Viola Solid Rock Assembly
Guest Speaker
- Good morning. It's so good to be here. Aren't you just happy that we have Jesus with us all the time? Doesn't have to be here in church. We can serve Jesus and he can feel us more and more no matter where we're at. And I'm just thankful for that this morning. Thank you so much to Pastor Joe and Chelsea for letting us come. This is our first official day of raising our funds and going around to churches and getting ready to go to Africa. Steve will explain to you a little bit what we've been doing in the last few years. But we're so thankful that God has called us back to Africa. I don't know if you saw out in the vestibule that we have a banner thing. Something up there, so our name on it. But anyway, there's some prayer cards there. We'd like for y'all to pick one up and we'd like for you just to remember us in prayer. Put it on your fridge, put it in your car, put it on your mirror, whatever. But anyway, just pray for us because we're old people and we need lots of prayer. We're telling everybody that we're going to spend our golden years back in Africa. So we're excited though. We're really excited. And on this, if you choose to support us in any way, there's one of these things, QR code. If you'd like to do that, it takes us right to our account. It's real, real easy. Also, if you're on Facebook, you can join our group, Journey with the Gestures, and you'll see updates about what we're doing. It will just keep you updated on our journey, getting back to Africa. So thanks again to all of you. It's a pleasure to be here. You got a good crowd for the 4th of July weekend, and we appreciate all of you coming out. Also, I just want to say one more thing, and that is your complex and all the stuff that you guys do for the community and giving out. It's awesome. I'm just so proud of your food and everything you do. I mean, a little bit of town could be a little community that doesn't do anything for your neighbors, but you guys are involved, and that's wonderful and so proud that you're taking care of the people around you. Amen. Thank you, Derek. It feels really good to be in the pulpit this morning and to be sharing with you. Karen just mentioned that this is our first official Sunday starting itineration to raise the budget we're going to have to have in order to get back to Africa. We're excited about it. I'll give you just a little bit of history about us. So when we first went out, we went to the country of Sierra Leone in 1991 as Arkansas missionaries from the town of Hatfield, Arkansas. Anybody ever heard of a place called Hatfield? Yeah. I don't know if you can get there from here, but you can at some point. It's just south of Meena. That's where my wife and I both grew up, wasn't far from the Oklahoma line, but went to Sierra Leone, and then we spent some time in Senegal and elsewhere. We worked for life publishers for a brief period of time, and I did some work in Myanmar, which you may know as Burma, and then did some work in Mozambique as well, trying to get some language projects going. But we got out of missions in 2016 and got to the point, you know, we're looking at retirement here. And my granddaughter said one day, I was talking to her. I said, you know, the older I get, the fewer grandchildren come to see me. As they get older, they don't come to see me as often. But I've got my eight-year-old, she's my youngest granddaughter, and I said, well, India, are you going to keep coming to see Pappar as much as possible? When I get so old that I can't hardly get around, she said, yeah, I'll come to see you. She said, but Pappar, you're not really old. You just look at it. I appreciated that so very much. But how many of you over 50 here today? Man, old people rule. Yes. We can still do it. You know, I could make the decision to buy myself a little bass boat, a little John boat or something, and go to the lake every day, catch some fish, post some pictures, collect some rocks, you know, arrowheads, or seashells if I go to the beach, and when I get to heaven, show those to God and say, this is what I did in my last year. Do you see my rock collection? I don't want to do that. I want to spend what time I have doing something for the Lord, and God has given us an opportunity to do that, to go back to Africa, and we're just excited to get to share that with you and let you know what we're going to be doing. Thank you, Pastor Joe, for letting us come today, our first service. I've known this guy for a long time, and he -- [ Laughter ] Great guy, great family, great pastor. And I know you love him and appreciate him and doing a phenomenal job here. Last time I was at this church, Pastor Alan Cartwright was here. Do any of you remember me? No, I'm so hurt right now. I had a little bit more hair than what I do right now, but anyway, that's beside the point. So when we go back, our focus is going to be to base out of the country of Togo. We have a couple of schools there that I'm going to be assisting with training leaders, but my goal is to train church planners to go and reach unreached people groups. Now, I want to explain to you, if you don't know -- I want to tell you what an unreached people group is. Imagine that the nearest church to you was as far away as, let's call it St. Louis. That's the closest church to you. You have never met a Christian in your life. You don't know what one looks like, and if you talk to one, you wouldn't understand what they said. You don't know any Christians. There's no church for you to get to. You might have to travel for weeks to find one, if you could find one at all. And among your people group, you speak all the same language with a few very dialects. There may be a hundred of you in this people group, or there may be 50 million people in this people group. But you have never heard anyone tell you about the name of Jesus Christ. You don't know any Christians and couldn't find a church if you set out across the desert to look for one. You don't know where any are. That's an unreached people group who's never heard the gospel. You know how many of those there are today? In the world, there are 17,360 some odd people groups. Of those, 42% are considered unreached. There's no Christian presence among them. In Africa alone, unreached people groups account for 425 million people who've never one time heard about Jesus or ever met a Christian. I want to see that changed. I want to train church planners and I want to partner with them to go and minister to unreached people groups so that we can get the gospel among them and get it started so that we can say there's been a church planted and there's a movement of God among this people group. And I've got to tell you folks today that we've never lived in a more exciting yet more dangerous time than what we're living in right now. While Christian apathy is on the rise and while hatred towards Christians is on the rise, God is still doing some incredible things behind the scenes that most of us never hear about. For example, one of our country's arch enemies is Iran, correct? We have no idea how many people are coming to Christ in Iran, but it's literally by the tens of thousands of people who are coming to Christ in Iran. And a lot of this is just happening under the scene where people are having visions and revelations about Jesus, they're having dreams and they're searching trying to find who Jesus is and they're being told in secret ways, they're in underground house churches and God is moving in incredible ways. Another one of our enemies is China, but there are literally 100 to 200 million believers in China alone and they're having to serve God in underground churches. God is doing things in those places, but yet there are so many who never yet heard the message of Jesus and we want to change that. We want to get involved in raising up church planners who are going to be part of that ministry. We have also been asked since we're older people, we've got a lot of young missionaries working in Africa, so we're going to step alongside some of those and try to help them see a little bit more about what culture is going to involve and how best to engage, so we'll be mentoring some younger people. There may be times that we have to go, somebody gets sick and we may have to step in and fill their shoes. Scott Ennis, you know Scott and some of you may know Scott. He just had to have heart surgery, he's not in good shape, but praise God that the heart surgery was really good. He's serving in the Gambia. We were asked if we had our budget raised to go and help him out while he's sick. We can't do it, we don't have our budget raised, but those are the kinds of things that we're going to be involved in. We do need your prayers and I would encourage you to pick up a prayer card, use it as a book marker, put it in your Bible when you see that. Just wish for a little prayer for us and we were certainly appreciated. Amen. All you older people turn around and give an older person a high five real quick. All right, good job. That made you feel a little bit better anyway, didn't it? Amen. Well, it's good to see you here today. Turn your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 16, if you would. Oh, sorry. Yeah, 16. Genesis chapter 16. I want to read to you one of those side stories that oftentimes we kind of bypass in a hurry and go to something else. Genesis 16 says, "Now Sarah, Abraham's wife had born him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. So she said to Abram, "The Lord God has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my maidservant. Perhaps I can build a family through her." The hero of the story that we read beginning in chapter 12 is Abraham. He's the main hero of the story for the next little while in the chapters of Genesis. We often overlook some of these side things because he's the most important person. On Abraham, the faith is established and the New Testament talks about him extensively, the father of the faith. But there's a little episode here where an unknown slave girl working for Sarah is given to Abraham to have a child with. Because God had promised Abraham he was going to have descendants, innumerable descendants like the sands of the seashore, the stars in the sky. Too many descendants to count. God's going to bless him and not only that, God's going to make of him a mighty nation and God is going to bless all nations through him. Genesis 12, 1 through 3 is the thesis statement of the Bible because from that point on all nations is the focus. God wants all people groups to come to know him. And from that point on, it's a universal message that God is trying to portray. If you read in Galatians chapter 2 and chapter 3, you'll find there that Paul says the gospel was given to Abraham before time when it said all nations will be blessed through you. That was the gospel Paul said. Jesus came to do that. Revelation chapter 7 verses 9 through 10 says that there is going to be a time when all language groups, all people groups, all nations are going to walk before the throne of God. And they're going to praise the Lamb who was slain. That's when it all gets started back here in Genesis 12. But a little side note here, so Sarah gives her handmaiden to Abraham and she becomes pregnant. When she becomes pregnant, things go south. Sarah mistreats her. And then look at this. Hagar flees. Verse 6. Angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to shore. The road to shore was the very first place that the Israelites after they crossed the Red Sea, escaping Egypt. The very first place they came to was the wilderness of shore. He found her there and he said to her, "Hagar, servant of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going?" She says, "I'm running away from my mistress, Sarah." Then Angel of the Lord told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." Only other person to receive that promise was Abraham, correct? Okay. Angel of the Lord also said to her, "You are now with child and you shall have a son and you shall name him Ishmael." For the Lord has heard your misery. Ishmael means God hears. Ishmael is where the hundreds of millions of Muslims trace their descendants to. Is Ishmael in Abraham? God has heard, so God hears. He will be a wild donkey of a man and his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. Verse 13, "She gave this name to the Lord." Now nobody ever gave God a name. Nobody ever said, "God, this is who you are. God was always saying, this is who I am. I'm El Shaddai. I'm Elohim. I am Yahweh, the Almighty. She gave this name to God. You are the God who sees me." For she said, "I have now seen the one who sees me. God sees." I want you to just let me paint a picture of Hagar for you for just a moment. Number one, she's an Egyptian. She's an Egyptian. She doesn't belong to the house of Abraham other than as a slave. Slaves are anonymous. Slaves have no future. The slaves are vulnerable to whatever anybody wants to do to them. Slaves are those people who feel like they have no voice. They're simply property. That's what she was. She was a person that was mistreated. She was powerless. She didn't belong to anything. She was trapped in a system that she, I am sure, would love to have gotten out of. And probably when she got pregnant with Ishmael, she was thinking, this is my way out. Ishmael is going to be the firstborn son, and this is going to happen. Good things are going to happen for me, but it didn't do that. She's a non-person. She gets mistreated by Sarah and she runs away. In the process of running away, she goes down into the desert on the road to shore. There's no water there. There's no food there. There's nothing there. It's desert landscape. And in the middle of that desert, God visits her and says to her, "Where are you going and what are you doing?" "I see you. I see you in your desert," he says. "I see you where you're at. I see what you're going through. I see your struggles. I see your mistreatment. I see everything that you've experienced that's negative in your life. I see you." That's what God says to her. We read over in chapter 21 where it happens again that Ishmael's been born. Things don't go good. Isaac's been born. There's jealousy going on there, and Sarah says, "This child has no inheritance with my child, so send her away." Abraham does. He packs her a day's worth of food and sends her off in the desert again. This time she's ready to give up. She's ready to quit. Look what it says here. "God heard the boy crying," verse 17 of chapter 21, "and the angel of the Lord called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, 'What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.'" The only other promise about that was to Abraham, correct? Then the Lord opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy as he grew up, and he lived in the desert and became an archer. Here's some things I just want to share with you from this passage of Scripture. There's something I find really profound that God takes this slave woman and makes some promises to her that are almost like the promises to Abraham. I found that really intriguing. I don't have all this worked out yet. I'm still working on what some of this implies, but there's three things I want you to hear from this. Number one, God sees. God sees. God has seen everything that you've gone through in your life, and he knows your triumphs, he knows your struggles, he knows your challenges, he knows your weaknesses, there's nobody knows you better than what God knows you. That not only includes great people of faith, it also includes the outcasts of life, it includes the marginalized, the people who have no hope. There may be some of you in here that you're going through some things right now that nobody knows about, some challenges that you wouldn't want anybody else to experience, but God wants you to know that he sees you right where you are. He sees you in that place of desolation, he sees you in that place where you don't feel like you've got much hope, or you don't feel like you've got much of a future, God knows and he sees you. Number two, God hears you when you cry out, when you call out to him, God is instantaneously going to be there by your side, whether you see him or not. Did you hear me? God's there with you. He's walking with you through those times. I cannot tell you how many times that I've been walking with God and never even knew it, and he was taken care of it the whole time. Sarah was mean to her, so she leaves. And she gets out here and I've got to tell you, there's nothing worse than being kicked out and feeling like you've got nowhere else to go, nothing worse than that. Feeling like you've got no future, no hope. And sometimes life deals with some hard blows. In the middle of one of her most trying points in life, she says, you are the God who sees me. In 2014, I went through my wife and I, I said I, but it's we, it's always been we. We went through one of the worst things that could possibly happen. We got a knock on the door at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning. It was December the 7th. And it was a couple of plain, closed detectives and asked, they come in and talk to us. This was in Springfield, Missouri. I was working with live publishers. I had a trip scheduled to go to the country of Turkey. We're going to try to start a project there to get the Bible and the local language and do some training materials and Turkish so that we could have an outreach to the Turkish. By the way, they're unreached. We've got missionaries there, but they're unreached. So this knock was on the door and my first thought went to my youngest son. I've got three children, my oldest Jacob, my daughter, Jill, and our youngest son, Benjamin. And my first thought was, what's Benjamin gotten himself into now? Because he had some issues in life. A lot of good things Ben was doing, but a lot of stupid dumb mistakes. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? So these guys asked if they could come in and talk to us. And I went and told my wife, come in the living room, these guys wanted to talk to us. So they told us, said, your son, Ben Jester, that's your son. I said, yes, sir, and they said, well, we hate to tell you this, but he was shot this morning and he did not make it to the hospital. He's dead. Now, the first thing that goes over you is shock. You know, that's just more than you can believe. It's more than you can take in. So they explained a little bit about what they knew, which wasn't much. They asked us if we knew of any enemies he had, had we heard of this particular person. Did we know that person? No, we did not. So instantly we called my wife's oldest brother who was a U.S. marshal and he made it from, he made it from Fort Smith to Springfield in under three hours. Yeah, that's how quickly he got there. That morning I had to go to the crime scene and collect Ben's car. And I don't know if I could have done that if my brother-in-law hadn't been with me because he kind of talked to the guys there and straightened some things out. We got the car and brought it back home. But it didn't really hit till about four days later that this is real. Ben's not coming home. I won't go into all the details, but I'm going to tell you for two, mostly three years. We were depressed, angry, not just angry at the circumstances. I was angry with God. I was upset with God. I was so upset that I would probably have shot the guy if I could have found him. That's how in bad shape I was. I was not good. We resigned our missions appointment in 2016 and moved to Phoenix. We had to get out of that town, get away from the location. I had to drive by too many times. I just couldn't do that anymore. Our oldest son was planning a church in Phoenix, so we went out there and helped him. When I say helped, I just mean mainly we occupied a pew and let our grandkids love on us and love on our grandkids. And it was a time of healing for us. But I've got to tell you in the midst of all that, God the whole time was seeing. The whole time God was hearing. The whole time God knew what we were going through because God understands. There's nobody can understand like God understands. There's nobody can understand your wilderness experience, your depression, your anger, your loss. There's nobody understands that like God does. Because I want to tell you what, very few religions will talk to you about God being weak, God being vulnerable, God being willing to place himself on a cross. Christianity is the only religion that says God was willing to come down and get in your mess. God was willing to come down and get in the mud with you. God was willing to come down and get hurt with you and die on a cross for you. That's what God was willing to do. But the religion like that folks, there's no other message like that. Only Jesus was able to incarnate himself and put upon himself what? Human flesh. He didn't come down as a king with a crown. He didn't come down living in a penthouse. He came down born in a manger and willing to die for us in our place, willing to become vulnerable. He's Elroy. I'm not talking about the English, Elroy. That's what she named him, Elroy, the God who sees and the God who hears. I like what Scripture says. Psalms 139, 16 says, "Your eyes saw my unformed body and all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. God knows your journey. He knows where you've been and knows where you're going. And there's nothing greater than to be seen by God is there." I was watching a little video online here while back about a little recital. A little girl, about five years old, just as cute as she could possibly be. And she was standing on stage with all these other kids. But you could tell she was nervous because she's just looking out and scanning the crowd. Not a smile on her face, just looking out over the crowd. And then all of a sudden she gets this huge smile on her face. And she starts doing this because she saw who she was looking for. Mom and Dad, videotaping her. And you could just see the excitement all over her. They're here. Mom and Dad are here and they see me. That's the same feeling I get when I'm in the middle of some mess. And I realize God's watching me. That gets me through the mess. God sees us. Zephaniah 3.17, the Lord your God is with you. He's mighty to save. He will take great delight in you and He will quiet you with His love. And He will joys over you with singing. The whole time I was going through all that depression. I pray God help me, give me an answer, help me to know. And it seemed like the heavens were closed but they weren't. God was right there all the time. God was right there beside me. Psalms 33, 13 through 15. From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. From His dwelling place He watches all who live on the earth. He who forms the hearts of all who considers everything they do. He sees and understands. What difference does all that make? Hagar was an Egyptian. There's a lot of parallels between that and the whole story of Israel. Egypt is a slave to Abraham in this particular episode but later Israel will become a slave to Egypt. And there's some other things there but I just want you to listen to what Psalm 32 and 8 says in the King James version. It says, "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eyes." In other words, looking where God is looking, going the direction God is going, seeing what God sees. The world is a broken place, folks. It is broken. People's lives are broken. People's lives are torn asunder. Jesus looked out at the city of Jerusalem and he wept over the city. The disciples didn't see it but Jesus saw the Samaritan woman. He knew exactly where she had been and what she had done. That didn't stop him from talking to her and giving her words of life. That's what we need to be doing today is giving people words of life. Yes, they're sinful. Yes, they're broken. Yes, they're hurting. They need God's grace in their lives. And the only place sometimes they're going to hear that is from us. That's what the message is all about. I don't know where you have been, what you've gone through, what you've experienced. I hope to goodness you've not experienced anything like what we experienced with our youngest son. But if you're here today and you feel like God hasn't been seeing, God hasn't been hearing, there's something good coming your way because God heals. As the Israelites came out of slavery and crossed the Red Sea, what a triumphant moment that was. The first place they come to is the wilderness of sure, right where Hagar had been so many years before. And in the wilderness of sure, they came to a place called Maribah. And they found the stream of water there in the desert. But when they tried to drink of it, they could not because the water was bitter. And for whatever strange reason, God told Moses to throw this piece of wood in the water. And when they did that, the water became sweet and was drinkable. That bitter water was made pure by chunk of wood. Go figure. I don't know God's ways beyond me. But God took that chunk of wood and made something sweet with it. That's what God is going to do for you. He has heard, he has seen, and he's going to heal. He's going to take that bitterness in your life, that bitter experience, that horrible experience, and he's going to make it sweet. He's going to help you to see some things you couldn't see before. He's going to help you to experience wholeness like you've not had before. I believe that God's going to help us to do that in Africa. I believe God's going to help us to plant some churches. I believe God's going to help us to bring people out of darkness into his marvelous light. Right here in this moment, I believe God has something for somebody. I want you to stand with me if you would, please. Let's bow our heads. Father, I'm so thankful for this opportunity to be in your house. I'm thankful, Lord, that there are people here that need you. We all need you this morning. We all need your presence. We all need your love and your mercy. We need your forgiveness. And God, we need to know that you see us. We need to know that you're the God who sees us. Lord, not only do you see us, but you've heard our cry. You've heard our cry of desperation. You've heard us, Lord, in our crying at night. The pain that we've experienced, Lord, the disappointment. You've heard all that. But God, now I believe, Lord, you want to bring healing into that. You want to take that bitterness, Lord, that maybe we've experienced in a life situation. And Lord, you want to make something sweet and beautiful out of it. Lord, as Samson killed the lion and later went back and found a honeycomb in the carcass, took something horrible and made something sweet out of it. Lord, you're going to do that here today. I believe that, Lord, for someone. And I pray right now, Lord, that Spirit of God move in someone's heart in a very special way. Now, while our heads are still bad, I want you to search your heart right now. And if you're one of those people that you have felt like you were going through a situation where you were totally anonymous, God doesn't see, God doesn't know. God doesn't know what's going on with you, and you felt so alone in your struggle. If that's you, I just want you to raise your hand real quick and say, "I'm going through some things." Yes. Anyone else? Yes. Thank you. Anyone else? Anybody else going through some really difficult times? You feel alone. Thank you. I appreciate you raising your hands. I want to ask you to do this. Anyone who wants prayer for healing or anything else, I want you to come up. And I want all those who raise their hands to come up. We're going to pray for you this morning because God sees you exactly where you are. God knows exactly what you're going through. I can't handle what you're going through. I can't do that. I can't change your circumstance either. Only God can do that. But God can help you in the middle of it, to find that God has seen and God's going to bring healing into that. I need some people who will help us to pray to come up with us right now. We're going to pray for each one. I believe that we can speak Jesus over these circumstances and find God doing some incredible things. Anybody who wants to come help us pray, would you do that? [BLANK_AUDIO]