Set the Captives Free

Our outreach pastor Paul Spurlock and I just got back from an amazing international trip to several different countries. It involved eight different long international flights to get around, shuttled around to all these countries. And I just have a quick poll here. How many of you have ever been on an airplane, first of all? Quick show of hands. Okay, good. Now how many of you find it very difficult to fall asleep on an airplane? Right, okay, good. I'm among peers here. How many of you love to sleep on planes? You can hardly stay awake on planes. That's the other group. The first group that raised their hands, they actually are feeling hatred towards you right now, those of you. No, just kidding.

But here's what I experienced as I was traveling with Paul Spurlock. I have to say on every one of our long flights, I am in the first group. I just am red-eyed through every flight, whether it's a red-eye flight or not. If it's 20 hours, I cannot get a wink of sleep. And I would look over at Paul, who's in the second group, with total envy. This is what he was doing every minute of every flight. He could not stay awake. Much like he does during my sermons every week. I see this in the pews, but what I love about this picture is look at the lady sitting next to him. Look at the look. Which group do you think she falls into, right? It's either that or she's looking at him like, "I really have to go to the bathroom. How do I get past this guy?"

But what were we doing on this trip? Well, along with one of our missionaries, we support Steve Reed. In fact, Steve is right there with his wife, Laura. Wave, Steve. Let's welcome Steve and Laura here. Great to have them. But we were visiting ministries in Brazil and Nicaragua and in Guatemala. We were at times preaching. We were meeting with pastors. To give you just an overview, in Brazil, we went to Sampa Community Church. Now, this is a church that uses our sermons, the same sermons you see Mark and I preaching every week on video. They're subtitled in Portuguese, and they have live worship, live announcements, much like our venue service. And it's a wonderful, growing, healthy church.

And they do more than just our sermons. They even do our small groups with us, long distance every week. So this is like a real sister church of Twin Lakes down there in Brazil. And I got to preach there, live. Two weeks ago, it was the first time they've ever had one of us speak there live. And I think it was a little odd for them because they'd ever only seen us on video. In fact, true story, as I was talking with some people after church, I overheard a woman behind me talking to somebody else and she said, "I thought he would be higher." I don't know if she meant an intelligence or classiness or whatever, but "I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They greet you warmly in the name of Jesus Christ."

But we went there. This is their leadership team, a wonderful group of people. But we went from Brazil to the poverty of Nicaragua. Paul got to preach at a church there, and I got to speak on the radio there in Nicaragua. And then it was on to the urban slums of Guatemala City. So in just the past couple of weeks, in three different countries, we got a chance to speak with pastors and Christian ag workers and teachers and ask them what's going on here? What do you want us to know? What are some of the biggest obstacles you are facing and what are you seeing God do?

So what do these people want you to know? What do they have to say about how captives can be set free? If this is your first weekend here at Twin Lakes Church, you chose a great weekend to come because we're doing something very special this weekend, our World Outreach Week, where we're talking about what God is doing all over the world and what we just experienced. Now, next week we begin a new series in the book of Colossians in the Bible, talking about how we are set free by Jesus Christ. But this week we're going to focus in on this question. What is God doing in the world?

Well, check this out. Every single place we went on our trip, we heard them talk about what experts call the five global giants that enslave people, the five biggest challenges facing humans today. And I want to invite you to jot these down on the message notes that are in your bulletins. They look like this and there's a space for you to jot these things down and keep them in your memory because I believe that as you learn about these five challenges and as you learn about God's solutions, some of you, the direction of your lives will change today. So jot these down.

First, spiritual emptiness. Spiritual emptiness. And this is the big one. This is the one that leads to all the others because when people feel spiritually empty, they try to fill that emptiness with destructive things, drugs, porn, alcohol, abuse, all kinds of addictions. Really you could call this spiritually dead. That's how empty people are. And then second, corrupt leadership. Corrupt leadership. Let me ask you a question. Can corrupt church leaders actually push people away from God? Can they? Jesus said they could. You know, Jesus Christ talked about this far more than any other sin. Corrupt religious leaders.

Let me ask you this. Can corrupt political leaders keep people starving even when there's enough food? Absolutely. And the Old Testament prophets talked about this so much. In every country we went, we heard about this problem. Third, global giant poverty. Get this. More than one billion people live in absolute poverty right now. That means living on less than a dollar a day. Something you and I can hardly imagine. Fourth, disease. Disease. Yeah, you want to know something amazing? Almost all the killer diseases in the world are preventable. Almost all of them. Like malaria kills two million kids a year in Africa. Almost every one of those deaths is totally preventable.

And the fifth global giant lack of education or ignorance all around the world because people can't read, they can't read the Bible, they can't read instructions on health or how to grow crops better and so the poverty cycle continues. Now, you may not have come up with this exact list, but you've experienced all of these things as you look at the news or as you read the newspaper and browse the internet. And probably like me, you've looked at these and almost despaired. And you've thought, "What can I do? The problems are too big." Well, good news today. God has a plan and it involves you. You can put it into the acronym P-E-A-C-E. That spells "peace" on page two. Just flip your notes over to page two. This is our mission's strategy here at Twin Lakes Church.

And Paul Spurlock asked me to remind you today of what this stands for. He asked me to do that during one of his rare awake moments on one of those flights. But I first heard about this strategy at Saddleback Church in Orange County and I loved it so much that we adopted it as a church. So if you ever feel down and depressed and think, "What difference am I really making in the world?" Your spirits are about to be lifted up because I'm going to tell some stories about things we experienced that fit into this acronym. And every single story I am about to tell you today is something you have already had a part in.

I want you to understand that because this is something we don't talk a lot about here at Twin Lakes Church and we probably should. We tithe at least 10% off of every dime that comes into this church to missions. Did you know that? To missions and outreach. In fact, this last year, it was much more than 10%. It was more like 23 or 25%. Almost $1 million last year went out of this church from the money that came in to missions and outreach. So if you have given one dime to Twin Lakes Church, at least one penny of that dime went to missions and outreach, including every single program I am talking about today.

So this is like a report to you about what your contribution has made in the part of the world that I saw. What do we give money away for to do these five things? So jot these down. The first letter, P, stands for plant and grow healthy churches. Plant and grow healthy churches. Now I'm going to spend most of my time on this point because this is the answer to the first global giant, which is spiritual emptiness. Look at Matthew 28:19 and I'd like us to all read this together out loud. The words of Jesus Christ, let me hear you. "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations." Disciples, not just converts. And the only way to make disciples is to establish church communities that will disciple people.

I saw a living example of this in Guatemala last week. Meet Otto de la Cruz. This is Otto. His name means Otto of the Cross in Spanish and there is not a more appropriate name for a human being because this guy is a saint. He's a modern day apostle Paul. Now I first met Otto 20 years ago, almost to the day. I stood with him and Steve Reed in his one room house in a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City. He had just moved there from Belize with his family because he wanted to do church planning. And we stood there at a dirt floor, living in one room with his wife and five young daughters. And this is a guy with two master's degrees. In other words, this is a guy with options. And he has chosen to come and live there and I said, "Otto, what are you here to do?" And he said, "I am here to plant churches." This is my vision.

And I remember asking him, "Well, Otto, how many people do you have so far in your core church planting group in your ministry?" And he looked around at his family and he said, "Counting to seven of us? Seven." That's all he had. That was 20 years ago. About a week ago, I had a chance to visit Otto and his family. Again, many of his girls are involved in ministry right now. They're all grown. So almost 20 years to the day. Would you like to know how it's going? So far, Otto has successfully planted 36 churches, which literally total thousands of people that he ministers to every single week. And almost every single church he has planted has been in a neighborhood that didn't have any church of any kind. And almost every single pastor is an ex-gang member or drug addict that Otto has trained. And they are amazing. And this is a ministry you've been helping with.

These guys are something else. Let me introduce you to one of his pastors. This is Herson. And Herson pastors a church in what they call the Red Zone. Now, why do they call it the Red Zone? There is so much violent gang activity in this neighborhood that even UPS and FedEx refuse to deliver there. Herson has been tied up and robbed several times by the gangs. One time they burst into the church during a funeral for an eight-year-old boy who had been killed by gang gunfire. And the gangs burst into the church during this eight-year-old gun shooting victim's funeral. And they robbed everybody in the church of the money that they were bringing as an offering for the family at the funeral. Then they led Herson and his wife upstairs and tied them up.

And at gunpoint, robbed them and not for the first or last time threatened him, "You leave this neighborhood or we will kill you." I asked Herson, "What did you say?" And he got choked up as he told me. I said to them, "I can't leave because Jesus Christ has called me here to share his love with you." I mean, these are the kind of guys that, you know, I'm meeting with there in Latin America. And then they turned to me, "And what are the challenges in your ministry, Pastor Radej?" Our fog machine didn't work at one of our Christmas concerts. It was terrible, you know. How is it possible for guys like this to live like that? Well, they really believe what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Let's read this out loud together and read it like you mean it. "On this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." And we saw this again and again on our trip.

If you have a pen or a pencil, circle in your notes the phrase, "I will build my church." This is a promise of Jesus Christ. And we saw this so many times, for example, in Brazil. Did you know that Brazil is now the world's sixth largest economy? It just passed the United Kingdom a few weeks ago. It is just booming. We were in Sao Paulo, which is now the largest metropolitan area in the world. As you can see, the city skyscrapers just go on and on and on and on and on. 6,000 square miles of city with 29 million residents. I want to ask you a question. Did our church board sit around and strategize and say, "I know, how about we partner with Brazilians and help plant a church in the largest city on earth in the heart of the fastest growing economy on earth?"

That is a brilliant move. Let's put a lot of time and resources into it. No, we're not that smart. God wanted it to happen though. And Jesus promised, "I will build my church." And so he made sure they got a hold of our videos and they started it. And it just keeps spreading. Now this guy, one of the leading civil engineers in all of Brazil, is starting another church two hours from Sao Paulo in the academic center of Brazil, a city with a ton of universities called San Carlos, also using our videos subtitled in Portuguese. And the ball just keeps rolling because like Jesus said, "He will build it." He is the chess master. He is the one making the brilliant moves.

All you and I have to do is to commit our lives to Christ. Listen and put yourself on the game board somehow. Just start getting involved somehow and then watch Jesus work through you. But this is where it all starts. Churches provide the infrastructure and the support for everything else. And that's for that first global giant, spiritual emptiness. But what can we do about the second? Corrupt leaders. The first E stands for equip servant leaders. We want to equip leaders to do a good job, but also remind them that we're here to be servants. And this is something all of us, all over the world need to learn.

One time Jesus called his disciples together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles, lord it over them." And their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Circle that phrase, "Lord it over them." I asked Otto de la Cruz in Guatemala, "What is absolutely the greatest danger to the churches that you have planted?" And I thought he'd say something like the gangs or maybe the cults. You know what he said? Hyper-authoritarian pastors. Pastors who lord it over their people. Pastors who consider themselves untouchable. "Thou shall not touch the Lord's anointed." Because when you're untouchable you're also unteachable. And you start spiraling into all kinds of heresy. And so Otto said, "Not on my watch."

And you know what he did? This is a pastor training institute that Otto started. It started just in the back room of one of his 36 churches and now they're finishing a modern four-story building where they're already holding classes and what's the goal to specifically make certain they learn servant leadership and good, solid theology. He wants to equip servant leaders. And this kind of thing is happening in ministries we support all around the world. This is what Johann Kombreich is doing in Africa. We're doing this in India. And we need to learn this as pastors too. Good theology in kind of a matrix of servant leadership. Not, you know, ego-centered, lording it over people leadership.

So we need to plant churches and then equip their leaders. And then the A stands for "assist the poor and oppressed." Assist the poor and oppressed. Check this out. When Jesus started his ministry, he defined it like this. This is our key verse this weekend. It's at the front of your notes. But look at this. Jesus said, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to who? To the poor. And to release the who? The oppressed, the poor and oppressed. Did you know that 2,000 times the Bible tells us to assist the poor? Now how did I miss that in my seminary education? I don't know, but it sure wasn't emphasized.

And here's something else interesting I discovered this week. Did you know the only time the Old Testament specifically describes the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? I don't know why you think Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, but this is the only time their sin is specified in the Old Testament. Here it is. Ezekiel 16:49. Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned. They did not help the poor and the needy. Wow. Assisting the poor, let me tell you an amazing story. On our trip to Nicaragua, I learned that it's now the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti.

And in the part of Nicaragua we went, it's mostly dirt roads like this. There's only one paved road, and even on that paved road, cowboys and cattle and carts far outnumber cars. And while we were there, we traveled with this man. This is Rigo Reyes and his son Juan Carlos. Rigo is another amazing guy. He's a church planter and pastor like Otto. And Rigo's background is this. He was an executive at Dole Foods. He has a degree in agricultural engineering that he was using at Dole. He owned several homes, nice cars. And Rigo left all that to follow his calling to become a pastor.

And now he pastors and plants churches all over Nicaragua. Well, last year Rigo and some of his leaders get lost, and they stumble into one of the poorest parts of the country of Nicaragua. For example, this is a bridge across one of the rivers there. This is the house of the rich person in the village. And Rigo told me, and I appreciated so much his honesty, because sometimes I feel like this too. He said, "René, I felt like I don't like it here." He said, "I know as a pastor I'm supposed to be with the poor, but I'd never seen poverty like this, and I prayed, 'Jesus, just let me get back to my house, to the comforts of home. I don't want to be here.'

But he had no choice because the road was flooded. And so Rigo had to get to know some of the villagers, and he starts to chat with them, and finds out that they were trying to scrape out their survival by growing corn, which would just grow very stunted like this, and their fields were not productive at all. And they never had enough to feed their families. They would literally, people would literally starve every year, usually the children and the weak and the old. And Rigo figures, "I don't think I just got lost by accident. I figure with my background, I was put by God to help these people."

And so he asks to speak to the 20 poorest families of the village. And he says, "You know what? I can get you the best hybrid corn seed on earth with my Dole connections. I can show you the best ways to plant it, and I can get you loans to buy chickens and show you the best way to raise chickens." And they say, "All right, we'll try, but it won't work." They told him, "Nothing grows here." They said, "Sometimes we think even God has forgotten us. Certainly his people have forgotten us." So what happened? Well, I'm not talking to you about ancient history, you know, from some missions book. Rigo's little ag project with them started last October.

So guess what has happened? Their first harvest, they quadrupled their corn numbers. Their chickens grew so healthy that some of the farms didn't lose a single chicken. They were able to bring them to the nearest city to sell. These are the people that I met there a little more than a week ago. These are the 20 villagers that Rigo met with that day. And they told me through an interpreter, "Last summer we were starving, and today we're rich." Now what do they mean by that? Check this out. Their biggest problem now is where to put all the corn. They have piles of it everywhere. They've made makeshift silos out of scrap tin to keep the hundreds of extra pounds of corn. They've gone from starving to overflowing.

And Rigo even told me, "René, I think we're on our way to eradicating the hunger problem here." And I said, "How many years do you think that will take?" He said, "Years. By my calculations, 18 months." So this pastor who was a Dole Foods agricultural engineer and thought, "I'll never be able to use that in my new field," happens to get lost in the poorest part of Nicaragua. This, you know what this is? This is Jesus the chess master moving his pieces around again. And you're one of his pieces. So don't get discouraged. Do not get discouraged. Do not lose hope. Jesus has a plan. And you're part of that plan, and I'm part of that plan. Just put yourself on the chessboard and get in the game.

Now I want you to check out this video of Rigo talking about this. This is his voice. We don't come only to say to people, "Jesus loves you." We say, "Hey, Jesus loves you." But we are worried for your situation. We want to help you. We want to work together. And when you see one of your students preaching and speaking about God with love, with passion, very soon there was nothing. You can see a building. You can see 35 families. And I know that when we finish in each ministry, we are going to reach thousands of people for Jesus.

Man, church, are you stoked by this good news of what God is doing all over the world in the hearts and the lives of people? Wow, assisting the poor. And then the C stands for care for the sick. You care for the sick. You know one thing that has amazed me as I've studied this, check this out. When Jesus tells his disciples their mission, he almost always says for them to do two things. And in my church culture, really, we usually just focused on one thing. But Jesus almost always says two things that go together. Number one, preach. We remember that one. What's the second one? Care for the sick.

They just keep going together. Matthew 10:7, Jesus said, "As you go, preach this message. The kingdom of heaven is near. Heal the sick." Luke 9:2, Jesus sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Luke 10:9, "Heal the sick who are there and tell them the kingdom of God is near you." And these are just three of many examples I could have put in your notes. And he doesn't just mean supernatural healing. Jesus says, "In heaven, some will hear him say, 'I was sick and you looked after me.'" Right now, as I speak, our medical and dental team is in India at Little Flock Children's Home. My wife is there with them right now.

They're all doing medical and dental work together with some people from Sri Lanka and from India. So, yes, I'm back from my trip, but I'm batching it with my two boys. It's just three men at my house right now. Please pray for us. It is actually a disaster area right now. But anyway, why do we do this? Why do we go over there? Well, Jesus said to. But why does this caring for the sick business always seem to go hand in hand with preaching the gospel? Look at this chart. Good deeds create goodwill, which leads to opportunities to share the good news. And it's a cycle. I've seen it here with what we did for the food bank. When people see what the church is doing, the good deeds, it leads to goodwill toward the church and they ask questions and you get a chance to share the good news.

And then finally, E, educate the next generation. The Bible says, "Teach these things to your children. Let the little children come to me." This is why Christians from the very first have started schools. We have a school here. We support schools all over the world. So, look back over this list. These are God's priorities. And let me just say this. I want you to listen to this carefully. Are you listening? Because last night, as I talked to a couple of people after the service, I think they had a little skewed idea of what we're trying to communicate today.

You are not called to do these things because they make you feel good, even though it often makes you feel good to do these things. And you're not called to do these things to earn favor from God. You already have his favor by grace. And you're not called to do these things only if they work, because they may not always seem to work. You're called to do these things as your response to God's grace in your life and because they point to God's grace. God saved you when you were poor and when you were sick and when you were ignorant. And so you want to reach out to others who are poor and sick and uneducated.

And all these things point to God's ultimate anti-poverty program. God's ultimate health program. God's ultimate education program that will solve all forms of oppression. They give you a chance to foreshadow God's redemption of the entire planet and to spread that good news around. This is why these are God's priorities. But let me ask you kind of a hard question, a question I asked myself on this trip as you can imagine. Are these my priorities? You know, I just read that the average Silicon Valley resident, I couldn't find stats for Santa Cruz, but the average Santa Clara Valley resident gives a wage of .5 percent of their income. The rest they keep for themselves and the pay bills and so on.

Now of course Santa Cruz people would be much more generous than this, but even if we gave twice as much that's just 1 percent. But imagine if that changed just a little and just in the lives of Christians. I read this stat and I think I fell out of my chair. According to the research organization Empty Tomb Incorporated, if members of Christian congregations in the U.S. gave at the 10 percent level if they tithed, that would total about $156 billion. Now what would happen if all those churches just tithed off of that and gave just 10 percent to missions? Now hopefully if that much came in churches would do more than that. At Twin Lakes Church I already mentioned last year it was actually more than 20 percent that came in that was then given away to missions and outreach programs close to a million dollars.

But what if all these churches that got $156 billion, what if they just tithed to missions? 10 percent. Take the $156 billion you'd get if all American Christians tithed to their churches and if all the churches just gave 10 percent off of that to missions, that's $15.6 billion. What could be done for that? It would only take five billion of that to stop most childhood deaths from disease in the world. It would only take seven billion of that to provide all the world's children with a basic education and with the $3.6 billion left we could launch the most massive evangelism campaign in Christian history and that's in the first year. Think of what could happen year after year if the Christians of the world and the churches of the world took God's peace plan seriously.

Now some of you are going, "Well, wait a minute here. Do I really want to support this? This peace strategy, does it really work?" Well let me close with this amazing story of an amazing person I met. Meet Henry. Henry grew up in this red zone that I was telling you about earlier and he told me his story a little over a week ago. I sat here in his living room and he told me how he was captive, enslaved in his neighborhood. His parents would be gone all day long and so at just six years of age Henry had to take care of his two little sisters aged four and two. He'd go out every day to beg for food. He had to fight off feral dogs for scraps that he took home to his little sisters.

He would fish in this very stream with a sand sifter that he found and stole from a construction site and he boiled the polywogs and little fish fry that he got out of the stream for food and then when his mom lost her job she started beating the kids. She would tie Henry up with electric wire and whip him with other electric wires screaming all the time "You are good for nothing! Why were you ever born?" and it affected him. Of course Henry tried to hang himself in a noose when he was seven. Tried to slit his wrists at ten but he always stopped because he loved his sisters and didn't want them to have to live alone with his monster parents.

Soon he found the gangs and he told me, "René I found a love in the gangs in a way that I didn't have at home but it came at a price." He became their enforcer. He broke bones, extorted money, stabbed people and then one night he told me he had a dream and in his dream there was a dark volcano on one side and a beautiful green hill on the other and people were marching right up the side of the dark volcano and hurling themselves into it screaming in pain but others were marching with smiles toward the green mountain and then he woke up and he thinks wow that was a weird dream.

Later that day a guy at the mechanic shop where he's recently gotten work happens to say you know the Bible says that there are two roads in life one that leads to life and one that leads to death and Henry's instantly riveted. He says to him my dreams in the Bible he'd never heard anything about the Bible before this and the man says what are you talking about and Henry says he sat down and opened his mouth to explain and for the first time in his life all the stuff that he had been through just came pouring out and he just started weeping. He told us, "René, I cried more than I ever cried when my mom used to hit me or when my dad used to hit me but they were good tears this time."

And then his Christian co-worker who's amazed by all of this starts weeping too and puts his hand on Henry's shoulder and says, "Henry, I think Jesus is calling you to him. I think that's why you had that dream." And in that moment Henry prayed to receive Jesus. He said, "I didn't know really anything but I just prayed Jesus I know I'm on my way to that destructive path and I want to turn and I want to walk toward you help me." And then his co-worker after he prayed gives Henry a big hug and Henry told me, "René, it was the first hug I had ever received in my life." First hug in his life and his co-worker says, "Henry, come to church with me tonight." And so Henry did and it was this church one of Otto's churches one of the churches where the pastor had been threatened by gang members and now he sees Henry walking in one of the gang members and the pastor and the church members get this scared look on their face thinking that he's there to rob the church and Henry's friend has to run up and say he's okay he's okay and he explains.

And then the pastor gives him a big hug and Henry said he thought, "Wow, what a day my first two hugs ever they feel really good maybe it's a three hug day." And he walks home and he tells his mom and she says, "Now you are my enemy." She said, "You thought it was bad before I'd rather have you in a drug gang than for you to be a Jesus freak." And so what does Henry do? He starts praying for his mom and dad. He told me he'd wake up at night and just pray, "God please save my mom and dad help them to find what I found." He was in church one day at a service praying that his mom would find Jesus when he feels a tap on his shoulder in this church and it's his mom startled he says, "What are you doing here?" and she says, "Son you gotta help me go forward because something's holding me back."

And they walk up the aisle together and Henry looked at me and said, "René, after all those years on that day everything changed." He said, "We sat down and for the first time we talked and talked about all the things that had happened and we wept and confessed and forgave." Two years later his dad comes to Christ and here they are both his mom and dad at Henry's wedding a few years ago they were there worshiping God and giving their blessing to their son and his new bride and now eight years later Henry is himself one of Otto's pastors standing here in his church with his wife in a neighborhood much like the one he grew up in and it is booming and he said, "René, it's amazing we have more kids and youth here than we have adults."

And I thought that myself I know why because Jesus the great chess master has moved you into this neighborhood with all these needy kids and with your background he has placed you there and he is building the church through Henry and he is building the church through you. Does that kind of story excite you? Does it get your blood going? Because it does mine. Jesus is working I'm telling you captives are set free by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But here's the thing go back to that verse and the bottom line is this every one of the challenges has a solution right on page one you wrote the five giants on page two God's solutions.

Listen the thing is in my experience too many Christians let their faith stall out at the why question. I hear this again and again as a pastor they stall out at why pastor why does God allow this? René how could God? Why does God allow all of these five giants on page one? I don't know if I can be a Christian because I don't have an answer to the question why. You know what? You may never get a satisfactory answer to the question why but don't let your faith stall out there. Move on to what? What is God's plan for this? That's clear in scripture. What is my role? That's clear in scripture too.

I mean listen if you were in a building that suddenly caught on fire I hope you wouldn't stall out at God why did you create fire? Why are you allowing fire in your world? No, you'd go what can I do? And you'd grab a fire extinguisher. The peace plan those are God's five fire extinguishers right so just get going every one of us can make a difference how we've given you tools on the back of this yellow sheet it suggests to some of the ways you can get involved out at the tables right after the service today you can pick up these local outreach opportunities every single one of the tables has one of these things.

But let me suggest this. I want to suggest that you begin to fantasize about this. You won't often hear a pastor instructing you to fantasize but in our culture we are encouraged to fantasize about things like an illicit romance or an expensive car or a mansion and those aren't going to be very constructive fantasies but God gave you your imagination for a reason and so use it to fantasize about how you'd love to help in these five ways to dream about what mission trip you'd like to help with about how you'd like to change the world with your unique skills and background or about giving a higher percentage.

The thing is this don't miss this God is doing great things in the world today church you are already a part of it that church that Herson is the pastor of where gangs threatened him at gunpoint Twin Lakes Church helped to build that church one of our small missions teams went over and helped him build it stone by stone brick by brick you're already a part of all this but I'll close by telling you that I believe God is going to use you in greater and greater ways in the future to help to change the world. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your plan. I pray that Christians here would just ask Jesus to guide them how can they be a part of the Lord's peace plan or maybe there are Christians here or people here who are not sure if they are Christians maybe they identify with Henry's story maybe they've been on the road to destruction and they want to turn around and turn to Jesus right now and like Henry they don't understand it all they just know that they want to they want to turn around.

I pray that there would be people here who would just pray what Henry prayed Jesus I turn to you you're my only savior I receive you today and your forgiveness for my sins accomplished on the cross help me to grow. Thank you. Amen.