Went to, with a group of about six or seven men, we went and founded West Houston Bible Church. And shortly after that, we called Pastor Dean down to teach us from Connecticut. So I've been a member of West Houston Bible Church over there for the last, I guess it's been about 19 years, maybe 20 now, since we started over there. I work for United Airlines, and I buy and sell airplanes for them. That's what I do in my spare time. But I'm not here to talk about that. I am involved in quite a few ministries, so the Lord's been pretty gracious to me. I'll briefly cover them, but we're here to talk about Brazil today. But I don't know, are you guys familiar with Charlie Clough? Anybody heard of him? Bible Framework Ministries. So I work with Charlie. I'm the vice president of Bible Framework Ministries. If you guys haven't heard of the Bible Framework series, I highly recommend it to you. I was introduced to it 15 years ago by Pastor Dean, and it was a big blessing. It's about 224 lessons. It walks through Genesis through Revelation. It's kind of a little bit of a Bible study, a little bit of an apologetic. But the biggest thing that it does is it pulled together for me all the little bits of truth that I'd learned over the years in the church that I grew up with, that my parents had taught me, that I learned from Robbie. But it brought it together and tied it together in a framework or a whole homogenous, Approach to the word and so that was very valuable. So I Recommend it's you can go on Google and type in Bible framework comm it's free It's all available there all 224 lessons. You can download them. You can order DVD CD You can listen online if you like I also Work with Camporete. I'm the president and director of Camporete and as we mentioned earlier We've been in business for 10 years now I believe We used to do you guys used to help us out quite a bit when we did our garage sales when we were trying to raise funds early on But thanks to the Lord's grace and a little bit of work on our part, we've got some good support coming in and no longer have to do those garage sales, which was a lot of work. But that camp, we're running strong. Last year we had about 50 campers. Each year we host for a week in Tennessee. This year it'll be July 17th through the 24th. And we're gonna be doing the Book of Daniel this year. We do a book each year with the campers. One thing that's a little different about Camporete, certainly a lot of Bible camps out there, but one thing you'll get at Camporete is gonna be some good Bible teaching. We have two staff pastors, Pastor David Roseland, Pastor Brad Mastin and then myself. I'm not a pastor, but I am a teacher and We teach three hours a day. We do a hour in the morning an hour in the afternoon and an hour in the evening and The kids love it. You know, it's very it's very interesting one of the requirements when you come to camp is We take away your cell phone We take away, you know, your laptop or your iPad, whatever it is that you're carrying around with you. And the kids are a little upset when that first happens. As you might imagine, that's day one. Literally, when they pull into camp, we collect all that. But by, oh, 30, 45 minutes after that, we get involved. The next day, they totally forget. They do the whole week. In fact, on Wednesdays, we have a time where they can call home. And we have to remind them that, oh, hey, by the way, we're going to be giving you guys your phones back for Wednesday night. You know, call home and talk to your parents and friends event. But we want to disconnect them from the outside world, the media. their iPhones, the internet, so that we can spend that week with them fellowshipping in the Word. And we've had a great success. Of course, in addition to the teaching, we have some great activities. We do all kinds of fun stuff. And so the kids really love it. And so if I don't see too many teenage kids here, but Highly encourage you to take a look at us. You just type us in on Google camper a calm and All the information you need as far as signing up and and attending is there so We'd love to if you guys do have any teens here. We'd love to share some time with them this summer and then lastly is Brazil Which is what I'm here to talk about this morning. I About 10 years ago, maybe 11 years ago, you guys probably know Jim Myers. He's a missionary that our church supports. Now that this war in Ukraine is going on, he's attending our church, West Houston Bible Church. But about 10 years ago, we were at West Houston Bible Church. I'd never been in the mission field. I'd done just a little bit of teaching, not much, but a little bit. And Jim saw me on a Sunday morning. He was in visiting from Ukraine. He was living in Ukraine at the time. I think he has the Word of Life ministry over there. But he walked by on Sunday morning. He said, hey, Jeff. Didn't even know that he knew me. Like, oh, hey, Jim, how you doing? He says, hey, I'm going to Brazil. And I think at this time it was in March. And I'm gonna be teaching Romans one through eight there. Would you like to come with me? And so I was like, sure, let's go. Taking a little bit of a leap of faith there. But so we went down to Brazil. This would have been 2014. maybe 15, and we taught Romans one through eight. So we use, this introduced me to a method of teaching. We use a curriculum that's developed by a ministry called DM2, Disciple Makers Multiplied. And this curriculum gets translated into Portuguese. It's a verse-by-verse study. It's usually written. There's a couple of pastors that write this you have pastor clay Ward That supports writing that We've got some curriculums from Mark Musser And then Bretton Asworth who is the president of? Disciple makers multiplied has written some of these curriculums, but what's very unique about this is that I We have these curriculums, and it's literally a verse-by-verse study of whatever book we're doing. In this case, it was half of a book, Romans 1 through 8. But it does walk them through the Bible verse-by-verse. And so many of these pastors and laypersons especially in Brazil, in some of the poor areas of Brazil, they have the desire, they have the heart for the word, they wanna share God's word with their people, they don't really know how. And for us, it seems kinda crazy that if someone says, oh, you know, I've never heard of this verse-by-verse teaching, to our ears, right, that's a little unusual, but it's very true, some of these folks You know, they were raised and brought up in a way, in a tradition with a big Catholic influence, but also in kind of this topical on Sunday teaching. And when we introduced them to verse-by-verse teaching, to a person, they absolutely love it. We go 10, 12 hours a day teaching. Usually a conference will run four days, and so it's about 40 hours of teaching. We'll start some mornings at nine o'clock, and we'll run till nine p.m. at night. Of course we break for lunch, breakfast, and dinner, and then we take breaks in between. It's about 50 minutes of teaching, then about a 10 minute break. But we'll get to nine o'clock at night, After teaching all day long 10 12 hours and these people will let's keep going. Let's keep going Because they they love the word and It's a great privilege. So going back to this moment that Jim introduced me to Brazil it just so happened. I was working with Bible framework ministries and it just so happened one of the folks that I was working with designing the website, his name was Jim Cully. Jim sent me an email, said, hey, I hear you're going to Brazil, and I was like, yeah, and he goes, well, I've got a friend, I don't know if, you know, what part of Brazil you're going to, but I've got a friend that lives in Natal, his name is Johnny. Well, it just so happened that we were going to Natal. So, I wrote Johnny N's is his name, I wrote Johnny, a quick note, an email, introduced myself, maybe two or three lines, you know, hey, I'm Jeff, I'm coming, we're gonna be teaching Romans one through eight at this church there in your city. And a couple of weeks went by and I got a response and it was like four pages from Johnny because he was so excited that somebody was bringing good, solid Bible teaching to the city of Natal and to Brazil. And so Johnny works there. He'd been there for many years working with a ministry called Light in Action. And Light in Action has developed a gospel presentation series of 11 videos where they walk you from Genesis to the cross. It's kind of, we'd be familiar with, if you guys have read Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, very similar to that, but it's put together in a video format. And they do it purposely in this video format so that they can import it around the world. They've got it translated into about, I think right now, 18 languages. They really work on languages where the folks are unreached. The world so Johnny was part of this light in action Ministry very excited for me to come so I came over with Jim. We taught at this church. I met with Johnny and He introduced me to everyone else there at light in action Well, they had been in the tall for the last 10 years working and so they knew just about every pastor and every church there in the tall and they had a good reputation and so I We left and the Light in Action team sent me a note and said, hey, we would love for you to come back. And so I talked with Jim briefly, sent him a note, you know, just since he had invited me up there, I kind of felt like I needed his blessing. But he was very gracious and very happy and excited and of course, you know pass that along with wishes of the very best and That started our trips to Brazil That was as I mentioned 2014 or 15 so I We go down twice a year. We did that for probably eight or nine years. As we mentioned, we'll teach a book of the Bible. We've taught Colossians. We've taught Galatians. We've taught John, the life of Christ, Romans 1-8, Romans 9-16. And each time we go down, you know, in the past, we would go down and teach at different churches. I would take usually 10 days of vacation, usually around the beginning of the year and then another 10 at the end of the year. We would go down and take 10 days with, and we'd try to hit two or three churches. And so, you know, that was a lot of work. You know, if you can imagine, we were teaching sometimes In those 10 days, 120 hours of teaching, which is a lot of speaking. Anybody here that's done any amount of speaking understands that kind of the challenge that that presents. But the Lord was gracious, we were able to do that, and we'd been doing that for about seven or eight years. And just about a year ago, we changed our approach a little bit. And so now we are hosting a pastor's conference. And as I mentioned, you know light in action has been a big part of kind of introducing This work that the Lord's doing down there to the local folks. You know, it was really a segue to Get in and meet folks in different churches as you guys might imagine here It's always nice to have a recommendation for you know, somebody that's going to come speak In front of you and so again was just another thing that the Lord put together in grace That really paved the way opened a lot of doors very quickly You know that the second time I went back after that we taught that at that Romans 1 through 8 With Jim and then I came I started coming back on my own There were 15 churches that wanted us to come teach, but there was just one of me. But I mentioned that because for two reasons. One, it was just so clear that the Lord had opened the doors there, but also too, that there is just this huge, huge desire to hear God's word in Brazil. The Brazilian people have been, inundated for the last 150 years with Catholicism. And Brazil was, past tense, was one of the largest Catholic countries in the world. But over the last 40 to 50 years, Protestants have gotten their foothold in there. And it's about, 45 to 50% Protestant and about 60, 55% Catholic. Now that's down from back in 1972, somewhere around there, it was about 90% Catholic. So it's a seismic shift that is going on in Brazil. And the Lord's allowed me and you guys to be part of that shift. As Greg mentioned, you guys started supporting the ministry last year. Very thankful for that. But as part of that support and what you guys are doing financially, this church is partaking of the work that we're doing down there in Brazil. And so we're very thankful for that. And it is a huge blessing. So let me walk you through this presentation. Now you've got a little bit of background about how it started, how long we've been there, what it is we do. And let me take you through this presentation. All right. Where do we go when we travel down to Brazil? Brazil's a huge country. And essentially, it's broken into two regions. You've got the northern region and the southern region. The southern region is where all the businesses are. It's where all the money is. It's very European in its looks. It's very European in, you know, people are on time in southern Brazil. If Bible class starts at 10 in the morning, everybody's there at 9.55. But then you have Northern Brazil. And Northern Brazil is a little bit poorer and a little bit more laid back. If Bible class starts at 10 o'clock in Northern Brazil, usually about 10.30 people will be walking in the door. And when they walk in, it's not like, oh, I'm so sorry that I'm late. It's just very normal. Like, hey, how's it going? So that takes some adjustment in dealing with it. And yes, I'm up in northern Brazil in the city of Natal. So Natal, I don't know how well you guys can see that map, but it's up in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, which is, up in the northeast of Brazil. It's right there on the South Atlantic. It's a seaside city. You guys can see that picture there. It's an absolutely beautiful city. I call it the San Diego of Brazil. In the wintertime, it's usually 78 degrees, and in the summertime, it's usually 79. It's pretty nice. Now it's very funny because they think 79 is hot, but coming from Houston, Texas, 79 is like a winter blast, right? But the population of the city, there's about, I would say 900,000 to a million people in the city of Natal itself. It's a metropolis. You know, it has, just like any other city that you might see here in Texas or in the States, you know, you've got the business sections, you've got the urban living sections, and then you kind of have those folks that live out in the countryside. One of the things that I'll tell you about Natal is that it is, I think it's the third most dangerous city in the world. Depending on what list you look at, it's between the third and fifth, but it's very interesting because, you know, it has this reputation, but you go there and visit, and it's just like any other city that you've been to. You just need to be aware of there's certain, you guys are from Houston, there's certain parts of Houston that you wouldn't walk around at two o'clock in the morning. And Natal's no different. So it's comprised of many, many, many different denominations there in the city of Natal. We'll talk about that in just a minute. But that has been the home base. That's where we taught our first Romans 1 through 8. It's been where light and action is based, and it's been the city that, and the surrounding areas, not just in the city of Natal, but in and around, let's say if we drew a 300 kilometer circle around Natal, that's really where we've, this ministry's been operating. We've had great success there. in teaching. We, as I mentioned, you know, that first trip that, or that second trip that I went on, you know, we had 15 different churches with invites. Now, and this is why we started the pastor's conference approach, is because instead of me traveling to three, four, five different churches in 10 or 12 days and teaching three, four, five conferences, 25 to 30 hours each. Now we bring all the pastors to us and we rent a retreat, we feed them, they sleep with us and we spend four days with them in God's word And then those pastors will take that back to their churches, their individual churches, which is a much more efficient way of multiplying. But anyway, so back to Natal. We talked about the history here already. Our first trip was July of 2011. That was with Jim Myers, talked about Light in Action. There's a picture of Light in Action there up in the corner. I don't know if you can see it, but the mission team there from Light in Action, really interesting story. So this is a group of missionaries. They were in Southern Brazil and they moved to Northern Brazil because Northern Brazil looks like Israel. And they started producing this film series called Tetelestai. And very, very little money. They worked with local churches to bring people in as actors. They sewed their own costumes. You know, and this is actually a picture of them all in costume. I forgot what particular video this is, but all of those costumes that you see there, they made themselves. And so there's this great ground roots effort to put together these videos. And if you watch the videos, they're extremely well done. you would be hard pressed to figure out that this thing was done on a shoestring budget. But more important than how the videos look, it's a excellent presentation of the gospel. You know, it walks you from Genesis all the way to the cross. And if you pay attention, anybody that's gone through that, either that road that stranger on the road to Emmaus or some other Bible study and you walk through the Old Testament and all of the signs that point to the cross and all of the signs that point to believe, faith alone and Christ alone come forward. And this particular video series does a wonderful job and it's being put into many, many countries around the world. Sometimes it has to be smuggled in in tiny little chips I want to say in Saudi Arabia or not a Saudi Arabia, but in there were two countries where you can't bring in the Bible, you can't, Afghanistan and Yemen, they have like 50,000 copies in each of those countries going in, these little chips that people can plug into their phones and watch this fantastic 11-part presentation of the gospel. Anyway, a little bit about them, we talked about them, We, you know, as I said earlier, the ministry grew very quick. We expanded from kind of a core churches of, say, 5 to 10 to maybe 20. And then, you know, and this is even turning people down, turning churches down. You know, again, I work full time. I use my vacation. I get six weeks of vacation. I try to use four weeks of that over there for Brazil, one week for camp, and then I reserve one week for myself. But it's hard to get around to meet everybody, or at least the demand that's out there. If there's anybody here in this church that is apt to teach and would be interested, we have a ton of work for you down in Brazil. So the invitation is open. Would love to have you. Talked a little bit about what we do. Here's some pictures of some different conferences that we had. There is a big, huge effort to train up and teach verse by verse. That is the primary focus of this ministry down in Brazil. And as I mentioned, we do that using the curriculums that Brett has, Clay Ward, Mark Musser. We use those curriculums. We'll take them. I've got a translation team that works with me and we'll translate those curriculums into Portuguese. When we show up to teach, we hand out the curriculums. The curriculums will have in each sentence, we'll have a word missing. Right? And so as you're in the audience and you're going through and we're teaching, they have to stay with us to fill in the blanks. And so that's been a great, you know, it's a great tool to use when you're, it's not so hard concentrating for 30, 45 minutes when we're teaching here, but as you can imagine, doing that 45, 50 minutes, 8, 10, 12 times a day. So that method works really well in keeping them engaged. And then, of course, we leave the curriculums with them. So a lot of folks use these. The pastors will use them. We've had six, let's just call them converts. churches so far that have gone from kind of being a topical study church to being a church that teaches verse by verse. And so that's been a wonderful thing. In addition to the curriculums and the teaching we do, we also bring seminary professors down. We've brought two down so far. to teach different, we've done hermeneutics, and as well as Bible study methods, those two are kind of kissing cousins, but we did a hermeneutics, because we're trying to get these pastors that get excited, that don't necessarily have the seminary training, they see the curriculum, they go, oh, this is great, wanna teach verse by verse, thank you for the curriculum, but hey, what if I wanna do another book? You know, how do I do that? How do I approach that from a study perspective? How do I approach that with my congregation? And so we recruit professors from Schaefer Seminary to come down and to teach with us, which has been a great blessing. We've had Brad Mastin, Jim Myers, I'll have Jeremy Thomas and Pastor David Roseland, who's also a seminary professor. And each one of these men will come down. We organize and construct the seminary course such that the pastors that attend will get a certificate at the end of it. You know, it's a crunch course. We consolidate, you know, a semester of teaching into a 30-hour week. And so it's pretty intense, but it's a fantastic training for these pastors. It really, really is. And then we do also bring pastors over to the Schaeffer Seminary. That's another function of the support that we get is we assist them with air travel. a place to stay every March. Schaeffer Theological Seminary hosts a pastor's conference. It's usually over at our church, but it's been around the different areas. But wherever it might be, we bring them over to meet other pastors, to get them introduced to other like-minded pastors. So that's another outreach of the ministry. Now, I mentioned earlier, we're going down there twice a year. What has changed, and what you guys have been a big part of and facilitated last year with the financial support that you provided, we've changed that pace to three times a year, just because of the demand. Now, what's different is instead of going for 10 days, three times a year, we'll go down for six days. And now we've got a pastor's conference. We've had, this will be, I'm going back in May. I was just there in December. It'll be our fifth conference. And so as I mentioned earlier, you know, at this conference, we'll rent a retreat. We buy the food we bring in a cook, you know, the food is prepared and cooked for them. It's typically On average we see between 50 to 70 pastors and church leaders. So We see all kinds of denominations We've got you know Pentecostals that come to our conferences. We've got reform folks. We've got Baptists we've got the The Brethren, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the Brethren, but they're our close kissing cousins here in the Bible Church movement. They're solid Bible, a Bible denomination. They've got a few quirks, but they understand the power and the need for studying the Bible verse by verse. But the interesting thing about it is when we, you know, we have, all these different denominations under one roof, and we're talking about the Bible. And this is absolutely a work of God's good graces and our Lord's mercy. But we're able to walk, I come from a dispensational, you know, verse-by-verse hermeneutic approach to scripture. And I don't make a point of, you know, grinding the dispensational acts when I'm down there, but that's the perspective we teach from. But each one of these folks, in fact, we've had two folks from the Assembly of God that were a big part of that denomination, two pastors that have left that denomination and now teach verse-by-verse. And the point is, is that when we go down there, our focus is on God's word and the power is in the word. And it's my job, it's the job of a couple other folks I work with who I'll mention in a minute, to be true to the word and to share the word. And we do that in love. You know, we don't, there's no talk about, well, you know, Pentecostal idiots or you know, you Catholic losers or you know You guys are so stupid None of that goes on down there. We open our doors to everyone we treat them with respect regardless of their denominational perspective we just simply ask in return that they listen and And if they wanna have a discussion, we have a whole bunch of robust and vigorous discussions, but we always keep it in the word. It's never about our opinion versus their opinion. It's always about, okay, let's take it back to the Bible. Let's see what Jesus says. Let's see what Paul says. Let's see what John says. Let's see what Timothy. It's a scripture-focused discussion. And we may walk away disagreeing, Oftentimes, you know, we'll win somebody over. A huge issue in Brazil is eternal security. And that's 90% of the questions we get. And I'd say 50% of the time, after we've walked through scripture, and they clearly understand scripture, and they've cleaned up whatever mess they've been taught or whatever mess has, you know, come into their own heads, do their own personal study, people walk away with eternal security, right? And again, a great demonstration of the power of God's word. When it's taught accurately, the issue is the word, and it's the word that changes hearts. So, I travel down by myself. Again, invitation is open. Anybody's interested. We have tons of work for you, but I do have a couple of pastors that I work with down in Brazil You can see here In the yellow shirt That's pastor Hui. And so pastor Hui has been with us for a Well, since probably 2012. He was a student for a while, but he just a couple years ago finished seminary. He started a church. Pastor Hui and I are aligned on 98% of our theology, but he speaks, you know, he's from Brazil. He's fluent in Portuguese, so he helps me interpret, but he also helps me teach. but he's also a fantastic blessing because He's on the ground organizing everything that we do Taking care of the retreats Getting all the food Making sure we've got the cooks hired making sure we've got cleaning people making sure that everybody knows So that when we show up to do the retreat the conference the pastor's conference. I mean literally the plane lands I get my rental car and I typically land Thursday afternoon at 5 and I drive over to the retreat. The conference starts that evening at 7 and it's all prepared and ready. So for those of you that are in here that have handled logistics and done stuff like that, you probably recognize what a tremendous blessing that is. So Pastor Hui and his wife and Family have been a just wonderful blessing to the work that we're doing down there. And he's also been a great brother in Christ. Just a fantastic friend for me to get to know. It's been a real privilege to get to know Pastor Huey. Circling back to why I'm here this morning. We've covered a lot of territory about what we're doing. but to summarize, you know, Arteas Ministries, and by the way, just a little housecleaning there, Arteas Ministries is what we're known in Brazil. That's our nonprofit in Brazil. Here in the States, it's Bible Framework Brazil. It's two separate entities, but they are connected, you know, We're not connected legally, but the Bible Framework Brazil, the United States entity supports the Brazilian entity, Arteas Ministries. So just a little housekeeping there to clarify that. Look, the reason I'm here is to share the work that the Lord is doing down there, which has been wonderful. But also to to encourage this church, this local body. First of all, last year, as Greg mentioned, you guys started supporting the ministry and it's been a fantastic blessing. In fact, part of that support is why we were able to go to three conferences a year. A conference costs us, you know, typically about 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. dollars, give or take. The conversion rate for the HAI, that's the denomination in Brazil, the HAI is about 4.5, so it's about 25,000 HAIs per conference. And you guys were a big part of what we did down there last year. So maybe you don't, hadn't heard of this before this morning, maybe hadn't thought about it before this morning, but this church, this local body has participated in that work and fellowshiped in that work down there. And yeah, I'm the person that goes and Pastor Huey and I are the people that teach, but it's local churches like this and others that make that possible. And I think that's how the body of Christ is designed to work. I was gonna teach this morning, but we got a late start. And I see we're about 10 minutes away from 12 o'clock. So I wanna wrap up with a couple words of encouragement. You know, people often say, well, hey, man, Jeff, that sounds like a wonderful thing that you're doing there in Brazil. It's great. And I'm always quick to remind them, look, it's not me, right? In fact, our message this morning was going to be John 15, the vine, right? And what does Jesus tell us? He says, without me, you can do nothing. And so I see this work. that goes on in Brazil is something that God prepared for all of us to walk in. You guys walk in it through your support. I walk in it by going down there, but you can't have one without the other. And so it's, again, it's an effort of the body of Christ here locally, as well as around the country. There's many other churches that are involved in supporting the ministry, but, you know, hey, how can you help? That question comes up all the time. So, there's three ways, right? You can go. We have many opportunities. Teaching especially if somebody is apt to teach and is anxious as you might imagine 40 hours of Bible teaching with a curriculum if you're new to teaching Or you know you're kind of getting your feet under you like I am I even though I've been going 10 years I consider myself a newbie on the teaching arena but We have a curriculum that you can follow And there's a great opportunity for for teachers if you're interested So that's one way another way which this church is already participating in is giving as I mentioned the The work needs to be done, but it requires money and without support these efforts, they wouldn't be happening in Brazil. So that's a legitimate part of the function of the body of Christ. And like Paul tells us in Philippians, he's so excited when the church sent him the money, sent him the support, and he Explains to them you know that hey through your support you guys are actually participating in the work that I'm doing And that's very true here through the financial support that this church and other churches provide You guys participate in that work of the Lord down there, so that's another way that you can help Which we always greatly appreciate and then lastly prayer and of the three I have to tell you that I think this is the most important and most crucial aspect. I've got a couple of friends that live here locally that are prayer warriors, and every time I go down to Brazil, I get a note from them that, hey, I'm gonna be praying for you down there. And let me tell you, prayers get answered all the time. And I'm so very thankful for them. And so to me, this, again, if there's anything that you take away from this presentation this morning, it's that we covet and want your prayers. We absolutely do. And God works in very powerful and wonderful ways when the body of Christ gets together and prays. So those are the three ways that you guys can support us down there. And again, a big thank you, not only from me, but from the pastors in Brazil. Because of the financial support that you guys provided, we were able to add an additional conference. And they love it, and we're happy to do it. So thank you very much. Before we close, any questions, concerns, criticisms? Martin, you've been holding your tongue, come on, man. Okay, face to face, right? Perfect. Again apologies I things got a little bit off track and I decided just because of the time That I did have a good lesson for us this morning about abiding in Christ and walking by the Spirit and we were gonna go from Galatians 5 16 over to John 15 and then wrap it up with Ephesians 2 10 and But time did not allow us to do that. But let me do this. Let me just jump over as we wrap up and read through Ephesians 2, which was really the conclusion of my lesson. I promise not to spend very much time at all on this. But I do wanna focus in on three verses here. And I'll read through them quickly and then we'll wrap up in prayer. This is Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. And if we'd had more time, we would have pulled together this idea of walking by the Spirit and abiding in Christ. And this vine analogy that Jesus shared with his disciples, you know, one of the things that when we're connected to the vine, right, we get that nourishment. From Jesus and what is that nourishment? It's his word. It's his love Right when we follow and obey his commands and we're enabled by the Spirit Right where we have this very vibrant We were used to these terms in and out of fellowship, but if you look at first John chapter The guy, John, who wrote the most about fellowship, never uses the concept of in and out. It's always an experience. And when we are abiding in Christ, we're experiencing his love, we're experiencing his word, and it lives and grows inside of us. John 6, verse 57, Jesus talks about how he lives in the Father. Right? And if we partake of him, we will live in him. And so there is this vibrant, wonderful, I hesitate to even use the word fellowship because it has a certain meaning for us. But there's this vibrant, wonderful life that's available to us when we abide in Christ. And abiding in Christ is simply studying and obeying his word. And we stay connected. So, that was a very, very, very brief summary, but this is what I was gonna wrap up with, and I think it's very fitting for what we talked about today. So, Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works. lest anyone should boast. Now that's where most of us stop. Most of us probably have those two verses memorized. But Paul goes on here, and I think it's so important, and I think it's apropos with what we've been talking about, this work that our Lord is doing down in Brazil. But verse 10, listen carefully. Paul just told us about salvation for by grace you've been saved through faith not of yourselves it's a gift of God and we all rejoice at that our salvation you know the concept of being delivered from being eternally separated from God and the punishment that the Bible describes man what a wonderful relief what a what a great thing and it's not because of anything we did It's because Jesus did it all on the cross. Because of his work, we can simply believe and we'll be saved. And all of us hold on to that as we should. And it's very comforting and near and dear to our hearts. But Paul says something else here. And I think it's an encouragement that all of us, myself included, I don't exclude myself from this exhortation, but I do think that it is, a bit of a problem in the Bible churches. We really get caught up in the teaching and we should. I'm a huge advocate because I think scripture teaches that we should teach the Bible verse by verse. We should learn it. Paul tells us over in Romans to renew our minds, day by day. But I think sometimes we miss the point. We're doing all of that learning for a reason. There's an outcome. There's a reason why we learn. In fact, there's a reason why each one of us was saved. Let's see what Paul says here. This is immediately following verses eight and nine. For we are his workmanship. created in Christ Jesus. For what purpose? To study the word? We're created in Christ Jesus to learn the Bible. No, it doesn't say that. I'm not against learning the Bible. We should learn it. We have to learn it. We were created in Christ Jesus so we can sing hymns on Sunday. No, it doesn't say that. Oh, we were created in Christ Jesus so we can come to church on Sunday and act very holy, you know, very spiritual. No, it doesn't say that. It says we were created in Christ Jesus for, and I'm gonna use this really dirty word in Bible church circles, for good works. We were saved to work. We weren't saved, so if you look at scripture, spiritual maturity is never measured simply by knowledge. Knowledge is part of it, but you look at how spiritual maturity is described in scripture, it is always associated with an action. There's something that came out of that learning, right? And so this concept of good works, let me finish the verse because it's very comforting to know this as well. We were created in Christ Jesus for good works. Amen. Did I hear an amen? All right, I like that. Quick story, I was about year three, or yeah, year three, I was teaching in Brazil, and we were going through Romans one through eight, and we had some Pentecostals in the, and one of the guys, one of the pastors, right in the middle of teaching, just like this, stood up and started speaking in tongues. Now, I personally believe that the gift of tongues has ceased. This church is probably a cessationist church as well. So I say tongues, but whatever it was he was doing, he was having a grand old time. And so I just stopped, and it went on for about a minute. And I listened, and every once in a while, I'd be like, oh, amen, brother. And then when he finished, I was like, thank you for that. And he sat down, and we just kept on teaching. So anyway little antidote to share with you back to our verse where his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works Important this last clause here which God Prepared beforehand Why That we doesn't say could or that we might, that we should walk in them. Again, this exhortation is for all of us. I include myself in this. But as a church movement, as a Bible church movement, we really need to grow That side of ourselves where we're learning. We're all great. I bet there's many people in this congregation that have had 20 years 30 40 years of good Bible teaching You can explain theology Like me I can talk to you about theology all day long. You know, there's probably not a Verse in the Bible that you can't go to that. I haven't been taught about in one way or another but The question we get asked when we show up at the judgment seat of Christ, does anybody know what that question is? What did you do with what I gave you? And what did Jesus give us? He gave us his word, he gave us the spirit, and guess what else? God's prepared works for us to walk in All we have to do, you have all the assets, you have everything that you need to walk in these works, you just have to step forward and walk. It's that simple. It was as simple as when Jim asked me, Jeff, do you want to go to Brazil? Now, I wasn't thinking about this first. I hadn't even, this concept hadn't come through my thinking yet. But all I did was say yes. That was it. There wasn't some moment, I didn't have like some, Epiphany and prayer, you know, the spirit didn't move on me and I fell down and oh praise Jesus. I'll go You know, it was just a simple decision. I Encourage you guys make those simple decisions in your life. It doesn't mean you need to step out and travel to Brazil There's all kinds of works in and around this church, in and around the body of Christ in Houston, your families, but we learn for a purpose. It's not to fill up our notebooks so we can impress everybody with how much Bible knowledge we have. Jesus isn't gonna ask you about your knowledge. He's gonna ask you, what did you do with what I gave you? And we're not going to be able to pull the wool over his eyes. He's going to know. So my encouragement this morning is to walk in those works that God's prepared beforehand. You guys are already doing that with what we're doing in Brazil. Part of that walk that you guys are doing is that giving. You know, this local church is supporting that ministry, and we're thankful for that. But there's many other opportunities as well, and I'm sure there's many things that this church does that I'm not aware of and so I'm not this isn't something where I'm Calling you out and saying you guys aren't doing anything. I just want to encourage you as fellow believers fellow sojourners Right, let's all walk together in the works that God's prepared for us Amen Amen, let me close in prayer Father, we just thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about this ministry that you've put together in Brazil, this work that you prepared in Eternity Paths for not only this church to walk in, but for me and for many other churches. Father, whatever successes we've had there, whatever blessings have come, we take those, we're gonna smell those flowers and they're very fragrant, we love that smell. But Father, we're passing those flowers over to Jesus and we give him the praise, we give you the praise because without Jesus, I could do nothing, this church could do nothing, there'd be no Brazil ministry. Father, without the work that you prepared beforehand, there'd be nothing. And so we give you the praise and the glory for that. We thank you so much that you allow us to be used for these purposes. Father, we just want to thank you for this church, this local body that has taken time and effort and thought to support the work that you're doing down there. We praise you for that. We thank you for this local body of believers. We ask, Father, that today that you would take this opportunity to this very, very brief talk we had about walking in the works that you prepared for us. Father, just pray that your Holy Spirit would enter those words into each one of our individual hearts. You know us personally, you know our struggles, our situations, but Father, we pray that those would have meaning and impact in a way that, if it's necessary, that we would start changing how we behave, that what we learn becomes action, and that action becomes glory to you. Father, we ask all these things in the name of your son, our Lord, our priest, the one who paid for our sins, the one who stands before you as an advocate day by day, as we fall, as we fail, as we sin. Each time that happens, Father, your son stands before you. He shows you the, the scars in the cross. And he says, no, he's one of mine. Forgive him. Father, we thank you so much for Jesus and what he did for us. And we just pray and praise him. And we close this prayer in his name. Amen.