What a blessing to come back here again.
I deeply appreciate Professor Joe and the leadership
for asking me to come and be with
you today and share what the Lord placed
upon my heart for you brothers here.
It's interesting, a couple of days ago I
was in Phoenix speaking for the Calvary Chapel
there, Mark Martins pastor there and the temperature
was 105 degrees.
So I kind of figured out it'll be
warm here.
And I came here, I began to freeze.
And it's quite a contrast.
The Lord willing, tomorrow morning also I'll be
sharing and I'll bring a brief report for
you from the tsunami efforts that's going on.
But it will bring joy for you just
to know that so far we have over
80 churches planted among the tsunami victims in
the subcontinent.
Praise the Lord.
And we have about a thousand missionaries and
church members actually are still working among the
tsunami victims.
It's quite significant what God is doing and
continue to pray for us.
I'd like for us to read a Bible
verse from the Gospel of Luke chapter 22
verse 31.
Luke chapter 22 verse 31.
Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you
as wheat.
But I have prayed for you, Simon, that
your faith may not fail.
And when you have turned back or converted,
strengthen your brothers.
It is interesting to note there, the Lord
is not saying, Peter I prayed for you
that you would not fail.
But your faith may not fail.
As a matter of fact, he faced the
temptation and he goofed up as you know.
He denied the Lord.
The teaching I have this afternoon to share
with you came out of an experience that
I had some years ago.
After the weekend ministry in this particular church,
fairly large congregation.
That afternoon, I went to the hotel trying
to take some rest and the senior pastor
asked if he could come and talk to
me.
I said fine, although I said I wish
he would leave me alone.
And so he came and said the first
chitchats and all the different things and his
face all of a sudden turned red and
he starts sobbing.
He buried his face in his hand and
began to shake.
I sat there realizing something happened in his
life that he wanted to talk to someone.
After a while he said, I lost it.
I don't think even God can forgive me.
And he made such drastic statements that only
began to help me understand whatever he was
dealing with was so serious that he just
didn't know how to handle it.
Yet he continued to be in the ministry,
husband and father of three children and on
and on things like that.
And that experience with this dear brother helped
me to look in the scripture about what
happens to us as God's people when we
fail.
What happens next?
C.S. Lewis said this, there is an
element of superficiality with all of us.
How are you doing?
Oh fine.
It's a good day.
Really?
He just had a terrible time of battling
with temptation.
Something you shouldn't look at, you looked at.
Some conversation you had, you shouldn't have that
conversation and whatever else and inside you are
dying and trying to overcome this guilt and
burden through some music and whatever is going
on and somebody says how are you?
Fine.
There is superficiality.
There is not one individual here including the
one who speaks to you today that can
say I have never sinned, I have never
failed.
And Jesus said this very well.
Someone among you without sin, let him cast
the first stone.
We all fail.
Twenty years of preaching, Paul makes a statement
about himself.
I am the chief of sinners.
Failure is a part of life that we
go through throughout our life.
Yet somehow we miss God's purpose in it.
Thus Satan comes along and uses that to
defeat us further and keep us down from
understanding the grace and the purpose of God
in our life.
Jesus came to give beauty for ashes.
He is the one who never looks at
a Bruce Lee and say, it's all over
for you.
Or a lamb that the oil is gone,
it's just only smoke left.
He is not going to snuff it out.
And he remains the same today for us.
In the work of God, whether you are
a full time Christian worker, a pastor, a
youth pastor, a counselor or a husband or
whatever you are.
If you really think about it, the way
God does his best is he picks the
unwanted, the least and the last, the nobodies.
How many among you are able and smart
and superstars?
He says, no one.
Then he says, God walks along and rejects
the able, self-centered, the mighty, and he
picks, chooses the weak and the nobodies.
If a few powerful individuals make it into
the work of God, in the plan of
God to do something significant like Apostle Paul,
usually it happens they are minority, but God
makes sure they hit the bottom so they
start from zero.
Illustration, Moses, Jacob, Paul.
What do you do when the vessel, the
pot is marred and the original plan of
the potter is no more to be realized?
He is going to throw it away.
When fruitful life now becomes a ruined field
and all there is canker worm and locust.
Without any warning, the storm hits and the
reed falls and is bruised.
What do you do when our life comes
to a place we think is beyond repair?
The glow on the face and the eyes
is no more there.
We speak the same language, same Bible verses,
same prayers, but somehow that fire is no
more there.
We feel that we are dying slowly.
What do you do in a time like
that?
When we are betrayed by close friends and
no one to turn to, now full of
shame and agony like the woman that was
caught in adultery.
Where do you go from there?
After having preached and taught and raised your
children or family, influenced others, all of a
sudden denying the Lord by some deed, some
practice and known to public like it was
in the case of Peter.
Where do you go from there?
Having been picked by God, anointed, called by
name, having laid aside, rejected the stronger ones
like young lad David.
Finally, after all the understanding of God and
His presence, getting to such a mess, what
do you do?
Where do you go from there?
When your body becomes sick because of sin
and the time span is not one day
but the whole year long, Psalm 32, what
do you do?
Who you talk to?
When co-workers or your leader or your
pastor or friends that you looked up to
says, you know, you are no use.
You don't measure up.
I gave you so many chances.
I can't do any more with you.
Please leave.
It happened to John Mark.
Where do you go?
When divorce hurts deep and the torment and
guilt continue to plague one's soul.
As we read in John's gospel chapter 4,
the woman at the well.
What hope is there?
Well, the question is, is there hope?
Is there a way to recover and gain
what I lost?
No, no, no, not just what I lost,
but get the best that I thought was
the best even beyond that.
Let me tell you very quickly.
The answer is yes.
Yes.
1000 times.
Yes.
If only you and I can believe by
the way, the Bible is full of God's
heroes and whole bunch of them are failures.
There was a article in the Indian newspaper
recently.
I just came back from India a couple
of days ago.
It talked about this fancy magazines they put
out, you know, women's pictures, men's pictures on
the cover of the magazine.
And it was quite interesting.
The article said, actually, these people really don't
look like that.
Photoshop.
I mean, he, you know, we can take
an ugly face like yours and put it
on the computer.
Within seconds, you come out a movie star.
Yes.
But God never does that with his people.
He leaves the whole thing as it is,
no touch up.
You know why?
He wants to encourage me, encourage you the
way his heart feels toward us.
Creation itself began.
He created the whole world perfect, yet the
whole thing went into chaos.
We read in Genesis chapter one in the
early verses there.
But then he would come and redo it
again out of chaos and darkness and hopelessness
and says, and God said, it is good.
He didn't say, you know, when I was
in Germany many years ago, visiting my wife's
family, one of the individuals sitting around the
dining table when they asked, what do you
think about the food?
Not bad.
No, God did not say, not bad.
It's okay.
No, it is good.
This is how God deals with things that
go bad and wrong.
Adam and Eve, what dream, perfect people God
made, but they messed up.
So Jesus comes.
Shall we say Christ coming into the world
was the second best that God had?
If we would say that, that would be
blasphemy.
The lamb that was slain before the foundation
of the world.
God was not surprised by that.
Abraham, he died a bunch of times and,
you know, got a son through his servant
girl, you know, all the stories.
Would God leave him?
No.
He became the friend of God, the father
of nations.
Jacob, what a classic example, one of the
great heroes of God.
Even before this fellow was born, God said,
the older shall serve the younger.
But would he believe that?
No way.
He was smart and crafty and careful about
planning and scheming and working about everything for
himself.
Twenty years, this man would run and run
and run and waste his life.
And finally, God finds him.
He became no more Jacob, the deceiver, but
the prince of God.
Moses, what a sacrifice he made to follow
God, yet forty years in the wilderness.
It is bad enough to take care of
some rotten, stinking sheep, but worse to take
care of your father-in-law's sheep.
In the end, he says, God, you want
me to?
No way.
I mean, I can't even talk.
Yet we read in the book of Acts,
Moses was mighty in speech.
Incredible orator he was.
Yet, after years of just walking around after
dumb sheep, he became like one of them.
Just lost, don't know what to do.
Did God say, well, you know, Moses, there
was a time I could have used you
as strong and able and now what to
do?
Like we say in India, what to do?
Moses, you are my leader.
What a sad story when you read about
Samson.
Yet, in death, he accomplished more.
You can go to Peter, doubting Thomas.
By the way, Thomas came to my village
in India in AD 52, planted a church.
Can you believe that?
He said, I won't believe anything, but how
God used him to spread the gospel in
a land like that.
John Mark, the one finally end up writing
the gospel of Mark.
And all this tells us something so real
in God's way of dealing with each one
of us.
No matter where you are, how many times
you fail, what you are living with, what
pain or quiet agony that you are now
living with, God understand you so perfectly.
And if only you will come before him,
he will take those things and make use
of that to do something far more significant
than you ever imagined or dreamed.
Peter, I prayed for you that your faith
may not fail.
Faith in what?
Faith in the grace, in the mercy, in
the ultimate purposes of God that he is
able.
But what are some of the things that
God has planned in our journey, especially when
we fail?
One, I believe this is to make us
holy.
You realize that none of us become holy
without temptation.
It is by choices you and I make,
we become more like Jesus.
The two trees in the garden, you can
pick either one.
And Jesus learned obedience through suffering.
It is us.
I write the exam in the fourth grade
and I fail in the subject.
The teacher, the Holy Spirit comes to me
and says, you are dead, finished.
No, he says, try again.
And he helps me.
He teaches me.
He encourages me.
And then I write again and he has
patience with me.
God wants everyone to succeed.
Don't want to fail.
And this is the reason why when we
fail, we have no reason to give up
and we must not.
But here's the thing.
If we start covering up things, how are
you?
No problem.
I'm not saying tell all the dirty stories
to everybody.
No, I'm not saying that.
But the definition of holiness to me is
honesty.
When you and I fail, instead of saying
that's okay, no problem, everybody's doing it and
change the name sin and call it some
weakness, you know, my DNA, my great-great
-grandfather's are monkeys and it happened because of
that and you know, whatever else, you know,
and it's a cultural thing, you know, this.
And listen, once we can stop and look
to the Lord and his face and see
his holiness and see Jesus and say, oh,
Lord, this grieves you, this hurts you.
And Lord, here I am and walk in
the light.
And God uses these failures to change us
to become more like him.
Then this, he allows, teaches about his grace,
his mercy.
Peter said, me, Jesus, all these fellows, they
are all rats.
They're all going to deny you.
By the way, that's my translation from King
James, but not me.
I'm not going to do that.
Sure enough, three times he denied the Lord.
Then he just couldn't handle it.
He had to walk away from everything.
I'm going for my old business.
And then after Christ resurrection, he makes a
statement.
Oh, by the way, tell all my disciples
and Peter, he puts that name out.
Then he goes after and talks to him,
Peter, what dumb, stupid things you did.
How can you do this to me?
Didn't I let you walk on water?
And all the revelations I gave you.
Didn't ask one thing about his sin, about
his failures, but what he did were even
nothing.
Peter, do you love me?
Grace became practical and tangible in his life.
Now you read the writings of Peter.
You will understand how it transformed him so
completely understanding the heart of the Lord.
Some of us, where we think we are
strong and able, know all the answers.
God just stands back and allow us to
fail so that he can show us how
much we need him.
Also, our failures are used by the Lord
to teach us humility or brokenness.
Why 40 more years the children of Israel
must wait and suffer?
The man was not broken.
God is always looking for a man to
be a broken vessel, to be a godly
husband, a father in the home.
One of my favorite author is A.
W.
Chaucer and then, of course, watch my knee.
And Chaucer said this.
He said, I doubt God can ever use
a man for his glory until he has
broken him thoroughly.
Peter was strong.
Jacob was strong.
But years it takes maybe, but God patiently
waits and let us hit the bottom again
and again and again.
When my children were growing up, in the
early days when my Danny and Sarah was
five, six years old, growing up in the
United States in Dallas, I used to tell
my wife many, many evenings, I'm scared to
death what will happen to our children in
America.
They would come home and tell us about
two daddies, three mummies, and all these things
that began to worry us to no end.
And I said to Gisela, let's go home.
Let's go to India.
Let's take our kids.
Forget all this stuff.
Let's not lose our kids.
I thank God for Gisela's stable, deep, quiet
walk with God.
Publicly, she never rebukes me or say any
bad things, but at home, please don't tell
this to her.
And one day she said, my husband, there
are two things I want to tell you.
Because you know, the way she talks, her
accent, now get the color of German, that,
that, that, and I know it's dangerous.
She said, you know, if you don't believe
for our children, they'll be lost.
According to your faith, they will become.
So a strong statement.
Daniel and his friends were in Babylon.
They were preserved.
And our God is the same God today.
We must believe.
Secondly, she said, no matter how many times
you preach and teach and whatever you do,
whatever you write, if your inner life is
broken and humble, our children will follow in
your footsteps.
That was a little too strong.
This is when I had to learn.
I grew up in a home back in
India where I never ever heard my father
ever saying sorry to my mother for anything
he did wrong or said.
Any problem in my home is always my
mother had to ask forgiveness in the end,
even when my father was at fault.
And I remember my son was five, five
and a half, six and like that.
He did something bad and he needed to
be punished.
And I punished him.
Very severely.
When it was over, the Holy Spirit very
gently said, what have you done to him?
I said, what do you mean?
The one who spared the road ruins his
son.
But you did what you did in anger,
in frustration.
You have sinned.
Now I reach back in memory and see
my father who never ever would say sorry
to anyone.
What am I going to do?
My culture, my DNA.
I remember walking in the room as he
lay in bed sobbing and crying.
I sat beside him and said, son, I'm
so sorry.
I have done wrong.
Would you please forgive me?
It was needed, I should to punish you,
but I didn't do it in love.
It was out of anger.
And he got up and reached over and
hugged me so tight and start sobbing.
And I cried and I prayed.
Beginning of a journey of understanding in my
home, I can lead my wife, my children,
not by writing 200 books and being a
missionary leader, but rather a broken man when
I began to accept my failures.
How many hundreds of times I have asked
my wife to forgive me for same things
in the flesh and my children and my
colleagues.
Brothers and sisters, if some sisters here, let
me tell you also, you can go through
life 20, 30, 40, 50 years with Bible
crammed in your head.
Powerful orator you may be, but you will
never know the heart of God that burns
continually and the experience of heaven until you
see yourself and say, Lord, I know I'm
wrong.
And I say this to you because God
uses failures in our life more than anything
else.
I'm convinced to bring us to the place
of brokenness because only as we are broken
in our self-centeredness and pride and arrogance
and this plastic superficial spirituality and lying and
deceiving about who we really are.
God cannot change us.
He can't.
And this is a choice we must make.
I left my home when I was 16,
hardly 17.
And I happened to be with this very
large missions organization with four, five hundred young
people ministering and serving God.
You know, there's a saying in my native
language, in a country where no one has
any nose, the one with the half nose
is the king.
You can quote me, okay, free.
I mean, of all the young people around,
it looked like I was one of the
few people had the gift or natural ability
or talent, whatever to speak and teach.
So within a few years time, I can
become a hero among the whole movement.
I was in great demand to come here,
go there.
I'm teaching Bible and speaking in meetings and
getting invitation from England to come and speak
there.
As young as I was hardly 19 at
the time and things were really going well.
I was studying.
I mean, this is no makeup.
All night I would stay awake and study
Bible so I can have the best message
and illustration stories and all kind of stuff.
Never forget, year end conference in Ajmer, Rajasthan,
northwest of India, or 400 young people, three
weeks of conference, after which we'll divide into
small teams and go all over the country
for ministry for the next six months.
As we go to the conference place, I
said to myself quietly, oh man, what I'm
going to do?
The whole world is going to ask for
me.
Based on my previous experience, the coordinator from
Punjab say, we want brother KP there and
the guy from Rajasthan said, I want him
here and Gujarat said, I want him there.
I mean, I'm just one person, where can
I?
I mean, quietly going around thinking, well, you
know, let's see how it go.
The conference came to an end.
Teams were divided, leaders were picked, teachers were
chosen and the rejects, you know, the useless
ones, the blind, the crippled, nobody wants, they
usually leave them behind and I happened to
be on the list.
The teams began to move out.
The day was like eternity for me.
Evening came, sun went down, the old building
in the shape of dome.
The senior leader said, KP, I want to
talk to you.
It was night.
There was not a star in the sky.
He walked in front of me, I walked
after him.
When outside, there was a stone and he
sat on that and I sat on the
other end.
He didn't look at me, I could see
his face.
He said, you realize nobody wanted you.
You are rejected by all.
Your pride, your arrogance, high-minded thinking has
caused this situation.
You know, I like grace.
I like for someone to put his arm
around me and say, brother, you know, I
love you so much and I care about
you.
I mean, I just want to be kind
to you, you know, and then polish it,
put some spices in it and, you know,
put some butter in it and make it
tender and soft and all those things.
This fellow didn't say nothing like that.
He just spoke those words and got up
and left.
And I sat there just weeping buckets and
I remember literally, I looked up all I
could see, the dark, dark night.
No angel, no Jesus, no one, no human
being and I said to myself, I will
never again preach.
This is what they do to me for
all the service I have given, all the
thousands of miles I traveled, the endless nights
I studied and agonized.
If this is what they will do to
me, I will not preach again.
I was really mad.
But, you know, the grace of God for
me is this, that in His mercy and
His kindness, He softened my heart, not to
continue harden it like rock, that it will
take 20 years before I will learn.
No, within a few weeks time, I was
weeping daily when I saw how wretched individual
I am on the inside.
That was a beginning of a journey that
I'm still on.
My precious brothers, please don't overlook sin.
When you're driving along, somebody cuts in.
I mean, you don't want to show the
wretched sign with your fingers.
Especially your wife, kids sitting, they don't want
to use ugly words he used to use
maybe in the past, but inside you're saying,
listen, that occasion, the Lord used to bring
pressure upon yourself just to show you the
inside has not changed.
Had you got the knowledge, would it be
possible for you to turn your wife and
kids in the car and say, you know
what?
You don't know what's going on on the
inside of me.
Would you please pray for daddy?
Would you please pray for me?
My wife pray for me.
I'm so, so million miles away from becoming
like Jesus.
That very admission brings grace, but we are
so conditioned that we can do all kind
of stupid things in the name of culture
and everybody doing it and then walk through
life thinking that we know God, we don't.
Then I have to move on fast here.
God never works with the kind of logic
we have.
You know, for us, two plus two is
four, right?
Before I came up, the prayer our brother
offered, Lord, your ways are not our ways.
And I said, that's cool because I was
thinking about the same thing, you know, but
in God's plan, he does things in a
mysterious way.
That is, he has a plan way out
there for our life and then he watches
us to see how we respond to failures
and temptations and all those things so we
can change and become more and more like
the Lord so he can fulfill his plan
out there.
A day for God is like thousand years
and I'm telling you, if only we concentrate
on Jesus and his dream to change us.
Many people think, oh, God is in such
a big fix that he need me so
bad.
Yeah, God needs us.
That's not a bad statement to make, but
you know what?
God never made man to do a lot
of work for him.
He got angels by billions.
He made man in his own image to
have communion with him.
And the highest priority God has is not
I evangelize the whole world and tell the
whole upside down.
No, it is that I may know him
and understand him because out of that life
flows life changing messages, writings, attitudes, words and
everything.
Hey, I tell you something interesting.
It's not a secret, but maybe it is.
You know, you read lots of books and
I do also, not a lot, but I
read enough books.
Now tell me, you read a book and
somehow it just grabs you and creeps through
the skin and then grab you and then
you start weeping and you kneel and pray.
English words.
But then you take another book.
The same words are there.
The same kind of teaching is there.
The same writings are there, but it doesn't
touch you.
Your mind don't even work.
You know what's the difference?
The first book that devastated you, ruined you
was written by someone who knew the ways
of God, not the acts of God.
The children of Israel asked for wonders and
signs and acts, show us, give us.
But he showed his ways to Moses which
is internal.
That's the difference.
And the way God does that is basically
use our external circumstances and problems to change
us on the inside.
Well, another thing he does all this so
that we can become an encouragement to others.
My life is spent, somebody asked me recently,
where do you live?
I said in the suitcase because that's where
we have brothers and sisters serving God in
10 Asian countries, some 14, 15,000 full
-time workers and 1.5 million baptized believers
in the 21,000 churches overseas.
And so my life is a little bit
busy.
And five years ago, the Lord spoke to
my heart in time of fasting and prayer.
And I didn't say fasting prayer to impress
you that I fast.
I do fast, you fast also, for nothing
else lose weight.
The Lord said to me, spend majority of
your time with your leaders.
So I picked about 80 some people, 70
of them are really serious, very serious people.
And out of that, there are about 24
that are senior most leaders.
And I find myself spending endless hours with
these people on the telephone, here, there, all
kinds of things.
And recently in one of our very inner
circle private leaders meeting, 24 people, something interesting
happened.
We were just talking, sharing and our journey
last two, three years of learning from the
Lord to be Godly leaders.
And one leader spoke up and said, we
just wanted to know what changed us and
helped us the most.
It is not all the best leadership books
and teachings you did, although they helped, you
know, and John Maxwell in all the books
are all out there.
Then he said, the times you shared about
your struggles, your sin, your failures, your repentance,
the times you broke down before us, when
you thought about your failures, it helped us
the most to understand we are also human
beings, we can learn and grow like you.
What a blessing, what a blessing.
And my precious brothers, these are a few
things I wish you would keep in mind.
No one is immune to failure.
If you sit here and say, well, so
far I have not failed, wait, it's going
to happen to you.
I promise.
He who thinks he stands, he will fall.
Be careful.
Today, tomorrow, sometime, we will face this kind
of struggles in life.
To sin is fallen man's lot.
Outside of God's grace, we have no hope,
but in God's grace, the best he make
out of it.
I heard the story about this man, Robert
Robinson lived in 18th century.
He became a spiritual rock.
He came to the Lord through George Whitfield's
preaching.
He is the one who wrote the hymn,
Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my
heart to sing thy grace.
Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs
of loveless praise.
Sadly, the man who wrote this hymn wandered
away from the streams of life and hope.
He became a prodigal, journeyed into the distant
country of carnality and deep sins.
One day he was traveling by a stagecoach
and was sitting beside a young woman, engrossed
in her book.
She ran across a verse she thought was
beautiful and asked him what he thought of
it.
The verse was, she didn't know who this
guy was, prone to wander, Lord I feel
it, prone to leave the God I love.
Busting into tears, Robinson said, Madam, I am
the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn
many years ago and I will give a
thousand words if I had them to enjoy
the feelings I had then.
So if you are one today, gone through
a few months, a year or whatever, covering
up very carefully, very wisely, it's amazing to
me that Judas could live with Jesus for
three and a half years and none of
the disciples could figure out this guy was
a rascal.
And Jesus loved him so much that he
wouldn't disclose who he was, how clever he
was.
He must have been involved in casting out
demons and healing the sick because Jesus sent
him out also.
He had fruitful ministry.
This pastor who was weeping in my room,
trembling, one of the amazing statements he said,
I still preach, I still teach, nothing has
changed, but I am the one dying on
the inside.
If you are one, may I ask you,
my dear, dear brother, God is not desperate
for your talents, your abilities, your money and
your being a missionary pastor or a husband.
Listen, just you and the Lord asking for
the grace to stop.
And no more let the devil blind you
from seeing the glorious face of our Lord
who said, I came to give beauty for
ashes.
Don't waste one day anymore.
Accept his forgiveness.
In the Old Testament, the blood covered like
a bedsheet over a dirty table.
But in the New Testament, his blood cleanses
us from all, all, all sins.
He remembered it, no more.
Years ago, Corrie Temboo speaking in Dallas, I
went to hear her.
It's interesting, she made a statement, God forgives,
he forgives so completely and he put a
sign by the seashore, no fishing.
And you come back and say, look, I'm
so sorry for that.
He says, what are you talking about?
I don't know what you're talking about.
If only we can believe.
May I ask you to remember this Bible
verse in John 17.
Jesus said, Father loves you just the way
he loves me.
Can you fathom that?
That my father in heaven loves me the
way, exactly the way he loved Jesus Christ.
He will hold nothing back from us.
He gave all.
The enemy's purpose is to remind us constantly
and hold us on entering into the glory
and the grace that he has for us.
And his blood is still sufficient.
And by the way, God knows our breaking
point.
Psalm 103 verse 14.
He knows our frame.
He remembers your dust.
Listen, you are not going to be destroyed
by the stuff that you face.
He knows.
Just keep looking to him.
And finally, I want to close by saying
to you, believe nothing, nothing is impossible because
he is the one who began the work
and who will complete it.
I like the book of Ruth.
As the book come to the conclusion.
You remember, you read the story of Naomi.
Her name means pleasant, joyful, happy.
But now, after having wandered away from the
father, paid such heavy consequence, husband dead, sons
dead, old, worn out, wrinkly face, beaten, hopeless,
discouraged.
She limps along toward Bethlehem.
And people see her from distance.
Oh, look at that, who is coming?
Oh, it's Naomi.
She says, quiet, don't call me that.
Call me Mara, Victor.
But you read on.
She became one of the most significant individuals.
In the name of the Messiah.
The overcomers are not the ones who have
not failed, but those who overcame by the
blood of the lamb that was shed for
sinners and failures.
When you read the book of Psalms, you
read this.
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.
But God, did you change this guy's name?
He's a Jacob, he's a cook, a deceiver.
He's on the side of me when I
fail.
He just want me to know, I'm still
the God of Jacob.
And may I encourage you to come to
understand him.
And what do you have now?
The broken marriage, with the broken children, past
failures, disappointments, choosing the wrong profession, being in
the wrong place.
Please listen to me.
You have not missed God's best.
Don't let the devil lie to you and
kill you.
No, sir.
The best is now coming.
If only you can believe, if only you
can believe.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for
these, my precious, precious brothers, my co
-workers, those who are your servants, called to
serve you in your church.
Their wives, their children, their family members, their
fellowship, their responsibilities.
Lord, you know everything about us so in
absolute detail.
Lord, thank you.
Forgive us, Lord, for running and running and
pretending.
Forgetting, Lord, these struggles and failures in our
lives that you allow.
It is not to destroy and throw us
away, but to fulfill your best plan in
and through us.
Lord, would you please help us that we
will not forget what we have just heard.
Father, Lord, the Holy Spirit will continue to
work on our hearts, that we can come
to you and embrace you and be embraced
by you and walk in a newness, in
a new way from now on.
Thank you for your blood.
Oh, Jesus, thank you for your blood.
We love you, Lord.
Bless your people in Jesus name.
Amen.