Jeff Sutton Are You A Citizen Or A Foreigner 81420AM

well good morning you guys are the early birds this morning however it's not too too early but it's early for camp meeting i mean we're out camping and enjoying god's nature uh you know i have my i call my my kids are like the chickens you know they go to bed with the sun and they get up you have the kids like chickens too my kids they'll be up at 5 30 in the morning morning crowing away and no sleeping in for us and uh i just i just love my kids they're just they're chips off the old block they hear their my wife my poor wife we're driving in the car here and they're singing some spanish song and repeating it over and over again and seeing those little harmony just little parts and i can watch my wife's wanting to pull the hair and i'm just laughing i think it's hilarious these guys they can really enter they're fun entertainment they really are and uh because i used to do the same thing when i was a kid i don't know how why why we like just sound you know and if it sounds funny then we'll just repeat it and repeat it i remember i made my my mom pull over once and she's looking for a cop and i had my mouth stuck out the window and i figured out when the wind blew by my mouth i could make a like a siren sound and i was i was making a cop car siren and she thought a carpet actually was about to pass and i was like mom why'd you stop you know and here i was just with my head out the window going whoa whoa you know kids you know there's always always doing something and so uh they're a blessing they're a blessing from the lord and you know i can't tell you that they're such an integral part of my ministry i don't know what i would do without them i just think what a thrill it is to have them up here singing and how much it inspires people to see children who love jesus and we are blessed uh very very blessed um so yesterday we were talking about what hap why people don't ignite what happens uh and a lot of times we we the kind of i would say the worst case scenario is we settle for the simulator we settle for listening for the good stories everybody else's miracle story and uh everybody else's you know testimony about how they've shared christ but we ourselves have never done it and so how do how do we start and i want to answer some of those questions uh today but before we begin uh i just want to ask that the holy spirit will be here and that he'll he'll speak to each one of our hearts you know it's it's difficult when i preach you know each one of you is a world in their own who has a perception a set of needs completely different and the words that i speak you know it's not just about speaking in a different language but the holy spirit translates those words and brings conviction in a unique way to each heart to each life and that's my prayer this morning that god will speak to the needs of each one this morning and he will fill the needs of your soul and he'll use me in some small way in that great mission that he has so let's uh bow our heads for a word of prayer gracious lord this morning as we open your word as we as i share some of my experiences with my brothers and sisters this morning lord we just pray that your holy spirit will be here that you will touch and speak to each one of our hearts lord that you will bring conviction that you will show us what it is that we can do lord that you will change our desires that you will give us a passion for people oh lord we're not worthy but you are worthy i don't know what you see in us but you have saw something special so special that you were willing to leave everything to save us lord we want your perspective we want to see the same value in people around us so this morning as i speak lord touch our hearts speak to us we pray in jesus name amen you know uh as i as i mentioned a little bit ago that i used to i'm i am teaching i teach mechanics and the longer i've i've taught i i used to always kind of throw out terms and words and i'd say things and i realized that not everybody has the same understanding of a very common word uh and so i would always take things for granted like and my students they i would say something you get it and they would just shake their head yep uh-huh but then i'd be like okay do that and then uh it was quite obvious that they didn't understand what was going on and so i've learned that sometimes we use terminologies and phraseologies and things and and not everybody understands them the same way and marriage of course is the same thing you know simple words like yes and no to your wife is not always i'd like it to be that way i really wish when we got married i told my wife you know just let your yes be yes and your no be no but you know it's not always no it's not always no and yes it's not always yes but you know that's beside the point uh but i do want to clarify a few a few terms and perspectives uh of course missionary and i mentioned this the last time i spoke we typically think of missionaries as someone who goes overseas and you know is preaching to some tribe on a river you know wearing the wearing a gourd or feathers in their you know that kind of thing i mean these are the missionary folk but my perspective of a missionary and by the way i believe that should somebody ask me what i do for a living and i i'm thrilled to say that i'm a missionary but i want to tell you that we could all respond the same our purpose in life is to be missionaries god it says every child i love the quote from desire of ages because every child is born into the kingdom of god as a missionary we've got a phone call luckily i think i've got my phone on vibrate it could have been mine but i think i have mine on silent mode but i have mine charging there too so it could happen to me uh but uh every child is born into the mission kingdom of god as a missionary we've all got a mission and so evangelism now is it so i just want to think when i look out in this audience i am talking to missionaries you may not thought of yourself as a missionary but you are and so now what do missionaries do well missionaries their purpose is to share christ to evangelize we're there to and and you know and some worlds that they kind of look and have that negative oh wow you're just trying to change people's customs and you know traditions and beliefs and make them westerners and some thinking that way but what we're trying to do is we are trying to and exactly change customs and beliefs but not into westerners but into heavenly citizens i don't i am not i am not much of a i i love our country but i'm a foreigner i've been living as a foreigner for well we should all be living as foreigners right now as when i actually went overseas it became even more notable i will always be a gringo in south america i'm a tall white guy and it's okay that means you get the white skin tax you know what that is and well that's that's an extra 30 on whatever they're offering you walk into the market and they look at you and you don't maybe speak there especially in the beginning when i didn't speak my spanish very well boy you'd get the old white skin tax and they just that if a tomato cost a dollar well now you're gonna pay two dollars you know or a dollar fifty just because you stood there and you look like a white guy in gringo and so uh you know and you show you always you're just never one of them really and so but now i got to be honest with you when i come back to the states the mentality here is quite foreign i don't really think like americans think now it's not about not about freedoms it's not about it but it's about for example americans money is a very important thing it's something we think about something we talk about entertainment is a very important thing lots of things you know and this kind of goes across the board and you know inside the church outside the church and so those things that you know i just it's not something i'm really excited about myself and so you feel somewhat foreign and my goal though is i'm happy i want to be foreign because i really want to i want to feel at home in heaven i am training to become i am learning to become a heavenly citizen now when you live outside outside of america the most notable place i've went to that people uh feel this way is cuba cuba is just an amazing island precious culture love the people i love listening going to their church service and listening to them sing cubans have the the quartets and violins and they just have beautiful music beautiful voices very sociable people they actually talk to each other still they nobody's doing this you know so you can see people visiting on the sidewalks in the evenings and you know there's there they still have a social life culturally but there's one unique thing about cuba that i never met one actually only one i met one cuban who was a pastor there who could come to the u.s and has chosen to stay in cuba as a pastor making 19 a month the rest of them want to go to the u.s i mean it is tremendous i have met cubans just about everywhere i am sitting on a boat in the amazon river a speedboat going south into peru and i'm sitting next to 26 cubans i was like boys you're going the wrong way yeah i mean you know i this this boat's going south and you guys need to go north to get to the u.s no no no they got to go south then north they'll go south east west whichever direction they go but they will end up here and i thought to myself how much are we willing to go through to become heavenly citizens i can tell you that thinking about getting to america runs through a cuban's mind probably every day i'm pretty sure they're thinking you see all the people build boats they try and drift across the the ocean we i hear these stories of of all kinds of stories of these people trying to just just touch us soil that's all they've got to do back guys would get in a boat and they would jump out of the boat and if they could grab the buoy they could stay and if the coast guard got them while they were still in the boat they'd go back half you know like two or three would get to the buoy a couple ended up staying in the boat and back they go i mean you know you're talking about in 20 days of drifting at the caribbean sea to get to the buoy you know and something made it some didn't but how much they're willing to do just to touch u.s soil but i think how much are we willing to do to get to heavenly soul evangelism is preparing people to be heavenly citizens but it's not just sharing information okay and maybe the next time i talk i'm going to talk a little bit about it it's about influence okay so i think sometimes when we think about evangelism we have all these training seminars and we think how can we be convincing about the state of the dead and we use the terms like proof texts now i'm not i'm not negating that we need to understand what we believe that's not what i'm saying but what i'm going to say is it's that good information is not necessarily a good sign of a good evangelist or someone that's doing evangelism evangelism has much more to do with influence i'll give you an example have you ever met parents who have good information but no influence you know johnny he's 17 and you know he's hanging out with druggies and uh mom and dad say you know johnny those friends you've got not good bad friends they're gonna lead you down the bad path you know this is gonna happen xyz is gonna happen and uh that girl you like she's a loser not a good girl good information now johnny's friends though they uh they have bad information like hey johnny try this you know you'll be cool if you hang out and we did all this you know dumb stuff and they give all the dumb information information and which stuff does johnny follow the stuff they do the stuff and you're just like why i mean you know this is ridiculous but the question is who has the influence you see it's not we think the what will make us good evangelists is good information but it's about influence it's not about i mean i'm not saying that the information doesn't need to be right that's not what i'm saying but you can have all the right information with no influence and you'll go nowhere now of course i think most of you here probably have heard this quote it's in ministry of healing and christ method alone you've heard that one will bring true success what did christ do he mingled with the people and he just didn't mingle with the people just to mingle he did it as one who desired their good and then what did he do he won their confidence and then bid them follow me you know it it that that that little process is really really important in evangelism and uh winning people's confidence winning that you know and that's that's something i remember uh just we have at the end of our classes we go on a mission trip and our students organize it they're in charge and i cease to be a staff member and become a student and they boss me around for a week so they tell me jeff do this pick up that i want you to wash the dishes i want you to sweet you know it's your turn to sweep the floor set up the tents do this project lead special music you know whatever they want me to do i just yes yes sir yes ma'am uh but one of the so they organize health expos and we do uh mechanics clinics and and all kinds of activities door-to-door stuff and we go into with this this particular village we were going to just had had an attempt to do an evangelistic series they set up a big tent and i think they ran about three nights and the fourth night uh their fourth morning they arrived back to the site and the tent was folded the chairs were folded the tables were put away and they said leave and they left the evangelists left and uh so we were coming into a kind of a village that was somewhat resistant to adventism and i wasn't quite sure how it would work but i i we set up for a i with the chairman of the village that would be like the mayor said we'd like to do a mechanics clinic we're looking to do these kind of sure and so they gave us the community center which is right in front of the catholic school now there's several denominations in there there's baptist nazarean jehovah's witness you know there's other churches there's an adventist church in the community as well and so not real sure how it was all going to work but it was really neat as we we start because i'm not a doctor we heard a lot well someone was in youth town i told a doctor story but uh i'm not much of a doctor but i can i can kind of fix some things so we were we do that and i remember this man brought a chainsaw in a bag i mean it's just a big gunny sack and he said jeff i don't know i just picked it up for the mechanic mechanic said that the lower bearings out in it and i i dug around in the back and pulled out this chain saw my students are watching me and i i you know i move it around i don't think the lower bearings out of it and my students like you're going to really try and fix that thing you know i think and when they said that to me i don't know somehow i kind of began to develop a little identity with that chainsaw because that's kind of how i felt you know i was like is there really hope for jeff that guy he's he's really a character my dad said he went to the school board more for me than any of my other his other children you know and so uh i just i think my teachers would be astounded you know to think that i'm standing up here talking about all the things i do now but uh i guess there's hope but so i saw that old chainsaw and i developed a affinity for it and i i said well let me see what i can do so i started pulling out the parts and sure enough i i discovered that the um the magneto coil and now i'm throwing out terms i won't be able to explain but it had fallen into the flywheel and it splayed all out and uh it looked pretty rough i thought well maybe i can get that and i took a chisel and over the next four days i began to work on that chainsaw a little bit of time we saw 110 pieces of equipment if i just worked on just that one i'd probably took half the time but i kind of worked on a little here and there and so uh i'm finally i got it to when i said if i can get it to get sparked it'll probably run and uh you know as i work on these people's equipment i pray and then i said lord you know give me wisdom because i'm really not that great of a mechanic but lord give me wisdom so that i can bless these people so that i can influence them for you and uh here i am and you know the the the chairman he came every day it's like a guy's sport by the way uh people say why do we have uh more women i don't know if you have this problem here but in latin america we tend to have more women in church than men and i just tell people it's real simple our outreach activities are geared toward women sure we do cooking schools who comes to those well i mean i'm not saying a few guys don't come but mostly women health i mean there's a lot of women yeah and uh and typically sick people you know if there's somebody who's got cancer or somebody's got some sickness they'll come to those kind of things but the healthy guys no probably not not in latin american culture and so uh but the mechanics clinics i got 25 guys sitting there and they get off they go to this particular culture they go to the farm at four o'clock in the morning because it gets real hot there like here your hottest day is like ac down there i gotta be honest with you it's nice you guys got great nice weather in the summer so uh they get up at four and they're done by about one they're they've already made the hour trip back from their farm and eat lunch and about two o'clock they cruise on over to the community building and watch jeff fix junk and it's a sport i mean they find i know they go to the garbage and dig out stuff just to see if i can fix it and they say and they'll come up to me say i don't know what happened to just quit working and i look at that thing and i'm like yeah right about ten years ago it quit working you know and uh well i look at everything it's amazing some of the stuff that we i've seen some lazarus come to life but uh this uh this chainsaw so my my chairman he make comments like you know i don't know how you do it you are so patient and i think to myself he has no idea i am the most impatient person ever i have a nickname it's yesterday i'm yesterday you know people ask me what would you like that's done i was like well it's better if it was done yesterday but whenever the soonest you can possibly do it the better you know and i'm yesterday living in the land of tomorrow which everything's going to happen tomorrow in the in the lands that i live in very difficult for a guy whose character likes everything instantaneous and of course i'm severely optimistic and i really struggle with patience in fact that was probably one of the most challenging things that i faced as a missionary and in fact the thing that i hated the most was mechanics uh i you know i got to bolivia and i started working as a director at this high school and the the volunteers could break the stuff so fast they'd run it out of oil they'd dent it they'd break it they'd sheer it off they'd get it stuck i mean you can't and i would break it too i mean i it was just i don't know you want to find jeff well go look under some you know piece of junk somewhere he's probably welding or screaming or kicking at it you know and and it would make me so frustrated you know i'd have people who getting sometimes people uh you know get kind of frustrated with people none of those things really bothered me i'd have people get real angry i had parents like we're going to burn your house down if you kick our kid out and i just turn in them and smile i say well there it is burn it down no problem but your son he's got to go home you know broke the rule and i don't i was anyway i won't tell all those stories but uh so patience was not one of my things in fact i would get so angry i remember one day i was so angry at the lord i i had i had a seven ton truck you know backhoe jeeps and about four or five different pieces of equipment generators motorcycles and i was walking to town because everything was broken and i was like god this is not cool this why are you doing this to me you know and so anyway but that's i'm a slow learner and and i still i got to tell stories on myself because that's i can give myself permission to do that i'm working on a little project in my shop and i've got my mechanics students i thought i thought doing mechanics was difficult but then teaching people and watching them break stuff was more difficult but this time i didn't realize that watching people watch me break stuff was fairly difficult too so i'm working on this thing and i'm putting it's just real simple i've just got to put threads in a hole right and this is a little tool you put it you drill out the hole first and you take this little tool and you you put it in there it puts threads in it well i got about halfway down and the tool broke i but at this time yeah you wanna it was just i was just kind of working it back and forth but it's just those little tools are real they're hard very hard and and they're actually kind of brittle and but you can't drill them out because they're so hard so it's really kind of a cat so i got it broke in there but at that time i'd probably been about 14 years in mission field so i'd learned a little bit of patience i took a deep breath i had another tool that was identical and i took and i patiently got a pair of hemostats and all these kind of things and i finally worked it out i said my student was kind of watching me there he's like wow i can't believe it that's really cool so yeah sometimes these things happen and so i go on for my second one and i get about three quarters of the way down and i gotta tell you i broke it again oh no now my student could i just wish you would go away go away little student i'm not very happy right now but i've got my student watching me so i can't really blow my top and explode and you know and all my fury at this thing like i would like to but now i've broken my second tool but i have someone in town and i call them up on the phone i say quick uh you mind giving me a couple more of these uh taps i need uh you know such and such a measurement and give me two okay yeah and uh and i told my student oh it's time for lunch maybe you can come back and watch me later on and so he ran off to lunch and i got the other one out and i thought well when my other person gets back here i'll finish tapping this this hole and hopefully my student won't be here and uh well sure enough she gets back gets it and i'm on my third tool and i'm almost to the very bot and my student shows up back again i don't know how he knew i was down there but he just had a homing sabling boop right back there watching me do that again and i'm almost to the very end i mean i had just a quarter turn and it broke again i got to be i just i couldn't contain myself i just turned lord this has always happened to me and i want to just chuck the tool across the room it always is like this you know and my student is just like oh the missionary's angry we have evaluations every month where we evaluate the students and the students evaluate us each one and i remember a student comes in and we have a little visit you know it's like jeff i i didn't realize you had such an anger problem yeah yeah i do yeah you don't get to i mean after a few years it's gotten a little better but it's still there the lord lets me know it isn't fully eradicated yet and so when the chairman said oh you're such a patient guy i just kind of chuckled to myself because he watches me you know you take these little weed eaters apart and they don't run and you put them together and you can take them apart i can put a weeping unit and take it you know put it take it apart and put it together in about 10 minutes you know but you get really good at it because you know you put this thing together and hope this doesn't work and you're just trying a bunch of different things and you know take the carburetor on off on off on off adjust it you know clean it anyway so you are just one of the most patient people but at the end of the that friday i had put this chainsaw all together and i prayed and the owner of that chainsaw had walked through the door he's sitting there and i was praying i was like lord help me to help this chainsaw run and i want to tell you by god's grace that old chainsaw is fired up it you know they don't ever start right on the first pull especially when you have them all apart like that but i pulled on that thing and i'm pulling pretty soon it started to smoke a little bit blue and i kept adjusting and finally i got a little beast to fire off and that that chairman just looked i can't believe it i said well there's a god in heaven that helps us and i handed that chainsaw back to that man and i want to tell you that while we were doing the mechanics clinics our students were visiting in the homes around and you know what they would say the people would say are you with the people doing the mechanics clinic at the community center yes oh come on in and we would they would sing with them and pray with them and i don't think there was a home that we didn't visit there were their students were in all the homes and it was such a blessing and that man that brought the chainsaw saturday night right before we left i went and visited him him personally in his home for about two hours and was able to share the gospel and i want to tell you it wasn't just that that you know when he got done he asked me well what do i owe you and i said you don't owe me anything believe it or not god paid me to fix your job because he loves you and uh we were visiting and you know he was open to the gospel message and why was he open because he really realized that i cared about him as a person it's not just about i don't care about them just because they want them to sit in a pew in my church i want to see him in the kingdom of heaven and every morning i pray that god will give me a passion for people like jesus had heavenly citizens are passionate about people missionaries are passionate about people so i that's just that's just a preface i want us to get on the same page when i ask you how to start uh i guess what i want to say is where are we going that's kind of more or less where we're going with this but how do you start how do you get involved how do you start doing something you know when i was a kid my dad fixed rex and my one of my favorite pastimes we'd have half a car sitting in our our yard you know the the back half's chopped off and uh i mean i've had we put cars together two two halves you know weld them right up made the back half was so smashed didn't want to use it just chop off another half of another car you weld that right on there saw my dad do all kinds of stuff but my favorite thing was to do was to play car there when i was probably six seven years old i'd sit on an egg carton and i would drive the cars especially if the steering wheel wasn't hooked up man that was fun would spin that old steering wheel and [Music] have you ever tried to drive a parked car kind of tough kind of tough to steer a parked car i know a lot of people who stay in park because they're afraid of making the wrong decision they're afraid what if i you know this question what is god's will what is god's will and a sermon that i preach a lot is you know there's a lot of people who sit down waiting to know god's will this is in uh samuel you know you know the story of uh jonathan and saul and gibba well you're gonna find out and if you don't do do you guys remember that story i'm gonna just i'm gonna just read it to you very very briefly just to freshen up your memories it is i want to say it's in first samuel no is it yeah first samuel 14 and you're going to find in first samuel 14 verse 2 it says saul terry done the uttermost part of gibba under the pomegranate tree which is in migrant and the people that were there were about 600 men and it lists the names of them and one of them is the son of phineas the son of eliz the priest lords priest and shallow wearing the ephod and the people knew not that jonathan was gone so all these guys are sitting under a tree waiting on the ephod they're waiting on the ephods this is the two stones i mean how many times would i love to have the ephod you know god what is your will when we get a little stone that lights up right but we don't have the ephod and i think if we did we'd be just like saul sitting under the pomegranate tree waiting on any thought i've met lots of people who are just sitting there and doing nothing but let me tell you it is very difficult to steer a parked car so i want to tell you if you're just sitting there this is my favorite phrase to use get worried that's what i tell my flight instruction students if you're just sitting there get worried there's always something we need to be doing if we keep moving god can direct us oh it says it's better to make a bad decision than no decision yeah we you know sometimes we're so fearful of doing some well what choosing between two good things i've watched a lot of people do that ah and i don't know if i should go here or i should do this and i'm like you know what pick one god will bless you they're both good pick one well what's god's will god's will is that you pick one do something that's god's will move that's right and so uh you know but we sit there and we wonder well i don't know you know should we do this or should we do that no uh don't don't worry god will bless you and he will guide you so the first step to getting started is to move that's real simple just pick something and do it don't worry about making a mistake and how do you know what to pick well i tell people you start there by what's nearest to you you know as a as a son of a car dealer you learn to see opportunities you know i always i don't know about you who likes to get a good deal i don't know you ever see a good deal i've always got my my eye out for hey that tool i just bought at a real cheap price or i got this and normally if it's a really good deal it doesn't last for very long right i still remember one of the best deals that i got was actually in bolivia i was really excited about it they had this old community generator sitting in a chicken coop and i don't know how long it was sitting but the diesel engines they said okay they don't normally have too much trouble if they've sat and had an old perkins diesel in it and they just said oh it's no good it's all the people have been stealing parts off of it and i kind of looked around at it and i the only thing i saw that was missing was the starter and so i went down and i found a starter that i could borrow and i took my buddy over there and i said let's just see if we can get it to fire and if it gives it fire well i'll make an offer on that generator and so uh we we turned it over and sure enough broom it fired up might shut it off real quick yep pulled the starter back off and went to make an offer on that thing and you know it's about seeing an opportunity and uh of course we buy and you know that generator is still running the power at the school there in in bolivia that about 80 students at a boarding academy there that i'm still involved with and i think i paid like two thousand dollars for that gender generator but you know i i was just cruising around on a visit with somebody and i saw that opportunity now my mind works that way i am it's a disease really you know i'm always got somebody's well that's and i when i see a deal man i wanna i just wanna get it and uh and i my son happens to be that way too he'll run around and my students that come around he'll he was he was how old was he when he was doing the flag thing four or five he'd be four or five he'd whip open the encyclopedia book and he'd figure out where the students were from and he'd draw a flag on a crayon on his on a piece of paper glue it to a stick and run around and sell it to him for a buck you know made money selling flags i thought you know this guy he's all right he deep selling he'd sell you anything watch out for that indian he's a salesman and so uh he's always he's always looking for a deal too you know he's telling me about how he got these tonka trucks at a real good deal and then he sold them down there and believes he's always wheeling and dealing so as business people and as americans typically our minds see money opportunities our minds work that way but do we see the opportunities for souls remember we're heavenly citizens so the things that are really important are actually opportunities to share christ and so you really a lot of that one of the fatal errors is people are shooting way far away thinking about the future when the opportunity was right next to them and they couldn't see it it was like it was like that generator sitting in the chicken coop i could be on the internet i needed a generator this is a 25kw generator i needed a big one and i'm on the internet looking in the u.s for a good deal when the screamer deal was in the chicken coop five kilometers from the school you see what i'm saying that happens quite frequently to us we're thinking about the evangelistic series that we could do next year when our neighbor is really wide open for the gospel but we're not thinking in those lines our minds aren't in that pattern and we're kind of more thinking about money it's because it's our culture it's mine it's something that i struggle with and it's something that i pray about sometimes you know we're were more concerned with the politics than the opportunities of sharing christ around us oh it happens right here too it happens and it happens with me it's something that i have to fight against every day lord help me to see the opportunities the divine appointments that are nearest to me i was thinking today what can i do to reach out to the young people that are in that tent god you've brought me all the way up here why am i here who is it that you want me to meet with today to inspire to follow you and i will tell you that it's not my my probably my most valuable opportunities are not up here i mean not that this isn't okay this is good but it's probably when i'm visiting with someone face to face i'm praying with someone what is those opportunities that i have you know i was talking with what's the name of the teacher down there patty patty said you know i've got a friend i'm studying with my neighbor and her husband's a pilot and you know my neighbor understands the gospel she really wants to follow but her husband's you know he's a spiritual as well and he thinks he understands a lot of things so anyway i i uh what can i do to share well i'm a pilot too remember the key is not information but influence it's interesting sometimes people have more certain and within certain groups of people you have more influence because you have more common interests did you see how that works that's why each of us has a unique mission each of us has a unique mission and uh i remember i just just on sunday this sunday i was talking with an evangelist and he said you know i i was having a conversation with a doctor in a town in montana and he said you know i've never i've never been able to lead a soul to christ he said really and so and he was really distraught about that and he said you know i went to his office and after his office after he finished closing uh he said we met together and we spoke for a while and we prayed together and i said you know would you be willing to take me to visit some of your closer patients that you've had that you've developed friendships with over the years i'd just like to have a business you just take me with you and so they began to visit his closer patients and while he was there the evangelist he just asked him would you like to would you like to study the bible with us and they turned and looked with with the doc and they they turned to look to the doc you would do that you would take time to study the bible with us and you know in a very short amount of time probably less than a week they had over 20 bible studies and in the evangelistic series they baptized 22 people many of those the bible studies that the doc why because he had influence he just didn't realize that they would want the information that he had and so he didn't necessarily see the opportunity the deal that was right there under his nose and so you know it's common it happens but we have to change our perspective so that when i say about starting to move the very simple first we move and then we can pray this very simple prayer god give me a divine opportunity today you know missionary work i do a lot of normal things just really normal like building and i do a lot of abnormal things too but i do a lot of normal things just wrenching on busted stuff and building things and you know just regular life hard work stuff but in the middle of all those things there are opportunities i remember a few of them that came about that were just unique because i am who i am and so one of the things i i have a pilot's license and so i was catching a free ride up to the states with the bolivian air force their cargo flight and it happened to be that we were on that cargo flight they had to stop in lima and they were waiting to load up 60 000 pounds of asparagus and while i'm waiting to load this up i'm sitting in a cockpit of a dc-10 visiting with a colonel in the bolivian air force and we had a two-hour bible study in that cockpit that afternoon about the the signs of the times all kinds of subjects his name was ricardo and i know that i was able to plant some seeds in that moment that the holy spirit will water and someday by god's grace will bring a harvest i remember another time i was in pennsylvania i had i had i had sold an airplane and this guy had taken it up to another mechanic to do a pre-buy inspection on it and the mechanic sold him an airplane that he had in his shop and then he kind of you know mechanics are really good at that they can kind of talk down someone else's thing and talk up their thing you know there's always everything's got problems but you know this is it's car dealership world that's how we you know i tell people it's hard being a mechanic and making it to heaven is a very difficult thing but by god's grace if grace god can save a mechanic but he can save anybody but uh anyway so this guy and on top of it after he sold in my airplane he sent me a bill for six grand and i made a big mistake i should have had a big deposit on that thing and i i was i'm just not the smartest guy but you know the lord is merciful so here i am i'm going up to pennsylvania it's december and uh it's snowing i lived in michigan i know about the snow but i don't i mean actually we're on the same page there we just don't like it i don't like it you know it's cold now i've got the airplanes covered in snow i don't have gloves i don't have i don't have winter clothes i'm in a rain jacket it's i'm freezing to death i'm clearing off all this snow off this airplane i'm already grumpy because i'm up here in pennsylvania picking up something that i've done stupid and now i've got to fix it now i got to get back down to you know take the airplane back down and i have to sell this thing and anyway i get lots of pressures different ones because i have a different airplane that anyway somebody loaned me some money what until i sold this one and i got to get this thing sold and so i get it finally get it all cleared off i get it started and then the a few things aren't working right and one thing wasn't working right and i said yes that's probably going to be okay and then another thing broke the tachometer on the left and i was just like forget it and it took me forever to get it started anyway i said i'm just gonna have to stay the night here but now i'm in the middle of nowhere this is like one of these remote it's not even in a town there's this random airport out in the middle of nowhere and i'm just like lord i have no idea what i'm going to do well anyway while i was trying to fix the airplane and get it going i met this mennonite guy in a local hangar there and he and i said man i uh i think i'm going to have to stay he says why don't we go out and eat have some dinner so an air force pilot this mennonite guy took me out to dinner we had a two hour dinner when i shared about the gospel i was able to share some amazing things with them and i stayed the night in the mennonite young man's house and we were up until midnight talking about you know all kinds of things i thought wow lord you're awesome and maybe this is why i came here and he well he would take me back to the airport the next morning but he had an egg run that he made and he had to get up at four in the morning to go start his egg rolling so he i got up at you know 3 30 we got to bed at midnight up at 3 30 over to the airport and of course it's cold so i climb in the airplane well no i think we figured out how to get inside he let me inside that i waited for the mechanic to come so i could fix my airplane and uh and go well mechanic didn't show up till 10 o'clock man talk about patience on you know just all that kind of stuff just chafes me so and i'm kind of grumpy about the whole thing but i am praying i'm like lord you've got me here for a reason let me let me take advantage of it now i happen to know the story behind who this mechanic was i read a little bit about it he'd actually worked on my airplane his father had worked on my airplane before and when i bought my airplane i only had copies of the log books i didn't have the originals because they were in court and his father is in prison for signing uh doing some illegal stuff signing log books when he shouldn't have been and i didn't know the entire story but i knew there was kind of something kind of going on there and so we began a conversation with this young man he was about my age and uh you know he asked me what i did and i began to explain to him about mission work and about uh you know uh you know serving others and and he began to tell me his story he told me a story that his uh his grandmother and his father were supposed christians and his father to stay out of prison was going to pin him with the with the deal say it was his fault his father never told him he said you know anyway he just gave this whole long story about this big saga and that his grandfather owned the airport and they put him in a nursing home and all these tragic things but they really kind of gave him a really going over his father and his grandmother did and he had a pretty bitter attitude and uh so i began to share with him about what it meant to be taken advantage of you know i've been taken advantage of a lot and i tell them you know when i get taken advantage of you know what i think i think praise the lord that i have the ability to be taken advantage of you know we take advantage of jesus all the time and i think jesus i thank jesus he does not treat me like i deserve to be treated and he lets me take advantage of him and he forgives me over and over and over again and i began to tell them stories about you know all and i would i would tell you all these stories this morning but we would you know cruise right on into lunch so i probably won't be able to tell you all of them right now but uh he began to tell me well you know i'm trying to help out these uh these girls my wife runs a cheerleading thing and they their their parents are druggies and we have them over to the house and we're trying to help them and i took them to walmart one time we were buying them some pants and i said hey pick out a pair of pants and and the girl says well yeah can i can i get two and he was kind of offended by that he's like you know what do they think you know am i here i'm santa claus or something i said no they're teenagers they said forget they they think that everybody owes it to them don't worry about it you know and in fact i've had volunteers we were working at the school and they'd come down i'm volunteering here teaching these kids and these kids don't want to do their homework and they treat me like garbage and i'm like dude they're teenagers man they don't have brains you know that trunk and to the size of a pee and rolled out their nose a long time ago it's going to be a while till it comes back probably statistics say i mean i think the car rental companies got it figured out about 25 it starts to you know swell again and it kind of starts to return and that's when you can actually rent a car but you know i said it takes a while you know and about 30 when they've got their own kids then it really they're like whoa man you were really great you did a lot for us then i said you're looking for thanks you're in the wrong place you're going to have to just love those little retards because they're retards you know that's it you know oh i do i love them i just love teenagers they're just so much fun and uh my god my wife says i gotta quit saying that see her as a teenager now and she gets a little offended by it but anyway uh you know we're well a lot of times we're looking for thanks we're looking we think we're going to be the hero missionary guy and we're everybody's going to treat us great because we serve them and no one will take advantage of us no i said people are going to take advantage of it you know but we're it's so it's such a blessing to be able to bless others you know in our conversation that man began to weep in the middle of that hangar he you know what he said to me she said i've never met anyone like you and i think praise jesus that means that he's seeing christ because he's met a lot of people like me but he's never met christ before and christ is amazing it's that disinterested love that's what gains us so you know that day i could have just been in a huff and he knew that he ripped me off i said nothing i just paid the check you know why because i represent christ i represent christ christ treats people well you know i i had a guy come in i we pulled him off the street he was a drunk dried him out gave him a job he worked for him for a couple years he got baptized and then he kind of wanted to start falling back into alcohol and i told this guy the story sorry about i said man bud you got to pick i can't have you working for me and you can't drink you can't you can't do both and so he chose the alcohol and he left and uh not a week later i get and just a couple months before some people have helped him with a knee surgery that he needed and uh they they and their i didn't i wasn't involved with the financial transaction so i don't know exactly how it all worked but they gave him about twenty five hundred dollars and uh i don't know if he ever got the knee surgery or not or how that went exactly but i do know that a week after he left he took me down to the department of labor and wanted his severance pay yep and he sat me right there in front of the department of labor's office and you know when i spoke with him i asked the department of labor you know manager their inspector i said so what do i owe him and she's like you owe him about 200 u.s i said sergio here's 400. i never want you to say that i treated you badly and you know he may have come he came back a couple years later oh can i have a job no sergio you had your chance but i i i don't see i don't burglar bars on my windows i don't have a gun under my bed i sleep really good at night i treat people well and because christ treats us well christ treats us well even when we don't deserve it and he has blessed me and blessed me and blessed me people take advantage and people do it doesn't you know i want to tell you that with that plane i'm just going to give you the final story on that plane that i had so i had it i sold it to that guy the deal was 140 000. that's what i had sold it to him there he was taken up for the pre-buy i want to tell you that i ended up selling the plane for 160. the lord is good i never got to i never get to get to tell that mechanic that he'd probably fallen over backwards but the lord worked it out and each time we because because our idea is to grab and to fight and to don't do that don't do jesus never did that we want to we represent christ and what we want to represent to people is christ's love and when we show that to them they see something different and we gain influence and then the information is meaningful do you see what i'm saying and so that comes from personal contact we can't each day there is opportunities right next to us that we need to take advantage of so this morning why i'm in my bed and i'm praying and i'm asking the lord what are my opportunities today just today i'm a dreamer i got my head in the clouds that's how i am boy i we were talking about boats yesterday weren't we boy i'll tell you that talk about having your head in the clouds that's like way out there big old boat i want to have my i want a cargo ship you know i think that would be cool i got i like buildings i like big tools i like flying airplanes i got my head in the clouds i'm a dreamer i'm way out there with all the stuff that i'm doing that's jeff but i want to tell you something that i can't be so far up in the clouds that i miss the guy right next to me that jesus needs me to share christ with and so today i'm asking god here i am in in maine i don't want to have my head in the clouds thinking about all the things over everywhere else a lot of times people are calling me can you solve this can you solve that how do we you know what i normally try and do is i try and put that phone off turn it right off if i'm right here and dealing with people turn it off i'll call them back i'll call them back but the opportunity is right here next to me so we start by moving we start by asking god for divine appointments and we start by thinking about who is in need today that i can reach and i want to invite you as you think of you think about that with me because i got a team of energy right there in that back tent that got lots of energy that can show christ's love to other people and there's nothing more fun than than i don't know i kind of think about it as like driving a team of sled dogs yeah i i've always dreamed about having slide dogs man those dogs get all that energy and you get them all pointed in the right direction man you're that's better than a snowmobile john i'll tell you what a thousand times better just hurting herding cats can be difficult but herding dogs is a little more possible and so uh anyway it's exciting you do a lot of things with those kids they're just they have them it is fun it is fun so think about people in need and we've got all that potential right there we want to maximize it so um the next thing so that what's nearest so first step is to move the next thing is nearest the next thing is use what you have a lot of times we sit around thinking about well if i was like jeff and i had an airplane well i might do some really cool stuff or if i was like so and so and i had this or if i had that job that if i was a doctor well then i'd really be influential or if i was a pilot well then i'd be really influential if i had money i'd be really i could do some stuff no it's not about what you don't have what do you have in fact in second kings there's a story and and uh second kings 4 2 and i'm just going to go with you there because it also teaches a little principle and i hope second kings 4 2 of course i don't have my phone on me to watch the time my i'm only a half hour over so far we're doing okay i mean uh we don't have any of the i call them uticus and luckily it's a single story so if there's a uticus here you don't have far to fall but uh uh let's see second kings four two and uh we have this this this story is so really interesting there's a lot of theological lessons just aside from money in this one by the way the verse one it says cried a woman now let me just read it now there cried a woman of the wives the sons of the prophets on elijah saying thy servant thy husband is dead and now notice that their servant did fear the lord and the creditors come to take him my two sons to be bondman now the context of the story is her husband had a lot of debt and uh interestingly enough it wasn't like the u.s where you can just declare bankruptcy and just kind of whistle tune and walk out with nothing there that doesn't happen what happens is you become a slave or your children become slaves and so that's typically what they start with is they auction off your children first and then if you still can't pay then you become a slave kind of a kind of a bomb deal especially if you have a dad that's in debt right and then let me ask you something if you're sold as a slave how do you pay the debt what do slaves get paid nothing interesting isn't it by the way if you go to uh hebrews 2 i'm just going to have a real quick you mind if i just take a little rabbit trail i'm going to take a real quick one i'm telling you mission stories and things that want you to get involved evangelism i could i could get theological on you i'm going to do it just for a second because this is an interesting concept that a lot of people don't understand they don't understand why sin is so addictive if you go to hebrews chapter 2 for then as much verse 14 that the children are partakers of flesh and blood he also him white himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the devil so who had the power of death the devil used to have it had and then it says and deliver them who through what fear of what death were their lifetimes subject to what bondage now if you wanted to sin like if we wanted to buy sin if i was like hey uh john what's the what's the going price of oil we'd say well it's what i don't know what it is right now is it 40 bucks a barrel or something i i'm not sure but you know it has a price it's a commodity so let's say we were to suppose sin is a commodity that we could just go down and buy how much would it cost does anybody got a verse how much does what's how much would it cost me to buy some sin death well it says the wages of sin is death now we could reverse that and say well the price that you're going to pay to buy a little sin is death that's the it's it's fairly expensive and you'll notice that it says then in this verse now you follow what i'm saying because now now if you want to live and buy some sin then you're going to have to buy it on credit right right now we've all got a little credit going on a credit line so we can have some sin if we want to and so it says that and deliver them who through fear of death were subject you see no one wants to pay the bill we could we could it's easy to pay we just got to die done you've paid the bill finished and it's interesting that humans as in general are afraid of dying we live in fear we see it all around us it's amazing how much fear people have of death it's a very fearful thing we do a lot to try and avoid it and so to avoid it they live subject to bondage you see if you're a debtor and you can't pay your debt you're sold as a slave to sin sin is enslaving and that's the story you see that right there in second and second kings four you see her two sons are about to be sold as slaves for a debt and it's interesting how are children of slaves born are they born free no it's great for the owner more more slaves wonderful well now elisha says to her what shall i do for thee what hast thou in nine house and she said nine handman handmaid has not anything in the house save a pot of oil now i gotta tell you i've been broke before i don't know if any of you experienced being broke but i've been broke before and i have uh you know but i've never been quite that broke never been quite that broke but i have been close but not quite that close so all she's got is a pot of oil and i'm guessing that her pot probably is not full i've just ventured a guess and uh so elisha basically says okay take that and use it god is gonna take what you have it's like the little boy's lunch god jesus could have like made fish fly out of the water leap onto the walk across the grass you know he could have done all kinds of ways to do the miracle right he could have just made it rain man but he took some kids lunch and he did it with that i i can't wait to meet that kid i have kids like that that come to my church they come to church with other parents that kid came without his parents that lunch is not a big enough lunch for a family that lunch is just big enough for a little kid to eat and you know like he had a loving mom somewhere that packed him a lunch and indeed that was the case and he went to see jesus children are going to be in the kingdom of heaven it is well worth the investment and don't ever neglect to invest in kids so this kid is there jesus uses his lunch and this lady's got her oil now what does she do to use it so first of all she goes and she borrows all the pots right and she finds all the opportunities all the needs and then she takes her pot of oil and it just and sets it on the shelf and it jumps from the pot into the other how does it work or did she just have to have it in the same room and it just no what does she have to do pour it just keep pouring just remember that phrase when you write that check just think of it to yourself i'm just pouring you never feel like the bank you feel like your bank account that your pot of oil is full i bet you no one here does normally it doesn't matter what how many zeros are in that bank account behind the number typically the bills that are coming down the pipe are bigger right and we're in a bit of a treadmill and we're trying to figure out how in the world are we going to make it figure out it doesn't matter if it's 100 or it's 100 million dollars it that makes no difference never met a rich man that feels rich so how do you write that check you write it thinking to yourself just keep pouring and as you pour into that pot you know i have you know people look at the missionaries other missionaries look at me and think man you got what do you do i mean what do you do to to survive you must you must be doing really good i mean man you've got it you fly an airplane and you've got schools going you just bought property down there and you bought these tools and you just bought the steel and you you're doing this and that and the other thing but if you looked at my bank account you'd be like whoa how do you do that again well i want to just tell you the big secret just keep pouring that's it it's real real simple and you know what as you i don't think it was a big gusher coming out of that pot i think she was just pouring away and pouring away and pretty soon that pot was full and said hand me another one and she just keep pouring and keep pouring and keep pouring and that you just keep writing those checks and keep blessing other people as the need comes to your door we can't solve the whole world don't worry about the a thousand pots or the other pots that are on the other side of the room just fill the one that's right in front of you just keep pouring you know sometimes we think about the bill that's coming down the pipe you know my college kids are going to have call how am i going to pay for my college for my kids how am i going to pay the school bill what am i going to do with my car you know we kind of start borrowing all the pots from farther out across the room but the only part we've got to fill right now is the one right in front of us and just keep pouring that god will do the miracle keep filling that pot your pot he'll do it every day every day every day that's how this is how you get started you people ask well how do you survive in the mission field i mean how do you support yourself well i don't worry about five months down the road five months is five that's a that's like ten pot down the road i don't know what's going to happen 10 pots down the road neither do you well we know the one that's right in front of us in that little stream that's coming out we just keep pouring filling that one and i'll tell you when you get to pot number 10 god's got a solution for it he knows how to fill pot number 10 too it's not a problem so these are these are little lessons that help people get out of their parked car and just get out of park and to drive you start with what's nearest pray god give me a divine appointment look for ways to influence people to build influence with people find the people that you have influence with meet people meet the people next to you i mean it's real simple don't i mean i know chat and zoom and these are good maybe those are the people next to you but don't don't ignore the ones that are sitting right next to you for the text you got a lot more influence with the person face to face than you do on a text i'll tell you that right now uh and then use what you have use what you have and the last one is real simple it's real real simple practice don't stress about you listen i tell my students there you will never beat me and mess up i have messed up so much stuff i have done it wrong so many times i mean so this this steel deal that i was telling some people i bought some steel had a d you know it's a deal it was a it was a smoking deal it was i thought man i don't know it was really i mean i bought this steel i'm building this warehouse with and uh i bought it pretty much at scrap prices but it's prime steel so that kind of gives you an idea so instead of being at like 65 cents a pound i was at 18 cents a pound that kind of more or less those kind of that's a smoking deal and i got it there and i figured out that this deal was really nice steel but really really hard steel very hard steel so hard i could hardly get a screw to screw in it which was kind of a problem it was got my heart rate up and i kind of had you know like oh lord you know i'm always doing this stuff lord why me and you know i had this little talk with jesus i tell you i get to tell you all my mistakes so you guys feel better that's all i do it so when you do it you don't feel so bad right uh so uh but you know then i thought well you know hard steel is good it means it's a lot stronger it's really strong it's a strong stuff and then god provided me a solution with some better screws that screw in there better and and now i kind of i feel a little better about it i've got some screws that'll screw into it but boy with that first day when i tried to put a screw in and it wouldn't screw i thought oh normally i have them send me a little test and i test my steel first but i was it was coveted and i was trying to take advantage of this screaming deal and i was in another country and i didn't know how to make it all happen so i just pulled the trigger and i thought oh rot roll that's not going to be good but uh the lord is merciful and i had hard steel but he found me harder screws and so looks like it's all going to work out okay but you know don't be you know it's all what if what if i made a mistake which i do i make lots of them but you know god has a way to fix our mistakes just keep moving move park get out of park and drive he'll steer you and be like hey next time but remember get the little sample thing that'll be a smart thing to do next time remember to do this next time try this don't worry about oh man what if i say the wrong thing to my friend don't i mean yes it can happen but don't give up we're learning we're in school and so you just got to keep practicing don't let fear hold you back god can do amazing things with each one of you think about and so i want to give us a little chance right now to think about someone someone that you know that's close to and something that you could do to gain influence with them and i want to give you example of something i have thought about uh for next week for me this is for next week while i was pouring that concrete i had the pump truck salesman came out and we had a wonderful conversation he's a theologian from a non-denominational church a pastor but he he uh we had about an hour conversation and it was a great conversation but i don't want to lose his contact and i told them when we were done when i get my family back here we get back in you're coming over for dinner i want to have you over for dinner we'll visit and we'll hang out a little bit and i want to build a relationship with matt right and so he's the guy that's on my radar screen i also have another guy that i'm renting a hanger to that i had another conversation with and he's interested in spiritual things he's the manager of a mercedes semi truck dealership and i want to have him over for dinner and uh you know because he's got kids the same age as i do and i what am i doing i'm just looking for opportunities have i mentioned a bible study anywhere yet i have it have i but i would like to see those turn into things that i can do but i first of all i want to build a relationship with these people and then what i will do is i'd like to start a prayer group or a study group a lot of times some of these are not quite ready for a personal bible study but they may be ready to come and just spend a little time because they're christians they're christian folk they'd like to just study the bible together and uh so i'm gonna i'm hoping to start a little prayer group in my area that's kind of what my my plan of attack because i'm i'm going to be here in the states for maybe a month or so beyond with this covet thing i'm not exactly sure but now i want you to think about who is close to you that you have a few contacts with that you may be able to build some relationships with and influence and then from that that's where you begin to ask do you know that right now the world is ripe there are so many people that are searching i mean the world's going crazy and people are looking for answers i will tell you this now is not the time to stay home and stay in park now is the time to be harvesting the souls that are around us so i want to just give you a couple of minutes talk to your neighbor and discuss just right there the person sitting next to you i'm going to talk to my wife here if you're in the same church just turn around talk to your neighbor discuss a few opportunities that you have and at least come up with one that's right next to you that you can share christ because this is if i just talk about this and you guys have warm fuzzy feelings and keep flying the simulator i'm a complete failure i don't want to leave here and have a bunch of simulator flyers so we're going to just talk about it one minute and then a couple minutes and then we'll we'll close with the word of prayer okay so discuss you

Channel: Caribou Seventh-day Adventist Fellowship

Views: 64

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Missionary, foreigner, men, women, evangelism, Christ's method, Help, How to be a missionary

Id: ND8pSIwAPYo

Length: 76min 6sec (4566 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020