Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Uh, can I introduce my wife, MaryLee? She's right down in front.
Speaker 1 00:00:14 Uh, we have, uh, three adult children, all married, nine grandchildren so far I've, I'm told that's it. And so, uh, the basket is full or whatever you, the, the, um, quiver. Quiver is full now. And, uh, uh, one of our sons lives in, uh, Libertyville, so not too far away. So, uh, we came visiting grandchildren this weekend, uh, to coincide with your admissions conference. Um, this church started, uh, supporting us, uh, about, let's see, who was I talking, talking to somebody this morning. Early service, I think it was around, it was 1987. Uh, that was the year, the first year of the Minnesota Twins, uh, won the World Series, is why I remember that. And, uh, we live in Minnesota. Uh, so it was 87, so that's been quite a long time ago. And so we've been part of your, uh, church family, uh, all these years.
Speaker 1 00:01:02 Uh, this year things changed a little bit. So I retired, uh, end of April and, uh, V C O B uh, began transferring their support from us personally to our family, to the SALT Organization Ministry. So you're supporting our national workers. Uh, salt today is totally indigenized, uh, no foreigners involved with, um, what we're doing, uh, internationally. And uh, that's a good thing. So what do we do? Uh, we write a curriculum in a local language, a, uh, very complicated one. Uh, we don't translate stuff. We write it originally in that language and then teach local church leaders how to teach. So I'm gonna give you a little flavor of some of what we do in terms of methodology is how we teach, um, because, uh, hopefully when you walk out the door this morning, uh, you'll have in your mind a little memory hook and you can share it and challenge and test each other with it.
Speaker 1 00:01:51 But it'll be to see if you actually were good students. Or maybe the real problem is, uh, was I actually an effective teacher? And so we'll see, uh, how that works. But that's, that's gonna come later this morning. Um, I wanna talk about, uh, the text that we're gonna look at. It's third John. It's not John chapter three. It's third John. So if you have a Bible, uh, or a phone, I'm gonna use my phone this morning. Um, book of Revelation, last book of the Bible, two pages before that is Third John. And so we're gonna, uh, start there. And it starts off, uh, this way. Uh, he identifies himself and he says, elder John to Gaas to the beloved Gaas, whom I love, in truth. Who is this elder John, same John that wrote the Gospel of John in for second, third, John, the Book of Revelation, all of those, he's probably a teenager.
Speaker 1 00:02:49 When he started following Jesus, my guess is he was 16 or 17 years old. He was by far the youngest disciple of all that group. He was a hothead, had a temper that got outta hand. We can recall the story. He and his big brother James, both were hotheads and they got really ticked off at this town, this village, because of their lack of response to Jesus. And they went to Jesus and say, why don't we just call down lightning on these people? Just burn 'em up. Give him a little wake up call. Of course, Jesus was not really impressed with that idea. And so John was about to begin a long journey of life transformation, the end of his life. He was just this wonderfully beautiful, remarkable sage, elderly, godly man known for his love for others, quite a transformation. What else do we know about John?
Speaker 1 00:03:39 Uh, he was unique. He was part of this inner circle of Jesus. So three guys, Peter and then James and John. These two brothers, they were called the Sons of Thunder, not a compliment. And uh, they were the ones that were on the mounts of figuration, uh, which would've been just awesome if you or I could have been there. And that was when the voice of God spoke audibly. It was very clear they saw Jesus. And there he was talking with Moses and Elijah, amazing, remarkable experience. Um, John was probably, uh, the only disciple who was with Jesus at the cross. Uh, everybody else ran except him. If you remember from the cross, Jesus looked at, John looked at his mother and he said, uh, son, behold your mother, mother behold your son, basically saying, John, will you take care of my mom and watch over her, which he did.
Speaker 1 00:04:35 History has it that John probably stayed in Jerusalem with Mary until she passed away, though that wasn't the only place, uh, we know or we believe that Mary traveled. And then it was after her death that he started traveling. And, uh, we bump into this book, third John. Um, John was the disciple that we read that says The disciple that Jesus loved. And so the last Supper, uh, it was John who was sitting next to Jesus, leaning against him in that fashion, the way they ate in those times. Uh, and so, uh, Jesus was very, very, John was very, very close to Jesus. Well, what did John do in terms of his ministry? Um, he was there when Jesus gave the great commission and said, you're to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, which he was, and Judea, which he was, and then Samaria, and then the remotest part of the earth.
Speaker 1 00:05:27 And John understood that is, that's not something you do consecutively. You get everything settled and people reached in your home community before you go beyond. He said, no, uh, Jesus under he understood Jesus' words, is this all happens to happen simultaneously, begins here in Bartlett as well as, I don't know what county you're in. Is this lake or cook one of those? Or is it something else? Uh, it's cook too bad for you. And so, uh, you go beyond Cook to Illinois, the US and to the other places all at the same time. There's reason for that. And there's benefit for you to be connecting, sending workers out that are part of your community or associated with you, um, that are speak a different language in a different part of the world. And there are benefits to you and challenges for you. So hopefully this morning some of that'll come through too.
Speaker 1 00:06:22 Um, no offense about Cook County. I'm just a smart Alec, and uh, I say things like that and then I'll regret them a moment later. <laugh>, uh, never quite figured out John's transformation life. Uh, I'm not as big a hothead as him, but I have my own problems. Okay? We all need a little bit of transformation, I think. Uh, so what else do we know about John? Um, he probably served most effectively in what we call Turkey today. So it'd be central and Western Turkey. And if you read, uh, early in the book of Revelation, those seven churches that are mentioned there, perhaps those were churches where John served in. So now we meet this guy, the elder John, and um, we assume from the letter that he wrote here that he was addressing a problem in the local church. And so John wants to know, uh, if your church, if the Bartlett Church, the church that he wrote to Gaas at where Gaas was at, um, if they were experiencing problems that needed some correction related to their cross-cultural or global outreach workers.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 And so I don't know if there are problems here in this church related to that. You can think about that and maybe, uh, it'll be worth some discussion later on. So we want to get into, um, what John is going to tell us. So before we do that, why don't you join me in prayer and then we'll read the rest of this text. Let's pray together. Father, we, um, are going to look at, uh, your son, elder John's words, this short little book for us and for the Village Church of Bartlett, but for everybody who's sitting here. And would you open our ears, stimulate our thinking, quiet our hearts?
Speaker 1 00:08:16 Would you and your goodness prevent distractions? Whether they're in our own minds, things are worried about our phone buzzing, something else that we can pay attention to you, uh, use me as you would, but anoint your word. And we thank you so much for it. We give you our time. Now, would you be pleased with how we respond, how we listen, so that we might live for you all for your glory? We pray in your son's name, amen. Well, let's look at this book of third John. I didn't bring the correct Bible this morning, and so I'm using my phone. I hope you don't, don't mind. Normally I would have a Bible, uh, I like holding things that you can turn pages on, but that's different. Alright? So it begins the elder to the beloved Gaas, whom I love and the truth. Now we're gonna run into these words, you, y o U, and as an they're all singular.
Speaker 1 00:09:10 They're just to this guy gaas. It isn't necessarily to the church as a whole. And he continues. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. Isn't that an interesting word? Uh, maybe you can ask each other that sometime from time to time. How is your soul and how are you doing there? That's what John is concerned about. He continues Verse three, for I rejoice greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth as indeed you are walking in the truth. And here's the verse we all know. And like, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. He continues. Now, this is what I'm gonna pay more attention on in our message this morning, verses five to eight. Beloved. So Gaius, that's who he's talking to.
Speaker 1 00:10:02 It is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are who testified to your love before the church, you'll do well to send them on our journey in a manner worthy of God for they have gone out for the sake of the name accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support people like these that we may be fellow workers for the truth. And now we come to an interruption. I've written something to the church, but Drees who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. Now, listen to what John says. So if I come, I'll bring up what he's doing, talking wicked nonsense against us and not content with that he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them outta the church. Okay? This is a leading church member that's got this other agenda, beloved, okay, GAAS.
Speaker 1 00:11:08 Now he comes back to him. Do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God. Whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius another godly guy friend with Gaas Gaas knows Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself, we also add our testimony and you know, our testimony is true. And in closing, I had much to write to you, but I'd rather not write with pen and ink. So I hope to see you soon and we will talk face to face. Peace be to you, the friends greet you. That is the brothers and sisters with John. Greet the friends, the other brothers and sisters at guys' church, greet the friends each by name, real personal letter, very succinct, and of course lots more to come because uh, he's got a lot to say. I would not like to be this guy Drees.
Speaker 1 00:12:03 When John shows up, I think he's gonna get more than just a earful. Um, one of the common themes of missions is opposition. And a lot of times we think opposition is something that happens over there when we're talking about, uh, cross-cultural work, global workers, that kind of thing. And of course we have that, uh, uh, I, we lived overseas for 37 years, and so we, uh, would run into opposition. You'll hear a little bit more about that, uh, in a little bit. But the other point is opposition happens here, happens in the local church too. And this is specifically what John's a little bit upset about. It's not a surprise because sometimes we think, um, why should we be supporting something on the other side of the world? Has nothing to do with us, no connections at all. We don't even have our act together and things settled down here in our own community and we waste our time spending money outside it.
Speaker 1 00:12:59 We should be focusing on where we really have good connections. And that of course is a natural unsurprising argument. But there's another way to look at things. And so this is a letter about opposition from the local church. And so this guy, Drees an interesting guy. What does it say he's interested in? First of all, first and foremost himself. And so John would send some coworkers, he calls them strangers because that local church didn't know them. They were simply came on. John's recommendation, they show up. And Dre is not at all pleased, probably a lot of reasons for this. He probably felt threatened by them. Maybe they knew scripture better than him. Um, it cost him and the local church something that people might pay more attention to them, uh, than to what he was doing. He got so upset and irritated about it, he was became the driving opposition force so that if you host any of these people, he would kick you outta the church probably on some pretense that they're heretics or there's something wrong with them.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 And so there was obvious real tension within the local church. So this is how to do it wrong, and that is opposition from, uh, within the church. So let's look at how do we get missions, right? And this is what we find out from Gaas and what John is saying to him. So we're gonna turn and look at these, uh, four verses, verses 5, 6, 7, and eight. Now, what I'm gonna do here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna explain a little bit what would your role be or could or should your role be in terms of your involvement with cross-cultural workers like me or what I used to be doing or people that you support now? And then, what is our role as, uh, the workers? What is it that we're to be doing? John mentions eight things. I'm gonna talk about all eight of them.
Speaker 1 00:15:00 I thought I'd hear a little bit of a groan. It's like, oh, you're kidding. I mean, three is enough. So I'm gonna go through 'em really fast, uh, to your relief, I hope. And then I'm gonna come back and talk about one for sure, and if we have time, a second one. So we'll see how that goes. Uh, so these are gonna be eight things that John wants the local church to get or to do or to embrace terms of relating to those who are cross-cultural workers. Okay? How are you gonna remember those eight things? Because there's gonna be a test later on, and I'd like everyone to pass. And so I've got a, I've got a, a trick, uh, we call it a memory hook. And so part of the salt ministry, what we do, uh, is we don't just create a curriculum for people to teach, but we teach them how to teach this.
Speaker 1 00:15:52 But the problem was, is we weren't dealing with people with maybe a college degree or some kind of education degree. Uh, they were preachers, evangelists, uh, but they just knew how to preach evangelism. They didn't know how to teach the scripture. And, and they tend to have about a sixth or seventh grade education. They were not stupid people, but they didn't have a lot of training. So the trick was how do you get someone with a sixth or seventh education to have the confidence and the skill level to actually teach and not just preach? And so it took us a while, but we figured it out. And we use little things, uh, called memory hooks. And a memory hook is a summary of a chapter. I don't mean a chapter of the Bible necessarily, but a chapter in one of our courses. And it helps the teacher remember what is the outline, the theme, how are we gonna get through this, what are the points to cover?
Speaker 1 00:16:41 And so a memory hook could be a, a little poem, uh, could be a little graphic or some kind of stick figure that illustrates things. Could be something that two people do with one another to act it out. And so another way is to come up with an acronym. So that's gonna be easy. So I'm gonna teach you an acronym. The acronym has eight points. It's two words. And the letter of each of those words is gonna be part of what John is talking to Gaius about. So that you'll go home, I hope, with this acronym in your head, and you'll be able to use it to remember, okay, this is what we could be involved in. And then the application of it is, which of these eight points might be one that you want to get a grip on and begin to start doing using, getting involved with. So here we go. We're gonna blast through these eight things just to give a quick highlight. First one, first five. Um, and John identifies perhaps the key role, and he says, it's really great that you are faithful.
Speaker 1 00:17:44 I think this is going to come up. There it is. You're it is a faithful thing you do. So this is the foundation. I think we know what faithfulness is. Uh, tenacity, stick to itness, consistency, uh, being counted on. All right? So long-term thinking, longevity, uh, repetition. That's this faithful concept. The second one he says is beloved or gaas. It's a faithful thing you do in all of your efforts for these brothers. So efforts, um, is the second one. This is the wrong, uh, slide. And so there we go. And so verse five, um, I want to change efforts to being active. And so effort is initiative, so is active. And the third thing he mentions is, uh, the, I want, I thank you for your efforts for these brothers, strangers, as it were. He uses this term strangers because they weren't from the local bodies.
Speaker 1 00:18:42 So we would call these people missionaries, it'd be one way to call them. But in our, um, vernacular today, we call them global workers. So that's who they are. Then the next thing he says is, uh, verse six, the beginning of verse six, about how the church practiced, uh, sacrificial love. This is the agape love. So that's, um, you love them, uh, from your church. All right? So that's the first part. Then we move on verse six B. These people should be people that are sent out and he says, we wanna send them out. And there's two aspects to the sending out. The first one is in a manner worthy of God. Uh, so that's their character and, and how the church relates to them. Do it in a godly, good, sincere, um, way that it reflects God's goodness. But the second way is we send them out in the name and that is what they are doing.
Speaker 1 00:19:36 They're going out to teach about Jesus, which is what, um, pastor Dean talked about a moment ago. So sending them out. Then we come to verse seven, the last part of verse seven, and he says, these coworkers accepted nothing from the Gentiles. Well, that isn't what the church should be doing, um, giving them nothing, but rather the church to do the opposite. And so I've considered this helping. And so the church helps in whatever way you can. What should you do to help us cross-cultural workers? Are there some things you, there are some things and some things, you know, we're just kind of on our own. We gotta figure out, but work that out together. The next thing he talks about besides that is he says, we ought to support people like these. Uh, the E S V translates this word support the, the original word, the English word.
Speaker 1 00:20:31 They use the word support. That's a little bit too broad. What does support mean? Does it mean just money? Uh, how do you support them? And so some translations say to entertain, that doesn't mean take them out to the movie or, uh, uh, uh, do something that's, uh, silly or funny for them. But the entertain is the, is the concept of hospitality. And so hospitality is what John is talking about here, is bring them into your home, give them something to eat, give them a place to rest, to recuperate and use hospitality as a gift for them. Then the last one he has is he says, consider these people as fellow workers for the truth. So if you think of me or you think of some of the global workers that you support, think of us as an extension of your ministry or your church staff here.
Speaker 1 00:21:25 Could you think of us as part of your church staff? And we're doing something on your behalf for God's glory in his name, in another co country, maybe in another language, certainly a different culture. And so we do this together. And so your church staff team is more than just the people you see on Sunday mornings. Alright, so here's, here's these eight things. How are you gonna remember All eight of them? So, okay, let's leave it there. And now I want to give you a little quiz. I mentioned all eight of them. You tell me how many of you you can remember without looking at your bibles. Just name 'em out loudly. Faithful MaryLee. You're not allowed to say anything. <laugh>. I can't believe she actually started saying something. Okay, sending. All right. Loving.
Speaker 1 00:22:19 Somebody said active. I think hum. Uh, wasn't humility. Hos Hos Unity. Unity. Oh, I'm sorry. Hearing problem. Uh, am I missing any that you said? Sending? Okay. Alright, now let's back up. Can any, any of you think you can do all eight from memory? Oh, wow. I can't believe it. I'm not gonna ask you. So you don't, but I don't believe you either. <laugh>. So it's just my own skepticism. Alright, here's, here's this thing. Flash hug. So this is a acronym, and we found out that if you do a motion with a word, you tend to remember it more. Makes sense? And so here's the motion I want you to, um, this is real cheesy. This is a real dorky thing. If you're a teenager, you're gonna think this is just so stupid. It is. I'm not trying gonna try to convince you it isn't.
Speaker 1 00:23:20 And if you're too cool to do it, I don't care, don't do it. So, but here's for the rest of us that are really into this and are paying attention and want to get an a on a test, um, here's what you do. So you got your hands, and if you're gonna make a, um, demonstration of flash, what would you do? Yeah, yeah, you got it. And so you'd go like this, okay? So the hand motion is just simply gonna help your memory. That's, that's the whole point of it. And, and it's silly on purpose because when it's dorky and silly, you tend to remember it better, okay? And so it, there's gonna be two things. It's gonna be flash hug, okay, can you do that? Is that too complicated? And, but it's embarrassing. So that's the other reason to not do it. All right.
Speaker 1 00:24:04 So ready, flash hug. Okay, so let's go through these letters. F L A s H H U G. You could switch 'em around. I mean, this is, I'm not god, this is not divine. Uh, just sat at my desk one day and say, how can I remember that? Hey, how about flash? I used to say hum, uh, because I used the word missionary instead of global worker. And then, um, Michelle said, you can't use that word. Uh, you gotta use global worker. That's what we were. So I thought, oh, hug, we could do hug. And that's kind of nice. Okay, so that's it. F faithful, L loving a active Ss, sending Now, which h I'm doing the shorter one first. Okay, so h help or helping the second H hospitality. You can you get this one? Unity. And the last one's tricky. Global, global worker.
Speaker 1 00:25:02 Okay, so those are our words. Flash hug. So when you leave the church today, you're having lunch, you can say, Hey, do you, you remember the flash hug? Do you remember what they all stand for? You just ate things and you can flash hug and then quiz each other. Okay? And whoever doesn't get it, pays for lunch. You could, I don't know, try something like that. Okay, so I have eight minutes. Alright? Um, I want to talk about faithful, and if we have time, I want to talk about loving, um, from a global cross-cultural worker perspective. From my perspective, uh, this faithful thing hits me on two dimensions in particular. One is, and both have to do with you both have to do with you. And the first one is being faithful at prayer, even daily prayer. A, a real routine prayer, intentional, predictable prayer.
Speaker 1 00:26:10 For at least one global worker, just pick one. Your church has a handful and most of them have been here this week. And so pick one of them. Get to know one of these people. Get on their prayer list and use a little bit of your imagination about what their life might be like and things you could pray for them. If it's kids, if it's parents, if it's little babies, it's diapers, it's getting sick, it's healthcare, it's food, uh, it's sanitation. If it's older kids, it's, you've know what that's like. Pray for the older kids and the issues that they're facing and the challenges, um, energy, uh, for, as a parent, uh, use your imagination of what their life might be like. And then if they come here and they come through intentionally say, can I have coffee with you? I just wanna understand your life a little bit better. And I'd like to share with you a little bit of mine. Don't spend all the time talking about your life. Ask them questions. What's, what's it like? What's hard for you? What has God taught you? What have you learned? Um, how can I pray better for you? Prayer. So one of the things in faithful is faithful in prayer. The second thing is, would you be faithful in your walk with God?
Speaker 1 00:27:31 Would you be faithful in your walk with God? That means the world to us as cross-cultural workers. I don't think I can stress this enough that you would understand how deeply important that is to us who are half the world away. But when you are faithful and stable and steady and you press hard through hardship and disappointments and pain and loss and doubts and difficulties, but you take those and you let God say, God, what am I supposed to learn through this? How do you want to change me? This isn't by accident, working my heart and life. When we know you do that, rather than give up, walk away, deny, that's hard for us. I can't tell you how many times we get notes and letters of things like that and it, it's just knocks the wind out of us, knocks the feet out from under us.
Speaker 1 00:28:44 Because when you are faithful, we go through hardship and difficulty and all those things too. And it's hard. But if you can be faithful, then I will too. And if I can be faithful, you will too. It works two ways, brothers and sisters. And so how are you to be faithful prayer and in your walk with the Lord? And when you struggle, get help, call on each other. You don't be an American and just be an individual and do it yourself. It's not good. Okay? Faithful, faithful in prayer. So I'm gonna tell you a few stories and encourage you to be faithful. Uh, we met this lady named Dorcas. Dorcas, if you know your New Testament means gazelle. And, um, in the seventies, second day of her honeymoon, she got arrested by the police. It was intentional, thrilling moment in her life. Let's go arrest this woman.
Speaker 1 00:29:41 Now that's a good time to just take the wind out of her sails. And then she went to prison and uh, eventually she was knocked down in the prison sequence to death row. Never a charge brought against her. Eventually she was released. I'll tell you that story maybe if we have time. But I met Dorcas 20 years later in the 1990s. Uh, she was just a, a seasoned saint and she was my age. And boy was I, did I feel like a little baby Christian next to her. And one of the things she asked the first day that, uh, we were with her is she said, are people praying for you? She was just real hesitant to get very involved with us or to let us in on too much of what was going on in her life because she wanted to know, is God in this?
Speaker 1 00:30:22 And I said, yes ma'am. People are praying. A lot of people are praying and they're praying Now this day for this time with you, you can count on it. Were you praying? Were you faithful to pray? Did you remember me, maybe, or one of your global workers? A year later I was at a training site. Um, we didn't know if the people who came and the training of course turned out one of them was a government spy. And so they reported me and, uh, my other coworker to the police, police showed up. Day two, arrested us, took our passports, put us in the police van, we head down to the city, back into the city. Boy was that nervous time. What's gonna happen to us? What's gonna happen to them? The people who we were teaching, uh, because they've got this connection with these foreigners and we didn't have a permit for it. And the police took us to our hotel, said, you guys show up at the police station in the morning and we'll have some questions for you. What a night anticipating the next day fear has. Does all kinds of goofy things in your head. Were you praying?
Speaker 1 00:31:26 Did you pray for your global coworker? And so we got up the next morning, we, we rehearsed what our story was gonna be all that night because they knew they'd separate us and ask us questions separately to, uh, see if it made sense. We couldn't believe they let us go to the hotel to practice. And, uh, so we got our passports back, got our hands slapped. Uh, nobody got in too serious trouble. Um, but the point is, is were you praying A few years later, I was in a, a big passenger van. It was a 15 seat passenger van. And there were, um, it was one of those where there's a door on the side. And so we were, uh, uh, two of us foreigners again. It was dead of winters, 30 below zero, super cold, no heat in the van. Uh, we had our stocking caps on scarf covering our noses because our noses are dead, giveaway that we're not local.
Speaker 1 00:32:17 And the only thing that was exposed was the color of our eyes, which is the wrong color. And so there were about, um, four local people, five local people in that van. And so they stopped there. There was, uh, police checkpoints and they stopped our van before we headed across this huge river and bridge. And they, uh, wanted to inspect the van. One of our guys, one of the local guys gets out, talks to the police, and they say, we want to come in and search the van. And so, um, I'm sitting, here's the door of the van. Door opens, policeman steps into the van. I'm sitting in this seat looking to the front right here. My coworker is in another seat on the aisle, on the other side of the driver's up there and these other people. Now, when you, when you're in that country, um, you learn early on, uh, you don't look eye to eye, especially to police people.
Speaker 1 00:33:04 You always look just straight ahead or you look down. Uh, if you look any other way, you're a foreigner. They can just spot it right off the bat. And so it's easy to tell. And so, uh, we just sat there and, and, uh, and in my thought it was, God, this is the moment. Wake your people up. They've gotta be praying because we're in trouble or these people we're with are gonna be in serious trouble. Get 'em up, get 'em on their knees, protect us, have that policeman turn to the left so that he doesn't move to the right and start noticing who's in the van. And sure enough, after he steps into the van, he turns to the left. He noticed some boxes back there, and he goes back there and he wants to know, what are these things? And our handler says, oh, these are these are Christian materials.
Speaker 1 00:33:50 Policeman says, is any of this pornography? He goes, Nope, none of it's pornography. He goes, okay, then you can go. He walks back, heads off the van, and we take off. His job was just to look for pornography. Thank the Lord. Were you praying a little while later? Uh, we were doing a field test. Every time we write a new course, uh, we rehearse it to see if it's gonna fly and will the locals, uh, and not just understand it, but will they be able to teach it? And so we're going along in this field test, and one of our, uh, American guys was teaching it. He hadn't really done his homework really well. He was teaching a particular chapter in this book, and he said something that was not right at all, sounded pretty impressive. But I leaned over to one of our friends and I said, did he just say what he said?
Speaker 1 00:34:41 What? I think He said, did he say this? And he goes, yeah, I think that's what he said. And I said that we, we can't let him get by with it. That we can't teach that to the local people. And they think that that's the truth. And so I interrupted him in English to not embarrass him. And I said, uh, uh, did you say what? Uh, we think you said, did you say this? He said, yeah. And I said, that's not right. That is not accurate. It's not truthful. Um, that's an exaggeration. You need to correct that because we don't want any of these people teaching. That's not what's written in the material. And so he did, but boy was he mad, he was fuming, that he had been corrected, that he had been embarrassed, that he had to go back and, and say that he was wrong.
Speaker 1 00:35:24 And so I didn't know how furious and fuming he was. We had another night and a half there, and then we get in the van, we come back to three of us, him and I and one other guy, we come back to where we're gonna get dropped off. We'd been out in the countryside, we'd come to the, the city and now is his moment. And he laid into me and let me have it what he thought about me and my leadership and my character. And the knife went in deeply and twisted and it was painful and it was wrong, and it was misrepresentation. And it was all about him being embarrassed. But I listened and let him vent. And as soon as he got done, he took off and just let me wallow around in the slime and the accusations. I thought, oh boy, we were just exhausted.
Speaker 1 00:36:15 And that's always makes things worse, you know? And so I had an appointment later on that afternoon. I took off, gonna have this appointment, it's gonna be a fundraising appointment. I thought this guy was really gonna come through for us and help us out financially. He didn't ask Harley a question about what we were doing. It was all about what he was doing. Total waste of time and energy. Uh, shouldn't have, uh, should have just rested someplace. And then I go to the airport and I'm gonna fly to the border town to go home and the plane's delayed, and then the plane's delayed and the plane's delayed. And finally I'm gonna, eventually I'm gonna get to the border and the border will be closing. I'm gonna have to spend another night in that country before I could go home. It's just depressed, discouraged. Does God love me anymore?
Speaker 1 00:36:55 You know, just stupid thoughts like that. And so I get on the plane, turned out 90% of the plane is empty. And I'm thinking, oh good, I can just crawl up against an empty window with nobody anywhere near me, and I can just be quiet and just pray and just lick my wounds and ask God to give me a better attitude and perspective. That started off okay. And then I heard a voice and it said, may I have this seat and just knee-jerk reaction. I said, oh, okay. Because I thought I didn't sit where I was assigned. Nobody did. And 'cause there were only 10% of the passengers on the plane. And so sitting right next now sits next to me, is this beautiful local woman smelled wonderfully and she had other interests on her mind that were not my best interests or my family's best interest. And for three hours I had to sit next to this woman leaning into me, smelling her perfume. I was rude, I was unkind. And I said, God, this is the enemy. When I'm weak and vulnerable and tempted to anything, when you're really hurting and somebody shows you attention, it feels good. And I knew that was the liar's tactic. God, are people praying? Wake 'em up. I need help.
Speaker 1 00:38:17 Keep me faithful to what you've called me to. Were you praying? Do you pray? And so, uh, God spared me, got off the plane and ran into the men's bathroom and hid for a really weird long time. So that lady was way outta sight and eventually went home and told my wife I was a good boy. But boy, was it hard? Were you praying? Do you pray? So what do I wanna leave you with this morning? I'm way over time and I'm sorry, but the worst thing they can do is tell me to go home. <laugh>. So flash hug, faithful, loving, active, sending, helping hospitality, unity, global worker. What's an area that you could begin to embrace to be an encouragement, a participant with some of these people that are part of your mission conference or part of your church life? Get to know them. Learn about their life a little bit. It'd be, it'll be good for you. Life changing and an encouragement to them. So can Village Church of Bartlett be a flash hug church? I think so. You have been many ways, but more of you could be. Let me pray for you.
Speaker 1 00:39:50 Father, thank you for Elder John and his words of encouragement, pretty straightforward with this guy Dre. He didn't mince his words. And sometimes we need to hear that. Help us to be tenderhearted toward you, your spirit, your work in our lives. And now as these people have listened to these ideas and thoughts from me, uh, put that aside. Let them listen to you. It's all about you, our love for you. Help them to be faithful to you. Oh, how we need faithful people to live and love you. We ask this, that you might be glorified in your son's name. Amen.
