Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 24, 2016 | Route 66 - 2 Corinthians

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July 24, 2016 | Route 66 - 2 Corinthians · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: You are rambunctious today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Rambunctious.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: A great old word.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're in 2 Corinthians.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're back on Route 66, and we're in 2 Corinthians today.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bibles, your New Testament to the seventh book in.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Book of 2 Corinthians, 13 chapters.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And great to be here.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And to be able to talk with you about a book, which I'll bet if more of you knew this book better, it would be the favorite book of the Bible for many of you, and might be after after we're done this morning.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I usually start these books with um sharing with you some of my favorite verses out of the book.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to do that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want us to recite some of these verses, and I'll just comment a little bit on a couple of them.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have them on the screen in front of you.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first verse is uh was was uh meaningful to me uh back in uh in the days I was single, especially.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was the my theme verse for dating.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was I didn't get married until I was 27, so I had a number of years where I was dating, and uh I carried this verse around with me in my wallet to remind me to behave.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um verse goes like this for our proud confidence, say it with me, for our proud confidence is this the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty good verse for a young guy who's who's dating, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul did not, he he put that verse in there, but it had nothing to do with dating.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but I think you can use that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's chapter 1, verse 12, 2 Corinthians.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's a verse in chapter 2, but thanks be to God, he says, say it with me, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Picture here is of Christ being the Roman general, let's say, who's conquered the Germanic tribes, and is leading the beaten Germans through the Arch of Titus and to Rome.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: The picture is not here that you and I are waving, you know, like the royals, you know, crowd, you know, we're waving, we've won, we've won.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is we are the defeated enemy of God.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now for the rest of our lives, we, uh the defeated enemy, carrying about in our bodies death, are in Christ's victory.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one who's won the victory procession.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes on in the next verse to say, and we smell, we smell toward those who are going to heaven.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's the smell of victory, but it's the smell of defeat and uh a bad smell to those who are who are not believers.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting verse.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the great verses in the Bible, chapter 3, verse 18, say it with me, and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that behind me on the screen I've put up a picture of Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, The Great Stone Face, is that it's the maybe the best story I know that illustrates this verse.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: The story goes real quickly.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think the boy's name was Ernest.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there is a there is a place down in Georgia, a real place, called Great Stone Face, where this rock cliff looks like a stone face.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a story about a boy who admired that face, stared at it every day, all the time, found it, thought that it was the most wise face he'd ever seen.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he just dreamed, just wished that he was like that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when he got to be to middle age and the town was lacking a leader, as I recall, this is just my recollection, they chose him and they said as he stood there, wow, he looks just like the face.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The point being that by staring in affection at that face for all those years he'd come to look like that.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, we all, now that the veil is torn and we get to look at Christ every day in our quiet time and love him, beholding his glory, are being transformed into his image from one degree to another.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful, wonderful picture, isn't it?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh the reason why some of the smartest people you know are not Christians, those let's say in the university or on the media, is explained best of all, perhaps, by 2 Corinthians 4.4.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is, say it with me, that the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Very famous little verse that you ought to carry in your hip pocket at all times, 2 Corinthians 5.7, we walk by faith, not by sight.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Say 2 Corinthians 5.17 with me, will you?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Old things have passed away.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, all things have become new.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you're checking out Christ, checking out Christianity this morning, welcome.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're thrilled to have you.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as the newspaper article yesterday said, I absolutely love it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when people who haven't yet decided on the claims of Christ uh come to TBC, visit TBC.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know, though, that this book, the Bible, tells you that if you decide to trust Christ as your Savior, if you decide to look at Him on the cross and realize that He's right, He did come to earth to die for your sins so that if you believe on Him, you may have everlasting life.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then what happens is you become a brand new person.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your appearance doesn't change.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some of your many of your tendencies don't change, and your personality, however, you really are a new person, you have a new heart, and you are changed forever.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's 2 Corinthians 5.17.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: All things have become new.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Two more verses, 2 Corinthians 8.9, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, a verse oftentimes used at Christmas thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift, chapter 9, verse 15.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Corinth was a really significant town in those days, perhaps the third largest city in the Roman Empire, maybe 400,000 people.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: It sat as it does today in the southern part of what we call Greece, Greece back then, and even to some extent today, is divided into two parts, Macedonia up north and Achaea down south, where the two major cities are, of Athens and over to the west on the peninsula, Corinth.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Corinth, a huge city, uh, because it was uh close to the ports where ships would dock, not wanting to go around south in the dangerous seas, and they would come across uh through the through the canal there, and uh and so they would hang out in Corinth, which as a result saw every kind of person, color, shape, size, nationality, religion.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the earth became uh and Corinth became an absolutely sort of uh you know metropolitan, cosmopolitan New York, San Francisco kind of a city with a lot of ice and a lot of gambling and and beautiful huge buildings, the longest Stoa 600 feet in the entire Roman world.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh just just remarkable uh place with a huge mountain called uh Mount Corinth or Acro Corinth behind it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this is what it looks like today, very beautiful, and and there was a church established there.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul spent a number of 18 months there at one point and built the church there.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that the church had, shall we say, thin walls, and its community influenced it more than it influenced its community.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as we said last week when we were looking at 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses them in his first letter and says, baby, you've got issues.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a little difficult to preach like we did last week on 1 Corinthians, because there are like a dozen issues.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he tackles issues of authority, issues in relationships, issues of sex, issues of legalities, issues of worship, all kinds of issues that they had problems with.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we learn when we now come to 2 Corinthians that a big part of the problem was that behind all these issues in Corinth is that there were, Paul had some opponents, he had some enemies, he had what we call today haters.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Haters uh can is often thought of as people who have anger toward everyone reaching success.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, they're envious.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they did hate Paul for that reason uh because he'd had success in Corinth.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: They considered themselves the rightful uh uh owners of the limelight in Corinth, shall we say?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were bothered by the fact that Paul had come in and had gained the limelight and you had a church, you know, that was following him.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, if you're going to understand and apply 2 Corinthians, you need to understand the answer to the question: who exactly then were Paul's haters?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who were the people and why were they so opposed to Paul?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because the answer is absolutely illuminating.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is that the people who hated Paul had a certain view of leadership that that was directly opposite of Paul's view of leadership.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had a view of what constituted status and power and glory and appearance that really was offended by Paul's view of status and glory and wealth and appearance.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the difference is, you and maybe you've heard this, that America, that the West is sort of a justice society, a right and wrong society.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That you know the question is, are you am I getting my you know fair share, you know, and so forth.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But but the inner cities of America and third world countries are more of an honor-shame society.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you embarrass me, I'll shoot you.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you give me shame rather than glory and honor, you know, that's that's the worst thing you can do.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the Corinthian society, uh, that they were sort of an honor-shame society, and they expected that their leaders would be uh, you know, on top of the pedestal, including their spiritual leaders, that they have they would have glory, they would have a professional oratory.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the group of these people were oftentimes associated with the what they want to call the sophists, these haters, uh, had a lot in common with the Sophia means wisdom.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: The sophists were a group of like private club wisdom intellectual people, like, shall we say, uh top-flight hoity-toity college professors, if there are any such things today, ha ha.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and so their view is, you know, um, we believe that a leader should have glory rather than shame, should have professional oratory and status and wealth and power and appearance, and Paul doesn't have those.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: In specific, we find that in this book, they attack Paul in four ways.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, they were saying Paul to the church.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were saying Paul is an unqualified person, a fraud.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: He has absolutely no credentials.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world they would stand up and say in Paul's absence, they would say to the church, how could you allow someone whom you've never even heard of come in through Asia off the street, not bearing any credentials or recommendation from the synagogues anywhere, like in Jerusalem?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Allow him to stand up, and then you believe what he says, this gospel, and you're following Paul.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: How can you do that?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He hasn't, he's not qualified.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: He has no credentials, he's an imposter, he's a pretender.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Paul says in chapter three of this book, are we beginning, do we have to commend ourselves again?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: You yourselves are our letter written on our hearts, recognized and read by everyone.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Paul's problem here is he hates to defend himself.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that the gospel's at stake, because those people associate the gospel with the guy who gave them the gospel, which is Paul, so Paul knows if they re if the people reject him, they're gonna reject the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he's in this messy pickle in 2 Corinthians where he kind of has to defend himself and boast or put him on the level with these people that are calling themselves apostles, you know.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he so he decides, okay, I'm gonna boast about my weaknesses rather than my strengths.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he's you see the pickle that Paul's in.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he's walking this tight rope, not wanting to boast at all, but at the same time having to defend himself.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then they went on and said, Well, Paul, he's an unimpressive dud.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: He has absolutely no presence.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they were kind of right about that, because from what we know about Paul from a little book called The Acts of Paul and Thecla, written a few years later, Paul was short, bow-legged, with thick eyebrows that met in the middle and a big nose.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's called an unimpressive appearance.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when these professional orators and sophists, they're all six foot four.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm joking, but I mean they're all good looking and they're wearing nice suits and they know how to speak and project themselves very well, and they're the kind of people that could run for president, not Paul, not some guy who's five foot four or five foot six and a little bit stocky and a little bit, you know.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul writes in this book, they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, that's what they say about me.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And but he says then twice in chapters 11 and 12, I gotta tell you, I consider myself in no way inferior to these quote super apostles, unquote.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then they say, Paul is an uncouth rube.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: He has absolutely no class, and class was so important back then.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: They say, have you checked out his hands?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's a manual labor.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Laborer.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know what Paul did for a living, right?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he made tents.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now he actually was skilled at it.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: He'd come from Tarsus, which is a part of Asia where they had special sheep with special wool that made really special tents.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this was that it was very valuable.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up learning how to weave tents and carpets and so forth.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a skill, but I mean manual labor?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're going, how can you allow a guy who does manual labor, whose hands look like that, to come up on stage and to lecture you and to tell you what you need to believe?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because their view was no, the people who came up front should be professional orators who took money, and you know, and so they were the gospel, you might say that they were the uh gospel of the easy life people.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They said, you know what?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: God's not going to allow his representatives to be dirty, to be poor, to look bad.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: God is all about success.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: God is all about honor and wealth.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: God's people and God's leaders especially ought to have the best of everything.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were the early sort of health and wealth gospel type people.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves you now, send us money, you know, type people.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, how can you listen to a guy who doesn't even take money?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a dead giveaway that he knows he's not worth it?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's reply is, yeah, I'm untrained in public speaking, but I'm certainly not untrained in knowledge.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And no, we're not like the many who market God's message for profit.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Am I committing a sin by humbling myself, that is, doing manual labor, in order to preach the gospel of God to you free of charge?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: 217 and 11.7.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, finally they said, you know what?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is, and this is the easiest charge of all.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is an untrustworthy con artist.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: He has no integrity, which is crazy because he wasn't taking any money, remember?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul is so bothered by this that he spends most of the first chapter responding to this.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why he says, our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity we've conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So now you understand what Paul's doing when he writes this book and why I think the theme of this book is listen, okay, I am weak, but when I'm weak, I'm strong.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think that what he means by that is that as he looked in the mirror, being wimpy, he somehow saw himself in a way that, you know, that he was strong when he really wasn't.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he's saying to us, I want you to think that you're strong, even though you're not really strong.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think he really means in this book that when you are weak, you are strong.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to I want to prove that to you.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm looking out today, and I see a few people who are in the mirror on the left, the uh weightlifter, but more of us who looked a little like me on the right.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you see the name Vladimir Putin on his swim trunks there.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I now what Paul does is he divides the book up really.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: The book's divided into two parts, and he explains this when I'm weak, I'm strong in two ways.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he says, when I'm suffering, I'm comforted.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I can rejoice in my sufferings.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So his first point is going to be that I suffer.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's no book, by the way, like 2 Corinthians, in which you have these long lists of Paul's sufferings, because he wants you to know that you should expect suffering, that you should count on suffering.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: He says in 2 Corinthians 4 10, through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 6, he starts, he gives one of the lists of how he suffered.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: In yellow print here on the screen, he says, in troubles and hardships, distresses and beatings, imprisonments and riots and hard work, sleepless nights and hunger.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like much fun, but Paul's saying, I suffer, I've suffered.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then he gives the longest list in the New Testament about his suffering in 2 Corinthians 11.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: What he later, what he calls his fool speech.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, I hate to be a fool, like these super apostles always bragging, but I'm going to give a fool speech, except I'm not going to brag about my strengths, I'm going to brag about my sufferings.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are they ministers of Christ?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I speak as a fool.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I am more.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: In labor's more abundant, and stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know that until this list.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: We know of one place in Acts where he literally died and was brought back to life.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, in deaths often.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: From the Jews, five times I received 40 stripes, minus one.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times shipwrecked.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: A night and a day I have been in the deep.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: That means in the water, in the ocean.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine floating in the ocean for a night and a day?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: In journeys often, in perils of waters and perils of robbers, and perils of my own countrymen and perils of the Gentiles, and perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea, perils among false brethren.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And his point is wow, I have really suffered.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe these superapostles haven't, but I have, and he's saying in this book, Christian, count on suffering.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then he says, When I am suffering, I'm comforted.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he has that wonderful beginning to the book, in which he says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's one time.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who comforts us, that's two times.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: In all our troubles, so that we can comfort those, that's three times.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: In any trouble with a comfort, that's four times, we ourselves receive from God.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that God does not comfort us in order that we might feel comfortable.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a two-stage process.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: God's comfort comes down upon us so that then we can comfort other people with the comfort we've received.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about that for a second.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask Christians, when did you most experience the warm comfort of God in your life?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never hear a Christian say, Well, it happened when she said yes when I asked her to marry me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or it happened when we walked down the aisle and got married, or it happened when I got my first good job.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Job, or it happened when I we were finally able to afford the house of our dreams, or when we were able to, you know, they'll never, nobody ever say that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know when you receive the greatest comfort in your life?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Of course you know.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you were at the bottom of a pit.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you didn't know if you can make it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you got the rejection slip or the insurance said we won't cover it, or they've she filed or he filed divorce papers.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you got a call from the doctor saying, I'm sorry to tell you, or when the policeman knocked at the door.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't know how much longer you could go on.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then something happened.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: You almost felt it.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: You just felt sort of like the endorphins of God's comfort coming down upon you.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul says.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what God does for his children.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now he doesn't do it so you might just sit and feel comfortable.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: He does it so that two years later, when he shoves someone up beside you that you never met before in your Sunday school class, he's crying, you say, What's wrong?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I've just lost a loved one.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You say, That happened to me two years ago.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let me share with you the comfort God gave me at that time.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: He comforts us so that we might comfort others.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say, for just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so through Christ our comfort also overflows, and we know that as you share in the suffering, so you'll share in the comfort.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: He says it in a different way a couple chapters later, in one of my favorite verses, the older I get, so we don't we don't lose heart.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Some of your outer selves are wasting away.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you I've noticed you've lost a little weight and you must be working out.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're looking good.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Your outer self is actually looking better than it did a month or two ago.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: But for most of us, our outer self, and I'm not going to mention any names there, it's it's wasting away.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and and thank God that our inner self is being renewed.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when you go, when you go to a nursing home or visit the hospital sometimes, you walk away and you go, wow, they're looking really bad, but I couldn't encourage her.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: She encouraged me.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I went there with a Bible verse hoping to cheer him up, but he cheered me up because the inner self is getting brighter and brighter, even as the outer self is crumbling.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I thought of the illustration.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Armando Valaderis was a journalist in 1960 when Fidel Castro took over, and he was a pro-Fidel guy, and he really helped support that you know revolution.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then he realized that Castro was the worst possible thing.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: He'd lied a lot and he was ruining the country, and Armando had become a fervent Christian, and so he started writing against him, which got him thrown in jail.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then he and some other Christians in jail were especially persecuted.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God after years, you know, he he got out.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty years.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote later in his book Against All Hope 8,000 days of hunger, of systematic beatings, hard labor, solitary confinement, solitude, 8,000 days of struggling to prove I was a human being.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: 8,000 days of proving my spirit could triumph over exhaustion and pain.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: 8,000 days of testing, my religious convictions, my faith, of fighting the hate my atheist jailers were trying to instill in me with each bayonet thrust.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the book, he says this.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says, a little story.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: We were taken from block five to the blackout cells, talking about this group of Christians.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: They had a little church.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Almost the whole population of the prison, that was over 2,000, watched the parade of our starving bodies.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our bones stuck out like scarecrow's frames.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some men dragged their legs.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: We were human ruins by now, and the torment had hardly begun.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: But all our eyes still glowed with vigorous life.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was a flame in us, our jailers had not been able to uproot.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what happens, is that you suffer, but when you suffer, God gives you, you know, the anesthesia and the endorphins of his special comfort.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that turns into a kind of joy.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis is right.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: He says, he says, sufferings are not valuable just for the suffering part.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: God intends, God wills for us to be as happy as we can possibly be in our sufferings.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, you know, our hearts ache, but we always have joy.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the first nine chapters, by the way, the word sufferings is used 12 times, the word comfort 17, the word joy another 12 times.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's as though he's saying you need to count on suffering, then you also need to count on God's comfort.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the result will be that you'll be filled with joy.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is 2 Corinthians 8 10.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 6 10.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 8 2.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Out of the most severe trial, these Philippians' overflowing joy, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty weld up in rich generosity.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: You suffer.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And out of suffering, as you know, emerge the strongest souls, the most massive characters, are seared with scars.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But they're survivors because God has poured his comfort on them.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they've responded by comforting others and being filled with joy.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first nine chapters.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm suffering, I'm comforted.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I can rejoice in my sufferings.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dear Christian, count on suffering, dear Christian, also count on God's comfort.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last four chapters, 10 through 13, when I'm weak, I'm strong.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I should brag about my weaknesses.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hold up, Paul.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you really saying that?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's really saying that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to flesh that out in these final minutes and share with you exactly how to do that.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: He starts this theme in the first half of the book when he says, we have this treasure, meaning Christ and the gospel, in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, our outer man, because of suffering and weakness, is decaying and is going to break apart like pottery jars, but the treasure is inside and it'll spill out more and more to show what?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: The glory and power of God.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: So as a result, he says, in chapter 11 at the end, chapters 11 and 12, two of my favorite chapters in the Bible, if I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's weird, right?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we're told by management people, if you're or if you go to positive mental attitude seminars or you go to personal development classes or whatever, what you're told is, okay, make a list of your strengths and your weaknesses.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and oftentimes they'll be paired.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're if you have a strength that you're good with people, oftentimes your weakness will be that you're not very good at communicating in print or, you know, writing things.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll tell you what to do then is you maximize your strength and you avoid your weakness.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, go talk to me.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you're supposed to write a report, ask if you can do a video blog or ask if you can do it live in person.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not good at writing, but you're good in person, right?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you have weaknesses and strengths, but the point generally is this is that you avoid your weaknesses while you maximize your strengths.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I told my one of my sons years ago he couldn't kick the ball very far in soccer.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I said, become the best short passer on the field.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to kick the ball long.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I remember the coach told me, Jim, you don't dribble very well, so don't dribble.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Learn to be the best passer on the court and a good shooter.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the philosophy of the world, and it's a good philosophy.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul's saying, no, no, no, no, no.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going beyond that.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying I want you actually to focus on your weaknesses and boast of them, and then he starts doing it.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Remember when I trusted Christ on the road to Damascus, and then my Christian career started.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Hey, Corinthians, do you think that I was, you know, powerful, honorable, that I got fetid in Damascus, that I was in the newspaper, famous convert?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was against me, including the king, so ignominiously or you know, embarrassingly, I had to get fringe to lure me in a basket at night over the wall and had to run for my life.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't play well in San Antonio.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's not gonna get you, you know, on the stage in New York City, but he's boasting about it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, by the way, I got he even got a thorn in the flesh.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, and he has to be really delicate here.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: He tells us something we never knew otherwise, which is that God took him up to heaven, whether in the body, in his body or not, not in his body, he doesn't even know.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he won't say that it happened to me.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: What he says is that I know a person who some years back was taken up into the third heaven.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can study this all you want, but this is in the presence of God Himself, and saw things which he can't even talk about, and heard things which he is not permitted to speak.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, it's Paul.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because his next words were, and then God said to me, so that you'll be humble and not and not feel conceited about this.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: A thorn, I'm gonna give you a thorn in the flesh.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: What was the thorn in the flesh?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a number of options.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: It could be something physical, like his eyesight or bad back or uh malaria or some other things.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: It also could be the persecutions, the fact that he was constantly getting whipped and beaten.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: God, would you take that from me?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know, but whatever it was, God said, I'm giving it to you so that it'll keep you humble.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then God said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: If that's not one of your favorite verses, 2 Corinthians 12 9, it should be.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to say it out loud with me right now.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he, in the next verse, he says, that's why, for Christ's sake, I delight, I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: When I am weak, then I am strong.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Would you notice, please, in these four verses, four of my favorites, the four reasons that he gives for why you and I and he are weak.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, it's to keep us from getting conceited.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, it's because his power is made perfect in our weakness.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, it's so that Christ's power may rest on us, and fourth, because when we are weak, we are strong.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those four boil down, there's repetition, they boil down to these two things.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: My weaknesses number one, make me humble, my weaknesses number two, show Christ's power.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: My weaknesses humble me, my weaknesses elevate Christ.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you think of anything more important for you than being humble?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can you think of more important anything more important for you to do than to magnify the power and glory of Christ?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And after all, isn't that how you started in Christianity?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't become a Christian because you were strong or mighty.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're not a Christian because you have it all together.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a Christian because I'm weak and I admit that I need a Savior.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And friend, if you're checking out the Christianity thing, welcome.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: But let me share with you that it has nothing to do with being smarter than other people, better than other people, more holy or pure than other people.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: It has everything to do with not being strong, but being weak, seeing your weakness, and admitting that you need a Savior.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you are weak, then you are strong.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that line still applies to you 50 years later in your Christian life.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I am weak, then I am strong.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, people get this wrong.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: They focus on one side or the other.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say I'm weak.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Other people say I'm strong.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: What God wants is when I'm weak, I'm strong.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: The I'm weak people, those are sad sack Christians, those are victim Christians, those are people that focus so much on their weakness.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt so intimidated by your weaknesses that you found that you were frozen?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are some.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've known some guys in my life, some single guys, that were so oppressed by their fears of their weakness that they couldn't be a good husband or father, that they haven't gotten married.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know people that you probably know some people as well who are so intimidated by their weaknesses, so focused on their weaknesses they didn't apply or interview for the job that they desperately wanted, right?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can get so focused on your weaknesses that you say no when people ask you to step forward and be a leader, or you decide that you really shouldn't help with a wana or the children's program or join a small group or whatever.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because you go, I'm too weak, I'll fail.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the focusing on the I'm weak side.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then there are people on the other side.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're the I'm strong people, the Superman Christians.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: They can do it all.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're self-made, and neither one of those is what God wants.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: He wants the when I'm weak, I'm strong, the spirit-filled Christians.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, impossibility thinking is definitely out.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: But possibility thinking, which is so popular today, is not what we want either.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: What Paul is arguing for is Christ's ability thinking.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because he knows that every weakness you have is an opportunity for God to show his strength in your life.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that when you are weak, it not only keeps you humble, but it displays his power.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he pleads with you this morning, and the Bible pleads with you this morning, to get that burden off yourself of constantly trying to convince people that you are strong and you are capable and you are enough.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let them see that he is, that God is, that he is the I am.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing more spiritual than you and I can do after reading 2 Corinthians than to say, I admit I'm weak, but I have a strong God.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, specifically, let me share with you some suggestions of how you do this.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you have to take out a sheet of paper and write your strengths and weaknesses, but it wouldn't hurt you to do that.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm not going to tell you to do is to maximize the strengths and to avoid the weaknesses.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say that you should ignore the strengths and maximize the weaknesses for God's glory.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because, and I'll say it one last time, this book is saying, When I'm suffering, I'm comforted, so I'll rejoice in my sufferings, and when I'm weak, I'm strong, so I should brag about my weaknesses.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now let me give you some illustrations of people who've done it, and just tell you stories, and then I'll be done.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: One famous one that you've all heard of is a woman named Fanny Crosby, who lived well over a hundred years ago, the greatest songwriter in our hymnal, Rescue the Perishing, Draw Me Near, God Wake Care of You, and so forth.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Blind.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: People said, How in the world can you write a song being blind?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And her answer was always, Well, I'm blind to this world, but I feel as though then I can see the music of heaven.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she wrote a poem, Oh, What a Happy Soul Am I, although I cannot see.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm resolved that in this world, contented I will be.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: So to weep and sigh because I'm blind, I cannot, and I won't.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: She saw her weakness as a strength.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: More recently, David Ring, born with cerebral palsy, goes around now and speaks.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I thank God for talking funny.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen him, of course he talks funny.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a privilege to talk funny, he says.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm in public and I open my mouth, people look.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you open your mouth, they just keep on going.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: They tell me I'm a cripple, but God tells me I'm a conqueror.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: His weakness turns into a strength for God.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny Erickson Tata, paraplegic.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, she says, the truly handicapped people are the ones that don't need God as much.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is, the weaker we are, the harder we must lean on God.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably seen that YouTube of Nick Vuyoichich, an outspoken Christian from Australia who has focomelia, no arms, no legs, rolls on stage, and then works to get up.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: The victory then says is not when I stand up, the victory is when I realize I can't do it on my own.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm weak, I'm strong.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you turn your weaknesses into strengths?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do you brag about your weaknesses?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say it a different way.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want to challenge you this morning to look at your strengths and weaknesses, but exploit your weaknesses.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you three illustrations.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first is very personal.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of my weaknesses that I've known about very painfully for decades, more than 40 years, is the fact that I am not constitutionally a natural-born leader.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to be more of a number two man.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel very comfortable sitting in the back or chipping in or helping out.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Never ran for student body leader or class president.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I was number two.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, occasionally I was elected to be the president of a club a couple times, but they had to sort of twist my arm to do it.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: The only times I've really been a leader when there was a vacuum there, and other people said, you go forward.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: That happened to me 38 years ago, for instance, at this church, and I knew I was in over my head.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've been comforted since then to hear that well over half of all CEOs of major companies feel unqualified, but I knew I was unqualified.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm much easier leading from the middle than from the front.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So as a result, I tried to solve the problem, you know, for 20 years by reading every leadership book I could find and by consulting with leaders and hanging around leaders and hiring leaders and so forth to try to learn these things.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And finally I realized this is just I'm just not me.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not either by frame, by voice, or other things, just uh in ideas, you name it.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a great leader and never will be.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I stopped whining to God about why he'd made me this way and decided to accept that maybe that was the way he had made me.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Accept his design.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then ask, how can this be a how can I exploit this for the advancement of his kingdom?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't take long before I realize, well, yeah, the church might do better in some ways with a stronger leader, but in in other ways, you know, it doesn't hurt to lean on a great elder board.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't hurt to lean on a great staff, and and for them to realize the whole thing is about team, and it isn't certainly isn't about Jim.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it is a great thing that the best things that have ever been done at this church, I tell people, have been done over my dead body.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that you know, they certainly weren't my initiatives or my ideas.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because after all, you start, I start start to realize after all, it's the best thing right now, for example, because someone who is a superstar, when they leave, then things can fall apart easier.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when they're when there's such a strong structure underneath, and when it's a sort of a team ministry, then there's perhaps unity to the glory of God in a church, hopefully.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a second story of exploiting weakness for God's glory.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of weeks ago, I'm in New York City with there's 30 of us.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's 20 teenagers, and then there's you know, 10 others of us that are some are teens and some are just past teens, and then there's the old man, okay?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're there the first night.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna witness to people, and and we're gonna go down and we're all terrified.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: All of us are terrified.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: All of us, okay?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: All 30 of us are terrified.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care that I've done this loads of times.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we're good down, and and I have half the group, and I take my 15.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're at Union Square, it's called, and there's people of every shapes and sizes and colors and nationalities and religions, and they're sitting around, many of them on cell phones.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I say, okay, we're gonna talk next couple hours, we're gonna go talk to people about Jesus.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's strong.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are we clear on that?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's weak.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's weak.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's looking for a bathroom, you know, everybody's looking for an excuse.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's tough.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, but they go out.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the youngest person who's there, the youngest person on the trip, a 14-year-old girl comes to me.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I can't, I don't think I can do this.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I say, talk to me about it.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she says, I have no idea.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, if people ask me a question, I can't answer it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I say, that's good.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Tell them you don't know.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Yeah, but I can't relate to him.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, Yeah, I'm looking around at all the colors and shapes and sizes.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can there's no other 14 year old blonde American girls out here.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's true.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, and I say, What do you know?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I don't know anything.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I said, you do know.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know Jesus, don't you?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know the gospel, right?
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins, so that all who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: I say, you know those two things.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: So just tell them that.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm praying so hard for her as she goes out.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to some other people, and I've got one eye on her, and I'm scared to death.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she talks to some 15 minutes, then she comes so excited, she comes back to me, they talk to me, they talk to me, she talked to me.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is great.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to her about Jesus.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Great, do it again.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes off again.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: After about an hour, I see this strange sight.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: I see this 14-year-old girl at 9 o'clock at night skipping through the park.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: She's skipping through the park because she finds new people to talk to.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tempted to go, stop skipping.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she was so happy, and at the end of the night, she's gushing.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: She's saying, I had eight conversations tonight.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why did she have eight conversations?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: When she was weak, she was strong, she knew only two things Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't rest in her at all.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Final illustration.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Melody's father was all that I ever wished that I could be as a leader, was this wonderful, wonderful, incredible guy that everybody loved.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: When Jim Smith walked in a room, sort of like all the lights went on, people just flocked him.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: He had a deep, great voice.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was powerful.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was a man's man.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: He ran a counseling center, great hunter and fisherman.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: He just, he was a leader, new Christian leaders from across the country.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Jim Smith, I just wished I was Jim Smith, you know.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then something happened when he was 55 years old.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're sitting there, you know, and all of a sudden he said, I can't eat Thanksgiving dinner.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it turns out he has pancreatic cancer.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he was dead three months later.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Three months later in his mid-50s.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden he couldn't walk in a room and turn on the light anymore.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the last three months of his life, he was in utter pain and he was lying in a bed, both at home and then at the hospital.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: But something happened as his body wasted away.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: His inner man just grew brighter and brighter.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said to me, every time I saw him, he said, Wow, he says, I've never been this close to the Lord.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most amazing.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the weaker he got, the stronger he got.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the last month of his life, he had Jan, his wife, call everyone that he knew really well, which is a lot of people, and he set up appointments with them to come into his hospital room.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're at Presbyterian Hospital, set up appointments for them to just come in all day long, had an hour with each one.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he talked to them in his weakness and changed lives.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget the afternoon I sat on the floor waiting for my turn, sitting on the floor next to Fred Smith, one of the top Christian businessmen in America, as we chatted about my father-in-law and his close friend, and we're waiting for our turn to see him.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nurse put her head out, looked at me, and said, It's your turn.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I walked in.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've never told anyone, including my own wife, what he said to me.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: So personal, so compassionate, so challenging, so spiritual, so weak, so strong in the power of God.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Even on your deathbed, even on your deathbed, in your weakness, you can display his strength.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, thank you for this weird idea that somehow we can brag about our weaknesses and we can boast in them, knowing they make us humble and they make the limelight shine on your Son Jesus Christ, where it always ought to be instead of on us.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Enable us, Lord, to trade on our weaknesses.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Be happy about our weaknesses, not let them stop us, but use them for your glory.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.