Today's just a great day for me. I get to introduce one of my longtime friends and brothers in the Lord, Aaron St. Meyer. I think of a verse, if I had to think of a verse that describes you, Aaron.
Paul, when he's writing to Timothy and 2 Timothy at the very beginning of 2 Timothy, he talks about that I really want to see you. And I think a lot of times when Aaron oversees, I really want to see him. And even when he's in the United States, I don't get to see him as much as I would like. And we're going to get together this week, I hope.
But Paul says, I desire greatly to see you. But it brings me great joy when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you. Of course, he says it was passed down from his mother and his grandmother. I know Aaron's mom is here today, and dad.
Glad to have you guys with us today. As my podcast starts playing. Now, speaking of which, Aaron has a podcast. You guys know that?
Called Clarity, the Clarity podcast. But I want to say that Aaron is a man of God that carries not just faith, but genuine faith. It's a faith Paul spoke about that existed in Timothy, something that became a legacy from his grandmother and then was present in him. And something that's genuine is something that can be evidenced by other people.
And the word actually means in the Greek, it means without hypocrisy. And it means that you're a person that lives the life that you speak about. And I can attest for the time that I've known you. You're as genuine and authentic a man as I've met.
I look up to you, I honor you, I respect you. And your life demonstrates what the life of Jesus looks like. So Aaron, I'd like to invite you up today. Aaron's no stranger.
Let's give Aaron a big welcome. Aaron's no stranger to city reach. I believe this is your third time here. Yeah, three times.
So we're so glad to have you back. Aaron has been, if you're not familiar with Aaron, or your first time here to hear it, Aaron's been a missionary with the assemblies of God for I believe 22 years. Serving in Africa, he served in the countries of Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and now Kenya. Aaron was the first person to ever invite me to preach overseas.
And I got to go to Madagascar in 2014, and I'm forever grateful for that. I was telling you guys know that lately we've been talking about this, ask better questions. And so the more questions you ask, the better answers you're going to get. And I probably first learned this in Madagascar, because I said, what are we doing?
Aaron said, we're going to preach in the bush. So I just accepted that to mean what I thought it meant, which we would just kind of walk out the door, part the bushes, and start preaching to somebody. Well, the next thing I know, we're at an airport with a rickety six-seater plane. And I was like, wonder who's getting in that thing?
He said, you are. And after we, I think it was MAF, missionary aviation fellowship, but I came to find out that MAF stood for mountains activate faith. Because as we're going over the mountains, I was praying in the spirit. I was binding and loosing.
And it really drew faith out of me that I didn't know that I had. It does. And then we, and I should have asked more questions at that point, but I'd got my mouth shut. And as we come to what he calls the bush, it's a dirt airstrip.
And the airplane is circling. And the weather, I'm like, well, why are we circling? Because we've got to wait till the zeboo, which are these big cows with horns get off the airstrip. So we circle until they get the cows out of the way.
And then we land. He goes, OK, it's time to go preach. And I was about right of vomit. We did it.
We did it. So ask better questions. Ask better questions. Ask better questions.
But Aaron has a podcast. I encourage you to download it. Listen to it. Aaron's also a he's a doctor of nursing.
He's a doctor from WVU. Although he's secretly a Maryland fan. I don't know about that. He loves his West Virginia, Mountaineers.
And Aaron has spent his life as a missionary caring for people specifically. He deals a lot with skin diseases. And so he's just loves the Lord. And he's got a good word for us today.
We're excited to hear from him. So I just want to say welcome you. I love you. I bless you.
I'm honored to be my friend. I'm excited to hear what God's late on your heart today. It's an honor to be with you all today. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here.
Yeah, it's it's great to have my family. My daughter Isabelle, my wife Heather, thunderous I other here. My parents are here. It's friends and family.
So it's an honor to be back in where I'm from. My wife doesn't necessarily claim West Virginia is placed at she's from. But I claim West Virginia for where I'm from. So it's red shared.
We are missionaries in Africa. We've been there for the last 22 years. It's been an honor to see our kids grow up, be born and raised, a different culture, a different environment in a place where we're sharing the love of Jesus Christ. Do you think what does African emissions look like?
What does what do you do? What's your focus? Our focus and goal is to see a healthy church planted in walking distance of every African. A healthy church planted in walking distance of every African.
Because we really believe the hope of the world. We're going to talk a little bit later about the hope. We believe the hope is Jesus Christ. And we can have different programs.
You can have different things, governmental programs. But the reality of it is a healthy church in a community impacts that community and changes the spiritual environment. You can change physical environment, maybe with food. But the spiritual environment is what's going to last forever.
And we believe a healthy church in that environment is what's going to do that. They say, how does that work? There's actually three different ways to do it. Live dead is where we have teams that go in and pioneer.
And they plant the church where it doesn't exist, where there's no church. Majority of the time that's in Islamic context, whereas the teams are persecuted. They can't go in with a badge that says, I'm a missionary. They have to go in, under normally under a business.
And they work in that environment to share the love of Jesus Christ. So they're planting the church. Planting, there's no church. Come on, Maryland, Maryland.
There's lots of churches. But in these environments, there are islands in the Indian Ocean where we serve where there is not a church. And if you can imagine, many mosques, five times a day, you're hearing the call to prayer, which you're not hearing, they're not seeing churches. So that's lived dead.
That's planting the church where it doesn't exist. Urban tribes, urban tribes is planting the church in gateway cities. Africa is continually becoming urbanized, meaning the majority of Africans are moving into these larger cities. We live in Nairobi, Kenya now.
You probably think, wow, there's giraffe. And there's elephants. It's five million people. So you can imagine a city of five million people.
That's a lot of people. And people continue to come into these urban environments. But the reality of it is, this is where they're shaping their culture. And the idea of planting a church in a gateway city is that you're helping influence the culture's shapers for Jesus Christ.
And if they can go and shape the culture and in their influence, shape that. And so that's what urban tribes like. NC squared is what we call a national church square, meaning that a missionary partners with the church that already exists. And that's what you would think with traditional missions, which would be Bible schools.
Working along children's ministry, those in the discipleship. That's the traditional things that missionaries have done in the past. So that is the three things is we want to see a healthy church within walking distance of every African. And that's how we go about it.
So it's not just this idea, Fred talked about asking good questions. And we've asked a lot of questions. And then paint a picture. We're trying to paint a picture of what that looks like so that we can have a preferred future where there is a healthy church within walking distance of every African.
So Heather and I, we have the opportunity to serve the teams in the Indian Ocean. We have a team, there's a team we serve in Madagascar, Jay Rossifer. I'll talk a little bit about him and Kerry and a little bit in the sermon. But they're planning an urban tribes church in Antan and Areva where we live for 14 years and raised our kids.
And that's what they're involved in. We have some other teams there. We have a Bible school gym in Mac Packer, lead that Bible school. They train 30 to 35 pastors a year.
They graduate. And they go out and plan a church. And so that happens every year. It's a very exciting thing.
We have a team on two islands. I can't tell you their name because they're really, they're undercover there. One is we call the Forgotten Islands. It's an island in the Indian Ocean base.
And 99.9999 is many not just you can get Islamic. But they're there. And it is a beautiful thing to see how they turn every conversation into what Jesus has done in their life and how Jesus is the hope of the world. Another team, we're getting ready to launch.
And I'll talk in a minute about them also. Another island, we call them the Shipwreck Island, Indian Ocean base. And once again, 99% with many not just you can put on there Islamic. And it's exciting to see people following through what God has called them to do.
The other thing that Heather and I have the opportunity when we're leading and working is missionaries, you can imagine, have problems. Missionaries are not all. We have problems. So we help people with their emotional help.
We have set up a way that people can get counseling. They can get coaching because they have missionaries run up against problems just like people in the United States do. And they have challenges. The enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy.
We know that in John 1010. Not just to come and make your life a little difficult. Not until they get inconvenient. It becomes to kill, steal, and destroy.
And missionaries and spiritual environments, all of a sudden, they're faced with things. Things that happen in their past. Maybe they've had abuse in their past. Maybe they've been abused in their past.
They get to the mission field. And all of a sudden, the enemy begins to attack them with those things again. The enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And we use counseling.
It would help people process that so they can live out the calling that God has placed in their life. Safety and security. I'm going to talk about an event that we had in Sudan a few months ago where you're in an environment sharing the love of Jesus Christ and more breaks out. What do you do?
We know that Isaiah 32, it says, the noble make noble plans to buy noble deeds they stand. The noble make noble plans. And buy noble deeds they stand. And we have a team of security professionals that have those three letter words, CIA, all those kind of things.
And they're able to help us get people out of those environments when their life sit risk and they're under fire. Heather leads a collective of people that help missionary kids. Kids that grow up in a different culture in a different environment are faced with different situations. They don't necessarily fit in in America.
They don't necessarily fit in where they're at. They have different struggles, different things. I'm the only person in my family that is not a missionary kid. Heather is.
My kids are, but I'm not. And so Heather helps parents walk through that education marriage. You can't imagine. Missionaries, marriages never have any problems.
You can laugh now. You're in an environment. And settling, it's all these things. We have marriages.
They become in conflict. And we're able to help them walk in their marriages. So their marriage is going to be healthy and strong. Relational help.
You can imagine missionaries will never have a problem and never have conflict. And you can laugh again. Missionaries, strong, strong, full of people that are missionaries. And they're going to rub at each other.
The enemy comes and kills the only destroying. And so we want to see them do that in a healthy way. And so we help them in relation to conflict. And then the last thing is spiritual formation.
You get to the field. You're faced with things that you never dreamed or imagined. The idea, I think sometimes in America, we are more like sheep among sheep and not sheep among wolves. And when you're on the mission field and you become a sheep among wolves, all of a sudden your face with spiritual questions that you thought you had an answer to.
And all of a sudden, you realize that that answer doesn't fit for that context. And we're able to help people process, go back to God's word, and find and help them process and grow in the spiritual maturity. So that's a little bit about what Heather and I do. So that's about our ministry.
That's a goal in Africa. And yeah, so that's exciting. We continue, we covet your prayers. And thank you for praying for us as we seek to see a healthy church planted in walking distance of every African.
This morning we're going to, my title of the message is, I had three different messages. The first one I had was, I wrote a book and it was around the message of the book. And then I didn't have peace about that. So I scratched that one.
I wrote another message and then scratched that one. And this one is where we're at today. Every summer, the last three or four, not every summer, the last three or four summers, I've got to give me a prayer for the summer. And in 2021, when I spoke here, I shared about the prayer of Jacob, a man in crisis.
In 2022, once again, I was praying God, give me a prayer for this summer. And that was Ephesians chapter three. And that's the idea of a gratitude, a heartfelt, heartfelt gratitude. And the prayer that God gave me for this summer was Psalms 90.
It's the only Psalms written by Moses. And we're going to look at that today. And I will believe you will be encouraged. As we read the song, you might think, wow, this is not an encouraging song.
It is, and he has some great things to offer us. And we're going to go through it, I think together, and it will be excellent. So let's read Psalms chapter 90. And the title of the message is, how to have a faith that's not fragile or an anti-fragile faith.
What we can learn from Moses when having an anti-fragile faith. Psalms 90 verse one, Lord, through all the generations you have been our home, I'm reading from the new living translation. Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from the beginning to end, you are God. You turn people back to dusting, return to dusting mortals.
For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours. You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that spring up in the morning, in the morning it blooms and florishes. But by evening, it is dry and wither.
We wither beneath your anchor. We are overwhelmed by your fury. You spread out our sins before you, our secret sins, and you see them all. We live our lives beneath your wrath, ending our years with the groan.
Seven years are given to us. Some even live to 80, but even the best years are filled with pain and trouble. Soon they disappear and we fly away. Hold on, it gets better.
Who can comprehend the power of your anger? Your wrath is awesome as the fear you deserve. Teach us to realize the brevity of our life, so that we may grow in wisdom. O Lord, come back to us.
How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants. Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love so that we may sing joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness and proportion to our former misery.
Replace the evil years with good. Let us, your servants, see your work again. Let our children see your glory. And may the Lord God show us his approval and make our efforts successful.
Yes, make our efforts successful. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. Father, we thank you for a man like Moses that we can look back on his life and see how you intervened, how you shaped his life, and how he wrote this song, the lessons he has learned.
He has learned. So Father, I pray that you use this time, not as an instructive time or a prescriptive time, but as a descriptive type of time that we can see what you did in his life, how it applies to our life. And Father, how we can grow in a faith that is not fragile, that doesn't fall apart at the first sign of trouble or the first obstacle we run into, but Father, we will have a faith that is strong, a faith that is strong and mature because of who you are in the promises that you've given us in your name. We pray, amen.
So the idea of an anti-fragile faith comes from, I interviewed a lady on the podcast, I think it actually comes out today, Anahampti. And so she wrote a book about the idea of facing fear. And the realities of it is the world we live in becomes more and more, you can fall into fear because there's things that we see, wars, famines, lots of rain, I don't have to be afraid of all the rain, but there's things that go on, and we become more fearful. Social media, the things that we see, we're a bar and bar with more information than we ever have, and we see a culture that has become more and more fearful.
And so she wrote this book about the idea of facing that, and in our conversation she talked about having an anti-fragile faith. The idea of fragility, it falls apart really easy. If you have something that is strong, it can withstand rain, it can withstand storms, it can withstand the difficulties of life and in the reality of it is the true challenges of our lives. I don't know about you, but I had many expectations when I went to the Mission Field 22 years ago.
A lot of those were unrealistic. I thought there was a McDonald's in Wagadugu. There is no McDonald's in Wagadugu. I had these unrealistic expectations, and then I was faced with, I remember the first time I went into the market, there was a man levitating.
I had never seen a man levitating in Wally Ford, West Virginia, or Cumberland, Maryland, or wherever you live, I had never seen a man levitate. All of a sudden my faith that I thought was strong began to, you began to wonder, is my faith strong enough to withstand this situation? And so as we look at the life of Moses, we see a man that has a firm, strong faith, a faith that is not fragile, as he would through many, many things in life. The first thing I think we can see from the prayer that Moses shares with us is that God is faithful, that we serve an eternal Father, that is faithful.
He talks about that, God, our life is short, but yours is long. And God, you are faithful Father, that has seen all generations. And I think that should be a encouragement to you and I, that we serve a faithful Father. Moses, as we saw, he's faced with the Red Sea.
He gets there. What does God do? God delivers him. God gave him assignment.
What does God do? He continually shows up because we serve a faithful Father. I don't know what situation has brought you here today. I do not know what you're facing, but I do know that we serve a faithful Father.
As Red shared, I remember one time, I was in a different thing going to the bush. We were in a helicopter, and we went up over one of these mountains, and that helicopter dropped like you were dropping a dime out of the sky. And it was falling and flipping and falling and flipping. And I thought, this is it, a boy from Wall-E-Ford, West Virginia's, who won a dime in the mountain, to Madagascar, and that's gonna be it.
We serve a faithful Father. We serve a faithful Father. If we're doing what he's called us to do, he is faithful to be with us, and he is faithful to follow through. My encouragement for you today is you look through the life of Moses, you see the things that Moses was faced with.
He was a man that recognized that God is faithful. He recognized that, and that's my encouragement to you. Whatever you're facing, we have a faithful Father. One of the guys that I was sharing a little bit about, is Devin and Ruthie, they're going to an island in the Indian Ocean.
To be one of the first global workers, as we call missionaries now, is the new words, so that people don't know what they're doing, which I think they do know what they're doing. But anyway, they call them global workers. And so they're going there because they have seen the faithfulness of God in their life. They have seen through their generations of their family, how God has been faithful to them.
And it breaks their hearts as you listen and hear them talk. They have seen the faithfulness of God in their life. But to know that there's an island in the Indian Ocean basin with thousands and thousands of people that do not know the faithfulness of the Heavenly Father. And that breaks their hearts.
And they said, we wanna go to this island. We wanna be the people that are pioneers in this area, to go play the church so that these Mayeotians will know that there is a faithful Father and we have a faithful God. And he has a son and his name is Jesus. And his son has come to save us.
And so Devin and Ruthie are going there with young kids, a young family. There's nobody there to receive them. They're going there with a lot of unknowns, why? Because they have experienced that there is a faithful Father.
And because they have experienced this as a faithful Father, they want others to know that there's a faithful Father. So as you add to your prayer list, add to your prayer list, Devin and Ruthie Lawley, and I'm gentleman by the name of Marcanie. They're going to language going France. And then within a year, they're going to be landing on this island for the sole purpose of sharing a love of Jesus Christ in a very, very dark place.
There have been workers that have tried to go there. There have been workers that have tried to live there. In general, the spiritual environment of that place is strong and heavy. Sickness, dreams, emotional destabilization, all kinds of problems because the enemy does not want light cast into darkness.
So pray for them the faithfulness that they've built their life on, as they go there to share that with the people in Mayot, that God will give them strength. And God will give them protection as they share the love of Jesus Christ. So we see in the life of Moses that we serve a faithful eternal Father. The second thing I think we see in his prayer is that our life on earth is very, very short.
Now this is from a guy that's recognizing that there's more sand on the bottom of the hourglass than on top. I went and got my haircut the other day. It used to be a challenge. I could just pick out the white hairs.
Now I can't, I'm still looking for a one that's not white. So that's where I'm coming to this prayer from. I've recognized my life is short and life is going by quickly. In Moses, he recognized that too.
He had been in the desert. He had been, he had saw all people live and die. You can imagine all the years that he is in the desert with these people that are whining and complaining and irritating. He recognizes the brevity of life.
He recognizes that our life is short, but he also recognized that God had given him a mission and he was going to do it. And so my question for you today is, what mission has God given you? What calling has God given you? And are you reacting to that or are you waiting for it?
Heather and I were talking this morning. She was doing her devotions and we were talking about making decisions. Sometimes we wait because we want things to be perfect. We want things to be all perfect.
And I think in life, if we wait for it all to be perfect, we're going to be at 80 years old, 85 years old still waiting for it to be perfect. Sometimes we have to have that faith like Moses did where he was able to walk out recognizing life is short and I'm going to need to walk in wisdom. We'll talk about wisdom in a minute, but walk in that and do what God has called me to do because our life goes by quickly. And so as we look at that and we process, now I'm an old guy talking about it, but do we recognize that life is short?
And what are you doing with what calling the God has given you? You hear me speak any time at all. I always talk about natural talents, acquired abilities and spiritual giftings. What natural talents has God given you to accomplish what he has asked you to do?
What acquired abilities? What are the things that you've learned in your education and what are the things that God has given you? What are you using that to do what he's called you to do? In your spiritual giftings, anyone in this room that is accepting Christ, you have a spiritual gift.
He has given you that spiritual gifting for a reason and a purpose, not to put it in a pocket, not to wait for another day. He's given us that spiritual gifting to use it because life is short and it goes by quick. The days are long but the years are short. And the older I get, I realize that the days are long, but man, the years seem to fly by the older I get.
And Moses recognized that life is short. As I said, he was in the desert with the people and is recognizing what God had done in his life, but he also recognized that he was given a specific task and he was willing to say life is short. I'm gonna do what God has told me. The third thing I think we see in the life of Moses is that sin is serious.
Sin is serious. Sin has serious consequences that I think sometimes in our world today, I come in and out of American culture back and forth and from African-Indian culture to here, but sometimes the sin seems to become very fluid. And we seem to have a higher tolerance for sin without the recognition that sin is basically disbelief in God. It's an unbelief in what God has given us a plan.
But somehow we think we know better and the choices we're gonna make are somehow better. But do we recognize the devastation that sin calls us? The consequences that it causes in people's lives. That is the reality.
Aaron, you know, sometimes I think I know better. I think I can do better, but the reality of it is God has called us to a life that recognize that sin is destabilizing. Then there's great consequences. Moses saw that, right?
When he got asked him what to, he said, Moses, I want you to speak to the rock. When they were complaining about hot-acting water, he said, I want you to speak to the rock. What did Moses do? He took the staff.
He didn't do what God asked him to do because in my experience in life, my past successes often caused me to get more trouble for the future because I wanna rely on the way God did it in the past without trusting for him to do it in a new way in the future. And so I lean on the past and say, this is the way you did it in the past and I'm gonna do it even when I know he's calling me to something different. He's calling me to something new. He's calling me to believe and trust in him.
But I revert back to this because that's where my comfort is. We also see that in Moses's life is you have the Israelites, they see the promised land and they send out the spies. You all know it, you've heard it in PBS in Sunday school, you know the story, very, very well. But that leads to them wondering, that leads to the consequences because an unbelief in what God had asked them to do.
And so my question for us here today is, what is the unbelief in our lives? What are the areas that we have compromised in? The areas that maybe we're compromising in without recognizing like Moses shared, that sin has devastating consequences? And it does anger God.
You can't read that prayer and say, well God is not angered by sin. God is angered by sin. And how are we in our lives walking in that? One of those things that happened in the last, probably four or five months ago, well, three or four months ago, that I think I was gonna live to be like 82 and 322 days.
And this event probably took 200 days off my life. So I think I used to have nice blonde hair and it all turned white, but we have a family and there was a team visiting in Sudan. They were there and there's footage of showing in a dark, dark place, still of the Islam, the church was being planted. People were coming to know Jesus.
There was a revival taking place amongst the Sudanese. And within a few days, we're a bit out. And so we have a family that has went there. They've recognized that sin has consequences.
They do not wanna see any Sudanese go to hell because they've not recognized that they have sin in their life. And they'll say they said, we're gonna move to Sudan in the middle of a place that is difficult and has all kinds of challenges so that we can share the love of Jesus Christ and that their sin will lead to eternal condemnation. And so they're there and I get a call, I was outside and I get a call and all the airports, the airports are shutting down. And then that led to a series of events, honestly, for like the next 12 to 14 days, very little sleep, is we try to get these people evacuated out of this country.
But what you say, why would people risk that? Because they recognize that sin has consequences. Sin calls this devastation and it ruins people's lives and without the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, that sin will ultimately lead to an eternal life in hell. And so the family, the social family, they were living in Sudan, sharing the love of Jesus Christ and shedding a light in a very, very dark place.
The fourth thing I think we see in the life of Moses is we walk through that with that, his prayer is, his wisdom is essential. The older I get, the more wisdom I want, right? Proverbs 13 talks about the idea. You walk with the wise, you become wise, you walk with the foolish, you'll suffer harm.
It doesn't say you become foolish, it says you'll get hurt. If you walk with the wise, you become wise, if you walk with the foolish, you end up getting hurt. The more and more of my life I want to be where wisdom is at. I want to be where people that have the discerning power of the Holy Spirit are at.
And as we mature in our faith, we want an anti-fragile faith, our discernment and our reliance on the Holy Spirit must increase. The Holy Spirit, we're given the Holy Spirit for power of boldness to witness the shared love of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit also does it, it gives us a sense, it gives us a feeling that, hey, this is what the direction I want you to go and being able to sense and walk in that in wise, wise decisions. I was in the airport, like in the mood a little bit.
I was in the I-robe airport with my family, and I like to go into one place to get these macadamia nuts. And Kenya, they have great macadamia nuts. So I took, my family went to the place of coffee, I don't drink coffee, they sit down, I said, I'm going to go to get macadamia nuts. And so I'm walking down this route, walking down the hallway, and I get on the elevator, where the elevator that I get on is padded.
I thought, well, this is, you know, I'm not used to getting on padded elevators. So I get on and I go to hit the button and this woman walks in behind me. And she says, hello, my name is Alice, and I'm here to help you have a good time. I said, oh, no, no.
I said, I'm not looking for a good time. And so she starts hitting that button to close the elevator door. I said, no, no, no, no, what are you doing? She said, no, I'm a nice person, I'm going to have a good time, da, da, da, da, da.
And she said, no, no, no, I don't need to have a good time. I said, I'm married, I want to off this elevator. She said, no, no, no, so then her friends come up and then they block the door. And so they're saying, no, no, it's going to be okay.
And I'm thinking, if that door shuts, dear Lord, give me wisdom. So I stick my arm out and then you know how the beautiful thing is that they opened back up. And I stood in the, oh, I said, no, I'm not on this elevator. Alice, she's a nice lady.
She'll make you da, da, da, da, da. I said, I don't need any of that. I'm just trying to go get macadamia nuts. I'm not looking for any of this kind of stuff.
So anyway, they're like, no, no, no, it's going to be okay. I said, this is not okay. This is not, this is not, dear Lord, give me wisdom out of this situation. So I walk back up and Heather and Josiah and it's more like, we're the macadamia nuts.
I said, you'll never guess. I met this woman named Alice. And she said, they're like, you're making this up. I said, why would I make this story up?
I want it macadamia nuts. And I met with Alice on the elevator. Just want to make me have a good time, which I was not looking for a good time. You never know when you're going to need wisdom in your life, especially in those situations with Alice.
But in a more, probably in a more serious tone, you have to sometimes you have to let lighten things up. In a more serious tone, what do you face with in your life that you really need wisdom? And when God gives you wisdom, do you act upon it? I think one of my biggest challenges in life is when God gives me wisdom.
Sometimes I begin to, I want to figure it all out. And is it really wise? And is it really the best? Does God really know me?
Does God really know the situation? I need to fill him in on a few other things. But the reality of it is God has given us wisdom. And are we following through with it?
Moses was in a place you see in the story, in the life of Moses, what is his father-in-law comes, and he tries to oppress his father-in-law with all he's doing. He's helping all these people. And his father-in-law, what does he tell him? He says, you're not being wise.
This is not for one man to do. He gives him a wise way to begin to help make decisions. Because he needed to be around people. Moses needed, he has somebody in his life to give him wisdom.
And for you and I, I think we need wisdom in our hearts and minds. And then when God gives us wisdom, he gives us people in our life to give us wisdom. But then do we listen to it? Then we follow through with it.
I was glad that day on the elevator, when Alice was trying to get me to have a good time. I was able to hear wisdom and get off the elevator. This is the fifth thing we see in this prayer for the life of Moses is God is gracious. I don't know about you, but there has been many, many, many times.
I have to call out for God's graciousness in my life. We see with the Israelites, Moses, he goes up. He goes up on the mountain. He goes up on the mountain to get the 10 commandments.
He comes down. They're having, they have the golden idol, the calf. All that kind of stuff drops, the tablets. Anger, all that situation.
But we serve a gracious family father, right? When he comes back down, he has the 10 commandments. And I don't know what situation is your face with today, but I want you to be encouraged. That we serve a heavenly father who is gracious.
We serve a heavenly father that whatever you're going through, whatever you've done, we serve a heavenly father that is gracious that he gave his son. When Jesus Christ died and went on the cross, he didn't just die for some sins. And sometimes I think in the Christian world, we've made some sins bad and some sins semi. And this thing, but when Jesus died, he died for all of our sins.
His blood covered all of our sins. Past, present and future, because we serve a gracious heavenly father. And are you accepting the grace of him? One of the things I've struggled with in my life is shame and guilt.
The devil bringing back the things I've done in the past and bringing those into the present. The things I've done in the past, bringing them into the present. The things I've done in the past, bringing them into the present. And sometimes then in the present, they don't paralyze because of what the things have happened in the past.
But we serve a gracious heavenly father that takes the things in the past and he washes those things away. And he said, because of my grace and because of my mercy, you don't have to carry those today. But some of the things that I've hurt, you live on the mission field for 22 years, you're gonna hurt people. You're gonna hurt people, they're gonna hurt you.
You're gonna make decisions that were right, wrong and different. Maybe the best of intentions, but at the end of the day, it still doesn't turn out the way you thought it was going to do. But then I would carry those into the future, into the present, they would paralyze my future. In my word of encouragement for you today as we see the life of Moses, Moses made mistakes.
There's no doubt about it. He made mistakes, he was doing what God has called him to do. He recognized, he had a faithful eternal father, he recognized life for short, he recognized sin was serious. He was searching out wisdom, but he was still faced with needing to have some grace in his life.
And he recognized that God does give a second chance. So if you're third or fourth or 156, I don't know what chance you're on or what place you're at. But he's still a gracious, heavenly father. All we have to do is accept the grace that he's given.
And the last thing I think we see in this prayer when Moses's life is that with him, there is a possibility for success. That when you read through that prayer in the middle of it, you begin to think, oh, this is not so encouraging of a prayer. Days are short, and God's angry, you're gonna blow away like weeds, it's not so good. But we see that we have a father that when we walk with him, there is success.
And the Heavenly Father's got some thunder out there for us to make us realize that he is still in control with a thunder, even a thunder and lightning. There is success. One of the stories I like to share when it comes to this is when we first got to Madagascar, it's a special friendship. I love to go out into the bush and go out and do medical clinics.
And we were going out into one of these areas and sometimes asking good questions. I didn't ask a whole lot of questions in those days. I just said, hey, we need to do a medical clinic. Let's go do it.
I'd sign up, you get there, and you'd think maybe I should ask a few more questions. And so in this one, on the ride to get there, we're getting there and the people are beginning to tell the story and some of you might have heard this story, but it's a good one. And so we're getting there, they're beginning to tell us, hey, there's been this guy that was turned into a horse by this sorcerer, and then we're going there because you're the medical doctor, and we're going to pray for them, and you're going to help them get better. I'm thinking, whoa, I'm a skin guy.
You know, I'm not turning people from horses back into people and raising people from the dead guy. I'm the skin guy. You got a rash, you got a acne man, I'm your guy. But this other stuff, I don't know how this is going to go.
So we get to, and I said, are you, you know, sometimes things get lost in translation. It's going back between French and Malagasy, and I keep saying horse, yes, horse. And sorcerer, yes, sorcerer. And sorcerers and Madagascar are normally women that have been well fed and they're naked and they're in pig grease and they run around the countryside casting curses on people.
So I'm thinking, this does not sound like this is going to be a successful thing for me to go on because I don't, anyway. So we get there and there's this guy in a coma, and we begin to ask the people, because I'm still in disbelief that this is not a true story. And so they begin to ask him, and everyone in this village tells the exact same story. This man was walking on the countryside, and this woman came up to him and said, the sorcerer came up to him and said, I need you to carry me back to the village.
He said, there's no way I can carry you back to the village. He said, if you don't, I'm going to turn you into a horse. He says, I can't carry you back to the village. And that's, that's what, so what the next thing in the village they see, this naked woman that's eaten a lot of food in pig fat, come riding into the village on a horse.
And this village had never seen a horse before. It's not something that they had seen, and Madagascar horses are not everywhere. It's out in the countryside. They've never seen a horse.
So they're drawing the picture on the ground of what this animal, cause I get there, and horse, are we talking about the same word? Horse. And they said she arrives in the village, and when she gets in the village, she says, I now have spiritual control over this village. And if you do not do what I say, you do, I'm going to turn you all into horses also.
The people in the village did not believe her. She tells the story. They don't believe what's going on. In front of their eyes, she turns the horse back into the boy, and the boys in the coma.
And then we show up, and I'm thinking, oh my gracious, this is not a success story. We get there, once again, there's medically, there's nothing I can do. But it's amazing to see the believers that came with us, because they knew that we serve a faithful heavenly Father. They recognize that life is short.
They recognize that the consequences of sin or the consequences of sin are devastating. When people are following in the occult, when they're worshiping ancestors, or worshiping with things, there's power there. There's no doubt that there's power there. But that's the amazing thing about Jesus, is his power is greater.
And they recognize this. And so they begin to pray, and they begin to ask God for wisdom. They don't rush into the situation. They say, we need wisdom on what to do.
And I'm saying, dear Lord, give us wisdom, because there's nothing I can do for the situation. We stay there, and we pray, and we pray, and pray. And then we see that God is a gracious heavenly Father, and he shows us what to do. And then they go and they lay hands on this young man, and when they lay hands on this young man, the young man wakes up.
The young man wakes up, and when he wakes up, he begins to tell the story. Once again, I was walking through the thing, and just as the sorcerer had said, just as she had said, is the same story the young man said. And then the amazing thing that happened in that village, what she had meant for the detriment of that village turned in for its good. Because they began, they planted a church, and it's really easy to plant a church in a community where they've just seen the sorcerer, they've just seen the horse, they've just seen the boy, they had some fear and trepination of what she could do.
They wanted a heavenly Father that was stronger, that the one that could help them succeed, like the one that was faithful in their lives, that's the heavenly Father that they wanted. Now most of you in this room today, you're not gonna be faced with a situation where you're gonna be turned into a horse, or you know somebody's gonna be turned into a horse, but that is the enemy that comes to kill, steal, and destroy. And it may look like a different shape and cover of the Maryland. It may look like methamphetamine, it might look like other things of ways that he's using to destroy people, but there is an enemy that comes to kill, steal, and destroy.
And what we learn from the life of Moses, and what we learn from the prayer of Moses is, we have a faithful, eternal heavenly Father. We have, life, our lives are short, and we make a choice to follow him and do what he's asked us to do. We see that sin has consequences, we recognize that we need wisdom, we recognize that we serve a Father that is gracious, and with him we have hope.