 Dear Father, we want to thank you and bless you one more time for these sessions we're having, for these concepts, principles, inspirations that you put in the hearts of these dear brothers, for your calling, your gifting, your choosing to use, our brothers for these sessions, Brother Harry right now, and you put these words in his heart and there's an enemy out there and we step into the courts of darkness and pass through the gates of hell. We've addressed some of these issues and there's opposition out there, but there's light, there's a candlestick, there's a lantern, there's oil in the lantern, there's a word from heaven, there's a word that rises up and that word is in his heart. We should bless Brother Harry this afternoon as he speaks to us, may your neighbor glorify it in this session. As we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you, brother. God bless you. How many of you want to know what is God's will for my life? Yes. How many of you know what is God's will for your life? Oh, fewer hands, much fewer. Good question, huh? Especially a question of youth. Actually, it's a question that comes really with salvation, with salvation. And that prayer I read this morning from the Matthias, I guess, who was going to be executed. He quoted a lot of scripture in that little prayer, but we know some great episodes in scripture where we hear, Lord, what would that have me to do? What would that have me to do? And so I think it's a constant question of youth. What do you want me to do? Someone asked me to repeat this week. I gave a devotion two weeks ago at church. It was basically from out of my own personal devotions. So I started with a little quote. Yogi Berra, anybody heard of Yogi Berra? He was this baseball player, a very colorful baseball player. And he had lots of statements. One of the paradoxical statements, and one of the paradoxical statements was, oh, nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It's too crowded. OK. But the one that I want to play with today is, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Now, I was looking at, we're going to get to the main body here in a minute. But I wanted to think about this with Paul. And Paul makes these statements when he's sort of defending himself, a little bit defending himself in Philippians 3. When they, in the beginning of it, he says, finally, brethren, rejoice in the Lord for me to write things to you is not tedious, but for you is safe. And he says, beware of the dogs, beware of these Pharisees, beware of all these problems. And then he says, but what things were gained to me, these I've counted for loss. Yet I indeed also count all things, loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered, the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be counted and found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is by the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God, by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death, if by any means I may attend the resurrection of the dead, not that I've already attained or I'm already protected, but I press on. And that's the word, I just love that part. But I press on. But I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ has also laid hold of me. I press on. Now, we have this situation. I know that a lot of you as young people would be in this whole question mark, what is God's will? I remember when I was young in the faith and I was in my, I guess I was about 25 at the time and discussing this with people, what is God's will? What is God's will? And I know that the Scripture gives lots of, this is God's will. What do you want me to do? We have a phrase in Operations Research, that's what I was, I was an Operations Research Analyst, meaning a mathematical problem solver using computers. That's basically what I did, I did that for many, for a few decades actually. We have a phrase, it's called paralysis by analysis. Paralysis by analysis. Lord, what do you want me to do? Or even a job, what is it? And I look at it and I look at it for ever and ever never coming to a decision, never coming to a direction, momentum. And in my own life, I began to understand, I'm not sure I'm gonna find exactly this perfectly stated, this is the will of God for you. I realized that I'm probably not gonna get that. And I run into young people now, I'm working with young people now, keep asking Lord, what is it? They're waiting for that message. And some people get it, I guess, they get a clear message to go and do it. I don't think that's for most of us. I just don't think it's that way. But I do know, press on, get moving. Opportunities before you, the fork in the road is there, take it and get moving, okay? I find that in my own view of leadership, leadership is more about initiative and attitude than it is about preparation and having skills. I mean, I find lots and lots of leaders, maybe they were not gifted with many skills, but they had initiative, positive outlook, and they were moving and people when they see that, I'll go with him. And I want you to encourage young people, take the fork, take the opportunities that are before you now to develop, especially in your youth, for the days of marriage and child rearing, which are so important and not knocking them at all. But I didn't get married too late in life. I've only been married three years, believe that. Got married at 57, 58. And same with my wife, we got married late, both of us are first marriage. And I wish I'd been married earlier. You know, there was times where, yeah, well, it would've been great, all those things, but one thing I know I did right, one thing I know I did right, I got moving. Made a lot of mistakes on the way. Lots of experience, I picked up the wrong way, making them, when I was in the army, training young officers, one of the thing I would teach them, they were under me. I would say, when you get into a situation, you don't know what to do. The answer is, do something. You don't know what to do, do something. If you do the wrong thing, you've learned, you've gained an experience, you've grown. Next time that situation comes up again, you'll know how to deal with it. If you do the right thing, you'll be praised. It'll reinforce what you did, you're gonna grow. You sit and don't do anything, you're gonna get my wrath. I used to tell them, I'm coming after you. You're just gonna sit and not do anything. We have all the opportunities in the world here before you. Yeah, I'm talking to you, youth now. You have enormous untold opportunities. Take advantage of them and develop them in your youth, especially in the realm of evangelism, especially in the realm of evangelism. Personally, I think that evangelism, yes, it could be a call on a man throughout his family years, but I'm telling you in youth, especially like we're gonna touch on Timothy, in your youth, those are the best years for evangelism. In your age range, that's the best years for evangelism. And then when you do get married, do you have children? Don't lose that evangelistic flavor for your life, for your family. Keep that going, take advantage of opportunity. Sometimes the opportunities don't look good, but take advantage of them. We have this great opportunity in Book of Acts when Paul is there in Athens. He goes up into Mars Hills and he's listening to these, I don't know if they're philosophers. They seem to just be toying and talking, sort of vein babbling. He interjects himself and says, no, I've got something else for you. Take advantage of the opportunity. When you are trying to figure out what God's call is on your life, what's your greatest vision? What is the greatest thing you can envision? Doing, becoming, accomplishing? Set your marks high, very high, high, so high that if God doesn't help you, they won't happen. I've got lots of stories in my own life where I've taken it and stepped out in areas. It looked absolutely impossible. If I did it myself, it wouldn't happen. God came in. So anyways, those are some thoughts I wanted to start with about will for your life because I know that's a struggle in youth. Now I had planned to do a little synopsis of Paul's letters to Timothy. The two books of Timothy, they are a book to youth. Paul's writing to his son in the faith. Doesn't explain it, but somehow we think that Paul actually brought the gospel to him even though his mother, Lois, was great in scripture. And throughout we have this exhortation, those two letters to youth. So let's turn it real quick. Let's go to first Timothy. I'm just gonna jump through some verses here. I'm gonna be a little bit of an expository comments. Let's put it that way. On some of the verses here, you would think about them and then we'll come to a, we'll shift a little bit of gears in the latter part of this to find application for our present day and age. First Timothy, like I said, I'm just gonna pick certain verses. Let's just jump to chapter one, verse 18. This I charge, this charge I commit to you. Son, Timothy, I'm using New King James. By the way, I'm in the middle of a move. I usually use King James Bible and it's in my car and I can't find it. I have so much stuff in my car. So I'm using New King James today. This I charge, this charge I commit to you. Son, Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you that by them you may wage the good warfare. Fight the good fight. What he's talking about? Timothy had been given a commission by a bunch of elders. You see it in here as an evangelist and he's saying go out with this commission you have, fight the good fight, fight the good warfare. This is about war. I mentioned it earlier, we're in a war. If you don't realize that you standing with Christ means you're at war with the world. You need to wake up. You're at war and you can't avoid it. At the point you think you're not in war, you need someone to come in and shake you a little bit. You are at war with the culture and the war is, the culture is at war with you. We don't fight according to their principles of war. We fight against them or to win them with the principles of the kingdom. So I'm gonna shift all the way to chapter four now. Verse seven. But reject profane and old wives fables and exercise yourself towards godliness. For bodily exercise profits little but godliness is profitable unto all things. Having promise of life that is, that now is and that which is to come, okay? Reject profane and old wives tales. What does that mean? Worldly thinking. Profane means world as opposed to godly. Profane is low, like profanity. Not necessarily the bad words, but the way this, sorry, there's a bug here, but the way this, this world is moving and the inputs that are coming into you, especially through the media. My concern is what are you being exposed to? It's so easy to expose yourself to the profane world. He's saying reject that, reject the profane thinking, the old wives tales, the wisdom of the world in a sense. Reject that, but rather exercise myself unto godliness. Exercise, not physical exercise, spiritual exercise. Now that day and age, the Greco-Roman world had an unbelievable fantasy or fascination, but fascination with the human physique, building yourself, they went to the gym, you would get trainers and you would work out, everything was about building that body into this beautiful form, the human form and they made statues of it, they're fascinated. He's talking about exercise yourself unto godliness, not physical exercise to go shape your body into something like the Greco-Roman world was doing. But exercise yourself unto godliness. I was an athlete in high school, I swam, I wrestled, played football, did a little bit of soccer, a little bit of track, did different sports, did triathlons, did all this crazy sports. But the one thing I know that when I was young, when I started playing sports, I was not much of an athlete, but when I was on the wrestling team, after one season I came out, much stronger, much stronger always because I spent the day, the afternoon, wrestling all my muscles against someone else, exercising, building strength, every muscle in your body gets worked out a lot and you grow strong. Here's the guidance that Paul's giving to Timothy or giving to youth, build yourself, exercise yourself unto godliness. Now, well, being a passive recipient of messages, like right now you are, I'm not gonna, that doesn't build you, that informs you, but it doesn't build you. Exercise thyself unto godliness means go out and do things, go out, shape your life, starting with your devotional life, on through your ministry life, and I dare say even into the evangelistic realm, one of the things I try to do with young believers as soon as I can, take them out and exercise them in evangelism. It is such a strengthening exercise. Now, I didn't always do it right. I goofed up a lot. There was one young man when I was in school once and I gave him a, he gave me a ride once, an eight hour ride down the Southern California. And this guy was quite an interesting guy. Heavy New York accent, giant mustache. When I got into his giant knobby, tired pickup truck, there was a pile about a foot deep of cigarette butts in the car. And I didn't know this guy's name, I just got a ride with him. And he chain smoked the entire way down there. And I had just gotten back from Europe. I'd actually been in Israel, studying in Israel, and I got back and I, oh well, here we go, I'll try and talk to this guy. And I saw the mountains and I go, those mountains look like Israel. What, what do you mean? Told him about Israel. Got to share the gospel with him, this long trip. Couldn't get away from me, I guess, eight hour trip. And at the end of that, he said, huh, okay, a couple of weeks later I saw him. His name was Tom, I go, Tom, how you doing? He goes, fine, he was smoking a cigarette. Want to come to Bible study? I'll come to Bible study. This guy came to Bible study. It was pretty funny, he was scared to death. He sat behind a couch, he wasn't even in view. I want to get to the main point, but little than I know, this guy was consuming the scripture like crazy. He became a believer. I talked with him a couple of times afterwards, sort of learning the ropes of discipleship. I've been only a believer about three years at this point. And I remember taking him out and say, okay, I'm gonna take this guy out. I'm gonna teach him evangelism, as if I know evangelism. So we're gonna try it. I didn't know what to do. There was no one who was going out and doing evangelism. We got to do evangelism, so what do we do? We got tracks, we got tracks, we went out there and we're walking along and what do we do now? Walk past somebody and he's supposed to be watching me and I remember what I'm doing. So we pass this couple and I do this free information. And the guy goes, oh, he took it. And I was like, oh, was it very good? And then the guy goes, well, I gave the track to him. He says, hey you, stop. Is this about that salvation thing? I go, yeah. He goes, man, someone told me about this salvation thing. What is it? Unbelievable. My point is I started taking this guy out to do evangelism and it solidified him. And actually, I don't know how to explain this. He passed me in the faith because I took him out and started teaching him to do hard things, to build this guy. He's principal of a Christian school in Southern California. Unbelievable, unbelievable man of God now. But I took him out and I said, I've gotta teach this guy to do hard things, to shape him. What are you doing to shape your life? Besides church attendance, good, reading your Bible good, exercise your self-undegobbiness. Okay, let's go through a couple others here. Well, I'm gonna get to verse 12. Verse 12, let no one despise your youth. Stop there. Let no one despise your youth. Seems we have a problem here, didn't we? That Timothy being a young guy, being given instruction by Paul, was teaching older people. He was the young guy and there was somehow, it looked like a negative attitude towards him because he was young. Does anybody know what that is? Has anybody experienced or seen that before? The old guys that look down on you but almost just because you're young, they look at you and go, huh? Sort of the grouchy old guy, grouchy old lady. You know, I know what that's like happening to me many times. Something about the youth doing things irritates some older people. I think that Paul's sort of touching on that. Okay, so what do you do with that? They'll pick at you. You're not doing it right. Pick at the way you look. Things you do during the day. Look at what it says here. Let no one despise your youth but be an example to the believers in word and conduct and love and spirit and faith and purity. Okay. Young people, your youth is in no way a disadvantage. If anything, when you have this, you receive an attitude, oh, we're just the youth. We're just the youth. You know what you do? You turn into an example for the older people. You grow in godliness. You excel in godliness. You are exceedingly valuable. Now, we have a very interesting situation in Kempstville. And we're new there. We were in Washington, DC, and now we're down in Kempstville in Virginia. And I talked when I first got there, I talked to the pastor about this. I said, really? We'd like to work on youth and evangelism. That was a, about a year ago, we talked about it. And so we started an evangelistic Bible study at Panera Bread, the youth group. Yep, playing everything out there at Panera Bread. Started advertising the Bible study on the Bolton board. Panera said, yeah, great, we talked to them. Hey, yeah, put it up there. What do you need? And we used technology. We actually used Meetup. See, I'm not anti-technology. Maybe you think, oh, he's one of those guys, technology bad. No, good uses of technology. You just have to know what he'll do to you also. Well, we're up to 18 people coming to Bible study now in Panera. We actually take over almost half a ton of Panera, this one portion. We're about to start meeting on Sunday nights to have his worship service. The youth group is stoked. They are now pushed beyond where they were before. They're exercising, okay? I took them down to Norfolk to do singing and handing tracks out and interacting with people. Are you doing that? Do you know what to do? Do something, get moving. In my own evangelism experiences, I couldn't find anybody to go do evangelism. So you know what I did? Went by myself. I just went down to the streets, trying to figure out, handing tracks out, like I told you what I was doing with that guy. And then learning how to, there's a fly that's after me, sorry. He loves me, someone loves me. Going down and trying to interact with people, doing question and answers. And over time, built a little bit of a skill at it. And then, we actually ended up building a group of evangelists. Started off with just the girl who became my wife, Julie, just the two of us going out doing evangelism on the street. People heard about it. We ended up having a group of 25 or so. And we would go every Sunday afternoon for 10 months of the year into the city to do evangelism. But it came from exercising yourself, uh-oh. Verse 14, verse 14, there. Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which is given to you by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the eldership. I just say that every one of you has at least one spiritual gift God has given you. At least one. Most of you have multiple gifts. And they're there in you. They're latent. Do you know what latent means? They're sitting there not being used. Gifts are not something that automatically just comes out. Oh, he's gifted. Look, he's doing these things. Gifts are exercised and built. It says don't and neglect them. You neglect your gifts, they go away. I think they're always a little bit there. But when you start exercising and trying out different ways of ministry, evangelism, discipleship, teaching, the ones that you're gifted in will start to really blossom. So at your age, in your youth, start exercising them now. Don't neglect them. Get them moving. Chapter five. Verses one through four. A little bit back to the despise thy youth. Don't let them despise your youth. Do not rebuke an older man. Don't fight with the older people. Don't think bad thoughts about them. Exhort them. Build them up. As a father, a younger man as brothers, older woman. The big point I have here is that when you, okay, here's one aspect of ministry I've learned over the decades. If you strike out and step out to do great works for the kingdom of God, you will have opposition and a portion of that opposition will come from within the body. It's just a reality that'll come within the body. Not necessarily stop, don't do it, but a little bit criticism, questioning. Isn't that a little bit outlandish? You're gonna get a little bit of that. I've gotten a lot of it in the past. Was it in a mega church or other type churches? But the answer to all that is, don't rebuke, don't fight. Honor, honor people. Ask them, well, how can you help me? How can I, what can I learn from you? Okay, that goes along with that youth. When they're looking at you young and you strike out, we wanna do great things. We wanna start an evangelistic Bible study and come now, how are we gonna do that? Ask them, well, how can we do it? How can you help us? Okay, I wanna shift over for time's sake, let's turn to 2nd Timothy. 2nd Timothy 1.6, therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you through laying hands on of hands. Stir it up, this latent gift, don't neglect it. Stir it up. You have a responsibility, yay, a duty to take the gifts that God has given you, explore them, find them, and get into action, get moving, now, especially in your youth. It will pay off in your married years, you'll be living or using all the experience you gained in your younger years, okay? Stir it up. Then we get to this next section here, chapter two. We'll shift to a little bit of the direction here, what I'm talking about. Verse one, you, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Be strong, we see that a lot in Scripture. Be strong, only be strong, be strong. We have this attitude from the media and from entertainment producers that Christians are weak. Because we don't use violence back on people, we must be weak, we're wimpy or something. This Bible teaches about strength over and over and over again. You are supposed to be strong in the might of Christ, not a wimpy pushover. We don't fight back with their terms, but we stand our ground and I'll go through some more of these Scriptures. How do we stand our ground? But here we go. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That's that progress. Find people that will push the gospel on, teach them the gospel so that they'll continue to teach the gospel. But verse three, you, therefore, must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. You must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Okay, let's look at that for a second. Having had been a soldier, one of the things we would do in training, it may sound sort of sadistic or something, that we put our soldiers in the army through hard, painful suffering, not because we want them to somehow feel pain that makes us feel good. We make them climb and crawl through mud, train some days, two or three days with no sleep because it made them better soldiers. So when combat came, they wouldn't quit, they wouldn't worry about themselves. They had to endure hardship. And Paul is using this same type of imagery. Endure hardship, grow strong, able to persevere. Then he has a second statement. No one engaged in warfare and tangles himself with the affairs of this life. Then he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. You know, when I first went into the army, as a kid at, when I said, we used to sing these songs. We used to sing about one guy all the time. And if anybody here has been in the military, again, I'm not advocating, I'm just telling you some stories. But we had these songs and they were called Jodies. Anybody heard, no one's talking about? And you'd sing no reason to look back, Jodies got your Cadillac. Stop worrying about your girlfriend, Jodies got her. Don't worry about that job out there. Jodies got it. Jody was this guy who took all the good things that you left behind, okay? You now have dedicated your life as a soldier for the country, you are letting go. It's gone, Jodies got it, okay? And this is a theme in military, is to give up the good life to serve your commander. And they pound it into you, that's what basic training's about. And he's using this theme. Look at that again. No one engaged in warfare and tangles himself in the affairs of his life. Then he may please him or enlisted as a soldier. We're not here for the good life. The pleasant, the property, the joy, the fun that this world provides. We're here for the joy of pleasing our commander. That means enduring hardship for him. Be strong, let's be strong. Let's look at a few verses here to be strong, let's go to Joshua 1.8. Joshua, when I started teaching at university, I had, it's a Christian university. It's conservative when it comes to universities, not real conservative when it comes to to Anabaptist and Kingdom culture. But I'd have them recite this verse every morning as we began in class. This book of the law should not depart, I'm sorry, I want to verse six. Be strong and have good courage. For to this people you shall go and divide the inheritance to the land, which I swore to the fathers before them. Only be strong and be very courageous that you may be able to observe, to do according to all that the law which Moses my servant commanded you. And do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law should not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may be able to observe, to do according to all that is written therein. For then you will make your way prosperous, then you'll have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and have good courage. Do not be afraid nor dismayed for the Lord like God is with you wherever you go. And of course Jesus refers to that, behold I'm with you all the way into the end. Colossians 1.9, Colossians 1.9, for this reason also since the day I heard it, do not cease to pray for you. And to ask that you may be filled with all knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful to every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. He's interested in you increasing and growing. And I have lots and lots of verses here on that. In 1 Corinthians 6.13, he actually uses military turns. Watch, stand, stand fast, be strong. But I wanna turn to another scripture. I'm gonna develop this a little bit. Ephesians 6.10-13, find the brother and be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. We wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this age, against the spiritual witness in high places. Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand, to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. This is military. Stand strong in this tsunami of popular culture coming at us. Ephesians 2. Now when I was first being witnessed to, this is the verse that got me. Ephesians 2.8-9, because I had been raised as a Roman Catholic, trusting in my own good works to save me. And this verse really got me. It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. Not of works, let's say any man should boast. But verse 10 is not well quoted, not nearly quoted as much as verses eight and nine. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. For we are his workmanship. What does that mean, workmanship? How many of you do any carpentry? How many of you make anything with your hands at all? Okay, lots of you with sewing or whatever it is. You know, if you were going to sell cabinets to someone and they're flawed, they're marked up or cracked or whatever problems they have with cabinets. What happens? Your name gets injured. They go, this cabinet, because your workmanship is flawed. You just sold me bad cabinets. Now, this here says we are his workmanship. You are his workmanship. You are his product. You are a, in a sense, a device created. I don't consider it like a stationary device. You are his workmanship like a machinery, something that's supposed to be producing. You are his workmanship created for good works, which he prepared beforehand that you'd walk in them, but you're supposed to be doing good works. We're not saved by good works, but we're supposed to be doing good works. And you are supposed to be his product. Okay? What quality of a kingdom tool are you? And the question is, how do you become a quality kingdom tool? Let's turn to Romans chapter six. Romans chapter six, verse 12. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you may obey it in its lust. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Now, it's interesting that word instrument is the same word as weapon. It's the same word. In the Geneva Bible, I go through different Bibles as I'm going through my readings. In the Geneva Bible, 1599 version, they actually use weapon, they don't use instrument. So you're supposed to be this weapon of warfare, that instrument, that workmanship. Now, I mentioned today about the swords. When I was in Sudan, swords everywhere. I actually was with a tribe called the Beja tribe and their name is, their slogan is Beja Hadid, Beja sword. They carry a sword, it's about this tall, about three feet, and Beja people are about four feet. They have these swords, they don't carry them on the waist, they carry them on their shoulder. These great big long swords, I have a couple of them at home and they use them, they're Beja Hadid. As soon as a boy can stand and walk around, he carries a sword. They have little swords, they put them on the little boy's shoulders. They carry these swords. So I became a little bit of a collector of swords and I actually have my grandfather's army sword and my namesake, the guy I'm named after. I have this army sword, the army doesn't have swords anymore. They used to have ceremonial ones. But it's interesting, on this old army sword, it has a sword right above the hasp. I mean, a star, right above the hasp. And you know, that's the star meant. It meant that that sword has been bent all the way around so that the tip has touched above the hasp and it didn't break, didn't bend. Which means that sword is now suitable for combat, trustworthy, it's not gonna break, not gonna bend, you'll be able to use it. And what he's telling us here is, present yourselves, this workmanship you are, not as weapons of unrighteousness by the way you live your life out, the way you think what you do, but present yourselves as this righteous weapon. And the way you do that, it's like we talked about earlier, enduring hardship, endure hardship to grow into that, like the weapon, the way they make that weapon, that sword, able to survive in combat, you know what they do to it? They beat it, they pound it, they stick it in the fire. Those of you who know about blacksmithing, heat it up to red hot and then bang it away, get it hot, bang it away and break up the molecular structure in there so that it's not gonna break in combat. Same thing with us, endure hardship, that you would grow strong. I talked about earlier in the talk here, opportunities, forks on the road. You have opportunity to go out and do hard things for the kingdom of God, do it. I encourage you, do it. Yes, I know people are sometimes over safety conscious about our lives and isn't that a little bit dangerous? Yeah, but it's gonna build you. I look back at the time when I was taking these risks in Sudan, high risks, and dealing with many near-death experiences and having gotten so sick there that my team thought they were gonna lose me. I got so sick one time, it ended up being sort of funny. I was so sick, I was in such pain that I kept just doing deep knee bends. I was going up and down, I hurt so bad. And so they finally, they held me down and they put some medicine in my mouth and poured coke in my mouth. It was sort of funny, it didn't really work, I didn't medicine go down. So finally they held me down and were gonna give me an IV. None of them were medical people. None of them had medical background, but they had IVs and they were gonna give them an IV and I was going, no. But I'd done it to other people before. So they held me down, they gave me an IV. They strapped me down to a bed, I was going out of my mind and I was in such pain. And then the leader of our trip sat there over watching me because he knew I was not saying, because I was in such pain. And at one point I sat up and he goes, what are you doing? I said, this is like two in the morning, I'm going running. He goes, you're not going running, you're not going anywhere. He's a pretty buff guy. So I lay down and I was so angry. I put my legs in the air, I started running on my bed. Back to my point though, is that I went into these situations, they were high risk, not comfortable at all, sleeping on the ground on a mat, no pillows, nothing. Weeks at a time, having run out of food, at one point had to buy a goat and kill it and I'd land and kill it. Having run out of water, having once got such a bad infection on my leg. We had a two day march back to the airplane. Got so bad, didn't know if I was going to make it. Was using fire to try and stop the infection from moving up my leg. All these things, craziness, I cherish now the times that I did that, that I took risks, went out there. All the times we were out in the street doing street witnessing, having to interject into sometimes angry people shouting and to calm them down and having tried to witness to people at work and received a lot of ridicule. Just many different aspects of ministry that I probed and tried to do when I was young, a young Christian, didn't know what to do, but like I said that phrase, you don't know what to do, do something. I look back and I thank God he put in me that volition to go try, at least try something. I beg of you, please do not waste your youth, your ability to grow and develop both your skills but even your desires grow stronger as you do things. Shape yourselves into that instrument of God. Endure hardship. Sometimes you have to do things that are hard, painful and seem to have no fruit. At one point I was boxing and I boxed in college and then I was boxing in the army. It's a long story, not that I advocate boxing, but there's a lesson in this story. I told the story before, but I tell a very short version of it now. We had been challenged by another unit in this boxing match. We were taunted and I told my soldiers, hey, we're gonna win this match. We're gonna win this thing. So I recruited some soldiers to box and we had a former Golden Gloves boxer in our unit who said, I'll train you. And the biggest thing he did in training wasn't the technique, it was the endurance. And he would make us punch, a punching bag. And if anybody knows what that's like, I don't know if you did that, it's hard and painful. And so we would do this punching bag thing and he would first do it. And just to do 15 seconds was hard. Then he worked at 30 seconds and then he would work for a minute, two minutes. And in this, I had a bunch of soldiers that came and pretty soon a bunch of them quit. This is too hard, we're done. And I came down to, I had seven soldiers, I'm sorry, 11 soldiers left. I actually got in trouble because I boxed myself. My commander was mad that I was boxing, but I did it. And I had one soldier named Sergeant Henderson. And I was actually interested in putting him out of the army because he was not a very good soldier. He'd been in trouble a bunch. Nice guy, but he just wasn't doing well. But he won the box, so he boxed. And when we would do this drill, he kept quitting. And the coach kept saying, no, no, keep going, keep going, I quit. And come on, Sergeant Henderson, come on, Sergeant Henderson. Well, the last, well, finally the day of our competition came, this boxing match, and I was their commander. And so it was almost like I fought every fight. I wrapped their hands, I got them ready to go into, into this boxing ring, and there were actually five units that were in the match. But it was really two of us that were pitted against each other who had the most people, we had the best chance of winning the fight. And the way it worked is we lost our first two fights. I go, no, we weren't ready for this. Then we won a bunch, then we lost a bunch, we won a bunch. And then finally, at the last fight, we were tied with this unit that we were, they were taunting us, we were taunting them for this fight. And guess who the last fight was, was gonna be? Sergeant Henderson, okay? The guy that was kept quitting, or is he in it, is he out? And so this is how the fight went, I was trying to get dramatic of this. Sergeant Henderson comes out, I wrap him. How are you doing, Sergeant Henderson? Okay, sure. He talks slow like this, okay, sure, I'll do okay. Wrapping him up. And their fighter was their top athlete, because their unit, in the military, you do a lot of sports. He was the center for their basketball team. He pitched for their base, he did all this stuff. They were sort of a rear echelon unit. We were a front echelon. We didn't have time to play sports. They did, their guy comes out in a silk robe and bouncing around in a silk robe like he's gonna, Sergeant Henderson's okay, sir, or whatever. And for the first round, their guy danced around and just pulverized Sergeant Henderson. He danced around and whack, whack, whack, round around, and Sergeant Henderson just couldn't do anything. Second round came, he was doing it again and one time he hit him so hard that he knocked his mouth guard out and it bounced in front of me and I almost threw the towel in. But something happened, right? In the middle of the second round. Their guy, the fancy, motivated guy, suddenly got tired. And Sergeant Henderson, with no skill, just started doing his drill, punch, punch, punch, punch. And this other guy who could dance for a bit, he couldn't hold his arms up and Sergeant Henderson, punch, punch, punch, punch, right into the corner. And that round, it was like, whoa, you don't know what's happening here. Ding, then the third, only three rounds, the third round. The guy comes out there, dances for like five seconds and then he can't keep his arms up and Sergeant Henderson, punch, punch, punch, punch. Punches down into the corner and they're going, you can't hit him in the back of the head. Okay, sir. You know, just punch. And finally, this guy was just dodging, dodging. Who was gonna win the fight? At the end, it was unbelievable that, you know, who wins the fight? It was just like a televised event. You know, Sergeant Henderson won the fight. We won the day. Unbelievable, Sergeant Henderson was a hero for like the next year. He had his medal in his car and everybody saw it, everybody talked about him. We really shamed that unit. Point is that it was discipline and hardship that got him through the fight. It wasn't motivation. Like this other guy had all the motivation and the dance and the flashiness but didn't have the discipline, hadn't put the work into it. Point is in your youth, build that strength, that stantima for the kingdom of God in a like way. We know Paul talked about boxing. So I sort of have license to use that. Not that I advocated. But the point is you train yourselves now in your youth to be that man or that woman of God. Okay, I'm gonna, I want to, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. I'm gonna ask you, you know we don't do this, but I like interacting with youth when I like preaching at youth. When I was doing Young Life, the Young Life are youth for Christ and so I'm gonna have the youth over. I used to always love to have stump hairy night, okay? Ask questions. So I'm good to give you a moment to ask me questions. I'd like to field some questions based on either this morning's talk about media or what I was just talking about now. Any general questions and maybe have a conversation with you all. Okay, so I'm gonna, I must have provoked some thought, I hope. Yes. Okay, his question is about the struggle we have with the internet, this power struggle. Okay. Now, here's, I had some discussions with someone this morning and it's in my more longer, when I longer talks, when I have more time to discuss this. There's something about our nature that the more we do something, the more we like it. Even when you do something you don't like, do it long enough, you begin to like it. It's a strange part of who we are, has to do with our neurological design, that your body, your brain likes familiar territory, loves familiar territory, actually. And when you start into the internet and you're always on the internet, you grow a proclivity to it, that you almost can't even control. You always wanna be picking up, always wanna spend time on the internet. Is that what you're talking about? Okay, what struggle are you talking about? I would say that there's a certain element where we all feel the surge of what happens just to air our thoughts. Okay. And other people are listening to me right now. So I'm getting your attention. Yes. Well, that's what happens with all of the media is they want our attention. I mean, the people that are really at the head of the whole thing. You try and put what you want on the media. You won't always get to put it on what you want. I'm sorry, the last thing you said? If you try and put what you want to put on the media, you won't always get the privilege to do it. Yes, are you talking about like on YouTube or so on? Yes, wherever. I mean, you make a statement. You're going to be buffed sometimes depending on if it's politically correct or not. Okay. Well, yeah, they're calling out the masters of the universe now, those that control all of the big media-based industries, communication, so on. And well, partially it belongs to them. So they owned you, right? Well, you're subjecting yourself to them when you have a Facebook account. You signed something at the very beginning. When you joined a Facebook, that everything you put on that Facebook account belongs to them. It's their property once you post that. So, yeah, it's their property. That's the power struggle that I'm talking about. Yes, yes. So you are giving over control in a sense when you do that, when you begin to use social media, because it's theirs. They're letting you use it, if that's what you mean. Well, we don't realize what's happening to us. Along that line, many times, I don't think as youth when we give ourselves to that. Yes. We don't know that we're being influenced and shaped by them. You know, there was this statement, this is from a few decades ago when I was working with youth, MTV, and they heard of MTV, movie, I forgot what it stands for, but it's basically this acted out songs. And they had a question, this is about 20 years ago now. They said, don't you think that you have a little bit too much influence over the youth in America? And their response was, influence, we own them. That was their statement, we own the youth. They belong to us, because they are the ones who listen to us, we can tell them what we want. And so in a sense, there's that acknowledgement when they're listening, when you're playing on their, you're in a sense on their playing field, they do get to shape you what way they want to. And if that's what you're talking about. And if you put things on there which don't go along their lines, it's theirs. It's their playing field. If that's addressed to what you're talking about. Well, the issue is for us then, as Christians, we need to be willing to express what the truth is. Jesus was willing to do that in front of Pilate. And sometimes that's not easy, but we need to do that. Yes. I mean, don't you see that as part of the warfare that we're facing? I see that. My view of use of the internet for ministry. I look at it as a fantastic opportunity for broadcast, meaning broadcast, the word broadcast, it's like casting seed, casting seed out there and to get a message out in a broad but sort of shallow sense and to get people in connection with yourself. But to then dwell in relationship or to develop relationship in the internet is not a good place to do that. To develop long-term and to get in convincing arguments with people, there's too much fallacy out there and it's too easy to just dismiss it as opposed to the face-to-face presence, okay? So I'm not against using the internet, it's how you use it in the broadcast, very good. Convincing people, I don't know about that. Discipling, no, that's in the face-to-face business. So that helps answer the question. Okay, so but even I was involved in one study on evangelism, discipleship using social media, one on many, but the conclusions are that social media is not very good for evangelism, not very good for discipleship. The net effects are almost nothing. Even the movies, the greatest movie, one of the greatest of all-time movies, Passion of Christ, all sorts of studies out. Didn't have any effect. Net result was zero on the media. Even the movies, we all think is gonna win people. Net effect was zero. So I have very little confidence in that. It was my field, I'm an information technology guy, but when it comes down to spiritual-relatial interactions and development, I have little hope for anything beyond that broadcast of information and hope of getting people connected into you, but then you have to take it from there and do face-to-face personal. Another question? Thank you. What time do we have to finish at? 4.30, right? 4.30, okay, yes? Harry, I wanna do something hard. Let's do it. What's the next step once I lock out that door? Next step. Push-ups. For him, he's a military, former military guy too. Okay, what do you mean? Just some practical next steps. Let's say, everybody, I agree, like I wanna refine myself, I wanna do something hard. How do I take advantage of the people around me to push me to what that hard thing is? How do I brainstorm and how do I organize my life so I actually walk out here and have a next action step? Okay, let's start with the commands from the Bible. Okay? Commands from the Bible, go make disciples. Are you making disciples? Try. Okay, I pretend you're not. Okay. In that area, are you making disciples? Are you making disciples? I like the trying. Go make disciples. That's a command and a duty. Command and duty, go make, five times, the five different versions of the Great Commission are to witness, make disciples. Duty, are you doing that? Then you walk out that door. I am failing in my duty. He told me to go do this. Then you go, God, help me. Give me a disciple. First of all, give me a disciple. Okay, in my life, when I ask God, God, give me someone to witness to. Sometimes within minutes it happens. It's almost like asking God, toss me a ball and you get a bowling ball in your lap. These people, boom, there they are. When you ask God, according to his will, Lord, we're supposed to witness? Lord, we're supposed to make disciples? Lord, give him to me. That's first, start with praying. Second, to start looking. Looking for the fork, the opportunity. And don't be afraid. And there are so many methods of entering into relationships, both with evangelism. There's great methods to get into conversation with people, spiritual conversations. And then with discipleship, you actually find someone, meet them. Hey, are you interested in spiritual things? Most people say yes. Would you like to learn more? Yes, would you like to get together? Yeah, and start doing that. I have a friend, his whole ministry. Some things I can't say because we're being recorded, but his whole ministry is Middle Easterners. Let's put it that way. Middle Easterners. I go overseas a lot and these recordings endanger me. So Middle Easterners, he actually went into a Middle Eastern country, was living in a Middle Eastern country learning their language. And in six months, started seven Bible studies. We'd walk up to him, talk to him. Are you interested in studying the New Testament? Okay. He does that now. His whole ministry here, stateside is doing that. He learned. Walk up, he's a certain way of questioning him. He's got Bible studies all over the country now doing this. That's his whole ministry because he figured out how to do it. Lord, give me people and now start trying, okay? Ask God to give you someone to make a disciple out of. Ask God for someone to witness to and then be ready and do it. I didn't know what to do. Personally, I was going down the street corner by myself handing tracks out by myself. And at sea, sometimes I see people who I knew. Like from work, what are you doing? But I learned to swallow it and say, okay, all right, they think I'm a nut. I don't care. That's what, didn't he promise that? Persecution? Called fools for Christ? You're called a fool. That's fine. I have no regrets. I have no regrets at all. The times, I'm sort of finding to take a new person down to do evangelism. I remember I had a Bible study when I was in California. And I was getting really bold in this with my Bible study and I announced to them, yes, next Friday night, we're all gonna go out and do street evangelism. And they're like, what? And they were shaking. They were shaking. I mean, physically shaking on the street, teaching them, taking them out. In a short time, they got over it and they became bold. And then they started evangelizing all over the place. They changed. It changed them to go out and do that street evangelism. They're evangelizing their family, they're evangelizing their neighbors. Something happened. And then within just a couple of months, they couldn't wait to get out there to do evangelism. Yes, it's always a little bit. When you first get out there, what am I doing? They loved it. They changed. They grew into it. That Bible study. Could have been a church. Could have grown into a church. For a decade after that, this is, we all moved, we all had gone different places. They would call up and they'd go, remember the days. Remember the days when we did that. It started, that little incident started with me, not knowing what I was doing. And then taking them out there, trembling. It solidified this group. They're all still out there in service today. Out witnessing, doing the best they can with their lives. That man, Tom, I told you about the one that, who became a believer, same thing. Now if that helps, if you don't know what to do, wait, let's see if I can get you here. If you don't know what to do, wait, wait, wait. If you don't know what to do, do something, get some movement. A rudder on a ship is no good if the ship is not moving. It's a worthless piece of wood. When the ship is moving, that little rudder, oh, you can turn this ship. You don't know where to go, get moving. The Lord will show you where to go. Time for another question, one more question. Yes. Maybe some advice concerning tactfulness, just a little bit. Yeah, there's some things I've learned over time. Doing street evangelism, you mean? I'll give you an example of street evangelism, or it could be office friends or so on. I call it the permission principle, okay? Don't give the gospel to people who have not given you permission to give them the gospel. If they don't wanna hear the gospel, do not give them the gospel. They don't want it, don't give it to them. Bottom line, otherwise you're just being irritant to them, you're building up a resistance to it. However, there's ways of getting them to give you permission, and it has to do with asking questions, okay? I gave you one example, a man I knew, he's just passed away, but he was great at this. He would just ask me, can I ask you a question? Are you interested in spiritual things? Okay, the single easiest question to start the process of evangelism, the single easiest one is this, okay? I'm giving you a trade secret, okay? Ready, trade secret. Excuse me, sir, may I ask you a question? How hard is that? Really hard, isn't it? When I go, excuse me, may I ask you a question? You have honored the person, I'm not gonna talk to you unless you, let me, do you know what the question, do you know what the answer is? 100% of the time, yes. May I ask you a question, yes. Then I say, this is what I do. I go, well, it's a spiritual question. You may not know the answer, do you want me to ask it? I do that, and that's the second principle. The second principle of evangelism in my book which is not followed by many ministries and that is honesty and open. Some play all sorts of trick games to get people to hear the gospel. No, you don't do that. People of God, you don't be tricky. So I will tell them right up front, be polite and say, well, it's a spiritual question. You may not be the answer, do you want me to ask you? You've honored the person, if they wanna say, you know what, you're a spiritual nut, get away from me, you've let them do it. If you want me to go away, I'll go away. Do you know what, 99% of the time, guess what? Yes, it's unbelievable. Sir, may I ask you a question? Second is, it's a spiritual question. Do you want me to answer it? Do you want me to ask it? 99% of the time, yes. You have taken now, and you have opened, I'm sorry, I'm asking whoever is asking that question, there. You've taken a person from closed to wide open permission to ask them any spiritual question and they won't get mad. The doors are open now. Ask them what you want spiritually, because they said to. It's almost as if they asked you to, but you've opened the permission zone, is what I call it. Does that make sense? And then I'll ask them a question that they can't answer. Most Christians can't answer. I go, well, you've, you heard this term? My question is, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? And they just scratch their heads. Some will say, well, it's something to do with the Bible. It's something to do with the, I don't know, what is it? Then I go to the next question. Again, honest and honorable to the person, honoring the person. I say, well, if you'd like, I can give you an answer. And therefore, next time you're asked, you'll have an answer. But you also might find spiritual application to you, to your life. Tell them that. I find application. Honest, put it out there, and would you like me to tell you? At this one, it's about 95% of the time, they say yes. That was using the permission. Does that help? You just ask questions that honor the person, you're honest, you tell them from the beginning, no hiding, if they're gonna think you're a religious nut, they might as well think it to the beginning. Okay, you're a religious nut. Fine, at the beginning, but because you've been honest and honoring most of the time, they say yes. And if they're in a hurry, and they say, I'm sorry, I can't go, I gotta run, I can't talk to you right now. Or if they say, no, I don't want to ask that question. You know what's in their mind? What's in their mind? I wonder what he was gonna ask me. The next time, what? I wonder what that guy was gonna ask me. You've made progress, but you've shown a graciousness to them. You see, these things are not hard, but you've gotta do something to find them out. And no one taught me that. I don't have like, I got it from some book on this. I just kept experimenting with things when I started figuring out, hey, guess what? When I start with these questions, open doors, okay? And maybe that's an example of stepping out and doing something, trying things and learning, okay? Is that helpful? Anybody find that helpful? Yes, you can do it at your office. Can I ask you a question? Yeah, are you interested in spiritual things? Most people say yes. Most people say yes. Have you ever studied the Bible to find out these things? Do you wanna do it with me sometime? That's what our Bible study is. We do inductive Bible study, explore the Bible study. We're not there to teach you anything. We're to explore the Bible study, and they're coming. Okay, I've tried to sort of give you a little bit of guidance and thought on how to get your lives moving in a direction. The will of God, are you gonna grab, are you gonna get a sentence written in the sky with the will of God is? No, the will of God is something more that you discover. The will of God for your life is more of something you discover and develop as opposed to something which is explicitly told you. Wait, one second. And so then I encourage you to start exploring, stepping out, developing your strength, your endurance, your abilities, especially in your youth. Use your youth for the kingdom of God. Before you know it, life changes, and your focus from being able to evangelize outside shifts to evangelizing inside the family. It's a different role, it's a different mission. Church is, everything's different. Once you get married and start having children, not a change in importance. Absolutely, both are super important, but your role now is out. Get the gospel out. You've gotta become people like those first Anabaptists. 1525, they were no slouches. They weren't sitting around wondering, what should I do? They weren't just sitting at home in their Bible studies. If you read about it, they were accused of horrible things, but they're the funny one that I find. They were accused of being hedge preachers. Hedge preachers, what's that? Hedge preacher, the hedges between properties. They were talking to their neighbors, talking to strangers, they couldn't help it. The gospel in them came out, and they were your age range, that 18 to 25 year old age range fired up for Jesus, went and told everybody, no slouches at all. We need to return to that strength, vigor, and attitude of moving, okay? Let me just pray for you, you youth, okay? Let's pray. Wait, stand up, let's all stand. Father of Heaven, I do ask now that you would bless these youth, Lord, with the opportunities in life come to grow, and to take a stand and be strong, and be a witness, and disciple in accordance with your command, your commanded will. They would take the opportunities. They would seek opportunities. They would look and figure out how they can be a witness. They would ask and receive people to disciple. They would seek out people to bring into the kingdom to disciple. They'd be willing to suffer hardship for the kingdom of God. They'd be willing to go to maybe even to dangerous places and risk themselves. You tell us, Lord, that greater love has no man than this, than he laid down his life for his friend. I pray that these young men and women will become so strong in the faith, so confident in you, that they'd be willing to lay down their lives for the kingdom of God. That they would take seriously those questions that I asked in the earlier session, is what you're living for, worth dying for, that they would grip hold of that and understand that the gospel of the kingdom is worth dying for. Therefore, we must live for it. God bless them with that spirit, move them. And I pray, Lord, that by this time next year, many people, many more people, will be in the kingdom of God because these young people took on their responsibility, their duty to make disciples, to teach nations, to be witnesses. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.