I'm going to jump right in. I think most of us
have had the opportunity by now, as I look around
the room, to have experienced evil to some extent.
It's possible that the kids have not. I pray
that that is the case. But evil doesn't always
look like the big bad things that you see on
TV or in movies like murder, rape, or drug dealing,
that kind of thing. Thank God. Through the Southside
Life Station, we've seen quite a bit of that
over the years, but not necessarily firsthand.
We've seen four drug dealers that got saved and
walked away from dealing drugs, and all four
of them were disowned by their families because
previous, while they were dealing drugs, they
were paying everybody's bills, and then as soon
as they started to no longer do that, they couldn't
do that anymore. But I never saw that. I've never
seen anybody, the whole time I've been serving,
I've never seen anybody actually sell drugs to
another person. We've seen untold criminals come
to Christ. I do know that there's at least one
murderer. He spent 20 years in jail. He was convicted,
and he openly admits what he did. But I wasn't
there when he did that, so I've never seen that
firsthand, thank God. I did do the funeral of
a young woman who was dating a gang member, and
she used to beat on him, and he'd beat on her.
One time he beat her too bad, put her in a hospital
for 10 days. The day that she was released from
the hospital, she was sitting on the bed waiting
for her friend to go get the car. and she got
up and fell over dead. And they said that she
had a brain bleed, and they said it was miraculously
unrelated to the beating. So we did her funeral.
We waited to see if the gang members would show
up and cause trouble. They did not. It was a
tense day. That's about as close as I've come
to seeing that kind of evil firsthand. The call
center ladies that work at the life station,
they get a lot of stories. We had a woman call
the life station. She said that her son that
day had been shot in the head with a firearm.
Some kid thought it would be a good idea to shoot
him to a crowd. And she called and asked us to
pray for her. And we circulated through the prayer
group. An hour and a half later, another woman
called. She said that her grandson, whom she'd
been raising, who was a little bit developmentally
delayed, some of the boys in his class had talked
him into firing a handgun into a crowd. He shot
a kid in the head. Now he was in jail and was
looking at possibly spending the rest of his
life in jail. And she asked for prayer for him.
So they hear a lot more than I do, the first
-hand stories, but I do get a chance to kind
of experience some of that at some of the worst
times when people are on drugs and they're literally
addicted or they're off their medications and
so their schizophrenia is going kind of wild
or whatever it might be. But evil is not always
loud or dramatic. The fact is that sometimes
evil looks like empty cupboards, silent homes,
isolated hearts, crushed hope. I'll tell you
the story of three guys named Ron. It's interesting
because in the life station, I've been there
for 15 years, and names reoccur. And I go like,
oh, that's the third guy. And actually, I have
a fourth guy right now that I'm working with
named Ron. But I'm not going to tell you his
story today because he's still greatly in process.
He just gave his life back over to the Lord last
week. And in seven days, he's lost 20 pounds
by changing his diet. So we'll see where that
one is. But he might be fourth Ron. These three
guys, the first guy is 99 years old. I ministered
to him this last week. He had, to my knowledge,
he had heard the gospel young, became a Christian
young. But at about 50 years old or so, he and
his wife became fairly successful, and he sort
of walked away from the Lord. At 99 years old,
he had not a friend in the world. His wife had
passed away. His mother -in -law, they had a
mother -in -law apartment on the back of her
house. She passed away. Everybody he knew. He
was 99 years old. Everybody he knew had passed
away. Everybody he went to school with, everybody.
And his sons had moved out of state and not talked
to him in over 15 years. His grandson had come
over to live with him for about two months. Then
he moved back with his dad and didn't talk to
him from that point on. That was about 15 years
ago. The only person that Ron knew who cared
about him at all was a Southern Baptist deacon
who lived next to him in the house next door.
He would come over and make visits and stuff.
All the time he ministered to him over about
20 years, he never shared the gospel. Never talked
to him about Jesus. I don't know for sure that
Ron was saved. But when he slipped into a coma,
they called me and I went and prayed over his
bed and I shared the gospel. He had not responded
in the least for about 36 hours. He didn't say
a word, hadn't made a move. His jaw was down
and slack to the left. His breathing was eight
times a minute. He was breathing eight times
a minute. And when I shared the gospel, his facial
expression changed and his jaw shut for a second.
And it looked like he was saying something. We
never did figure out what it was he was saying.
So I don't know for sure if Ron went to heaven
or not, but I say to you that being 99 years
old, not having a friend in the world, not a
family member around you, nobody at all. He didn't
go to church. He talked to his doctor every so
often. He would talk to the mailman when he came
around. Other than that, there was nobody. That
kind of isolation and loneliness, that is an
evil. That is an evil. Second Ron, he was in
his late 50s, and he spent most of his life on
drugs and alcohol, and he was dying. The doctor
had already told him that because of cirrhosis
of the liver, he was not doing well. And he reached
out to the Life Station and said, I've been receiving
your encouragement call. I've gotten food from
you multiple times over the last several years.
And I want to tell you that as far as I can tell,
the staff and the volunteers at the Life Station
and you personally, because I had talked to him
personally a couple of times, gone to his house.
He said you personally and the staff and volunteers
may be the only people in the world that love
me. And I want to know, will you give me a Life
Station shirt with a logo on it so I can be buried?
I've already paid for an open casket funeral.
I don't think anybody's going to come. That wasn't
true. One of his friends did come. So he was
buried in a Life Station shirt, a Life Station
logo, at like 59 years old after dying from his
addictions. The last one, Ron, he was a very
active businessman, very successful. He had a
nice pickup truck that he bought, and it was
full of tools, and he was running his own business.
And he was working all under the table, making
all the money without paying taxes, and he was
making pretty good money, $6 ,000 or $8 ,000
a month doing that with no taxes paid. He was
living in a house in East Toledo. One night,
he and his buddies were getting together drinking.
They were always doing that about five, six nights
a week. He was a little hopped up on whatever
he was into that particular night. And he hit
a patch of water or ice in the expressway, totaled
his truck. It was impounded. That meant all of
his tools. And overnight, he couldn't make any
money. And overnight, he lost all of his friends.
They kept on drinking, but they did it at somebody
else's house. So Ron called the life station,
started getting groceries. Eventually, I wound
up on his driveway, shared the gospel. He got
saved. He began to live for the Lord, started
going to church. About two years later, he passed
away from cirrhosis of the liver as well. These
are all men who saw evil firsthand that most
of us have never seen. The kind of isolation,
the kind of loneliness and sorrow that they faced.
The third Ron I told you about, he had no food
in the house for two weeks other than a five
-pound bag of rice and a few cans of green beans.
He had no food in the house for two weeks before
the first time we delivered him emergency food.
That is evil. In the urban America, there's a
lot of good things that happen down the road.
I don't want to paint a really dark picture and
make you think that America is a horrible country,
because America is the greatest country on the
face of the earth. And you can disagree with
that. I'm not preaching that. I'm just telling
you that's how I feel. That being said, in Toledo,
there are free food deserts where a person has
to walk over a mile to get to a grocery store
that sells groceries at a normal price. I wonder
why people with food stamps don't have enough
money. The in -town urban grocery stores that
are not Grover's or Walmart are like that. They
sell grocery stores at over 200 % of what you
and I would pay going to Walmart or Grover's
or whatever. So their food stamps run out by
the third week, and the government, if they give
more food stamps, the prices in those grocery
stores just go up all the more. So it doesn't
actually work. And they can't really walk the
mile to buy groceries, so they go to the carryout.
So that results in a thing called malnourishment.
Malnourishment is when you're taking in food,
so you're not actually hungry, but the food that
you're taking in isn't any good for you. And
so the children and a lot of people living in
urban America are living off of Doritos and Gatorade
that they can buy at the convenience store. There
was a young lady who started attending New Heights,
which is my Southern Baptist Church in East Toledo
there. And she started attending when she was
six. At that time, she was babysitting her three
younger siblings, doing all the diaper changing.
She was the responsible person in her house 50
hours a week. Her mom got involved with a boyfriend
who was an addict, and then she started babysitting
him. his two kids. So now she's got five kids,
three of which are in diapers, and she's babysitting
them starting at six years old. She would walk
to the convenience store with her food stamp
card, buy them all a bag of Doritos and a bottle
of Gatorade to have for lunch and dinner every
day. She did that from the time that she was
six to the time that she was 10. We got involved
somewhere in the middle there, started delivering
emergency food to the house, but we cannot provide
all the food for one family. So there were many
days a week where that was still going on. When
she would have graduated high school, she was
17 years old. She was just over 4 foot tall and
75 pounds. Because she had not developed when
she was young, she never became a full -fledged
adult in size. And I said would have graduated
high school because she became pregnant at 17
and a half and is now living in a similar situation
and has a child that she's raising in a similar
way. The reality is these are evils. They don't
come with a gun in hand. They don't come with
blood, usually. Sometimes maybe, but not usually.
Evil is not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes
evil looks like empty cupboards, silent homes,
isolated hearts, crushed hope. But I think these
subtle evils are the ones that get me the most.
I despise criminal behavior. It vexes me deeply
when I see people do things wrong against our
laws. But at the same time, I can't stand the
evils that are not illegal, for which there are
no court sentences. CSB was involved multiple
times in the life of that same lady. That's children's
services involved multiple times in the life
of that same lady who had her six -year -old
daughter changing their diapers every day, all
day. And they never took the kids out of the
home. They never determined that the kids were
actually unsafe by federal standards. And so
they didn't. Even though all they were ever eating
was mostly, you know, their mom would get them
one meal a day plus Doritos and Gatorade. That's
what they ate. It was terrible. I made a house
visit. There were literally a thousand Dorito
bags sitting everywhere. And when they didn't
have something, they would just go and find one,
stale maybe, but they'd just go and find one
and eat out of it. And that was not considered
criminal behavior. And they stayed in the household.
I can't stand that. It drives me nuts. I often
think these very things are the reason for so
much of the other things that go on. You and
I know that God is not mocked. God is present.
God is real in the world. God is active. God
hates these things that I'm talking about today.
And he does not fail to act in the face of evil.
So let's take a look for a moment at a short
passage of scripture that speaks about a time
through the prophet Isaiah, which God would intervene.
He would act to deal with those evils. And let's
see how that goes. So grab your Bibles, if you
would. Give me a little amen, maybe, as we go
to Isaiah chapter 19. Thank you very much. That
was kind of weak compared to New Heights, which
are now. They hoot. One guy says Yahtzee when
I say the Bible verse. I don't know. He's kind
of goofy, but I love him. Okay. So Isaiah 19,
we're just going to read verses 1 to 4. We're
going to really focus in on verse 3. It goes
something like this. Isaiah wrote a lot of oracles
to different countries. And you know Israel's
history with Egypt probably a little bit, how
all the false gods of Egypt have already been
deposed, including Pharaoh himself. God did that
in a miraculous way. Versus destroyed the country
to extricate his people from Egypt. The oracle
concerning Egypt, Isaiah says. Behold, the Lord
is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come
to Egypt. The idols of Egypt will tremble at
his presence and the heart of the Egyptians will
melt within them. God was going to come and you
can believe that when people are involved in
evil, that means God's wrath. God's wrath does
not mean God's anger. It means God's opposition.
So God was going to come in his opposition and
deal with the false gods of Egypt, show their
worthlessness. Verse 2 says, so I will incite
Egyptians against Egyptians. And they will each
fight against his brother and each against his
neighbor. City against city and kingdom against
kingdom. Do we not kind of see this today? Like
people against people. Everybody thinks everyone
else is the reason there's a problem. Everybody
thinks that somebody else is the problem. And
there is a lot of... striving, fighting, pushing,
especially in large urban environments to try
to find. And I'm not saying everybody's involved
in criminal behavior, but everybody's trying
to find their way, work their strategy to get
ahead. And a lot of times it's to get up over
on top of somebody else in order to do well.
And God said, that's what's going to happen.
God would incite the Egyptians against Egyptians.
Verse three then says, then the spirit of the
Egyptians will be demoralized within them. Their
spirit be crushed, broken up like the internal
strength of the Egyptians just giving out. He
says, and I will confound their strategy. That
means nothing that they would try to do to solve
the problem is going to work. It's going to bring
them to the point of going like, what is going
to do this? What's going to work? There is nothing.
There seems to be nothing that can actually solve
these problems. So that they will resort to idols
and ghosts of the dead and to mediums and spiritists.
Now, gosh, I mean, did that catch you like it
catches me? Like, is that what you expect? God's
wrath comes in and they realize that the idols
are worthless. All the false gods of Egypt are
worthless. All the priests and magicians, they
can't do anything, right? They really have no
solutions whatsoever. And instead of them going,
oh, you know, we need to turn to God. We need
to repent and turn to God. Instead of that happening,
they resort to what? To the idols and the ghosts
of the dead and mediums and spiritists. And the
King James is neat there. It calls it wizards.
Right. And the idea is people who seem to have
an otherworldly connection. So there are people
that live in urban environments that are authority
in their community. And a lot of times they're
drug dealers or gang people or there or whatever.
They they seem to have it together in some way.
And people are turning to them rather than turning
to God at that moment when everything that they've
been trying to do is confounded. Just like the
Egyptians are being shown that Isaiah said that
they would do. They'll turn to anybody, to anything.
Verse four says, moreover, I will deliver the
Egyptians into the hand of a cruel master. Now,
you and I know who that cruel master is, right?
For the people who don't know the Lord. And a
mighty king will rule over them, declares the
Lord God of hosts. So just a real quick summary.
God's presence and accordingly his wrath will
be visited on the Egyptians who already have
a proven past that their idolatry is worthless,
right? The Egyptians would fall apart in that
moment. The Egyptians would then turn to their
false gods and idols all the more, and they would
turn to people who seemed to have otherworldly
attachments. The idols have nothing, are nothing,
and yet they have become the center of modern
Egyptian society again. And now they're going
to get even more prominence as God tries to redirect,
God does enact his justice, and the people instead
turn again to the idols. Because their false
gods could do nothing, God would then turn them
against each other. They begin to think it's
everyone else's fault. And God will make their
plans, ideas, and strategies come to nothing.
Ultimately, God will give them over to a cruel
ruler. This kind of makes God seem kind of harsh,
right? The key verse of the life station then
is Romans 12 .21, which says, Be not overcome
by evil, but overcome evil with good. The context
of that verse is talking about your enemies.
So it's basically saying when your enemies are
coming against you, do good to them, right? Like
we might want to do bad, but we actually should
do good because you can't overcome evil with
evil. And when you do bad to people, that's evil,
right? So you can't overcome evil with evil.
You have to overcome it with good. So Paul is
calling them out in the book of Romans. He's
writing to Rome saying, do good. Do good to them.
And he even goes so far as to keep coals on their
heads because they're going to realize how stupid
they're being because you're doing good to them
when they're trying to do evil to you, right?
So that's the kind of God that we serve. The
life station verse then leads us to a strategy
where we desire to war on behalf of God to do
good in the areas of hunger, poverty, loneliness,
and hopelessness. God says these in his word.
These are paraphrases a little bit. You might
want to look up the verses if you want to get
the exact wording, but I'm just going to kind
of go through them real quick. Isaiah 55, 6 -7,
it says, Seek the Lord while he may be found.
Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked
forsake their ways. Let them turn to the Lord,
and he will have mercy on them. Acts 3, 19 says,
Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins
may be blotted out. Joel 2, 13, Rend your heart
and not your garments. Return to the Lord your
God, for he is gracious and compassionate. 2
Chronicles 7 .14 says, If my people, which are
called by my name, shall humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked
ways, then will I hear from heaven. And he goes
on, of course. James 4 .8, Draw near to God,
and he will draw near to you. Malachi 3 .7, Return
to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord
of hosts. The process... as described, goes exactly
this way for many people who are in the world
and even believers who are not putting God first.
God sees the idolatry, shows up to confound,
to demonstrate their weakness and their worthlessness.
They run all the more to worthless idols and
turn to those who claim to have some power or
connection. I thought, why? What's our role here?
And then I realized people need an option. People
need a herald to know that they can turn back.
Where's Ivan? Right? That they can turn back.
You see, it happens this way. In that moment,
there's kind of like three major ways. The first
one is that they are ignorant. See, I was 25
years old. I'm going to tell you, I was ignorant
of the gospel. I believed that there was a God
generally. I didn't know anything about Jesus.
I'd never heard the truth. I was given a Bible
when I was young, but my mom, who was not a Christian,
thought everybody in the church was looking at
us when we came in, and so she wouldn't let us
go anymore. And so occasionally I would poke
at the pages of the Bible. I didn't really know
anything about Jesus. I didn't know anything.
And I got to the point where I owned a house
where really the bank owned it, and I could barely
afford the mortgage. I had two cars, both with
loans. I could barely afford that. And I started
thinking, What I'm doing kind of isn't working.
I still feel empty. I don't feel alive. I don't
know what. I was confounded. And one day I was
riding back from BG after buying a ride in Longmore,
which was like the last thing on earth. I had
a motorcycle, two cars, a house, a kid, a wife,
beautiful wife, a child on the way, a job, a
career. I had literally all the trappings of
life, but none of them were of any value internally
to me. I just felt empty. And I thought, I got
to know. Well, there was one, exactly one person.
grandmother who had ever said anything about
god or jesus in my life she was the only one
and i and i probably fortunately did not know
a drug dealer i didn't have the opportunity to
join a gang right i there was no way i could
steal large sums of money at work and get ahead
right so i didn't have those opportunities but
i had a person who told me something about god
so i started going to church and then i was ignorant
and eventually after six months i became less
ignorant And then God called me, and I ignorantly,
foolishly said no two weeks in a row after I
was sure. And then the third week, I thought,
well, God might not call again. And I finally
gave in and surrendered my life. It happens that
when people are confounded and in that moment,
sometimes they're just ignorant. They just don't
know. Some people actually are programmed. Programmed
by culture, parents, school, media, social media,
popular culture, icons, everywhere you look.
There is programming to tell you that you don't
need God. God is not real. God did not create
everything. That the story of evolution makes
more sense, etc., etc., etc. All of which is
lies. I get that. But I was programmed. By my
parents, who never went to church when we were
kids, never read the Bible, never prayed. My
dad was a backslidden Christian. We never did
any of that. I was programmed to think that God
was just some fairy tale that other people believed
in. And there are people who are in that place.
And then thirdly, there are people who arrive
in that place where they see what they have been
trying is not working. And it happens that no
one is there to offer them a chance to turn to
God. And they then turn to whatever seems to
be working for somebody else, whatever seems
to hold promise. So this is our role. We show
up at that particular juncture, at that moment
where they are thinking they need to do something
differently, and we offer them a biblical solution,
which is nothing less than turning to God. This
is our role. Now, what does it look like, actually?
Well, first of all, you realize that people in
that situation, they're confounded, they're hungry.
Right. So it's got to look like food. If people
come to you and they're literally starving. Guy
told me we've only had a bag of rice in the house
for the last four days. We don't know what we're
going to eat. We had refugees from another country
living in Toledo. And the woman's breast milk
dried up because she and her husband had not
eaten in three days. They gave all the food they
had to their nine year old son. So her breast
milk dried up. So their seven month old baby
would not stop crying. City of Toledo, just north
of Maumee. So we delivered food within 45 minutes.
And they barely spoke English. We got them connected
with somebody locally that that spoke both languages
so that he could begin to find employment and
get back on his feet. If you don't offer food.
Why not? Right. And so we offer food. When I
started working, the first month I worked there
15 years ago, we did six, six houses of emergency
food. The next month it went to 60 because the
rumors that we were going to be closed died down.
Now it's. 1 ,700 families a month, 50 % of which
is delivery. If you look on the page that I handed
out, there's a thing that looks all blue. So
that's the city of Toledo. The Maumee River runs
through it from the lower middle to the upper
right. And every one of those pins represents
a household that the life station has provided
emergency food for. We have now reached a place
where we have provided emergency food. Wait for
it. on every city block in the city of Toledo.
Either they came to us to get it or we delivered
it to them. So we deliver because when people
are isolated, they are disabled, they're mentally
health problems, keep them from going to pantries
or whatever, they still need the food. So our
driver goes there and while he's there, he can
share the gospel and he gives the material and
they get signed up for our encouragement calls
and everything like that. I don't want to get
ahead of myself. I'm trying to summarize. So
food and clothing. And then we talked about malnutrition.
We started food and nutrition training, three
lessons where they can learn what foods are actually
good to eat and how to put together a meal and
how to cook a basic dish with very basic supplies
that you can literally do stir fry on a couple
bucks for a family of four. And you don't have
to eat Doritos, even though the rice costs 200
times or 200 percent as much as it does anywhere
else. Those classes are available for people
to do from their homes for free. We pray with
people on their porches at the life station.
We share the gospel, ask people, are they professional
Christians? Do they have a church home? Every
client who ever signs up at the life station
is asked, do they know Christ and do they have
a church home? And if they don't and they're
willing, we share. And we help them find a home.
On our church hunting page, we point them to
Southern Baptist churches and other churches
of like faith. We describe what a good church
is. We provide Right Now Media, which has over
10 ,000 Bible studies taught by pastors all over
the country. So they can literally watch hours
and hours and hours of Bible taught in their
homes. We have the I Can Pray group, which any
of you can sign up, where you actually get the
names of your neighbors so you can pray for them
specifically. The people near you get their names
based on... Recent census material. So they recently
moved. It's not the right name. We've got now
112 households who have agreed to pray for their
neighbors across the city. We anticipate that
it will take probably 4 ,000 households to get
every name in the city prayed for. Got a long
way to go. We've got the call center where they
can call every day for prayer, to order their
emergency food because someone just can't use
a computer. Then we started a publishing arm
where we published books. that go out over the
entire world. And the gospel is presented in
this book four times. A person can get saved
four different ways, basically, in this story,
which is what happens to be about the first of
the last 12 Christians who will get saved before
Christ comes again. We started a website called
ameldan .com, which sells fun and light products
like Lammy here. And when people buy this, all
the profit goes to the life station. We don't
make a lot of money doing that. In fact, Google
blacklisted us because, wait for it, Our website
is too Christian. So you can Google, you can
find it, but it will never be advertised on Google
because our website is too faith -based. We started
a cell phone app in which all of the products
and all of the services of the Life Station are
laid out in there. And we ask people, wherever
they are, when they get food from us, to think
about how they can overcome evil with good where
they live. I told you about the... The encouragement
call, just briefly, the encouragement call goes
out now to 1 ,900 households, 1 ,900 different
phones. They receive a call two to three times
a week. All it is is 90 seconds on Bible. It's
one or two verses, 90 seconds about one or two
verses, and it goes out as an automated call.
Since that began now, 362 ,000, you see the big
red number, 362 ,108 times somebody has received
a message from the encouragement call just talking
about a verse or two of the Bible. It's crazy.
But that's not even as crazy as God wanted to
make it. It baffles me that that's even possible.
But if you look at the bottom down here, you
see this little ring? So as I stand here today,
I pulled this up a day before yesterday, so it
probably has grown a little bit. That encouragement
call has been listened to in 106 cities across
the globe. So that podcast, we take that encouragement
call, then we repeat it on the podcast, and then
people can listen to it. It's called Life for
Toledo. You can get it on. Google, Siri, Alexa,
on your phone, wherever, it's all free. And then
now it plays ads on there that are just, we've
blackmailed or blacked out all the bad kinds
of ads. You shouldn't hear any ad that's not
godly, right? But it plays ads and we get pennies
when people listen to it. I would encourage you,
if you need encouragement or you know somebody
does, share that with them. When they listen,
we'll get two or three cents. I'll actually get
two or three cents every time somebody listens
to a 90 -second encouragement message. But not
only has it been in 106 cities to represent 50
countries. That's world missions arising out
of God's desire to reach people when they are
confounded, when they are stuck, when their hearts
are melting within them and they're trying to
figure out what to do to make sure that somebody
is available to tell them about Jesus and to
say to turn. But listen, that message, this message,
everything I'm talking about is too bold. Because
just as the... just the same as these people
who are in that situation need to hear and respond.
There is another situation that people sometimes
find themselves in that they also need to hear.
Generosity, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and
when necessary, self -control, right? The Bible
says about generosity, Proverbs 19, 17, whoever
is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and he
will reward them for what they have done. And
1 John 3, 17 questions how God's love can abide
in someone who has worldly goods but closes their
heart to a brother in need. In Matthew 19, 21,
Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell his
possessions and give to the poor. That's not
a principle, by the way. You don't have to go
sell everything you own and give it to the poor.
But what is a principle is if your money, if
your generosity is lacking and your money is
standing in the way of you doing what God wants
you to do, then you do need to get rid of it
so you can get right with God. And so Jesus was
saying, let's get ourselves right with God through
him. And then that man could not do that. He
couldn't give up his money. Leviticus 19, 9 -10
and 23 -22 instructs farmers not to harvest the
corners of their field, but leaving a portion
of what they sow for the poor and the sojourner.
Proverbs 31, 8 -9 commands leaders and the fortunate
to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves
and to defend the rights of the destitute. Proverbs
28 .27 warns of neglect when it says that those
who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those
who close their eyes to them receive many curses.
Generosity is not a check with a big number and
a dollar sign. It's a state of being. Poor men
who have little often give as much as they can
and never miss it, while wealthy men often count
the dollars and cents and fail to give what they
could. It's happened many times that we've ministered
to people on their way down. What do I mean by
that? I mean, I'm talking about people who had
a nice house, cars, family, and they fell for
a scam or they were beset by a huge medical bill.
They were robbed or got addicted to painkillers
after a surgery, which can happen to anybody.
Now they've lost all that prosperity that they
had. See, God has to get his glory, and in order
for God to keep being God, people will endure
hardship on this earth. We are called to consider
it great joy when we face tribulation because
of the fruits that it presents in us. This is
especially true of people that think they have
it all together, people that think that they're
doing well, those who think it's okay to let
someone else handle the day -to -day kingdom
work and kingdom cost. which you've heard about
today, I could not have orchestrated. In my wildest
dreams, I couldn't have done it. I couldn't even
have stood in front of you. I missed 38 days
in my junior year of high school to avoid every
time I was supposed to stand in front of the
class and give a report. My mother didn't mind
if I lied about not going to school, and so I
was sick or hurting. We had to go out of town.
Everything you can imagine to miss every report
in front of class. And they still got me for
one, but I was so badly trembling that the teacher
let me sit in my desk. to give the report. When
God said, you're going to preach the gospel,
I said, no way. A man in my church said, I want
you to preach at the Toledo Gospel Rescue Mission
coming up. I believe God's calling you to do
that. I said, oh, no. He said, you won't even
pray about it. I said, no, I will not. I will
not. I was a young Christian, a year, year and
a half. I said, I will not. There's no way. I
know who I am. I know who God made me to be.
That's definitely not me. I'm not going to do
it. 48 hours, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat.
I felt sick. I didn't have a fever, but I felt
so terrible. And at the end of 48 hours, I asked
the Lord, I said, is this about that pray thing?
About that preaching thing? And he said, why,
yes, it is. And I said, do you want me to call
him right now? And he said, why, yes, I do. And
I said, and you want me to tell him that I'll
preach? And he said, yes, you will. So I made
the phone call, told him I would preach. I had
no idea what that would look like. When the day
came, I stood up in front of the Toledo Gospel
Rescue Mission with my sermon written out exactly
as I would say every single word on 23 note cards
front and back. And I stood there and I read
them until about the 11th note card. And there
was a guy sitting in the aisle about where you're
sitting and he was falling asleep. And if they
fell asleep, they weren't allowed to eat. And
they had warned me of that. I tried raising my
voice and he didn't respond. And so I took the
last 12 note cards front and back and I went
down and I stood on the aisle in front of him.
about three feet in front of him, and I read
the note cards directly to him so he could stay
awake so he could eat. Now, I've been preaching
for a few years now, almost 20. So that's an
old story. But the bottom line is, what I brought
to this whole program, it wouldn't fill a bucket
of dirt. And if it did, it would be God's dirt,
not mine. If we will take all that we are and
put it into God's hands, he will make of it something
amazing, like a podcast that plays preaching
the gospel. The New Heights podcast, just a little
side note, by the way, the New Heights podcast
is very similar. It also plays in many countries.
In fact, the number one country, Vietnam. More
people listen to my service in Vietnam than come
to my church in a week. I don't get it, except
I do get it. Somebody has to be standing at the
moment in time at which people are confounded,
their hearts are melting in them, and they're
reaching out for money. Somebody who's not a
demon worshiper, somebody who's not a drug dealer
or a gang member will jump them in. Somebody
will not belittle them and tell them how worthless
they are, but somebody who will offer them an
opportunity to turn to God. God chooses to use
us as ministers of reconciliation. Reconciliation
chooses to use us at the moment in time when
men lost in evil would turn to evil for supposed
solution. God would like to use us to present
an alternative. If you're here and you've never
turned to the Lord yourself, even if people thought
you did or whatever, you've never taken, when
I got saved, my wife asked me, the second day
that I refused God after he called me, she said,
I said to her, I think I'm going to accept Jesus
Christ. And she said, well, what does that mean?
I said, to tell you the truth, I really don't
know. I said, but I do know just exactly one
thing. It'll change everything. I said, it's
going to change everything. It'll change who
I am as a man, and if after that you don't want
me, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to have
to do it. I'm going to have to live for Jesus.
And in her lost person way, not knowing Jesus
herself, but believing God was some person in
the sky, she said, well, you do what you got
to do, and I'll do what I got to do. And I'm
like... Well, okay, that's what I was going to
do. So we'll see what happens. Praise the Lord.
Two weeks later, she gave her life to the Lord
under the same principle, which was that whatever
God wants to make out of this mess that we are,
that's what it's going to be. Now my wife, praise
the Lord, we give to the ministry and serve in
the ministry and donate in all kinds of crazy
ways that we never expected. But she has a job
which a person cannot have without a master's
degree. This is unheard of. And she's never had
a day of college in her life. So that's how we
survive. I'm not a good fundraiser. So if you're
here today and you feel like the Lord is asking
you, you know, like, hey, give to the life station
or give to some cause that you know of that's
here in your church or give in your community
or step out and work and serve and sweat a little
more and things like that, then definitely do
that, right? Overcome evil with good. I just
keep thinking God's going to provide. And so
far, he always has. I drove here today in a van
that's got 283 ,000 miles on it. And it runs
great. That van was given to me 12 years ago
by a church in Mississippi because my wife needed
a car to get to work. And we didn't have one.
And it's still running, 283 ,000 miles. Since
then, we bought a new, to us, it's a used car,
which she's driving, and now it's reaching 250
,000 miles, and it still runs great. God just,
I believe he's going to take care of it. But
it is our great blessing to realize that he might
choose to make us the person that stands at that
junction. You could later today, you could be
talking to a waitress. I've had it happen. I
went to Tony Paco's, this is my closing story.
I went to Tony Paco's with a couple of guys who
wanted to bring a youth group to Toyota. Met
a waitress there. Her name was Kendra. She's
one of four. In 25 years, she's one of four Kendras
that I can tell you about. I'll just tell you
hers. And she come up to the table and I basically
started talking to her, shared with her about
fear. I'm not a good evangelist either. I just,
like, people, if they start giving me the idea
they want to talk about Jesus, I just kind of,
like, spew all over them. It's not neat. It's
not professional. It's nothing like that. And
I just started sharing the gospel. And she started
crying at the table. And she was bartending and
also waiting on our table. Like, the one section,
they do that. And she had to go and come back
and go and come back. And finally, she stood
at the table at one o 'clock in the afternoon.
These two teenage kids who came with their youth
pastor to find out where they're going to bring
the mission team up. And both of them, and I
didn't know this, but both of the kids were only
Christians for like two months. And she stood
at the table bawling like a baby and gave her
life to Christ. And everybody in the restaurant
looking at her like she's some kind of freak.
I don't know, maybe they were looking at me.
Anyway, the point is, you could be the one. Who
shows up at the moment when they're confounded
and you just need to, whatever you can do, however
you can get it out. Jesus is everything to me.
Just turn to God. Like, how do I turn to God?
Through Jesus. What does that look like? I don't
know, but it'll change everything. You just did
everything you need to do. If you run into somebody
who's stuck in a Catholic religion, for example,
or in another faith where the gospel is... kind
of muddied by a lot of things, then just say,
you need to be born again. You need to have a
fresh start. Did you ever have a fresh start?
Oh, I've been a Christian my whole life. Listen,
if you've been a Christian your whole life, you
ain't saved. Because the Bible says, Jesus said
to Nicodemus, you will be saved when you're born
again. When you have a fresh start. So if you're
here today and you never had a fresh start, get
one here today right now while you're here. And
if you're here today and you did have a fresh
start, I want you to think about how you too
can be involved in overcoming evil with good.
And if that doesn't involve the Southside Life
Station, that's okay. But if it does, we need
all the help we can get. We're moving tens of
thousands of pounds of groceries. That was never
in my plan. I hurt my back a couple years ago.
Now, whenever I lift a can, it doesn't matter
if it's four ounces, I wear a back brace. Like,
I'll pick up one can, I'll put it in my back
brace first, right? Because I learned. And there
is work to be done. And there are people being
reached, and some of them are in Afghanistan.
Which is crazy. You have the details. You can
look at the paper. Thank you very much for having
me today. Let us work together to overcome evil.
Let us work together to overcome evil with good.
Thank you.