The Heavenly Vision

SERMON: 2009-08-19--ac2607--the-heavenly-vision SOURCE DURATION: 00:53:26.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: All provided candidates form a cohesive sequence of prophetic declarations and liturgical praise (a structured sermon conclusion). Since there is no clear transition to non-sermon material (like music or announcements) after the final candidate, I must select the last segment as per instructions. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:49:56.460-00:53:19.080 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, I don't know if you've ever noticed this in your own reading perhaps of the book of Acts, but there are three instances where Paul relates his own personal testimony. The first time is in Acts chapter 22, that is when Paul has returned to Jerusalem after his missionary journeys. Some Jews from Asia recognize him. They are angry because he is preaching the gospel to Jew and to Gentile alike. They think he has brought a Gentile into the temple court and they turn the whole city upside down and Paul finds himself in the midst of a riot. The Roman soldiers come in and they rescue him. He receives permission to address the crowd and he tells them his own journey. And then again in Acts chapter 24 there he is on trial before the Roman governor Felix at Caesarea and there again he tells his story and then here in Acts chapter 26 the verses that we have just read together when he gives an account of himself to King Agrippa who is a visiting friend of Festus the governor. And the reason Paul tells his personal testimony in each of these instances I believe is because his life is a powerful demonstration of the message that he has been called to proclaim. He summarizes that message in his testimony when he quotes the Lord Jesus is saying I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Paul's own conversion story was a powerful demonstration a powerful illustration of the very message that God had charged him to preach. At the risk of sounding self-indulgent or presumptuous I want to share with you a little bit of my own journey during these 35 years of ministry and I do that this morning for two reasons. The first because I really want to share with you and testify to the Lord's faithfulness. I think I can say honestly with John Newton certainly in terms of my life and ministry through many dangers toils and snares I have already come. Disgrace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home. I want to encourage you that in all the ups and downs of life when sometimes you don't know where you're going God's still there and then secondly I want to encourage and challenge each of us to embrace the calling that God places on our lives even when by times that calling may be very difficult and when everything inside us says I want to throw in the towel because this is not what I bargained for when I signed up as a follower of Jesus. Are you good with that? As most of you know I was born in 1947 the fifth of seven children born to Maylis and Cornelia Visser. My father was the oldest in a farming family farmed all his life before he died in his mid-50s very early premature. My mother was the daughter of a blacksmith one of two children and only daughter and we often joke in our family that whatever technical or mechanical skills any of us possess it comes from his side it certainly doesn't come from my father's side. And one of the interesting tidbits of history as I reflect on my parents is that my father had always wanted to be a preacher never had the opportunity and my mother when she was a young girl had wanted to be a physician. That was quashed when her father according to the custom of those days at the age 12 took her out of school because she had to help her mother at home. My mother always resented that partly because there were only two kids at home and there really wasn't a lot to be done at home and and obviously because it kept her from pursuing her dreams. Now I gotta tell you I'm grateful she didn't become a doctor she would have never met my father and there's a whole lot of us that wouldn't be here. You know there'd be a lot of others but that wouldn't do me any good probably. But here's the interesting tidbit I think it's more than coincidental that my younger brother Hank ended up feeling called to become a physician and I ended up feeling called to become a preacher I'll tell you more about that a little bit later. I believe it's not coincidental because I think there is an anointing and a calling from a previous generation that has come upon our shoulders and we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us and that is true for good or ill for all of us. No man or woman is an island we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us in very significant ways. Well at the age of 10 in 1958 my family and I emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada and that handsome young man over here that would be me surrounded by my school buddies who would come to Rotterdam to wave us goodbye. It was an incredible adventure when you're ten years of age the fun wore off real fast when the ocean liner bobbed up and down for ten days on waves that you didn't know how high they could be. We had a cabin towards the end of this ship and you don't know how sick you are until you are seasick for a good portion of the journey. Well we landed in PEI where our family settled and I remember clearly to this day the challenges of learning English and I can so clearly remember the exact spot where I was on my way home from school uphill against the wind both ways as they say and I caught myself thinking in English for the first time. Now some of you say that's not a big thing that's because you've never learned a second language. If you have ever learned a second language and try to speak it then you will know that at the early stages of learning to speak a language then you always think it out in your native tongue and then you translate it in your mind and then you try to speak it and here I caught myself all of a sudden learning to think in English. Now that got me into some trouble because at one point my friends and I at Victoria Public School were playing baseball and I picked up some words in the English language that weren't quite as noble I won't tell you what it was but I I let out a good English expletive only to discover that my teacher was standing right behind me and she turned to the other teacher and she said well at least John is learning English fast and then she took me aside and gave me a good dressing down about the proper use of the English language some things you just don't ever really forget. Somewhere between the age of 12 and 14 I sensed God's call to ministry I cannot tell you how that came about it was simply there. I know it came out in a conversation with my father in the stable behind the cows when he asked me if I had ever given any thought to what I was going to be and all of a sudden it was just there not because it was his agenda or his wishes because I didn't even know about that at that point in time but because it was a genuine call of God in my own life. I do know that in subsequent years I was significantly and powerfully impacted and influenced by Billy Graham. He had a crusade in Charlottetown somewheres along that period of time and for quite a number of years I was an avid listener to the hour of decision. I used to practice my preaching to the cows which made a great audience and really experienced the power of modeling as a matter of fact when I was in college I wrote a paper on Billy Graham there was a period in my life where I could tell you I knew more about Billy Graham than Billy Graham knew about himself and I've often looked back on that and I have said it's so important in all our lives isn't it to have somebody that we look up to who embodies a certain set of values so that we can build our lives on it. Paul says be imitators of me as I am of Christ and it's also so important for us to be aware that even as we look to others to be role models for us there will be others in turn who look to us for us to be role models for them. In connection with my birthday last week I got this birthday card from Jalene Mitema. Jalene just wave your hand so that people can see who you are. Most of you won't have met her in Timiak. Tim is the son of my good friend Art Mitema from Nova Scotia. Art was my closest friend for many years died a number of years ago and they've just moved here with their kids but remember how two weeks ago I shared with you the story of Michelle and I shopping for shoes and boots in Winnipeg with Deborah? How can you forget he? Well here's what Jalene writes in this card listen to this she says this week I went and bought our son Tristan a new pair of shoes and a new sweater vest and his first response upon seeing his new items was oh wow now I look more like Pastor John. He was all smiles I thought it was pretty cute. You never know who's watching and it's important to recognize the importance of being a role model. Well after high school I left for Calvin College in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1965 Calvin is our denominational school I went there to follow their pre-seminary course to prepare for ministry and I got to tell you the first couple of weeks there were tough I had never been away from home for an extended period of time that wasn't so bad but because of the way I had traveled by train they had lost my suitcase and for the first week or more I had to live out of the little that I had carried with me not only that but remember 1947 is the front wave of the baby boomers so they had many more students enrolled and they had dormitory facilities for and so I ended up being the fifth man in a four-man suite I got shoved into a corner it was a difficult experience at least for a little while until I got used to it you can tell how homesick I was by the fact that I seriously contemplated going back home and planting potatoes seemed very attractive to me now you got to know that farming is not my calling to know how deep that ran well I survived developed a number of friendships and as I look back over my college years there are really three things that especially stand out the first was my involvement in our college radio station it was a little carrier current a station that could only be heard in the dorms but very early on I inherited the general manager position and what arrived I mean we first year we tripled our budget we went to 24 hours a day broadcasting we managed a hookup with the NBC radio network for next to nothing that is still an amazing thing to me these days and we had a staff of about 40 kids and it was my first introduction to learning management and leadership in that kind of setting if you consider that here we have John Eric von Lunkheisen who is a hard rock fan and here we have Kenneth A. Bush I don't know why it was always Kenneth A. Bush but that was his name a classical music devotee unlike anything that I'd ever seen now you put these two together in your programming team and you ought to watch the sparks fly they not only don't like each other's music they don't like each other either but it was a fascinating and an interesting experience and I got to tell you I still look back upon it with great fondness it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life then it was a time of personal growth and some of you have heard this story very early on in my life at Calvin two resident advisors a guy by the name of Phil Tao and John Deckinga took me under their wing and they shared with me in more detail what it means to receive Christ as your Savior and what it means to receive him as your Lord powerfully impacted my life and changed it to the core even though I was already in school studying for ministry Jesus became real to me in a way that he had not been real before and then it was a time of severe testing and again some of you have heard me share this story after Christ became real and I was growing I prayed that radical and dangerous prayer Lord do whatever you need to do to make me the kind of Christian you want me to be it's a good thing we don't know ahead of time what happens when we pray that kind of prayer I thought I'd sprout wings sport a halo and go straight to heaven God will become more real this is too good not to give myself to instead the bottom fell out of my world my father died every sense of God's presence left me and for the first time in my life I seriously questioned the validity of the Christian faith God are you there what is this all about and what made this particularly painful is that this is all happening in the months leading up to my enrollment at Calvin Seminary and the idea of proclaiming Christ and the truth of the Christian faith when my life is torn apart was an incredibly painful thing that I wouldn't want to wish on my worst enemy but God knows what he does and what it taught me was to walk by faith and on by sight because up until then when God was near and I sensed his presence there was no end to the willingness that I had to serve him but take that all away and I wanted to throw the towel in and walk away from it and in subsequent years I've had the opportunity of walking this out with a lot of people when I've had to take them by the hand and say listen we walk by faith and not by sight God is there whether you see him or whether you don't see him he loves you whether you feel his love yes or no the Sun is shining even when it's hidden by the clouds and he is worthy of our praise and of our worship and our obedience even when it's the last thing in the world that we want to do and it sets us free to love him and to be obedient to him in ways that are different from when our emotions are engaged so that was a deep lesson and a deep experience that has stayed with me all my life took a number of years to come out of that sort of and then upon graduating from Calvin in 1969 I enrolled in Calvin Seminary if you've ever been to the Calvin campus then you know that the seminary is a one-corner of the whole campus a place that was a farm in the mid to late 50s was bought by Calvin when they moved their campus from the downtown Franklin Street campus to the Norquist campus great job and incredibly beautiful facilities it was I think in that first year that I was introduced to Wayne Kears now you remember my sharing Wayne's story how he died by his own hand a number of weeks ago four of us shared an apartment that first year and Dale Evenhouse so many of you know and whom I had met in my radio station days he was our librarian when I first met him and a guy with the name of Jake Weida who now is a pastor and then Wayne who also lived with us that first year and that one of my favorite pictures of that year is this shot I don't know if you can read that but that sign says men working this handsome dude here you might recognize in studious mode this is Jake Weida you can't see Dale's face but this is Dale here and this is Wayne they showed this picture a couple of weeks ago at Wayne's memorial service and I remember thinking somebody stole that sign and I have no idea to this day who I know it was an eye and I doubted was Dale so the Lord will judge but it wasn't me now Wayne and Michelle knew each other because they grew up in the same church well in Junction Christian Reformed Church and long before I met either of them they had gone out on a date now to my good fortune that date was not a terribly happy experience and so they remain good friends but it never went anything further but that's a little bit of information that at the end of that first year I did my first year internship in Fredericton New Brunswick the reason for that was that up until then I didn't have a car and some of you may remember my story of bargaining with the Lord earlier to get that Oldsmobile that I was going to buy but didn't succeed in order to help my love life along and it crashed badly but at this period in time the family had an extra car in 1968 Pontiac so I had to go back to PEI pick that car up and I took a summer assignment in Fredericton where I would be the seminarian or the summer student leading a team of youth called swim summer workshop in ministries and that summer was significant for three reasons first of all I met my lovely wife Michelle now isn't that a cute picture other really I saw that picture on our application and I fell in love with her right away you got to remember the Lord had told me previously and this may sound strange to you but that I would find my wife that summer on a swim team so here in the Lord's providence he gives me a team of charming young ladies there's a fifth girl that's not on that picture her name is Dorothy she'd been in a bad car crash and was still injured and not able to leave with these girls this girl here is L Boonster's sister Jane who passed away a number of years ago this is Tessie who would later marry Wayne and this is a girl called Ruth and a girl called Jeanette this sad dude back here is myself this is as the team is leaving at the airport and just to let you know my romantic flair those roses that they're carrying can you see those roses that was my farewell gift to eat isn't that touching we had we had a great summer together and I'll tell you more about that in a moment but a second reason Fredericton was really significant is that I had the privilege of working under pastor Tony Vanden in the pastor Tony had in fact been Michelle's pastor previously in Welland Junction which is one of the reasons she had signed up for that team to be with him and Tony is now retired struggling with recurrent cancer but was an incredible man of God with an incredible heart for the lost and if you ever wonder where my passion for the lost came from it is in part because I saw he'd modeled in his life I will be forever grateful for his impact on my life and then Fredericton is significant because it's a place I got into big trouble that is me being pilloried you can not see that very clearly at kangaroo court at the end of my stay in Fredericton and here is how it happened any of you that are old enough to ever have been involved in swim will know that one of the rules about the swim program was that you don't date and that produced some tension between my determined call of God to marry this woman and the program but we were pretty good about it really until the end we had this youth camp at camp mack the quack and somehow I had received the impression that the last night in camp was a free-for-all that nobody had to worry about curfew and all of that sort of stuff so Michelle and I went sauntering off into the woods for an extended period of time because remember we're soon parting now and who knows where this is going to lead and our kids were all over the camp making trouble so Tony Vanden Ender finds out about this rounds up all these kids get them back into the cabin he says where's John oh he's out for a walk with Michelle in the woods well there we are hiding in the woods and there comes Tony Vanden Ender with his flashlight trying to find us I have never so identified with Adam and Eve in my life to our credit we hid well that too we learned from Adam and Eve and he never found us but next morning seven o'clock there he comes marching into my cabin and he says in his sternest voice you get into my cabin right now and I got that dressing down of my life well deserved but I got in big trouble and this was my punishment at kangaroo court it was an experience to never forget well a year or so later Michelle and I got married and at that marriage Tess was are made of honor you got to love this 70s I mean just look at those dresses psychedelic and colorful so here's Tess made of honor for Michelle this is her sister Mary and this is Jeanette who had been in our swim team this is Dale my best man my brother Gerard who now has the cancer and my youngest brother Hank who is the physician it was Michelle who introduced Wayne to Tess and so you can appreciate why his death was particularly impacting on our lives so after graduation then from seminary in 1972 we went first back to PEI where David was born and then we received a call from the Barhead Westlock congregation in Alberta an unusual congregation in the sense that they were two separate congregations half an hour apart but they had one council and they were really one church and I remember getting the call as I was staying at my mother's house I had never heard of Barhead and I had never heard of Westlock before and unless you're familiar with Alberta I bet you you hadn't either so I went upstairs where my mother had this big world map hanging on the wall and I said I got to see if that's on the map and wouldn't you know it there is a Barhead and there is Westlock and I said to myself those have got to be fairly prominent communities to feature to being featured on a world map well we get there later on and we discover there isn't a single soul around that whole area and there's enough room on the map to print both of those names what a revelation so we spend time there and our stay in that congregation was significant for a number of reasons first of all Michael and Deborah were born there and then it was a place where I received a revelation of the person of Jesus unlike anything that I had ever experienced before for a number of years now five years as a matter of fact I had prayed Lord help me to understand what it means to be joined to Christ in his death and in his resurrection nothing much had happened in fact I had forgotten that I had even prayed that prayer until five years later one day as I'm sitting in my study and this is the only time it has ever happened in my life it's like the Lord says to me I want you to read Matthew chapter 1 now that puzzled me because I know that Matthew chapter 1 is the genealogy of Jesus so Lord what are you trying to tell me so I started reading the genealogy of Jesus the son of David the son of Abraham and that's as far as I ever got and all of a sudden my eyes were open to recognize that Jesus is the heir to all promises made to Abraham what are the promises made to Abraham is that he would and his descendants would be the people of God and they would serve his redemptive purposes for the world and all of a sudden my eyes were open to understand that all the blessings promised to Abraham became real in Christ and then by extension all those of us who are joined to Jesus as Paul says so clearly in Galatians I discovered later are Abraham's offspring heirs according to the promise revolutionized my life and my preaching ministry because I understood in ways I had never understood before the incredible impact of being united by faith to Jesus the second thing that happened there that was highly significant is that towards the end of my stay there I received what I felt was a revelation from the Lord that one day I would be called to pastor the Maranatha Christian Reformed Church in Belleville Ontario not a word of a lie the Lord had in that season of my life late 77 and part of 78 sort of pulled back the veil about what was going to happen to me professionally in the next year he pointed out a number of places where I would receive calls all of which came and my my understanding was that at the end of that I would be called to Belleville Ontario whole story in itself my wife will vouch for the veracity of this story because Belleville this congregation was without a pastor at the time and so we were following the calling process along in the banner this was before pastor Henry get Kate came here and I turned to her and say those silly people if they'd only get on the right page call me then both they and we would be together in the way that clearly the Lord has intention well you didn't you called pastor get Kate instead from Sarnia in retrospect that was God's ordering because pastor Henry did a lot of the plowing in this congregation that needed to be done to bring us to where we are today and we would not be where we are if he hadn't been prepared to pay that kind of price so time went on and shortly thereafter I received a call from the Kentville Christian Reformed Church in Nova Scotia and my wife and I always joked that I got the vill part right but I got the first part wrong and so we went left Alberta in March of that year it was an early spring our winter clothes were all packed away and we had our summer shoes on and we hadn't listened to any weather forecasts and we drove straight into a blinding snowstorm in Wawa Ontario I have never heard of Wawa before all the motels were full except for one motel at the end of the road that had one room left and there we packed our whole family and climbing over all these huge snowdrifts so it's not an exaggeration in our summer shoes and our light jackets and we got this room next to the creakiest sign that you have ever heard went back and forth all night long in the wind we paid good money for a little sleep that night but at least we weren't in the car two summers back or whenever it was that Michelle and I went to Winnipeg to drop Deborah and Tino's stuff off we said on the way back we got to see what Wawa looks like in the summer so we drove into that little community the hotel is still there but thank the Lord the sign is gone so when we came to Nova Scotia to the Canterville congregation we discovered there was a whole contingent of people there who were just so hungry for the Lord that the gospel quickly took effect in their lives and and Frank and Florence Brink were part of that contingent in those days and if you were at Florence's funeral you may remember the story of how Florence was the first person in that congregation in one of our prayer meetings to come forward and to say I want what Jesus has for me she was the first person we prayed over and her life she says was changed forever their daughter Susan and husband Dawn and their family more recently have just moved into this community to be with Frank and to be with us and they're part of this congregation now and learned a lot in that period of time one of the highlights was a profession of faith service where we had 17 people make profession of faith five of which were adult baptisms it was a glorious time of celebration marred by the fact that one of the men in the congregation thought that we were trying to stack the membership by bringing all these new people in and in the middle of that service if you can picture this and I can see this like the day of today Frank will remember this he was up on the balcony and he starts reading out a protest against counsel in this service now you got a picture of this I have never been so angry in my life and I can say with confidence that if not altogether at least 99% of my anger was a very righteous anger I was furious and I told him to sit down and he didn't so I turned to the serving elder who just loved me for this and I said you better go up there and tend to him he was a peacemaker so he didn't like that very much by the time he got there somebody else had pulled this guy down into the seat and I got to tell you the rest of the service went on not only unhindered but it was like the congregation rose to the occasion and we caught the wind of the Holy Spirit and we had an incredible celebration at that particular time and so along came late 1984 into 1985 when one day as I was in the kitchen I got a telephone call from Jake Burke who's in of this congregation now remember that whole you're going to Maranatha Belleville story was still playing in the back of my mind I get him on the phone and he says where he is from and he says would you be interested in considering a call to Belleville I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that I nearly dropped my drawers it came out of the blue and I said to him well it depends on what you're looking for if all you want is maintenance ministry then I'm not your person because by that time I was tired of churches playing church I'll tell you but if you want to commit yourself to following the Lord and move forward with him into renewal then we can talk and so one thing led to another I visited here some of you will remember that the congregation called and then in July July 16 of 1985 we moved here the reason I remember that date so well is that was Jonathan's first birthday he had been born a year previously in Nova Scotia and the other reason I remember that date so clearly is the first night that we were here we not only almost got hit by a car trying to find our way into Orchard Drive because it's hard to find this place when you don't know where it is you all end up in the street behind here well this was compounded by the fact that the streets were dug so we could see the promised land but we didn't know how to get there so in that process they almost ran into somebody and then that night we got violently ill probably food poisoning don't know if it was one of the fine Maranatha folks who fed us that caused us to almost die or if it was McDonald's along the way but it was not a happy and auspicious beginning but here we are now well over 22 years later and I got to tell you my incredible gratitude to you and to this congregation for your heart for the Lord your heart for each other and your heart for us you have carried us particularly in these last couple of years as we struggled with illness and business and financial problems in ways that I could never have dreamed up I have said to a lot of people I've always been accustomed to being on the giving end and to have been as we have been and continue to be on the receiving end you have no idea how humbling that is but also how gratifying and the credit goes to the Lord and the credit goes to you because I think that's what it is to be Christian community so you say why do I tell you all of this because you know it's a long story well as I said at the beginning for two reasons the first because I want to testify to the faithfulness of God during these 35 years of my life and my ministry without in any way wanting to compare myself to the Apostle Paul I know that I share a similar ministry to him when he says that the Lord has called him to lead people out of darkness into the light and by way of repentance into the coming of God's kingdom I preach Jesus crucified risen exalted and coming again to judge the living and the dead now when you do that not only does that stir up all kinds of things in people's lives but it also stirs up the gates of hell because Satan is very jealous about his kingdom and if I were to tell you some of the other stories of what I have experienced in the course and in the context of ministry you would continue to be amazed that lovely wonderful good people can do the kinds of things they do and they can say the kind of things which they say and there have been times in the midst of that I've cried out to the Lord and said Lord here I am but send somebody else I don't like this it's too painful I'll remember in in our bar head days those two congregations somebody has said about two congregations either you can love the one and hate the other or you'll hate them both those two congregations were as different as day and night and one embraced the gospel wholeheartedly and the other not only resisted it for themselves but they also resisted it for the other congregation and so eventually this came to a head and we had a congregational meeting in which they voted then as to congregate as as two meeting places to go their separate ways I remember when that vote was being taken and the vote was being counted and you know we filled the time with singing hymns one of the hymns that somebody chose was the song blessed be the tie that binds I have never so been struck by the irony and I remember so clearly in one of those moments of battle one of my my primary supporters and elder whose life had powerfully been changed by the Lord he had come under pressure from some other people and he caved in at a critical point where we could not afford to cave in and I knew the battle for the soul of those two congregations was lost and I'm not one who cries easily but I lay on the floor that night and I wept bitter tears because I knew how painful this was and was going to be but you know I can stand here before you this day in good conscience and say as Paul does later on in Acts chapter 26 verse 22 I have had God's help to this very day and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike God is faithful even when we're not faithful and even when sometimes our own mistakes aggravate the situation we all need to know that and understand that because we'll all face challenges and difficulties at some point or another in our lives I want you to know when Jesus said I'll be with you always even to the end of the age that's exactly what he meant and then I want to encourage each of us to respond to our calling and remain faithful to it even in the face of difficulty and opposition and that's true individually and that's true corporately God has a call in each of our lives and if I look back over these last couple of years trying to discern Lord what are you doing in this community then I can say without any hesitation the Lord is trying to impart to us life abundantly especially in the deep dark places of our lives where we have been shut down if I look around what God does in my life what he does in staff and what he does in the broader Christian community he's digging around picking out those places of unresolved issues those places of shame that has shut us down those places where we just think we cannot live and we cannot function and in powerful ways he is breaking through into those places and he is raising from the dead people who are once dead in Satan's power coming alive under the power of Jesus and I got to tell you there's nothing more precious and nothing more beautiful than when people of God come into their inheritance and start leaving out their wives as the sons and the daughters of God most high but there's also a collective calling on our lives isn't that we're in the middle of this big transition into building new facilities we look forward to expanded ministry opportunities and as we go forward in this whole process if you haven't already there will be three dominant emotions that I can promise you by times will grab hold of you one is the feeling of being overwhelmed overwhelmed by the financial challenges overwhelmed by moving into expanded ministry areas and saying Lord I don't know if I can do that most of our staff is and has gone and will be going through those kinds of questions challenges of where am I going to set can you imagine this you got to find a new seat and what are you going to do if somebody else gets there before you do well that'll be traumatic and all kinds of things of this nature where you say Lord who is sufficient for these things I'm just warning you that if he haven't felt it already there will be times when you'll feel that another dominant emotion that you will feel by time is the temptation to scatter your focus if the enemy cannot keep us from going forward and focusing on our calling then he will try to spread us so thin occupied by so many different things that we will not be effective we will be jack-of-all-trades but master of none and in a community like this there are plenty of dreams plenty of goals plenty of agendas but we cannot possibly ever fulfill them all and part of our challenge is to zero in on the specific calling that the Lord places on us collectively as a community and then then there will be those times when we'll be tempted to circle the wagons and look after ourselves why did Paul get into so much trouble yes because he preached Jesus but that alone didn't get him into so much trouble what got him into trouble is that he preached Jesus to the Gentiles and the Gentiles began coming in to Christian community and you know what happens when Gentiles come into Christian community they change the makeup and now you've got to start rubbing with people that all your life you've been told to stay away from and I can tell you from my own experience now in 35 years of ministry that where the rubber hits the road is the inherent tension in the gospel between looking after ourselves and looking after our own needs and throwing wide open the door and allowing ourselves to intersect with the world they don't think like we do they have language that often we don't approve of they have cultural habits and customs and beliefs that are far removed from where we are and historically again and again what the church wants to do is rally the troops circle the wagons let's make sure that we remain true and faithful and let the world go to hell and Paul says I've been called to minister not only to Jew but also the Gentile because by the time the curtain falls in history it's people from every tribe tongue and nation that are going to be united around the throne of God and there will be times you rub shoulders with people that you don't understand you'll rub shoulders with people whose music or whose background or whose value is very different from your own and everything inside you will say I want to retreat back to where it's safe where I can control the agenda and where my my kids won't be polluted by the people out there do you know what I'm saying what's the antidote the antidote is to be obedient to the heavenly vision the antidote is to recognize that Jesus has come to call sinners to repentance and that the gospel applies to both Jew and Gentile that is to say people that have been raised in Christian community need Jesus every bit as much as people that have been raised outside of Christian community and the purpose of the cross is to make one people out of many and so as we keep our focus on Jesus he will give us the grace that we need so that we're not overwhelmed by the task as I said earlier as the little saying says it the will of God will not lead us or the grace of God will not sustain us as we're tempted to scatter our energy he 'll help us to understand where it is that he wants us to focus so that we can be effective in the one area where we need to be effective and when we're tempted to circle the wagons he'll show us that the genius of the gospel is that he can keep us safe even in the midst of the world because even while Jesus says we are not of the world we're still in the world and one of the things we're talking about the retreat is that Jesus knew how to hang around with sinners he knew how to hang around with prostitutes but he also knew never to go to bed with them that's the challenge and that's what God gives us grace for if we're obedient to him I believe with all my heart that if the Lord enables us to be faithful to him if he grants us the grace to obey him and he favors us with his presence our best years are yet to come there are people all around us the fields are white and to harvest but the laborers are few there's a lot of you in this place who wouldn't be here if this community had not been faithful to the call of God to lead you to Jesus and to help you to grow up in him and there's a lot more out there on that final day we all stand before the Lord we want to hear those words well done good and faithful servant you've been faithful over little I will put you over much my invitation to each of us is let's join together by faith in Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit and be about [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:49:56.460; remove through 00:53:26.000] the business of the [CUT] kingdom these are the days of your servant Moses righteous this meeting restored and those leaves are days of great trial of heaven and darkness and soul. We are the voice in the desert crying, preparing the way of the Lord. Behold he comes, riding on the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call. Lift your voice to hear and to believe and as I entail salvation comes. These are the days of Ezekiel the dry bones becoming his flesh and these are the days of your servant David rebuilding a temple of prayer and these are the days of the harvest the fields are as wide in the world. And we are the labors in your video declaring the word of the Lord. Behold he comes, riding on the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call. Lift your voice to hear and to believe and as I entail salvation comes. There is no God like Jehovah, there is no God like Jehovah, there is no God like Jehovah. There is no God like Jehovah, there is no God like Jehovah, there is no God like Jehovah. Behold he comes, riding on the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call. Lift your voice to hear and to believe and as I entail salvation comes. Behold he comes, riding on the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call. Lift your voice to hear and to believe and as I entail salvation comes. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:53:26.000; resume after this marked segment]