence of God and see what happens. The second thing I want to say about the ministry of children in Christ. I've never heard of anything like this on the earth. I interact with so many ministries all the time. I've never seen a ministry this effective financially. Spend so little money and have so many results. I mean, the budget's only about a million dollars. Okay, for a quarter million children, A million dollars is ridiculous. For 20,000 workers, a million dollars. I mean, when I was asking about, okay, so who gets paid? Well, some people get paid. Well, what do they get paid? You know, if they've proven themselves and they're over this many people, then we'll start paying them $10 a week.

12:18 Whoa. A month. Oh, sorry, a month. I was being generous. I wanted to give them a raise. $10 a month. $10 a month. Okay? But we're not just going to hand someone $10 a month. You better work for it and show that you've been faith. I mean, when I start looking at these numbers and understanding that, and then some of the upper leadership get like $50 a month, right? Yeah, they're crazy. You know, and you start looking at the numbers. You guys, that's why. Man, that's why we're meeting out here right now. Okay? It's ministries like this where we go, okay, you know what? I'll sit in the sun. I'll sweat a little bit. I'll get burned, whatever, you know. But if these guys are spending, you know, getting paid $10 a month, you know, why would we spend thousands of dollars today to sit indoors, right? And this is why all your pastors volunteer their time.

13:17 No one gets paid at the church. Why? It's not because we just want to be martyrs or something. It's like, no, we see better places for the money to go. And so we'll work our jobs. We'll make money other ways. We'll hustle. And then, you know, for the church, we'll just volunteer and we'll serve. That's why we're asking everyone to take that mindset of not coming to just take, but saying, you know, the Bible says we're all gifted in these miraculous ways. And if we all came to give, then we could do this thing. And so as the elders were praying about a gift for children in Christ this year, we thought, you know what? A lot of your churches, you have money in the bank. And some of your pastors are like, we're not even sure where to give it to. And we thought, you know what, let's just pray right now. So as the elders, we just prayed, the five of us, and say, you know, what number comes to your mind of what we should shoot to give children in Christ as we are church all together this year? Okay, so we've got like four months to go.

14:19 And we're going, okay, a lot of us, we have money in our churches, in the bank. Some of us at home have money in the bank. Like, you know, what number do we think we want to shoot for before the end of 2017? And we all came up with different numbers in this span. And so we settled on a number, and this is what we're going to shoot for.

14:44 We'd like to give them a quarter million dollars this year. Okay? And that means for some of us digging deep, sacrificing. but I believe that's a number that we can accomplish, that we can pull off, because we have no other expenses. I'd like us to raise a quarter million dollars this year, because I can't think of a better ministry to give it to, and the thought of people, see, it's so foreign to us to think of these people groups who've never heard of Jesus, have no access to the gospel, because in America, we have, like, we're, like, gospel competition. I think this guy says it a little bit better than this guy. No, this guy, let's buy his book. Let's listen to his podcast. It's just so crazy and weird. I just want to jump off of that merry-go-round and go, man, these people haven't even heard. Let's put all of our effort and finances toward that.

15:41 And so, man, we're asking for this month, the month of December, to give to your churches. And we're going to try to raise that money. and be praying as couples, as families, what to sacrifice and say, let's shoot. Let's see if we can give a quarter million dollars to this ministry by the end of the year. Sound good? All right. Good. Good. Jen didn't know that. Surprise.

16:13 I'm just going to share something real quick because it's on my heart. I had this whole message planned. I really did. And I was thinking, how am I going to get through this message? Because there's so much in Chronicles I want to go through. But then this morning's reading and everything the Lord's been teaching me, I just want to focus on one verse of something Jesus said this morning. well in our reading this morning he said it a while ago but it says this in Matthew 7, verse 7, Ask and it will be given to you. This is Jesus speaking. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

17:06 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? The reason why this passage stuck out to me so much today was our focus on prayer coming up this next month. But in particular, it was those last couple of verses. Versus which of your which of you fathers, if your son asked for some bread, you're going to give him a stone. Or chew on this. Like you just you don't do that. And he talks about, okay, if you guys as fathers being evil, you can pull that off. What do you think about your heavenly father when you ask him?

18:04 Okay, if your son asks for a fish, you're going to give him a serpent? You're going to give him something bad? Here's why it was so big on you. I'm perfectly honest with you right now. these last two days, last three days, I've been an absolute wreck. I've been on like the verge of tears.

18:28 Constantly, and I've just broken down a couple of times. Falling again this morning, just crying. because on Thursday, my daughter Mercy left for college. And there's no way to explain that to anyone who has not had a kid go away. Like, it's just, no one could have explained what this was going to feel like. Okay, and this is the third time that it's happened to me, you know? And it's terrible. It's awful. So don't have kids. It is. It's not worth it. It's not worth this kind of pain. Seriously. It's just dumb. I just walk around like everything reminds me of her.

19:23 Even this morning, you know, every time, church together, Mercy and I would leave early, you know, on church together days. And we'd go get coffee. And, you know, we'd come here and she'd go to worship practice. And I would go pray and get ready for the message. And this morning, you know, I went to get coffee by myself, you know, and we used to get a large one and split it because it's a better deal. And now I get a medium and that's not a good deal. And I was telling someone, I go, I'm not I'm never going to get it again on Sunday. It just it was too much. I'm just like, I mean, it's just I can't even I mean, I'm laughing about it, but it's like it's weird. It's just like you just feel like sick to your stomach for days. everything, everything.

20:10 And you don't even know what to do with yourself. It's really, really weird. And, you know, every kid is special, and there's a uniqueness to each one and your relationship with them. And for Mercy, she was the one where, I mean, it was weird. From the moment she was, okay, when she was born, I mean, literally, I looked at her face, and I just thought, ew. Okay, I mean, all newborns look bad, but no, but the reason why I thought, oh, I mean, I seriously, like, I may have even verbalized, like, oh, because she looked so much like me.

20:49 And I thought, a girl me just sounds really ugly, you know? Like, so I literally thought, oh, you know? And all her, like, when she was a little kid, people would say, you look just like your dad. and she would just burst out in tears, you know, because she would look at me and it would just make her cry. Like, I look like that. And she didn't understand, you know, and by the grace of God, you know, she looks fine. But it was just like this weird, like connection, like, man, this girl looks just like me, even as a baby. And then there was just, there was just uniqueness. is like we call ourselves twins, you know, Mercy and I, because everything was, I remember her taking her, telling her, hey, we can go horseback riding, you know, Rachel, and a friend of mine has these horses, and she goes, how long are we going to be gone? I'm like, I don't know, what are you worried about? She goes, how long? I said, two hours? She goes, okay, okay, because she always needed to snack, and she just wanted to know how many snacks to bring, like she just was her panic and remember one time we were at this arcade you know and and uh she was like seven or so and she goes she goes dad I need a snack she goes oh wait a second I forgot I have bacon she had grabbed bacon from breakfast and wrapped it up in paper and stuck it in her pocket which I thought I was so proud of her no because it was free and so you take it and you put in your pocket that's very Chinese it's brilliant you know and so it's just like man we're just these twins right and everything you know just I mean that was just life it's like I like how she thinks bacon in the pocket why didn't I think of that you know it's just boom boom boom boom and everything And then, man, and so, gosh, Thursday, you know, 430 in the morning and I'm hugging her goodbye and just.

22:54 She leaves and you just feel like. Then you walk by a room and everything's out of there. And then, you know, you just want to, you know, she's my eating buddy. We ate all the same foods, you know, it's like, I don't want to eat that anymore. I don't want to go there anymore. I don't want coffee anymore. I don't want any of this stuff. It's just like sick. It's crazy. And this morning as I'm praying, still just feeling like I'm crying. Just, you know, going up. I don't like this. I want her back so badly. I mean, it's right. It's good. You know, like, she should be educated. It'll help the kingdom. and use this education for God, but everything just wants her back here. And then I was reading that passage about God and him saying, you know what, if you know how, you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, then how much more your father who's perfect.

24:05 And it just hit me. I just thought, God, do you feel any of this of what I'm feeling right now? Like if I feel this strongly as a evil human father and I am going nuts without my daughter. And God says he is the perfect father. He's the one that created love. He's the one who created desire. And he's at another level. then I go, God, is it true? Could you possibly feel towards me what I feel right now, this emptiness, because she's distant from me, she's away from me? Man, that's a hard thing to believe. I mean, I know it from the scriptures. I know it. It's like that song. It doesn't matter what I feel. It doesn't matter what I see. My hope will always be your promises.

25:02 And the Bible says that God is rich in mercy, God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us. That his love, his desire, because that's not what I would naturally feel. And there's part of me, and this is my screwed up thing. I'm just letting you know, like there's a screwed up part of me that believes like if God is so holy and so powerful, then he can't grieve. He can't feel these feelings of desire because somehow I've almost equated this powerful, holy God, and if he's that strong, then he must be robotic.

25:47 He couldn't desire me because we look at that emotion as a weakness. And that's why, you know, I don't know where I get it from or whatever. It's like, I don't want to cry in front of you. I don't want to tell you, oh, I was crying this morning. You know, why? Because doesn't that mean I'm weak?

26:10 And somehow we think that way, and it's wrong thinking. Because then we impose that on God, that God doesn't have these desires like he's longing for me, because that makes him weak. No, where does this love that I have for mercy come from? A brilliant creator. Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. I can't even, I mean, it's just unimaginable. How do you make these people love each other so much that when they're separated, everything in you just feels like it's torn apart? Like you created this amazing union and relationship to think of that. You put that in us. We were made in your image. And so I just started to thank God. And I'm just telling you right now. I had to confess to God.

27:06 I don't believe your love to that degree right now. I know it in my mind. But I really want to believe it in my heart, because if I believed you longed for me. Even as much as I long for my daughter. to be close to me. That really would bring a level of security in my life that would be outrageous. And that really would be life changing. If you believed right now that almighty God grieves when you're distant from him. And when you pursue all sorts of other things. I don't long for him and when there's separation, That God loved us so much. That's why he made him who knew no sin become sin.

28:00 It was to bring us to himself. You know, we sang that song, you didn't want heaven without us. So, Jesus, you brought heaven down. The whole scriptures is about a God that's pursuing us. And I've just been praying this morning, oh, God, help me to believe it.

28:21 Help me to believe it. You say it in your scriptures, that should be enough. But I know I don't believe it in my heart right now, and I need it. I need to believe it more, more in my heart. I mean, I do, but I don't. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's like that longing. And then during worship and as Jen was speaking, it just hit me. You know. it's not just about us praying and asking God help me to believe this the way that we believe this from our hearts is by staring at the cross and taking communion I think that's why they went house to house and they celebrate and it was such a big deal because to believe in the love of God is a very difficult thing because most of us a lot of us didn't feel the love of a father.

29:17 And so then to believe like a holy, perfect, all-powerful God longs for us, that's just impossible to believe outside of a miracle of God. And in our weakness, I think we'll just, we're prone to wander. And I believe that's why he gave us communion. That's why we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.