Thank you, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks.
Wow, well I have no jokes today.
I could find him if I needed to.
I wasn't in the mood.
So, it's so good to be here.
It's such an incredible privilege
to have such large family, you know.
We love you.
Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks.
I'm just glad, I'm glad for the privilege
to be with family and friends.
And I found out during the COVID thing
that I was addicted to people
and that addiction has only gotten worse.
So, you will never get rid of me.
So, I'm thankful for the privilege of this morning as well.
I did not wanna miss this morning,
but I also knew I could not do this four times.
So, this is the only time I show up today
other than I'm gonna get raptured
right when this is over with.
I will not be around to clean up any mess that I make, so.
The backslider in heart will always judge God
by what he didn't do.
But those who run with tenderness for who he is
will always define him by what he has said,
by what he's promised and by what he has done.
And to be as honest as I know how to be,
I've seen too much of his kindness
to think anything other than he is absolutely good.
Always, always good.
We don't get to choose stuff like,
like I don't wanna experience any pain.
That's not an option we get, you know.
It's where we do life.
In fact, let's be really honest.
He says things like,
rejoice always, pray without ceasing
and everything give thanks.
Those verses are completely useless
unless you're gonna experience loss and disappointment.
I mean, nobody needs to be taught to rejoice
if everything works the way you want it to work.
Right?
It's like, it's pointless.
So, his nature is defined by promise
and by his history, his testimony.
And that's what we build theology around.
That's who he is.
But what about loss?
That's the mystery that we have the privilege of carrying.
The level of revelation God gives you
will always be equal to the measure of mystery
you're willing to live with.
And the inability to live with mystery
is your resistance to childlikeness.
It's childlikeness that actually gives us access
to dimensions and realms of the kingdom
that you can't get in any other way.
There are certain things that he has hidden in the journey.
For example, several years ago,
I discovered something about
in the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil because you're with me.
And what I found was there are measures of his presence
you can only find in the valley of the shadow of death.
And we say we'll have presence and we do.
We're a people that gather to celebrate
and honor who he is and thrive on
just that presence of the spirit of God
who is always with us.
There is no greater treasure than him.
Never will be.
Heaven itself is him.
And yet there are aspects of presence
you can only find in the valley of the shadow of death.
It's only in darkness, in darkness of soul,
in the trial of not knowing what's going on
and doing everything you know to do
and having things not work out like you think they should.
He's not a vending machine.
You know, I don't get to put a quarter in
and get out what I want.
It's a relational journey.
And I've experienced his kindness,
his miracles at a level that I could never earn or deserve.
And I just don't have the right
to reevaluate what he's like
because I've experienced loss.
I've experienced loss.
It doesn't work that way.
It just doesn't work that way.
Everybody in the room has experienced this.
So I don't stand here as, you know, the only.
The guy who has experienced pain,
I understand that, I do life with you
and we've wept together and laughed together
and I get that.
But I just wanna tell you that God gives us
these special moments or he gives us these opportunities
to grow down, to become more childlike.
It's the simplicity of faith that just trusts him
no matter what.
It's the simplicity of childlikeness that just says,
you know what, he knows what's happening, I don't.
And I'm gonna trust him.
I'm gonna trust him.
I don't want my why to ever take me away from him.
I don't ever want to be the one who critiques God.
He critiques me.
I wanna keep that, keep aware of that.
None of us would choose loss, pain, disappointment,
any of that stuff.
I get that.
None of us would ever choose that for ourselves.
We wouldn't choose this for, you know, your biggest enemy.
I mean, it's just, you would just not do that.
It's not something that any of us would gravitate towards.
And yet we don't have options at times.
And so what am I gonna do?
Is God my friend?
Yeah, but he was my Lord before he was my friend.
Yes.
And my friendship with God can only go
where his Lordship has already been.
I can't go in a friendship with God
where I haven't gone in Lordship.
Amen.
And one of the things that has been
such a valuable thing for us through the years
has been the realization,
and I discovered this quite accidentally
when my dad died.
And many of you have heard me share the story,
but when he died,
I was faced with learning something
I had never known at that level before.
And it was this.
I've just experienced loss,
and I have just experienced loss.
And the disappointment is huge.
The pain is annoying.
It is, it's just.
The questions, the what if, all the stuff, you know.
But all of that pain, that discomfort,
that the questions, all the stuff,
I'll never have any of that in heaven.
I'll never have, I will be a worshiper for all of eternity.
I will glorify him for all of eternity.
I will bow before the Lamb on the throne
for all of eternity.
I will declare his wonders.
I will celebrate his greatness, his grace, his kindness
for all of eternity.
But I'll never have the chance to do it with pain.
That's only in this life.
And I want to give him the most priceless gift
I can give him, and that is joy in loss.
That is celebration in pain.
That is giving up my right to understand.
He gives the peace that passes understanding,
which means I have to give up my right to understand
to enjoy the peace that he has purposed to give me.
And we're in that place, and some of you,
you have your own stuff going on in your life
where this becomes a very painful process.
But what we do is we just give him thanks.
And this morning, my goodness, so wonderful
to be with you and our online family
and to be able to celebrate the goodness of God.
It's not, you know, it's not forced.
It's not hard to do, not once you've tasted.
Not once you've tasted.
You never forget the taste of his kindness.
And it puts everything else in perspective, everything.
And so the privilege to just.
offer him celebration and praise.
It almost sounds contradictory,
and for some it would sound forced,
but to honor him as being the healer
when you've just lost somebody you love through disease.
But it's not fake, it's not hype, this is who he is.
This is who he is.
Well, why did this happen?
I don't know, he doesn't work for me.
I work for him.
He never owes me an explanation, never.
He often gives them, but he doesn't owe me.
I owe him.
Every day of my life, I am indebted to him.
And so the privilege of lifting hands and voice
and in the midst of tears, I remember my aunt,
who is in heaven now, Mount Helen,
I remember her saying once that laughter with tears
makes a beautiful rainbow.
I don't understand it, but I like it.
So I'm just gonna do it.
I'm gonna make sure that I laugh
while I'm crying my head off, you know?
And just, oh, you're a nice guy.
Do you have any more boxes of this?
I need to take some of these home, thank you.
So to grab your moments, you know,
we get certain moments in life
that we never get them back again.
They're at once, they come and then they're gone.
And I never have a chance to steward that moment again.
I get one crack at it.
And to take the moment of greatest pain
or the greatest loss or the greatest confusion or whatever,
and just grab it and determine,
I'm going to do the best I can
to give him an offering that costs me.
That's what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna give him an offering that costs me something.
I'm gonna give him a sacrifice
that I'll never have a chance to give him again.
I get one chance at this painful moment.
In many ways, I feel like the richest guy on the planet
because I get to do this with you.
I get to do this.
I have so much of my family down here.
We've been together hour after hour after hour,
day after day after day.
Some of them moved in with me.
They did.
They're everywhere.
Wherever there's a couch, there's a body, you know.
It's just been the coolest thing.
Just to know that you don't have to do stuff by yourself.
And then I've had so many of our own team,
you, that have rallied around us,
and it's priceless, it's priceless.
I am thankful.
There are some things you can only find
in the valley of the shadow of death,
and there are some aspects of the kingdom
you can only find through childlike trust.
You can try as hard as you want
to be as smart as you can be,
but you can only get it through childlike trust,
and to do that, you have to have mystery.
There's certain things that just open up.
They only open up in childlike trust.
I want to read a scripture to you.
I've actually got,
I've got two clocks up there, and I'm not sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll just tell the next service.
Just go home.
I, when does this one end?
12.15.
12.15?
So I actually do have a half hour.
Oh, goodness, that's enough time to make you miserable.
That's awesome.
I want to share something that I,
that at least for me is a life-giving,
a life-giving perspective on truth.
Here's the deal.
Mourning is biblical.
not tomorrow morning, the weeping kind of morning.
It's not smart to avoid mourning when you have loss.
It's not a good thing to do
because you end up getting stuff going on inside
that you just can't manage well.
Mourning's just, you know,
and mourning with family, with friends, you know,
in some way, give before God and mourn good, mourn good.
Mourn good, because there's two options in mourning.
Mourning will either take you to the comforter,
into the presence of the Holy Spirit,
or it will take you to unbelief.
There's only two options.
Blessed are those who mourn.
It's Matthew five, verse four.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Mourning can take me into presence
to experience what I don't understand.
And it's important, because most of the time
when we experience loss or whatever,
answers won't fix the problem.
Presence will.
So God shows up and he says,
this happened for this reason, this reason, and this reason.
Still, I hurt.
That doesn't fix anything.
What I need is I need him.
I need him to come so near
that everything that's out of sorts in me
somehow finds its place, and there's peace there.
It doesn't mean I have every question answered.
It just means that I'm just being inundated
with the Spirit of God who has promised
to never, ever leave me.
And in that presence, there is a comfort.
It's almost like I find my place.
I don't know what's going on,
but I have a place in presence that is irrevocable.
This is forever.
And you only find that measure in mourning.
So there's the mourning that leads you to the comforter.
But in Mark 16, we've studied this
a number of times through the years,
but I keep going back to it for my own sake.
It's at Mark 16, Mary Magdalene,
in verse 10, she went and told those
who had been with him, the disciples,
as they mourned and wept.
So Mary Magdalene had seen the resurrected Christ,
and she runs to the disciples,
and she said, he's alive.
And she said it while they were mourning and weeping.
Now remember, mourning can take you into presence
or it can take you where these guys went.
And it says, and when they heard it,
that he was alive and had been seen by her,
they did not believe.
After that, he appeared in another form to two of them
as they walked and went into the country,
the whole road to Emmaus story.
And they went and told it to the rest,
but they didn't believe them either.
What happened here?
We've got the wrong kind of mourning.
Yeah.
And I hope to define the right kind of mourning next week.
No, I'll try to do it.
It says after that, he appeared in another form
to two of them as they walked and went into the country,
and they went and told it to the rest,
but they didn't believe them either.
Later, he appeared to the 11 as they sat at the table,
and he rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart
because they did not believe those who had seen him
after he had risen.
You've got to see this.
So here's Mary Magdalene.
She sees him.
She has a story to tell.
That's not just to appease their curiosity.
There is a story that when it is spoken,
releases the presence of the person she's talking about.
So there is a witness.
There is an experience to be had in God, in the story,
but their mourning disqualified them.
Their mourning,
their mourning, like a dislocated arm or something,
they were so disjointed that they couldn't respond
or receive to the gift of God
that he brought into their life in that moment.
He actually sent a woman with a gift
and they could not benefit from the gift
because of the mourning.
And so then he sent two more and the same thing happened.
So he rebuked them because they didn't.
believe the story, let me rephrase it.
He rebuked them because they didn't believe
the experience of another person.
How could he require them to believe
the experience of another person?
Because in the telling of the experience,
a person becomes manifest.
And they were so blinded by their mourning
that they couldn't recognize who just came into the room
in the story by the two guys in the road to Emmaus
as they talked and they said, it was read this morning
that when he broke the bread, their eyes were open
and they began to tell the disciples,
this is what we just had happen.
And that person came into the room,
but not one of them recognized him when he showed up
because of mourning.
So you've got a mourning that leads you to him,
we have a mourning that leads us to resistance
to the God who's actually speaking and reaching out to us,
bringing us the gift of life and encouragement and strength.
In this journey that I'm in right now,
I found language for this that I never knew,
I didn't understand this.
And it's in First Thessalonians chapter four.
First Thessalonians chapter four, verse 13.
You guys all right?
Thanks.
Tried to break the bread of my own soul in this moment
and see if we can get somewhere.
So all right, First Thessalonians chapter four, verse 13.
I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren,
concerning those who have fallen asleep,
lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.
Lest you sorrow as others.
That word there sorrow is grieving, mourning, lamenting,
that's what the word means.
So think through this with me.
He says, I don't want you to mourn
like those who have no hope.
That gives us a clue.
Biblical mourning must be enhanced with hope
or it will lead to unbelief.
That's it, that's it, that's it right there.
That's it, there's got to be something more
than the hellish moment that you're in right now.
There's gotta be something on the other side.
See, this is such a critical part of kingdom reality
that even Jesus endured the cross because of the hope,
the joy that was set before him.
There was hope on the other side.
And because of that, Jesus could endure
the most horrific thing any person has ever endured.
And it was for that, it was for that.
So here he comes and he says,
you'll never be overtaken by a situation.
If you have hope, it will never master you.
It will never control you.
It will never destroy you.
It will never govern you.
It will never redefine you.
None of those things will ever have a voice
or impact on your soul if you maintain hope.
And biblical hope is different than the kind of hope
that is in culture.
In culture, hope is kind of like a wish.
I hope that happens.
But the Bible word for hope is,
my favorite translation, if you will, of the word hope,
is the joyful anticipation of good.
So a biblical hope is a faith-filled moment
of joyful expectation.
That's what the hope is.
And it's maintaining that.
If you don't have hope,
you haven't been reading his love letter to you.
And if you've been reading it
and you can't find reasons to hope,
I don't know what to tell you.
You.
Maybe the Bible has not been reading you.
Because when we come before him,
it's only, I only leave moments
with him with significant change
in the measure I came to him in surrender.
Surrender measures everything.
If I praise him without surrender,
I was just making a business deal.
I'll do this for you, you do this for me.
Every part of this journey
is the great privilege of surrender.
Great faith, as we've said so many times,
doesn't come from striving.
It comes from surrender.
So here's, I wanna end with two thoughts.
I want you to look with me at Hebrews chapter 12.
I'm gonna read to you verse one.
Here we go.
Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin
which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance
the race that is set before us.
Look at this again.
Since we are surrounded
by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin
which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance
the race that is set before us.
You remember the verse that says,
death, where's your sting?
No one who is conscious of eternity
can find the sting in death.
Eternity has already started.
The one who lives forever, the resurrected Christ,
the resurrected Jesus,
the one who lives forever, the resurrected Christ,
the resurrected King,
dwells inside of every born-again believer,
and there's this ongoing journey and taste of eternity.
And this passage says,
since we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,
what is the cloud of witnesses?
Chapter 11 was the heroes of faith.
And so he says, since we are surrounded
by those who have gone before us,
and they are now forever with the Lord,
those heroes of faith
are actually like a cloud surrounding us.
And since, it's interesting the way he approaches it,
since this is undeniable and absolutely true,
then we have to live a certain way.
Holiness and endurance.
So what does that tell me?
It tells me my passion for holiness and my longevity,
my ability to endure difficult situations
is usually equal to my awareness of eternity.
It's being conscious of, you know what?
This life, the ups, the downs, the trials,
the difficulties, the successes,
all the stuff that just makes up life here on planet Earth,
all those things, all those things take on definition
in the measure I live aware of eternity.
Cloud of witnesses.
Chris always gives such an amazing illustration
with the runners, the pass on the baton,
what do they call it?
The relay race, thank you.
Somebody help me here, I'm going numb.
Yeah, the relay race.
And so you've got four guys running,
gals running this relay race and they pass the baton.
When the first person is through with that,
part of the relay race, they don't go in and take a shower. They stay on the field to see what the
next person does and what the next person does and what the final person does. And everybody in
the relay receives a prize according to how the last guy finished. Well, guess what? We've got
the stands of heaven are filled with those who have gone before us to see what we're going to do
with what we've been given because they receive a prize. This is biblical. They receive a prize
according to how we finish. That's stunning. That's absolutely stunning. And so to help us
to do well, the two things that were critical to the writer of the book of Hebrews, the two
things that were absolutely paramount in importance was number one, holiness and number two, endurance.
And so he said, here's what you're in the middle of.
Those who ran the race before you are watching.
Don't forget it. Don't forget it because you won't make stupid choices if you remember.
And the last thing I want to share with you, there's probably dozens of things,
but two things have come to my mind in these last several few days. And the first is that,
that I just shared this cloud of witnesses saying is it's supposed to help me to clarify my thinking,
help to clarify what's valuable and, and to see what is worthless that doesn't deserve
my affection or my time and what does deserve my affection, my time.
And the second one is actually in the gospel of John. And I'll read one more verse for you before
we wrap this up. It's in the gospel of John chapter 12.
John 12, it's all good. Just read anywhere. It's a, it'll bless your life.
John 12, verse 24.
Good.
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies,
it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain.
Each of the verses that I've read today are in a context that certainly deserve
better study than I can do today. But I just want to extract a couple principles. The first,
this is the cloud of witnesses. There's something about this next phase of the race for us.
That living conscious, you know, don't talk to the dead, don't be stupid. But just, you know,
just live aware. Live aware. Live aware we're not alone and it's not about us.
It's not about us. We get to make decisions that they benefit from and God is glorified by.
And this last thing that I think is, is, is helpful for me and hopefully it's helpful for you.
Every loss and every disappointment can become a seed that brings increase.
And let's be really honest. Some people experience this crisis, this tragedy,
this tragedy, and they never walk it through with the Lord. And so that seed was to say,
it remains alone. It never, it never releases into our life what only God can do with loss.
And that is to bring increase, to bring blessing, to bring reward. Only he can take the crisis
and turn it into something that changes our life forever. Only he can do that.
And I've watched for years and years and years. So many of us go through crisis and loss,
and there's the weeping, which is fine. There's the mourning, but it never,
it never becomes something that we journey together with God about. I don't need explanations
from him. I just need him. I just need him. I need the face of God. I need the countenance of God.
I need those tender moments where I do my best just to honor him, just to give
Give him thanks.
I need these moments of interaction.
Why?
Because in that process,
a seed is put into the ground
that will bring forth increase.
It will.
Galatians 6, it says,
God is not mocked.
Whatever a man sows, he will reap.
What does that say?
For me to think I could plant a seed in the ground
and not have it bring reward
is for me to insult God.
It is in the way he created nature itself
is that there would be sowing and reaping.
And part of this is taking our losses,
our pains, our disappointments,
or all the stuff that didn't work out like we thought,
and we just simply give it to the one
who knows what to do.
Son, I'll take that.
And I'm gonna put it into the ground.
And watch what happens.
And the most important thing
is that he will be glorified.
We get to benefit,
but it's not about us.
He will be glorified by the increase, by the blessing.
I'm gonna share one more illustration
and then wrap it up, close.
Dick Mills, a wonderful prophet friend
of our family in this house.
He's been home with the Lord for a number of years now,
but I remember him sharing this story.
You remember the costly ointment of Mary.
She had this year's worth of salary,
of increase, of wages.
And she invested it into this priceless ointment.
And they didn't have screw top lids.
It was in a sealed container that once it was broken,
you had to quickly use it because there was no reusing.
And she had this ointment.
And there was something inexplainable.
It was what she did offended everybody in the room.
I mean, the disciples were looking at,
I mean, they realized she just took $60,000 worth of ointment
and just poured it all over Jesus.
And it could have been sold.
It could have helped the ministry.
It could have fed the poor.
It could have done so many things.
And it's crazy how often we don't discern
a given situation the way he does.
He saw it completely different.
He saw that offering completely different
than everybody else in the room.
And she was concerned with one thing.
If you can imagine, she wasn't thinking
about some personal breakthrough or something.
She just wanted to give something of value to him.
So she grabbed her moment and she broke that thing.
She poured it over his feet and wiped it in with her hair.
And just this moment, in fact, the Bible says,
what she did will be spoken of throughout eternity.
So everybody in this room, when you get to heaven,
one of the individuals you're gonna wanna
have a conversation with is that lady
because her story is still being echoed throughout eternity.
It made such a mark on eternity
it's like a high watermark.
It's like what she did impacted the course of history
for nation after nation after nation,
just a simple vial of ointment
that she broke to honor Jesus.
But the part that Dick brought to our attention
was that when she left the house that day,
she smelled the same as Jesus.
She gave it all to him,
but she left smelling just like he did.
She poured it all on him, wiped it in with her hair,
but when she left the house that day,
she also smelled like a million dollars.
And there's something about this life that we live
where we grab our moments
and we give the most expensive thing,
the most difficult thing,
where we yield, where we break,
where we take that which is priceless
and we just simply say, it's all for you.
And Jesus says, that's right, and I'm all for you.
And something happens in that transaction.
While I never intended it to be about me,
he seems to just entrust himself to me more.
I can't explain that one.
I'm not sure I even know what I'm talking about,
but I do know it's true.
In fact, let me rephrase that.
I don't know what I'm talking about,
but I know that he entrusts himself
to those who will embrace mystery, live as a child,
be a true worshiper, not make it about themselves,
but truly let's honor the name Jesus.
Let's stand.
Let's pray.
I wanna thank you.
I know that so many of you have been just praying
day and night, day and night,
for my wife.
So thankful.
Some of this house's greatest warriors
would come down to our house,
just our home, and just march around the house,
and we'd look outside, and we'd see these violent ones
who are just,
it's just the coolest thing in the world.
It was like everybody else on the planet
think we're crazy, but this made the most sense
of anything I've seen.
And the prayer meetings where you guys
just spontaneously gather together in your homes
and here at Twin View, I will owe you
for the rest of my life for that.
I'm so thankful.
And I'm so thankful that this story,
this journey didn't end when Benny was taken to heaven.
I will never, all my life, forget the moment,
that moment, it's priceless.
Priceless moment of giving thanks.
And then have her taken, escorted into eternity.
Man, don't waste your moments.
They're painful, but they're priceless.
And they shape us.
And I'm thankful, I'm thankful, I'm thankful for you.
And her death was the end of one part of my life.
I can't pretend otherwise.
But in the bigger picture, it's the beginning
of something else.
It's the beginning.
Lou Ingalls flew from, I forget where he was now,
but he called me and he said,
he said, I need to see you and he told me why.
And he flew to Reading to have a 20 minute meeting
with Benny and with me.
Actually with Benny, I got, I was the tag along.
If you've ever been the third person in a date,
that was me in that moment, I was the third person.
And he came because of her book
that she had written on communion.
And at some point in the future,
I'm going to actually lay out in sequence
more information that I can give you right now.
But the Lord took him into a very interesting experience
in the days previous where the Lord began to speak
to him and his team that there was coming
a massive revival to our nation.
And he called it the communion revival.
It was because of the broken body and the shed blood.
There's something released.
And he wanted to talk with her, ask her questions
and then have her lay hands on him and pray.
Little did we know in that moment.
Little did we know in that moment
that that would be the last chance at that one.
But she laid hands and prayed for an impartation
to be one of those that championed a revival
in all the earth that came from the Lord.
And she laid hands on him and prayed for an impartation
to be one of those that championed a revival
in all the earth that came from the Lord.
From the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus.
It's so critical that we return to what's real.
And there's nothing.
more real than the lamb of God who sits on the throne,
who gave himself to be bread and wine.
So Father, I ask that even now
and in this next season as a church family,
that you would help us to play our part well
in a revival that will encompass the globe.
Yes, amen.
We pray this for the honor of the name Jesus
and that you would help us to not rush through this season
that we're in, that I'm in right now,
not carelessly, but to do so thoroughly.
And our heart is just to be faithful.
I thank you, in Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Bless you guys.