SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is Andrew Demazio, lead pastor of Rose Church here in Portland, Oregon.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to our podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission here at Rose is building big people, becoming like Jesus in community while growing in our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever you are, wherever you are, I pray today's message challenges you and encourages you on your walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy today's podcast.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I love uh love talking to you guys.
SPEAKER_01: You guys are easy to preach to.
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Um Kim and I were married in a little town called Ferrum, Virginia, uh, in a chapel there on a very hot day.
SPEAKER_01: And this Thursday, it will have been 38 years since that event.
SPEAKER_01: And she's put up with a lot, you know, my idiosyncrasies and all that kind of stuff, but she remains the girl in my dreams.
SPEAKER_01: I knew I was gonna get that.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I want to say to this service.
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, uh love you, honey.
SPEAKER_01: Um, this is this is so great.
SPEAKER_01: Twenty-one people.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this is a record, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll we'll we'll we'll call it a record.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this is we'll uh this is better than the than the World Cup, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: My my wife is uh amazing in that.
SPEAKER_01: She's like following this and telling me, oh, this team just won.
SPEAKER_01: And so anyway.
SPEAKER_01: Uh anybody here from Germany?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, they won yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 20.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna jump right into this.
SPEAKER_01: This is this is so good.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 24, now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
SPEAKER_01: So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But he said to them, Unless I see his hand, in his hands, the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.
SPEAKER_01: Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.
SPEAKER_01: Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them.
SPEAKER_01: He just appeared and said, Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands, and put your hand, out your hand, and place it into my side.
SPEAKER_01: Do not uh do not disbelieve, but believe.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you've seen me?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who've not seen and yet believed.
SPEAKER_01: Year 1498, the Portuguese uh explorer, Vasco da Gama, landed on the western shores of southern India in the state of Kerala, and he was shocked to find Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Thousands of Christians, Christian communities, Christian churches.
SPEAKER_01: And so as he began to ask, hey, you know, how did you guys become Christians?
SPEAKER_01: They said, Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: I remember in 1988, my first uh trip to India, all in those southern states, uh Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, filled with Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they had Thomas everything, Thomas trucking lines, Thomas Market, Thomas this, Thomas Barbershop.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the pastors were named with Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: And isn't it interesting that Thomas goes from doubting Thomas to world-shaking Thomas, to the influencer Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: How did that happen?
SPEAKER_01: Because you just don't get that with just information.
SPEAKER_01: Something happened.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus did what he did here to Thomas, it transformed Thomas's life, made such an impact that he was able to impact a whole nation.
SPEAKER_01: And um so I'm going to talk to you a little bit this morning on, dear Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: I have something to show you.
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's there's a couple of people that I believe, two kinds of people I believe that God wants to speak to this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, like Thomas, you believe, and yet something has happened to your faith.
SPEAKER_01: Something has taken place, something has shaken you to the core.
SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna throw the Bible away, you're gonna still come to church.
SPEAKER_01: But honestly, you are in this room, and it's like, man, I don't know what's happened.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I call accidental doubt.
SPEAKER_01: An accident has happened to you.
SPEAKER_01: And you're you're reeling.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll be honest with yourself, you'll be honest with us, you're reeling today.
SPEAKER_01: That's the first set of people.
SPEAKER_01: The second set of people that I'm talking to today, or those those of you who especially who've been in church for a long time, you know your Bible, you read your words, you've got your little Jesus mug in the morning and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01: But to be honest, your faith is really low.
SPEAKER_01: Like there's, you're just, you're just going on fumes.
SPEAKER_01: And God wants to say to you today that He has come to give you a faith upgrade.
SPEAKER_01: Turn to somebody and say, I'm getting an upgrade today.
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting an upgrade.
SPEAKER_01: God absolutely wants to do something.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we want to look at today, okay?
SPEAKER_01: We want to look at what happened with Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: We usually, when you preach about Thomas, usually go from Thomas's point of view.
SPEAKER_01: I want to go from Jesus' point of view.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus had a disciple in crisis.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had a disciple in crisis.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's some of you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has disciples in crisis this morning.
SPEAKER_01: And what is wonderful is he loves you and he wants to do something about it.
SPEAKER_01: So he did something to Thomas that absolutely again affected him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let's clear something out about Thomas, okay, because we he's known as doubting Thomas, right?
SPEAKER_01: Everybody, all of those disciples doubted.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, the Bible uses the King James anyway, uses the word upbraided them.
SPEAKER_01: That, if you look that up in the Greek, I mean he really took them to task.
SPEAKER_01: So all of the disciples disbelieved Thomas, the only reason we call him doubting Thomas is because in this story, he's like the only one left.
SPEAKER_01: He's zoomed in, right?
SPEAKER_01: But the fact of it is, is Thomas was a sold-out believer to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my goodness, he was one of the twelve.
SPEAKER_01: He's in the inner core.
SPEAKER_01: He's there in all the meetings and all the things.
SPEAKER_01: He's there with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And if you look in John chapter 11, when Jesus goes to raise Lazarus from the dead, the Bible says that he goes into Bethany.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Bethany at that particular point, it's actually right over the hill from Jerusalem, and that was a danger zone for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had been threatened, you know, it was it was common knowledge that the scribes and Pharisees were plotting against Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So this was dangerous.
SPEAKER_01: And it was Thomas who, when Jesus said, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna see Lazarus, it was Thomas, nobody else, that said, Hey, let's go and die with him.
SPEAKER_01: So this guy is, he's on point.
SPEAKER_01: He's not a wishy-washy loser type of a disciple.
SPEAKER_01: He is really there.
SPEAKER_01: He's locked in with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So we've got to understand that about Thomas.
SPEAKER_01: But again, he's doubting.
SPEAKER_01: Here's my take on Thomas, and I've thought about this a lot over the years.
SPEAKER_01: Why did Thomas doubt?
SPEAKER_01: Why didn't he just believe?
SPEAKER_01: And why did he say what he did?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna put my, I won't believe it until I put my finger in his hand and my my hand in his side.
SPEAKER_01: Why did he say that?
SPEAKER_01: I proposed this this morning to you.
SPEAKER_01: That because he was so sold out, and because he had given his life, everything to Jesus, you know, we don't know if he had a wife or or house, but but I definitely he was with Jesus all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Why did he doubt then?
SPEAKER_01: Well, have you ever been through a situation, and maybe you're in that today, where everything just took a side sideswipe.
SPEAKER_01: Everything just just turned upside down.
SPEAKER_01: And now all of a sudden, what you thought was reality is now in question.
SPEAKER_01: What you thought was secure and guaranteed, it's it's all gone.
SPEAKER_01: The people that you counted on, they're all gone.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas had seen Jesus being taken away.
SPEAKER_01: And even though he wasn't there at the sight of the cross, who knows?
SPEAKER_01: Was he looking out a window and watching Jesus die?
SPEAKER_01: He knew that Jesus died.
SPEAKER_01: His world was rocked.
SPEAKER_01: And so to me, Thomas was really saying, look, I gave my heart once.
SPEAKER_01: I gave my heart once.
SPEAKER_01: I trusted once.
SPEAKER_01: I thought for sure.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the other thing about Thomas is Thomas only had pre-resurrection faith.
SPEAKER_01: That's all he had.
SPEAKER_01: He knew Jesus was the Messiah, but he really didn't see Jesus as my Lord and my God.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is what Thomas is doing.
SPEAKER_01: So Thomas isn't a loser in this story.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas is a hero.
SPEAKER_01: But there were three things that I want to talk about today that Jesus helped Thomas in his shaken faith, and that God is going to do today in your life.
SPEAKER_01: I I was as I was praying yesterday and today for these meetings and praying for you.
SPEAKER_01: I really felt that there's a there's a number of you here today.
SPEAKER_01: You need a faith upgrade.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I said, but God is gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01: Turn to somebody and say, God's gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So there's three things that he did.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, let's go back to verse 26.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, it says, um, although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood.
SPEAKER_01: He just appears and says, Peace be still.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gave Thomas an experience.
SPEAKER_01: Now watch this.
SPEAKER_01: Let's back up just a minute and talk about doubting for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Doubting, or what is a doubt?
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: A doubt is when you don't have information and you have not had full disclosure, you haven't had the experience.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: But doubt is is an experience.
SPEAKER_01: It's real.
SPEAKER_01: You really feel something.
SPEAKER_01: It's it's real to you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it reminds me, uh it reminds me of uh I've talked to people who've gone to the same restaurant I have and and the same places I've had, and I'm in there, you know, talking about the glories of this place.
SPEAKER_01: Man, that pizza was so amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what he will look at me and say, no, that that I had a lousy experience.
SPEAKER_01: I went to this particular place, had a lousy experience.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that is going to change a lousy experience is a good experience.
SPEAKER_01: Doubting is an experience, and this is what I feel by the Spirit of the Lord today.
SPEAKER_01: God wants you to experience Jesus all over again.
SPEAKER_01: And especially those of you who are, again, you're in that low ebb, but you're in that, it's just running on fumes.
SPEAKER_01: Can we just be honest here?
SPEAKER_01: Look, I've I've I've been saved for, oh my word, what 1977 is when I gave my life to the Lord on a friend's couch.
SPEAKER_01: And I can tell you that at a at a several times, many times, I get up and it's like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm feeling this today.
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like here's the other thing is that we think that faith is a feeling.
SPEAKER_01: I ain't feeling it today, so I guess it's gone.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Faith goes way deeper than that.
SPEAKER_01: And I have noticed that if I am, if I am, am, you know, I I gotta get my mind.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I need you.
SPEAKER_01: I remember one time I went through this crisis in my uh Kim and I had just been married, had our first little one.
SPEAKER_01: We went out to uh Michigan, Lansing, Michigan, where her her uh mom and dad are all from and visiting family out there.
SPEAKER_01: And on the way, I said to Kim, I said, honey, I said, I know we're gonna be staying in this little campground, and I said, I know that, you know, family and friends are gonna do a bunch of stuff, but I gotta get in touch with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I I don't know what's the matter.
SPEAKER_01: I just feel like something is missing in my life.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you gotta understand, I was in the ministry, I'd been through Bible school, I'd been preaching at that particular point for over 10 years, and it's like, but what do I, you know?
SPEAKER_01: So she said, okay, that's fine.
SPEAKER_01: So in the mornings, I'm a morning person, by the way, and uh, I would get up early in the morning, sneak out of that little uh trailer that their family had provided, and and walked around, and there was a small little pond, had a path.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember going back into the woods in that path, and I just began.
SPEAKER_01: Never before in my life had I just I started pouring out my my heart to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this is not actually um it's actually not sequential, but let's pull up that scripture from Psalms 142.
SPEAKER_01: This is when this particular scripture came real to me.
SPEAKER_01: I cry out to the Lord with my voice, with my voice to the Lord, I make my supplication, I pour out my complaint before him, I declare before him my trouble.
SPEAKER_01: When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then you knew my path.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember just crying out, God, where are you?
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you were there, you'd probably say, Pastor Mike, come on.
SPEAKER_01: That's that you know, I I'm telling God, I'm telling you, Lord, I'm not here denying you, I'm not here, you know, anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: God, I'm still gonna do what I need to do, but I'm just telling you, I feel empty, I feel drained, I feel nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And all of these frustrations that I had always I had bottled up because I'd never prayed be like that before.
SPEAKER_01: I bottled it all up, and I just for hours at a time, I just would just come and go back in that path, and God, here I am.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember at the end of that week, it seemed like I was completely drained of all that, and and this wonderful peace came into my life.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember going home and uh shortly thereafter, and I told our secretary, I said, uh, Sister Flo, I said, I'm gonna go downstairs in one of the Sunday school rooms, and don't disturb me unless it's an absolute emergency.
SPEAKER_01: She said, Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So I went downstairs in one of the Sunday school rooms, and um, I got a chair, put it in the middle of the room, and I turned out the lights, locked the door, because I just wanted to be private, I wanted to be alone.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Lord, I'm not moving until you come.
SPEAKER_01: Ten minutes went by.
SPEAKER_01: Twenty, thirty, forty minutes.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know, my mind is racing.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I should be doing something.
SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't I look up a scripture?
SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't I be saying it?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should sing, maybe I should do all this.
SPEAKER_01: And I had to keep saying, no, I'm waiting for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I'm waiting.
SPEAKER_01: 45 minutes later, Jesus walked into that room and changed my life.
SPEAKER_01: And I went from somebody who had it all up here, folks, to somebody who could bring it out, have it all in here.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus will, Jesus will come to you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's there's some doubts that the Lord Lord won't He won't deal with.
SPEAKER_01: He's not gonna deal with doubts that are they're they're coming from uh a place where I'm not I'm not gonna listen.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
SPEAKER_01: You can give me the facts, you know, I'm not gonna listen.
SPEAKER_01: He won't deal with those kind of doubts.
SPEAKER_01: He won't deal with a pessimistic doubt.
SPEAKER_01: That's somebody that just expects failure.
SPEAKER_01: We're kind of familiar.
SPEAKER_01: You know, doubts can be very comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us have a dysfunction of doubts.
SPEAKER_01: We like them.
SPEAKER_01: They're the you know, the weird thing.
SPEAKER_01: And and and that's the pessimistic.
SPEAKER_01: But then there's the narcissistic.
SPEAKER_01: What I call the narcissistic.
SPEAKER_01: This is where you think that your you know truth only goes through you.
SPEAKER_01: You are you're it.
SPEAKER_01: And you can't imagine yourself being wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I just can't.
SPEAKER_01: Everything is I doubt.
SPEAKER_01: I doubt.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the old preacher said, uh, some people don't think it's smoke unless it's coming out of their stack.
SPEAKER_01: And that's just the way it is.
SPEAKER_01: They they it's got, but but when we're talking about honest doubt, that's when the Lord says, give it to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's some people in this room today, you really haven't articulated to the Lord that you you're having doubts.
SPEAKER_01: That's that's a dangerous thing, folks.
SPEAKER_01: That's a dangerous thing, especially when you're and and you're low.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's something because we've, I don't know where we've picked it up, but in in the church world, we we we don't want to show everybody else what we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we don't.
SPEAKER_01: We talked some of the staff was just talking last week about the Christianese thing.
SPEAKER_01: And I've grown up in church, I know it, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: How you doing?
SPEAKER_01: How you doing, brother?
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing good, man.
SPEAKER_01: More than a conqueror.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: I I get what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: I understand what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: And that's fine.
SPEAKER_01: You want to encourage me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna assume that you just want to encourage me.
SPEAKER_01: But the fact of the matter is, at some point, at some point, you've got to get with your brothers and sisters, and you've got to say, hey, I'm going through something.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not as strong as you think I am.
SPEAKER_01: I need prayer.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care who you are, I don't care if you've been ministering for a hundred years, I don't care if you know the Bible and in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Portuguese.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: You are going to run out of faith.
SPEAKER_01: And I like it, I like what I say.
SPEAKER_01: It's something that the Lord showed me a long time ago.
SPEAKER_01: You know, the Bible doesn't say uh it's the fruit of the saint, it's the fruit of the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: When I hang around Jesus, listen, it's like being out in the sun.
SPEAKER_01: Now I have to dress uh long sleeves because I, you know, I deal with skin cancer and everything else, so it's like, okay, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: So I go to the beach and like I'm on an umbrella and I've got, you know, everything else like I'm waving at the grandkids, hey, how you doing?
SPEAKER_01: It's not quite that bad.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: When I was a kid, when I was a kid, man, we were out there, and you know it's something, all you gotta do is be out in the sun for like an hour or two hours, and you come back in, oh, you've been in the sun.
SPEAKER_01: You've been in the sun! And some of you need to be in the S11.
SPEAKER_01: You need to be in the sun.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna fuck your life, he's gonna change you.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna walk around one day, and all of a sudden, where did that faith come from?
SPEAKER_01: Where did that faith come from?
SPEAKER_01: It's becoming Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Put your hands up and praise God.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah! Well, I feel faith in here.
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says to Thomas, he said, put your hand here for your finger here, see my hands, put out your hand, put it into my side.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting about this is Thomas never did that.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't put his finger in Jesus' hand.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't put his hand in Jesus' side.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't need to.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus walked into that room, turned to him, and repeated his own words to him.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: We serve a God that knows everything about you.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says in the book of Psalms that he knows my thoughts afar off.
SPEAKER_01: He knows where I'm going.
SPEAKER_01: We got a little dog, he's a little white thing.
SPEAKER_01: He's a cotton, a coton de.
SPEAKER_01: That's French.
SPEAKER_01: And it means cotton.
SPEAKER_01: His fur is very soft.
SPEAKER_01: Now, before we bought him, my wife has looked into this.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, he's hypoallergetic.
SPEAKER_01: He's, you know, gonna max out at 14, 15 pounds, he's gonna have this, he's gonna have that.
SPEAKER_01: Before that dog is born, I know what he's gonna be like.
SPEAKER_01: Before you were born, God knew what you were gonna be like.
SPEAKER_01: He made your skills, he built you with your personality.
SPEAKER_01: You listen, you mightn't think you had developed it all on yourself, but honey, God was there forming you in your mother's womb.
SPEAKER_01: He knows you better than yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why when you're walking with him and talking with him, you find a destiny, you find a purpose because this is the one.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in the sun.
SPEAKER_01: I'm in something's happening to me, an experience.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: The power of God knows exactly who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just say something about faith, too.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, faith, faith is is is not just feeling.
SPEAKER_01: Uh what is faith then?
SPEAKER_01: I've thought about it.
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in church and we had all these teachings on faith, and some of it was good and some was throwaway stuff.
SPEAKER_01: It was.
SPEAKER_01: Um what is faith?
SPEAKER_01: Faith is something that you have.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds simplistic, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it's true.
SPEAKER_01: It's something you have.
SPEAKER_01: See, some of you have faith, and you don't even realize that you have it.
SPEAKER_01: Look at this quote from Dr.
SPEAKER_01: A.J.
SPEAKER_01: Swoboda.
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
SPEAKER_01: Struggling with your faith is often a sign you have one.
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't be struggling with faith unless you had it.
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that people who don't believe in God are fighting against him?
SPEAKER_01: If God doesn't exist, why are we having debates?
SPEAKER_01: Why are we writing books?
SPEAKER_01: Why are we brainwashing college students?
SPEAKER_01: If God doesn't exist, why are we putting so much energy into saying he doesn't exist?
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you why, because he does exist.
SPEAKER_01: He does exist.
SPEAKER_01: And you know it's something because every time when I begin thinking and my faith gets low and doubts start coming, I have to do what Thomas did.
SPEAKER_01: See, sometimes the only thing that's going to charge your faith is worship.
SPEAKER_01: I just start thinking about the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: I just start thinking about the times that He was He was good to me, that He He kept me, He led me, He guided me, He directed me.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember Kim and I were getting ready to.
SPEAKER_01: We we had bought our first little tiny house.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it was 49 feet by 120, is the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01: But we loved it, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And but the only problem with that house is we we had neighbors from hell.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I could have almost guaranteed their address was 666.
SPEAKER_01: It was just and I I remember I we we had to get out of that house.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was so it was so tormenting, but we couldn't.
SPEAKER_01: We were like locked into this crazy, you know, thing and on battle, court battle and everything else with them.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh.
SPEAKER_01: And so I would I was so bothered by this that um I remember going to the Lord in prayer one time, and I said, Lord, you I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_01: We've looked at houses where we can't buy a house until we get this crazy thing settled.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember one time the Lord gave me a vision.
SPEAKER_01: Now somebody says, What is a vision?
SPEAKER_01: I can't explain it.
SPEAKER_01: Your eyes are open, you're seeing a vision, you're seeing something else, and you know it's from God.
SPEAKER_01: I can't explain that.
SPEAKER_01: But I had a vision, and I was out in this big yard.
SPEAKER_01: I knew in my vision it was a big yard, very big, and I saw barns all around in this vision.
SPEAKER_01: And then I smelled lilacs.
SPEAKER_01: I could smell it.
SPEAKER_01: And then I heard uh traffic off in the distance, and the Lord spoke to me and said, There's something wrong with this house, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_01: It'll be taken care of.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All right, you know, sometimes the Lord will give you a seed.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta plant it.
SPEAKER_01: Plant the seed.
SPEAKER_01: God, you gave me a seed.
SPEAKER_01: You gave me a seed.
SPEAKER_01: Still haven't moved, but you gave me a seed.
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember some time went by, I think it was about like about a year later, and I remember one one day flying back into our little hometown of William Sport, and uh Kim picks me up.
SPEAKER_01: It was at like 10 o'clock in the morning, something like that.
SPEAKER_01: And and uh, you know, I if you've ever dealt with jet lag, you know, you know, you don't want to go to sleep right away.
SPEAKER_01: Just stay up, you know, fight sleep, and then try to get back in the the swing of things.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I told Kim.
SPEAKER_01: I said, I don't want to go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh let's do something.
SPEAKER_01: She said, Well, I just uh printed out the you know the MLS listings.
SPEAKER_01: That's when yeah, MLS was a book.
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't go online, and um so she said, I I I printed this out and uh let's look at I said, Yeah, let's look at houses.
SPEAKER_01: So we picked out this house, this uh first thing, and there's that nice little house.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go over and see it.
SPEAKER_01: Went over, saw it, liked it.
SPEAKER_01: I called the um uh real estate agent, yeah, we can get you in there.
SPEAKER_01: And about an hour later, we're in the house.
SPEAKER_01: I made a beeline for the backyard.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what I found?
SPEAKER_01: It was this big yard, a third of an acre right in the middle of this city because of the the way that it was shaped.
SPEAKER_01: All of the garages were in the barn style.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, I smelled lilac and I looked over to my right, and there's this big, huge lilac tree in full bloom.
SPEAKER_01: And I could hear, I could hear 180, the the traffic on 180.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, there it is.
SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, as I'm soaking this in, I'm like, wow, Kim comes out and she says, by the way, she said, there's something wrong with a stove, but the owners are gonna take it away, so you don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_01: I said, This is our house.
SPEAKER_01: She said, Doesn't you want to look through the rest of it?
SPEAKER_01: I said, I don't need to.
SPEAKER_01: It's my it's my house.
SPEAKER_01: I know it's our house.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good time to praise God.
SPEAKER_01: See, he knows.
SPEAKER_01: He knows, and those are the these are the type of things I rehearse in my mind.
SPEAKER_01: I remember one time we were um, there's a farmer in our church, and he had Kim and I up for dinner, and he and his wife, and the wife is still out uh getting things ready.
SPEAKER_01: She hadn't quite gotten everything ready for dinner.
SPEAKER_01: So the farmer turns to me and he says, Hey, he says, Pastor Mike, is now that you are here, he says, Can you come pray for my cow?
SPEAKER_01: I have a little calf.
SPEAKER_01: He's blind, he's got things on his eyes, and I said, Yeah, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So we walked out and we went by the the holding area under the barn there.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I told him, I said, I can't walk in there because I only have these shoes on.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so uh, but I said, Yeah, okay, and I could see the little guy, and it was like he was smashing against, you know, pounding against the fence and you know, couldn't see, and he's stumbling around.
SPEAKER_01: And so I just reached out my hand, and this farmer and I we just agreed, Lord, heal this little calf, and Jesus' name we pray that he's gonna see.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: I went back in and had dinner.
SPEAKER_01: About a year later, this farmer comes back to me and he says, Um, hey, he says, Pastor Mike, I never told you.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that cow that we prayed for?
SPEAKER_01: I said, Yes.
SPEAKER_01: He said, God totally healed that cow.
SPEAKER_01: Totally healed that cow from blindness.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow.
SPEAKER_01: I said, brother, I would love to go see that cow.
SPEAKER_01: He said, You can't see it.
SPEAKER_01: I said, why?
SPEAKER_01: He said, because we ate it.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: If God can heal a cow, he can do something with your experience.
SPEAKER_01: He can do something with your situation.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, right now, somebody, I feel somebody needs to put your hand up and say, God, that's me.
SPEAKER_01: I need that today.
SPEAKER_01: You healed a cow, you can certainly take care of my problem.
SPEAKER_01: You can certainly take care of my finances, you can certainly save my daughter.
SPEAKER_01: You can certainly amen do the work that I need in my heart.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God.
SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, we're gonna do, and I want you to do this in just 30 seconds.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, let's give God a praise right now, and then we're gonna sit back down.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Humble ball.
SPEAKER_01: We claim Portland as a place of faith in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: All right, you can be seated.
SPEAKER_01: We're not done.
SPEAKER_01: I love this, verse 29.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to Thomas, he said, Have you believed because you have seen me?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gave Thomas a mission beyond his expectations.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you don't even realize why you're saved.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're a mess.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're in sin.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, all of that.
SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't, your salvation doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_01: Because God has watched this, He's got other people in mind.
SPEAKER_01: God has a mission for you.
SPEAKER_01: We need to get away from this self-centered idea that it's all about me.
SPEAKER_01: There was this really annoying song back in the 80s.
SPEAKER_01: Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: I know we gotta have a personal experience, but let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: God is raising up a church, He's raising up a community, He's raising up a people.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, neither you nor I nor any individual is going to save Portland.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a community of believers.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a church filled with people that have a mission.
SPEAKER_01: God gave Thomas a mission.
SPEAKER_01: You know, while I was in India, I remember this guy, an old, old uh Indian pastor, sat me down one day and he said, Let me tell you some stories that have been passed down from generations.
SPEAKER_01: And he told me about this story about how Thomas one day is walking along this river and he sees these men taking the water.
SPEAKER_01: They're standing out in the river, taking water and throwing it up and doing this.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, What are you what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're worshiping.
SPEAKER_01: We're worshiping the sun.
SPEAKER_01: Watch.
SPEAKER_01: And as the sparkling, the light would go through the water, to them that was a divine connection with the sun.
SPEAKER_01: Sun in the sky.
SPEAKER_01: The power of the sun.
SPEAKER_01: And Thomas said, Let me ask you a question.
SPEAKER_01: He said, If I were to show you that my God is bigger than your God, would you serve him?
SPEAKER_01: And being good heathens, they said, Yes.
SPEAKER_01: And so he said, Okay, here's what I want you to do.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I want you to go out into the middle, go to that spot over there, and when I tell you, I want you to throw that water up again.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by this time, dozens and hundreds of people had lined the shores and are looking at this.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever been to India today, India is a very people are all over the place.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not hard to get a crowd.
SPEAKER_01: So here's a here's a crowd of people gather.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas prays, and then he said, Now, throw the water up again.
SPEAKER_01: And as they threw the water up, Thomas said, In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, freeze.
SPEAKER_01: And the water froze in mid-air.
SPEAKER_01: And as the story goes, hundreds of people gave their life to Jesus Christ that day.
SPEAKER_01: So again, what happened to Thomas?
SPEAKER_01: What happened to him?
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what happened to him.
SPEAKER_01: God moved into his life.
SPEAKER_01: God moved into and here's the thing I want to leave you with today as we wind this down.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we think that we have to muster up faith.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's this feeling.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm here to tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: God wants to do a work in your life.
SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget.
SPEAKER_01: We were out, uh, this was oh man, many years ago.
SPEAKER_01: We took a team to Israel.
SPEAKER_01: We had started and planted a church in Jerusalem, and we were having special meetings there, and man, they were just powerful.
SPEAKER_01: Literally young people coming off the street and you know uh confessing Jesus as Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: It was just amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget one night, uh I think I was preaching, and and uh I happened to mention, I said, after the after my message, we're gonna lay hands on the sick today, and God's gonna do something.
SPEAKER_01: Now, uh I keep among the team, I had my two brothers with me, Mark and Matt.
SPEAKER_01: Matt, my my youngest brother, was sick.
SPEAKER_01: He had a fever.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's like sweating.
SPEAKER_01: And I told him, Matt, why don't you stay at the hotel tonight?
SPEAKER_01: He goes, No, I feel like I really need to come.
SPEAKER_01: So here's Matt.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the front seat.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just sweat dripping down there, and I you could just, he is not well.
SPEAKER_01: So here's this this prayer line comes up, and and uh, you know, so I had everybody come up and pray.
SPEAKER_01: Matt gets up and he comes over to pray.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Matt, you don't need to do that.
SPEAKER_01: You can no, he says, no, no, I got to.
SPEAKER_01: So I I notice in the in the course of things, this tall woman comes down to Matt.
SPEAKER_01: Matt starts praying for him, praying for this woman, and all of a sudden she just let her sh her hands shoot right up.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about people don't know the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: She her hands shoot right up like this.
SPEAKER_01: She starts crying and everything else, shaking.
SPEAKER_01: You know, okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, everything is is done now.
SPEAKER_01: The lady came afterwards to the pastor.
SPEAKER_01: She said, Pastor, I've had a lifelong disease, and tonight it's gone.
SPEAKER_01: Here's my brother with a fever.
SPEAKER_01: He's sick.
SPEAKER_01: How does that compute?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not about him, it's about him.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what you need to realize when it all shakes down.
SPEAKER_01: This is all about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: This is all about God doing a work in your hands.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says that if you'll draw nigh to me, I'll draw nigh to you.
SPEAKER_01: If we'll take a step toward Jesus, first of all, you're gonna find that he's already taken a step toward you, but he'll take another step toward you.
SPEAKER_01: He's here to meet you today.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, we have to take the Bible for what it says.
SPEAKER_01: If God says, I will come to you, it means I will come to you.
SPEAKER_01: We need to shake off this traditional idea that, oh, somehow Christianity is a philosophy, it's just a good idea, it's just your tradition.
SPEAKER_01: No, you don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: We're in this room today because a man called Jesus, amen, died and rose again and ascended into glory.
SPEAKER_01: We're here today because the Holy Ghost has been poured out upon all flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: God is not done with this church, he's not done with Portland, He's not done with America, He's not done with this world until Jesus breaks that eastern sky.
SPEAKER_01: We've got a job to do, we've got a love to see, we've got something to happen.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: It's a reality, folks.
SPEAKER_00: If our ministry has been a blessing to you at all, whether through the podcast, online, or through socials, would you consider partnering with us financially to help us continue blessing people and reaching people with the gospel of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to do so, you can go online to rosechurch.orgslash give.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for partnering with us and helping us continue to do what God has put in our hearts here for.