Hope Church LV Sermons
Guest Spearker :: Bob Roberts
- Amen, you glad to be in God's house this morning? (audience applauding) You know, I get excited. Have y'all seen the movie called "The King's Speech"? Everybody tweeted me, I had to see it. I go see it, it's about a stutterer who learned to speak. And when I was a little boy, I stuttered so bad my mother was the only person who could understand me until I was 13 years of age. God called me to preach and my parents wept. They thought, Lord, you've called the wrong son. This one can't even talk. But I believe that God heals, amen? And this is no joke. God loosed my tongue, let it go and it hadn't stopped since. But when I was a little boy, my mother, to try to teach me to speak, when I said a word right, she'd grab my hands and she'd rub them together like this. So I came to associate enthusiasm and excitement with this. And so when I sit and hear this singing this morning, I'm just going, whoa, that was fun. But let me talk to you about the Lord this morning. If I could, I'm glad to be in your church. It's good to be at Hope Baptist Church in Las Vegas. It's good to be with Vance Pittman. Let me tell you something. You have an exceptional pastor. You do. [APPLAUSE] Now, you know that. But I want you to understand that we also know that. God has raised up this church. He's raised up Vance in a very unique way. He's given him a platform in a very unique way. And God's going to continue to bless him. He's going to continue to bless this church. And I wanted to challenge you to stay fluid and loose, amen? Stay committed to Christ. Stay tight on that. Stay tight on the Word of God. But stay loose on everything else. Because this is his church. And who knows what this place is going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now. But if you try to hold it too tight and in a box, you're not going to get to receive what God has in store for you. So I just want to challenge you with that. Because very unique church, very unique and gifted pastor, and you need to not take it for granted, stay on your face before God. He's going to do something great. Listen, vision comes from God calling an individual to do a specific thing like he did Vance. But here's the other reality. It can't stay within Vance. It has to push out and infect you. It has to be your vision. It has to be your passion. And I want to talk to you about that a little bit this morning. In the context of what does it mean for vision to really flow through and to capture an understanding of the kingdom? You are alive at the most incredible point in all of human history. You're blessed. And I don't mean just because you have technology and cars and air conditioning and things like that. You're blessed. A lot of people would long to live in the days of the apostles. Listen to me. You live in the day right before the return of Jesus Christ. Get excited. When there's a relay race, you have four runners. The two most important runners are the first and the last. It's the first one who sets the pace for the others. But the last one who runs has to run faster than all the rest because he's got a make up time for those that slow down a little bit or somebody else that ran faster on the other team, he's got to run with all of his might. We are the fourth heat. We're the final lap. God has destined that you be born in this time, in this air, because he's got confidence that you know how to run. And so let's come together as the body of Christ and run with all of our being and run with all of our might, knowing that we are obtaining the goal of Jesus Christ. We are alive and are going to see the fulfillment of the great commission in the next 10 years. When did the Holy Spirit tell you that? He didn't. I was sitting in Dallas, Texas, watching the Olympics on television in China a couple of years ago. And the commercials came on. It said it now celebrating Coca-Cola, 122 years. You know, I'm all over the world. I'm in deserts, jungles, war zones, all over the world. No matter where I go, I can get a Coke or Fanta, but I can get something. Next commercial, GM, celebrating 100 years. Now, you too can get the employee discount. Hopefully, if GM makes it, but you can get the discount. No matter where I go in the world, I get on an airplane, and then I'm picked up in some kind of car and I'm taking somewhere, and there's that combustionable engine that I go in. If I'm not mistaken, Coke may be filled with carbonated water, but not the Holy Spirit. An engine may be filled with gas, but not the Holy Spirit. There are two billion people who call themselves Christians. And we have the Holy Spirit, and if we'll give the Holy Spirit rain in our life, we'll see the completion of the Great Commission. That's only three for people, guys. That's not bad. Just three. What will it look like when the Great Commission is completed? How does it work? Because I think we have to understand that. The challenge is not going to be people hearing the gospel. The challenge is going to be the message not getting lost in all the other great commissions of the world. How do they hear the one of Jesus Christ? And that comes down to us. I have one verse this morning, Matthew 633, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness." And all these things will be added to you. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. What does it mean? How do we live that? How do we seek God? I know you've been studying it for a while. How do we experience that together? A few years ago, I was pastoring my church. And I started our church about 25 years ago. And I'm not the greatest preacher or the greatest this or that, but God called me to start the church. And I can do two things really good. Number one, I share my faith in people except Christ. I'm a personal evangelist. So I can do that really good. The second thing is I like to laugh a lot. So when people came to church, I'd make them laugh. We'd have a good time. Hey, if you lead someone to the Lord and you're the only preacher they've ever heard, you're pretty doggone good. That's literally what I did. I just led a bunch of people to the Lord and, you know, they just thought I was the best thing they'd ever heard. And I didn't tell them any different. And so our church began to grow and God began to bless it. And we had a chance to learn from some people across the country about how God was moving, how he was working is I would implement things about advertising and how to do a worship service. Our church kept growing even more. And we had a chance to relocate our building. So we did. And in the process of relocating the building, we sold our old facility. We'd only been it in about three years. Bought 50 acres, moved to a shopping center. We only were supposed to be in the shopping center about 18 months, but it wound up taking five years. Because a lot of the people didn't like the transition. I didn't realize it, but they didn't want to do it. And so we lost a bunch of people. And that's hard. I'm from Texas. I mean, churches are supposed to grow big and fast, not in reverse. And our church for the first few months after moving to the shopping center was growing faster in reverse than it had ever grown and drive. I was embarrassed. As a matter of fact, I was speaking at a conference with Rick Warren, and I called him and said, Rick, you probably don't want me to come, because guys don't want to hear a preacher speak on how to grow your church in reverse. And he said, well, have you learned anything? And I said, yeah. He said, well, just share that. So I did. But I came back home, and I was real depressed. And I have this hill where I live in this pasture behind me. So I got up one morning, and I was walking and checking on my long horns and my oil wells. And as I was walking through him, and I'm bad at this. That's a lie. Anyhow, but I'm walking on this hill, no joke. And I'm looking over the Fort Worth skyline, and I see this church over here that's running 3,000 plus. And that pasture has had affairs with five different women. Yeah. And it's all over the news, and they're going to sue him. And if you'll just admit to it, the charges will be dropped, which he ultimately does. I see another steeple. This guy's running over 2,000. And he's going to the penitentiary for embezzling money from the church. And I was upset. Our attendance was horrible. And I said, God, you couldn't have just given us another 100 people. I mean, Lord, look at those guys. I've kept my pants on, my hands out of the offering plate. You can't bless me, God. Have you ever felt that way? Don't be the ball. I'm open. God, I'm better than them. Now, a lot of people talk about how you need to pursue the Holy Spirit. Let me tell you what I love. I love it when the Holy Spirit shows up without an invitation. He does that sometime. Did you know that? And so I'm graphing at God why he had and blessing me and how he's making a big mistake. And while I'm praying about through all that, the Holy Spirit asked this little question, Bob, when is Jesus going to be enough for you? Where did that come from? When is Jesus going to be enough for you? You've been given the Holy Spirit the Word of God. You've got a wife and two kids. You've got 50 more people than Gideon. Got to outdo somebody. Why can't you be content? And then I began to ask myself questions like, well, what if this is as good as it gets? What if this is all God's ever going to do with me? Can I be content? My response was no. And it made me realize something was wrong in my heart. I'm standing up preaching peace and joy and all this stuff and I don't even have it. And I said, God, I'm religious. I'm moral, but something's not right. I want to live your kingdom. And I opened up my Bible and I slowly, for the first time in my life, slowly from beginning to the end, read the sermon on the Mount. And I begin to sob because Jesus redefines the 10 commandments. He quakes murder and hate less than adultery. He goes to the heart of the issue. And I said, God, this isn't me, but I want this to be me. I was a great Baptist. I was a great Old Testament Christian. I love to follow the rules. I'm from Deep East Texas. We love legalism. It's the truth. It's how we know we're walking with God. And the closer you walk with Him, the more rules you have. We don't smoke, drink, chew, or mean as hell, but that's just being a good Baptist in East Texas. [LAUGHTER] And if you have the ability to make people feel guilt and shame, oh, you're going to grow a big church. [LAUGHTER] You're going to have big offerings. So I pray and I say, God, I want to live this kingdom life. And God, from being the biggest church in the area, I want to church the area. And that day, I made up my mind, OK, we're going to be a church of 350 or whatever. In that first year, we started our first church, two miles to the east of us. The next year, we started our second one, three miles to the west of us. I didn't know you're supposed to start them 30 minutes away from you. And now we are working on our 22nd church that's within three miles of our church. So this morning, they'll have a couple of thousand people at Northwood, but about 20,000 at all those other churches. And at those 140 churches we've started, there's over 50,000. Move over Joey Osteen, because I just can't fit him in one stadium. He's going to have to buy another stadium. I just keep sending him out. I'm rabbits, man. I'm rabbits. I begin to say, God, what does it mean to live the Sermon on the Mount? I was in a small group of pastors with old Dave Gibbons and some other guys. And God began to work in our hearts, and we held one another accountable. We started confessing sin to one another. You know how hard that is for a Baptist pastor? We don't sin. We can't admit it. Amen? But we got honest and realized we were just as screwed up as everybody else. And God began to change our lives. Three years, all I did was preach on the Sermon on the Mount and the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven, because I was trying to teach myself. I mean, if Jesus came preaching it, if that's how acts begin, if that's the whole basis for all that we do, the Kingdom, how in the world could have I missed that for so long? So I begin to study it and understand it. God began to change my life. My wife wanted to know what was going on. My son wanted to know, Dad, what's happening to you? When a five-year-old notices a change in their dad and he's been a pastor, it's kind of convicting. But something else happened when we said we're going to church the area, I didn't realize what was going to happen, but a shift was taking place in my mind. All I was saying is we're going to see the area church. I shifted in my mind from thinking like a pastor to thinking like a missionary. And I didn't understand that. See, here's how a pastor thinks, I'm going to start a church and we're going to reach our city. It's about his church. And God's Kingdom is measured by how my church is doing. God's Kingdom is measured by our attendance and our offering and our baptisms. And my church, doesn't matter what other churches are doing, doesn't matter what's going on in the city, it's about the Sunday event. But a missionary doesn't view it that way. Their mission is not their church. Their mission is their city. And so now they shifted off the grid of the Sunday event to the grid of what is God doing in this city. And so now they're going to connect with other churches. They're going to collaborate. They're going to multiply new churches, campuses, whatever it takes. And they're not just going to be about church on the Sunday, but church through the rest of the week. That changes your thinking. In that process of accountability, there's a man who mentored us and late and forward. It's Billy Graham's brother-in-law. And he would bring us together and pour into our lives. And he was coming to Fort Worth to the seminary there to do a conference on evangelism. I got there, and it was on global missions. And I got real upset, because, see, three times my wife and I tried to be missionaries, and we were rejected. When she was a little girl, she was in a car accident when she was five, that killed her mom and the newborn baby. They were bringing home from the hospital. It messed her head up in such a way they said she wouldn't survive, and she did. She'd be a vegetable. The best they could hope for is that she would be severely retarded. This was in the '60s, or the '60s, when the charismatic movement in East Texas was coming through churches, and it was very divisive. But you know, when you're laying on a hospital bed and you're about to die, you don't care who's what, you'll take prayers from anybody. And all the preachers in that little town of Lindell of 1,000 people got around Nikki's bed who prayed for God and touched her. She made it. She's valedictorian of her high school. Graduated magna cum laude at Baylor. Had scholarships to be a medical doctor, but felt instead called to teach kids that were coming from around the world as refugees to America. And then when she was eight, she's in another car wreck, loses her other sister, and it crushes her hips in such a way she could never have children supposed to have surgeries all her life. So we went to the IMB, all the health risks and so forth, they wouldn't appoint us. But I kept trying. So I'm going to have to hear all these people talk about missions, and I get all upset. I come home, Nikki says, "What's wrong with you?" And I told her, she said, "Bob, you gotta let it go." I said, "Niki, I've tried." I've told God, take this mission's desire out of my heart. I can't stand it." And she said, "Well, I don't know what to tell you, Bob. "You're not going to be happy until you deal with this." You know, we are all captives of our own mindsets. And I was. Got up the next morning, I was praying, and I was upset. And the Holy Spirit showed up for a second time. Second question, out of the blue. Bob, you've thought about the church different. I want you to think about missions different. Here was the question. What if the church were the missionary? Did you hear that question? What if the church were the missionary? I began to think to myself, "Wait a minute. "What in the great commission given to the church?" And all of a sudden, my mind exploded. I thought, "Oh, my word. "We've taken the great commission and we've funded a few. "We've let everybody else off the hook." And we said, "That's for the missionary." No, the great commission was given to every single part of the body of Christ. Everyone who calls themselves by the name of Jesus, you have all been fulfilled to fulfill the great commission. Not just to pay for a few people to go. Not just to go on an occasional trip. So you can say, "I did my part." What would it look like if every single person in this room committed their life to the last thing that Jesus gave us in a physical command to fulfill the great commission? My mind began to explode. I thought, "Well, what would it look like "for a church to own the great commission?" Went back the next Sunday at our church. And at that time we had this little over 400. And I said, "How many of you ever felt called "to be a missionary?" And two thirds of our church are from unchurched backgrounds. So I figured maybe 10 or 15 people would hold their hand up. About a third of the people in our church held their hand up. Now these are new Christians a lot of them. I'm going, "How can this be?" And all of a sudden I began to think, "What if God really did call them? "What if God calls every believer "to fulfill the great commission? "But the problem is we don't understand "as the church how to mobilize people in the world. "We don't understand as the church "how to make that kind of disciple." Because guys, if you're gonna engage the world, that calls for a different kind of disciple. That takes more than a Sunday kind of person. It takes a 24/7, seven day a week kind of a person. What does that disciple look like? How do you make that disciple? We begin to pray where what does a missionary do? They focus on a spot. So we begin to look at how we made disciples and then we begin to pray about where to go. We had this guy who was shot down three times in Vietnam on those three places we weren't. Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. But he would go in and pick up the soldiers that were wounded or were dead. He was an atheist. He came back from picking up wounded soldiers. He decided to become a doctor, a surgeon. Very successful, very prominent, very wealthy. And he was an atheist. He begins to come to our church and in coming to our church, he winds up accepting Christ. And so he's there when we're going through this whole scenario of things that we're evaluating what to do. So we're praying, "Well, what do we do?" And he said, "Let's go to North Vietnam." Now my response was, when we can't go to North Vietnam, it's a closed country. That's the language of missionaries and denominations in Christian religious groups, closed countries. Let me make it real clear to you, there are no closed countries. God is at work everywhere with or without us long before we ever showed up. I don't have time to tell you the story, but through some unique circumstances, some people paid my way outside our church that didn't even know about this. And I wound up going to Hanoi and God broke my heart for that city. So I came back and I said, "All right, let's do it." I don't know how we're going to do it, but let's do it. And we've been trying to do different things, traditional things, how churches would work in places like that, and I'm just going to be candid. It didn't work. Not too many Christians want to do dining dash evangelism, except for a crazy pastor and three or four other guys who used to be in special forces who were getting thrills out of that, how am I going to mobilize my church to do that? And so I'd come back from Vietnam on one of the trips that was in '98, and two families met me at the airport and said, "Pastor Bob, you're going to be so excited. "Vietnam's pastor law exchange students can come, "and we have two kids that are coming." I said, "You should have checked with me first." Said, "You can't do that." "Well, they're coming, we're doing it." "Okay, well, that's fine, "but you're going to have to go to one of the mission churches "we planted, you can't do that." They said, "No, God's told us to." I said, "Well, he didn't tell me to." We literally got an argument at the airport because of security reasons. This didn't feel like it was a wise thing to do. Next morning we met at the church, finally we came to a conclusion. There's some Sundays they couldn't come when we were raising money, they couldn't get the newsletter in case, I mean, all this stuff. And then one Sunday I was sitting right over here where Vance is, and we're worshiping, and the people were raising their hands, and I looked on the other side, and one of those kids who had come, whose dad's one of the top leaders in the country, even today, that kid had their hands lifted up, and they were sobbing, and I thought, "Oh my word, that kid is gonna accept Christ, "and I would have been the biggest hindrance." My second thought was, "Oh no, they're gonna accept Christ "and mess up all our work." (congregation laughing) Not that we'd had anyone accept Christ, but hey, we had our work to think about. I didn't know what to do. There's a lot of things I'd love to tell you, but I just can't. Well, I wish I could tell you the story, how it happened, but ultimately, that person gave their heart to Christ, and not only did they give their heart to Christ, but they wanted to be baptized, and legally, I could not baptize them without their father's permission. So in a sneaky kind of way, that young person got their dad on the phone when they were in my church office and explained what had happened, and said, "He won't do it without your permission," and he said, "Are you coming to Vietnam any time soon?" So we worked it out. And so I went and I bought me a real nice suit. I go to see their dad to get permission. Plain lands, these police cars, a big black car comes up. That man, I wonder who is on this plane. They come up the steps, soldiers come up, ask what everyone remains seated. Dr. Bob Roberts, would you please stand up, show yourself and come with him? Help me, Jesus. You know, I'm from East Texas, and I don't have my 12 gauge with me. (audience laughs) What do I do? So I get off and I get in the car, and the first question was, I don't understand, you have a doctor's degree, why would any intelligent man believe in God? And you know how the Holy Bible says the Holy Spirit gives you a recall? Guys, let me tell you, I really believe in the Holy Spirit. People say second blessing, third blessing, first of all, I don't care, just make sure the Holy Spirit's in you. It's not option equipment anymore. It's your GPS. Every Christian comes fully loaded. You need to be able to release the Spirit in your life. For if you're gonna see the world changed at least. So anyhow, I went through, Holy Spirit gave me a recall, I went through seven philosophical reasons why I believe that there is a God. Okay, that's cool, so why do you believe Jesus? Well, if I wanna believe that, then the next question is what is the source of my authority? The Bible, the Quran, you know, the Bhagavad Gita, different literature, so why I believe four reasons, why I believe the Bible is the word of God over against all of the scriptures. And then if that's the case, then Jesus is a piece of cake because I've established there is a God. The Bible is the word and the Bible tells us who Jesus is. The man said, this is incredible. I've never heard this before. He's trained in Moscow, very educated man. So he said, would you be willing to share it with some friends, and his friends were other top, I mean top government leaders. And I thought, man, this is not good, I'm in trouble. And so that night, I had put on my suit again and sat down and I went through the whole same thing. He said, this is incredible. We have never heard this before. Would you get some Bibles and come back and start visiting with us and meeting with us? And I said, I can't. I said, why? And I said, because the government won't let me. And looked at me and they'd start grinning. And they said, we are the government. (audience laughs) And they really were. And then we're, they're talking. And while we're talking, the next thing I know is that one of them says, hey, we need some help with our schools. We need 6,000 schools in the North. Would y'all be willing to help? So we're Christians, we're charting. He said, I don't care if you'll, if you look, we don't have anything against God. We don't want your American ways. We don't want your government that subverted our government, kept it from being. That's what we don't want. Said, if people ask you about your faith and you talk to them like you talk to us, there's no problem. I said, all right, we'll do it just like that then. No problem. Another guy said, we need clinics. The Cubans have helped us with some clinics up in the mountains, but we need more. Would you be willing to help us? And all of a sudden my mind exploded. Oh my word, this is what we do. Instead of taking missionaries and try to make them businessmen, which they're not good at, just take a businessman and decidefully. (audience laughing) Duh. That's what Jesus did. Think about it. And so I begin to think, whoa, that's even how the first church painting movement got started in Antioch. It was a couple of guys who faced persecution in Jerusalem. They head out to two different places. They wind up at Antioch at the same time. They're business guys. They start sharing their faith. Acts 11 through 12. The church explodes and emerge. And we don't even hear from them again. It was business guys that started it. Isn't that crazy? And I begin to think about people's jobs, education, economics, health, governance, security, communications, agriculture. And I begin to think more like a human resource map. And I thought, what if these jobs that people have are the very ways that God has called people to engage the world? What if that is their ministry? Instead of just having a Bible study at your job, what if you use that skill to serve some nation? And so that's what we did in Vietnam. That was about close to a thousand people ago that have been going back and forth from our church. That was about 75 exchange students ago. And every three to four months, there's some Vietnamese delegation that's in our church from ambassadors to diplomats. And about a couple of weeks, the top businessmen from Hanoi are all gonna be at our church. They'll be going to different universities. They're our friends, their kids come and stay at our church. They stay in our home. We spend our Christmases in Hanoi. They spend their Christmases at our house with us. They're not Christians, it's funny. They come, they worship, they are open to God. I'm in the middle of literally writing a book with the top diplomat of all Vietnam that established relations with the US, with John McCain and John Kerry. We're writing a book together. How do we see God? I'm gonna get to write a book about who is God as I understand him. That's gonna be translated in Vietnamese, travel all over Vietnam. And he and I do lectures together. (laughs) But anyhow, I'm sorry, I'm a little excited about that. But my point is, had I tried to do it the traditional way and fund a people to do dying in dash evangelism, sneak in and sneak out, I would never be doing the things I'm doing today. But the reason it's happening, it's not because I did it because it's our body that begin to use their jobs. Are you with me? What in God's name could he do with you guys? There are no accidents. God has allowed you to be placed at this point in time, at this point in history, like no other time. Why has he allowed this church to be planted? Why has he allowed it to grow? Why has he given Vance a global understanding, a global platform, a national platform, just so y'all can have a nice Sunday event, just so you can be another American mega church where the pastor writes books and says, this is how I do it, Vance Pittman way. God has more in store for you than that. God loves Vance, but he also loves you. And here's what he wants to do. He wants to release you. He wants to release you. We need to let our people go. God is calling him to do everything. People ask me all the time, what's your strategy for Vietnam? Here's my strategy. It's sitting right out in front of me. What's your job? How can you do that and make a difference so that our church members literally wrote all the special and curriculum for Vietnam because they didn't have any. And for the last six years, they teach that. We have businessmen that are mentoring businessmen. One of the top women executives in the Metroplex goes to our church. She's mentoring the top 50 business women in Hanoi, another guy is a plumber. And he's got all these plumbers together. They go do water treatment, water wells, and everything else. It doesn't matter what your job is. We just teach them how to live the gospel, how to share their faith, and it's viral. And that's what God is calling all of us to do is the body of Christ. All of us to do is the church. But we're looking at a kingdom perspective, and that is far more than just Sunday go to church. That means that we've got to be transformed. See, a lot of you thought you got saved. Listen to me, guys. Heaven is just a benefit of being a part of the family. Do you know how God sees you? God looks at you and sees you as part of his family. Some of you got all excited about the doctrine of justification. What you need to get excited about is the doctrine of adoption. The doctrine of justification is just the legal paperwork to get your sins forgiven so you can go to heaven. But that's not what you need to shout about. What you need to shout about is, you're now one of the kids. You're in the family. You God loves you. You're not an orphan anymore. And a lot of you are acting like orphans. Oh God, please let me do something for you. You're in the family. Do whatever he puts on your heart. You own it all now, but you live as if you're orphans. You're afraid. You don't have to afraid, he's your daddy. Who's your daddy? Somebody say, "Who's your daddy?" He said, "God's my daddy." Look at you, you the son of God, I am. You crazy? I'm a fool for Christ's sake. Let me tell you something, guys. If you really believe that God is your father, you're gonna act different. You're gonna have a lot more faith. You're gonna take a lot more risk. And can I just tell you this? You're gonna have a lot more fun. It's a journey. I don't have time to tell you about all the stuff I'm doing in the Middle East and the doors that God is open, but do some unique circumstances. I wound up working with a bunch of imams. Imams. I didn't think I'd ever worked with an imam. I'm a Baptist from Texas. We're gonna win. Amen? We got a Bible bazooka. We're gonna shoot down your throat. I mean, we got it figured out. And I remember the first time a bunch of imams asked me to build some schools for him. Oh, I can't do that. But then I thought, wait a minute. What if God has put me in this relationship to build a relationship with him? So I did. Now we've had four schools, two clinics, one hospital, two orphanages, a community college, and it goes on and on and on. And all I will say is this good stuff is happening. See, here's what I've learned. You can go anywhere in the world. I tell our church planners when we train 'em. Wherever hell is breaking out, that's God calling the church saying here. You know, I know a lot of Christians, but we need a new guy around while we can. But you know, one of the greatest movements of God taking place right now, getting to be pretty much common knowledge is college students in Iran. Sorry guys, I don't wanna nuke 'em. I wanna see 'em come to faith in Christ. We've got one kid in Vietnam that's a girl. Her dream is to be the first general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam that's a Christian. And you figure it out, I don't care. I hope she gets to do it. You hear me? We so confused our flag, the American flag with the Christian flag. Sometimes we don't see the difference. It's not the same thing. What does it mean to love people enough to give your life for them? Not long ago, I was in Gaza. Literally, Muslims funding me to take in evangelical doctors and I was introduced to the government there, about 30 of them, and this is Bob Roberts, Baptist Evangelical Pastor from Texas. Not the way you want to be introduced to those people. You could just feel the air go out of the room and I said, "How many of you have ever heard "of an evangelical that all raise their hands? "How many of you have a negative view of evangelicals? "They all raise their hands because we love the Jews, "but don't care about them." I said, "Well, contrary, "how many of you know an evangelical? "No one raised their hand." I was the first one. I said, "Well, contrary to what you may think, "we are not all terrorists. "Even though I'm a Baptist, we're not." And they died laughing and I was grateful for that. And so what has God done? When I stay, I stay with the foreign minister and he tells me stories from the Quran and I tell him stories about Jesus. And the last time I was there, he brought 30 of his friends over and say, "Bob, share with us your favorite stories about Jesus." So until one in the morning, I sat up, told him about Jesus. Been invited to go speak at the Islamic University in Gaza by the Islamic scholar in charge. I'm going. Well, it's dangerous there. I'm a dead man, anyhow, so are you. You've been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me and the life that I live is by the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Quick bullet isn't so bad, guys. I watched somebody die of cancer last week. Give me a quick bullet any day of the week and you're going to die anyhow. God may let you die fast. Just pray they don't slowly hack my head off. I may start saying, "Alla Akbar, if they'll stop." I mean, I don't want to hurt. You hear me? I don't want to hurt. Now, would you stay with me? It's no accident I'm here this Sunday. Guys, I don't preach at other churches. I only did so because I love your pastor with all of my heart. I'll give him whatever he needs. I'll do whatever it takes to help Vance Pittman out. That's the truth. I'm here because he asked me. That's it. And listen to me. When Vance asked me many months ago, God knew what was going to be going on in Egypt. This is your time. Time to play ball, guys. Time to step up to the plate, shut up whining, play ball. I don't care how hot it is. I don't care if the sun's in your eyes. I don't care if you're scared. If you wet your sleeping bag, it's okay. Keep your feet moving. Just get back up on your feet. Nobody's going to laugh. Nobody's going to make fun of you. Move your feet. Amen. Do you realize what God is doing all over the Middle East? Gaddafi has called in African mercenaries to kill his own people. He's out people. It's just a matter of time. He's done. It's over. Adios. The whole Middle East is dead. Don't you know every dictator in the world, their knees are shaking right now? Don't you know all those African nations are petrified? What is going to happen if the Muslims are doing this and in the Middle East? Don't you know that India is concerned? Don't you know China is watching it closely? The whole world of global leaders, their knees are knocking. This is time for us as the body of Christ to stand up and serve people in the name of Jesus like never before. God gave you a pastor with a heart for the Middle East. For God's sakes, he's giving you a staff member who's been a top diplomat with the Egyptian government. Why did he do that? Because he knew in his sovereignty that in 2011, he was going to do something. And it's game time for Holt Baptist Church. Play ball. (audience applauds)