November 19, 2025 • 44 mins
What is the worst thing that you have ever done or been through? How did God help you through it? Is there someone else going through the same thing right now?
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of delivering the message our church. The message is about how you have witnessed God move in your life. This is your testimony. This is one of the most powerful ways to reach those around you! Show them how God has worked!
What is your Testimony?
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of delivering the message our church. The message is about how you have witnessed God move in your life. This is your testimony. This is one of the most powerful ways to reach those around you! Show them how God has worked!
What is your Testimony?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Ax.
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Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think you guys can all tell I'm not Doug.
I know it's a surprise, but I have the privilege
today of being up here in front of you with
the faith and trust of Doug, which is which is
a gift as well. But I just want to first
(02:24):
introduce myself. I'm Steve Zill. My wife back there is Liz.
She is part of the women's ministry here in the church.
My father in law Ben's back there as well. He's
hiding like he normally does. And I have two sons,
Jackson and Mylin. Who if you hear any noise down there,
that's probably Mylin. But I just wanted to kind of
(02:52):
talk to you a couple of weeks ago or a
couple of months ago. Really, I actually reached out to
Doug and said, Doug and I actually talked to Sean
about this first around in Texas working on some another
project we were working on, but I reached out to
Doug and the Doug, I really feel the Holy Spirit
is telling me that I need to say something to
the church. There's something that God has put on my heart.
(03:16):
And in typical Doug fashion, Doug's like, how soon can
you do it? And I'm like, uh, oh, shouldn't you
pray about this first? Doug, just let's back it up
a little bit. Let's pray about this. And Doug's like, oh, no,
this is great, I love it, blah blah blah, And
it's what he always says. And I think it's true.
I think each and every one of you could get
up here and have an amazing message that you could
(03:37):
share with everybody because God has done wonderful things in
every one of our lives, and I think that's what's important.
But if you take one thing from this entire message,
one thing, listen to the Holy Spirit. Listen to the
Holy Spirit. Don't sit there and regret that you didn't
(03:59):
follow through on something that the Holy Spirit's pushing you to. Do,
which I've done the majority of my life is sit
back and say, well, somebody else will do it when
God's pushing me in a direction, and I feel like
you guys have all been there before. But never turn
a blind eye to the Holy Spirit when He's given
you what you're called to do, because each of you
(04:20):
have a calling, each of you have a plan that
God has put in your life that we're supposed to
follow through. One Now, Doug a few weeks ago, went
over and I love this. I thought was really cool,
but he stole it from me because I wanted to
talk about it before he did, but he brought it up,
which I think was really cool. Was where we got
(04:41):
our church name from. And the old the church term
that is used in the New Testament is ecclesea. It's
the Greek term, and now it meant a gathering or
an assembly, which was a political term used by the
Romans for any time they got together for an They
would use that term as far as like, you know,
(05:03):
this is a massive gathering for a political rally, whatever
it is. That was an ecclasea. But the coolest part
is they started using that term for the church for
a reason. There's a deeper meaning behind it because it
means a gathering of the called ones. Now. If that
doesn't describe this room right here, I don't know what does.
(05:24):
Every one of you is called by God for his purpose,
and sometimes that purpose can be uncomfortable, as it is
for me right here, right now. And when you go
out into the mission field, which is as soon as
you leave those doors. There's a lot of times that
when you're out there, it's uncomfortable. It's hard to sometimes
(05:45):
share the word. God doesn't make it easy to follow
after him. But we do it because we love him.
We do it because of what He's done for us,
because of the salvation and the gift of Jesus that
He's given us. So we are a gathering of the
called ones. Now. We didn't need a temple anymore like
they did back then. We didn't need the high priest
(06:07):
to go and help us sacrifice. You know what happens
is we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Now,
Jesus becomes our mediator, he becomes our high priest. Hebrews
tells us that Hebrews eight actually tells us Jesus is
our high priest. So the early Church grows, and it
grows exponentially. Right. We talked about this in the first service,
(06:31):
But I say, when the Holy Spirit was first given,
there was one hundred and twenty believers in that upper room,
just one hundred and twenty people. First day, Peter goes
out and preaches. By the end of the day, there's
three thousand more members. That's amazing. I don't know. Just
(06:51):
think about that. This is you know, the way the
church grew was on a level that Billy Graham was
just trying to scratch the surface, you know when he
did his crusades, which he did amazing work and everything
he did, but the church crew so amazingly in the
beginning because people were following after what God had told them.
(07:14):
The Bible gives us instructions. The Bible has a laid
out plan for how we're supposed to do these things.
And I think it's kind of cool because I went
through and I looked at the last chapter of each
of the gospels. Because if you think, we go through
the Gospel and we see how Jesus works and how
he moves, and then how he leaves, and there's instruction
(07:39):
in each one of those. If you go to Matthew
eighteen twenty eighteen through twenty. That's the great commission. You know,
we're supposed to go out and make disciples of all nations.
Mark sixteen fifteen says, go and preach the good news
to everyone, okay. Luke twenty four forty nine says Jesus
(08:04):
is going to send his Holy Spirit. John twenty one
states this is this is I love this one. I
think this is so cool. But John twenty one, at
the very end, Jesus asked Peter, do you love me?
Peter's like, of course I do, Lord right. What does
(08:27):
Jesus say, Then feed my sheet? He says it three times,
if you love me, beat my sheep. It's not just
to call the Peter to call to every one of us.
As a member of the church. We're supposed to feed
his sheet. Now. I want everybody to go to Acts
(08:48):
Chapter one, verse eight. And this is one. If it's
I don't even if it's the church's Bible highlight underlining
this is super important. Everybody needs to see this all
the time. This sums up those instructions all into one.
Give you a second to get there. Chapter one, verse eight,
(09:13):
that's the one before two. Chapter one verse eight. All right,
but you will receive the power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling
(09:33):
people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth. You will be
my witnesses everywhere, not just when you're in the church,
not just when you're at work, but everywhere you go.
You're His witness Now, the cool part is it says,
(09:57):
when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, guess what we're there?
We have it. Check that boxes checked. Where Now His
witnesses in everything we do, everything that He's done in
our lives. We've all been through something that has made
us struggle, and maybe our faith walk has taken us
in some of those valleys and low spots. Whether it's
(10:19):
relationship problems, whether it's getting food on your table, whether
it's the loss of someone you love. We've all struggled
with something and God's helped us through those things. God
has been there and helped us through those things. Now,
(10:40):
a really cool thing that we see is that those witnesses.
It was said to those people who saw Jesus initially
when he was preaching, and man, would it have been
cool to see him heal people, you know, walk up,
put mud on someone's eyes. Boom, you can see, like
you know, the lame walk. That would have been amazing
(11:01):
to see. But remember Thomas. Jesus comes back to the
disciples when they're in the upper room and Thomas isn't
with them, and Jesus shows himself and the disciples are like,
oh my gosh, this is awesome. Thomas comes back and
they tell him. He's like, not unless I see it myself,
Not unless I put my fingers in the nail marks
(11:24):
and feel the wound on his side. While I believe,
sure enough, Jesus shows back up. What does Jesus tell Thomas?
You believe because you have seen, But blessed are those
who have not seen and yet still believe. That's all
(11:46):
of us. But the cool part is we have that
Holy spirit, We have God living inside us, so we
see these things in our life. God is like the wind.
And I know we've probably all heard that analogy before.
We don't see God, but we see the result of
everything he does. You don't see the wind, but you
see the leaves move. That's how He works in our lives.
We see that all the time. God does amazing, miraculous
(12:09):
things in our life all the time. Now, the cool
part is if those people who saw the amazing things,
if after they had passed away, all the disciples passed away,
and now there's no more living true witnesses of Jesus
on earth, we wouldn't be sitting here today, right. We're
all witnesses because of what He's done in our life,
(12:32):
not because we sat and saw him when he was
here on earth. Now, Paul is awesome. I'm just gonna
say it off front. We all like Paul. He's read
thirteen books of the New Testament. I mean, are credited
with thirteen books in the New Testament, which I think
is pretty awesome. But Paul never met Jesus while he
(12:57):
was alive here on this earth. He had an experiences
on the road to Damascus changed his life, and he
went on to do amazing things, to the point where
he was stoned and was taken out of the city,
left for dead. He walked up, got right back up,
got right back into the city, like, hey, let's do
it again. I'm preaching the good news what I'm supposed
to do. But Paul was originally Saul. If you go
(13:26):
back The first time we hear about him was at
the stoning of Stephen, and he was all for it,
Stephen being the first martyr that's mentioned in the Bible.
And that's the first thing. The first time we see Paul,
they come and lay their coats at his feet. Now,
if we go back through time, and I can't tell
you this for sure, but when we get back to
(13:47):
that point in time, the Pharisees and the Saddesties, Paul
who which was a Pharisee, were over the Jewish people.
They were the judge and jury for those types of crimes.
So for a stoning to not be a murder, it
had to be okayed by the Pharisees. So you know
(14:08):
the old if you ever watched like Gladiator, like oh,
thumbs up, thumbs down, something like this. So we see
Stevens standing there in the next chapter, right after Stephen's dead,
when he says, please don't charge them with his sin.
Paul is happy this happened. Paul's this is what's supposed
to happen. So what he does is goes around and
(14:29):
starts killing Christians. He arrests them, he brings them to jail.
He's attempting religious genocide now today, right now, in this world.
That's happening as we speak. In Nigeria right now, in
the past three to four years, there have been thousands
(14:49):
of people killed for their faith, standing on their faith.
We are blessed to be in this country. We are
so lucky to be here, blessed to be here. But
don't think that we're too far above that happening in
the future. We don't know the time or the hour,
but I do. I will tell you this, being followers
(15:11):
of Jesus is only going to get harder as we
go along with the way our society is and the
way that we glorify this materialistic world. It's just part
of it, and we know it's going to get worse
because that's what the Bible says. Now when Paul's converted
Acts Chapter nine, Light from Heaven, this guy, I just
(15:33):
back this up just a little bit. I just want
you to think about what if Paul was today. What
if Paul was one of those guys in New Jera
in Nigeria, which he would have been that's murdering Christians.
Would we look at him and say, man, that guy's awesome. No,
we would think he is the scum of the earth.
We think he's the worst person on the planet, but
God chose to use him. Think about that. I mean,
(15:58):
there's the most evil, corrupt person that the Church could
have fought, the biggest adversary of the early Church, and
God still can use him to write thirteen books of
the Bible, to be a inspiration to all the other churches.
Writing these letters all over the place, visiting on these
different missionary journeys and changing lives. That's a transformation right there.
(16:25):
But that's one of the reasons I absolutely love him.
But Acts chapter nine tells us about that conversion of
the Road to Damascus. His life is changed in an instant,
and how his life was changed that moment became his
testimony he witnessed God move in his life.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. The holidays are here,
which means I am stressed, over committed, slightly buzzed and
pretending I know how to cook. But at least my
dog Doug is thriving. He's eating just fresh for just
food for dogs, real human, great food with none of
that process. It's shelf stable, which means I can toss
it in my suitcase when I travel or shove it
in a cabinet next to my tequila. And honestly, Doug's
(17:07):
living his best life. His coat is shiny, he's got energy,
and when guests come over, he's the only one not
complaining about their food. Meanwhile, I'm over here eating takeout
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(17:28):
first order, no code, no hassle, and thank god, no
cooking required.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Now, the cool part about this is, and why I
really do like Paul in this sense, is that we
actually see how he uses his testimony. In Acts chapter
twenty two, Paul's confronted by an angry mob of Jews
that are screaming kill him, kill him. And what does
(17:57):
Paul do share his testimony? He tells them about what
God did in his life. Now, if we go a
little further, we go into Acts chapter twenty six. Paul's
been arrested. He's been in prison for a couple of years.
Felix is the governor. Felix likes to talk to him,
bring him in, talk to him here and there about
(18:17):
different things about being a follower of the Way, as
Christians were called at that time. And King Agrippa shows up.
Cool thing about King Agrippa. King Agrippa is actually King
Herod Agrippa the Second, who's the grandson of Herod the Great,
who actually was the one that ordered the killing of
all the babies, including you know, attempting to kill Jesus
(18:39):
when they escaped to Egypt. So it comes full circle,
which is awesome. I just see how God always works
in these full circles, always connects everything back. But King
Agrippa wants to hear Paul talk. He comes out. How
does Paul lead with his testimony? He uses his testimony.
(19:00):
So if you look at this at that time, Paul
uses it with commoners and kings. He uses it doesn't
matter who you are, whatever status, whatever, it didn't matter.
He used it with commoners and kings. Our testimony is
the most powerful thing that we have in our life.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
It is.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How you truly see God working through you and in
your life. Now, I'm absolutely sure there's many other times
that Paul shared this. I bet you you can go
through and he preached in town after town after town.
But the Bible is so cool that it gives us
(19:43):
and shows us that he uses that as as one
of his main ways of approaching adversity or trying to
reach people or trying to change people's lives. He uses
his testimony. Now, we all have a testimony, every single
one you do. And sometimes I come, I'll meet people
(20:07):
and when we're talking. I do actually a podcast with
Ben back there and another one of our friends, Justin
called the dig Bible Podcast. Me and Sean. Actually I
said we were in Texas. We actually are working on
a documentary right now about creation and the truth of
what that is all because there's things that God's called
us to do. But we all have a testimony. And
(20:32):
when I talk to people who say, well, I didn't
have a pall like moment, I didn't have this massive
thing that just converted me in a second. I've lived
in a Christian home my whole life. I've never had
a struggle. We had money, so I had food on
the table. You have a testimony. You ever struggled with loss,
(20:54):
You ever lost someone you cared about, offered through a
broken or troubled relationship, You ever been through addiction. Have
you ever just had a bad day at work that
you just could not wait for it to end, but
(21:15):
God helped you through. There's no level, no magnitude, on
which God God can work with the greatest thing to
the least and still works in your life all the time,
all the time. So what's God done in your life?
How has he changed you? How has he pulled you
(21:40):
through something difficult? I want you to think about that
for a minute now. I have enough stories in my
life of how God has everything from save my life
to just getting me through difficult situations that I could
write a I could write a Homer's Odyssey, I could
(22:04):
write the longest book you can think of that you
could ever imagine, and it would still I still probably
couldn't even remember everything that He's done for me my life.
It's absolutely unbelievable. I have so many stories, and one day,
if we ever sit down, any of us want to
sit down and want to talk and swap stories. I
love it, because man, I love sharing how God has
(22:24):
worked in my life. It's awesome. But I have one
that I do want to share with you today, and
I'm going to tell you right now. It's not easy
for me to talk about, and very seldom is testimony
one of those things where it's like, you want to
talk about the difficult thing you went through. It's gonna
(22:47):
be hard because because you open yourself up and you're vulnerable,
you're showing something that you've hidden from other people, showing
something you don't You don't want people to see a
chink in your arm or you come to church, don't
want think people to think that you're not, you know,
this perfect church going person. We're all sinners. We all
have had struggles, and we have to be open and
honest about it. That's how we help other people who
(23:10):
are going through similar struggles. But I'm going to share
one with you today. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
in that area in my life, I was a thief.
I mean a thief. I'm not being fictitious here. I
(23:31):
stole from whatever I could whenever, didn't care, didn't care
who I hurt, didn't care who I did it to.
I was chasing something. I didn't know what I was
looking for, the next thrill, the next rush, whatever it was.
I didn't care. I didn't care who I mean at all,
who I hurt, my parents in the crazy person is.
(23:51):
I grew up in a Christian home, phenomenal Christian parents.
My dad was a Christian school teacher who was an
amazing man. My mom's a such a strong Christian woman.
I went to church, I went to Sunday School, I
(24:11):
went through all those things. Still fell away, Still fell away.
Now in high school I went to a private schools
as well. So I mean my parents did everything they could,
and I still fell away. So if anybody out there
struggling with one of their kids going through some things,
(24:33):
no it's not just you, it's the world, and we'll
pray for them and help them through whatever it is.
But just know that I had a lot of people
praying for me at that time too, because there's no
other way how I got how God helped me through
all this. But every four years, my school would do
a mission trip. Before I went. They had a trip
(24:58):
to Russia, they had a trip to to Mexico, they
went to Haiti, and my dad would usually go on
all these trips and they had one coming up that
was going to China and Hong Kong. Now at that
time it was still under Great Britain's control, which I
think it went back to China in nineteen ninety seven.
(25:20):
It was July first, nineteen ninety seven. But either way,
you're going into a communist area, because we did go
into mainland China. But story short, I'm not even there yet.
So what happens is they had these applications to fill
out to go on this mission trip. My dad's like,
you're gonna fill one of those out. I'm like, no,
I'm not. I wasn't that guy, not that guy at all. Eventually,
(25:47):
after he told me repetitive times, I filled it out,
knowing they wouldn't pick me because of who the person
I was. I'm sorry, Ben, but I'm not the guy
that you would want your daughter to bring home. That's
exactly who I was. Not that guy. So I feel
like this application I turned in And a little later
they go to do interviews to see who's going to
go on this trip, and they have the pastor of
(26:10):
the religion department doing the interviews. They pull me in
and he looks at me. Pastor sits down, I sit down,
looks at me and says, I don't like you. But
I don't like you either. He looks at me and says,
but you're going I said, what he we don't have
(26:34):
enough guys. I'm like, oh awesome. So six months out
from this trip about we're having to go to these
trainings every so often to kind of learn customs and
learn a little bit of language and kind of get
to know the other people that are going on the trip.
And none of these people are the people I would
hang out with, because I was definitely not the person
(26:57):
you would send on a mission trip. Was as far
from it as you possibly can imagine. So we get
closer to go and I'm still thinking they're gonna kick
me out at any time because they know the person
that I am. Oh, actually I forgot when they went
and announced who was going. They announced it in our
chapel service after third period. I still remember that like
(27:21):
it was yesterday. But after third period they announced who's
going on this mission trip? And I'm gonna tell you,
we're talking about four hundred kids in a gymnasium, And
can anybody tell me how quiet you can get those kids?
They don't get quiet. There's no such thing. They said
my name, and you could have heard a pin drop
because everybody knew the person I was. Everybody knew. They're
(27:44):
like hip it's crazy. So we get closer and closer,
and finally we get to the end, and I'm like, well,
at least it's a free trip to see part of
the country i'd never or part of the world I
would never see otherwise. And I mean, not free for
(28:04):
my parents, but free for me. But so we finally
the time comes and we go. We get over there,
and we fly into Hong Kong and we're staying at
this little it was called the Pok Fu Lam Rehab Center.
It's like a little YMCA type place that they actually
rented out to people. And we stayed in this place,
(28:28):
no ac just fans, and that's a pretty humid, pretty humid,
warm place. But we get there and then for the
first three days, they'd bust a whole group of these
Chinese kids in to spend time with us, and they
group us up in what they called families. There would
be three to four kids with me with and in
each group, so I had three boys or four thing
(28:48):
it was four boys with me, and each group had
a different amount of of people and a group with them,
and they had family groups. And we would go do
things through Hong Kong and we'd stand out on the
street corners, hand out tracks, all these different things, and
I wasn't in it. I didn't care. I'm on a
mission trip and I did not care at all. So
(29:14):
these kids were extremely hungry for Jesus. I mean, you
think about it for most of their lives. You know,
Christianity has banned most of those places over there, you
just don't hear about it. And we're kind of going
back through that phase again over there where we're seeing
a lot more crackdown on the Christian Church. But we
were there in the middle of a time where we
(29:36):
could bring Bibles into actual China and places like this.
But I hang out with these three kids or four kids,
I'm sorry for three days. Every day they're asking me
questions and I'm just like, yeah, Jonah, yeah, Noah, they are.
I'm giving them Bible school answers or Sunday school answers
because I'm just not in it. I don't The crazy
(30:00):
part is God was still using me and I don't
even know it. But we were with them or for
four days, three days, and then I had one kid
that actually got pretty close with. They had given each
of these kids an American name because otherwise we wouldn't
been able to pronounce anybody's name over there. It was
really tough. But the one kids that he had, his
(30:21):
name was Eric, and I really like this kid. I
wish I still had his address and all this stuff.
I could reach this kid, because I mean, he knew
it after the fact, but I wish I could have
shared it little even more with him. But those kids
left and they went back. They had this test they
(30:41):
have to take at that time of year when they're
graduating high school, their version of high school. That whatever
you end up doing on that test, if you get
a ninety percent ninety five percent, that determines what you're
doing the rest of your life. If you are bad
at tests, well you are not going to have a
good job. That's just how it is. So these kids
all go back to take this test. We go into
mainland China, and I saw things that if I told you,
(31:02):
you would look at me and say, that can't be possible,
that's not real. But I saw things that I can't
I saw gutters with drug needles. When you talk about
like for opium and heroin, that deep in gutters up
and down street as far as you can see. I
can't even put into words the horrors that I saw
in China and the way people lived, or if that's
(31:27):
what you want to call it. We're there for a bit,
and I have a bunch more crazy China stories. But
you shouldn't sneak out of your hotel in the middle
of the night in a communist country. I'm just gonna
leave that right there. We'll leave that alone. But we
go back to the place we were at originally in
(31:51):
Hong Kong, and they bring those kids back for one day,
just to say goodbye to us and say thank you
for everything. And some of the kids came back, and
some of them didn't. And the one kid that I
had gotten close to didn't come back. He didn't come
back that day. Well, the other kids that I was
with did, and one of them came up and handed
me a letter. I opened that letter, and the letter said,
(32:21):
thank you so much for coming. Because of you, I
know I'm going to heaven now. Because of you, I
know who Jesus is. Lightning struck me. I had my
Paul like moment, if that's what you want to call it.
Everything changed so much so that when I got home,
(32:46):
I walked in the house, my mom just saw me.
I didn't say anything. She saw the weight was gone,
saw the evil in me was gone, and just started
crying like that. That moment lives with me all the time.
I think about that all the time. That doesn't mean
(33:09):
I haven't have my mountains in my valley since then.
That doesn't mean my struggles aren't still real. That we
all still go through things, that we all still have
our hurdles that God needs to help us through. As
a matter of fact, when we become followers of Jesus,
it gets hard. There's expectations as a Christian that we
have to follow through on. We're supposed to be imagers
(33:32):
of Christ. It's tough. But just like what I told you,
that's a tough story for me to tell. And I
got a bunch of them. I got a bunch of them.
In that moment, God found me. I didn't find God.
(33:56):
God wasn't lost. I was. Now, how do you share
your testimony? I just shared it here, I've shared it
at work, I've shared it in different places. I mean,
we can go and just tell everybody, which we should.
But the cool part is God doesn't make it that heart.
God will put people in your path that are part
(34:19):
of your plan to help change their life. God will
continue to put people in your path, and that means
opening up and being vulnerable, that means sometimes having tough conversations.
But He is going to put people in your path
that it's your call to reach them. Now, I want
(34:44):
you to go back to when you had one of
your your biggest life struggle, the hardest thing that you've
ever had to go through, that God helped you through.
I want you to think about it right now. How
did you feel Did you feel a lit did you
feel despair? Did you feel like the weight of the
(35:05):
world was on your shoulders? God helped you through. But
right now, there's somebody out there that is going through
exactly what you went through, that feels those same feelings
that we're talking about. Right now, there's somebody else out there.
(35:31):
Those of the people God are going to put in
our path. Now, how do we how do we reach
these people? Some of them could be in this room,
Some people in here could be going through something that's
really tough right now. Some of them might be at
(35:54):
work at the grocery store. But I promise you they're
all over the place, and God's going to help you
reach those people. Now. It reminds me of a story
that my father in law Ben's told a bunch of times,
but I absolutely love it. Maybe I've told it more
(36:14):
than him now just because of how much it's resonated
with me. But he tells the story of a little
girl and her mom and there's a thunderstorm and this
little girl goes to bed, big old knock, a thunder comes.
The girl runs out of her room, runs to her
mom and she's like, mom, I'm scared. Her mom's like,
(36:36):
just pray to Jesus, he'll protect you, and I go
back to bed. Sure Enough, five minutes later, boom, big
old crack of thunder. She runs back to her mom. Mom,
I'm scared. She's like, pray to Jesus, he'll protect you.
Go back to bed. Sure enough. A third time. Wow,
(37:00):
all things come in threes, right, Sure enough, a third time,
boom thunder. She comes running into her mom's room. My mom,
I'm scared. She's like, pray to Jesus, he'll protect you.
And she looks at her mom and goes, sometimes I
need Jesus with some skin on. And that's what you
(37:22):
guys are. Holy Spirit lives in each one of you.
The Holy Spirit is here to have God exude through you.
We're images of Christ. We have the Holy Spirit living
inside us, and we're meant to go out and share
that with everybody. Now, the cool part is God doesn't
(37:43):
need you. I mean that sounds I know it sounds crass,
and I don't mean it that way, but that is
the truth. God doesn't need you. God could just say,
guess what, boom, You're fixed, that issue's gone, that's done,
don't worry about it. But God allows us to be
part of his plan. God gives you the opportunity to
step in and be part of it. What a gift
(38:05):
that is, not just the fact that I mean the
greatest gift being Jesus sent to us for our salvation,
but really the second greatest gift I can think of
as being part of someone else's salvation story. I look
back to that kid in China. He's part of my
salvation story and I'm part of his. I don't want
(38:29):
to go up to Heaven and God be like, well
you miss this seventeen opportunities or these three million opportunities
that are all right there. I want to hear, well done,
my good and faithful servant. So when the Holy spirit's
calling you, when the Holy Spirit's pushing in direction, whether
it's to talk to that person at work, whether it's
(38:50):
to give five bucks to the guy in the corner,
whatever it may be, whatever the Holy Spirit's pushing you
to do it cool this is I'm sorry, there's so
many cool things. I'm just all excited. But the cool
cool thing is my mom always told me this, and
this is this is really cool. She told me this
(39:11):
a long time ago, and something that stuck with me
for a long time. She said she would get up
every morning and she would pray a prayer and she
would say, God, please put someone in my path today
that I can reach for you. Please put someone in
my path today I can reach for you. But more importantly,
(39:35):
please don't let me miss it. Please don't let me
miss it. How powerful is that prayer? That's unreal? And
that's that's the parents, the amazing parents that I still
turned away from it, turned away from God, turned away
from all that. But that's who my parents are. They've
been amazing throughout my whole life and they're part of
(39:58):
the reason that I'm standing here today. But I just
want you to think about that how many times could
you be in someone's salvation story? Reach out. You've been
through tough things, You've been through hard times. God's helped
(40:21):
you through them. That is your testimony. You're a witness
to God working in your life. You're a witness to
seeing these miraculous things that He's done all around you.
You're a witness. It's that Acts one to eight. You're
a witness to everything that God has done in your life.
(40:44):
Now it's our job to go out and share that
with everybody else around us. He'd getting ahead of my notes.
I apologize, it's only about another hour or so. Yeah,
(41:04):
So I challenge you this week. Go home every morning,
wake up, pray that prayer. Pray that God puts someone
in your path, and pray that you don't miss it.
(41:25):
Pray to have that opportunity to be part of God's
salvation plan for somebody. He gives us that opportunity. We
just have to step up to the plate. We are
all his witnesses.
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Speaker 2 (02:04):
I think you guys can all tell I'm not Doug.
I know it's a surprise, but I have the privilege
today of being up here in front of you with
the faith and trust of Doug, which is which is
a gift as well. But I just want to first
(02:24):
introduce myself. I'm Steve Zill. My wife back there is Liz.
She is part of the women's ministry here in the church.
My father in law Ben's back there as well. He's
hiding like he normally does. And I have two sons,
Jackson and Mylin. Who if you hear any noise down there,
that's probably Mylin. But I just wanted to kind of
(02:52):
talk to you a couple of weeks ago or a
couple of months ago. Really, I actually reached out to
Doug and said, Doug and I actually talked to Sean
about this first around in Texas working on some another
project we were working on, but I reached out to
Doug and the Doug, I really feel the Holy Spirit
is telling me that I need to say something to
the church. There's something that God has put on my heart.
(03:16):
And in typical Doug fashion, Doug's like, how soon can
you do it? And I'm like, uh, oh, shouldn't you
pray about this first? Doug, just let's back it up
a little bit. Let's pray about this. And Doug's like, oh, no,
this is great, I love it, blah blah blah, And
it's what he always says. And I think it's true.
I think each and every one of you could get
up here and have an amazing message that you could
(03:37):
share with everybody because God has done wonderful things in
every one of our lives, and I think that's what's important.
But if you take one thing from this entire message,
one thing, listen to the Holy Spirit. Listen to the
Holy Spirit. Don't sit there and regret that you didn't
(03:59):
follow through on something that the Holy Spirit's pushing you to. Do,
which I've done the majority of my life is sit
back and say, well, somebody else will do it when
God's pushing me in a direction, and I feel like
you guys have all been there before. But never turn
a blind eye to the Holy Spirit when He's given
you what you're called to do, because each of you
(04:20):
have a calling, each of you have a plan that
God has put in your life that we're supposed to
follow through. One Now, Doug a few weeks ago, went
over and I love this. I thought was really cool,
but he stole it from me because I wanted to
talk about it before he did, but he brought it up,
which I think was really cool. Was where we got
(04:41):
our church name from. And the old the church term
that is used in the New Testament is ecclesea. It's
the Greek term, and now it meant a gathering or
an assembly, which was a political term used by the
Romans for any time they got together for an They
would use that term as far as like, you know,
(05:03):
this is a massive gathering for a political rally, whatever
it is. That was an ecclasea. But the coolest part
is they started using that term for the church for
a reason. There's a deeper meaning behind it because it
means a gathering of the called ones. Now. If that
doesn't describe this room right here, I don't know what does.
(05:24):
Every one of you is called by God for his purpose,
and sometimes that purpose can be uncomfortable, as it is
for me right here, right now. And when you go
out into the mission field, which is as soon as
you leave those doors. There's a lot of times that
when you're out there, it's uncomfortable. It's hard to sometimes
(05:45):
share the word. God doesn't make it easy to follow
after him. But we do it because we love him.
We do it because of what He's done for us,
because of the salvation and the gift of Jesus that
He's given us. So we are a gathering of the
called ones. Now. We didn't need a temple anymore like
they did back then. We didn't need the high priest
(06:07):
to go and help us sacrifice. You know what happens
is we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Now,
Jesus becomes our mediator, he becomes our high priest. Hebrews
tells us that Hebrews eight actually tells us Jesus is
our high priest. So the early Church grows, and it
grows exponentially. Right. We talked about this in the first service,
(06:31):
But I say, when the Holy Spirit was first given,
there was one hundred and twenty believers in that upper room,
just one hundred and twenty people. First day, Peter goes
out and preaches. By the end of the day, there's
three thousand more members. That's amazing. I don't know. Just
(06:51):
think about that. This is you know, the way the
church grew was on a level that Billy Graham was
just trying to scratch the surface, you know when he
did his crusades, which he did amazing work and everything
he did, but the church crew so amazingly in the
beginning because people were following after what God had told them.
(07:14):
The Bible gives us instructions. The Bible has a laid
out plan for how we're supposed to do these things.
And I think it's kind of cool because I went
through and I looked at the last chapter of each
of the gospels. Because if you think, we go through
the Gospel and we see how Jesus works and how
he moves, and then how he leaves, and there's instruction
(07:39):
in each one of those. If you go to Matthew
eighteen twenty eighteen through twenty. That's the great commission. You know,
we're supposed to go out and make disciples of all nations.
Mark sixteen fifteen says, go and preach the good news
to everyone, okay. Luke twenty four forty nine says Jesus
(08:04):
is going to send his Holy Spirit. John twenty one
states this is this is I love this one. I
think this is so cool. But John twenty one, at
the very end, Jesus asked Peter, do you love me?
Peter's like, of course I do, Lord right. What does
(08:27):
Jesus say, Then feed my sheet? He says it three times,
if you love me, beat my sheep. It's not just
to call the Peter to call to every one of us.
As a member of the church. We're supposed to feed
his sheet. Now. I want everybody to go to Acts
(08:48):
Chapter one, verse eight. And this is one. If it's
I don't even if it's the church's Bible highlight underlining
this is super important. Everybody needs to see this all
the time. This sums up those instructions all into one.
Give you a second to get there. Chapter one, verse eight,
(09:13):
that's the one before two. Chapter one verse eight. All right,
but you will receive the power when the Holy Spirit
comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling
(09:33):
people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth. You will be
my witnesses everywhere, not just when you're in the church,
not just when you're at work, but everywhere you go.
You're His witness Now, the cool part is it says,
(09:57):
when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, guess what we're there?
We have it. Check that boxes checked. Where Now His
witnesses in everything we do, everything that He's done in
our lives. We've all been through something that has made
us struggle, and maybe our faith walk has taken us
in some of those valleys and low spots. Whether it's
(10:19):
relationship problems, whether it's getting food on your table, whether
it's the loss of someone you love. We've all struggled
with something and God's helped us through those things. God
has been there and helped us through those things. Now,
(10:40):
a really cool thing that we see is that those witnesses.
It was said to those people who saw Jesus initially
when he was preaching, and man, would it have been
cool to see him heal people, you know, walk up,
put mud on someone's eyes. Boom, you can see, like
you know, the lame walk. That would have been amazing
(11:01):
to see. But remember Thomas. Jesus comes back to the
disciples when they're in the upper room and Thomas isn't
with them, and Jesus shows himself and the disciples are like,
oh my gosh, this is awesome. Thomas comes back and
they tell him. He's like, not unless I see it myself,
Not unless I put my fingers in the nail marks
(11:24):
and feel the wound on his side. While I believe,
sure enough, Jesus shows back up. What does Jesus tell Thomas?
You believe because you have seen, But blessed are those
who have not seen and yet still believe. That's all
(11:46):
of us. But the cool part is we have that
Holy spirit, We have God living inside us, so we
see these things in our life. God is like the wind.
And I know we've probably all heard that analogy before.
We don't see God, but we see the result of
everything he does. You don't see the wind, but you
see the leaves move. That's how He works in our lives.
We see that all the time. God does amazing, miraculous
(12:09):
things in our life all the time. Now, the cool
part is if those people who saw the amazing things,
if after they had passed away, all the disciples passed away,
and now there's no more living true witnesses of Jesus
on earth, we wouldn't be sitting here today, right. We're
all witnesses because of what He's done in our life,
(12:32):
not because we sat and saw him when he was
here on earth. Now, Paul is awesome. I'm just gonna
say it off front. We all like Paul. He's read
thirteen books of the New Testament. I mean, are credited
with thirteen books in the New Testament, which I think
is pretty awesome. But Paul never met Jesus while he
(12:57):
was alive here on this earth. He had an experiences
on the road to Damascus changed his life, and he
went on to do amazing things, to the point where
he was stoned and was taken out of the city,
left for dead. He walked up, got right back up,
got right back into the city, like, hey, let's do
it again. I'm preaching the good news what I'm supposed
to do. But Paul was originally Saul. If you go
(13:26):
back The first time we hear about him was at
the stoning of Stephen, and he was all for it,
Stephen being the first martyr that's mentioned in the Bible.
And that's the first thing. The first time we see Paul,
they come and lay their coats at his feet. Now,
if we go back through time, and I can't tell
you this for sure, but when we get back to
(13:47):
that point in time, the Pharisees and the Saddesties, Paul
who which was a Pharisee, were over the Jewish people.
They were the judge and jury for those types of crimes.
So for a stoning to not be a murder, it
had to be okayed by the Pharisees. So you know
(14:08):
the old if you ever watched like Gladiator, like oh,
thumbs up, thumbs down, something like this. So we see
Stevens standing there in the next chapter, right after Stephen's dead,
when he says, please don't charge them with his sin.
Paul is happy this happened. Paul's this is what's supposed
to happen. So what he does is goes around and
(14:29):
starts killing Christians. He arrests them, he brings them to jail.
He's attempting religious genocide now today, right now, in this world.
That's happening as we speak. In Nigeria right now, in
the past three to four years, there have been thousands
(14:49):
of people killed for their faith, standing on their faith.
We are blessed to be in this country. We are
so lucky to be here, blessed to be here. But
don't think that we're too far above that happening in
the future. We don't know the time or the hour,
but I do. I will tell you this, being followers
(15:11):
of Jesus is only going to get harder as we
go along with the way our society is and the
way that we glorify this materialistic world. It's just part
of it, and we know it's going to get worse
because that's what the Bible says. Now when Paul's converted
Acts Chapter nine, Light from Heaven, this guy, I just
(15:33):
back this up just a little bit. I just want
you to think about what if Paul was today. What
if Paul was one of those guys in New Jera
in Nigeria, which he would have been that's murdering Christians.
Would we look at him and say, man, that guy's awesome. No,
we would think he is the scum of the earth.
We think he's the worst person on the planet, but
God chose to use him. Think about that. I mean,
(15:58):
there's the most evil, corrupt person that the Church could
have fought, the biggest adversary of the early Church, and
God still can use him to write thirteen books of
the Bible, to be a inspiration to all the other churches.
Writing these letters all over the place, visiting on these
different missionary journeys and changing lives. That's a transformation right there.
(16:25):
But that's one of the reasons I absolutely love him.
But Acts chapter nine tells us about that conversion of
the Road to Damascus. His life is changed in an instant,
and how his life was changed that moment became his
testimony he witnessed God move in his life.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. The holidays are here,
which means I am stressed, over committed, slightly buzzed and
pretending I know how to cook. But at least my
dog Doug is thriving. He's eating just fresh for just
food for dogs, real human, great food with none of
that process. It's shelf stable, which means I can toss
it in my suitcase when I travel or shove it
in a cabinet next to my tequila. And honestly, Doug's
(17:07):
living his best life. His coat is shiny, he's got energy,
and when guests come over, he's the only one not
complaining about their food. Meanwhile, I'm over here eating takeout
and calling it festive. So this holiday season, give your
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(17:28):
first order, no code, no hassle, and thank god, no
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Speaker 2 (17:34):
Now, the cool part about this is, and why I
really do like Paul in this sense, is that we
actually see how he uses his testimony. In Acts chapter
twenty two, Paul's confronted by an angry mob of Jews
that are screaming kill him, kill him. And what does
(17:57):
Paul do share his testimony? He tells them about what
God did in his life. Now, if we go a
little further, we go into Acts chapter twenty six. Paul's
been arrested. He's been in prison for a couple of years.
Felix is the governor. Felix likes to talk to him,
bring him in, talk to him here and there about
(18:17):
different things about being a follower of the Way, as
Christians were called at that time. And King Agrippa shows up.
Cool thing about King Agrippa. King Agrippa is actually King
Herod Agrippa the Second, who's the grandson of Herod the Great,
who actually was the one that ordered the killing of
all the babies, including you know, attempting to kill Jesus
(18:39):
when they escaped to Egypt. So it comes full circle,
which is awesome. I just see how God always works
in these full circles, always connects everything back. But King
Agrippa wants to hear Paul talk. He comes out. How
does Paul lead with his testimony? He uses his testimony.
(19:00):
So if you look at this at that time, Paul
uses it with commoners and kings. He uses it doesn't
matter who you are, whatever status, whatever, it didn't matter.
He used it with commoners and kings. Our testimony is
the most powerful thing that we have in our life.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
It is.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
How you truly see God working through you and in
your life. Now, I'm absolutely sure there's many other times
that Paul shared this. I bet you you can go
through and he preached in town after town after town.
But the Bible is so cool that it gives us
(19:43):
and shows us that he uses that as as one
of his main ways of approaching adversity or trying to
reach people or trying to change people's lives. He uses
his testimony. Now, we all have a testimony, every single
one you do. And sometimes I come, I'll meet people
(20:07):
and when we're talking. I do actually a podcast with
Ben back there and another one of our friends, Justin
called the dig Bible Podcast. Me and Sean. Actually I
said we were in Texas. We actually are working on
a documentary right now about creation and the truth of
what that is all because there's things that God's called
us to do. But we all have a testimony. And
(20:32):
when I talk to people who say, well, I didn't
have a pall like moment, I didn't have this massive
thing that just converted me in a second. I've lived
in a Christian home my whole life. I've never had
a struggle. We had money, so I had food on
the table. You have a testimony. You ever struggled with loss,
(20:54):
You ever lost someone you cared about, offered through a
broken or troubled relationship, You ever been through addiction. Have
you ever just had a bad day at work that
you just could not wait for it to end, but
(21:15):
God helped you through. There's no level, no magnitude, on
which God God can work with the greatest thing to
the least and still works in your life all the time,
all the time. So what's God done in your life?
How has he changed you? How has he pulled you
(21:40):
through something difficult? I want you to think about that
for a minute now. I have enough stories in my
life of how God has everything from save my life
to just getting me through difficult situations that I could
write a I could write a Homer's Odyssey, I could
(22:04):
write the longest book you can think of that you
could ever imagine, and it would still I still probably
couldn't even remember everything that He's done for me my life.
It's absolutely unbelievable. I have so many stories, and one day,
if we ever sit down, any of us want to
sit down and want to talk and swap stories. I
love it, because man, I love sharing how God has
(22:24):
worked in my life. It's awesome. But I have one
that I do want to share with you today, and
I'm going to tell you right now. It's not easy
for me to talk about, and very seldom is testimony
one of those things where it's like, you want to
talk about the difficult thing you went through. It's gonna
(22:47):
be hard because because you open yourself up and you're vulnerable,
you're showing something that you've hidden from other people, showing
something you don't You don't want people to see a
chink in your arm or you come to church, don't
want think people to think that you're not, you know,
this perfect church going person. We're all sinners. We all
have had struggles, and we have to be open and
honest about it. That's how we help other people who
(23:10):
are going through similar struggles. But I'm going to share
one with you today. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,
in that area in my life, I was a thief.
I mean a thief. I'm not being fictitious here. I
(23:31):
stole from whatever I could whenever, didn't care, didn't care
who I hurt, didn't care who I did it to.
I was chasing something. I didn't know what I was
looking for, the next thrill, the next rush, whatever it was.
I didn't care. I didn't care who I mean at all,
who I hurt, my parents in the crazy person is.
(23:51):
I grew up in a Christian home, phenomenal Christian parents.
My dad was a Christian school teacher who was an
amazing man. My mom's a such a strong Christian woman.
I went to church, I went to Sunday School, I
(24:11):
went through all those things. Still fell away, Still fell away.
Now in high school I went to a private schools
as well. So I mean my parents did everything they could,
and I still fell away. So if anybody out there
struggling with one of their kids going through some things,
(24:33):
no it's not just you, it's the world, and we'll
pray for them and help them through whatever it is.
But just know that I had a lot of people
praying for me at that time too, because there's no
other way how I got how God helped me through
all this. But every four years, my school would do
a mission trip. Before I went. They had a trip
(24:58):
to Russia, they had a trip to to Mexico, they
went to Haiti, and my dad would usually go on
all these trips and they had one coming up that
was going to China and Hong Kong. Now at that
time it was still under Great Britain's control, which I
think it went back to China in nineteen ninety seven.
(25:20):
It was July first, nineteen ninety seven. But either way,
you're going into a communist area, because we did go
into mainland China. But story short, I'm not even there yet.
So what happens is they had these applications to fill
out to go on this mission trip. My dad's like,
you're gonna fill one of those out. I'm like, no,
I'm not. I wasn't that guy, not that guy at all. Eventually,
(25:47):
after he told me repetitive times, I filled it out,
knowing they wouldn't pick me because of who the person
I was. I'm sorry, Ben, but I'm not the guy
that you would want your daughter to bring home. That's
exactly who I was. Not that guy. So I feel
like this application I turned in And a little later
they go to do interviews to see who's going to
go on this trip, and they have the pastor of
(26:10):
the religion department doing the interviews. They pull me in
and he looks at me. Pastor sits down, I sit down,
looks at me and says, I don't like you. But
I don't like you either. He looks at me and says,
but you're going I said, what he we don't have
(26:34):
enough guys. I'm like, oh awesome. So six months out
from this trip about we're having to go to these
trainings every so often to kind of learn customs and
learn a little bit of language and kind of get
to know the other people that are going on the trip.
And none of these people are the people I would
hang out with, because I was definitely not the person
(26:57):
you would send on a mission trip. Was as far
from it as you possibly can imagine. So we get
closer to go and I'm still thinking they're gonna kick
me out at any time because they know the person
that I am. Oh, actually I forgot when they went
and announced who was going. They announced it in our
chapel service after third period. I still remember that like
(27:21):
it was yesterday. But after third period they announced who's
going on this mission trip? And I'm gonna tell you,
we're talking about four hundred kids in a gymnasium, And
can anybody tell me how quiet you can get those kids?
They don't get quiet. There's no such thing. They said
my name, and you could have heard a pin drop
because everybody knew the person I was. Everybody knew. They're
(27:44):
like hip it's crazy. So we get closer and closer,
and finally we get to the end, and I'm like, well,
at least it's a free trip to see part of
the country i'd never or part of the world I
would never see otherwise. And I mean, not free for
(28:04):
my parents, but free for me. But so we finally
the time comes and we go. We get over there,
and we fly into Hong Kong and we're staying at
this little it was called the Pok Fu Lam Rehab Center.
It's like a little YMCA type place that they actually
rented out to people. And we stayed in this place,
(28:28):
no ac just fans, and that's a pretty humid, pretty humid,
warm place. But we get there and then for the
first three days, they'd bust a whole group of these
Chinese kids in to spend time with us, and they
group us up in what they called families. There would
be three to four kids with me with and in
each group, so I had three boys or four thing
(28:48):
it was four boys with me, and each group had
a different amount of of people and a group with them,
and they had family groups. And we would go do
things through Hong Kong and we'd stand out on the
street corners, hand out tracks, all these different things, and
I wasn't in it. I didn't care. I'm on a
mission trip and I did not care at all. So
(29:14):
these kids were extremely hungry for Jesus. I mean, you
think about it for most of their lives. You know,
Christianity has banned most of those places over there, you
just don't hear about it. And we're kind of going
back through that phase again over there where we're seeing
a lot more crackdown on the Christian Church. But we
were there in the middle of a time where we
(29:36):
could bring Bibles into actual China and places like this.
But I hang out with these three kids or four kids,
I'm sorry for three days. Every day they're asking me
questions and I'm just like, yeah, Jonah, yeah, Noah, they are.
I'm giving them Bible school answers or Sunday school answers
because I'm just not in it. I don't The crazy
(30:00):
part is God was still using me and I don't
even know it. But we were with them or for
four days, three days, and then I had one kid
that actually got pretty close with. They had given each
of these kids an American name because otherwise we wouldn't
been able to pronounce anybody's name over there. It was
really tough. But the one kids that he had, his
(30:21):
name was Eric, and I really like this kid. I
wish I still had his address and all this stuff.
I could reach this kid, because I mean, he knew
it after the fact, but I wish I could have
shared it little even more with him. But those kids
left and they went back. They had this test they
(30:41):
have to take at that time of year when they're
graduating high school, their version of high school. That whatever
you end up doing on that test, if you get
a ninety percent ninety five percent, that determines what you're
doing the rest of your life. If you are bad
at tests, well you are not going to have a
good job. That's just how it is. So these kids
all go back to take this test. We go into
mainland China, and I saw things that if I told you,
(31:02):
you would look at me and say, that can't be possible,
that's not real. But I saw things that I can't
I saw gutters with drug needles. When you talk about
like for opium and heroin, that deep in gutters up
and down street as far as you can see. I
can't even put into words the horrors that I saw
in China and the way people lived, or if that's
(31:27):
what you want to call it. We're there for a bit,
and I have a bunch more crazy China stories. But
you shouldn't sneak out of your hotel in the middle
of the night in a communist country. I'm just gonna
leave that right there. We'll leave that alone. But we
go back to the place we were at originally in
(31:51):
Hong Kong, and they bring those kids back for one day,
just to say goodbye to us and say thank you
for everything. And some of the kids came back, and
some of them didn't. And the one kid that I
had gotten close to didn't come back. He didn't come
back that day. Well, the other kids that I was
with did, and one of them came up and handed
me a letter. I opened that letter, and the letter said,
(32:21):
thank you so much for coming. Because of you, I
know I'm going to heaven now. Because of you, I
know who Jesus is. Lightning struck me. I had my
Paul like moment, if that's what you want to call it.
Everything changed so much so that when I got home,
(32:46):
I walked in the house, my mom just saw me.
I didn't say anything. She saw the weight was gone,
saw the evil in me was gone, and just started
crying like that. That moment lives with me all the time.
I think about that all the time. That doesn't mean
(33:09):
I haven't have my mountains in my valley since then.
That doesn't mean my struggles aren't still real. That we
all still go through things, that we all still have
our hurdles that God needs to help us through. As
a matter of fact, when we become followers of Jesus,
it gets hard. There's expectations as a Christian that we
have to follow through on. We're supposed to be imagers
(33:32):
of Christ. It's tough. But just like what I told you,
that's a tough story for me to tell. And I
got a bunch of them. I got a bunch of them.
In that moment, God found me. I didn't find God.
(33:56):
God wasn't lost. I was. Now, how do you share
your testimony? I just shared it here, I've shared it
at work, I've shared it in different places. I mean,
we can go and just tell everybody, which we should.
But the cool part is God doesn't make it that heart.
God will put people in your path that are part
(34:19):
of your plan to help change their life. God will
continue to put people in your path, and that means
opening up and being vulnerable, that means sometimes having tough conversations.
But He is going to put people in your path
that it's your call to reach them. Now, I want
(34:44):
you to go back to when you had one of
your your biggest life struggle, the hardest thing that you've
ever had to go through, that God helped you through.
I want you to think about it right now. How
did you feel Did you feel a lit did you
feel despair? Did you feel like the weight of the
(35:05):
world was on your shoulders? God helped you through. But
right now, there's somebody out there that is going through
exactly what you went through, that feels those same feelings
that we're talking about. Right now, there's somebody else out there.
(35:31):
Those of the people God are going to put in
our path. Now, how do we how do we reach
these people? Some of them could be in this room,
Some people in here could be going through something that's
really tough right now. Some of them might be at
(35:54):
work at the grocery store. But I promise you they're
all over the place, and God's going to help you
reach those people. Now. It reminds me of a story
that my father in law Ben's told a bunch of times,
but I absolutely love it. Maybe I've told it more
(36:14):
than him now just because of how much it's resonated
with me. But he tells the story of a little
girl and her mom and there's a thunderstorm and this
little girl goes to bed, big old knock, a thunder comes.
The girl runs out of her room, runs to her
mom and she's like, mom, I'm scared. Her mom's like,
(36:36):
just pray to Jesus, he'll protect you, and I go
back to bed. Sure Enough, five minutes later, boom, big
old crack of thunder. She runs back to her mom. Mom,
I'm scared. She's like, pray to Jesus, he'll protect you.
Go back to bed. Sure enough. A third time. Wow,
(37:00):
all things come in threes, right, Sure enough, a third time,
boom thunder. She comes running into her mom's room. My mom,
I'm scared. She's like, pray to Jesus, he'll protect you.
And she looks at her mom and goes, sometimes I
need Jesus with some skin on. And that's what you
(37:22):
guys are. Holy Spirit lives in each one of you.
The Holy Spirit is here to have God exude through you.
We're images of Christ. We have the Holy Spirit living
inside us, and we're meant to go out and share
that with everybody. Now, the cool part is God doesn't
(37:43):
need you. I mean that sounds I know it sounds crass,
and I don't mean it that way, but that is
the truth. God doesn't need you. God could just say,
guess what, boom, You're fixed, that issue's gone, that's done,
don't worry about it. But God allows us to be
part of his plan. God gives you the opportunity to
step in and be part of it. What a gift
(38:05):
that is, not just the fact that I mean the
greatest gift being Jesus sent to us for our salvation,
but really the second greatest gift I can think of
as being part of someone else's salvation story. I look
back to that kid in China. He's part of my
salvation story and I'm part of his. I don't want
(38:29):
to go up to Heaven and God be like, well
you miss this seventeen opportunities or these three million opportunities
that are all right there. I want to hear, well done,
my good and faithful servant. So when the Holy spirit's
calling you, when the Holy Spirit's pushing in direction, whether
it's to talk to that person at work, whether it's
(38:50):
to give five bucks to the guy in the corner,
whatever it may be, whatever the Holy Spirit's pushing you
to do it cool this is I'm sorry, there's so
many cool things. I'm just all excited. But the cool
cool thing is my mom always told me this, and
this is this is really cool. She told me this
(39:11):
a long time ago, and something that stuck with me
for a long time. She said she would get up
every morning and she would pray a prayer and she
would say, God, please put someone in my path today
that I can reach for you. Please put someone in
my path today I can reach for you. But more importantly,
(39:35):
please don't let me miss it. Please don't let me
miss it. How powerful is that prayer? That's unreal? And
that's that's the parents, the amazing parents that I still
turned away from it, turned away from God, turned away
from all that. But that's who my parents are. They've
been amazing throughout my whole life and they're part of
(39:58):
the reason that I'm standing here today. But I just
want you to think about that how many times could
you be in someone's salvation story? Reach out. You've been
through tough things, You've been through hard times. God's helped
(40:21):
you through them. That is your testimony. You're a witness
to God working in your life. You're a witness to
seeing these miraculous things that He's done all around you.
You're a witness. It's that Acts one to eight. You're
a witness to everything that God has done in your life.
(40:44):
Now it's our job to go out and share that
with everybody else around us. He'd getting ahead of my notes.
I apologize, it's only about another hour or so. Yeah,
(41:04):
So I challenge you this week. Go home every morning,
wake up, pray that prayer. Pray that God puts someone
in your path, and pray that you don't miss it.
(41:25):
Pray to have that opportunity to be part of God's
salvation plan for somebody. He gives us that opportunity. We
just have to step up to the plate. We are
all his witnesses.
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Speaker 1 (43:47):
Hi, everybody, it's me Sender. Relax.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
You are listening to the fringe radio network. I know
I was gonna tell them, Hey, do you.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Have the app. It's the best way to listen listen
to the Fringe radio network.
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I know I was gonna tell him, how do you
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I know, Slippers, we got to keep cleaning these chimneys.
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