SPEAKER_01: Welcome to our podcast.
SPEAKER_01: We hope this powerful word from City Center Church transforms your mind and grows your relationship with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Be sure to check out our website at CityCenterchurch.com for all of our sermons, outreach events, and the opportunity to partner with us to advance the kingdom of God through your generosity.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us, and let's get into the word of today.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Pastor Kirk and Beta.
SPEAKER_00: Karen and I love you.
SPEAKER_00: And we have loved City Center Church long before you were called City Center Church.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we're thankful.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you just just for being people who care about, first and foremost, that the name of Jesus be proclaimed around the world, and then you are people of compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Project Rescue is about compassionate evangelism for women and children trapped in sexual slavery.
SPEAKER_00: You may not know this, but the United Nations has indicated that, as you might have seen on the screen, human trafficking is the fastest growing financial concern in the world.
SPEAKER_00: You may not know this, but according to the United Nations, there are more people in the world in slavery than they were in 18, I'm saying that on purpose, 1859, the year before the Civil War began in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Slavery is a real issue.
SPEAKER_00: Not all the people held in slavery of human trafficking are being sexually exploited.
SPEAKER_00: But Project Rescue works with them.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great aspects of Project Rescue is once a woman is rescued and restored, uh, one of the elements that's very important is we make sure that they find and get trained in a trade, a skill, something that's marketable, something they can do that has dignity to it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when you leave today, uh through these middle doors and on the right, there's a table, and it's covered with goods made by survivors of sexual slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And uh there's some books there, there's some informational pamphlets, but um I hope that you'll take advantage of those pieces.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you buy a scarf, ladies, and you're wearing it, uh, the real reason we want you to buy it is uh uh it helps support these these women in their in their new world, in their new life, but it also gives an opportunity if someone says, Wow, that's a that's a nice scarf, or oh, that's a cool bag, or whatever it is, it gives you an opportunity to talk about uh what we do, we do in rescuing and restoring trafficked women and children.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you go back there after the service and spin yourself into bankruptcy.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I'm I'm teasing about the bankruptcy part, but I hope you'll take advantage.
SPEAKER_00: In the next few moments, uh, some of the things I'll be telling you about, uh, it's a bit PG 13.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you have had some experiences in life, um, just be aware of the uh content and uh take good care of your heart and mind.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we can't avoid talking about this issue of sexual slavery.
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking out at you and I'm I'm seeing that um some of you have recognized the benefit of somebody coming up with what is called a solution.
SPEAKER_00: Do I have anyone in this room this morning that you used a comb or a brush on your hair?
SPEAKER_00: Let me see your hand.
unknown: Oh.
SPEAKER_00: Look at you.
SPEAKER_00: A comb is a solution to tangled hair.
SPEAKER_00: A comb is a solution.
SPEAKER_00: You're sitting on a chair.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad you're not sitting on the floor?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the chair is a solution to a problem.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that City Center Church is not just the place where you get to come together and receive and experience this incredible worship.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's this way every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: You listen, I travel all over the nation and the world.
SPEAKER_00: This ain't normal.
SPEAKER_00: You are blessed, and I go to a lot of places that have great worship.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that city center church, though, is it's it's not your gas pump where you can come and just get filled up again.
SPEAKER_00: City center church is a is a solution, part of the solution that God has for this scourge of human trafficking.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I've had a lot of people through these last couple of years say, well, well, uh, what about the United States?
SPEAKER_00: It's happening here too.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, unfortunately, it is.
SPEAKER_00: But Project Rescue is a global ministry, it works outside of the U.S.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain this.
SPEAKER_00: If if uh anybody go to Starbucks?
SPEAKER_00: Anybody like Starbucks?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, anybody else addicted to Starbucks?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if you buy a grande cup of breakfast blend Starbucks or Pikes Place coffee, and you have a grande cup, and you have a 10-gallon jug or bucket on the floor, and it's filled with the same brew, the content is the same.
SPEAKER_00: The volume is different.
SPEAKER_00: The bucket is the global reality of trafficking.
SPEAKER_00: The Grande Cup.
SPEAKER_00: Same horror, same diabolical spirits behind it, but by volume, it's just not as much.
SPEAKER_00: And so Project Rescue works around the globe to be a solution, and you get to be a part of that solution today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so thankful that I'm that I'm talking to a church that is eager to step up, to step over, to step in to what God wants to do through you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you this morning from a passage in Matthew chapter 13, and the topic of small seed, massive transformations.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus told a story about something that was tiny, so so small that most people would overlook it.
SPEAKER_00: Most people would think it insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: And after he talks about this small little item, he says, that's how the kingdom of heaven works.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven grows from what looks insignificant into massive transformations.
SPEAKER_00: But it only happens if it gets planted and only when it stays rooted.
SPEAKER_00: So Matthew 13.
SPEAKER_00: The writer Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus, he several years after Jesus has died and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, uh, around 6065 A.D., Matthew is writing to an audience of Jewish believers, Jewish followers of the Messiah, and he is, he's strung together.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's an interesting composition.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew kind of builds his book, his letter, or his document that we call Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: He kind of builds it around the same structure as the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: And so, so Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Matthew builds his in kind of five compartments.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew is committed to making sure that these Jewish believers understand three things about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: One, he talks about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He takes great pains to connect Jesus to David and to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: He's a son of David, he's the child or an offspring of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to make sure these Jewish believers understand and see the connection that Jesus is like the new Moses.
SPEAKER_00: He's like the new Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to make sure that they not only understand he's the promised Messiah and a new Moses, but that he's actually fully God.
SPEAKER_00: That he's Emmanuel, God with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so in chapter 13, he he gives multiple, he he he has collected and held these together, and he's given us these multiple parables that Jesus shared, and all of his apostles, his disciples had memorized these, and so he's capturing it.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that a short pencil is longer than a long memory?
SPEAKER_00: Thank God Matthew used a pencil.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote something down.
SPEAKER_00: So he says these words, starting with verse 31, just two verses.
SPEAKER_00: Here is another illustration Jesus used.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field.
SPEAKER_00: It's the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest, the largest of garden plants, and it grows into a tree.
SPEAKER_00: And birds come and make nests in its branches.
SPEAKER_00: Things totally unlike the seed.
SPEAKER_00: If you took a mustard seed and you had a bird that and you could put that mustard seed on its one of its toes, I know that's not what they're really called.
SPEAKER_00: Do I have any bird watchers that you could?
SPEAKER_00: They're not claws.
SPEAKER_00: What are they?
SPEAKER_00: Talons?
SPEAKER_00: Talons, even like if they're not a hawk?
SPEAKER_00: So we'll call them talons.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go with that.
SPEAKER_00: But you put that tiny little seed on a talon, it's almost camouflage.
SPEAKER_00: You can't, you can barely see it on the on the bird's toe or talon.
SPEAKER_00: But when that seed grows and becomes full grown, this same bird can build a nest.
SPEAKER_00: Because what was insignificant?
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've picked up already.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm talking about you and me as well.
SPEAKER_00: Talking about what Project Rescue does, but I'm I'm talking about you and me.
SPEAKER_00: There may have been a lot of people who looked at you and they said they're insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: They'll never amount to anything.
SPEAKER_00: But look at where you stand now.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you're so bright, but because he's so bright.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you had such capacity, but because he had unending capacity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is able to take what seems insignificant, what others overlook and throw away, and turn it into something massive by his wonderful transforming work.
SPEAKER_00: So he says the kingdom of heaven is like this.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven, when I hear that phrase, I get these kaleidoscopic image of multiple truths.
SPEAKER_00: I see, I see government ideas, I see military, I see borders, I see finances, I see social structures, I see economics.
SPEAKER_00: Kingdom, the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But for a kingdom to be a kingdom, there has to be someone that's like on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: There has to be a king.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad Jesus is king?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the king and and he's coming back.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you hear that from time to time, and it's imperative that you keep remembering that it's actually true.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a last sermon preached from this platform.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a last offering collected.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a last missionary giving opportunity like you'll have at the end of the service.
SPEAKER_00: There will be a last day that you get up and go to your job.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about retirement, I'm talking about rapture.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, Jesus is the king and he's coming back.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a much younger man, uh there was a gospel singing group that sang a song.
SPEAKER_00: It was very entertaining, it was very fun to hear.
SPEAKER_00: It was theologically incorrect.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm telling you, don't say amen or anything.
SPEAKER_00: That'll be embarrassing.
SPEAKER_00: But they sang a song, and it said, There will never be any peace until God is seated at the conference table.
SPEAKER_00: The reason it's theologically wrong is when Jesus comes back, he's not sitting down at a conference table to ask Russia or Ukraine or the U.S.
SPEAKER_00: or China, what do you think about this new plan?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I've got a new deal.
SPEAKER_00: He's not coming to negotiate, he is coming back as King of Kings, Lord of Lords, President of Presidents.
SPEAKER_00: He is the king, and his kingdom will never see decrease.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The day will come when he's suddenly revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Those of us who are expecting him, it's said a lot at funerals, but I believe it needs to be reminded to us when we don't have a casket or a burial in front of us, that the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'm about to quote to you sounds like something you would see on one of the rag magazines as you're checking out with your groceries at the local grocery store.
SPEAKER_00: You've seen those crazy magazines, woman gives birth to seven-pound rhinoceros.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's like, come on, nobody believes that.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, the Lord Himself, Jesus, who died, graveyard dead, three days later came alive.
SPEAKER_00: He is coming back.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet call of God.
SPEAKER_00: The dead in Christ will rise first.
SPEAKER_00: You and I, we who are alive and remain, will be caught up together and forever be with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The day is coming, as Paul put it to the Philippians, every knee will bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, the kingdom of heaven, this kingdom is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm an American, I love being a part of we the people.
SPEAKER_00: I love getting to vote, but when Jesus comes back, if you want to vote, go ahead, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: Because he is not in place because of vote of anybody.
SPEAKER_00: He's in place because he is God the Son, and he is the glorious, imminent, coming king.
SPEAKER_00: Well, until that day, our King has us, you and me, you followers of Jesus, he has us on a mission focused on rescuing what he values most.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when Jesus comes back, if he comes back today after I've had a nice lunch with Pastor Kirk and Beta, and I'm driving my rental car back to Manhattan, Kansas.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I'm so glad you clarified.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you want to shut off half of the people from listening.
SPEAKER_00: Worse than that, half of them from giving.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to give to a wildcat.
SPEAKER_00: What's the matter with you?
SPEAKER_00: We have our youngest two granddaughters live there, uh, with a couple of adults that I kind of know.
SPEAKER_00: Their mom and dad, my daughter and son-in-law, and they planted a church in Manhattan, Kansas, 11 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, so we wanted to live closer to them.
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus comes back, if he comes back this afternoon, he's not coming back for that nice little rental car.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm running down the highway at 75 miles an hour and the rapture comes, get out of the way if you're not going, because that car is gonna not have a driver.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ascending with him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, my my daddy, I buried him 20, 24 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: I buried my brother in 2015.
SPEAKER_00: Both died with cancer.
SPEAKER_00: And I just think that about just a flash before I am changed, I think they're, I know they're coming up out of graves.
SPEAKER_00: I just kind of wonder if they're gonna say two things.
SPEAKER_00: First, they're gonna say, Jesus, there you are.
SPEAKER_00: And if the next thing they say is, hey, cancer, what do you think about this body?
SPEAKER_00: Because we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
SPEAKER_00: The mortal will put on immortality, and we will listen, if you want to get out of a space capsule while it's orbiting the earth, you better put on a space suit because the atmosphere is non-existent.
SPEAKER_00: So you better put on a space suit.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to live in eternity, you gotta have an eternity suit.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the new body is gonna be about.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is coming, and when he comes, he's not coming for stuff.
SPEAKER_00: However, much you have in your bank account.
SPEAKER_00: He's not coming for the money you have, he's not coming for our houses.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's coming for what he loves, what Jesus cares about.
SPEAKER_00: The reason he came to planet earth is because he loves people, and he intends to take us from every tribe and nation and tongue and build us together into a house, into a body of believers that are following the king.
SPEAKER_00: He is coming back for people.
SPEAKER_00: He cares about the least, the last, and the lost.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven doesn't orbit around we the people.
SPEAKER_00: We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, provide that's about all I know.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who have no idea what I was talking about, that's the preamble of the Constitution of the United States.
SPEAKER_00: When we align with his values, he is not orbiting his life around us.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us, but the kingdom doesn't orbit around us.
SPEAKER_00: He's crazy about you, he's coming for you, but he is he's not all about you.
SPEAKER_00: You need to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: We're all about him.
SPEAKER_00: And he died and rose from the dead for us to be saved and made part of the kingdom of God, but he is about establishing a kingdom that will never end.
SPEAKER_00: That's who Jesus is about.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus has Project Rescue on a mission to see how many women and children we can rescue out of the clutches of the mafiosos and of their of other situations that I'll unfold in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: So so when we align with his values, it produces life.
SPEAKER_00: Project rescue is in the business working to capture, save, rescue what some call insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: Uneducated women from unknown, impoverished villages and backwater places.
SPEAKER_00: Women like Fatima.
SPEAKER_00: She was 13 when she was sold by her family to an older man called a child bride.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted her for two reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One, he wanted a sex toy.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, within two weeks of their nuptials, he was selling her to cousins, brothers, friends, because she was a source of income.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard for us in America, most of us hold little girls to as much value as as our little boys.
SPEAKER_00: I I have two sons and a daughter, and uh, and I love them all.
SPEAKER_00: My boys have have teased all these years, and I I just got to where I just here's the response.
SPEAKER_00: They'll say, Yeah, Daddy, she's just your favorite.
SPEAKER_00: And I say, And what's your point?
SPEAKER_00: I I took out a few years ago, I took out a new life insurance policy, and if Karen and I go both together, then it has to be divided among the three kids.
SPEAKER_00: And so just to gig my boys, I gave uh them 33%, each one of them 33% and gave her 34%, just so they, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But I'd step in front of a bullet for my boys, just like I would for my baby girl.
SPEAKER_00: But most cultures don't look at little girls the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Fatima was sold at 13.
SPEAKER_00: She's had to live this way for several years.
SPEAKER_00: She was introduced, she was connected to Project Rescue.
SPEAKER_00: It was an OASIS ministry in in one of the Southeast Asian countries, and she began to open her heart to the to the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But this husband of hers he put his foot down.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't want you going back over there anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the gospel of Jesus not only begins to tell you you can be free in your heart, but it also starts telling you, you know what, you you can have a different life.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to sell your body, you don't have to to be somebody's community toilet.
SPEAKER_00: You you can live different than this.
SPEAKER_00: And she began to say, Would you please not make me do this anymore?
SPEAKER_00: And at first it was just no, you're gonna keep doing this.
SPEAKER_00: And when she kept on, he started beating her.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in a country that it's it's appropriate in that culture.
SPEAKER_00: If a woman is pushing back, it's appropriate for a man to beat his wife.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I don't care what culture you're from, if you're gonna follow Jesus, you're not gonna treat a woman that way, and you're not gonna treat a brother that way.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's that's not acceptable.
SPEAKER_00: It's not it doesn't follow biblical.
SPEAKER_00: Character.
SPEAKER_00: But she wouldn't quit, and she kept asking, and he beat her severely.
SPEAKER_00: She'd get better.
SPEAKER_00: He'd keep trafficking her.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, she asked one time too many.
SPEAKER_00: He drug her to an alley.
SPEAKER_00: And he thought he had succeeded in choking her to death.
SPEAKER_00: He left her there for dead.
SPEAKER_00: In a few minutes, she came to, and she was staggering out of the alley.
SPEAKER_00: And four thugs saw her.
SPEAKER_00: And they dragged her back in.
SPEAKER_00: And they were just about to rape her.
SPEAKER_00: And a policeman came by, saw what was happening, beat them, he ran them off, beat them away, ran them off.
SPEAKER_00: And then the policeman raped her.
SPEAKER_00: I have told that story a few times.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand the facts.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know whatever you've gone through?
SPEAKER_00: If you can just get to Jesus, deal with it honestly in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: Have some community around you that is full of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If you will just get to Jesus, and Fatima staggered and stumbled her way to the oasis house.
SPEAKER_00: And our missionary was there to take care of her.
SPEAKER_00: She got the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: She received perfect, wonderful, trauma-informed counseling.
SPEAKER_00: She she began to receive uh good uh uh training, she's developed a skill.
SPEAKER_00: She she lives in in by herself in a in a hovel that some of you wouldn't put your dog in it.
SPEAKER_00: But my missionary there says, she tells her the gal, she tells her, Fatima says over and over, my life is so beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: How can anybody say, after all of that, my life is beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus says your yesterdays don't have to define your tomorrows.
SPEAKER_00: And Project Rescue shows up and gives hope where there is no hope.
SPEAKER_00: So I came this morning to ask for your partnership in rescuing and restoring what organized crime, brothel owners, sometimes husbands, sometimes parents.
SPEAKER_00: Karen and I, my wife and I were recently in Spain, November we were in Spain, and there were a couple of girls, might have been 15 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Those two girls were being trafficked by their older sister.
SPEAKER_00: Those two girls could have been my granddaughters.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looks at them, and no matter who has mistreated them, what family member or mafioso has said you're insignificant, you're disposable, and when you get sick and die in some of the brothels, some of the most notorious red light districts, if a girl reaches 23, she's considered an elderly woman on the street because of disease and violence.
SPEAKER_00: Most of them never see their 23rd birthday.
SPEAKER_00: So the mafiosos say, if you can't function anymore, I'll replace you with another insignificant, disposable object.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of heaven, please remember, it grows from what looks insignificant, but it only grows if the seed of the insignificant gets planted, and only when it stays rooted.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus said the kingdom of heaven functions like a mustard seed planted in a field.
SPEAKER_00: So for the seeds to have success, number one, they've got to get planted.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody found us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you might have looked like you just stepped off the pages of GQ magazine.
SPEAKER_00: You might look like like the women on the devil wears Prada.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't think of a magazine for women.
SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, and if I could, some of you would have thought, what's wrong with him?
SPEAKER_00: You might have looked, I mean, to the nines.
SPEAKER_00: You might have looked like you were on a 12-day drunk, strung over, unshowered, kids hungry.
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus saw you, he said, I didn't come to judge you, I came to save you.
SPEAKER_00: I came to take that which is broken and give it hope and life and wholeness, not just put you back together, but to make you a totally new creature.
SPEAKER_00: If any man or woman be in Christ, they're a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know you can still look in the mirror and see the cracks and the breaks and the super glue that held you together.
SPEAKER_00: I know you can still see those things.
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus looks at you like he looks at these precious brothel babies that we've been able to educate and lead to Jesus and see them turn into powerful adult women and men, he see when these women that have been rescued, when Jesus looks at them, he doesn't see all of the put back together, he sees his precious daughter or his precious son.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the truth everyone is sin sick and needs a forgiving, transforming Savior.
SPEAKER_00: So whatever you look like, maybe you're here today, maybe you're watching online, and you're not following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You're not even sure why you tuned in today, but something caused you to not not just thumb past while you're you're doom scrolling.
SPEAKER_00: Something caused, and I'll tell you what happened is that the Spirit of God is watching and noticing you.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, some of you don't even know for sure why you're here.
SPEAKER_00: You're here because you have a drug problem.
SPEAKER_00: Someone drugged you here because they just wouldn't take no for an answer.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta come.
SPEAKER_00: And you said, Well, I'll all right, I'll finally go today.
SPEAKER_00: And they drug you here, but Jesus is looking at you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, I know your yesterdays, you're way too worried about them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not worried about them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to forgive your sin, give you a new name, give you a new direction, re-establish something of an identity that will hold for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me, listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: Male, female is not enough to get you through eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Being a Jew or a Greek, being a U.S.
SPEAKER_00: citizen or a Russian citizen, it's not enough to get you into and through eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, in the kingdom, there is neither male or female, Jew or Greek, bond or free, but in Christ there is one.
SPEAKER_00: We are made one in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The identity that you need is found in Jesus and being a follower of him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm known by a lot of identifying factors in Arkansas, Izzard County, Arkansas.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: I can still go into grocery stores there, and someone will say to me, Well, you're Billy Joe's boy, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: You're Carol Jean's boy, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: I was in Indiana about a year ago at a meeting and work in a booth, and a former superintendent came up and had his adult daughter with him.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I want to introduce you.
SPEAKER_00: She said, Oh, I know him.
SPEAKER_00: He's Karen's husband.
SPEAKER_00: In other places, I'm known as Lacey's daddy or Jared's daddy or Jeremy's daddy.
SPEAKER_00: I like all of those monikers.
SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_00: My second favorite is Karen's husband.
SPEAKER_00: I just have to tell you the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Today is what?
SPEAKER_00: The 23rd?
SPEAKER_00: I've been married to her 47 years, seven months, and 20 days.
SPEAKER_00: I like the girl a lot.
SPEAKER_00: She says, honey, every time you do that with the whole number thing exactly to the day, it sounds like you're talking about a prison sentence.
SPEAKER_00: And I say to her, I am.
SPEAKER_00: It's yours.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna make her live every day of it.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever you looked like, and whatever you look like now, I just need you to hear me.
SPEAKER_00: He sees what you and I might become if we just get planted in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus looks at you and me and he says, I inject possibilities into otherwise static futures.
SPEAKER_00: Your future doesn't determine your past.
SPEAKER_00: Your decisions today determine your future if you will follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So we expand the kingdom of heaven by you and I, we expand the kingdom of heaven by seeing what Jesus sees when he looks at sexually exploited trafficked women and children.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm here inviting you to see with Jesus' eyes as he injects eternal possibilities into otherwise static futures.
SPEAKER_00: So the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, moves forward, project rescues part, it moves forward, just like the local the work of this local church, it moves forward at the pace of your generosity.
SPEAKER_00: And in case some of you uh are like folding your arms on the inside saying, Oh, there it is.
SPEAKER_00: All that preacher wants is how much I can give.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to follow Paul's advice.
SPEAKER_00: He told the Corinthians, he was collecting, getting ready for them to be a part of a big special offering of helping the Jewish people back in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, give what you've decided in your heart to give, not out of manipulation or because someone cajoled you, but God loves a cheerful giver.
SPEAKER_00: And so you'll have an opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Kirk will come and lead you in that.
SPEAKER_00: You can trust him and and you you you understand all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But but I'm not here just for your money.
SPEAKER_00: I I want some people who will say, Yeah, we'll give what we can, but we're we're gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna pray that the Spirit of God put an umbrella, uh a cocoon of protection around our workers who they're going into dangerous red light districts where where if if a woman is rescued, that's money.
SPEAKER_00: That's money.
SPEAKER_00: You can touch a lot of things in this world, but if you touch somebody's money, so I'm here to say, I hope that you will partner with us.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been around long enough.
SPEAKER_00: You remember David and Beth Grant preaching here and sharing this work.
SPEAKER_00: So you would know that 29 years ago in Southern Asia, we got our start rescuing women and children.
SPEAKER_00: We have a school in India called Jyra International.
SPEAKER_00: The way it started, there were about 35 women who were being prostituted, that were opening their heart to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, if you work for Walmart and you don't want to work for them anymore, you just give them your blue smock and you say, I'm not coming back, and they'll want to know where to send your final check, they're not gonna send Bruno with a ball bat and brass knuckles.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not their property.
SPEAKER_00: These women are the property of these brothel owners.
SPEAKER_00: And these women were entertaining clients night after night with children three and younger sleeping under the bed because there was nowhere else for them to be.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to our Project Rescue colleague, will you please take these children before they're trafficked, before they're enslaved like we are, and give them a better life.
SPEAKER_00: We started Gyra International, a boarding school.
SPEAKER_00: People like you supported that, and and every child was clothed and educated, had a great bed to sleep in, good food to eat.
SPEAKER_00: And after over almost thir almost 30 years, we have what were boys and little girls, now they're adults.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them are pastoring great churches, some of them are serving in government.
SPEAKER_00: We have one that's a research scientist, she is hot on the trail of finding the cure to AIDS.
SPEAKER_00: And the world said they're insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: But now, look what they are doing for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: A mustard seed has everything in it, but if it never gets planted, it never becomes anything.
SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want to share with you is that uh for the mustard seed to succeed, it's got to stay planted.
SPEAKER_00: It's got to stay in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: As an organization, Project Rescue, oh listen, I I know you see the same kind of news I see, and we hear the the fallout of uh moral failures and celebrity pastors going down like like flies, and I mean it's it's and and and talk of of uh inappropriate use of funds and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: On the table, we have some brochures, or you can go to projectrescue.com if you'd like to check out our our financial issues.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's absolutely available.
SPEAKER_00: But the most important thing for Project Rescue leadership is that we stay rooted in what what we got started in.
SPEAKER_00: As an organization, we are rooted in the Great Commission, making disciples by the power of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: We're not backing up.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to hedge on the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan and Jennifer Barrett now lead the ministry because Age has uh had to sideline our founder David and his co-founder, his wife Beth, and and she takes care of him a lot, and he just can't go anymore like he used to.
SPEAKER_00: But recently, John and Jennifer had a businessman call and wanted them to come by his business because he wanted to give a like a$50,000 check.
SPEAKER_00: That seems significant to me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you heard$50,000 and that didn't seem significant to you, make your check.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not going to miss it, give it to Project Rescue.
SPEAKER_00: We'll take care of rescuing and restoring women and children who are being trafficked.
SPEAKER_00: But he wanted to give a$50,000 check thereabouts.
SPEAKER_00: And he had John and Jennifer sitting across the desk from him, and he was asking to tell them some more stories, and they did, and and he slid that check across, and Jonathan picked it up and said, Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: And and uh we'll we'll move on now.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, there is one request.
SPEAKER_00: Could you kind of tone down the Jesus talk?
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan laid it back on the desk and he said, Sir, we cannot afford your gift.
SPEAKER_00: So we come to churches that appreciate Jesus talk, and not just Jesus talk, but Jesus power, Jesus reality, and we say to you, will you join us in this great work to rescue and restore women and children?
SPEAKER_00: It takes money, it takes prayer, it takes planting mustard seeds.
SPEAKER_00: If a woman is standing here being trafficked, even atheists say that's unacceptable.
SPEAKER_00: That's unacceptable.
SPEAKER_00: Project Rescue says we're gonna rescue as many as we can.
SPEAKER_00: More than 850,000 so far in almost 30 years.
SPEAKER_00: That's to the glory of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is unacceptable.
SPEAKER_00: Off of the street, getting healthy, learning to read and write, learning a skill.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little girl, 14 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Her name, we call her Mandy, it's not her name, but Mandy.
SPEAKER_00: And uh when when she came to Project Rescue, 14, she'd already been trafficked for seven years.
SPEAKER_00: She could barely put three words together in a sentence.
SPEAKER_00: She couldn't look anyone in the eye, couldn't read or write.
SPEAKER_00: Our missionary there told me just the other day, she said, Mandy's like any other 14-year-old girl, now she'll hardly shut up.
SPEAKER_00: She talks, she looks people in the eye, and it's not because Project Rescue people are so smart, it's because the power of Jesus applied with sensitivity and the love of heaven that brings change.
SPEAKER_00: And Mandy is growing so unacceptable, better.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Kirk Project Rescue says we want to get them out of the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because everyone who's in Christ, they have a shot for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: They have a different perspective.
SPEAKER_00: And so when those women who are rescued and set free and they're following Jesus in the morning, when they splash water on their face and happen to look in a mirror, they no longer see a woman who has been abused and treated so ill and horribly.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, they see on their face the glow and the hope of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They know they remember where they were, but they know where they stand now, and they know where they're going.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm urging you, let the Spirit of God help you.
SPEAKER_00: Do what you can.
SPEAKER_00: One last slide, I think.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody can do something.
SPEAKER_00: We we have a safe house that we just opened in Malaya, Spain.
SPEAKER_00: And um, in Malia, for$20 an hour, it takes$20 every hour, seven days a week,$365 a year.
SPEAKER_00: For$20 an hour, you can cover a woman's recovery, her food, trauma-informed counseling, training, uh, Bible studies, discipleship efforts.
SPEAKER_00: You you can do that for$20 an hour.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have a calculator, you can figure what 10 hours would take, what a day would take, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what you decide in your heart to do, but I urge you.
SPEAKER_00: Step up into what Jesus says you are.
SPEAKER_00: He says you're part of the solution.
SPEAKER_00: A mustard seed planted.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you.
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