My Story // Brad Kochis

Former founding pastor, Brad Kochis, joins The Refinery to share stories about how The Refinery was first founded. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Welcome to the Refinery Church Sermon Podcast. We're simply that you've joined us today. Our prayer is that this message will help you grow in your pursuit to love and follow Jesus for life. If you'd like to learn more about the refinery, find ways to get connected. Share Prayer Quest. Working for resources to help you grow deeper in your walk with Christ. Visit us online.com. Let's dive into today's message.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

And in this week, we have um refunding Pastor, Pastor Brahmett coaches joining us. Um and I'm thankful for I get to serve under Brahman, I guess, tongue and tongue for nine years, and then it seemed like sometimes it seemed longer, and then sometimes it's like only nine years. Um but again, so I'm excited to hear from Pastor Brahmand in my prayer this morning with our team was then that whatever part of his story that he shares, that God would use it, um, and that maybe there would be a bit of it that we could use in our own lives uh to seek God to see the way that he might move uh in our own lives. So if you would please welcome Pastor Brad Coaches.

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Um this piece of property is sacred ground for our family, and it's uh coming to the refinery always feels like home for us, and we're grateful. We're grateful for that opportunity. And I'm grateful that Landon is away on a sabbatical, taking uh intentional time to pay attention to the needs of his soul. Ministry, I often say, ministry is a little bit like radiation in that it accumulates over time. You don't always feel it immediately, but the extrapolated effects over a season of time, it can have it can take a toll if you're not careful. And uh I'm really grateful that that's that's what he's doing right now. A friend and mentor of mine named Len, Len is he's wise, uh, he's in his upper 80s, he's been extraordinarily successful, and probably 15 years ago or so said to me, Everybody has a story, but not everybody has a listener. And I want to position my life to be a listener, but I want to say thank you today for allowing me to share part of my story uh with you. Before we get too far this morning, I'm curious. Have you ever encountered a hard-hearted person? Or maybe maybe the question should be when's the last time you encountered a hard-hearted person? Right? If you've never seen a hard-hearted person or encountered one, just wait until the next election cycle and then go on Facebook. It's like you can view them like you're at a zoo seeing dangerous animals from a distance. With keyboard confidence and nimble fingers, they put out everything. But really, the question I think today that that I would ask you to consider would be this are you a hard-hearted person? If you brought your Bible, turn to Hebrews with me if you would, it'll be on the screens for you, chapter three. Um, but while you're turning there, I I would say to you, part of my story is is the family of origin from which I come has a lot of hard-hearted people on both sides. On my dad's side and on my mom's side, there are there are people who are just hard-hearted. And the thing about a hard heart is if you if you allow yourself to get into the place where where you have a hard heart in like one area, maybe it's a relationship and you're really upset with somebody and you harden your heart, you build this wall, that hard heart, that that choice, it grows bitter roots. And and those bitter roots, like a vine uninvited into your garden, tends to take over other parts that you never would intend for it to. If you've ever planted mint in your yard, um, anybody know about that? Just if you're gonna do that, put it in a pot and learn that lesson. Mint goes everywhere, smells great, except it's a headache. That's what a hard heart can do. The bitter roots cultivate a system and the soil of life that tend to take over nearly every aspect. And those aspects aren't pleasing to God and they're not good for you. And if you don't remember anything else I might say today, I would ask you to remember this: a hard heart doesn't lead to a better life. A hard heart doesn't lead to a better life. When we get to this portion of scripture, the the book of Hebrews is written to Christians who were formerly Jewish. So they were Jewish believers, converted to Christianity, and they're facing persecution from Jewish people, and the persecution in those days is legit persecution, like your life could be at stake for following Jesus. And in North America, we're so far removed from what many other parts of the world routinely face for their faith. But that's the context of the book of Hebrews, and the author of the book of Hebrews is writing in this way to these people to encourage them not to abandon their faith and to realize that Jesus really has been the answer to all of Judaism, what it was leading to, what the prophets and all that. But we break in, and we're gonna just break into the story in chapter 3, and we're gonna start at verse 12. And it says, See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily as long as it's called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We've come to share in Christ if I don't like that word there. If. Indeed, we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. Well, what is that original conviction? That original conviction is that Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the one that the Jewish people have been waiting for. Jesus is the author and perfecter of faith. Jesus is the one who came in flesh incarnate, was crucified, died for our sin, bearing the weight of sin, and rose on the third day to give us hope and to deliver us in freedom. That's the conviction. We've come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said, and he said this up in verse 7, the author wrote this Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And he's talking about that in context to those that were led out of Egypt's captivity and followed Moses through the desert, through the Red Sea, having all these miracles, but there came moments where they would harden their heart because things got a little rough. And what the writer of Hebrews is saying is don't let your genealogy determine your present position of your heart. Again, a hard heart doesn't lead to a better life. Matter of fact, a hard heart grows bitter roots, and over time the fruit it produces is distance and sadness. Distance and sadness. That's what comes from a hard heart. And I want to tell you just a little bit, and I'm gonna go as quick as I as I can and hopefully make sense of it. But the first time I ever heard the Lord's voice, um I was I was a person living in addiction in high school to drugs, alcohol, and a number of other things that because there are kids here, I don't want to talk about any of that. I'm just gonna tell you, addiction was firmly a part of my story. I I had ready access to things at way, way too young of age. And with that, I began to model the behaviors of those uh the males in the surrounding part of my life, and that's what I lived into. And by the time I was 19 and a half, it was January of my senior year, so if you're doing math, you know that education wasn't my priority. Um I had gotten myself into quite a situation, and legal trouble was looming, and a lot of other pieces of life's puzzle were about to crash, and I heard the voice of the Lord um saying there's an alternate path, there's a better way. And my brother, who is 19 months older than I am, had several years before had had a sincere moment of faith and encountered with Christ and changed many attributes of his life, and he was off at college, and so I knew um, I knew there was a way. I just didn't know how to get on that way. Does that make sense? But that's the first time I heard the Lord's voice, and I and that's the day. It was January 16th, 1990, that that I asked Jesus into my life, and I asked him to forgive me for everything I could think of that put distance between him and I. And I'd like to tell you that that was it, and everything was good from there, and I never had another issue. If I've learned anything about faith, it has a starting point, and its ending point will be when I am no longer on this side of eternity. Right? It doesn't end. This story, this story has chapters yet to be written. The story isn't over, the story continues. My question is, how do you want the generations behind you to read your story? The next time I heard the voice of the Lord in my life, and the voice of the Lord, it's kind of weird. I don't know if you've heard it, but it sounds like like a whisper. It sounds like it's not like I've never had God shout, but I have had him confirm. I have heard the inaudible, undeniable voice of God at different times that were pivotal moments for me and for us to know how what we should do here. The next time I heard it was at a a gathering for teenagers in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, a couple a couple months after I came to Jesus, and I was there with this youth group. That uh the youth pastor was the one person, one of the people who in my in my life kept trying to to show me kindness and love. And uh so I'm at this place, and there's like a thousand teenagers there, and there's an altar call at the end, and and the the speaker was saying, if you're if you're open to God using you in full-time Christian service, I didn't even know what that meant, then we'd like you to come and pray. And again, I heard the whisper. It was I wasn't emotional in that moment. I had no future prospects of what to do with my life. I thought I'd work on a farm that somebody else owned, I'd live in a single wide trailer, and my big aspiration was a Chevy square body four-wheel drive truck. Uh, I still haven't got the elusive truck. So I go to the altar, and it was there that I I sense God saying, I want you to give your life to help other people. And in that context, turned out to be ministry, like church ministry. The next time I heard the Lord's voice speak to me clearly was when I was at uh MVNC, Mount Vernon Nazarene College. That's where I ended up going to school, mostly because they were into charity cases, because my grades weren't great and they took a risk, and I'm grateful they did. And I was sitting in a uh student revival and and the the Lord spoke to me, you need to forgive your dad. That was the hardest time that I'd heard his voice up to that point in my life. See, all the other times were for me to have hope. That time was for me to give hope or something, right? Like, and I don't have time to unpack it, but I can just tell you my father was the hardest person in my life to forgive, and he's remained over the course of my life, very difficult to forgive, and he's been gone 27 years now. He died when he was 60. Um, praise God, he came to Christ five years before he passed, and we had some good time, and I'm grateful for that. I don't hold hurt in my heart, but there are still signatures of pain. Anyone, can you anybody familiar with that? See, sometimes I think that we think forgiveness is a one-time thing too, like it's a check mark we make. Forgiveness is a dispensation, it's a disposition of our heart that allows the Lord to work. It's it's a it's a relationship this way that says, I want to love the people that you love this way. Right? But I I I remember hearing that and and having the conversation with my dad, which did not go great, by the way, but the Lord used it and he came to faith a few months after that, which, if you would have told me my dad ever would have become a Christian, I would have thought you probably were crazy and should see a counselor. I guess what I'd like to say to you is when you hear the whisper and you allow obedience to be your response, God gets to write a story. If you hear the whisper and you choose not to allow obedience to be the response, you take the pen and you start writing the story. I only want God to write the story. It's always better when I let him, when I'm obedient to that. I could go on and tell you time after time. I could tell you about the time we were sitting. Melissa and I early married, we're living in in Kentucky, I'm finishing my education, she's working in a job. Um and and we're at this church, Ironton, first church of the Nazarene in Ironton, Ohio, and the pastor's preaching, and he has an altar call at the end, and as clear as I'm uh you're hearing me now, the Lord said, You're not surrendered. I didn't even know what that fully meant. But here's what I came to learn. See, when I got saved, I got all the grace that Jesus had in the moment for me to really understand and embrace. But the problem was I kept hedging. Does that make sense? I I wanted I wanted God to have control of some things, but I didn't want God to have control of everything. I wanted to protect a lot of things. I wanted to, I wanted to still be in charge of a lot of things in my life. And the Lord made it really clear if you're in charge, I can't be. And I went to this altar, I think it was the first time we were in that church. And that's a little weird, right? Anybody feel that? Like to go and you don't really, you're you don't know the people, and yet you're going to the altar and you're having this really emotional moment where God's chiseling away on things, and people are like, How can we pray for you? And I'm like, that's a great question. They're sweet. I ended up going on staff there, and that moment was what we would refer to and what the Bible refers to as a sanctification moment where I gave I gave up my everything that I knew to give up. I'd like to tell you that a sanctification moment is a one-time event too. It's a starting point. Right? Surrender is a decision, it's a choice, it's an effort of consciousness that we make along the story, the storyboard of life. But the time I want to focus on today and the remainder of our time together is what led to this church coming into existence. But we have to back up. So Melissa and I were were living in Atlanta, and uh we we had moved from the tri-state of Ashland, Kentucky, Ironton, Ohio, Huntington, West Virginia, to Atlanta, where I accepted the role as a youth pastor, and and then part of that role morphed into me overseeing the construction and relocation of the church from where it sat inside 285 to uh about just below or just shy of 23 miles to the east, going toward Athens, where the church exists today. Um in that season, being a youth pastor, what got really complicated is how do you do youth ministry when you're moving a church that far away and you you I mean it was like a moving target, right? So, how do I engage these students? So I decided and felt like we should start trying to reach the the students where we were ultimately going to land and end up. So we had this blue bird bus, and we put a basketball hoop on the back and we put a basketball hoop inside. We hung chili pepper lights and we started going into neighborhoods, and today you probably get arrested for that. We had speakers and you know, we didn't have any permits. I think, you know, forgiveness, let's go there first. Um and and students started coming, and we go to parks, and and then we we started this thing called cell groups that would meet in homes because we didn't have a church there yet. So we would invest in student leaders that we knew that were a part of the church, and we would get uh adults who didn't care about their carpet and their furniture to open their homes and host these teenagers. Lots of broken lamps, learned about how much lamps cost back then. And we had two or three of the same lamp. I'm like, it's maybe we should get better lamps. Maybe that maybe we shouldn't get pottery lamps. Maybe that's a lesson, anyway. Um and students are are getting getting saved, but here's the thing these students that are getting saved, they're messy. Praise God, they're messy. Right? And and but when they're getting saved and they're messy and they're coming in and they don't know that that you know, you don't say those words here because those are their normal words, right? Some of the folks in the church were concerned, and their concern came to the point where like they wanted us to stop that ministry because it was uncomfortable, and it was at that moment that I was kind of tired of church people. Anyone ever been tired of church people? Can I get a witness? Now I am a church person now, so careful. But I never want to be a church person in the context that we build high walls to keep the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. I've always wanted to be a part of any congregation that has an invasion mentality instead of a castle mentality. But I was frustrated. A friend of mine had a growing business in Metro Atlanta, and uh and he had invited me to consider coming on on his team and and going into sales, and and it was attractive, and the business was lucrative, and so I started doing what any good pastor does. You start negotiating with God. Like, hey God, I thanks, this has been great, but I I think I just I'm gonna I'm gonna really follow this offer with my friend, and um and I'm gonna tithe, I'll tithe more than 10 percent. All those things. And while we were in that season, Melissa and I end up uh with the kids. Our kids were just little. Um, which by the way, now I'm a grandfather, so time goes really fast, Bailey. Sometimes it does feel I don't know how did you how did you feel about Bailey saying it was it was nine years, felt a lot longer. Anyway, I feel that. I understand. But we have our kids. We're we're at this condo in Florida that uh we were borrowing, and and we get the kids, I do my part of getting the kids down, which is don't get them riled up and then say goodnight, and Melissa then takes over from there and brings sanity and you know all the pieces. And I'm sitting out on this this uh Lanai and I'm reading this book by John Ortberg. If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat. And again, I heard the voice. And the Lord said, Into my spirit, start a church for people that are far from me. Start a church for people that don't like church, start a church for the unchurched and the dechurched, start a church for people where everybody can find hope. So I didn't know what that meant. Melissa came out onto the Lanai and I said, Hey, what would you think about planning a church? And she said, I don't know what that means. And I said, I'm not sure I do either. Like it miraculous things that I to this day, you know, you know, the the disciple John who followed after Jesus and was boiled in a vattle of oil because of his faith and then exiled to the island of Patmos, wrote these words, by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony. It's important that we don't forget what God did in our past because it can give us present present confidence and future hope, right? So uh we we begin that journey and we end up moving to Columbus because we we had uh the central Ohio at that time, it's now called the South Central Ohio District Church of the Nazarene, asked if we would consider planting a church in Columbus. And so we through all of that, we end up moving to Columbus to start a church, and we didn't know where, we had no idea where. So we would drive around uh 270 on Sundays with the kids, we would feed them the super nutritious value meal from McDonald's, they would pass out and we would drive and we would pray that um the Lord would break our heart for a part of the city. Meanwhile, I'm doing demographic research on every quadrant of the city of Columbus. And I honestly think I probably knew more about the demographics than the mayor at the time, Michael Coleman, knew. I mean, we were, I just lived in the data trying to understand where where would it be. But here's the crazy thing: every time we would drive around, we would get near Tuttle Mall, Melissa would say this, this feels like home. And I would say, sure it does. We can't afford to live here. There's a mall, right? I don't I know the mall's not really a thing there now, but there was a mall that was thriving, all those things. Well, I I go to the board that is, you know, a part of this from the district, and I tell them that, hey, I we have a heart for the Northwest Quadrant of Columbus, and we feel like it's that area, kind of the Tuttle Mall area, Dublin Hilliard, that that area, you know, that butts up against the river. And they this was the statement we've tried planting a church there and it didn't work. And we invested and built a building and it's been sold, and that was up by Kaufman High School, and I said, okay, and uh and I sat with that and for about a month just praying, and God kept saying, That's the area. And we were living in a real little apartment at the time in Mount Vernon. I would drive to Grove City where I had an office at the NAS, and and I would drive there four days a week, and we drive down on Sundays, and so we bought a house up off Sawmill Road, and then I told them, hey, we're gonna probably plant a church near where we just bought this house, somewhere in that quadrant. Turns out they were okay with it then, anyway. Um so um I get a job because you need one of those at Starbucks because everybody likes coffee. And the reason I went to Starbucks is because we needed insurance and because the entire community comes to Starbucks. And I was working at the Starbucks in historic Dublin, which uh I would open the store early in the mornings, and I got to know all the the customers who were regulars, and and I began to try to understand and exegete the community. But while I was working there, somebody that I'd met that um is part of that district board, he called me and he said, Hey, there is a church called Northwest Evangelical Christian Church that their pastor abruptly resigned and they need somebody to fill in in a couple weeks for a while. Would you be interested? And I said, Sure, I would be, I'd be happy to do that. So we I end up coming here uh and I'm preaching, and it was and it's on this property, it's this property, and it was in the Harnak Center. That used anybody here worship in the Harnack Center? Anybody? So, yeah, a lot of you are familiar with that part of the story. So the first time that that we come, it's Melissa and I and our two kids. There weren't many children in the church, and Melissa said to me, Um, don't tell them you'll come back. So before I even preached, she doesn't like this part. This is the part of the story, she's like, I'm gonna hear about that on the ride to the restaurant, I'll tell you that. This is my story, it's about to continue. So uh I end up saying, Yes, I'll preach more, and that goes on. And she wasn't saying, here's the reason the church, it was full of good people. They just in some ways had lost the direction to be engaged in the community, that's all. And it and it was operating in in the in a way that was familiar that we were wanting not to continue. Does that make sense? That's all. Great people. Some of them are are here today, love all of them. But that was the first Sunday, and I I keep preaching, and over time, while they're looking for a pastor, they said, Hey, would you consider being our pastor? And I said, I'm I'm grateful that you would ask that. I'm honored that you would ask that. But the reality is God called us here to start a church that that is different and new, and we'd already landed on a name, we had a website, and um, and I said the the target audience is 18 to 34-year-olds with kids, and that's how we're gonna structure everything we do to try to bring hope to that demographic. And so, servant evangelism is gonna be a methodology that we embrace. We're gonna go into the community instead of waiting for the community to come to us. There's this, it's gonna be different. And then they a few, I don't know, maybe three, four weeks later said, could we join your church? And I said, Well, you're welcome to come to our house, it's where we meet on Sunday nights. And what they were really saying was, would you consider us gifting the property and just doing this thing differently? And over a course of I don't know, two to three months, that's what happened. They gifted this entire property. Dominion Homes was wanting to buy this property and subdivide it into McMansion lots, and other people wanted the property, but they wanted it to go to a church, and they wanted that they had come to really appreciate the heart behind what we were trying to accomplish. They were helping us with outreach. The first outreach we ever did as a church was we bought a pallet of water from GFS and uh we gave it away at the parade, the Fourth of July parade in in Dublin. And that was a labor. I learned a lot on how not to do it, so it's like more efficiently, it was effective, but it wasn't efficient. And you know, the only people that we ever offended doing outreach were other churches. The first the first outreach, this is crazy. The first outreach we ever did, we had these baby pools and we put them along the parade route. We iced down the water, we got there super early. We learned that that's a lot of work. And and uh we sat up just outside of our Starbucks because I got permission, and there's a church right next to it, and we're giving out free water. I didn't know that that church was gonna sell the exact same water to the same participants who were now not buying their water, and they came over and they said, Hey, can you move down? And I'm like, It's a baby pool full of water. No, it's like wrestling a whale's bladder. I don't know. I don't know how we're gonna do that. I mean, there I believe in miracles. Instead, we just gave them money. One of the people there with us just took out their wallet and gave them a couple $50 bills and said, we're gonna continue to give out our water. Um, but the church that was meeting here, Northwest Evangelical Christian Church, really wanted to be a part of something different and alive, and they they risked all of that to make that happen. And then over time, God began to work. But after all the legal documents were signed, after the deed was signed and everything was was finished and the deed was in the name of Life Point, which is what the church was called before it was the refinery, when we branded to LifePoint, life was the acronym Living Intentionally for Eternity. That's the point. And um LifePoint, we were either the second or third LifePoint on the web. And LifePoint became as common to the church world as a name as Michael Jordan did to basketball. And so when we were doing disaster relief, people were dropping things off at life points all over the city. We were starting to get tithe dollars for other life points, which we like that part. We're like, that's pretty good. But then ultimately we rebranded to the refinery to mitigate a lot of that confusion. But once that was done and the property had transferred, I was going through the church files and trying to uh just get my mind around what needs to be shredded or incinerated, what are documents that need to be historically kept, all that stuff. And I came upon a pictorial. Does anybody remember what those are? It's kind of like a yearbook for high school for churches. It's where they invite um a photographer, and the ladies all get glamoured up like glamour shots, and the guys wear uncomfortable clothes and stand there as if it's not a funeral. And they take all these pictures and then they sell them, they they sell them, and and it used to be you go in people's houses and they had their their Jesus glamour shots, like you know, next to the senior pictures of their kids. Well, I found that, I found this directory, and I start flipping through and I'm looking and I'm like, wow, that's interesting. I think I know that guy's I've heard that name, and it's the pastor that looked real stately and pastoral. I've always not looked that way, so I admire it and I pay attention when somebody does. And he did, he was pulling that off, but I recognize the name, and then I start seeing pictures of people that I know like like Judy Duchesne and and uh the Johnsons and the Harnacks and people that you know now are a part of our church. And um and I get to the back and I see, you know, in the H is Hackney. I'm like, man, that name, that that name and that guy looks familiar. Well, I've got to tell you, 11 years ago, or 11 years before that, before we had kids, before we moved to Atlanta, any of that, I'm finishing my degree, and I I'm working in this floor covering company, and one of the one of the representatives for one of the vendors is from Columbus, and his name's Mike Hackney, and he said, uh, we're we're starting a church in Columbus, and the former president of Circleville Bible College is a pastor, and I'm gonna give him your name because I think they ought to talk to you about being the youth pastor. And I thought that was nice. I wasn't interested. I didn't want to move to a big city, I wasn't interested in moving to Columbus, and God said, joke's on you, go to Atlanta. Everybody has a Nineveh, read Jonah. So we I'm I'm looking at it and I'm I said to Melissa, I said, This is crazy. I think this is the same Mike Hackney. So I called the number, and sure enough, Mike Hackney answers the phone and I said, Hey, this is Brad Coaches. I don't know if you remember me. Sure, I remember you. And I said, Mike, the do you remember telling me about a church in Columbus that wanted because that that pastor had called me twice. I turned him down cold twice. And I said, Do you remember talking to me about it? And yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, What was the name of that church? Do you remember? He said, Northwest Evangelical Christian Church. And I said, Mike, are you sitting down? This seems crazy. The church that, right? Like, I don't know how God does that stuff. But I can tell you this when we were in Atlanta, had I allowed myself to make the choice, to be hard-hearted, to negotiate with my conviction, to negotiate with what I knew God had called me to do and was calling me to continue. See, sometimes callings of that nature have a season. Sometimes they have an extension. I was in a season that he was calling me to extension. I um had I become hard-hearted, I would have missed everything he was already up to. The apostle Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, before you get to verse 10, it's for it's by grace you've been saved through faith, not by works, so that nobody can brag or boast. God has done this thing in your life so he can do amazing things through your life. God will never be able to write an amazing story if you if you refuse to surrender the pen and loosen your grip. But we get to verse 10 of Ephesians 2, and it and it says this, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works that He prepared in advance for us to do. If I'm not willing to say yes to Jesus, and I can't say yes with this hard heart that's trying to operate my life, if I have bitter roots that have grown around everything else, uh I limit his effective work through my life. You see, a hard heart doesn't lead to a better life. A hard heart doesn't lead to a story that God is writing in those moments. A hard heart leads to my stubbornness, a hard heart leads to my passive aggressiveness, a hard heart leads to my bitterness, a hard heart leads to me trying to justify why I am the way I am instead of saying, make me how you are.

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Right?

SPEAKER_00 38:44

A hard heart does a lot of things, none of them are good, and some of those issues can be inherited, right? Just as the Hebrew writer was saying to the the Christians who had walked away from Judaism not to not to do what their fathers had done. I've had to live in a in a format of saying, I'm gonna come out of agreement with my genealogy in those ways. I'm gonna come out of agreement with a culture that wants to help me think it's all about me. I'm gonna come out of agreement with unforgiveness that limits God from working in and through me. I'm gonna come out of agreement. I'm not gonna live in agreement with those things because if I live in agreement with those things, a hard heart will drive your life. And my story, my story is obedience delayed will lead to obedience denied. My story is without Jesus, I know exactly who I am. Every morning I look in the mirror, without Jesus, I know exactly who I would be. I don't want that to be my story. My story is, like yours, still being written. I heard the Lord's voice, and I'm gonna end with this when I resigned from the church. I didn't have a plan B in mind. The Lord a few years before had said, prepare the church for your departure. And so I tried to do that, and I um I don't know if I did it well, but you're all here, praise God. But Melissa and I'd been praying and and I was tired. That's one of the reasons I'm so grateful Landon's taking time. I didn't know, I didn't do that well. I just didn't do that well. It's not because I didn't want to, I didn't know how to do that well in those seasons. Um But we had a we had a board meeting on that Thursday night, and and I knew that God was strong in my heart. So uh we had a short staff meeting that morning, and I got on my motorcycle and I was riding up 315 North, which is a beautiful ride toward Delaware, and I was praying and praying, and I heard the voice of the Lord say this, pray for your successor, pray for the next pastor. I'd never heard him say that before. And I began to pray for the next pastor, Lord. Whoever it is that you're preparing to step into this, Lord, I pray for their family. I pray that you would be near to them, that you would be loosening their grip where they are, help them to sense the tension that your cloud is about to move for them and that they'll follow it. And as I'm praying that, tears begin to fill my eyes. And the Lord said to me, I'm releasing you from this burden. And then, you know, tears are really in my eyes because I don't know what to, I mean, I know what I need to do with that, but I don't, I don't want to do that, right? It's like that weird place. So I find a place to pull off. There's like one place on that little route where I was at that you could pull off on the right hand side, and I get myself composed. Because it's really hard to ride a motorcycle with tears in your eyes. And uh you you take that route because it's got enough curves to keep it interesting. And I I thought, if I if I can get back before Melissa goes back to work, I can let her know what I'm gonna do. Because the next thing I'm gonna do is sit down and write a resignation letter. And so I turn around and ride as fast as possible legally and safely to uh our house over here on Braidwood Drive, just up the road. And Melissa was getting in her car, and so I put the when I pulled into the driveway and I said, Hey, um, I'm gonna resign tonight. And she gets out of the car, and uh she hugs me. Resigning from this church is one of the hardest things I've ever done. But it was the right thing to do, and the Lord knew that. In his kindness and generosity, he knew I didn't have a pandemic worth of leadership in me. That was October of 2019. Tired leaders make tired decisions, so it's good to be helpful for your pastor not to get to that place, right? That's just good. Um and I learned that because the board was trying to help me do that, and I was the one resisting that because I was dumb. True story. I was in fifth grade twice. Melissa said, um if that's what God's telling you, I fully support it. So that night. When the board gathered and some of those members are here, I resigned to the board. And then that Sunday I resigned to the church, and 30 days later was my last Sunday here. I didn't have a plan B. I've never operated my life all that well with plan B. Because plan B can usurp God's plan A for my life. And so you know how I stay sober, I just try to do the next right thing. You know how I try not to live in anger and hard-heartedness, I try to hear his whisper and just do the next right thing. Man, I am so far from perfect, and my story's not over. But what I can tell you is if you'll let him, if you'll let him, he'll write a fun story that you get to be a part of. Not every chapter is going to be one you want to go back and reread, but every chapter gives him an opportunity to do what only God can do. So quickly I'll leave you with this. A hard heart doesn't lead to a better life. Instead, it leads to distance from God, resistance from the truth, and opportunities that are gone. So today, if you hear his voice, I would encourage you, do not harden your heart. Do not harden your heart. Father, for this occasion on which we have been able to gather, I am indeed grateful. I'm grateful for the incredible work you have done and continue to do in this church and through these people. This building isn't the church. It's the people that are the church. And you are continuing to write stories and do amazing things in and through the lives of those that call the refinery church their home. And Lord, I pray if people are here today and they're wrestling with things and bitterness seems to have taken hold, or there are relationships in their life where there are walls. And as much as it depends on them, Lord, I pray that they would hear your whisper and help them to know what to do next. Whatever the next right obedience step is, it would give you glory and give them freedom even when it feels hard. Would you give them the courage to do it? Father, for people that are struggling in their finances or parents that are struggling in their parenting, or children who have adult parents that they're struggling with those relationships and how they how they function at this stage. Lord, whatever it is, I pray that you would do the kingdom work in a kingdom way that restores hope and sets them free. Because what we know to be true is that your word is true. And the thief comes to rob, kill, steal, and destroy, but you've come that we might have life and have it to the full. In Heavenly Father, I pray that collectively that would be our story, life to the full. In the mighty name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the church says, Amen. Amen. Thank you, friends. I hope that whatever the rest of your week has for you, that you'll go in peace and live with purpose. God bless you.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. If you're ready to take a next step in your faith, please reach out to us through our website, refineryohammed.com, or you can email us at mys at refinerymohammed.com. We hope you have a blessed day.