Latest / The Rhett Palmer Show / Our Needs for the Mission

Transcript

Our Needs for the Mission · The Rhett Palmer Show

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: He is the great I am.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: His first friend was Abraham.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Surely said to Abraham, I am that I am.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: He is the great I am that I am.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Moses said, Who should I say that sent me?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: I am that I am.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I always will be.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: And always will be and always has been.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And always has been.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Pretty amazing the concept.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I tell people, I said, he's much more powerful than you ever imagined.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not a sparrow falls.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's written, not a sparrow falls from the heavens without the Father's permission.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: For do you not know that the very hairs on your head are counted?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: We have no idea how awesome, mathematically correct everything is.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now you just said you went swimming in the ocean this morning, right, Michael?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I did, yes.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: In the Western Caribbean.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: You look at in the Caribbean, you know, you look at those shells.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm a very I'm like a paint over the lines kind of guy.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm not really.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: I look at the discipline of those of the lines that are perfectly geometrically made into every single shell.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, every grain of sand has his name on it, you know.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we we had uh for a couple weeks we had a pet conch.
• 1:29
  unknown: Oh, really?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was right out in front of our dock.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I um we go for a swim, Larda, every day.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: We swim about a thousand yards down to uh uh a sunken sailboat and we swim back, and uh so that's kind of our daily routine here for our uh exercise.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so we I see this conch, it's just like you know 20 feet from the end of our dock, and so I pick it up, and we're in about uh 12 feet of water, and I pick it up and I look, and the colors in that conch show are just incredible blues, oranges, uh hints of yellow, uh a uh alabaster color.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's incredible colors in that shell.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I set him right in front, directly in front of our dock.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next day he had gone about 30 feet kind of in the north direction.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, how is this guy dragging this big shell around?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so uh a couple days later, he was almost uh in the uh uh in our next door neighbor's front of their dock.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I picked him up and brought him back to ours.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I'm thinking, okay, why is why is he moving?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where where is he headed?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so the next day I was talking to my friend Gil, who is a uh doctor, but he's also a dive master, and he's the one that runs the uh chamber here, the decompression chamber.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Gil, why do you think uh where do you think that uh conch is moving to?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, he's looking for other conch.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, so he's on the soccer team and he's the goalie, and oh, okay, and I've I've you know I've been picking him up and bringing him back to our and you know what?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: He's been saying there's some human being here keeps take it takes me two days to get over here, and he brings me back again.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, hey! You want to know what's the little geek or the thing that looks that turns the color of wherever you put it?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh chameleon.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: A chameleon.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now listen to this.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: You have you ever taken a chameleon?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: You put him on a red book and the thing will turn red.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: You put him on the green grass, he turns green.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now, how in the world did God make something where the skin changes its color to match its environment?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's totally wacky, insanely creativity over the top.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: How can who can fathom God even on a yeah?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh John Lennox is a mathematician scientist that we see a lot of him on uh YouTube and a lot of just uh random clips.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and John said, you know, if you if you're an atheist, you cannot even have a rational brain because to even consider what you're considering, because if you don't believe there's a creator and there is a just a uh combination of molecules that forms eventually through the evolutionary process, you but you know there's no rational rationality behind creation, then you can't even trust your own mind to come up with the idea that there's no God.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's been uh but when you look at nature, how can you not believe in a creator?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of my dear friends here on this island is a guy named Gunther who is from uh Austria.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's from a town right on the German-Austrian border up in the Tyrol.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up skiing, became a ski racer, uh, toured Europe, came to North America, was racing, and and then he heard about this treasure island called Utella, and he came here in 1970, and uh everybody thinks that uh Gunther found the cave at that uh 100 meters where the pirate treasure is stored.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: But uh a strong believer, a follower of Jesus, and we were talking and Gunther and I on uh Saturday, and he he said, you know, when I just I look around this island, I just see God's hand everywhere.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a a feast of my eyes to see God's hands, uh, just his handiwork.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when I go underwater, it's just an incredible display of who he is.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, You know, when I talk to a guy and he tells me he's an atheist and he doesn't believe that there's a creator, I go, uh, there's nothing I can say to this idiot.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: He just obviously is ignoring the evidence around him, you know.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is the Bible says the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, listen, today we're talking to somebody who wants to go out and maybe harvest, they want to be a missionary, they want to go out and spread the love of Jesus Christ.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: What's the title of today's show, Michael?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, our needs for the mission.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Jesus from the get-go was letting his disciples know there was more to this experience with him than just salvation.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And even Paul writing to his friends in Ephesus in the chapter one, he's he gives us about from verse three to about verse nine, he gives us uh all the things that God has done for us.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the next four or five verses, nine to thirteen or fourteen, he says, and uh and all things, and for this purpose, God has done this because it's uh at the right time, he's gonna bring everything under the authority of Christ.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he's given us his Holy Spirit as a result of this mission that he's calling us on to bring all men to him, all mankind.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he sends out his uh twelve disciples, then he sends out the 70 disciples, and he tells them to go and preach the gospel and drive out demons and heal people, and he does that to the 70, and the 70 come back, and they're astounded, even the demons flee in our name.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last thing that Matthew records that he says to his disciples is the great commission.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And go ye into all the world?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that uh passage that's uh in the English, you read it, all authority in heaven has been given to me.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I commanded you, and lo, I'll be with you.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, to me, when I read that in the original language, uh the command word is not go.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's only one command form, verb in the Great Commission, the four verbs go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: The only command form is make disciples, matateus.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the others are in the continuous action form, going, baptizing, teaching.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus has given us a very uh definite mission that we are now to go.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the word go is the word poremori, which means to proceed on a journey.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: That now that we've begun this journey with Jesus, we're gonna proceed on the journey, and as we're doing that, we're gonna be making disciples, and we're gonna be baptizing them, and we're gonna be teaching them to obey all that God has told us.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, all as he's commanded us.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been contemplating that one for a long time, Rhett.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I have talked about this and the mission that God has given us.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when we ask the question specifically, what Lord did you put me on the planet to do?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is my mission?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what comes to mind is a verse in the second chapter of Ephesians where Paul's writing to his friends and he says, you know, it's grace, only grace by which you've been saved, nothing that you've done to earn it, not that no one can boast.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: For you are God's poema, you are God's handiwork, you're his workmanship.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: He created you anew in Christ Jesus so that you could do the things he planned long ago.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you read that, and especially in the original language, the thought is when God created planet Earth, Genesis chapter one, red, he had your name and he had my name in mind.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he had specific things that he is calling us to do during the 70, 80, 90 years that we're on this planet, because we are part of his outreach, we are part of his plan to bring all humanity, all mankind into his kingdom.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the last thing that Luke records that Jesus said is tarry or wait here in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and then you will be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, in Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, very specifically, if we read these passages of uh in the uh in the Bible, there is no way that we could ever think that Christianity is a spectator sport where we are just to show up at a building one day a week, we are to clap our hands, sing some praise songs, listen to a 30-minute message, put some money in the offering, and walk out of the building and then come back the next week.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and you know, I was not I was 29 years of age.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I didn't even know about what Easter meant or anything.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I got born again into my living room.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, one day I'm sitting in my car, maybe it was a month, maybe it was six months later, but I'm sitting in the car and all of a sudden I said, I said, Oh, it's a privilege to serve others.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And the Holy Spirit just went right through me and confirmed what I said.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine how stupid I was at 29, not even knowing that I'm here to be in service of others?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was like well Red, I uh sorry to say, but I've met followers of Jesus in their 50s and 60s and 70s that have not yet understood that concept.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus was so specific with his disciples.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when they asked him, Well, in the next kingdom, uh James and John said, Can we uh sit at your right and left hand uh side?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, What are you guys talking about?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, are you able to do that?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Of course we are, you know.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he said, uh, you know, authority is something the Gentiles have and they lord it over people, but it's not to be that yourself.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: For even the son of man did not, or the greatest, then he says, the greatest of you will be the one that serves the rest of you.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The greatest will be this greatest servant.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So this other centeredness, this serving other people, is at the heart of the message of the Bible.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And once we get that, then the next question is okay, Lord, what do you have me here to do?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what do I need to do the work that you've called me to do?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not to be religious or to, as you said, Lord it over.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: I remember, I don't know, a couple of years ago, and I was saying, you know, something about somebody doing something, and I played Bible roulette.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: I happened to open the Bible, and it was right to a page where he said, You who have seen God, in other words, he was telling me, you've seen God.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't seen him, seen him, but I I've come to a knowledge of him and a miraculous saving knowledge being born again.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: And what he was making very clear to me is that people that are not saved, I'm to serve, to love, not to judge.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because this is the kingdom of God.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole mindset shift.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so fortunately, the uh body of Christ is growing tremendously on the earth right now, and we are in every continent.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're growing in South America, we're growing in Asia, we're growing in Africa, we're even having some uh revival movements going on in Europe right now, which has uh been pretty cold toward the gospel, and in North America, we're having, and uh even the places where the Christians are being persecuted the most, places like Iran, the church is growing.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh estimates that uh 20 years ago there was less uh than 100,000 Christians.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard this number in Iran.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's over five million.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: And this is Iran used to be a Christian, was a Christian nation until the Muslims took over, and they're they're surreptitiously in a clandestine uh plan, and they they have a plan of action.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: There's they're there's they're subduing all these other countries.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh uh Egypt was a Christian nation.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well when when Muhammad wrote the Quran, it was a message of go out and conquer and uh convert, and if they don't convert, um force them to convert, and if they don't, well, just kill them.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of those strong Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th, 8th, and 9th century uh were uh overrun by Muslim armies.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in many cases, they allowed the Christians to continue being Christians, but they prohibited them from proselytizing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you if you're a Christian and you're not doing the mission, if you're not out bringing others into the kingdom, you will spiritually die.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And those churches spiritually died over the next centuries.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually the Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and and they took over the entire Iberian Peninsula.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: They crossed the Pyrenees and they began uh establishing small little uh political units in the south of France.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, a guy named Charles the Hammer, Charles Martel, uh, knew and had planned for years to fight the Muslim cavalry, and he his army defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732, I believe.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that was where?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was where?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the south of France, and so they were forced across back across the Pyrenees, and eventually the northern parts of uh the Iberian Peninsula uh started pushing them back, and it was finally Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 that expelled the Muslims from the south of Spain.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Spain, how did Spain ever take they they they took them over?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: They kicked, they had dominated the Spanish, and the Spanish finally rose up and they kicked those guys out of the country.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was when uh King Ferdinand and uh Queen uh Isabella, she was the queen of uh Aragon, and I think he was the king of Castile, they married, they united their kingdoms, and suddenly they had a military force to push the Moors from Granada, Seville, and the south.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh anyway, well that's that's that's not our lesson today.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, one well, just one final note.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Recently, this older man, he's an engineer in his 50s, he's in the hospital.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: I may have told you this, and he said he was uh dying, and they're all cluttered around him in his hospital room, the doctors, the nurses.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: He finally says, Everybody, get out of here.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm dying, let me die alone.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he's he's given you know hours or maybe a day to live, whatever.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: They all leave the room.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Then he said, All of a sudden, there was a man standing there in a white robe and he had long hair and a beard.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Who are you?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: He says, I'm Jesus.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Where's Mohammed?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: And Jesus said, Mohammed is dead.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then he said they had a conversation about all kinds of questions and answers and stuff.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: So about two hours later, the doctors come into his room.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: He's sitting over there in the chair, seated up.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Get me some food.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really hungry.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: The next day they he exited the hospital and went on to live his life.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: He had a miraculous encounter.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is happening to a lot of Muslims lately.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: But so anyway, I'm just very concerned about this.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's top of mind.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we need to go out into the mission field and not spread hatred, but love to the Muslims.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Am I correct about this?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the only way that they're gonna uh receive uh the love of God is if they experience it from us.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, many of them are uh hardcore martyrs, jihadists, but I think there's a large majority of cultural Muslims that are very open.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, as you pointed out, the man in white is appearing in many dreams.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so in many mosques across the Middle East, after uh one of the mosque events, there will be someone standing outside asking the question Have you seen the man in white in your dreams?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And oh yeah, yeah, I've seen him, I've seen him.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that uh, you know, well, let me tell you who he is.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's happening right now.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is uh is really showing up.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: But uh so for us, you know why we're not getting the job done soy bay, I gotta go do this myself, apparently.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, just imagine that Jesus would leave this whole mission of bringing mankind into the family of God, leave it to us.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a risky proposition that he would actually uh hand us the uh this mission, this responsibility to you and me, Rhett.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, talk about flaky people, talk about people that have gone down the wrong roads in our life, you know.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but yet here we are.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I was reading a passage uh in uh Mark chapter six a couple days ago.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it suddenly I realized that in about uh six uh verses here, uh we actually had our um needs, everything that we need to do the mission gets encapsulated in this six uh verses.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So uh chapter six of Mark verse uh seven begins.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: You want to read it, Rhett?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Read down to verse 13.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so 13, including 13.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he called the twelve to himself and began to send them out two by two and gave them power over unclean spirits.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts, but to wear sandals and to not put on two tunics.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Also he said to them, In whatever place you enter a house, stay there till you depart from that place.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And whoever will not receive you, not nor hear you.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: When you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Assuredly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than that city.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: So they went out and preached that people should repent, and they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh here he is sending them out.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To uh on a mission.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And notice the first thing that he gives them as you read it, it says it gave him they gave uh he gave them power, okay?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my translation, the new uh new American uh translation says he gave them authority over unclean spirits.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: That word is exosia.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it means authority, charge, control, domain, dominion, jurisdiction, power.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, it can be power, but it's more often translated authority.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he gave them authority to go out on the mission and uh over the unclean spirits.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yep.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So why do you think he sent them out two by two?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, because working as a team is much better, especially when you're in a very uh charged spiritual environment.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Team team ministry is always better than one person because uh one person can get distracted and uh easily discouraged and off track.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as uh the book of Ecclesiastes says, two are better than one.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my friend David Usher, we've been friends for over 40 years.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: He got I got born again, and a few months later he got born again.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we had our times, we've been together, not been together.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: And recently, of course, we went to Key West last winter together, and we we had the greatest time.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: God kept putting, we didn't stand in the street with big signs, but everywhere we went, we ran into people, and we were able to, as a you know, as two together, and and also we admonish one another throughout the years.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: We have right, you know, like brothers do, right?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So so it's a good strategy, is to always uh work as a team, not as just an individual.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: But look at the first thing that he gave that Jesus gave them, he gave them authority.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he said, go do this, all right?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you authority, go do this.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Rhett, I want you to think about some times in your life where you've felt very distinctly that God has said, Rhett, I want you to do this.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and have you experienced that, Rhett, where you very distinctly I will tell you this be here two things.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Before I came to know the Lord, I was about 14 years of age, and I had a dream of a book that was in front of me, and it said, Thou shalt lend out a hand.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I can show you the little notebook that I had when I was 14, 13, 14, and I wrote that down.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, years later, I got born again in my uh living room, and I was at the uh now this may sound weird to some people, but I'm gonna tell the truth.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was at word of life Christian camp and I was falling asleep, and an audible voice he said to me, Will you help me?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I didn't negotiate with him like Abraham, which is what I should have done.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: The next day I said yes.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: I lost my girlfriend, I lost my uh the whole thing, the whole world fell apart, and I ended up in Africa, thousands of miles away from home with a broken heart, uh, giving a concert in uh Chabuk Stadium in downtown Harari with a broken heart.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I said yes.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oi they I should have negotiated.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Did I get to keep the girl?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, okay.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So how did that work out?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: You going to Africa and uh and giving uh concerts and singing?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: Just an eternal investment.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when I went to Haiti, as a like you're on a missionary trip now.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: When I went to Haiti, I didn't realize it was happening to me.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: It fed the hunger, came back to America, I went back down.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now anytime I run into a Haitian, I go, Oh, come sepah, which means Jesus loves you, Jizi Remi moi.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like I have this, and they smile and I smile.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's like this eternal connection because I invested in their country, you know, spiritually.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when you went to Africa, what country were you in?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: In uh Zimbabwe.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you went to Zimbabwe.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're uh okay, so but it it turned out that it was a very good experience for you to go.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was quite a wonderful time of my life, and Jesus showed up along the way.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's just amazing.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so so the first principle that I see here is that Jesus has specific things for us to do.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives us authority to do specific things, like he said to you, go to Zimbabwe.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you went, Okay, I'm not sure what's going to happen, but you're telling me to go.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm going, and I'm going in your authority.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: In my case, Red, I was living comfortably in Maui, uh being part of a really uh dynamic church, Hope Chapel.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I was growing in uh spiritually and my knowledge of the word and uh just being a better disciple involved in our community.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then a guy came to our church and told us about the refugee situation in the in Honduras because of the war in Nicaragua, and he really encouraged me to get involved and uh and start collecting relief supplies.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I volunteered to do that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: We collected about 3,000 pounds of clothes and personal items, packed them up, put them on Continental Airlines.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: They went to California.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh eventually, the organization I was working with had a whole container.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It got shipped to Houston, and eventually it made it to Honduras through some miraculous things.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: It took us six months to actually distribute that.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, uh, one of the refugees asked us to help him start a school.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a remote corner of Honduras.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: These are Nicaraguan Mosquito Indians that cross the Cocoa River.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we bought uh some plywood, some blackboard paint, some notebooks, some pencils, and some chalk.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we made a black couple blackboards, and Augusto Vicente began teaching first grade in Sawa because the kids had not had uh school in five years since the Sandinista Revolution of 79.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that school project, Rhett, lasted 37 years, and we finally finished it two years ago.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you were in you were down there for up until two years ago?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, we we started uh a school project that eventually we had uh schools in the we had 1,600 students in 14 communities along the most remote stretch of the Cocoa River in Central America, and you see, God gave me authority and told me to go and do that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I went not in my own power, I went in his power.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: And let's let's and let's honor Jim Elliott here.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Jim Elliott was a young uh 20-something year old.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: I met his uh his widow, Elizabeth, years later.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Jim Elliott uh was a very smart, handsome young guy, but he went off to become a missionary in South America, I think it was.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And he he said, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, uh making money and being prosperous.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Here he said, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose, because what we do for the kingdom is eternal.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: He went down there, was speared in the head and killed.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then his wife went down there to go after to meet with the men who killed his her husband, and they she brought them to Jesus.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: And afterwards, then they confessed when we killed those missionaries, we saw these angelic beings flying above them, and that man came to know Jesus Christ.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: This is Lord's leader.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: But Jim Elliott said he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that man uh also uh uh that uh Alka Indian, why and why and Yantabia, I think, is the actual tribe, but they were called the Alcas.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he actually became a uh Christian leader and baptized Nate Saint and Jim Elliott's children.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about that story.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: He baptized them, he baptized them, baptized the children of the man he killed.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I uh met that guy uh probably in the 90s.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was uh Nate Saint's uh son, uh brought him to Florida and he actually came to Vero Beach and uh spoke at our church.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: The man who killed?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's not yeah, it's incredible, incredible how God works because Elizabeth Elliott did go back to work with these people, yeah.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the first point, and this is for all of us, not just Rhett and I and professional, I guess, pastors or missionaries, because I didn't never considered myself to be a missionary.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh God gives us authority to do something, and that authority can be uh for things as small as stop and pray for that person who looks like they need prayer, that person who's complaining, stop and pray for them.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: That person who just got a pretty bad diagnosis, stop and pray for them.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, when God gives you the unction to do something, he's giving you his authority to do it.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when he does that, you can believe something is going to happen.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's the first principle.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do we need for the mission?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Rhett, we can't just limit this discussion to going to a foreign country and working with indigenous people because we step outside our door in America and in Europe every morning, and we're confronted with a culture that has really turned its back on God.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we are in a mission field that is white for harvest.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to go to a foreign country.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, uh, Jesus is not commanding us to go somewhere, he's commanding us to make disciples wherever we are.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, right now I'm in Vermont and you're stirring me up here, and I'm thinking Burlington, many uh particularly women 35 and older, they won't go to Burlington.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Barbara won't go to Burlington because there's an excessive amount of odd people and they dress oddly and stuff, and they have all kinds of attics.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: There actually are parks set aside that are called safe parks.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And you can go there and do drugs, you won't be arrested in these parks.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: The homeless are in abundance.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the other day I happened to park over near Church Street.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Church Street is this big, long, multiple uh uh streets where they uh they they put in uh the cobblestone and there no cars are allowed.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I parked on the corner and I was there and there were all kinds of these weird people in in the park and uh you know slopping around lots of homeless people.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden this car showed up, they pulled out a table, and they were feeding the hungry, you know.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thought, you know, I I feel like going to the churches there and admonishing them and saying, that should be you, it should be the Christians feeding these addicts.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, who was feeding them?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but it did so.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably Brett, it was probably some followers of Jesus.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna find out.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Find out, but it's probably some people that walked by or drove by.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they said, Lord, uh do something about this.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, Okay, let's do something.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and sometimes you don't know what to do.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes uh I feel like putting on like a robe with a big heart on it, and it's going to the guy's just saying, Jesus loves you.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what we do.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what we do.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: We start the day with uh the outline of prayer that Jesus gave us.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father who is in heaven, great is your name, let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we utter those words, now we are giving him permission to let his kingdom come on earth through our actions that day.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because the only way the only control I have over uh God's kingdom is into my own life, is in the 24 hours that he's given me, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: So do you think that because God had a covenant of man having free will, that then if we say that we're giving him uh uh uh openness to say, okay, there may be a free will, I'm giving my free will up to you, use me as you want.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's all about, Red, is is acknowledging him as Lord.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if we acknowledge him as a spiritual butler to uh give us the things we think we need, uh we don't really understand the relationship uh with our Heavenly Father.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that God gives us in our mission is authority to do the job.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when he nudges you and says, Rhett, go down to that park and see what you can do to help meet the needs of some of those people.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And while you're doing it, okay, then they're going to feel my love through you.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to notice the second instruction that Jesus gives them.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing is he gives them authority.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the next line says he instructed them they should not take nothing for their journey except a mere staff, no bread, no bag, no money in their belts.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you think Jesus would tell his disciples not to take anything with them?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because normally, if you're gonna go out, you're gonna pack a lunch, you're gonna uh have an extra coat, you're gonna take your raincoat, uh, you're gonna take place.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's living by faith.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: When I used to travel around the United States doing concerts, let's say in the Carolinas, I had this old van and I would pull into a town.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I might get uh you know$60 for performing, sometimes I might get hundreds.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I pull into town, I got a van full of dirty clothes.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Suddenly I'm at this church, and the lady comes up to me after the church and says, By the way, I own the local dry cleaner and laundromat.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: Do you I'd like to give you a gift, any dirty clothes you have, we'd like to clean them for you.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, just at the moment that you need money for a meal, somehow it shows up.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Living by faith is really a very exciting thing.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head here because God wanted Jesus wanted his disciples to know that he would provide everything they needed for the mission that he is sending them on.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: How come some people had greater faith?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember the guy that's very famous for having the orphanage?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he said he would just merely pray.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: George Mueller.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have no milk for the babies this morning or eggs for breakfast.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: And somebody would knock on the door suddenly, and there'd be uh I don't know why, but the Lord told me I've actually had heard these stories.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why, but the Lord said for me to bring uh milk here, you know, and uh pretty amazing.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's been my life story.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: When I left on that two-week trip to Honduras from uh Maui in 1984, I had$200 in my Bank of Hawaii account.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I got back a year and a half later, there was$700 in my account.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And along the way, people in our church just randomly started giving money to our church that got put into my checking account.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when I got back, I had more money than when I left.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was incredible, uh, Rhett.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is uh you you hit the nail on the head that this mission that we're on is an act of faith.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend uh Chip Kendall, that was just here from the Audacious Church in Manchester, England, he said a couple times, faith is spelled R-I-S-K, risk, that we really need to step out with.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I like that.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: When God has told us to do something, even if we don't have the means, the resources, or even the knowledge of how to do it, nevertheless, he says, I will provide all that you need.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine, Rhett, that I was in Hawaii and I thought to myself, you know, there's indigenous people in the eastern part of Honduras, and I'm sure they, after this war, or as the war is going on, they need schools.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna go and help start some schools.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would have gone through probably a couple of years of preparation to do that.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had no plan to start any schools, but I met Truman Cunningham, a Mosquito Indian who was a natural leader.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Truman and I, and Augusto Vicente, his friend, his cousin.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think uh Augusto and he are cousins.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: When the need came up for education, Augusto asked us, Truman and I, and Augusto began working together.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, 1986, we started four more schools.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: 1987 we had 12 schools.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: 1990, the new Nicaraguan government, after the war ended, invited us to cross the river.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Soon we had 14 schools, 1,600 kids.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was an incredible thing.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: All of our teachers that we trained ourselves eventually became certified uh uh primary school teachers through the training that we gave them as well as the uh government.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're able to pay them salaries.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Rhett, this went on for 37 years.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we had to end the project uh because of uh things going on in the country.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it's incredible how God provided for us.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And even us, we're sitting uh here on a piece of property on the island of Utilla.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2008, the Lord, we came here to visit our friends that we had not seen in 10 years, and the Lord said, start a coffee store.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Laura and I looked at each other, we're like, we're supposed to start a coffee store here.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: How do we do that, Lord?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, our one of our friends said, Bring your kids back and take the open water course, and you can use my apartment.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we came back uh in June of 2008, spent a month here.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: We came back the following year, 2009-2010.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: We came uh back twice, and the Lord finally showed us a piece of property.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: We met a builder that helped us build benches and build a coffee service area, and we celebrated on Saturday, this past Saturday, 15 years of running the Rio Coco Cafe here on Util.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: Now you're upstairs from that very cafe now, right?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm uh we live upstairs, the cafe is downstairs.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did you build this building you're in?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it started off as a small two-bedroom, small bathroom, small kitchen building on cement post, and now it's uh let's see, we have built two additions.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: We made our back porch a kitchen, we built a uh big, a small dock, then a larger dock, then a bigger dock.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's been incredible.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: God's provision for us.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we have had so many conversations with people from all over the world.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we have an Israeli couple coming today.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: We met them yesterday.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually gonna come and prepare shatchuks.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to say that.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very famous North African dish that uh Israelis uh really love making.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna make lunch for us today.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we've had uh Germans, we've had uh French, we had a dinner at our house on Monday night, we had an Italian girl, a French guy, we had uh four English people, uh, we had the Honduran people, we had Americans.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was it's amazing what God is doing and providing.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it all started off with uh him giving us the authority to start a cafe here.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they yeah, you went with the intent of having a church, but as the Lord's wisdom said, well, people may not grace the the doorway of a church, but they will go into a coffee shop.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: And unlike some people that jump all over people proselytizing, you said you need to learn that you have to earn the equity.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: I said, earn the equity.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's a brilliant way to put it.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because too many people get religious and they jump all over people.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna know Jesus or you're gonna go to hell.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't you just be friends with somebody first?
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's what you said.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Earn the equity, and then they might say, Hey, well, well, there's something different about you.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is it?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, may I tell you about my savior, Jesus?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a young lady that uh we met when we got here uh about a month ago.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: She's uh dive master and uh just a very sweet-hearted girl from San Diego, and um she's here, and now she's gonna be leaving next week.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I never had a conversation with her about Jesus, but uh we've had many meals with her.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: She's been sitting here uh at our cafe.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she sat next to me at a few restaurants, and yesterday she's uh telling us about her plan to go to school and be qualified as a crew member on private yachts, and but yet she's got this background of all sorts of experiences, and that was the moment, Rhett.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: After hours of being with this girl, that I finally said, Olivia, I don't know what your spiritual background is, but I know this that God has a plan for you.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: And you're uh 26 right now and you've got life experiences.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, do you have a spiritual background?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, No, not really.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I had, I was in the same place when I got to Maui in 1981, and I didn't have any uh plan or purpose in my life other than to travel and have fun.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I became a follower of Jesus and I started asking him the question, and I realized he had a purpose.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Olivia, start asking the question.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: You see, it took me hours of being with this girl before I finally had enough equity in the relationship to actually bring it up.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now she's gonna be going to school in Fort Lauderdale, and she's uh her mother uh lives in uh Miami, so she's gonna have a vehicle.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: She's probably going to see us next month in Vero Beach.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, so so I think that God gives you authority to go and do something, whether it's pray for somebody, go help somebody, go down to the park in Burlington and help uh the homeless wret, uh, whatever it is.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: When he tells you to do it, know that he's given you authority and it's gonna happen.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now we just have to really pay attention to the details and be willing to go and step out and be risky uh in uh uh in uh the uh as we walk this out.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: But look at the third thing, the third aspect of what he tells his disciples to do.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: He see, first of all, verse seven, he gives them authority.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Verse eight, he says, Don't take anything with you.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I got your back, I'm gonna provide everything.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then verse 10, he says, wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, why would he say that, Rhett?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just stay stay stay there.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I uh What's gonna happen when they stay in the house that they're in rather than moving?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, people will come to know you and trust you.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you're gonna build relationships.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but you know what happened to me?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna get a kick out of this.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm like a forest gump.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: I was so neat, I was traveling around doing concerts, so I came into the Carolinas a few years ago.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: And this nice elderly couple, I was booked at three different churches for concerts.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they said, Oh, come stay at our house.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I stayed at their house.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: And a few days went by and a week went by, and then two weeks went by, and finally, you know, uh the man came to me and said, I think it might be time for you know you to move along.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was so naive.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: The poor guy.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: I stayed at their house.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: Did you become friends with him?
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, but I overstayed my welcome.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was pretty naive back then, you know.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but did you have good uh uh did you develop a good relationship with them?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: I believe so, except it's overstaying, you know.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Were they good, uh were they followers of Jesus?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, see, I think the key here to understanding this stay in the home, develop relationships.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because developing relationships with people is the natural organic way to spread the gospel, yeah.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: Not jumping off, not jumping on on top of people, but as you said, building up that uh what do you call it?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh equity in the relationship like you do in a home.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: You you know, you make the payment.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: The key word is relationship.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: And relationship.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: If if you look at the Christian history in the first, second, and third century, according to many studies, and one I'll quote is Rodney Stark's The Rise of Christianity, a socialist, uh sociologist that actually did this study.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: But Rodney said there was about 10,000 Christians at the end of the first century, but by the middle of the fourth century, there were 33 million Christians in the Roman Empire, constituting 56 percent of the population.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: We took over the Roman Empire, and now the rest of Rodney's book is How Did We Do It?
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, we treated women differently.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: We gave them dignity, we gave them positions and of authority.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Second, we took care of orphans and widows.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when the Romans who had uh female babies would often throw them off the Tiber River or take them out into the woods and just leave them, the Christians would walk out in the woods and find these babies and bring them home and raise them as their own.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: When the plagues came in in 160, and then another one came 90 years later in 250, which wiped out about a third of the population of the cities.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Christians that stayed around and they cared for the uh sick people.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: The pagans just threw them outside of their house and just let them die in the streets.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: The Christians took them in, gave them food and water.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do that, their chances of survival jumped by 33%.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Christians were the ones caring.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: When the Christians were known as being overly generous with their possessions.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so the whole strategy that Rodney is describing of what how the church became the majority was because of relationships.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here Jesus is saying, when you go to a place, build relationships.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is how I'm gonna grow my kingdom.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend uh Chip Kendall, who uh is a very powerful evangelist, uh singer, a dancer, uh, he and his family uh in England.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Chip is the son of Roy and Mary Kendall, who are our friends that live in Jerusalem.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's where Chip grew up, was in Jerusalem.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he says, whenever I'm out on the road, I never want to stay in a hotel.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: I always ask the ministry that I'm working with, can I stay in a host home?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can I stay in a home and get to know people because that's where the kingdom of God grows.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this little short passage of chapter six gives us everything we need for the mission that God has called us to.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he tells us to do something specific.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: He told his disciples, go cast out unclean spirits.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you authority to do that.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: He told you, Rhett, go to Zimbabwe and put on some concerts.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you the authority to do that.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go in my power and not your power.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I've noticed, Rhett, is in my uh missionary work, my experience living in Central America and in the Middle East over the last uh I don't know, 37, 38, 39, 40 years.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen people that have shown up and they're not there because God called them to be there.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're there because they get an idea that, well, I'm not really fitting into my community.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll go be a missionary.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've met some of these people, but they're really misfits.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they come to a place and they're volunteering to work, but the reality is because of their personal issues and things going on, they're not very effective in reaching out to the people, at least that I've been working with, that we uh spend more time caring for them than they're caring for the people that we're supposed to be there serving.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually they leave and go back home.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they were not called.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I want to tell you a story, huh?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: I want to tell you a story, and it is about relationship.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I was invited to Zimbabwe, Africa, and when we got there, we had to go to a print shop and um to make up posters, and they had posters with my picture on it and the evangelist's picture on it.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, anyway, the day came for our concert.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: There were between seven and nine thousand Zimbabweans in this uh downtown Chabuk Stadium at the uh Chabuk Chabook Stadium in downtown Harari.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um, okay, so they have a podium in the middle of the stadium, right?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then they had um, so anyway, I I went out there first and I started singing.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was really inspired by Mother Teresa because they said wherever she was, she was right with that person, you know.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh they she was she she one day she was pulling the worms out of a man's body.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, he was they brought him in from the from the from the uh road and they put him on nice linen, white linen, and she was picking the worms out.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: And and they and they they said, Well, why are you doing this?
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: He's just gonna die anyway.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Yes, but he will die with dignity.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the next day he did die.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, I'm singing.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you know what I did?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: I went up to the they had um fencing.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so I went up to the fencing, uh, strolled right over with my microphone, and I all these hands, these little black hands were coming over, the Afrikans, and I I was touching them and shaking, touching all of them, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm touching their hands, you know, I'm singing songs about Jesus.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I was done with my three songs, and I sat down.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then the preacher got up behind the pulpit.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: This is a true story, the outside.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, we're outside in the outside pulpit, and he's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, he's done preaching at him.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden, uh, we were uh there was a black minister there.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: We were his guests in the country, and some other uh dignitaries of his or friends, whatever.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so they started yelling.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is gonna sound this is not I boast not of myself, only of what love does.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: So all of a sudden, the Africans were going, huh, ha ha, huh?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: They were yelling, Palmer, Palmer, Palmer, 7,000, 8,000 of them, Palmer.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the black man, the ministry turns to me and goes, they are calling for you, they are calling for you to go back up there.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I got back up there, and they were anyway.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: What it was was I had touched them, not just spoken at them, but touched them, and their hearts were touched.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: When I got back to America, I received literally thousands of letters.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is uh a very practical application of this principle.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the personal touch is key in any mission that God sends us on, is the personal touch.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Our willingness to listen, our willingness to uh, you know, to touch African kids.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've touched many mosquito kids, a lot of them with boils and other things.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there when we've given them worm medicine, I've watched worms come out of their bellies, uh, them coughing and worms come out of their mouth.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a nasty business.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I gotta say that the just us being that kind of servant speaks more volumes than any words I ever said to them.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you got me thinking today that I need to go downtown to Bur Burlington.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna buy myself a uh a table at Walmart and maybe buy uh$300 worth of pizzas and just go there and give out pieces of pizza to the to the homeless in the in the in the uh park.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, give it a shot and uh and see what happens, Rett.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just give it a make use of your time there.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, you're uh uh God's uh I think God sends you there more than just to enjoy the cool air.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it's angry.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: I sometimes in my life I I lately I had not felt maybe as happy as I used to be.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I went, well, that's because you're living for yourself more.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm older, you know, I've got a rent a house here, kind of indulging in self.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Indulging in self is not really a great place to be, you know.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you gotta be uh for me, travel was sort of one of my gods of traveling.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was fortunate in my life and especially in my Navy years to travel pretty much in many parts of the world.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when I moved to Hawaii, that was just another part of that adventure of travel.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've realized that travel without purpose is pointless, and it's just another uh bus, it's another airplane, it's another train, it's another hotel.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the scenery's great once you've seen the Alps.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen one Alp, you've seen them all, what a beautiful sunset over the lake.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're traveling with God's purpose, it's a completely different situation.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I'm traveling, I'm always asking the question, and Laura is uh so with me on this.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: We wake up in the morning and we say, Okay, Lord, today is your day.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Use us, give us purpose, give us your purpose, and introduce us to people that you want us to uh pour into.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Weren't you on a plane and the Lord had someone sit next to you, a girl, a female, and some well, it was actually 1986.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'd gone back to Florida uh to spend Christmas with my folks.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been in Honduras at that point for almost two years, and so I'm sitting on a flight uh to Tegucigalpa, and there's a girl sitting next to me.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, okay, uh, well, I don't see too many uh single ladies uh going to Honduras because there's a war going on there.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked this young lady uh who was about probably my age, maybe I was probably 33, 34, she's probably late, middle, late 20s.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, why are you going to Honduras?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, I'm going to Roatan, I'm going diving.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this I didn't know much about the Bay Islands at that point, but obviously the we're on part of the second largest barrier reef of system of the world, so there's great diving in the Bay Islands.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, uh, that's really cool.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What are you going there for?
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, Well, how can I make this interesting?
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said a quick prayer, and I said, Well, um I work there.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, You work there?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what do you do?
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I work for a guy, he just this guy is just the smartest guy I've ever met.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: He knows everything.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he takes really good care of us.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Wow, that sounds like a good boss.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that we need, he gives us for our work.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to want for anything.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Wow, that's really cool.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I said, the best part is our retirement plan is literally out of this world.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Wow, that sounds like a company that I need to be working for.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, funny thing you should say that because we're taking applications right now.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she smiled, and I and then I told her what I was doing.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had a conversation, that lady, that young lady and I.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her about my time going to Maui.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: I told her about becoming a Christian.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: I told her uh about uh feeling the call to come and help these refugees, and then uh what God was doing and the things he had done, and we landed.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen that girl again.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I cannot help but believe that somehow my words to her on that two-hour flight had some eternal significance.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: I tell you what, I remember back I was in my 20s, I didn't know Jesus, I didn't even know what Easter was about.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I was doing a jingle for the American Lung Association, the CEO took me out for lunch with a group of his those in authority, and they he started saying, Do you know Jesus?
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: I felt so embarrassed.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: This guy's a Jesus freak.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had a friend of mine who was converted, and I'm watching him for the next year.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I went out to Hollywood, I was at the ABC commissary, and this guy's telling me that he was a homosexual, he came to know Jesus, and he probably wasn't going to be the star.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: He'd been in some movies, but because now he wasn't living that lifestyle, uh, he was from my hometown, apparently.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, but he said he was converted.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: He's telling me about Jesus and some cameraman over here who's eating his tuna sandwich says, Amen, hallelujah, brother.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, I'm surrounded by these Jesus freaks everywhere I went.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, it got into my head, and that's when I got up.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: I started watching Pat Robertson on on TV.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I I like the fact that he spoke gently and intelligently.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I got up one uh one Sunday morning and I just started talking up to the ceiling and saying, okay, uh, you know, I'll take a chance.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody says you're real.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: You died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead, and then I said, uh, and I surrender the rest of my life to you.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was filled with the Holy Ghost.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: And my I have to say this, I'm I'm I apologize, Father in heaven.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the first thing I thought was, oh, this is why people do drugs, drugs of a counterfeit.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is the real thing.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was so beautiful.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I sat down in the rocking chair and I was going, wow, you're real, you're real.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so all those witnesses, so to speak, built up that I finally, you know, God closed the deal.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty cool, huh?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Rhett, uh, I think this life is an exciting one.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we give our time back to the Lord, I think when we have uh an idea that we're here to serve Him and serve the people around us, I think that changes everything in our life.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Life has purpose, life has uh a divine interjection of knowledge, wisdom, and power.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: It has divine interjection of provision.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I gotta say, Rhett, at the end of our days, we're gonna look back, and it's not gonna be the mountains that I skied down or the sunsets that I watched, it's gonna be those moments with kids that uh are gonna make the difference.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll just let me just finish by just uh just a story that happened on Sunday.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have a Bible study here at our uh cafe on Sunday morning.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you're at what island, friends?
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're on what island?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: On the island of Utilla in the Western Caribbean, off the north coast of Honduras.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of our friends is a girl named Saray, who's a uh dive instructor, and this is a girl from a very uh remote part of Honduras, back in the mountains, and she grew up really dirt poor.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, her family, her father was not around, her mom was so poor, uh, and the situation, excuse me, was such that her mom didn't even have a legal name, didn't even have a birth certificate.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when Saray was born, she didn't have a uh a birth certificate, but her mom scraped together enough money where she could start attending school.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: Saray was really embarrassed because she's walking to school uh and it would and with her one pencil and her one uh notebook and in a plastic bag, and just abject poverty this girl grew up in.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the third grade, her teacher made some connections with some American organization, and suddenly a donation arrived.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Saray was handed a little backpack with pencils and notebooks and other things in it, and she said she opened it up, and inside was a drawing that some child in America had uh made a drawing to give to whatever person, whatever girl or boy was going to get this backpack.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: And she put that up on her bedroom wall.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly she felt value, she felt like somebody was caring for her, and it changed this girl's life.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, somebody, some kid back in America at some church or something, the parents said, Oh, we're gonna send some uh a backpack full of school supplies to Honduras.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: And not knowing that this changed her life.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: Her whole life trajectory changed as a result of that.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now she's a dive instructor.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's married to uh to she married one of her students who's a guy from Canada.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she's having her uh religious uh ceremony uh in March.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: She already had the civil ceremony.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: She asked me if I would participate in that.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this girl's life was changed because somebody in America told a family to put together a backpack of school supplies.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at Laura uh while she's telling this story, and Saray's sitting right next to me, and she's weeping while she's telling the story.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because Laura and I put together those backpacks, and we brought so many school supplies to uh we had tens of thousands of Mosquito Indian uh children over the 37 years that we ran our school project, and often we wonder, did we even make a difference?
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, you you gave that group that your your your part of giving her that no, no, this was our uh school project is in a very different part of Honduras, way out to the east.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: But just we suddenly realized that all the things that we did, there are random kids that are now adults like Saray, that their life was changed because we gave them education and we gave them the word of God and we gave them school supplies, dignity, and for so long, you know, we've wondered did we did we really make a difference?
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I would just want to encourage when God tells you to do something, guys, and he gives you the authority to do it and he gives you the provision to do it, you are going to impact somebody for eternity.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: So please start today tomorrow and ask the Lord, what do you want me to do with these 24 hours?
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Show me what you want to do, give me authority to do it, empower me to do it, give me all that I need to do it, and while I'm doing it, let me develop the relationships with the people that you put in front of me.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is the mission, this is the kingdom of God at work.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we will turn our society around.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, and so one on one hallelujah, hallelujah.