SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Lord God, that is the testimony of our heart today.
SPEAKER_01: That you are good, good.
SPEAKER_01: God, no matter what our circumstance looks like today or this week, we hold on to the truth that you are good, good, and you love us and care for us.
SPEAKER_01: We thank you for the grace and mercy we find in your Son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, church.
SPEAKER_01: For those of you as Brother Don said, my name is Jerry Anderson, and I am a church planter in the city of New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: We're in the process of planting Riverbend Baptist Church in the West Bank of New Orleans, which I like to say is the best bank.
SPEAKER_01: New Orleans, if you don't know, it's split by the Great Mississippi River, and the East Bank is Bourbon Street and all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And the West Bank is not that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, where I'm going is Bell Chase, and it's called the Boondocks of New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And so pretty much there's nothing there but swamp, gas, and oil, and uh that's where we're going.
SPEAKER_01: But I just want to thank Pastor Neil and Pastor Don for having me come here.
SPEAKER_01: And thank you all for being here to let me just share what God is doing in our hearts and working to push back lostness in the city of New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this picture right there.
SPEAKER_01: You see, there's one person that doesn't quite look like us.
SPEAKER_01: She's the brunette.
SPEAKER_01: Her name is Alicia.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Alicia came into our home about a year and a half ago through foster care.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell you, do you know we serve a God that adopts?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, there's a stat right now that says seven out of ten people under the age of 18 will grow up and never be in church.
SPEAKER_01: Think of that.
SPEAKER_01: Seven out of ten people under the age of 18 will grow up and never be in church.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to just challenge you.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a home and you have space, there's no greater, great commission work than you can do than bring in a child who needs a place to stay.
SPEAKER_01: Lisa came in our home and she was from Nashville.
SPEAKER_01: Nashville is the buckle of the Bible belt.
SPEAKER_01: You know that, right?
SPEAKER_01: And she had never been to church before.
SPEAKER_01: And she told my wife on the first week, she goes, Look, I don't really like that church stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And we're like, well, baby, you're gonna have a rough year and a half because that's I'm a pastor, that's what we do.
SPEAKER_01: And to tell you her biblical knowledge, she thought the books of the Bible were the names of Jesus' brothers and sons.
SPEAKER_01: She had no clue.
SPEAKER_01: She didn't even know what we did in the building.
SPEAKER_01: But through God's divine interaction, on Father's Day of last year, we were meeting with a couple that we didn't even know.
SPEAKER_01: My son was going to a music camp, and pastor friends of ours hooked us up with their friends for the place to stay.
SPEAKER_01: And this guy was an orphan, and she was having a rough day because she didn't know who her dad was.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Look, I don't know who my dad was either, but let me tail my father in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And over a Zack Spee's meal, a stranger that we didn't know, who we were connected to by chance, shared the gospel with a girl that we had only known for four months, and God brought her to salvation because God does what God wants to do.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going to challenge you, it's not part of my message, but if you've got space in your home and a heart, you can have a chaotic home, but a chaotic home that knows Jesus is better than no home at all.
SPEAKER_01: And so I plug that everywhere you go, God is an adopting God and his people should be adopting people.
SPEAKER_01: So Alicia, she's in Nashville right now, studying massage therapy.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for her in this transition.
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to be forced to go to church when your father is a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: It's another thing to be 18 and choose to go.
SPEAKER_01: And we're just praying that God puts around her people that encourage her with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: So pray for Alicia.
SPEAKER_01: Um, do you have the boy right there?
SPEAKER_01: That's Austin.
SPEAKER_01: You'll see him at next service.
SPEAKER_01: He's 13.
SPEAKER_01: He's about to be a freshman in high school.
SPEAKER_01: Pray for him in this transition.
SPEAKER_01: He's going from a class of 100 kids to a city that school that has over 1,300 kids.
SPEAKER_01: And we went to freshman orientation and he was there for about five minutes and said, Dad, I want to go home.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like this.
SPEAKER_01: He was overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_01: Um, pray for him.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to be an architect, and so he's got his heart set on Cornell University, so pray he gets good grades because I can afford that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm also praying that he looks at Rice, because Rice is here in Houston, that's a lot closer, but he wants to be an architect, and man, he is smart.
SPEAKER_01: He, at eight years old, he began asking me, How do we know the Bible's true?
SPEAKER_01: And so I had to explain to him stuff that I didn't even study until college about how we can trust Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's my son, he looks just like me, and he acts just like me.
SPEAKER_01: So pray that both of us live the next six years because we are too much alike.
SPEAKER_01: But I love him.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the middle daughter there, her name is Autumn Rose.
SPEAKER_01: Autumn Rose, like I said, is 11, and she is my artist, and with all that envelops, everything is a huge deal for her.
SPEAKER_01: Like someday she'll just cry.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, baby, why are you crying?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what I'm crying for.
SPEAKER_01: She's just, she's an artist and she wants to be an artist.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, baby, I said, you know, artists don't make a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01: She said, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: I'll live with you and work at McDonald's.
SPEAKER_01: She's got a new plan.
SPEAKER_01: Her plan is to marry a doctor.
SPEAKER_01: So if you know any godly men that want to be a doctor, that's her plan.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know how workable it is, but you know, God can do great things.
SPEAKER_01: So, but she wants to be an artist, and let me tell you, she is fabulous for 11 years old.
SPEAKER_01: And she loves to draw and she loves to take pictures and she wants a nice camera so she can take great pictures.
SPEAKER_01: She just loves art.
SPEAKER_01: And then I have Catherine.
SPEAKER_01: Catherine is seven, and uh, Catherine is spoiled rotten.
SPEAKER_01: That says a lot more about me than her.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I just I will rescue her from everything.
SPEAKER_01: She'll be like, mama's mad at me, and I'm like, oh, come here, baby, what's wrong?
SPEAKER_01: So my wife, right there, Emily Anderson, say hi, Emily.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Emily, Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Emily Anderson.
SPEAKER_01: She won't ever let me call her that, but I will because I can get to her later.
SPEAKER_01: She uh she moved to New Orleans five months before I did because she was the principal of the Christian school in our area.
SPEAKER_01: And our plan was to transition from Dyersburg to New Orleans in June.
SPEAKER_01: And so she worked out her process, she gave her school a large notice, and the school basically said, you know, the plan you've given us is great.
SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna go ahead and accept your resignation effective immediately and not in six months.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know about you, but in that moment I was really angry with God.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, God, listen, I am faithfully following where you're calling me to go.
SPEAKER_01: We're a two-income family, what are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: And so we began to talk about it, and she said, Well, I'll just move down to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And so my wife moved to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: She interviewed in like nine schools and was offered eight jobs on the spot because she's fabulous.
SPEAKER_01: She's been teaching in the city of Gretna.
SPEAKER_01: Gretna Middle School, I just want to let you know she went from a Christian school in West Tennessee.
SPEAKER_01: So picture all of that.
SPEAKER_01: To Gretna, where four years ago there were 200 arrests in her middle school.
SPEAKER_01: She has a student that was pregnant.
SPEAKER_01: She had she had more relationships with probation officers than parents.
SPEAKER_01: That's just Gretna.
SPEAKER_01: But you know, God has used her to be a light in that school.
SPEAKER_01: And the first day, she was listening to some Christian music, and a teacher knocked on her door and said, I thought you might be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: There's two more of us in the building.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a hundred teachers on staff, three Christians in the building.
SPEAKER_01: And so God has provided her opportunities to present the gospel and share with kids.
SPEAKER_01: And only that, God has blessed her.
SPEAKER_01: Uh within six months, she'd already moved into an administrative role that she's supposed to start in August.
SPEAKER_01: But she was supposed to drive with me here yesterday, but I ended up going to pick her up at the airport because on Friday, her superintendent called and said, Can you come in at noon for an interview for a position, a principal's position?
SPEAKER_01: And my wife said, sure.
SPEAKER_01: And so she interviewed for a principal's position.
SPEAKER_01: We're waiting to see the response on that, and we're hoping that's a positive thing that she gets the yes.
SPEAKER_01: But God has just used her dramatically.
SPEAKER_01: And what we can look back now and see, even though our plan was to move in June and she left early, God had a reason for all of it.
SPEAKER_01: We're closing on our house next week in New Orleans, a house we've bought.
SPEAKER_01: Um, my kid Austin got into a charter school, which he would have missed if we'd not been there.
SPEAKER_01: And if he hadn't gotten to one of the charter schools, he'd have to go to one of the normal schools in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And New Orleans is not known for its great school system.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he's gonna go to the number one high school in Louisiana, praise God.
SPEAKER_01: My daughters have acclimated the city, and so while I've had a plan, we followed God's plan, and God's plan has been much better.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was the longest five and a half months of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: I tell you, I'm glad we had a strong marriage when we started, and I'm grateful that we have a strong marriage still.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my wife, like I said, she's incredible.
SPEAKER_01: I've only got evidence of one poor choice she made, and that was 14 years ago, and she chose me and she stuck with me.
SPEAKER_01: So, so I always tell her, look, you made me, so I can't really trust you for rational decisions in our relationship because you chose me.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're going to Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: Now, New Orleans, I want to be honest, I did not want to go to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, about uh October of 2015, we began to feel this uneasiness, this unsettleness like God was moving us.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not from Tennessee, as you can tell.
SPEAKER_01: I don't sound like a Tennessean, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm from Washington State, and I moved to Tennessee in 1994 to go to college.
SPEAKER_01: Thought I'd be there for four years and go back home.
SPEAKER_01: I've never gone back.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've been in Ohio, northern Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky, and I've been in Tennessee, but never back to Washington.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in about 2015, October, I felt like God was doing something.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, God is calling us back to East Tennessee.
SPEAKER_01: All of my wife's family live there.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we lived before we moved.
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, there's no greater place than Knoxville, Tennessee, September to December on Saturday mornings to watch the University of Tennessee volunteers play football.
SPEAKER_01: Because I believe that God loves Neeland Stadium.
SPEAKER_01: I thought, this is where we're gonna go.
SPEAKER_01: I know I'm not gonna get anyone agreeing with that.
SPEAKER_01: Uh but I'll be telling you, God loves the underdogs.
SPEAKER_01: So he's a T U T fan.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this funny story, my son, 13 years old, until last year, had never seen Tennessee beat the University of Florida.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't think it could possibly happen.
SPEAKER_01: We finally did it, praise God.
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I wanted to go to Knoxville.
SPEAKER_01: But the doors, just nothing felt right.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, sometimes you just get a check in your spirit where you know something's not, and nothing just seemed right.
SPEAKER_01: About the same time, uh, my youth pastor at the time, he'd worked for me about three years, his name was Doug May.
SPEAKER_01: He was like, hey, I need you to pray for me because I'm getting ready to transition at the end of this year.
SPEAKER_01: I want to go finish my MDiv, my Master's of Divinity, at the seminary in New Orleans and pray that God finds a place of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And so we began praying, and my wife began doing research, and she said, Hey, you know, the North American Missions Board is looking for pastors to go plant churches in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: You need to pray about this.
SPEAKER_01: I said, No, I do not need to pray about that because I do not want to go to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: I had I'd been involved in church plants most of my ministry, either bivocationally or volunteer-wise, and I knew how hard it was.
SPEAKER_01: I knew how much it was uncertain, I knew how much difficulty was, and I kind of liked being in an established church.
SPEAKER_01: There's something about coming every Sunday morning and having a treasurer hand you a check that I really like.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I didn't really want to go to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: I said, God is calling me to Knoxville.
SPEAKER_01: She said, just pray about it.
SPEAKER_01: I said, I don't need to pray about it, I'm not gonna pray about it.
SPEAKER_01: Well, my wife did not relent, and she said, Hey, we need to go down to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: The missions board is doing a catch the vision tour for pastors to come down and see how they can get involved.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, I'll go.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's what I know you either love the city or you hate the city.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I'll go to New Orleans and I'll hate the city.
SPEAKER_01: Case closed, I can go to Knoxville.
SPEAKER_01: I got down to the city and I just fell in love with it.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, New Orleans is not Bourbon Street.
SPEAKER_01: That's where the tourists go.
SPEAKER_01: It's the number one visited city in the world, by the way, for a tourist.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not where people go.
SPEAKER_01: That's not New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And I spent the weekend and I heard all these stories of what church planters are doing and the stories of lostness, and my heart just broke for the city.
SPEAKER_01: And the closest thing I can connect it to from scripture is if you read the story of Acts, Paul is trying like crazy to go to Asia with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And every time he tries to go roadblock, roadblock, roadblock, and finally he has a dream one night about a man in Macedonia that said, Come help me.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul woke up the next morning and ran.
SPEAKER_01: The closest thing I can see is I felt like God was directly saying, Come help the city of New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And so we began the process.
SPEAKER_01: It's not an easy process.
SPEAKER_01: The North American Missions Board, which you guys partner with, is awesome at what they do.
SPEAKER_01: They don't send just anybody.
SPEAKER_01: You go through a long process where they evaluate you, and I had to give them people to talk to, and they had to sit down.
SPEAKER_01: I had to go to a weekend where they sat down and they were invasive in our marriage and asked questions that my mama doesn't even ask, and I had to answer the questions honestly.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a real time where they began to investigate.
SPEAKER_01: Not only do you feel called, but does the church feel like you have the skill set and the relationship to work?
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, I believe that God speaks clearly through his church, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: Every time you see in the book of Acts, when something was done, the church always affirmed it.
SPEAKER_01: And so the North American Missions Board said, Hey, you know what, we confirm that you have a calling.
SPEAKER_01: And a church in Pentacola said, Hey, we confirm that you have a calling.
SPEAKER_01: And so we began going to the city of Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: And uh Bell Chase, if you've ever watched NCIS New Orleans, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a military community.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I have military background.
SPEAKER_01: I spent eight years in the National Guard.
SPEAKER_01: My wife spent 12.
SPEAKER_01: She's a much better soldier than I am because she is so much better at taking orders and giving them.
SPEAKER_01: I was not good at it, but we we loved the military life, and so there's a military base there, and I'm actually going for a physical in the next month to go back in the reserves as a chaplain because it opens up another 4,000 people that I can get access to on a consistent basis to share the gospel with.
SPEAKER_01: But the city of Belchase, if you don't count the military base, it has 12,000 people in it.
SPEAKER_01: That's a 28% increase over the last 10 years.
SPEAKER_01: It is a growing city.
SPEAKER_01: Its number one industry is oil and natural gas.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know there's oil and natural gas in the Gulf Coast?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you duh.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that that's another, in fact, they're building a new refinery.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be between 500 and 1,000 jobs.
SPEAKER_01: The average starting wage is$70,000.
SPEAKER_01: I told my wife I'm in the wrong business.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I said I said that to say that there's a growing community, but and it's a young community.
SPEAKER_01: The median age is 34, it's young people.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what happened: New Orleans was destroyed about 10, 15, 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: This little storm, you guys remember it, right, Katrina?
SPEAKER_01: What wiped the city out?
SPEAKER_01: Well, all these millennials came in and they did work and they fell in love with the city, and so these millennials are coming back, and so the age group is dropping to about 34.
SPEAKER_01: But in this city of 12,000 people, I sat down with a pastor of the church there and I said, Hey, just Jason, just tell me what an average Sunday looks like here in Belchase.
SPEAKER_01: He said, if every church had their top attendance, there's five evangelical congregations.
SPEAKER_01: He said there'd be 400 people in church on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I was talking with Brother Don.
SPEAKER_01: He said there's about a thousand people that worship here on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: So twice as many, more than twice as many people will come through this building today and worship Jesus in the entire city of Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: See, for me, as my wife and I talked, there's gonna be no shortage of people that want to go to an hour's pool and pastor an established church.
SPEAKER_01: My church I left in West Tennessee, I could have stayed there forever.
SPEAKER_01: They loved me, they liked me, and it was comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: My wife was the principal of the Christian school.
SPEAKER_01: We had a pretty easy life.
SPEAKER_01: But you know, as I gave my resignation, I wasn't even out the door and they had resumes to take that spot.
SPEAKER_01: There's a shortage of people that are willing to pack their lives up and go to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And we just felt like that God was calling us to do that.
SPEAKER_01: And so people ask if there's only like 400 people, what is the worship?
SPEAKER_01: What are the people like?
SPEAKER_01: And and the first thing is this about 48% of them have no affiliation at all.
SPEAKER_01: They don't even care about church.
SPEAKER_01: God is either there or not there, don't really care.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of that is that millennial influence, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, the largest demographic of faith people in our in our country are non-affiliated, people who just don't even have a background.
SPEAKER_01: See, about 15 years ago, we realized that that 75% of the kids that graduate our churches from high school will leave and never go and never attend church.
SPEAKER_01: About we retained about 25%.
SPEAKER_01: But we weren't concerned because we thought, well, they'll get families and they'll come back.
SPEAKER_01: And I bet if we looked around this room, a lot of you left high school, went your own way, had families, and came back to church.
SPEAKER_01: Is that the story of anybody here?
SPEAKER_01: You kind of left for a little bit and you came back.
SPEAKER_01: We weren't concerned because we thought they'd come back.
SPEAKER_01: Remember my stat earlier.
SPEAKER_01: Seven out of ten people under the age of 18 don't have a church background.
SPEAKER_01: You know what that means?
SPEAKER_01: There's no faith to go back to.
SPEAKER_01: So 48% of the people in Bell Chase, they don't even have a faith background.
SPEAKER_01: The other population is huge, 43% Catholic.
SPEAKER_01: Um, you guys down here in Texas, you know Catholicism is a big thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's a huge thing in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the oldest, that's a picture right there of St.
SPEAKER_01: Louis Cathedral.
SPEAKER_01: That is the oldest active, continually active Catholic church.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a generational Catholicism.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, my mama was Catholic, her mom was Catholic.
SPEAKER_01: All the way back to the 1700s, we were Catholic.
SPEAKER_01: It's huge.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's deeply rooted.
SPEAKER_01: I'll talk to some guys that can share you a salvation by grace story.
SPEAKER_01: They can present the three circles, they know the gospel clearly, but they'll never leave the Catholic Church because that's everything.
SPEAKER_01: For several reasons.
SPEAKER_01: One is they don't want to go to the public schools.
SPEAKER_01: And to go to the Catholic school at a great discount, guess what you got to be?
SPEAKER_01: You know, to get a burial spot at a at a gravesite, guess what you gotta be?
SPEAKER_01: So they're not willing to give that up, not just that, they're not willing to give up the family connections.
SPEAKER_01: The other part of that is very nominal Catholic.
SPEAKER_01: They're kind of like, you ever met Baptists that they say they're Baptists or they say they're churchgoers, and you see them on Christmas and Eastern Mother's Day?
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you, the interesting thing for me, pastoring a church in West Tennessee, is I'd see the obituary and I'd read somebody that says, faithful member of Harvest Baptist Church, and I'm like, baby, I don't know who that person is.
SPEAKER_01: There's that population, they're Catholic in name only.
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is you got about 3% Buddhists.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna plant in, and I know I talk fast, I'm sorry, I get excited.
SPEAKER_01: We're planting in the northern part of Bell Chase, where Belchase connects with a part of New Orleans called the English Turn and Algiers.
SPEAKER_01: And in that about five-mile radius, there's about 30,000 people, but no churches.
SPEAKER_01: Gotta drive three to four miles to find a church.
SPEAKER_01: As I leave my house in Algiers that we're buying, as I cross the bridge into the English Turn, I will pass two Buddhist temples before I pass an evangelical church.
SPEAKER_01: 3% of the population is Buddhist.
SPEAKER_01: There's a Thai Buddhist temple and a Vietnamese Buddhist temple.
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is there's two to three percent Muslim.
SPEAKER_01: My wife, the school she teaches at, they have a full-time Arabic interpreter because there's Muslims there.
SPEAKER_01: It's just the population.
SPEAKER_01: My daughter will tell me that a teacher will come in a couple times a day and escort kids out of class so they can go pray and come back to class.
SPEAKER_01: The Muslim population is growing.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, there's about twice as many Muslims and Buddhists in this area than there are evangelical Christians.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, stats tell you about 1% are evangelical.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let's be honest.
SPEAKER_01: You ever know anybody that went to church but didn't know Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that 1% doesn't mean 1% of them actually know who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: That 1% is probably closer to about 0.5%, a half a percent.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what that tells me.
SPEAKER_01: That tells me in the city of Belchase, in New Orleans proper, there's 1.2 million people.
SPEAKER_01: And by our best guess, maybe one, if we're generous and we count all the mainline Protestants, if we count every church that's Protestant, maybe 8%, but let's just say, let's say 10%, can we round up to 10%?
SPEAKER_01: Let's round up 10%.
SPEAKER_01: If we round up to 10%, 1.1 million people face a Christless eternity every single day in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: Less than six hours away from here.
SPEAKER_01: In the South, in the Bible belt.
SPEAKER_01: Now here's what I believe.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone believe that heaven's a real place?
SPEAKER_01: You know, I believe heaven's a real place.
SPEAKER_01: This Bible here tells me it's a real place.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna go prepare a place, and when I come back, you can be where I'm gonna be.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about heaven.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that's real, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that excites me some days.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Paul said our light and momentary troubles are okay because we're getting a glory that far outweighs them.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that heaven is an amazing place and God is wanting us to be with him, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: Here's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: I also believe there's another place in the Bible that we don't talk about a lot.
SPEAKER_01: Hell.
SPEAKER_01: And if heaven is a real place, because Scripture says heaven's a real place, you know what that means?
SPEAKER_01: Hell is a real place.
SPEAKER_01: And 1.1 million people, if we're generous, if we give them 10%, are facing an eternity where they're gonna wake up, and they're gonna wake up in a Christeless eternity where the Bible says there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_01: Totally separate from God.
SPEAKER_01: See, because the problem Jesus says this, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except by me.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that 1.1 million people have not been introduced to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And like Paul says, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess in heaven on earth that Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And for us, that's a great day, right?
SPEAKER_01: When that trumpet sounds and the sky parts and Jesus comes back, I'm like, Yes, he's Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Is great, we're done.
SPEAKER_01: Because let me tell you, there are some days I just want to be done with this, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: There are some days I'm tired, I'm worn up like, but even so, Lord, come quickly because this is hard work.
SPEAKER_01: But for those 1.1 million people who don't know Jesus, they're gonna say He's Lord, but just be like, oh my goodness, He's Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And there's no chance at that point.
SPEAKER_01: So God has called us.
SPEAKER_01: Now the question is, how in the world are you gonna reach out to 1.1 million people?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to reach out to 1.1 million, because I can't affect 1.1 million people.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna focus on the city that God has called me to, which is Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: And from Bell Chase we'll extend just like you all will focus here in Richmond, Texas, right?
SPEAKER_01: Your primary mission is the people you see day to day.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, if you won't do it here, you won't do it anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: People say, Oh, I want to go to a missions team and I want to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Look, if you're not sharing the gospel here at home, don't think that you're gonna go on the missions field and share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be just as shy and just as not wanting to do it, and you're gonna have every excuse not to.
SPEAKER_01: Mission starts at home and always goes out.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say, mission starts at home and always goes out.
SPEAKER_01: In case you missed that, mission starts at home and always goes out.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna start in Bell Chase where God has called us to be.
SPEAKER_01: And there's four strategic places we really believe that God has called us to.
SPEAKER_01: And number one is the school system.
SPEAKER_01: My wife is has been blessed to be in the school system.
SPEAKER_01: She's she talked to me, she said, I'm really nervous about interviewing for this principal's position because I know we're trying to plan a church.
SPEAKER_01: What if this takes up my time?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, baby, you're gonna have way more influence as a principal of a school than I will be as a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be able to bring in teachers that share your worldview.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be able to affect culture.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have parents come talk to you that will never come talk to me.
SPEAKER_01: Who knows if God hasn't called us to New Orleans specifically so you can be a principal here in the school system?
SPEAKER_01: God knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: Not just that, my my friend Doug, who was praying for a place of ministry, has conveniently agreed to come minister alongside me, which is awesome, because I am not an administrative guy.
SPEAKER_01: I don't just I just don't have the skill set, but he loves spreadsheets.
SPEAKER_01: I get to tell him what I want to do and he makes it happen.
SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And so, but he's also teaching in the school system.
SPEAKER_01: So we've got two different schools we're involved in in loving and caring for people.
SPEAKER_01: The next thing you see down the bottom corner, that's a big party.
SPEAKER_01: That's because New Orleans loves to party.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, I don't downplay the door-to-door evangelism.
SPEAKER_01: I think that works to an extent.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: People don't want you in their homes, right?
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I sit down to dinner about seven o'clock, five o'clock, you know, I don't really want a lot of knocks on the door, do you?
SPEAKER_01: I've been working all day.
SPEAKER_01: What I want to do is I want to sit down with my family and enjoy my meal.
SPEAKER_01: And so I still do some door-to-door.
SPEAKER_01: We have teams that'll come down and help us canvas and find out who's there.
SPEAKER_01: But man, you throw a pot together in New Orleans, you throw some corn and some sausage and some shrimp in that pot, people will show up.
SPEAKER_01: People in New Orleans like that.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're asking for teams to come down and help us put together block parties because people will come, enjoy the food, enjoy the fellowship, and we'll have opportunities to dialogue with people.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Paul in the book of Acts went where people gathered and shared the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He went to the synagogues, but the synagogues didn't want him very long.
SPEAKER_01: So he would go where people were and he would share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna do block parties.
SPEAKER_01: Next top corner, that's a little bit of a picture of work.
SPEAKER_01: I really feel that at least for the short term, God wants me to work bivocationally.
SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily because we need the extra income, but because I don't know a lot of people in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And so I have God is just amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Before we were in West Tennessee, we had a series of a time where we were bivocationally working at a church, and I worked for Panera Bread Company.
SPEAKER_01: I managed and I was a manager there.
SPEAKER_01: And my dad always taught me, he said, son, whenever you work somewhere, you leave on good terms.
SPEAKER_01: He said, because you never know when you're gonna need to go back.
SPEAKER_01: And so I worked there, and my best friend, I had worked for him at Fazoli's, and he was a manager there, and I was a manager at Panera together, and he managed Panera.
SPEAKER_01: And well, lo and behold, about four years ago, the franchise that I worked for bought all the franchise rights to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And back in December, when I was talking to my friend, he said, Look, he said, if you need work, I can hire you third shift to bake bread in New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm Monday night, I'm talking with a guy there, and I'm gonna start working three nights a week, baking bread, not because I necessarily love baking bread, but because I'm gonna be in the facility where I'm gonna meet people, and God is gonna bring relationships that I can bring the gospel to.
SPEAKER_01: I want to let you know something.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go on the missions field to find a mission field.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever vocation God has given you, that's the place of ministry and missions work he's given you.
SPEAKER_01: You should be always having your eyes open where you work and where you spend time, saying, God, who do you want me to share the gospel with?
SPEAKER_01: Because I believe that if we pray according to God's will, God will do it, right?
SPEAKER_01: You know it's God's will to save people.
SPEAKER_01: So if you pray that God brings people to you to share the gospel with, he will do it.
SPEAKER_01: And so the last thing is a picture of music.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the thing: a lot of people do what their skill set is, and so a lot of our church planters do sports camps.
SPEAKER_01: There's no nice way to say this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not athletic.
SPEAKER_01: We are my kids went to a physical this week, and the pediatrician said, Oh, your kids are perfect.
SPEAKER_01: He said, They're all small like mom, not like dad, husky football player.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, husky football player.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Baby, he just called me fat.
SPEAKER_01: He just called me fat.
SPEAKER_01: She's like, Well, I'm like, all right, I'm a f what I say is I'm not a sports guy, and so a lot of our church planners do sports camps, and sports are great, but you know, only about 25% of kids like sports, and they're never gonna come to a sports camp.
SPEAKER_01: You know, my son would write my son, we played club sports for a little bit, and my daughter still loves club soccer, but I can't keep up with it.
SPEAKER_01: It's too much.
SPEAKER_01: You know, club sports are difficult, but about 75% of the kids have no desire to do sports.
SPEAKER_01: But New Orleans is a music town, and so we're gonna do some music camps because we feel it's a great way to reach out to kids.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you do a music camp, and in that music camp rotation, you add a story time where you present the gospel, kids hear the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You you send them home with music that's about the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You know what they're doing at home?
SPEAKER_01: They're sharing the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And the idea of the sports camps, I mean the music camps, is to build interest in what we really want to start, which is a fine arts academy.
SPEAKER_01: A fine arts academy where in the nights we have group choir lessons and piano lessons that are taught by Christian people.
SPEAKER_01: So, Doug, who's coming down with me, he's a music ed major.
SPEAKER_01: That's what his degree is in.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's going to lead some group choirs and some piano lessons.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get students from the seminary to come and do other lessons, and two to three nights a week, we're gonna have kids coming to our center and they're gonna hear the gospel because they're gonna be doing music that's gospel centered.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what I'll do?
SPEAKER_01: I'll sit in the front door and I'll welcome parents as they come in, and I'll build relationships with parents.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not exactly musical.
SPEAKER_01: I can play guitar and I sing tenor, ten or eleven notes off, but I sing loud.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but we're we're we're gonna, it's gonna build opportunities for me to when parents say, Well, what is this my kid singing?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's singing the doxology.
SPEAKER_01: Let me show you that's found in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's singing about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you what Jesus has done.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens is this you create conversations about the gospel where they come to you.
SPEAKER_01: Not just that.
SPEAKER_01: My Muslim friends, they'll never walk into a church.
SPEAKER_01: But they'll walk into a music academy that just happens to let a church use its facility on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that we're being deceptive, we're being wise.
SPEAKER_01: We're looking for ways to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing: in New Orleans, they love the Southern Baptists.
SPEAKER_01: When Hurricane Katrina came, the Methodists left, the cat, everyone left them, but you know who showed up and worked?
SPEAKER_01: Us.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, when the floods hit Baton Rouge, I read a stat that said about 85% of the meals that were cooked by Red Cross, you know who they're cooked by?
SPEAKER_01: Us.
SPEAKER_01: And so what happens is this, you'll have people that say, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I have my house because you all came back and rebuilt my house.
SPEAKER_01: We have what we have because you guys came and stayed here.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, a statistic, a study was done, and it said that of all the religious points of view that they have respect for, Southern Baptists were equal or greater than Catholics in New Orleans, and that has never happened before.
SPEAKER_01: That happens because of missional giving to disaster relief.
SPEAKER_01: And you think, oh, it's just building a it's just building a house, it's just putting on a roof.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's building a bridge for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And then so, but here's the thing: you start sharing the gospel, and then it's like, oh, I love you, but I don't want to talk about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But if you get them to a music academy, or you get them in a classroom, or you get them at a block party, or you see them at work and their defenses are down, and you just share your story, because I believe that Christ is compelling, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, If you lift, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.
SPEAKER_01: I believe if you live a life that glorifies Christ, you will draw people to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of our plan.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we're hoping there.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the question: how can Grand Park Way help?
SPEAKER_01: There are three ways.
SPEAKER_01: First one is prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I challenge everyone to go to riverbendbc.com, riverbendbc.com, you can sign up and be on our prayer list.
SPEAKER_01: What it means is this is about once a week you'll get a prayer list from us of what we're praying for, and once a month you'll get a newsletter talking about what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I believe that God does not do anything in this physical world until it's been accomplished in the spiritual world.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you?
SPEAKER_01: I believe that sometimes the fact that things don't get done is not because God doesn't want to do it, it's because God's people don't want to pray for it.
SPEAKER_01: My great-grandmother on my mother's side, she uh she would pray every day, my mom would say, for her children and her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren she'd never met.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that my life is a fruit of the prayers of my great-grandmother on my mother's side.
SPEAKER_01: Because she would pray faithfully for me, even though she'd never even seen me or knew what my name was.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that God answers prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Next one is prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Second one is go.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a little controversial.
SPEAKER_01: Go short term, go long term.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe God is calling you to pack your family up for a year or two and help establish a church.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're a teacher and I might know a principal that can get you a job.
SPEAKER_01: I say that jokingly, but I say why not?
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't just call church planters, he calls families to go and establish a church.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe God might call one or two or three families from here and say, you know what, Pastor, we love Park, Grandview, Grand Parkway, and we're gonna come back here, but we're gonna tie the part of our lives to the city of New Orleans for a couple years to help a church get established.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that God can do that.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I pray?
SPEAKER_01: I pray that God calls my children to ministry.
SPEAKER_01: My baby girl, she wants to be a doctor.
SPEAKER_01: She wants to be a pediatric ears, nose, and throat doctor because my middle child, she's had hearing problems her entire life, and she wants to help babies who can't hear.
SPEAKER_01: My prayer is that God calls that beautiful sweet Catherine to communities and places where Jesus isn't known.
SPEAKER_01: And she uses her love for medicine to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: My son wants to be an architect.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe God will use his architecture skills and put him in a place like Dubai where he has a career as an architect, but really he's a missionary.
SPEAKER_01: My goal and my desire is that every part of my family spends our life in ministry loving Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And that's my prayer for this church.
SPEAKER_01: That every single one of you uses your vocation and your passion as an avenue to proclaim the gospel because nothing else matters.
SPEAKER_01: So go.
SPEAKER_01: And the last thing is this is give, and this is the one that's tricky because it's like, oh, you want me to give money?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you have to give money.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not to me, but give money to your church because here's the thing: the gospel costs money, right?
SPEAKER_01: Now I am praying that God gives me a free building in Bell Chase and He can do it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm praying that God gives me a crazy deal in a building in Bell Chase.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what I know: God has all the resources he needs in his church to accomplish his mission.
SPEAKER_01: God has all the resources he needs in his church to accomplish the mission.
SPEAKER_01: You know, David Platt has said that if we if Jesus tarries a hundred years and we don't reach the nations for the gospel, it won't be because we didn't have resources or technology or skill set, it'll because we liked$5 coffee.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is this is we choose comfort over the gospel on a considerable time.
SPEAKER_01: And so here's what I challenge everybody when I speak, and I can say this here because I'm leaving today.
SPEAKER_01: Look at your budget.
SPEAKER_01: How much of your budget do you spend on comfort?
SPEAKER_01: Is there not one percent that you could give directly to your church to increase your missional giving?
SPEAKER_01: Is it not one?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I found.
SPEAKER_01: Is I found in my life we had Netflix, we had Amazon Prime, we had some cable during sports seasons, we like to go out to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And I found out that there was way more than one percent that I was spending on myself.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: It goes back to my statement earlier.
SPEAKER_01: Hell's a real place, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So am I choosing comfort over the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying that you can't have comfortability, and I'm saying there might be some families here where literally they live paycheck to paycheck.
SPEAKER_01: And listen, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, praise God that you come and you give faithfully.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that God shows you and provides for you more ways to give.
SPEAKER_01: But some of us we spend on ourselves more than we spend on the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I have to say about that.
SPEAKER_01: If you believe the gospel, you can't spend more on yourself than you do on the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Because hell is a real place.
SPEAKER_01: And so I challenge you to find wherever you're giving right now, whatever you're doing, I would challenge you to look at your budget and say, is there not more?
SPEAKER_01: Not because God, listen, God doesn't need your money, right?
SPEAKER_01: He wants a cattle on a thousand hills, he's fully loaded, but he wants you to get the blessing and the benefit of being part of his mission.
SPEAKER_01: And so I challenge you to look through your budget and see if you can't find an additional 1% that you can give directly to the church and to missions.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's what I know the Great Commission is worth everything that I have.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna we're gonna talk about joining God in his mission.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I know.
SPEAKER_01: As a pastor, I have people come to me and they say, I just don't feel God.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why we get in this feeling.
SPEAKER_01: I just don't feel God.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel connected to him.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, Richard Blackaby wrote a book a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01: I know it's a long time ago because I read it in college and I was in college a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was called Experiencing God.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, if you want to experience God, you find out what God is doing and you get in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_01: You know what God is doing?
SPEAKER_01: God is doing great commission work.
SPEAKER_01: My wife lived in New Orleans for six months without me.
SPEAKER_01: Would you believe our relationship was not intimate and dynamic when we were 500 miles apart?
SPEAKER_01: Because my wife was over here in New Orleans doing her own thing, doing the things she had to do, and I was over here in north of Memphis, Tennessee, doing my thing, and we weren't together.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: There was just no connection.
SPEAKER_01: All of our conversations were facts and emotions and dealing stuff, but we weren't doing the same things.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: We spend so much of our time with God here doing great commission work, doing the missions, doing evangelism, God wanting to do these things in the world, and we spend so much time over here doing our own thing.
SPEAKER_01: What if we just moved ourselves from here in the middle of what God is doing?
SPEAKER_01: If you do that, I guarantee you your relationship with God will be dynamic and vibrant and intimate.
SPEAKER_01: Because you can't be where God is and not have a dynamic, vibrant relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Can't happen.
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 through 21.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you'd all do around here, but I like to stand up when we read God's word because I believe that God speaks from his Bible, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: You know, here's what I know.
SPEAKER_01: If the president or the governor just walked that door, we'd all stand up out of respect, right?
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna stand up, we're gonna read.
SPEAKER_01: I'm reading Genesis chapter 3, verses 8 through 21 from the New Living Translation.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what it says.
SPEAKER_01: When the cool of the evening breeze were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.
SPEAKER_01: So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Lord God called out to man, Where are you?
SPEAKER_01: He replied, I I heard you walking in the garden, and so I hid.
SPEAKER_01: I was afraid because I was naked.
SPEAKER_01: Who told you you were naked?
SPEAKER_01: the Lord God asked.
SPEAKER_01: Have you eaten a tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?
SPEAKER_01: The man replied, It was the woman you gave me.
SPEAKER_01: She gave me the fruit and I ate it.
SPEAKER_01: And then the woman God asked, What have you done?
SPEAKER_01: And she said, The serpent deceived me, she replied, and that's why I ate it.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild.
SPEAKER_01: You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live, and I will cause hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
SPEAKER_01: He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
SPEAKER_01: And then he said to the woman, I will sharpen your pain of pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth, and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.
SPEAKER_01: And the man he said, Since you have listened to your wife and ate from the tree, whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you, and all of your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
SPEAKER_01: It will grow thorns and thistles for you, and through it you will eat of its grains.
SPEAKER_01: By the sweat of your brow you will have food to eat, until you return to the ground from which you are made.
SPEAKER_01: For you are made from dust, and you will return to dust.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Lord then Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all who lives.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord made the Lord God made clothing from animals, skins for Adam and his wife.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe seated.
SPEAKER_01: I want to look at three things that God does in missions.
SPEAKER_01: Three things that God does that we should mimic.
SPEAKER_01: Three things we see in this text that God does, that God calls us to do as well.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is this God brings hope to the hopeless.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, Genesis chapter 3, life was great until then, right?
SPEAKER_01: God created the world, it was perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Created man and wife, it was perfect, it was this perfect garden.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, Satan comes in and says, God is holding something from you.
SPEAKER_01: And so the story comes, and Adam and Eve eat the fruit.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how long they were there.
SPEAKER_01: If it was me, probably about six weeks, because it didn't take me long to do my own thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how long they're in the garden, but he eats the fruit, and God's about to cast judgment.
SPEAKER_01: You know what's amazing?
SPEAKER_01: In verse 15, before God casts his judgment, he brings this promise of redemption.
SPEAKER_01: You understand that God, before he casts, here's what it says, verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers.
SPEAKER_01: He will bruise your head and you will bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_01: See, he's talking about Christ will come and crush Satan.
SPEAKER_01: Before he gives the curse on Eve and the curse on Adam, he brings the promise of redemption.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, listen, I'm about to kick you out of the garden.
SPEAKER_01: It's about to get bad, but I'm gonna come and I'm gonna crush Satan.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_01: See, we get this idea that God is this angry, vengeful God.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you, God is angry at times.
SPEAKER_01: And God is jealous, and God brings judgment, but in God's judgment, he always offers grace and mercy, and before he brings judgment to Adam and Eve, he tells them, I'm going to redeem you.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 5, verse 6 says this when we were utterly helpless, Christ came just at the right time and died for us sinners.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, I am utterly hopeless.
SPEAKER_01: You know what 40 years of life have taught me?
SPEAKER_01: I'm never gonna be good enough.
SPEAKER_01: I'm never gonna be a good enough husband, never gonna be a good enough father, I'm never gonna be a good enough man to deserve redemption, but that's okay because Christ came to a hopeless situation and said, You don't have to be good enough because I am.
SPEAKER_01: You know, last Friday I went to the mosque with a church planner friend of mine because uh this last Friday began the start of Ramadan, not Friday, Friday, a week ago.
SPEAKER_01: And Ramadan in the Muslim world is the season of grace and forgiveness as long as you work hard enough for Allah to accept it.
SPEAKER_01: If you do all the right things, God might accept.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh a true Muslim will say they'll never know if they've done enough.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I know I'll never do enough.
SPEAKER_01: You and I will never do enough.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus did more than enough.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' grace and mercy and sacrifice is great enough to cover the greatest sinner and every sinner.
SPEAKER_01: And John 3.16 tells me that anyone who will believe in him won't perish.
SPEAKER_01: He brings hope to a hopeless situation.
SPEAKER_01: Down there, a missionary friend of mine was telling me about a man from China who lived in his community, and he said one day he went to share the gospel with him, and he went through the three-circle conversation, and this guy from China is about 35 years old, said, Hey, that's a great story.
SPEAKER_01: I don't believe a word of it.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Now let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: Growing up in China, I heard this story on the street every single day.
SPEAKER_01: I've been here for five years, that's the first time I've heard the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Was engaged with the gospel every day in the streets of China.
SPEAKER_01: Five years in the city of New Orleans and never heard the gospel once.
SPEAKER_01: New Orleans is a hopeless place, and God wants us to bring hope to the hopeless.
SPEAKER_01: He brings community outcast.
SPEAKER_01: Look again at Genesis chapter 8, verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: It says this.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord God called the man, Where are you?
SPEAKER_01: You realize we have the only faith where God comes looking for man?
SPEAKER_01: Adam and Eve were hiding.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't even want to find God.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing when you know you're guilty, you want to run.
SPEAKER_01: You know when I know my kids have done something wrong?
SPEAKER_01: I can't find them anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: When I can't find them, there's something bad.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, we're just the same.
SPEAKER_01: When we're bad and we know we're bad, we hide from God.
SPEAKER_01: We run.
SPEAKER_01: But Genesis, God comes.
SPEAKER_01: Looking for Adam, he says, Where are you?
SPEAKER_01: The entire book of the Bible is the story of God looking for man and building a relationship with man.
SPEAKER_01: Throughout every text, every verse, every chapter of this book is God desperately wanting a relationship with man.
SPEAKER_01: He comes to bring community to the outcast.
SPEAKER_01: There's a boy in our community named CJ.
SPEAKER_01: CJ is a fourth grader, and he's a little African-American kid there that lives in the community where we live.
SPEAKER_01: And about three months ago, my son and I were visiting and they were skateboarding, and CJ met Austin, and CJ just started coming to our house all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Like, all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Like doesn't even knock on it.
SPEAKER_01: He just opens up like he owns the place.
SPEAKER_01: Like CJ's home is our home now or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how it works, but he comes all the time.
SPEAKER_01: He always comes around 5:15.
SPEAKER_01: You know what his question is?
SPEAKER_01: What's what's eating?
SPEAKER_01: What y'all having?
SPEAKER_01: And so we have just learned that we feed CJ four, five, six times.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: We just feed him.
SPEAKER_01: CJ uh his he's a single single mom, uh, works a lot.
SPEAKER_01: We don't really know a lot about the we try to build a family relationship, it's kind of a relationship we can't really figure out.
SPEAKER_01: But CJ just has become part of our family.
SPEAKER_01: And about two months ago, we were all home, and Doug, my friend, was with me and his parents were there visiting.
SPEAKER_01: So we had a lot of people in the house, and a phone went missing.
SPEAKER_01: And I and we looked and we said, CJ, have you seen the phone?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, the phone may have fallen in my pocket and I may have left it at my house.
SPEAKER_01: Well, CJ, why don't you run to your house and find that phone?
SPEAKER_01: Now here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: In that moment, I had I had two choices.
SPEAKER_01: I could tell that kid who had violated my home he could never come back.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'd probably have been justified.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you think I'd have been justified to say, look, you stole from me, don't come back.
SPEAKER_01: Because that was what part of me wanted to do, but then my spirit was checked because he doesn't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we should not be surprised when people who don't know Jesus act like people who don't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a lot of patience for Christians who claim the Bible and don't try to live like Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have a lot of patience, but if you don't know Jesus and you live like you don't know Jesus, I got a lot of patience with you because you're just acting like you should act.
SPEAKER_01: So uh on the way home that night, we walk CJ back to his house and he's like, Mr.
SPEAKER_01: J, I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what happened with that phone.
SPEAKER_01: I want to say, yeah, I know what happened.
SPEAKER_01: You took my phone.
SPEAKER_01: But in that moment, my my wife and I talked and said, CJ, have you ever been to church?
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, no, I've never been to church.
SPEAKER_01: He lives two blocks away from a church that's active and missional.
SPEAKER_01: They're a good church, but he's never heard that, he's never been to church, and so my daughters begin praying that night that CJ would come to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you know, you sometimes you pray for people and you don't see responses.
SPEAKER_01: You ever have someone you pray for for a long time and you don't see a response?
SPEAKER_01: Man, but God built my children's faith quickly because the next Wednesday, CJ joined us, joined my wife and my two kids at church.
SPEAKER_01: He heard the gospel for the very first time.
SPEAKER_01: And his response to his teacher was, I gotta get me some of that.
SPEAKER_01: CJ responded to the gospel and was introduced to the gospel and now has community with gospel people.
SPEAKER_01: I told the the Send missionary, the guy that coordinates all the church planners.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Look, we're moving out next month into our house, and I feel kind of bad for the next missionary family that comes here because we kind of had an open door policy.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I really don't feel bad because Christian homes should have an open door policy, and we should have people in our house all the time sharing the gospel with them.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing that kid is on the streets all day long.
SPEAKER_01: Him and his friends will come to my house just for water, just a glass of water.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: They're coming to a home where people love them and care about them, but more importantly, love and care about Jesus and are using it as a way to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: People, you know our world is desperately looking for community.
SPEAKER_01: Man, I got 300 Facebook friends, and sometimes I can't find no one to have lunch with.
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because they're not real friends.
SPEAKER_01: We've connected with so many people, but we have so few relationships.
SPEAKER_01: But Christians, if we build real community, we can bring the gospel through community.
SPEAKER_01: Not just in New Orleans, but here in Richmond.
SPEAKER_01: Last thing is this God brings hope to the hopeless, He brings community to the outcast, and God redreams at great personal cost.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 3.21 says this, and the Lord God made Adam, made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
SPEAKER_01: Now I want you to think about this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first sacrifice you find in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This verse always amazed me.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation 13, 11 says, the lamb who was slain before the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: When I read that, it kind of passes until I realize this.
SPEAKER_01: God's plan for redemption was planned before the world was created.
SPEAKER_01: Before God said, Let there be light, he had determined that he would come and die for mankind.
SPEAKER_01: When God's spirit was hovering upon the waters in Genesis chapter 1, his plan was to create the world and then die for creation in mankind.
SPEAKER_01: When God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, he was forming the beings who would kill his son.
SPEAKER_01: When God breathed breath into Adam, he had already determined he was going to die for him.
SPEAKER_01: When God gave the instruction not to eat the fruit of the tree, he knew they would and he would die for it.
SPEAKER_01: There was nothing God would not withhold to redeem mankind.
SPEAKER_01: There should be nothing that we would withhold to redeem mankind.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, I don't, I didn't want to go to New Orleans.
SPEAKER_01: New Orleans is a difficult city.
SPEAKER_01: Church planning is hard work.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I kind of liked being at a church where it was easy at times.
SPEAKER_01: But God is calling me somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: You know what the problem is this?
SPEAKER_01: We put so many restrictions about what we'll let God call us to do.
SPEAKER_01: God, I'll do whatever you want as long as it's A, B, or C, which really means, God, as long as you do what I want to do, I'll do what you want me to do.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And we would create a God who wants to do exactly what we want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, if your God wants to do exactly what you want to do every time, I want to say that maybe you don't serve the same God I serve.
SPEAKER_01: Because God makes me do things I don't want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Here's one.
SPEAKER_01: Turn the other cheek.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to turn the other cheek.
SPEAKER_01: Love your, I don't want to love my enemies.
SPEAKER_01: There's things that God calls me to do, I don't want to do.
SPEAKER_01: Great personal cost.
SPEAKER_01: What are you withholding from God?
SPEAKER_01: What is your I won't do?
SPEAKER_01: What is the thing that you say, God, I'll do anything to reach the loss, but I won't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Apostle Paul in the book of Romans says this.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I would rather myself be accursed if it would save all my brethren.
SPEAKER_01: Now that that's a really fancy way of saying, I would rather that I would go to hell so no one else would.
SPEAKER_01: I would rather that I myself be cut off from Christ if it meant nobody else would.
SPEAKER_01: I am not there.
SPEAKER_01: But I pray that I will be there.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that my desire for the lost will be so great that I would take their place because hell is a real place.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I know.
SPEAKER_01: CJ was a nameless kid to me three months ago, but he wasn't nameless to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know 1.2 million people in New Orleans, but my scripture says that God knows the hair on every one of their heads.
SPEAKER_01: Is there anybody in your life that you want to know the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: That you what would you give?
SPEAKER_01: What would you do for them to know the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: My dad's mom, to the best of my knowledge, never responded to the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: My grandmother.
SPEAKER_01: She she there was no evidence in her life her entire she was a good woman.
SPEAKER_01: She loved me, but she never responded to the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: There is nothing I wouldn't have given for my grandmother to know who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: I know what this word says, and I know what that means.
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't withhold anything in my life for her to have known the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: A large part of my family doesn't know the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: All of my cousins on my mom's side, there is no evidence that they know the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I would give anything for them to know Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I should be willing to do that for anybody.
SPEAKER_01: Do you understand that every saved person on this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person on this side of hell?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we know: we owe Christ to the world.
SPEAKER_01: To the least person and to the greatest person, to the richest person and the poorest person, to the best person and the worst person, we are in debt to the nations.
SPEAKER_01: We owe the gospel to everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Not just here in Richmond, not just here in the Houston area, but to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: We owe the gospel to everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, grace is a free gift, right?
SPEAKER_01: Christ gives it to us and expects nothing in return.
SPEAKER_01: But we owe the gospel to everybody, and we should be willing to give every last bit of our time, our talent, and our treasure as long as God gives us breath to the proclamation of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: God, I believe that you paid a debt that I could never pay.
SPEAKER_01: And you paid a debt that you didn't know.
SPEAKER_01: And before creation, you called me and you knew me and you loved me.
SPEAKER_01: But God, you also know and love the 1.2 million people in New Orleans that don't know you.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you'll call your people and your church to be passionate about what you're passionate about, to give their lives in service for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: God, you are king, and that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: That the words of your truth, the words of your word will soak into our hearts, and that we will leave here making you king of all of where we go, what we do, of our time, of our talent, and our treasure.
SPEAKER_01: That we'll give our lives to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.