Bill Kauble 0:09
Our joy is to be in this environment, and to allow the Holy Spirit to come in and help themselves to our lives. We believe that we are faith based, Christ centered and grace driven. We have five pillars that we believe in. One is Jesus is not only our Savior, but he’s Lord of our lives. The Bible is a final authority. We’re men of prayer, we link with like minded men. And we give it away give the gospel away. The thing that embodies that we want everybody within influencers to be part of the forum group. Ron towbars here Ron’s gonna come here, stand up and give us a word. It is so important we believe that every man in influencers be involved in a forum. So Ron, share,
Ron Tovar 1:02
thank you.
It’s, um,
you don’t have to be all that smart to realize that.
suicide rates are up and, and people are drinking more and, and drugs are really prevalent. And I’m seeing it amongst people that I have contact with and discipled for many years and worked with men worked with men for many years, over 30 years. And have and right now
you really can’t see a vehicle that’s more effective or more powerful than for him.
we’ve all been through it. We’ve all been banged around and knocked around. And, you know, God has sustained us and kept us. We God has placed us in a position where we’re the ones who make the difference. Someone has to oppose and push back what the devil is doing. Here in our county, in our cities. And in our country. One of the most patriotic things we can do is serve the Lord Jesus Christ with all our hearts, you know, one of the anti political things that you’re feeling and unrest, and all of that is serve the Lord and be Christ centered, and walk with Jesus. And, and and spread that and the vehicle to do it today. And forsaking the assembling when everything else is coming against us to assemble is go find three guys. And pour, pour that tenacity that God put in your heart. That’s how God has strengthened you. And, and one of the most beautiful things about for him is, you know, for years, I’ve seen people sit in the back rows of churches, I’ve seen men go in and out of church, where you know, feeling the same way they came in, and not connected with other men. And and for em is doing the opposite of that. We are having victory. We are Touching Lives. We’re gonna pray for the forum groups right now. Lord, I thank you for the annoying thing that’s on this program. I thank you for the annoying thing that’s on. Ron Father, we just we just cry out, Lord, that You would encourage men’s hearts to be involved in the forum where this is not about any process, any program. This is simply about for men coming together, to worship you and to share Christ with each other. Lord, thank you for this man. And God, thank you for the men that are in the groups and the groups that are going to be formed in Jesus. Amen. We want to be known as a ministry of prayer. And next Tuesday, we will be returning to Woodbridge Community Church at seven o’clock for prayer. We’ll also be involved on the phones that that time to the same time. So I would like right now to to close in a prayer and then Peter has a special guest. He wants to talk to the Lord that just lift up influencers and you’ve been such a faithful God, such a faithful God, Lord you have provided from us so many years. Lord, we just asked you that if anybody has been involved with this ministry has been blessed if they would contribute generously and father just
Bill Kauble 5:00
Thank you for this time that we’re together this morning, I should have blessed our time together and bless the offering for the purposes that you choose In Jesus name, amen.
Pete McKenzie 5:11
You know, we’re committed to ministering to men and women’s marriages and to missions and we want to we have a number of missionaries in our group and we love them we try to support encourage, pray for them, and their flame, or Londo, make your way up here, buddy. One of them that’s been in our group, as long as I can remember, he hadn’t grown any taller since then. But
but this is this is one of our All Star heroes. Orlando Sanchez, in Orlando, is on the frontlines out there feeding people right now they just don’t have another meal coming in. And he is, it’s such a
time that
in such great need, that he’s getting a lot of food donated to his ministry. And and getting a lot of food donated. That’s a wonderful thing, except when you get that much food donated, you need somewhere to put it
as you’re preparing it to be able to meet the needs of the hungry. So Orlando came to me this last week, and we were talking about what can we do to help Orlando tell us what we can do to help? Well, first of all, thank you so much for your love, because that’s something that you was proving to us, by your teachings by your life. And I remember one day, Bill Campbell was asking us how this ministry was really influencing us how it really affecting us. And I can testify number one, I learned something that had been on all men. Praise God, at this age. I believe I’m learning. I need to love God with all my heart. But besides that, my wife is no question and now i i cannot be more than thankful to be with Lupita because I remember when he was praying with me, for me, and I can tell you today’s like a honeymoon with Lupita. In does one of the miracles because I remember the word from Pastor Pete. He told me so clear in you know, Pastor Pete, you told me this needs to be a miracle because you gave me the percentage of divorcing CCI. But no, God was having compassion on us. And today we are celebrating 33 years in I can tell people is hoping Jesus, amen. Way to go.
Orlando Sanchez 7:37
Yeah, thank you so much in just, it’s amazing. It’s not wait how can I explain is too much before pandemia. We will show you from 40 to 60,000 pounds of food monthly basis. In during all the 2020 gear unit. Lamia was giving away over 200,000 pounds of food monthly basis. And for sure when pastor Pete says about food with these scams. Now, there are donating us closing cars and we can bless many people. But the good thing on this one is like I’m so excited because I’ve been now going back to Mexico. That is another thing that I can testify. I never imagined that one day I will be returning to my own country. But now as ambassador of Christ, not just because God conquered my heart. But now I can share the gospel and let them know who really crisis. And with that in mind, I can tell you and share with you. I’m working with our own foundation down there. As a Mexican by bird. It’s a great honor. But you know what, as Christ representative, I can tell you he never imagined because today we are having an encounter with TV and personalities that he never imagined. And now the Lord allows me to pray with secretaries of the state and can be decreased really me? Well, that’s what God was choosing someone like me and I’m saying, Lord, thank you, here I am. But I can tell you we already started crossing the border with non legal money free, because we’re going by the legalities. But I’m still working with all the foundation, for sure many things that are needed, but God knows. And he’s in control. As long as he will be taking the steering Well, we’re heading in the right direction. Just the very last thing last week when I call pastor Pete because this need of warehouse. I went in the day before yesterday, I signed a contract for this warehouse in the city of Stanton in and I’m waiting now for the decision from the owner. But we feel that about the requirements and here we are celebrating today. prayer was answered and you got to warehouse. All right. Hallelujah. I didn’t know that.
Pete McKenzie 9:45
We’re proud of you or Orlando, and we’re proud to be a part of your ministry. We want to encourage you every way we can and y’all join me in prayer. And as we pray for Orlando Father, we just thank you for providing the need that Orlando had for warehouse space. Thank you that you’ve made it possible
For him to cross the border legally and go into minister in Mexico, thank you for the in Santa Ana and all around Orange County where he’s feeding the hungry and taking care of the poor and the sick, sharing the gospel and seeing people come to know Jesus Christ. So we ask your continued blessing and anointing on him in his ministry in Jesus name, and all God’s men said, Amen. God bless you, buddy.
Well, it’s been a great morning already. And I have a few thoughts I want to share with you this morning that are kind of gonna be, you know, as I was thinking about it, I said, this might be a little remedial. And I thought, well, I want to make sure I know what remedial means.
So I looked it up.
And here’s what remedial means. It’s intended as a remedy. It’s concerned with the correction of faulty living habits, and the raising of a man of God’s general competence. A reminder that, that which you may know, but have forgotten, and an encouragement for us to live what we have received in our salvation. I never liked it. When they said Pete, you need remedial training. That means initial training one that red hot, and I didn’t do that well with it. So they got me to go be retrained. Sometimes in the Christian life, we need to be continually reminded not sometimes, but all the times of who we are. And while we’re here, and where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there. So as we come to this message today, I want to share some thoughts with you that I’ve shared over the years, but I need to be reminded of it on a regular basis, especially in the days we’re living in in the days have always been troublesome. Jesus in this world, you’re going to have tribulation, it’s going to be tough. I started out and you know, my testimony, but I’m going to immediately share it with you again, just briefly, I was raised in a Christian home, I was raised in solid church, sang hymns went to Sunday school, walk the owl, which was kind of common with kids in our church in those days, when I was eight years old. Join the church. As far as I knew that I was a Christian, I believed all this stuff. Christians are supposed to believe I believe Jesus was God’s Son, and that God loved me. And I’d been baptized. And so as far as I knew I was a Christian. But as I grew up, sports was my God. And that’s all I live for the next ball game played basketball and baseball in high school, and, but the older I got, the more I started having problems with more and more different kinds of sin. And you know, what I didn’t know. And what I was so frustrated with, is I didn’t know what to do with it, or where to go with it. How do you conquer sin? When you got a problem and you got a sin problem? What do you do with that? How do you stop doing? How do you start doing right things and stop doing wrong things. I found myself in Romans seven. And I’ve never really heard of Romans seven. But when I did hear about us that that was me, things I knew I should do, I didn’t do and things I knew I shouldn’t do. I was doing all the time, and kind of enjoyed it. But what I didn’t enjoy was the guilt and shame that came along with it. And I had guilt and shame because I was raised in a church and I knew what the gospel was. And I knew that I knew right from wrong, I know knew good and evil. And I understood that I had a conscience. And I thank God for my conscience. But I didn’t like a guilty conscience and ashamed conscience. And that’s what I was dealing with all the time. So the only thing I knew to do to deal with sin was at the end of our services in the church, they would have an invitation at the end in the there were three things you could do. You could come in what they call, move your letter from one church you were attending, and now you’re coming to become a member of this church, you can come down the aisle and join the church are you could come down and receive Jesus Christ and is your personal Savior. Or the third thing is you could come down and you’ve been a backslider you haven’t been living it you haven’t been talking it yet, and you need to change your way. So you come down and rededicate your life. Well, if you go to that church today, you’ll see a little plaque at the beginning as you go through the door and there’s a carpet that goes all the way down to the front big church. It says a Pete Mackenzie Memorial carpet.
And the reason it was is because I read dedicated about every other month or so and I felt like read it. Kayden every week but who got to be embarrassing? password literally roll his eyes when he’d see me coming down the middle aisle. And my brother would get up and walk out, because he was ashamed of his little brother. But I didn’t know what else to do. What do you do and you know, it really helped for about 24, sometimes 48 hours, and I was really dedicated. And then I’d be right back in the owns stuff. So I went through that and I went to Auburn played ball at Auburn got out of Auburn, and we had some pretty good teams there. And I got drafted by the Detroit Tigers, and they sent me up to North Carolina to play in their a league and in several years before that, I remember Billy Graham was on TV and he was preaching a revival at Yankee Stadium. He had Bobby Richardson who played second bases acquired an all star second baseman for the Yankees in those days in the late 50s, early 60s. And he was a Christian and Billy had had him give his testimony during the crusade. And mom had called me in from whatever I was at Duke said, I think you’re gonna want to watch this. And so I watched Bobby shears testimony, we all get up to Rocky Mount and bond. I’m sitting on the bench for the first time in my life. And the team had been going since April, and we had played in the College World Series. And we didn’t get through with all that till join the team. The first of July, we had two months left in the season, we were at a pretty good little team, and we’re in the pennant race. So I wasn’t getting to play much. But at the same time, we got rained out one night, some of that three or four of us on the team went over to a local mall, and we were wandering around the mall and I went into a bookstore with the guys. And as we were browsing through the racks, one of the guys picked up a book and I looked over to see what it was. And it was a Bobby Richardson story. And I thought Good grief, he’s written a book. I think I’ll buy it and read it. So I bought the book. I was reading it in the evenings in this little bedroom and the two of us that had bedrooms in a widows house and close to the ballpark. And I was reading and I was really identifying with Bobby who was born in a small town in in South Carolina and went to similar church to me San with the Yankees out of high school. In his second or third year in the minor leagues, Bobby met a guy that was a real unashamed Christian as he described him with the Yankees, and he was playing on the same team with him. He became good friends and started hanging out with this guy. And he made this comment it was changed my life. He said, for the first time in my life, I began to realize that I could be a professional baseball player and an uncompromising Christian at the same time. And boy, the word that jumped off the page there was uncompromising. I said, Boy, that’s all I do is compromise back to Romans seven things I know I shouldn’t do i do things that no I should do. I don’t do wretched man that I am. What who saved me from the body of this death. And so that night, I prayed. What I found later was the center’s prayer, this sinners prayer. And I was frustrated. And I just said, God, I’m a total failure, trying to be a Christian, I can’t keep the roof. I can’t do what’s right, I can’t do what I know I ought to be doing. And I don’t know how to change that. I know, I’m not the man You created me to be. But here’s a mystery to me. But I want to be Why did I want to be I never thought about that at the time. But I thought back on that a lot. Over the years, and I just saw God put it in my heart to want to be a man of God. I think he does that with guys. I’m not the only guy he deals with like that, and he puts in your heart don’t want to be a man of God. But how do you get from here to there? So I said, Would you this was my request, would you make me that man, and God’s been doing that for the last 50 plus years, making me a man of God helping me understand how to overcome sin in my life. And you know, I’ve had the great privilege of ministering to men for the last 30 years. And you know, I want to do this also, I want to share with you that I was talking about my being remedial his thoughts on grace, because I was saved by grace through faith. That’s the phases 289. And so, if you look up grace, here’s the definition, you’ll find its unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification, acts of kindness, courtesy or leniency toward the guilty, undeserved approval or favor.
the favor of God bestowed on the undeserving without expectation that the recipient can make any kind of payment in return. Now like that definition, let me read it again.
the favor of God, this, this stowed on the undeserving without the expectation that the recipient can make any kind of payment in return. In other words, I’m going to do something good for you and there’s no way you can pay it back. And that’s grace. And then unmerited favor given toward one who does not deserve it by one who did not have to give it. That’s grace. Now, there’s some things about grace, I want to share some insights about grace with you. Why we struggle with grace, I was sharing with a guy one time who was talking about his wife and his marriage, who having lunch. And he was talking in the course of our conversation, I was just sharing with him, you got to give your wife grace. And I explained what that meant, and how he needed to respond to his wife. And he looked at me and said, I hate grace. In other words, he didn’t want to give her she didn’t deserve grace. He had his resentment bank full of things toward his wife, and I’m sure she had a bigger one toward him. But, and I said, Well, you better not hate grace. Because if you hate grace, you go, you’re gonna love hell have to love hell. Because that’s the only way you can stay out of hell and go to heaven is by grace through faith. So we’re saved by grace through faith. Now, Grace is a unique character trait of the Judeo Judeo Christian God, Jehovah Jesus Christ. And what that means is, there’s no other God, that call themselves god, there’s no other God that’s worshipped, that has this whole understanding, or character of grace. Everything else is works. And you say, by grace through faith, it’s not of yourselves. It’s a gift of God, not as a result of works, but every other God has works. And the way that you control people is by works and merit, you earn it, you, you don’t get it, unless you deserve it, you’ve earned it, you’ve worked for it. You if you’re gonna find approval and acceptance, then you got to be good, you got to be obedient, you got to do what you’re told to do. And it’s easy to control people when you’re on a workspace system, and a workspace religion, or business or marriage, for that matter. But, but God, Jehovah God, and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit dispense grace, that unmerited favor toward people who don’t deserve it. And who can’t pay back to get it. No other religion has the concept of grace. Grace is foreign to the unregenerate mind. In other words, we have a fallen mind. And we’ve been raised with things like if you ever heard there’s no free lunch. In other words, yeah, they say it’s a free line to it, there’s a, there’s a hook in there somewhere, they’re gonna get you one way or the other, they’re not going to give it to you for free. And that’s really true. In most cases, you get what you deserve. You won’t love earn it. You want me to love you then earn my love. And that’s what we find out about love. There are four kinds of love. Let’s say there’s arrows, which is romance, there’s phileo, which is a love of friendship, and a best friend. There’s store gay, which is family love. And then there’s a God Bay, which is God’s love. Now those other three loves other than a copy, love are all based on merit, they have to be reciprocal, if I’m going to be your friend, you have to be my friend back. If I’m going to love you, you have to love me back. I’m gonna get along in this family, then we have to all pull together. If not, if you’re not going to earn my love, then you’re not going to get my love. And that’s what we grew up with. That’s that’s what makes sense to the regenerate. That’s just and that’s fair. You want mercy, show that you deserve it, the other Do unto others before they do it unto you. And so those are the kind of things we grew up with, by all means, give others what they deserve, and not one penny more. So those are the values that we grew up with. So someone comes along and says we’ll give them grace. And what does that mean? That means you need to forgive them. Well, they have an ask, will it be in your best interest to forgive them anyway? And so you don’t have to carry it around? Well, they don’t deserve it. Well, that’s why it’s called grace. Because they don’t deserve it if it wouldn’t be grace, if they deserved it if they earned it. So it changed my life in my marriage when my wife got a handle on this and start giving me grace.
I’ll never forget, I was going to play golf one day and she said this early in our marriage. She says you’re going to play golf with those guys spend four hours with him, When am I going to get four hours of your time. So I couldn’t get down to the car and put my gloves in the car quick enough to get out of there. Then she had a Bible study on Tuesdays. And Tuesday was the best day to come home. It was a bunch of godly women, and they’d come to our apartment and there was about seven or eight of them, and they would study a Christian book, all the book was called the Christian family. And Tuesday was a good day to come home because she was kind of into it. She was had a blessing and being around all these godly women. And so and then the next time I went to play golf, I was heading out the door, and she says, I’m glad you got a chance to play, go beat those guys. And a man I stopped and said, Who are you? What do you do with Susan? That kind of thing. She followed me down to the car and waved as I left, kind of made me want to stay. But I didn t Time waits for no man. But you know, that’s the whole thing about grace. Grace has no rationale. People have a natural opposition toward grace where it violates their system of justice and fairness, then where’s the fairness? And that guy did this? And you’re gonna let him off the hook where that’s not fair. That’s not right. How much have we felt like that? What’s going on in our country today? What happened in our recent election? What’s going on with all the executive orders? What? And when there’s 1000, things like that that’s going on? And how often have we said, That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not just and we’re judging. And you know, we’re right about that. We may be right about that. But what good does it do? How good does it do to us to recount all the unjust and the unfair and the wrong things that are going on? What’s the benefit? That’s reason I don’t watch the news, and hardly ever listened to it. is because when I hear all this going on, and my critical, judgmental spirit just rises up within me, well, that’s not a spirit, I want controlling me, I want the Holy Spirit controlling means. So what what happens when the Holy Spirit controls me? Pray for them. They don’t deserve me to pray for Do you know how many babies they’ve killed, and you want me to pray for them? You know, how they’re putting people in bondage. You know how they’re stealing our freedoms, you know, how they’re changing and stomping on our constitution and our Bible and you want me to give them grace. They’re guilty. They deserve punishment. Vengeance is mine, said the Lord. I heard I think I shared this last week about the Iranian pastor and having a great revival over in Iran. And his little brother was caught and executed for crimes against religious crimes or something. He wanted revenge. And he was so angry, and God says revenge is mine. And he says, Well, can I get angry and mad just in hate him? No, you can’t hate him. See, when the Holy Spirit comes in, he changes things and it goes against everything, every fiber in our body that’s sinful, and fallen prey and for those who persecute you, blessing your enemies, turning the other cheek, going the second mile. Those things just don’t fit in our system. They don’t fit in our justice system, our fallen nature, you get what you earn, you get what you deserve, and what you deserve. You stole a horse you stole our cows are gonna hang you and they hang them. And they did steal. But there’s no grace. Only in Jesus Christ, you just discover grace for his death made it possible for him to be both gracious and just. So God has called us and given us a new nature. When I received that holy spirit that night in Rocky Mountain. I said, God made me that man, I came to know Christ at night. I didn’t know what was missing in my wife. I thought I knew I knew all about Christ, but I didn’t know Christ. I didn’t know him personally. I didn’t have his Holy Spirit living in my heart. And that night, he gave me the Holy Spirit, living in my heart. And it changed me. And that’s another story. But Susan came up to tell me about Armando about that time, and I was a different guy. And God worked a miracle in our heart and we ended up getting married six years. slider. And she went from breaking up with me to seeing a different guy.
And I was given her grace. That would have never been possible for me when she told me about her mind. But I felt sorry for her because she didn’t understand what’s going on with me. And she was crying all the time. And all I could do is feel sorry for her and give her grace. And God healed us. And God gave us 50 great years together by His grace. See, because when he died on the cross, he took care of the sin. It was just and it was right, that sin had to be paid for. And he paid my debt on the cross, I should have hung on the cross, I deserve to hang on the cross my sin and nail me to the cross. But Jesus said, I’m going to take your sin on myself and I’ll die on the cross for you. That’s Grace has unmerited favor. That’s foreign to the human fallen, mindset and understanding. Nothing in the object of God’s grace merits God’s favor. You know, way to go, you’ve done you’ve been a blessing you’ve served, you’ve sacrificed, you’ve surrendered. Way to go, Well, thanks, I appreciate that. But I’m just doing what I’m supposed to do. God has called me up higher. He’s called you up higher. If you have the Holy Spirit in your heart. God is calling you up to a higher standard that cannot be reached about human gifts, human understanding human wisdom, it cannot be attained. It has to be lifted up by the Holy Spirit. And that’s the reason we draw clear to God, close to God, we abide in Christ, we get in the word, we become men of the word, men of prayer, men of chasing after other men who are chasing after Christ. That’s a reason we gather in fellowship. That’s a reason we memorize and read and study and hear and meditate on God’s word because we want to attain to that higher standard, which is what turning the other cheek giving grace when they deserve punishment, they deserve bad and we’re gonna give them good. And you know, what grace does? He remember Les Miserables
and Jean Valjean,Jean stole, he, this priest brought him and fed him gave him a place to stay. And then he stole some candelabras in the middle of the night and left with him. And then the gendarmes caught him and brought him back to the priest. And they we found this stuff, and we knew that he had been at your house, so we figure he stole it from you. And the priest went, No, he didn’t steal it. He just forgot to get this one here.
And he gave it to Jean Valjean, Jean. he could see him going back to school, our going back to the prison on that island, which was absolutely hideous. But he didn’t have to go back. Why? Because the priests gave him grace. It changed his life, he became a new creature, a new person. And the rest of the story is beautiful.
How that changed his life, what changed his life, Grace, I deserve to go back to the prison. But he gave me grace and free. Jesus did that on the cross for me and you if you know Jesus today, in all interpersonal relationships, but one reciprocity is required and is essential. And that’s what we said earlier, that you get what you deserve. If you’re going to be my friend, then I have to be your friend. But if I don’t want to be your friend, we’re not going to be friends.
If I don’t want to love you, then we can’t be together in love. Because I’m not loving you back. I’m giving you love, but you’re not reciprocating. That’s every other kind of love. But God’s love says, I’m gonna give you Grace, I’m gonna love you no matter what. And you know, here’s the secret. There’s a power in the Holy Spirit that gives us the spirit of patience and goodness and kindness and gentleness, love, hope, peace, self control, that says, that’s those character, the nature of the Holy Spirit in us now we have to do something with that. Once we receive that, we can either nurture it or forget it. And God gave us a spirit to nurture. And my job is to nurture to Jesus, if you abide in Me and my word abides in you, you’ll bear much fruit. For apart from me, you can’t do anything. So my, what I have to decide is, is is my God, a God of grace. And if the answer to that is yes, then I have to ask myself, am I a man of grace? Am I giving people Grace? Or am I judging them and saying that man needs to die? What’s what David did, but broke David’s heart, so I quit running from God after he had killed you, Ryan committed adultery with Bathsheba. And he told the story. Nathan the Prophet came to confront David and he told him a story. There was a young shepherd. And he had one little lamb a ewe lamb. It was like a pet and a member of the family and they loved him. It was a big Shepherd that had a big amount of sheep in his flocks. And he had all he can need and more in the custom was when you have a guest that comes in visits you you kill one of your sheep and feed them. Instead of killing me, he had a guest that came in instead of killing one of his sheep, he went over and stole the ewe lamb from the little shepherd and killed him. And David stood up and said, That man should die. And Nathan stuck his finger right back in David’s chest and said, Thou art the man. That’s what you did with you, right? You had a whole hair on full, full of wives and you went and stole his one wife. And David broke. And when David broke, he repented. And he wrote Psalm 51 be gracious to me, oh God, according to your loving kindness according to the greatness of your compassion blot out my transgressions. who hadn’t prayed brought out my transgressions. who hadn’t bright Forgive me from us in lift this guilt and shame. See, guilt is not a bad thing. Guilt is says, You’ve done a bad thing. So guilt is not a bad thing, because it helps you see you’ve done a bad thing. But shame is different. The devil tempts you to sin and shames you when you do. Shame means you’re a bad person. And that’s what the devil Heat’s on you. You’re a bad person. You’re unworthy. You haven’t measured up. He says, all those things. Do you got a list of things here? That the devil says to guys, when he’s trying to just discourage and defeat us. He come along and say, if you do and God says, If you do this, you’ll die. It’s what he told he. Remember what God said, we can’t eat that fruit would die, you surely shall not die. You can do this and you can get away with it. That’s okay. God doesn’t know what it God’s just trying to control you. He doesn’t want you to have all the enjoyments in life that he has. He’s not fair. He’s not right. He’s not just sweat. The devil comes along and trust and entice us with I know that you’re a hard taskmaster when the slave that had one talent. And he hid it in the ground. And the master came back for an accounting. And he said, I knew you are a hard taskmaster who gathered where you have not sold repo you have not scattered. So you knew that I was a hard taskmaster, that’s what the devil will come along and say, Jesus is hard taskmaster? Well, he’s not he’s a, he’s a God of grace. He will come along and look at you and go, you know, you’re unworthy. I know you’re seeing God knows you’re seeing you know, you’re seeing you and whether you call yourself a man of God. Look on worthy you are. And so that’s why we say do you find your identity, your worthiness in Christ? Because I can come along and call you unworthy all day long? And I am absolutely right. And you can call me unworthy. And you’re absolutely right. I am unworthy. But I’ve been made worthy. I’m unrighteous, but I’ve been made righteous in Jesus Christ. So when I stand before God, that that great Throne Judgment,
then he’ll, he’s not going to say we’ll get McKinsey scale out here. Let’s see if he’s been good or bad. See, if we’re gonna let him into heaven. All he wants to know is Do I have the righteous robes of Christ of white robes of Christ washed clean by the blood of Christ, say by grace to just ask a guy if you want to know if a guy’s a believer or not ask him this question. If you died today, and you were standing at the gates of heaven, and Jesus says, Why should I let you in? What would you tell him? Now, I’ve asked that question to scores and scores of people over the years. And usually, nine out of 10 times quite honestly, even with church going people. I’ll get a merit based answer. I get an answer that says, Well, I’ve tried to be a good person. I’ve tried not to hurt others. I’ve tried to do what I’m supposed to do. And they give you a merit base workspace answers. Instead of saying, I am unworthy, I don’t deserve it. I’ve been saved by grace, he forgiven me for all my sin. So I’m standing in the white robes of Christ enter into the Masters heaven. good and faithful servant. Why is he good and faithful because he has a righteousness of Christ? Because he’s been washed by the blood of the Lamb. He’s been given grace. He didn’t deserve it. That’s what he got. Can you imagine that day You’re guilty, unworthy, you’re shameful and weak, you prayed and prayed and they died Anyway, you can’t trust God. We could go on and on. But that’s the way the devil operates. Because if there was one word that captured everything the devil is does, it would be deception. And deception is the act of causing someone to accept as true or valid that which is not true and invalid. I’ve talked to couples all the time, and they have resentment banks. And they’ve got all this stuff in their resentment bank. And you know what, it’s pretty much true. I’ve taken three pages of notes sometimes on people empty in their resentment, banks, mostly wives, they have bigger resentment banks, because they’re more committed to the relationship, they’re more easily hurt and wounded. That doesn’t mean they’re weaker vessels. That just mean God has given them tender makeup and tender personalities. And it’s a good thing until they’re wounded and hurt and mistreated. And then they start keeping score. And men do the same thing. We just don’t pay enough attention or care enough to keep a lot of score, in my opinion. But what they do is they start emptying their resentment bank, and they have every reason in the world not to give grace if they want don’t want to give grace. Because this is pretty much all true. I’d say 80% of all this stuff I take hear from her and hear from him. is true. They’ve done that. They could document it. Sometimes they have it on video. But where are you go with that? What do you do with that? What is God do with all my sin? Does he ever resentment bank to me, and that’s how we’re that’s our standard guys. If Jesus had a resentment bank on me, then I’m totally in my rights to have a resentment bank on my wife, or on you or you on me. But he has no resentment banks. It says I forgive your sin. And you know what, I don’t just forgive it, I put it behind me as far as the east is from the west. And so rather than judging you and making you pay and wanting to hurt you, like you’ve hurt me, which is what goes on in these marriages and relationships and family relationships. And they just hurt and wounded each other. And you know, that’s the whole thing about being hurt and wounded, all you can do is hurt and wound. If you’re healed, and forgiven and restored, you can help others be healed and forgiven and restored. But if you’re just hurt and wounded, and you’ve been soaking in your bitterness, and your anger and your desire to hurt or get revenge, all you can do others, you’re just hurt looking for a place to happen. And looking for a guy to honk at, or looking for a politician to curse and criticize. God hadn’t called us to be critical on people that deserve it. God’s called us to pray for them. God doesn’t show me shortcomings in you so I can judge you in person criticize you. He shows me shortcomings coming so I can pray for you. And I’ll know how to pray for you. How many wives take that and husbands take that toward their spouse. They see the shortcomings. I know more about my show, Susan knew more about my shortcomings than anybody else will ever know.
But she prayed for me. And I read her journals now and she prayed for children and her grandchildren. She prayed when they messed up and they like everybody else, children, they messed up. They made some very bad decisions and choices. And she was just pouring her heart out bringing them before the Lord. She didn’t judge him she’d never heard her criticized one time anybody and she got after me when I did. That’s the kind of person that I want to be. That’s the kind of person that’s going to share the gospel and use words if necessary. That’s the kind of person that’s going to do good. And that’s the reason we love games so much in the journey to the Enter chamber, the two allegories and Gabe was a black man. And he got it showed him how to take care of his crops so that they wouldn’t die out during droughts and things and irrigate them and, and he had healthy crops when all those white farmers around crops are dying. This one guy got so jealous and angry and bitter that he came over in set fire to gabes barn as you recall. And so Gabe came out and started fighting the fire and as a guy was running away at the time he stepped in a hole and broke his leg. He couldn’t move. And so gay bill and he got to attend into the barn went over and took the guy and put him in his wagon, took him home. Gave him to his family. Yet the doctor they took care of his leg and for the next several months gay brought To the family because that man wasn’t able to provide for him. And what do you call it? Don’t we love gay because of that? Don’t we hope that he’s a real guy? People ask rocky all the time, is gave a real guy. Is he a real man? Because they want him to be. They want to see men like that, who are men of grace, who have men of faith that believe in God and can’t be easily wounded and hurt and be overly sensitive. Today, all we’re doing is telling people to be overly sensitive. All this sexual harassment and hate crimes and all this kind of stuff. If you’ve been disappointed, then that’s, then that’s harassment. If you say good morning, and they don’t respond, that’s harassment. If you feel not included, that’s harassment. And we’re just feeding that thing inside of us. They’re feeding it that always gets offended, that always gets hurt. It wants to get even it puts hurt on other people. See, when the devil is in charge, that’s all it can happen. Jesus looked at the Pharisees and says, your of your father, the devil, and he was a murderer and a liar from the very beginning and your desires to do His will. And when you open your mouth, all you can do is lie because it’s your native language. That’s all the devil can do. It seems like God’s unleashed him on our culture today. Well, if he has, where’s the man of grace, it’s gonna fight back. We talked about fighting back taking our country back calling for revival. And we didn’t call him for Jesus to come even so come, Lord Jesus. But God has not called us to do that God has called us to Yes, there’s nothing wrong with that. But God has called us to fight the battle, and how are we going to fight the battle, but God’s weapons and whatever his weapons, it’s a helmet of salvation, saved by grace through faith. That means we’re dispensing grace, everywhere we go, every chance we get the belt of truth that holds everything together. That’s a word of God, the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes fit with the gospel of Christ. That’s how we fight we’re not fighting flesh and blood. But boy, it’s hard to remember that when we see all the injustice, but we have to remember it. God has called us to be men of grace in prayer. We’re not going to fix this thing, being sarcastic and judgmental, and complaining. And we have to repent of that. I do that all the time. That’s reason I don’t listen to the news. Because that’s all the flesh in me comes up. I can’t listen to it. Because that’s what it come up. So I want to bless and pray for. So if I hear the news at all, it’s the know how to pray now. Know what my next prayer request is going to be for the country, the world for what’s going on, and what God’s doing. So let’s call for revival. And we know what God did with Billy Graham, maybe there’s another one out there.
We need a revival in our homes. We need a revival with a husband, loving his wife and a wife, loving and forgiving her husband. We need a revival with our children. We need to share the gospel and have family prayer times. We need to gather when we can. And we need to gather together in fellowship in the spirit with each other, pray that we pray on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays. But we need a revival. We need to pray that God would give us a revival in our own hearts and start with me. And that be the prayer is it starts. But then God bring a revival to our nation. I don’t know if it’s going to change anything or change the government or change the people in government. But I’m praying for some Apostle Paul’s, from Hollywood from Washington, DC that right now persecuting and will be persecuting Christians who Jesus comes to like he’s doing in Iran to dreams and visions and doing miracles and bringing great revival in the nation of Iran. And what if God wanted to take our country down and steal our freedoms, to bring a great revival? And that’s what it took to bring a revival in America that we would lose our rights and lose our freedoms. And we would have to suffer like we’ve never had to suffer for our faith. Would God see fit to some men like us to bring revival? This pray that that would be the case, Father, as we close today, we thank you that you’re the God of revival, personal revival in our own hearts. When you revive us and you give us new life, a new forgiveness, a new sense of grace and a new sense of being able to give grace because we’ve received it from you that we could do it in our homes and our families that we could do it in our churches. Lord, the church needs grace. It needs revival it needs to, to be awakened to be faith base. Instead of fear based, and that’s what we all need. Our country needs revival and if you need to tear our country down to bring revival and so that there won’t be a single person in this nation who doesn’t know that there’s a God and he came to redeem us, he came to save us and he’s given us grace and there’s no need for all the suicides that are going on. There’s no need for all the worry and anxiousness and anxiety and stress that’s going on in our culture and all the medical physical problems that go along with that. But Lord, there’s a peace that surpasses all understanding. And so friends come to the principes who hung on a cross and gave us grace. So we give we thank you for the grace that we’ve received. We pray that would be grace givers even today in Jesus name And all God’s men said Amen
Amen. Give them heavn guys
Transcribed by https://otter.ai