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Lessons From a Journey
A sermon by Dr. David Garrison
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, July 15, 2007
In all the traveling
that I’ve done over the years, the many different places I have gone, God has
taught me some lessons along the way. And right now, as I was praying for what
message would God have me share with my friends and family back at First Baptist
Richmond, He said, “You know, First Baptist is now on a journey.”
In a way, you have been
on a journey for over 225 years, but they are at a special leg in that journey,
I think, right now. A special stage in which God is taking you to a place that
you don’t know what’s ahead. You’ve come out of a wonderful season of being
under the shepherding and leadership of Dr. Flamming, the future is unknown, and
you are on a journey. And so as one fellow sojourner to another, this morning I
want to share with you some lessons from a journey. And I know this is a little
unorthodox and it may be the last time you ever hear a sermon like this, maybe
the last time you will let me speak here, I don’t know.
I want to share with you
some lessons that God gave to me from one of the trips that I was on. In fact,
it was while I was a member here at First Baptist back in 1989. We were opening
up new work in closed countries all over the world. Closed countries that
didn’t allow traditional missionary presence, but we found that if we prayed
hard and stepped out in faith, that God would open doors for us. And one of
those countries that we needed to get into was the Sudan.
The Sudan has always
been a hostile place for missionary activity. But we placed a family there in
Khartoom back in 1989 and in May of that year, the first week of May, I flew
into Khartoom to be with that family and to begin a journey with them that would
take us from the capital city in Khartoom, right in the center of Sudan, we
would go 750 miles round trip across the Sahara Desert into the Red Sea Hills to
try and reach an unreached people group, a Muslin people who were hidden there
in the Red Sea Hills that had gone for 2,000 years isolated from the gospel of
Jesus Christ.
We had done some
research on this people group so we knew a little bit about them but we really
weren’t sure how we would find them because all the different people there
looked alike to us. But one clue that we had was that these, this particular
Muslim tribe carried with them a long sword. In fact, they said it was about 4
feet long. And you know, that was probably one of the reasons they were
unreached for so long. Because wherever they went, they had that sword strapped
to their side.
Our missionary family
there, the husband’s name was Robin, and Robin and I decided we were going to
set out on a journey. We were going to trek across the desert. To do that, we
had to first hire a driver and a car and there weren’t many vehicles available,
especially those that could handle the desert conditions. But we finally found
one that was, that just seemed to be waiting for us. No one was trying to hire
it. It was an old Range Rover and they said the engine was good and reliable
and there was a driver whose name was Ibrahim, an Ethopian man, and his friend
named Segoum Mengesha, and they agreed together that they would take us across
the Saraha to Port Sudan – where, hopefully, somewhere along the way in the Red
Sea Hills there we would find this unreached Muslim people group.
Now, I am telling you
the story and you are saying, “What has this got to do with us here in
Richmond?” Well, I want you to realize that you also are on a journey. It’s
not enough to simply be Christians. It’s not enough to just be Baptists. It’s
not enough to be First Baptist Richmond. God has saved you for the purpose of
taking you somewhere. In Hebrews, Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. The author of
Hebrews, we don’t know who that was, but the author of Hebrews gives us a
powerful challenge. He says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a
great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin
that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out
for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith
who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such
opposition from sinful men so that you yourselves will not grow weary and lose
heart.”
We have a crowd of
witnesses all around us – some have gone on to be with the Lord but they still
fill our memory, and they remind us that we are here for a purpose.
Early one morning in
May, long before the sun came up, I sat in that Range Rover with my friend
Robin. We were waiting in line at the local petrol station, a long line. You
had to get there long before the sun came up just to get gasoline for the
journey. And as we were sitting there in the front seat of that Range Rover,
and the line was moving slowly, we were half awake. In our minds, we were
praying, asking God to go with us, to prepare the road ahead for us, and we were
wondering how in the world were we ever going to find this unreached Muslim
people group. And then someone knocked on our door – the door of our Range
Rover. And it was a man who had come up dressed in Muslim garb, he was covered
with a turbin on his head and a sort of a tunic wrapped around him. And he was
trying to sell to us some of the arts and crafts that his family had made. He
was a poor man. And we glanced over at….we really weren’t interested in picking
up a whole lot of trinkets, but then we saw something that struck us. Suspended
from his waist was (reaching for sword) well, was this (holds up sword). The
sword that we had read about, that we had seen pictures of, and there it was
around his waist.
We were looking for a
hidden, unreached people group and God sent him to us. And so I didn’t buy any
of his trinkets but I did buy this sword. And I brought it back – it’s been in
the home of Richard and Ruth Szucs these last few years. Some day, if I ever
get a fireplace, it’s going to go over my fireplace, but in the meantime, it’s
in good hands. You know, it is as if God was saying to us “You’re not here by
accident.”
Young people, you need
to hear this. In the lives of born-again children of God, nothing happens by
accident. It only seems like an accident when our eyes aren’t open – when we
are still half asleep. And that I suppose is the first lesson I want to give
you from the journey is realize that you are on a journey. It’s a journey of
purpose, that God know where you are, he knows where you are in school, he knows
why you got that mean teacher last year or the mean one that’s coming up this
year. God is shaping your lives. God understands when that arthritis is
bothering you in the morning. God knows exactly where you are, whatever stage
you are in life. But we’ve got to be awake to look beyond the mundane and see
where God is at work around us. That’s the first lesson for the journey.
The second lesson we
didn’t discover until we went out the next morning. You see, we felt like coming
from America, May is a nice time of year to take a trip, isn’t it? Early May.
You know, spring is in the air, the birds are flying, the dogwoods and azaleas
are starting to bloom in Richmond. It’s not that way in Sudan. That’s the
hottest time of year. In fact, the first two weeks in May, they say that is the
worst time, before the monsoons come and cool things down. We had a thermometer
that would go up to 115, and in the shade it was 115. But God had sent us on a
mission and so we got in that Range Rover and we took off with Segoum Mengesha
and our driver Ibrahim and my friend Robin.
As we went out into the
desert, we began to realize very quickly how dangerous this trip was going to
be. We began to see cattle, dead cattle, all along the road and we asked about
that and they said, “Yeah, there has been a drought here. It hasn’t rained in
the last three years.” Wow. As long as you lived in Khartoom by the River
Nile, you had plenty of water but once you ventured out into the desert, and we
were taking a straight shot east across the desert to Port Sudan. Once you got
out into the desert, there was no water at all. And as I saw these cattle
carcasses, I said, “You know, this seems unhealthy. This is unhygienic.
Shouldn’t someone bury these things so they don’t rot and cause and spread
disease?” They said, “O, no, you don’t understand. In the Sudan, nothing
rots. It deep dries. All the moisture is sucked out of it and it becomes
mummified. So you can leave things out there forever. They will still be there
twenty years from now.
We went a little further
in the desert. We no longer saw dead cattle. We saw a few dead donkeys. Now,
donkeys are hardy animals and when we saw those, we joked a little bit and said,
“Boy, this really is serious.” We went a little bit further and we saw a dead
camel. Now, friends, when you see a camel that died of thirst, a wise man will
turn around and go back. But we were on mission with God and the foolishness
that we were participating in, we were convinced that God had a hand in it,
because there were a people who did not know Jesus and we were going to find
that people. And we were going to keep going.
We went further into the
desert. I remember it got so hot. The reason we found, incidentally, that that
Range Rover was available when none others were – this one didn’t have air
conditioning. I forgot to tell you that, didn’t I? They forgot to tell me
that, too. Didn’t have air conditioning; furthermore, they pointed out later
after we were too far to go back that the starter was broken. That meant as
long as the engine was idling, it was o.k. but if we ever stopped somewhere, you
had to find a hill to park it on, pointed down, so you could roll start it and
jump the clutch and it would be o.k. But if you were on flat ground, you were
in trouble. So that was our adventure.
As we went deeper into
the desert, I remember the heat inside, it just felt like it was radiating up
out of the engine and into the inside of the car, and the warm sun would, the
hot air would just beat in on us like an oven. And I remember leaning against
the seat in front of me from the back seat, and praying, “Lord be with us; watch
over us; take us where you want us to go.” And as the sweat began to fall,
after a while it stopped falling. And I knew when sweat dries up, you’re facing
heat exhaustion and you can have a heat stroke. And I was really worried. My
friends were worried, also. And my friend Robin, he was in the front seat with
Ibrahim, and Robin – I don’t know what prompted him to do this – Robin just
began to pray out loud, “O, Lord, it is so hot. Lord, we sure would love a
little thunder shower right now. That would be wonderful, Lord, if you could
just provide us with some rain.” And you know, it just seemed ridiculous to
pray… there wasn’t a cloud in the sky as far as we could see. And there hadn’t
been for about three years. And then something happened. Drops of rain began
hitting our windshield. And they didn’t stop. One or two, we just sat real
quiet. And then three or four. And then ten or twenty. And then a deluge just
fell right on our vehicle. Now, friends, I know I am not in a Pentecostal
church, so I am not expecting a lot of Amens here, but I am telling you the
truth. This is what happened. And we pulled the car over; we didn’t kill the
engine. We pulled the car over and stopped it and we all got out of the car and
stood there and let the rain just come pouring down on us and cool us off. And
it was so refreshing. We opened our mouths and let it touch our tongues. And
it was as if God was saying, “I know where you are. I know what you’re facing.
I know where you’re going.”
In II Corinthians,
chapter 5, verse 5, Paul describes something like this in the life of a
Christian and in the life of the church. He said, “The Holy Spirit that’s been
given to us when we got saved, when we invited Jesus into our life, his Holy
Spirit came into our heart” and Paul says that Holy Spirit is a deposit. It’s a
down payment for what is to come. Now, adults, you know what I am talking
about. Young people, you may not know because you haven’t had to enter that
kind of financial transaction just yet. Let me tell you what it is like for us.
In India, when we want
to find a place to live, we’ve got to rent an apartment. Now, to rent an
apartment, the person who owns it needs to know that we are trustworthy before
he will let us move into it. So he demands a deposit. And in India, we have to
give them more than a year’s worth of rent just to hold that place. So we give
all of this money as a down payment so that he knows that whatever happens, if
we leave the place, whatever goes wrong, there’s money on deposit to cover it.
And that’s a guarantee for him of what is to come.
Paul says in our lives,
in our journey, the Holy Spirit is that sort of a deposit. It’s a guarantee
that some day, some day, heaven is waiting for us. If you’ve ever had that
moment, you know, that time when Jesus just seems so close and the spirit was so
thick you could cut it with a knife, and all your prayers seemed to be answered,
that’s that time when God is giving you that deposit. He is saying, “I know
where you are, I love you, I have a purpose for you, even though it is dry and
hot and parched, and it seems life threatening. I know where you are and that
was the lesson for the journey God was giving us that day when that rain cloud
suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And for about two or three minutes, poured
rain down on our little vehicle and then it evaporated and it was gone!
You know, it is
interesting the next day, we were driving again and as the sun rose up, it got
hotter and hotter and hotter. And we were baked and the sweat poured off, and
then the sweat dried up and we were praying and finally Robin again, out loud,
said, “O, Lord, we thank you that you do know where we are. And we’d like to
ask you once again, could you give us a little shower and just refresh us and
remind us that you know where we are.” Nothing happened. It was as if God was
saying, “Don’t push your luck. How bad is your memory that you can’t remember
yesterday that I knew where you were?” And you know, friends, sometimes the
Holy Spirit is that way. You can’t just live from miracle to miracle to miracle
to miracle. Some people chase miracles all their lives and, friends, that is
not reality in this world. In this world, it’s about obedience. It’s about
being under the lordship of Jesus Christ. And sometimes, that means all you see
are dead donkeys, dead camels, and dead cattle and you wonder when your body is
going to be out there alongside them. But just when you think you can’t make
it, God is there to assure you and support you.
Well, you know, we did
make it across the Sahara Desert. And along the way, we met some interesting
people. All kinds of strange nomads, moving across that area. Bedouin and
various tribes of people. But one of the most interesting to me were the two
guys from Ethiopia who were in our Range Rover with us. One I mentioned named
Segoum Mengesha – Segoum was an interesting fellow. He was a direct descendent
– in fact he was the great-grandson of Haile Selassie, the last emperor of
Ethiopia. And Segoum, as well as Haile Selassie, traced their lineage, their
genealogy, they could name every ancestor all the way back to the Queen of Sheba
and King Solomon. Now, he had some interesting stories. I loved, at night, we
would camp out underneath the stars. You would sleep out on a cot and just see
the whole Milky Way spread out overhead in the Sahara. And it was cool and
pleasant at night. We would listen to BBC sometimes over the radio, shortwave.
And Segoun would begin telling us stories from his history.
Just fascinating people
you meet in your journey of following Christ and the road that He has for you.
But you know, one of the most interesting people was not Segoum. It was actually
Ibrahim, the driver. Ibrahim was an interesting fellow. He was probably in his
mid-50’s. He looked 85. You know, the weather had not been good to him. His
face was beat up and craggly and scarred and deep-set wrinkles and as he would
drive along, he didn’t speak much English but he was talking to somebody the
whole way. And every now and then, you’d see him look up and he was talking and
he would open his hands up like this, and then he would go back to driving.
After a while, he’d talk a little bit more and he’d move on. I’d say, “What’s
he doing?” They’d say, “He’s praying.” He had an ongoing conversation with
God, all along the way. And I was glad. You want your driver to be talking to
God on the way.
They told me an
interesting story. Ibrahim began telling his testimony; Segoun translated it
for us; of how when Ibrahim was just a little boy in a village in Ethiopia, far
removed from the cities, no hospitals, no clinics, no doctors anywhere to be
found, and something happened to Ibrahim’s eyes and he went blind. Not a little
bit blind; totally blind. He could not see anything. Now, in Ethiopia, if you
are an orthodox Christian, what you do when you go blind or have any illness,
you call on the local priest to come and pray for you. And he’ll anoint your
head with oil, as the Bible teaches, and he will pray for your healing. And
they called for the local priest to come and he anointed Ibrahim’s forehead with
oil. He prayed for him. And then he reached into his cassock and he pulled out
a very sharp knife. And as the little boy Ibrahim was lying there on his back,
this priest knelt down over him and he took that knife over his eyes and he
carved a cross into the flesh over his eyes. One right down under his forehead,
over each eye. One across the eyelid so that it bled the shape of a cross. And
he pronounced a blessing on him and he left. And I listened to this story and I
said, “My goodness.” And I looked very closely at Ibrahim’s face and even
though it was old and weathered, I could still see the scars in his eyes. And
he said the next morning, Ibrahim woke up and he had 20-20 vision.
Now, I don’t recommend
that as a medical treatment. But the lesson for us is along the journey, along
the way, all kinds of different, unusual people, people from Africa, people from
Asia, people from Sri Lanka, find their way into a church like this and praise
God for the diversity of the body of Christ. But look for this – when you want
to find who can you trust, who would you trust your life with to go across a
difficult hard place, don’t look for the color of their skin, don’t look to see
if their hair color is the same as yours, don’t look to see if they speak the
same language you do. Look for the mark of the cross. Look for the mark of the
cross in their life. It may not be cut over their eyes. But it needs to be cut
into their soul that at sometime, they bow their knee to Jesus Christ and say,
“All to Jesus I surrender.” And when you find a mark of the cross in their
life, you can trust them. Even if there is no air conditioning and the starter
doesn’t work! You can trust them. So you meet interesting people along the way
– that’s another lesson for the journey.
The next lesson we
learned was to travel light. When we arrived in Port Sudan, we crossed over the
Red Sea Hills. We couldn’t stop in the Red Sea Hills; they wouldn’t allow us as
foreigners to go anywhere in the villages in that area, and they were tucked
away in the mountains. We wondered if we would ever see this unreached Muslim
people even though we had reached our destination. But we found that many of
them had come out of the Red Sea Hills and had settled in refugee resettlement
camps, all along the outskirts of Port Sudan. There were the people that we had
wanted so badly to see, for whom we had prayed. There were swords like this all
over the place. And we didn’t know at that time, but we began praying and
within a year, we saw our first little fellowship of Baptists come to faith in
Christ. Muslims who had come in faith to Christ there in those outskirts
settlements of Port Sudan. But while we were in Port Sudan, we were struck by
how different it was because now we were no longer in the desert; we were on the
coast. And there were beautiful beaches, pristine beaches, because these
Bedouin didn’t hang out on the beach. We saw these beaches; they were
untouched. And there were ships that had come in from all around, delivering
goods to Port Sudan where trucks would take them back over the Red Sea Hills,
across the desert, into the capital city of Khartoom. And while we were there,
we took long showers. We drank lots of water and Coke and orange soda and just
really enjoyed it. But we only had a couple of days there because my visa would
expire shortly and I had to get back to Khartoom. So as we were preparing to go
back, it was tempting to load up our vehicle with every kind of luxury item we
could find. And we found Snickers. We were going to put Snickers in there. We
were going to put all kinds of just things that you couldn’t get in Khartoom.
And as we were thinking about loading up the back of our vehicle to take the
journey back across the Sahara, our driver wisely said, “Don’t take too much,
because we have still got to go back up over the Red Sea Hills.” So we decided
what was most important to us. And we took our big plastic canteens and we
filled them with water. We made sure above everything else, we had water. And
then if we had a few other luxury items, a few candy bars, a few little things
we couldn’t get back in Khartoom, that was o.k. But the water was most
important.
As we set out of Port
Sudan and went back west, up over the Red Sea Hills, we began to understand just
how important that was. Because there was a long line of trucks, 18-wheelers,
that were straining to get up that mountainside, up over the Red Sea Hills, and
at some point, it looked like they weren’t going to make it. And you would hear
them lock their emergency brake on, put it in a low gear, race the engine, let
the emergency brake up, and try to get up that hill while the truck behind them,
and the truck behind that one, prayed for them to get over that hill. Because
our load was light, and we dared not slow down too much, we raced around them
and up the mountain and over the other side. But we could look off to either
side of the road where there were deep canyons and in those canyons, they were
littered with giant 18-wheel trucks and cargoes that had spilled all across the
wilderness there. And I imagined in my mind what it must have been like for
some driver in a truck who thought, “Yes, I can take a little more. Yes, I can
take a little more.” And then as he is going up the mountain and realizing, “I
am not going to make it.” And he starts to slip, and he starts to slip, and
then one truck hits another, and then another, and then they begin cascading off
the mountainside there.
The lesson for the
journey was to travel light. Make sure you have the most important things for
the journey. Friends, everything else is wood, hay and stubble. What does the
author of Hebrews say to us? He says, “Therefore, let us throw everything that
hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with
perseverance the race that is set out before us.” And then it says who our
example is – that was Jesus, who didn’t have a family, who didn’t have a home, a
place to lay his head, because his face was set on Jerusalem where he knew he
would lay down his life for us.
Friends, it takes a
discipline for the journey. To be able to say no to the many, many luxuries we
have here. Young people, you guys, you know, my kids grew up here in Richmond.
They consider Richmond their home. And when we got to Bangalore, I’ve got to
tell you what I did. This was a very cruel thing I did to them. We were in
Bangalore and we had enrolled them in a little school there. They were
initially in a Canadian school. And you know how sometimes you get to griping
about your teacher. Well, they started ragging on about this one teacher, and
they were just going on and on and we were in the car and I was listening to
this. And I thought, “You know, come on, kids, give this teacher a break.” And
we stopped at an intersection, and a little kid came up and tapped on our window
and it was a little beggar child. There’s so many beggars in India. A little
beggar child, wearing rags, no shoes, selling Q-tips in our window. Q-tips.
And I said, “Hey kids,” I looked back over my shoulder, got my kid’s attention,
it got real quiet, and I said, “See this little boy right here. He think he
would complain if he could go to your school for even one day?” Isn’t that mean
when parents do something like that. I just put all that guilt, such swoosh,
and there was this dead silence. I don’t think I ever heard them, ever, gripe
about that school again. Because you realize you’re in the top 1% of the world
for opportunities, for things that you can do. We have high speed cable
internet, we have a thousand channels on our television set and you still can’t
find anything good on TV. That’s the world we live in. And that’s not a bad
thing. But travel light on the journey. Make sure you have the most important
things. That you have that water of life in you – the Holy Spirit flowing
through your life. The Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life. And all those
other things will fall into place.
We set back across the
Sahara on our way back to Khartoom and we kinda felt like we were going to make
it. Now it had taken a toll on me. I think they actually took a picture of me.
I had one in my passport when I arrived in Khartoom and I looked like sort of a
nice preppy suburban Richmond guy. I had a preppy haircut. I had a little more
hair back then. Clean cut. Polo shirt. Blue blazer. And then they took a
picture of me when I got to Port Sudan. I looked like a poor man’s Indiana
Jones. Like I had been beaten with a stick, you know, just all sunburned and
dry and parched and bloodshot eyes. They took another picture when I finally
got back to Khartoom. I looked like road kill. It was bad. It did take a
toll. But let me tell you, the lessons I learned along the way and I think maybe
the greatest lesson of all came in that last leg of our trip back.
We were driving home and
they said, “David, your journey is almost complete but we think you’re missing
one great experience. We think you need to drive for a while. So, Ibrahim
slowed down (he didn’t stop), he slowed down and slid over to the passenger side
and I slid behind the wheel, and there I was, 115 degrees in the shade, no shade
available, driving through the Sahara on that long straight stretch back towards
Khartoom, and I was loving it. It was a great feeling, you know. I was behind
the wheel, I was one of the guys, me and the Bedouin, you know, and I was just
trecking along there. Camels occasionally going by. Loving this feeling until
something happened that changed everything. Suddenly, suddenly the clear skies
ahead of me, the wide open roads where I could see for miles and miles and
miles, turned golden. Then they turned tan as a dust storm, a sand storm, came
blowing at us. Now in the Sudan they call that a haboub. In Arabic, that means
“beloved.” I don’t know why they call it beloved but they call it a haboub.
Maybe they think if they call it haboub, it will leave them alone. But it came
blowing at us, and these things are massive. It is almost like an entire front,
you know, a storm front coming in. The temperature went from about 115 down to
95 instantly. But we didn’t feel it because we had to roll up our windows. So
now not only do we not have air conditioning, we were in a little oven, driving
through this … And the most dangerous part of all was I was behind the wheel.
And they dared not switch out drivers.
They kept coaching me,
“It’s o.k., David, just keep the car going. Whatever you do, don’t stop,
because if you stop, we die.” We had no starter. And as I went through, I
slowed down, slowed down, and finally I saw that some other trucks and cars in
front of me also had to slow down. Sort of like a foggy night when you slow
down to make it safe. And I could see in front of me there was a big truck and
after a while, I couldn’t see the truck anymore but I could see his red
taillights. He had turned on his lights. I could see his red taillights. And
we drove together into that pea soup thick fog of dust, dirt, and sand that was
blistering our windshield and chipping the paint off of our vehicle. And I held
on as tight as I could and I watched those lights and I stayed with them. And
everybody, I know, in that Range Rover was praying for me. And then the driver
of the truck in front of me did something I never would have expected. He
suddenly turned left off the only highway that cuts across the Sahara. And he
cut off into the desert. And instantly, I was faced with a choice. Do I
continue on this highway or do I follow the truck? Now, my mind raced with
possibilities. Why would he turn off? Maybe there was an accident ahead.
Maybe the road was out. Maybe it was blocked. Maybe he knew something I didn’t
know. But before I could make any further decision, I turned the wheel and took
across the desert with him, knowing that if I slowed down too much, I would stop
and the vehicle would die and I would die with it. And I followed him, gripping
the steering wheel as tight as I could, watching those red tail lights, staying
just a few feet behind him. When he would flash on his tail lights from his
brakes, I would slow down. When he would let them off, I would let off again,
and I would follow him. And I stayed with him. And we went far out into the
Sahara, all the way around, and looped back onto the highway again. And before
long, we were back on the highway. Within about a half an hour, we had passed
out of that sand storm, out of the haboub, and the skies cleared and the traffic
moved up ahead and I began to relax, and I thought I was going to collapse. We
made it. We made it back to Khartoom.
I learned a lesson from
that experience. Sometimes, you pass into a cloud of unknowing, a time when you
just can’t see anyone around you or in front of you. It’s almost like darkness
just descends on you – you don’t know where you’re going. But there’s something
that you can follow. You see the same Jesus Christ that we follow from the
Bible through history is the same Jesus Christ that lives in our hearts. Hebrews
says, “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily
entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out before us. Let
us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy
set before him endured the cross.”
Friends, this is the
lesson I want to leave with you. The last lesson. You are in a time of
uncertainty – a time of unknowing. You have been under the pastorate, the
shepherding, of Jim Flamming for many, many years. You don’t know who’s up
ahead, and in between, it may seem like you are in a fog of unknowing. But one
thing doesn’t change. You don’t follow a pastor. You follow a pioneer and a
perfector of your faith. Don’t take your eyes off Jesus. Don’t take your eyes
off Jesus. This church exists to be Christ in this community. To lead others
to Christ, to multiply Christ. And my prayer for you is that Christ would go
before you, that Christ would follow behind you, that Christ would live in you,
and Christ would multiply his life through you. And when God provides you a new
pastor, you won’t have to change course one bit because you will have been going
in the direction that God had for you to go.
I was talking to our
Regional Leader for the Northern Africa-Middle East Region earlier this year.
He is one of my dear friends. He said, “David, today in the Sudan, we have
dozens and dozens of churches among people who were formally Muslims, who were
unreached, who had no knowledge of Jesus Christ. Today, they are multiplying
new believers among their own people group.”
Back in 1989, when I was
a member of this church and first went into the Sudan, that was hard to imagine
that that day would come. Today it is happening. When you keep your eyes on
Jesus, you don’t have to worry about what is going to come behind you. Christ
will take care of all of that. You don’t have to worry about what’s up ahead of
you. Christ will take care of all of that. You don’t have to worry about
anything around you. Christ will take care of all of that.
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