Welcome to Foundry Cast, the Ministry of Foundry, Nine Methodist Church in Starlings in Louisiana. The following messages from Jack Lockaby, our director of discipleship, and it's all about testimony. For more information or to engage with us, find us at weirfoundry.com. So, Jan, I like to make a joke.
I have done a bunch, I mean, a bunch of random things throughout my life. When I was 12 years old, I got certified to be a scuba diver. Went into that, didn't really like it. Let's see, I've been rock climbing, I've done a bunch of mission trips.
When I was 19, I became a commercial, and I was 20, I became a commercially rated pilot. That was kind of my dream. That's what I wanted to do with my life. And I kind of realized that, you know, that's not what God has for me.
That's at the end of my time in Florida, I realized I actually needed to have a relationship with Christ. And that kind of started this whole process. It's been six years now since I became a Christian. And despite all these interesting things that I've done, I've gotten to travel all over the place.
It didn't get interesting until I started getting a relationship with God. I wanted to be a pilot, so I could travel. I didn't start traveling until I started a mission trips. And not only did I get to go to places, I actually got to go and live with locals.
I got to kind of just be in their world for a period of time. And so none of that actually compares this past year though. This past year has been probably one for the history books. It's been super interesting.
I've had a bunch of different things happen that I just don't think are coincidences. And so during my internship, I realized that I needed to start praying. And I needed to start praying in a way that was deeper than I ever had before and more intentional than I ever had before. And so when I realized this, I started getting a hold of a couple of books that kind of helped guide me into that process.
And one of the things that they said is ask for prayer. Or ask God to teach you how to pray. It's the only thing that disciples actually ask Jesus to teach them. And so I asked God, like, hey, teach me how to pray.
The next day, Chad calls me, he's like, hey, Pete Greg, and I'm a big fan of white Pete Greg, has a prayer course on the internet. You should check it out. And so the next day I'd check it out and it was life changing. And I did a six, eight week course on it at the Wesley and it was a lot of fun.
And it really helped me grow. And so I started seeing all of these things kind of changing in my life. I raised $1,750 for my internship. So I got to live off that for a year.
I got to work every single weekend and I had one day off a week. But every time I had a big ticket item come up, the money was always there. Like a job would come up or I could work in a vent and I would get that extra cash just to get me through. So God provided in so many ways.
I had some pretty tense relationships. So I'm a parents from through a divorce and things got kind of rocky. And God worked in that. I remember there was a day that I just cried out to God and I said, God, you're the great healer.
You're supposed to be the great physician and I need you to do that in my life right now. You healed me in the past. I need you to heal me today. Like I can't stand this anymore.
I need you to heal some of this trauma that's happened to me in my life. So I can be a healthier person. And that afternoon he provided someone to speak some truth in my life. That was, if I cry, I'm sorry, I'm ugly cry, but it happens.
And it just spoke to me in such a deep way that how much he loves us and how much he wants us to live in his presence. But despite of all of these things, despite how he has worked so tremendously and greatly in my life, I still doubt. And I still get down and I still get discouraged. I have absolutely faith in prayer, but I still sometimes I'm just like, are you hearing this?
Am I just praying to a brick wall and I get frustrated? And so the scripture, one of the scriptures for today is Hebrews 10, 35 to 36, which ironically popped up this week as a daily text. So that kind of lucked out there. So do not throw away your confidence.
It will be richly rewarded. I need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you'll receive what he has promised. And that's a lot easier said than done to persevere in your faith to persevere when we have so many distractions around us in life, which brings me to testimonies and why testimonies are important, why looking back at what has happened to us in our life can actually help us move forward. So the first testimony I gave, I gave it six years ago and I cried like a little baby.
There were some things I was worried about and again, I'm a really sentimental person, like I almost cried during worship today. But it was something that honestly took me by surprise. There were a couple things, I was like, I'm gonna get to this and I don't know how this is going to, how this is gonna fly. I don't really wanna kind of share some of my baggage, but I did.
But it was actually something involving my brother. We had kind of hit a rough patch and I didn't realize how much of a strain that it put on my soul until I'd set it out loud and how I felt about it. And I cried and I felt like this weight was lifted off of my shoulders. And so what I found is that testimonies, they help us work through our mess.
They help us kind of process some stuff that we don't even know is kind of hurting us. And when we're hurting them, we've got stuff weighing us down that keeps us from God. The second part is it helps you see your own flaws. I can look back and say, okay, man, you're not as good of a person as you like to think you are.
You don't deserve some of the stuff that you want. And all this stuff. It helps humble me. It helps keep me in a place of realizing how much I need God.
And when we realize how much we need God, that's when some cool stuff really happens because that means we get to invite him into that need. We get to invite him to fulfill some of these things that have to be done. Public speaking is one of those things that had John for me a second ago to just get God to help me with some of my nerves and anxiety and like he did. Like it's awesome what he does.
And so looking back helps us also know that God will act in our lives. It builds confidence. It says, hey, like I need you to do something, but I don't know if you're gonna do it. But if we can look back and we can say, oh, well, actually I prayed for this and God did it and I prayed for this and God did it.
This time in my life, God said, hey, like, like I've got you. And that helps me when I get down, when I get discouraged, I just have to look back. The only problem is when I get mopedia like to moped. I don't know.
I mean, I like to just kind of sit there and pout for a while. I can ask my dad, I just have my down days. And but you know, if I look back and I say, oh God's looking out for me. God's gonna get me.
He's been faithful up till now. He'll be faithful tomorrow too. It kind of makes me have to say, like, am I getting worked up over some stuff I really don't need to be getting worked up about. So personal flaw, thus needing God even more kind of helps you keep going in this faith.
My plan for my life, I realized wasn't big enough. If you look at the aviation stuff, people still say like, hey, you can still fly one day. And I don't want to because I also realized that God's plan was bigger than my plan. My plan wasn't enough to satisfy myself.
And so now realizing that I need God's plan in my life, I can pull that from my testimony. And it builds that confidence. And when we know what he's done, I mean, if you think about the Bible, is one huge testimony to God, when we know what he's done, his past acts of faithfulness will also know what he will do. And I think that's very important for our future.
And then looking back through all of the bad stuff that's happened in my life, a lot of times testimonies, you know, I'd be like to say, hey, this is all that junk that's happened. God has been faithful through all of it. And through all of it, I'm still here. I mean, those days I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to survive till tomorrow.
I'm here. And I can look back and I can pull on that. I can say, not only was God there, but he made me stronger because of it. You know, no good tragedy.
Like he makes it work for his people. That brings me to the second scripture, Romans 828. And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. And so knowing that, building upon that, that intimate relationship with God, I mean, can't ask for a better person to be our Lord and Savior, right?
And so that brings me to the second part of what testimonies mean to me. So the first part is testimonies are for ourselves, to strengthen our faith, to help us know where we're going. The second part is how testimonies are for other people. Testimony does no good if you don't say it.
You gotta get it out there. And so when I was younger, I always thought I was cursed. I was kind of the guy that always jumped between social groups. And so I never had one place that I really fit in, which made me feel kind of lonely and isolated.
Even though I knew all of these people, I just didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. And until I heard a good friend of mine named Josh, I actually lived with him for a while, shared his testimony. And when I'd heard his story, when I'd heard all the stuff that he'd been through and what God had done in his life, I realized that like there's this connection now. Like this loneliness is gone when I'm around him because we now have that connection because he's heard my story and I've heard his like we know everything about each other.
And so that's in one way why testimonies are so important is because they help us feel connected. It helps us be the community God has taught us to be. Jesus said, you'll be known by the way you show love for one another. And that's a lot more easy when we know each other, when we have that deep relationship.
When everyone in this room knows everyone's issues, not to be nosy, not to be something like that, but we can then pray for each other. We can pray for those problems. We can lean on each other knowing that this person knows me completely and they still love me. Chad passed out a book called The Band Meeting a While Back.
And I still think we have some copies, but one of the things it talks about is we have the self that we are and then we have the self that we present to other people. And when we can just kind of get out there and just say, this is who I am, this is where I've been, this is what I've done and then be accepted because that's what this community about is about, this is a second, then God told us to do is love others as I've loved you. Then we can just kind of got pretenses. We can stop worrying about what other people think or can I wear blue jeans on a preach.
Yeah, I had to pick out an outfit today, I'm not good at that. But that's kind of the second part. It helps us realize that our faith just isn't for us, that sometimes our story, someone else needs to hear it, to know that God is faithful, to maybe get some wisdom from it. And I love hearing people's stories.
I love knowing what God has done in other people's lives and all of that. And so at the heart of a testimony is a intimate relationship with God. So the second time I gave a testimony, I had a purpose for it. And I was trying to, I don't know what I was doing, there was a girl there I liked.
And so I thought it was gonna help her like me, I don't know. But at the end of it, I was just like, this is not what a testimony is about. This is, I did it for the complete wrong reason. And that weighed on me for a while.
Like I had to realize that I have to do it for the glory of God, not for myself. And that sob story that I guess I'll try and get some sympathy points, that's not what a testimony is about either. Cause I mean, some people have sob stories and they need to be said, they need to be shared because I mean, God can work through it. But when we limit it to that, that means people who've had a good life, people who've had just a good relationship with God, they were raised right or whatever you wanna call it.
That takes away their story. And that takes away the power of what God's done in their life. So what that means is it's about that relationship, right? Toeser likes to talk about how there are two types of Christians, they're the scribes and they're the prophets.
The scribes are someone that they know God, right? Like they read about them, they are really well versed with scripture and the Bible and theology and what everyone to get into. But all they can really tell you is what God did, 2000 years ago, whereas the prophet tells you what God is doing right now. And so when someone asks me, hey, why are you a Christian?
I don't open up my Bible and say, well, this is what this book says. I have a lot of books and I have a lot of books that say a lot of things. What I tell them is that when I was 20, a friend of mine asked me how my relationship with Christ was and I said it was fine. But then it kinda started waiting on me.
Then it kinda started eating at me. And so I get home and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I'm laying in bed and I realized I didn't have that relationship with Christ. I realized that I had a hole in my heart figuratively and that I had been doing a lot of things, trying to feel it, like to party, I like to adrenaline doing all kinds of things like that. And it never worked.
I've been trying to find acceptance. I've been trying to feel that hole. And then I realized that it was a Jesus' shape hole and I invited them into my life and it was gone. And it took me about a day to realize it.
And so that's what I tell them. Is because I've had an intimate moment with them. I've had prayers so that I can look back and say this happened and this can't be a coincidence. And that's why testimonies are important.
That it means you have to pray. It means you have to, I won't even catalog since we have the ability. Say your daily prayers, write them down and see how God answers them. You can have proof.
And you can tell people about that proof. You can tell them all the amazing things. It also means that we have a corporate responsibility. If our testimonies are not just for us, that means it's for the people around us, for the people that we have influence on.
And so when we start to analyze ourselves and our own spirituality and our life, that's when the cool things really start happening. That's when we can start seeing how God is working in our life. And then that micro change, the individual, when that starts happening on a grand scale, that's when the macro changes, that's when the church as a whole starts making the devil scared. When we as a collective are praying for each other and sharing our experiences with God and then reinforcing our faith.
That's when movements happen. And so in closing, I just have a couple questions and I've got a challenge. And the first question is what is your God story? What is that thing that happened in your life that made you believe?
What makes you keep coming back on Sunday morning? Because I mean, we're not always gonna have these mountain high experiences, but for some reason we still show up on a Sunday morning. We still tie the giveaway money that could be spent elsewhere. We make some responsible choices, not to go out to Halloween parties on Saturday night.
We have to preach the next day. Or go to your honey. So you can preach the next day. So, you know, why do we do it?
And so my challenge is this week is to pray every day, we wake up or go to sleep however you wanna do it. But I want you to pray, I want you to pray for this church. I want you to pray for your friends. And I want you to pray for yourself.
And then I want you to tell your story to somebody. If you'd like to hear my story, let's grab coffee sometime. I would love to hear yours. But let's go and honor God.
Let's see what he really can do and see what he's really done in our lives. So back heads please. Heavenly Father, I thank you for how faithful you are. I thank you how there have been many times you could have bailed on this relationship that we have, but you haven't.
That you always fight for me. That you always stand up for me, you stand in the gap. God, you know what I need before I even ask for it. And I don't know honestly how I could live this life without you.
So thank you so much for everything you've done. Namapra, amen. Amen.