Hope Church LV Sermons
Mike Laughrun: the joy is in the journey
This is an exciting weekend for us here at Hope in many ways. Ten years ago, God invited a little over ten years ago now. God invited my family on an incredible journey. God spoke into our lives and invited us to join in what God was doing in starting a new church in Las Vegas. And ten years ago when that began, our church just turned nine last month, but God really began it in our hearts a little over a year before that. When God invited us to get in on this journey, we had no idea all that we were in store for what a joy it has been over this last decade to see God begin a work here in this valley that would literally result in a multiplication of churches and it would ultimately touch the world. Working on four continents around the world, it has been some journey. And in the middle of the journey, there have been some high moments and there have been some low moments, like any journey. There are mountaintops and there are valleys and we have walked through many of both of those. And throughout that journey that we've been on, there are two things for my family that have been a real constant. And one of those is the faithfulness of God. Amen? I mean, you know, right? Doesn't matter if it's a good day, a bad day. If it's a mountaintop or a valley, God is always faithful. And it hopes we have witnessed the faithfulness of God. We have seen God do unbelievable things in the last decade, things that far exceeded our imagination and it is all rooted and grounded in the faithfulness of God. But another thing that has been a constant for my family over the last decade is we've always been walking along this journey in partnership with another family, Mike and Jennifer Lauren and their three wonderful children. What a joy it has been for this last decade of our lives to be able to walk along this journey together. Just over the last few weeks as we've kind of reached these decisions and prayed through this process, as God is in the process of now transitioning, as you know, we shared with you a few weeks ago, Pastor Mike and his family and Mike is going to be the lead pastor in another church. And we've been walking through that transition now for a little while, but as we've been doing that, Mike and Jennifer and I and Christy, we've had the opportunity to talk and just reminiscing and telling the stories and looking back over this last decade of all that God has done. What a joy it has been. What a journey it has been. And so one of those constants for my wife and I and our family is changing right now and change is always difficult. It is not ever something that we look forward to, but it hopes we believe that the success of a church is not found in its seating capacity, but that the success of a church is found in its sending capacity. And as a church family, God's called us to be a kingdom church and we want to be about sending people to join in God's activity to touch the world. So as we are celebrating this weekend, 10 years of ministry with Mike and Jennifer and also in a sense, we're going to be at the end of the service commissioning them and sending them as they will be going from us, not leaving, but being sent to join in God's kingdom activity in another part of his kingdom, we'll continue to partner with them. So this weekend, you're going to have the opportunity in just a few moments. I'm going to pray for him, but you're going to get to hear from Pastor Mike. I asked him to take this weekend. This will be his last official preaching as a part of our pastoral team. Won't be his last time. We've already negotiated that in the contract with the new church, right? They're going to have to let him come back and speak occasionally. But Mike will be sharing from his heart this morning and you're going to be very blessed to hear as he does that. Well, it was 10 long years ago that God opened a door for my family and I to be a part of something very, very special. As a third-year seminary student there in the great state of Memphis, Tennessee, he got to begin to do a work in my heart and got to begin to give me a desire in my heart to minister outside of the traditional South. That's all I'd ever known. That's where I'd grown up. God put a desire in my heart to be a part of something brand new. I wanted to be a part of a new work somewhere. God had really given me a desire to be part of a team, to work together with some other guys so I could grow and learn in the ministry as a young pastor and I guess it was December of 1999, somewhere around in there. Pastor Vance came in and he and I were working together, my friend and actually my boss at that time. We sat down in an office and he began to share with me the opportunity that God had opened up for him and Kristita, start a brand new work in the city of Las Vegas, be a part of a church planning team to leave the South and head west and as he was sitting there sharing that with me, my heart began to leap and get very excited and it is as if God had began to form this shadow or this shape of what he wanted me to be involved in and then opened up this door of ministry-wide opportunity of service and to plan a church in the city of Las Vegas, outside of the traditional South was an incredible opportunity God opened up for me and God had given me that desire to work outside of the South and I don't know if you know they're not but Las Vegas is definitely outside of the traditional South. Vance said we're going to go out as a church planning team together and we'd like for you and Jennifer to go out with us and be a part of that and at that moment it was as if God just put those things together, what he had been forming in my heart and an opportunity and the two met, of course I went home and said, "Vance, give me a couple of days to pray about this, I'm very excited but let me, I think I probably need to talk to Jennifer a little bit about this, I need to spend some time with the Lord on this," so I went home that afternoon and I'll never forget it, they're in our apartment in Memphis and went home and sit down with Jennifer around the dinner table and said, "Sweetheart, if you've heard about what Vance and Christie are going to be doing," and she said, "Yeah, I've heard about that, that's real exciting isn't it?" Yeah, that's real exciting and today as I talk to Vance sweetheart they've asked us to be a part of it and go with them. My wife's first response to the dinner table, I'll never forget it was she just started to cry and I went exactly sure why she was crying in that moment but now looking back I think I know there were a couple reasons, one reason is we had never been to Las Vegas ever and everything we knew about Las Vegas was not necessarily positive if you know what I mean, it's not the desire of every young Tennessee boy to start a family in Las Vegas to that, I'll just tell you that and I think the other reason is she knew in my heart and my voice even as I shared that God was in it and we knew that and it just seemed to be the direction God was leading our lives. So we took the next couple of weeks and we prayed like we never prayed before and we sought the face of God and said, "Lord, is this indeed the plan you have for our lives?" And without question, God confirmed from His word and from circumstances and others that this was indeed the door of opportunity He had opened for our family to come to Las Vegas and be a part of this team. So I went back to Vance and a few weeks later I said, "Man, we prayed about it and we want we want you to know we are in, we can't wait to be a part of this." We had no idea, no idea what we were signing on for. So that spring, this was in January I guess, that spring about May, maybe middle May, late May, we had already been in this process for a couple of months so Jennifer and I decided we might want to visit Las Vegas, you know, we'd never been here before, all we had seen was on television so we had a little vacation plan after when I was near the end of seminary so we decided we'd come to Las Vegas for the very first time. And ever we'll forget we had somebody recommend a couple places to stay and I'll never forget that first time flying from Tennessee where it's green and trees and grass and flying into the Las Vegas Valley for the first time and kind of looking out that plane window and thinking, "Man, it's different here, it looks kind of different." So we landed there at McCarran Airport and got out and I never will forget, just walk it out of that plane and look it around and saying, "Where is the grass? Where are the trees? Where is the water?" Then we spent a little time here and we said, "Where is Chick-fil-A? There's no Chick-fil-A here." So we left McCarran Airport our first day and we were headed to the hotel and someone had recommended this hotel to us and maybe you've heard of it, it was called the San Remo, anybody ever heard of that? Obviously you've heard of that. It no longer exists, it's been condemned and torn down I think at this point. So we went to the San Remo and our first day there we kind of walked in, it was May, it was late May, it was hot, at least 90 degrees, 95 degrees, something like that so we thought, "You know we'll just go spend our first afternoon by the pool and went up by the pool and it was shut down, closed for repairs, that's fine." We actually went to a neighboring hotel and swim in their pool but we didn't tell anybody about it so it was confession time. At night we were in our room and again it was hot and we woke up about 2.30 that night and the air conditioning had froze over. So it was literally 95 to 100 degrees in the middle of the night we had to swap rooms, that was alright, no big deal. My wife gets up the next morning, our first morning in Vegas and she decides she'll go out for a jog on the streets of Las Vegas early in the morning. Nobody told us, alright? So she's out jogging and she notices all this literature all over the streets. She thought maybe it's a gospel track, maybe somebody's been sharing the gospel or, "Oh yeah." Maybe it's a map to the homes of the stars or something like that. So of course she picks them up and checks them out and you know what it was. I'll never forget she comes back in the hotel that morning and I was still there and she says, "Honey, whatever you do, you are not going outside this hotel early in the morning, you won't believe what I saw out there." So we've been here about 24 hours at that point and I'll just be absolutely honest with you, we're saying something to the effect of, "Lord God, what have we got ourselves into?" This is totally out of our comfort zone. It's not what we're used to, but we knew that God had called us here. We knew that without any doubt. Now I won't say there was almost a phone in my hand to call Vance and say, "Bro, we need to think about this. I'm not sure we're in," but God had clearly confirmed his call. So that day we spent the afternoon and we knew early on, the only place we really knew much about in Vegas is we knew we were likely going to start the church somewhere near a place called Anthem. That's all we knew. So we got out in our rental car and we found the street called Eastern Avenue. So we just started driving on Eastern Avenue. We drove south and as we began to get off the strip we just were really looking for anything normal. Is there anything normal around here? So we passed a target, a brand new target, Great Land, right up here in Silverado Ranch and my wife said, "Honey, let's just stop and go and target. We don't need nothing. It's just normal. Let's do something normal." So we get out and spend a few minutes in Target, kind of meet some people. Then for lunch we went over to a little restaurant, I don't think it's even in business anymore, called the Five and Diner. It was right over here on Eastern Pebble and we just went in there and said, "Let's just sit down for some lunch," and we just began to pray together because we were just really out of our comfort zone. And for whatever reason, right there was one of those God moments in Five and Diner. As we sit there praying together and we sit there over a hamburger and a milkshake, it's as if God just sit down in that booth with us and said, "It's going to be okay." It really was. It was a God moment. And he reconfirmed right there in that little booth, "This is where you're supposed to be. I've got everything worked out, just trust me." And right there in that diner, Vegas for us became home. So we got out and spent a little more time and drove around, some neighborhoods and saw that people really do live in houses in Las Vegas and non-in casinos, and we went up on Mount Charleston and saw some trees and felt a little bit better, and God just really began to change our hearts, and Vegas became home. And that's the way it's been for the last ten years. God's planted a stake in the ground very firmly, and without question, we have been where we're supposed to be for the last ten years. So we went back to Memphis, and things really started happening. We graduated seminary, and the team came together, and we moved to Atlanta, Georgia. That summer, Jennifer and I got pregnant with our second child, and things were happening. We went to first Baptist Woodstock and spent a few months there, and the team, myself and Pastor Vance and Pastor Jeff, we came together with our families and began to plan for a big adventure of going to Las Vegas. And then in January of 2001, the team hit the field. Here we are, ready to take Las Vegas and send city by storm. These guys from Tennessee and Alabama are ready to hit Las Vegas, and here's our team picture. I don't want to throw this up on the screen. There we are, the Beverly Hillbillies hit Las Vegas. I know we look a little different than ten years ago, but... And Vance has said it, and I'll just say it again to be very clear, God could not have chosen three guys that knew less about church planning than the three guys He chose. God chooses the foolish things, right, of this world. But He called us, and He chose us to be a part of this work. So we hit the field in 2001, and we were just praying like crazy, and God, what are we supposed to do? Lord, what's our next step? We know You've called us here, and we need clarity and direction and wisdom, and in those early days, God just confirms something very clearly in our heart that He was more concerned with teaching us a heart of dependence and a heart of trusting Him than our elaborate plans. There were a lot of elaborate plans, but God taught us to trust Him from the very beginning. He had called us to join something He was doing. Wonder what we were doing, it's something He was doing. So we prayed, and we prayed, and we prayed some more. And then in February of 2001, we started our very first small group Bible study there in Vance's Home, and you've already mentioned it several times, and there'll be a picture on the screen so you can just see it. It looks a little different than it does now, but that was in February, 18 adults came together there in Vance's Home, and man, it was absolutely one of those, again, God moments. It was just a glorious time of beginning to see what God had put in our heart and the vision He had put in our heart, becoming a reality before our very eyes. Vance opened up his Bible and began to preach out of the book of Acts, and as I said there, it was literally like we were living out the book of Acts. We were getting to experience that sense of fresh new activity of God, and we got to be a part of it. That spring things really begin to take off for the church. God just began to send people out of nowhere, literally. I mean, people would come and knock on the door for our services at Vance's Home and say, "I just heard there was a church meeting here, and we want to be a part of it. Nobody had ever met them. We didn't know how they found out. God was just at work in an incredible way." Last spring we began to see people come to know Christ, and we baptized, we had our first baptism. There's a picture of that. There's a man named Rob Kinerson. He was one of the first guys we baptized, the lady named Donalight there in a family's home. We began to see God doing what we were asking, "God, change lives, transform lives, build this church," and he was doing it right before our very eyes. We began to present our first members, and we began to come together as a church, and later that year we took our very first mission trip to the country of South Africa and Zambia, and God was taking this little church here in the middle of Las Vegas and allowing us then to touch the nations from the very beginning. God showed us it wasn't just about us, it was about his kingdom. What we knew very early on, God had given us a vision of a church that he was going to use to transform lives in Las Vegas, in the West, and all over the world, and the dream was becoming a reality, and now ten years later. A decade later, we have seen God save thousands of people's lives. We have baptized over a thousand people. God has allowed us to see over nine churches start. We've been active on four different continents and 20 different countries, and God has allowed us to form and begin relationships that will last forever. God has allowed us to be part of a journey that was more than we could have ever imagined. He invited our family to be a part of something that's been very, very special. So you can see why it's been somewhat of a struggle for my family over the last few months as God has been stirring in our hearts and making very clear that the season that he's called us to here is coming to an end, and that's not been easy. We've wrestled with that, and we've wrestled with that decision, and we've wrestled with God as a God, are you sure this is what you're doing? Now he's made it clear he's calling us to a new ministry assignment to pastor a church, and it's with mixed emotion that I come before you this morning as our church family, the only church family we've known for the last ten years and say this is one of the last times we'll get to stand before you as one of your pastors, and church family, I want to thank you on behalf of my family for allowing us to be a part of this journey over the last ten years. It's been an incredible honor to serve as one of your pastors, and this morning the challenge for me is what do you say after ten years? What do you say when you look out and see faces that have impacted your life so deeply, and our lives have been so interconnected over the last ten? What do you say in just a few minutes? And I want to say I want to thank you for all the emails I've got in this week, and the texts, and the words of encouragement, and how you've come around us, and just again encourage this so much. I've got a lot of great emails, and God even humbles you in some of that. I got a very interesting email this week from a gentleman who was very kind. So Pastor Mike, we love you, love your ministry, so thankful for you. But we do have one question, will your wife still be able to teach you any here in Las Vegas? We're real sad you're leaving Mike, but we hope your wife stays. But I was just kind of flipping through the scriptures this week, and I came across a great passage in 2 Peter to kind of help me frame where we want to go this morning for just a few minutes, and it'll be on the screen for you. Listen to what Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 12, Peter says this, "Therefore, I will always be ready," he says, "to remind you." He said, "I'll always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you." He says, "I consider it right, as long as I'm in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder." Peter says, "It's not necessarily my job to always be teaching you something new." Peter says, "What I want to do is always be diligent to remind you of some things." So this morning, all I really want to do is just as Peter says, is I want to stir you up, I want to encourage you by way of reminder. In 10 years, God has taught us some incredible principles, some incredible truth. In this morning, I'm just going to share with you four reminders of things God has taught us, things God is still teaching us, things God is teaching you as a church, that I want to encourage you, I want to challenge you, and I want these things to always be before you as a church family as a way of reminder this morning. So let me just share with you four words this morning as a way of reminder, as a means of encouragement to you, my church family, this morning, all right? First word is this, the first reminder is this, is simply the word dependence, dependence. The statement is this, "Apart from God, we can do nothing, and nothing means nothing, but through Him, we can do all things." You know what Jesus says in John 15, "I'm the vine. You're the branches. You abide in me, and I knew you could do, you'll bear much fruit, but apart from me, you can do what?" Nothing. If God has taught us anything over 10 years, it's that we are absolutely desperate for Him every moment of every day, no matter if times are good or times are bad, no matter what's going on in your life, you live in a state of desperation. Sometimes you realize it, sometimes you don't, but you're always desperate for Him. When we first hit the field at 10 years ago, the three of us, we knew we were desperate for Him. We were on our face saying, "God, you've called us to do something we cannot do, it is bigger than us. God, you've got to do this, or we are sunk." We knew we were desperate, and we spent those early days on our faces before God said, "Lord, what do we do next?" "Lord, show us the next step. God sends somebody to this church, anybody, it doesn't matter who it is, just send somebody." Over the last 10 years, we've had the days as pastors and as staff team, and days of not knowing what was next, and days of highs and days of lows, as Vance said, "Man, you can have the highest highs and the lowest lows and all in the same day." So we realized, being in a place of desperation, that's a good place to be. You know why? Because a place of desperation always teaches you dependence, and that's exactly where you need to be. And God has honored me and given me the privilege of the last 10 years to sit with a lot of you in times of desperation. I look out and I see some faces, and I've spent some time with you and your homes or over a cup of coffee talking about some desperate situations when I've heard things like, "If God doesn't do something in this marriage, it's over." I've heard things like, "If God doesn't do something in the life of our son or our daughter, we don't know what's going to happen. We are desperate for God. If God doesn't come through financially, we don't know what's going to happen. If God doesn't save my neighbor, I don't know what's going to happen. We've been praying for that neighbor. We don't know what's the next step in our lives. God is doing something, and we don't know what, but we're in a place of desperation. Listen, church, being in a place of desperation is a good place to be as long as it teaches you dependence, right? And we're 10 years along as a church, and we've seen some incredible success. But let me say this very clearly as a pastor that loves you, you as a church family are just as desperate for God today as we were 10 years ago, and that will never change. Don't ever forget the fact that apart from him, you can do nothing. There's a sober warning in the Old Testament. You say, "Why don't you get the Old Testament in there somewhere?" Well, you're right. In second chronicles, there's a king named Josiah, and God allowed Josiah to experience a lot of success as a king. But then some things changed in Josiah's heart because of his success. Here's what the Bible says. Second Chronicles 26, "Hence his fame spread afar, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong. But when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful to the Lord, his God." It's a sobering reminder church. Don't let success or strength or prosperity or the blessing of God somehow make you think that you don't need him as much as ever. We are more desperate for God than ever. Don't ever forget that. Dependence. Apart from him, we can do nothing. What word is this? Second truth is simply the word generosity, generosity. Live ready to make a difference in the lives of others. Psalm 67 says this, "God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear him. God has taught us generosity over the last ten years. I want to encourage you as a church family, you have become a generous church. You are renowned and you're recognition as a generous church. I want you to know is known all over the world. I wish you could hear when we get to travel overseas in some different places of how hope Baptist Church is looked on by people all over the world. What a generous giving church. I hear so many people all over the world say thank God for that church in Las Vegas, Nevada. God a generous people. God has taught you and you are a generous people. Don't ever forget generosity. How could you forget it? You'll never forget this, right? That thing Vance does. I mean no matter where I am, I'll never forget it's kind of weird, kind of funny, but this is the way we live with everything on our fingertips ready to make a difference in the lives of other people. Listen, you as a church get it that we are blessed to be a blessing. You are blessed not for yourself, you are blessed to make a difference in the lives of other people. And I want you to know this morning church family, I want you to be encouraged because of your generosity. Because of the generosity of this church, there are nine churches today that are changing lives all over the world that didn't even exist ten years ago. Because of the generosity of this church, there are pastors and church leaders on four continents over 20 nations who are trained and impacted and encouraged because of the generosity of this church. There are families that have been put back together, there are students whose lives have been changed, there are homeless being fed, there are thousands of men and women, boys and girls who have heard the name of Jesus in Las Vegas and all of the world because of your generosity and I want you to be encouraged, don't ever stop living life with everything on your fingertips and I want you to know that there is a family that moved out here from Tennessee who has been incredibly blessed by your generosity for the last ten years. And I want to take the opportunity to say church family thank you for how you've taken care of my family over the last ten years and how you take care of your staff team. We have been blessed beyond measure. We have gone through the highs and the lows but this church family has stood by us and taken care of us and met every need we could possibly have and from the behalf of my wife and my children we thank you very, very much. Don't ever stop being the generous people that you are. Now remember the temptation as a church and the temptation as a people is to go from living like this to slowly drift to living like this, right? Don't let that happen. Continue to live in dependence, continue to live generously as the people that you are. Third word I want to share with you is this word, it's the word kingdom, kingdom. Seek to join God's activity all over the world. You know what Jesus said? We are to make disciples of all the nations. You are a church that gets that. You are a church that gets that it's not just about growing our church, it's about the kingdom of God and you as a church have sacrificed. You as a church have given, you as a church have gone. You are a kingdom minded people and I want to encourage you, the world is a different place because of this church. You had said it earlier, you're alive in the greatest days of the history to be a Christian to be a Jesus follower because what God is doing all over the world and He is inviting you to be a part of it. Hope about His church, you are a kingdom minded people. Don't ever change. Don't ever change. And I know without any doubt that when some of you get to heaven you're going to meet people that you've never met before and they're going to come up to you and they're going to say you don't know me, you've never met me, but thank you for being a part of that church. Thank you for giving, sacrificing, serving. I'm from Zambia, I'm from Thailand, I'm from Laos, I'm from North Las Vegas, I'm from Summerland, I'm from Perup, I'm from Tucson, I'm from wherever, but I'm here. God used you and God used your church to make a difference and that's why I'm here today. You are a kingdom people and you are a part of something that's bigger than you are. Don't ever stop. Live dependently, live generously and don't ever stop seeking the kingdom of God. Fourth and final word this morning and I'm finished. I would say if all the things God's taught us over the last ten years, this would probably be the most impactful thing for me personally. The fourth reminder is simply this word is the word relationships. Do you ever heard that word around here, occasionally, relationships? Following Jesus is all about relationships. Listen, church family, if I can communicate anything to you this morning is this the most important thing in your life, is your dynamic, daily, intimate love relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Nothing is more important than that. Everything in your life is an overflow of your intimacy with Him. The calling on your life, the calling on my life is not even to ministry. It is to Him, it is to intimacy, it is to a deep, abiding relationship with the person of Christ, everything in your life flows out of that. If that's not right, nothing else in your life will be right. And we have shared that and I'm learning that and continuing to learn that and you hear that but I want you to know it. I want you to know that on a daily basis because you have an enemy. You have an enemy that would love to take your focus and your attention and shift it to anything except Jesus. You don't care what your attention is on as long as it's not on the person of Christ. It can be on ministry, it can be on church, it can be on activity, it can be on self, it can be on anything but the person of Jesus church don't ever lose the reality that following Jesus is not a religion. It's not a set of rules and do's and don'ts. It's a relationship with a person, your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul understood that and he wanted the church at Corinth to get that. I want to read a warning that Paul said to the church at Corinth and 2 Corinthians 11-3 he said this is sober warning. Paul said, but I'm afraid Paul was concerned about something. He said, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, his trickery, his subtle deception, as the serpent deceived Eve, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Paul said to the church at Corinth, Paul is saying to you and he's saying to me, watch out, there is an enemy that wants to complicate your Christian life. It is simple, it is a dynamic growing intimate relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Don't let the enemy deceive you. Don't let him ever shift your focus away from the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dependents, generosity, kingdom. Ten years ago God invited my family to be a part of something very, very special. God invited my family to be a part of something much bigger than we are and God invited my family to be a part of something that has changed my life forever. In ten years we've seen him do the miraculous, we've seen him change lives, we've seen him touch the nations and we've learned who God is in a way we never could have imagined. This morning as I close I just want to have this opportunity one final time to say thank you to you as a church family. And I want to say a couple special thank you's because there's been some people in my life that have impacted my life in a special way. I want you to know this morning brother and I said it last night and I want to say it again. I want to thank you for taking a chance on a young third year seminary student that didn't know much. That was a big risk. If it wasn't for you and it wasn't for what God was doing in your life I would have never experienced any of this. And I want you to know you've been a mentor to me and wherever God takes me and wherever God uses me the impression and the impact and the advancement of my life will always be there brother. I want to thank you very, very much. I don't know if you know you've got a pastor unlike any other you are blessed with the man of God that God has called to leave this church. God has gifted him in unique ways. God has used him around the world and you're blessed. And I've been blessed and I want to say a big thank you to my sweet wife. Sweetheart, I want to thank you for listening to your crazy husband who decided he was going to raise a family in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thank you for trusting me and allowing me to lead our family. It's been a great ride and I would have not imagined doing it with anybody else but you. And I don't plan on doing it with anybody else but you. And I want to say to the staff team that I've had the privilege of walking alongside for the last 10 years, thank you. You are the greatest staff in America and it has been a joy to serve in the trenches and to be in the foxhole with you guys for the last 10 years. Church family, I want you to know God's blessed you with an incredible staff. Pray for them, walk alongside them, love them. You are blessed with the staff team that you've been given here. And I want to say finally church family, thank you for the incredible honor. I consider it an honor to have been called one of the pastors at Hope Baptist Church. That's one of the greatest honors God could have ever given me. And you have trusted me with mistakes and highs and lows and ups and downs over the last 10 years but I want to thank you for investing in me and investing in my family. And I'm who I am today because of the Lord Jesus and because of this Church. Thank you very, very much this morning, I love you. [applause] Thank you. I think that means you want me to keep preaching for 30 more minutes. Is that what that means? No, you guys have a seat. Thank you so much. I just want to ask you to allow me to do one more thing in just a moment. I'm just going to ask you to bow your heads in just a moment. I simply want to have the privilege of praying over you as my Church family one last time. But before I do that in just a moment, let me share this last thing. If you are here this morning and maybe this is your first time at Hope or maybe you've been attending for a while, whatever the case may be and you hear all this about relationship and relationship with the Lord Jesus and you realize this morning you don't have that relationship. Maybe you're a good person, maybe you attend church a lot, maybe you're a religious person but you've never been transformed by relationship with Christ this morning. I pray I want you to know Jesus loves you and he offers you a life that you can't imagine. He offers you forgiveness, he offers you an eternal relationship with him. He died in your place and he offers you complete forgiveness of everything in your life and wants to know you and have a relationship with you. And if you want to know more about that, when we dismiss in just a few moments out at our guest center out in the foyer, there will be some people out there that would simply love to talk to you about having a relationship with Christ. I encourage you to go after our service and talk with one of them this morning. And for the rest of his church family, I want to pray for you. In the book of Ephesians, Paul wrote an incredible prayer over that church that he spent three years at and loved so much and I want to ask you just to bow your heads right there where you are and give this pastor one last privilege of praying over my church family this morning. Father in heaven, I thank you for this God moment. And God, I thank you for this group of believers called Hope Baptist Church. And I thank you for this, my church family. And God, I want to pray over them the words of the Apostle Paul from the Word of God in Ephesians 3 when Paul said, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father that he would grant you. I pray that he grants you, Hope Baptist Church, according to the riches of his glory, that you would be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you will be rooted and grounded in love and able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. And now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundant, far beyond all that we can think or ask according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever and ever, Amen, Lord Jesus, I pray this prayer over these people, God I love you and I love this church, glorify your name and make your name known through this body of believers. In the name of Jesus we pray together, Amen, Amen, I love you, the name of church family. I'm going to stay on this side just a little bit more, let's move back here a little bit. I'm going to ask Jennifer and their kids to come and join us here this morning, God bless you guys man, how you doing buddy, smiley, you guys come on with me, I'm going to miss you Jennifer, good to see you guys more. What a special family, Amen. We want to do one more thing this weekend as we have an opportunity to pray over this family and to send them and commission them. But also we want to be a blessing to this family and I want to share again with Mike and Jennifer this morning, you know in the life of a pastor, there are really three things that everything else in your life is built upon. First and foremost, Mike talked about it there at the end, the most important thing in the life of a pastor is his own personal, intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ. The greatest lesson God's ever taught me in ministry is that God's primary call on my life is not ministry, it's intimacy and ministry is what he does out of the overflow of intimacy. So Mike as you take this next step and go to be a lead pastor in a church friend, there is nothing more important in your life than your intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ. Secondly, in the life of a pastor, behind and a real close second behind his intimate love relationship with Jesus Christ is his love relationship with his sweet wife and his kids. You know in ministry God allows your family to be the platform from which he opens doors for you to be involved in ministry, the credibility for who we are as men of God is the way we first are husbands and fathers inside our own households. And what an example this family is to our church, of what it is that Jesus does in the life of a husband and a wife and their kids. What a joy it's been to watch them and to learn from them and to be challenged by them over the last 10 years and Mike as you take this next step and we send your family. I know you won't forget but don't ever forget. The most important thing next to Jesus is this group standing right around you and we love you guys. And then thirdly as a pastor, it's your commitment to study and to teach the word of God to be a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything is built on those. So in each service this weekend so that this isn't repetitive for us, we're giving Mike something a little different. Last night we gave Mike a copy of God's Word. We gave Mike a Bible that we presented to him and it was a symbol of that intimate love relationship with Jesus. As he spends time in God's Word you see the challenge for pastors sometimes you begin to spend time to study the Bible to teach it but not as just an intimate love relationship to know God. We gave Mike a Bible and we also gave Mike I made his boys hold it last night, I won't make you do it this morning. But at the fellowship we had Friday night a lot of people wrote notes on a picture that we presented to Mike and his family last night but then this morning we're giving Mike something different. This is a six volume commentary set written by William Barclay. And Barclay is a great word scholar. He knows the great New Testament and a lot of the word pictures that we give you come through our study of the scriptures and our reading of the writings of William Barclay. And so Mike this morning we want to present you with the complete set of William Barclay's study as a symbol of your commitment to continue to study and expound the truths of God's Word. So I want us to, now I want to ask some of our pastors to come and join me and I want you to just in faith extend your hand as if we are laying hands on this family. This morning to pray for them and to send them out from our church so let's pray together. Lord Jesus we come before you today and God we thank you for this family. Lord what a joy to walk these last ten years together and God changes always difficult. But Lord the great commission demands that we be ascending people and God we thank you today for the privilege of being able to have loved this family and journeyed with this family and poured into this family and been poured into by this family. And now Lord we thank you for the privilege of being able to send this family. To commission them afresh in anew and to send them out or not leaving but being sent as missionaries, as a pastor and his family to go and plant their lives and invest in a church that will touch its city and the world for the glory of Jesus Christ. God I pray you put a hedge of protection around this family. Guard this marriage or the enemy would love to destroy but God this morning thank you that greater is He that is in us than He that is in the world and we pray a hedge of protection around this family. We love them. I pray for these children. God that as you raise them up they become mighty men and women of God for your glory. Lord we love you and we bless you. It's in the name of Jesus Christ we pray and all of us say together amen let this family know again how much you love and appreciate that. [MUSIC PLAYING]