So I rode my bicycle for a year in 2010 from Canada to Columbia and as part of that journey I discovered that basically a billion people in the world didn't have access to clean drinking water.
So I began this journey and did some higher level education and been on a series of trips with my friends in the last six years.
That's all led us to this spot now where we've become very interested in small scale decentralized desalinization projects.
It's really the future for us.
It's all about relationships.
The Bible says that Jesus came into all the monks.
So he left heaven to dwell among the people.
It also says the son of man be feeding and drinking.
That's what we do. We dwell with people, hang out and eat.
That is ministry. That's love. Building long term relationships.
Not to say, hey to be a part of what we're doing you have to come to our thing at this place.
We want to be a part of what they're doing and point them and show them where God is working in their life.
And if you've been down here and you come and see, you see God working in all these different ways of through line connecting people's lives and stories.
Like that's God. That is God.
I've surfed since I was 12 years old.
And it's always been the way that I've made my friends.
And most of the trips that we've done have revolved around surfing.
And out of our time together surfing we actually got to know people and develop some really good friendships.
And kind of through that we saw some of the challenges they were facing with water.
And we tried our best as their friends to try to start to meet that need.
And so out of our relationships from surfing and being friends for a few years we have kind of formed a way to try and help here in the community.
So six years ago when we first came down here we just started building relationships and looking for needs.
One of the things that we saw that was a huge issue in the beach cities here was that they didn't have access to clean water.
They only had a couple of days a week where they had access to any water that they could use in their homes.
So we realized that clean water was a big deal.
And we started by doing filtration.
And so we brought filtration in and we began handing out filters and we were working with a lot of the families and the schools in the area.
And as we kind of got into it we realized that the need was bigger than just the filters.
We needed something that was sustainable and we needed something that was scalable.
Desalinization was something that actually just occurred to me and it was sort of ironic because I had been playing in the ocean since I was 12 as a kid.
The thought first occurred to me that wait a second, the thing that I've been playing in can actually be incredibly helpful to people for their water rights and access if we can just help them get it.
And with that dream in mind we began working and researching how can we do that in a simple way.
And we looked all over the globe and we couldn't find a small scale decentralized, de-cell project happening that we could emulate.
So we decided to jump in with both feet and figure it out and make this place the place where we would begin to experiment and find a model that we could begin to scale all over the world.
As we've done research for water as it relates to the problem that it is now, there's a billion people, by 2050 it will be a two billion person problem.
There's sort of some real challenges we're facing in the world of water and much have to do with access and distribution.
Can we help people access the water they need out of the ocean and then can we distribute it for free?
Because if you can help people access their water from the ocean they'll have an unlimited supply.
If you can make the price point of zero that helps people economically to get all the health benefits of that.
So that's really what we're passionate about and it's so important because there are 108 countries in the world that have a coastline that are directly accessible to the ocean.
And in those 108 countries is where you find the lowest levels of poverty and the people that actually need the economic benefit most.
So we want to be a platform to distribute, disseminate water from the ocean for free.
Part of that is helping people secure their long term water rights.
When we talk about doing small, decentralized desalinization projects, what that does is that helps people secure their long term access to water.
And then out of that, that helps people's health, it helps people's economics, it helps them grow their own food.
There are all sorts of empowering aspects that come from that.
So we're excited about the future. We want to be a platform that helps people.
So logistically we looked for a model that we could take, not only use here in El Salvador, but take it and reproduce it around the world.
We're building this model we couldn't find anywhere else here in Palmer Seaco.
We've now formed a partnership with Spectre Watermakers and we have purchased a system from them. There's about 18 of them in the world that have been made.
We have one of them for our friends here in Palmer Seaco, El Salvador.
And that system is small, it checks in as two pieces of luggage on commercial flights so it's scalable.
We're really excited about that because ultimately we want people who are younger, who haven't put boots down yet
and establish where they're going to be for a long time to be able to take a system like this and go do a bunch of good.
Oftentimes there's this feeling of need to see fruit in your life.
So we want to just put a bunch of more branches on our trees so we can see fruit.
But the real fruit is not on your own tree.
Real fruit happens when you see your fruit grow on other people's trees.
And the only way that fruit grows on other people's trees is when you die.
It's not about your name. It's about dying to anything, your name, your brand, your name, your win, your success, your metrics of measurement.
To see other people win, to see other people's stories, to see them have a successful story.
You know you're part of it, whether you get credit or not. You make heroes out of people.
Your fruit grows on their trees.
Thank you for your time. We would love to partner with you.
Water is a global problem. It's going to take as many partners as we can to help solve this problem.
We'd love for you to partner with us. If you can go to our website at www.oceanwater.com.
That's ocnwtr.com. We'd love that. Thanks.
Welcome to Ocean Water. We hope you feel refreshed by the living water of Jesus Christ as we help people receive drinking water from the ocean for free.
Thanks for joining us for this weekend's message. And if you enjoy it, please share it with a friend.
I'm Ryan with Ocean Water. I'm here today at the beach where I live in San Clemente, California.
It's a beautiful day. We've had some really warm water. We've had some great waves this week.
That's exactly why we live at the beach. I'm stoked that you could be with us for this week's Beach Talk.
We've been working our way, teaching through the Bible. We read every day together.
If you'd like to do that, you can join with us today. We're in Job chapter 40.
It says, Moreover, God said to Job, shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him.
Job, are you trying to instruct me? Isn't that ridiculous?
Do you think that anybody trying to instruct God, how foolish?
You're looking at one. Many times I've tried to instruct God.
I'll say, now God, this is the way that I see it. And I think that you should do things exactly the way that I think.
And I say things like, God, why aren't you doing things the way that I think they should be done?
This is foolish thinking. And then I get upset when God doesn't do what I want.
That's silly. I seek to instruct God and then I get upset when he doesn't follow my directions.
Unfortunately, there are those who are thinking the same types of things today.
We think that God should do what we want him to do. God's ways are not our ways.
A lot of times we feel like we've got to instruct God and then he's supposed to follow our directions.
And actually the opposite is true. God gives us the directions and we're supposed to follow them.
An ant can't give directions to a human being because the ant doesn't have the capacity to understand in the same way.
God, it's the same way.
A lot of times you try to take control of our destiny. We try to put it into our own hands.
And we try to constantly instruct God. Well, that's dangerous.
God said to Job, can the person who contends with the Almighty instruct him?
And Job answers, well, I'm vile. How should I answer you?
In Job 40 verse 2, God said, hey, look, you've been trying to instruct me. You've been trying to tell me.
You've been trying to give me direction. Job said, well, what else can I say?
I'm not a very good person. That's exactly what I think. I'm not a very good person.
So it's my job to try to understand God and not to tell him what to do.
So we often get caught up in this. The entire book of Job is this back and forth between Job's belief and his friend's belief
and the way things should be and then God's understanding of the way things really are.
The whole book is kind of a commentary on this.
And picking up in verse 5, think about this for a moment, because I think quite often we're guilty of this in our own lives.
Condemning God in seeking to make ourselves righteous.
We say, I don't know how God could do that to me after all when I'm so good, good, I'm so pure,
and I'm so righteous, and I understand everything, and I know everything.
Why, God, would you allow this to happen to me? God, this isn't fair. This isn't just.
We oftentimes operate with a very limited amount of knowledge.
Can the arm say to God? Can the thunder tell God?
Nature's full of examples. We explore Job.
And God says, I want you to do this. Can you deck yourself with majesty and excellency?
Can you array yourself with glory and beauty?
You have the rage of an angry person. Behold, everyone on earth, I can bring low.
And I can put the wicked in their place. I can hide them in the dust again.
And then they'll have to figure out how to connect with me.
Now, God says, if you can do these things, then I'll confess to you that your right hand can save people.
That you can help people.
Well, God goes on and gives Job the illustration of an elephant and talks to the elephant.
He gives Job the description of the elephant, its size, its diet, and so forth at the end of chapter 40.
And then he says, he starts to speak of this thing called the Leviathan.
Now, what's a Leviathan? Well, it's a giant creature. God made the creature.
It might have been a crocodile. It might have been even a dragon, maybe.
A large reptile. Maybe a hippopotamus.
These are just some opinions.
And God says, can you catch the Leviathan, this large creature?
Can you hook it like with a fish? Can you put the hook in its nose?
Can you bore through its jaw?
Does the Leviathan pray to you? Does it ask you for help? Does it make a covenant with you?
Will you take the Leviathan as a servant?
Will you play with him like a bird?
Or give him things to do?
God asks a series of questions to Job to get Job to understand that his ways are not our ways.
That's oftentimes how God asks us questions.
He says, he'll ask me a question to get me to think.
See, the best way to get people to think is not to give them the facts.
It's to ask them a question.
When you give people the facts, they tend to figure it out.
When you ask people a question, it helps them think.
This is what Socrates figured out. It's called the Socratic Method.
It helps people learn by asking questions.
God goes on to speak in the Leviathan and his strength and so forth,
and showing Job that he really doesn't have that much power over nature.
God has the power over nature. God has the power over the Leviathan.
And God has the power over us.
So at the end of the book, God's drawing this perspective to Job, common control.
And then Job finally says, God, I know that you know everything,
and that no thought can be withheld from you.
Job 42, this is pretty important, that we know that God can do everything.
And secondly, that we can't hide a single thought from God.
The Bible says concerning Jesus that he didn't need anyone to come and tell him
and other people because he knew how man really was.
You know, we can't hide any of our thoughts from God.
The Bible tells us that every day our thoughts and our lives,
that one day our thoughts will all be judged.
God is the discerner of thoughts and the intentions of man.
That's what makes God the judge.
That's why we're warned so harshly to never judge other people
because we always do it with a limited amount of information.
God has all the thoughts. God has all the wisdom.
God has all the knowledge. That's what makes God the judge of the entire world.
Jesus will one day judge all of us based on our circumstances,
our thoughts, our motives, and our intentions.
That's why our lives, each minute, each moment, each hour, each day, each week,
each month, should be lived with the perspective that one day I give an account of my life to God.
That's the fear of God when we understand that everything that we've been given,
just like Job, all the wealth, all the riches, all the influence,
one day we're going to give an account for our life before God.
He asks a question. Does God hide His counsel without knowledge?
Well, Job is confessing. He says,
I've talked about things that I don't understand, things that are too wonderful for me,
things that I didn't know. You ever done that?
He says, God, I've been talking kind of out of turn. I didn't even know what I was talking about.
I say that to God all the time. God, I'm sorry. I literally don't even know what I'm talking about.
Sometimes we're so confident in our knowledge. We're so confident in our beliefs
only to have to go back and apologize later on because we spoke not with all the knowledge
or not with all the information. We have to go back and we have to apologize. I've done it many, many times.
This is the conversation that Job is having with God.
This is the conversation that we have with God.
God is always wanting us to trust Him more, just like He wanted Job to trust Him through this time in His life.
Now, think about that. Do you trust God through everything in your life, through all your health,
through all your wealth, through all your influence?
You know, the Bible says, the blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
God always is looking for the purity of our heart, the purity of our intentions, and the purity of our motives.
So we want to line up our intentions and line up our motives, line up our agenda with God's agenda.
That's making followers of Jesus, making more families of followers of Jesus, known as churches.
That is our mission. That is what God wants us to do.
Now, with ocean water, we do that in a few different ways.
Primarily, we're helping people get a permanent supply of water out of the ocean.
God's happy with this. That's why God's helping us. God made the ocean for free.
God wants people to have access to the ocean for free, especially when it comes to the water they need every day to survive.
God is looking for us to see if we'll line up our motives with Him.
Isaiah says, woe is me. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.
You see, seeing God gives us the greatest insight on ourselves.
A lot of times, people will say, well, you know, I'm pretty good. I'm a pretty good guy.
When you get an elevated view of God, you get a clear view of yourself.
If you don't have a view of God correctly, you can't see yourself correctly.
We think all sorts of things about ourselves, but then when we see God, high-lifted up,
we understand our place in the world, and we understand our place in the universe.
That is a humbling thing. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. God made us.
So, so, that after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord turned to his friends, to Eliphaz,
and he says, my wrath is kindled against you guys, your friends, because you give Job all of this terrible advice
about what you thought I was doing in his life, and all these philosophies, and all these ideas,
and frankly, all of these meaningless cliches that are never helpful to people when they're going through suffering,
and they're having to persevere through a trial. Meaningless cliches never help.
He says, well, I'll deal with you, and you too, Job's friends, you'll give an account of your life to me as well,
just like my Job, just like my servant Job.
Now let me say that God doesn't like us to go around saying false things about him.
He doesn't appreciate that. Or go around speaking for him things that he hasn't said.
Because a lot of us in the world today that are guilty are speaking for God about things that he didn't necessarily say.
The Bachelors of Friendship, they started theorizing and hypothesizing about what they thought God was saying.
They were absolutely wrong. So what we want to do, we want to be very careful to speak for God.
The best thing that we can do is let God speak for himself. That's why we quote scripture.
That's why we quote the Bible. That's why it's important that we read the Bible every day, know the Bible every day.
That's why it's important that we make time in our life for every word of God every day in our life.
We want to quote God's word and let God speak for himself instead of giving our opinions about what we think God is saying.
That shows honor to God and honor to his word.
So Job's gone through a terrible amount of suffering, a terrible amount of trial, a terrible amount of unjustness,
things that he didn't deserve in his life. His friends came along and hypothesized and came up with their ideas
and their interpretation of what was happening to him.
And really, God sort of brings this conversation together full swing of the earth.
And God actually gave everything back to Job. The camels, the oxen, the land.
He had seven sons and three daughters. God gave it all back to Job more than he had at the beginning.
That's exactly what God wants to do with us when he sends us through a trial.
God wants to reward us for the faithfulness that we've had to him through every trial that we've had in our life.
God wants to give us that blessing and he wants to come through and he wants to reward us just like he did with Job.
In all the land, there were no women found as fair as the daughters of Job.
And Job gave them inheritance along with their brothers and Job actually ended up living to 140 years old.
Now, Job was a contemporary to Abraham as he was. This is a long time to live.
Abraham lived to be about 180. Now, this was just a few generations after the flood.
And so, after this trial, after this experience, Job lived 140 years.
You know, we have a lot of life to live after we go through a lot of the difficulty.
A lot of us give up in the middle of the difficulty.
And we need to hold on because there's so much more that we're going to have an experience with God when we get through that trial.
The worst time to give up on a trial is in the middle of it.
We want to hold on, get to the other side, and enjoy the lessons that God taught us through trial.
Now, a lot of times you'll see ungodly people prosper. You have to ignore that.
There's some people that are certain about their answers. You have to ignore that.
We suffer. We don't always get to know the reason. We experience pain.
Sometimes godly people don't live long lives. We're never promised a long life.
We're promised eternal life.
That's why we always want to make sure that our lives are connected to Jesus and that they're right with Jesus.
Job's friend said, it doesn't pay to try to live right. It doesn't pay to try to do good.
Because you're going to get afflicted anyways. Boy, were they wrong.
These are the wrong conclusions.
What we need to realize is that this present suffering is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is going to be revealed when Jesus comes for us.
So if we do experience hardship or suffering or disappointment,
we can't compare it with the glory that God is going to dispel upon us in eternity.
For this present suffering, which is a moment, it works God's exceeding eternal weight of his kingdom.
Corinthians 1, 4.
Now it's important to remember that God deals with us. He always has eternity in him.
We have tomorrow in mind. We have next week in mind. God has eternity in him.
He has a much different perspective.
God is interested in our eternal comfort, not our temporary comfort.
We're called sacrifice now for the benefit of eternity.
That's a mature Christian perspective.
Now, there might be things in your life right now that are stumbling you and are trying to drag you down.
But God loves you and he wants you to be with him eternally.
And sometimes he'll take away earthly, temporary things to get us to think about long term, eternal things.
It's not that God doesn't love us. It's not that God's angry with us.
It's not that God wants to punish us.
It's that God is looking out for our long term welfare because he knows us so much better than we know ourselves.
God knows our weaknesses. God's trying to shield us and protect us just like a good here.
You know, when your kids are small, we see things as parents.
Where we protect them, you'll see that car that's speeding up.
You'll see that unsafe merger onto the freeway.
And we know as parents we have a different perspective.
And we move in a fashion that protects our children and our family members.
Sometimes we'll have to take away things from our kids even though they don't understand and even though they don't comprehend.
And they'll cry and they won't like it.
They'll even accuse us of being mean. But that's all part of the process of looking out for someone's long term benefit and respect.
That's why the Bible says discipline through God shows that you're his child.
A lot of times we yell at God and we're angry with him.
We say, God, I didn't want that. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want to go through that.
Are you just messing with me? He's not.
He has our long term benefit.
He looks at things eternally. And he deals with us in this fashion.
Isn't that awesome? It just makes me want to trust God more knowing that he sees a lot more than Ryan sees.
He sees a lot more than everyone sees.
So although we can't see where he's taking us, we can learn to trust his hand and trust his heart.
So we don't need to be troubled when we're going through these hard experiences because we know that God is working in our life a more exceeding and abundant reward in his kingdom.
That's why Jesus encountered all joy when you have these trials.
James 1-2.
So if you've had hardship and difficulty, trust and know that God is working in your life.
That's actually proof that you're one of God's children.
Difficulty, suffering, hardship, and overcoming are the Christian store.
That is the Christian narrative. That's true in my life. That's true in your life. That was true in Jesus' life.
That's the Christian end.
Now would you pray with me today? I'd like to end all of our time in prayer.
Say, God, would you forgive me for my complaints, for the things I don't think that are right, for my sins, all of my shortcomings?
God, I ask you today that you would give me grace and give me understanding and give me mercy and help me to walk with you today.
In Jesus' name, give me the strength. Amen.
Now, we worked really hard to put together a great story that you can share with your friends and family.
We just completed it this week. It's on the home page of Ocean Water.
And I'd like to give you a little assignment this week.
I'd like you to go to the home page of OceanWater.com.
And would you go and text or email or share on Facebook the seven-minute story that our friend Ryan Shoemaker spent six months putting together?
And help get the word out about what God is doing for Ocean Water?
That'd be a great way for you to share what God is doing through Ocean Water and through your life.
Thank you so much and have a beautiful week.