Okay. 120, you said. Did I hear that right? Okay. Don't you hate it when a preacher says things like that? Even if you know he's joking, it's still just the thought of it. Oh, no. All right. Let me tell you a little bit about Final Frontiers for the three of you that don't know, because I know this is a heavily supporting church. I was telling the Sunday school class that Grandview Baptist is the largest supporting church our ministry has. And that's really something. And we appreciate Brother Mutchler letting us come the many times we've been here and his eagerness for us to share our ministry with those of you who are maybe joined the church as I was here last, which was three or four years ago, I think. So let me get started by saying we produce a quarterly magazine. We call it the Progress Report. For 35 years, I've printed this. For 35 years, I've called it the Progress Report. And people always say, hey, I get that magazine thing you send out. It's the Progress Report. Why do you think we call it the Progress Report? Because I'm trying to show you the progress we're making, and I'm reporting on that. So the Progress Report is filled with nice, colorful pages, things that you might learn about that you didn't know before. But you know what occurred to me a couple weeks ago? 35 years. I've never one time been on the cover of this thing. What is wrong with me? I probably never will be on the cover of it either. If you're interested in getting it, it's free. We'll email it to you. Although, if you sign up for email and you don't get it, check your spam folder. That's where we are. We're waiting for you there, okay? 99% of the time, that's the problem. If you want to get it, there's a sign-up card. All this is on the table. Name, address, how you want us to send it to you, that sort of thing, and we'll make sure you get it. Now, there's also some books out there that during 2020, I wrote two books. I had to do something. Uh, it's something to get away from my wife and nag, nag, nag, nag, nag. By the way, we're separated now. I was up here and she's in the very back. So pray for her that she'll get right with her. I see brother Chris moved to the front so he wouldn't have so far to go during the invitation. But, uh, but I thought, you know, I can't go out speaking in churches. I can't travel right now. So let's Let's do what I've been putting off. So we have the original book, Great Omission, which talks about our philosophy of supporting national preachers, how effectively it works and so forth. It's been a great blessing. You can get it now in English. You can get it in Spanish. If you happen to speak Tamil language, you can get, which by the way, the people of Southern India believe that Tamil was the original language. I asked them why. They said because they talked about the people moving to the plain of Shinar and there that they made the tower out of sun-baked bricks, red bricks. And the word Tamil means red brick. So they think, putting those two together, that they were the original language. I don't know whether they were or not. I don't really care. I hope if they were, I know why God confused the languages, because that language is confusing enough by itself. You know, if you're in India, there's 1,700 languages and dialects, and most of them are familiar with each other. You can jump from one to the other. Tamil is the only language in India that is not related to any other language in India. It'd be like having to learn Japanese for you and me. Now, some of you guys might have no problem with Japanese. You've been speaking it since you were a little kid, maybe. That's why their kids are so smart. They can speak Japanese like this, you know. Takes us forever to learn it. But anyway, the second book is on great commission conundrums, and that's where I try to take questions that pastors and missionaries and some church members have asked me over the years about missions. What do you do in this case? Why do we do things this way instead of this way? And so I answer those questions. If you're a pastor or missionary, it'll be interesting to you, or if you just like missions, I think you'll glean a lot from it. And then the third book I wrote, this was real easy. This is like a daily, not a daily, a weekly devotional on missions. I think there's 52 of them in here. I don't know what we do with leap year, but anyway. Each one, each chapter is like that, just one or two pages long. So throw away our daily bread once a week and do this instead. It'll get you thinking about missions at least once a week. And as soon as you finish thinking about it, you'll want to go online and give money to me so that we can do more. By the way, what do we do with the funds you send us? Well, we support Bibles, which I'll talk to you about tonight more. We buy motorcycles, bicycles for guys. You know, if a national preacher has to go about on foot, he can only travel one or two miles a day. He's got to have time to be able to walk back home. So we watch a guy's journey and see how well he does. And when he saturates his area, then we buy him a bicycle. Now with a bicycle, he can get out maybe a 10-mile radius from his house, and he can plant more churches, train more men for the ministry. When he's exhausted that, we get him a motorcycle. And with that, he can go 50, 100 miles a day. It's no problem. And it's limitless. You say, what do you buy him after that? Nothing. That's it, as far as we go with that. Now, we do buy a truck or a van every now and then, but those are really expensive. But worldwide, we can buy a motorcycle, brand new, with a helmet, with a license plate, with a registration, for about $1,300. And these are good motorcycles. They're made by a company called Genesis, usually, which is a subsidiary of Yamaha. So it's really a Yamaha bike without the Yamaha name on it. Or as they say in Honduras, Yamahas. They say everything wrong down there. Like, they call me Joan. I am not Joan, I'm John. But to them, I'm Joan. And then they spell it J-H-O-N. Those people need the gospel. Really badly. Anyway, our main focus is supporting preachers. In the past, we always did it so that you could select a preacher to support, $50 a month, you get four reports a year from him, I think it is. But now we have something called the Great Commission Fund. I don't know where I came up with that name from. Great Commission, it just popped in my head one day. But you're free to use it. And we ask you to give any amount of money you want to do that. If it's $50 a month, great. If it's $5 every three months, great. It really doesn't matter. We take the collective funds and then we send it out to national preachers around the world who have a need. Maybe they needed some money for Bibles. They need a little bit of food for their family. whatever the case may be, instead of them having to wait 10 years for us to finally find a sponsor for them, they're getting money now. And now we don't take on preachers one at a time, we take on 10 and 20 at a time because of the Great Commission Fund. If you're interested in helping us with that, Brother Mike says you can put that on your card, when you tell them what you're gonna give, put Great Commission Fund on there. But if you do want to do that, look at the table and take one of these cards. There's a magnet on the back. Stick it on your idol in the kitchen. The thing you go to to pray three times a day as you open it up and say, what should I eat? Lord, please don't let me get fat if I eat that. Put it there and it'll remind you that while you're gorging yourself, this poor fellow has nothing. Oh boy, I wanted it, that would work good. I'm gonna perfect that to get, no, he has, and we're gonna take care of one way or the other, but this can be a preacher that you're supporting that's helping him to spread the gospel around the world to places you can't get to. And even if you got there, you wouldn't be able to speak the language. We have, but let me say this, if you do wanna support a specific preacher, we still have that option available. Just talk with me or my wife at the table. We also have a child sponsorship program that many of you participate in where you select a child and it's $35 a month. Children don't eat as much as preachers do. So, uh, give them time. They will when they get to be teenagers, they do. Um, you could still support an individual child if you want, but we have a fund like this for Children. We call it our daily bread fund. Out of that fund, we can feed a child for 10 cents. I'm not talking about giving them a cracker. I'm talking about giving them a cooked meal that's in their culture to eat, whatever they like, tacos or rice and beans or pork and tortillas or whatever. A cooked meal that they can come to church because that's where we feed them. They come to church where they hear the gospel, learn songs, make friends, get a good meal, and then they come back the next Sunday. And right now we're doing those as Sunday meals to get them in church. And as we collect more funds, we'll get them Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. Finally, they're getting fed every day of the week. Folks, I know you hear about this on TV all the time. But if you could just see it once with your own eyes, you know, it's one thing to watch it on TV and it touches our heart. But you're also sitting in your nice home on your nice couch or whatever and thank God for those blessings. But it's different when you're out on the field and you're standing in the garbage dump and you're smelling the sewage running by and you're seeing the dogs biting at Children because they're trying to get to the food before the kid does. And you see kids whose hair is turning red or falling out because they're malnourished for many months. And you stand there and you think, goodness gracious, what I spent on breakfast this morning, I could feed 15 or 20 of these kids with it, a good meal. And if you see that and you walk away from it and you do nothing to try to rectify it, then God help you. And I know you're not in that position, but I am. Everywhere I go, that's what I'm faced with. And I don't have that much money to be able to take care of them. So I come to you and ask you to help me to help them. Now, I know that means you've got to trust me, but y'all have known us for many, many years, and we've got a reputation. 35 years I've been doing this. I've never been accused of stealing money because I'm just that good at covering it up. Delete that from the thing. We're not in this to see what we can get out of it. We're in this to see what the Lord can get out of it. I'll emphasize that point. You see this nice, beautiful suit I have on today? I would model it for you, but I don't wanna make you men jealous. Y'all bought me this suit when I came here with Rogie and Dennis seven, eight, nine years ago. That's the last time I got a suit. Now you notice it doesn't fit me anymore? It's because I've lost so much weight. I mean, look at this. They always stick your fingers up there. The guy got his arms stuck down there the other day. I've lost a lot. I've lost 65 to 70 pounds since you bought me this suit. Elvis was a hunk of hunk of burning love. I'm just a hunk of hunka. By the way, who's that guy that came up here earlier? Was that Clark Kent? The guy reading the missionary letters? He does look like Clark Kent, doesn't he? Oh, wow. He comes flying by in a minute and I'm ducking. Oh my goodness. Well, now let me get away from commercials and get on with the word of God. Turn to John chapter six, please. While you turn, I'll just say my wife and I are here for this service will be here tonight. If we can help you at the table, if we could answer a question or interest you and helping us support a child or a preacher, please stop by and let us do that is only when you give that we're able to do more. Oh, okay. Um, our our churches According to this report, which is four months old, there are 413,736 churches we have started. Average 30 new adult believers per church. So with kids, now it's about 100 people per church. You know where I live? You can stand on the front door of our office and throw a stone and hit numbers of churches that have been there for 150 years that don't have 100 people in them. Our churches have 100 a day to get started. That's why we call them a church. They've assembled together for that purpose. But we're now having a new church planted every 15 minutes. So that's 96 new churches a day. This was written four months ago. That's 12,000 more churches have been started in that time. During your worship service this morning, we'll have four more churches started somewhere around the world. That's because when we started in 86, we had six men in Thailand helping us. Six church planters, that's where I learned The term national pastor, that's where I learned the term church planter. I'd never heard either one of them, but they taught me when I went to visit them. And I thought, my goodness, these guys can survive on a dollar a day. And all my friends over here in this country as missionaries are making $4,000 a month. And these guys are pastoring 12 churches and still going out and evangelizing more. And that guy's pastoring one church. Why do I want to help that guy when I can help these guys? And I didn't try to start a ministry. I just tried to help. And I went back and told my church and the members said, can we help? Well, not at all. Let me think about it. Now, of course you can help. And then the patent church down the road heard about it. Can we help? And that was when Jim Baker was going back and forth to court every day. And I didn't want to be his roommate. So I thought rather than everybody sending money to John Nelms, We need a foreign organization so they can send the money to that. So we did. We actually started a public foundation for financial accountability. It took four years to be approved. Now if you start a public foundation, I'm told it can take up to 15 years to get approved. But we have to file our records every year with the estate and trust division of the IRS. That's where banks, savings and loans send their tax work. We're considered by the government to be as much a public trust as a bank is. So we're held to a higher degree of financial accountability. I set it up that way so that I could never steal from God and so that whoever came after me wouldn't be able to steal from God. And he's blessed us with it. And we're also 501c3. We have like eight different designations. So you get a tax credit for anything people give to us. But we try to do everything right. We look upon this as our father's business. So let's run it like a business. And since our father is the founder and the CEO, and we answer to him, we better do things right, decently in order, transparent. So we don't talk about transparency. We give transparency. We'll answer any question you want. If you want a copy of our 990, it doesn't matter if you've never given us a penny and plan on using it to hurt us, we'll still give it to you. We'll tell you where you can go online. In fact, you can go online today if you want to on our website. We have a link to it there. Or you can go to GuideStar, you can go to Charity Navigator, and they'll tell you what they think of us after our 35 years of financial accountability. So we're trying to do things right so that we can do more things for the Lord. And that's what he's enabling us to do. Right now we have more donors than we've ever had, more churches on board, more wealthy donors than we've ever had. I mean, I used to go to the PO box 30 days at a time and not have a single check in the mail. day after day after day. I quit my job as a pastor, went full time in missions with no support and never one time went on deputation. I still have not gone on deputation. Well, I deputate all the time, but I'm deputating for other people, not for myself. And yet the Lord has taken care of me. So no matter what the pastor asks you to do, it's not a sacrifice of your serving God. He may let you go through a trial, but it's not punishment. That's like the coach making you run laps. Why does he do it? So you'll be ready when it's time to play the game. So accept anything that comes from God as coming from God, yield to it, submit to it, thank God for it, and then take it and run with it. That's the key to getting God's work done. In John chapter six, I will refer to some verses as we go along. So we're not gonna do a typical way of, you know, the typical way, but I need to hurry up and get into this. Jesus has left the Southeastern tip of the Sea of Galilee. In chapter 5 of John, he had healed the maniac of Gadara, who was a man named Marcellus, a leader of the Roman legion of men. He had lost his mind, flipped out crazy. We know he did that because of demon possession. But they had locked him up in a cave. They would chain him to the walls of the cave. But he continually would break the chains or pull them out of the wall, and he would run headlong into the cave walls to try to smash his vertebrae and kill himself. They kept him locked up because nobody could control him. It would take nine or ten men to try to wrestle him to the ground to put the chains on him. And then he would just break them. Twice a week, they would bring a pig up to the cave where he was kept, and they would send a live pig inside the cave, and he would catch it, kill it with his bare hands, and eat it raw. I mean, I like pork, but... Not raw. Twice a week he would consume an entire pig. This guy was out of his mind and demon possessions until the Son of God came. And Jesus cast those demons out of Marcellus. Marcellus became a strong believer. Jesus told, he said, I wanna go with you, Lord. I wanna get on that boat and go with you. And Jesus said, no, you stay here. Tell what great things I've done for you. He did. Marcellus, history tells us, history, not the Bible, tells us that later when Paul was in prison in Jerusalem, Marcellus was his, what do you call the guard that watches over him? So he was discipled by Paul. Marcellus, after he left the Roman Legion, had served his 20 years, 20 plus years, went to Rome. And there he stayed to help found the church. Remember when Paul said to the people that he's coming to Rome to visit them? He didn't start that church. He'd never been there. But yet there was a church already there, because it had been founded by Marcellus and by Paul's brother, who's mentioned in the New Testament named Rufus, and by Paul's mother. They had moved to Rome, had planted the church based on the teachings that the Apostle Paul had given them. Paul was simply going to meet them to encourage them and to be encouraged by them. But there in Rome was Marcellus. So no matter how a guy starts off, that's not the end of the story. It's not how you start, it's how you finish. And it doesn't matter how old you are today or how old you think you are today. If you're like me, I don't even think I'm old till I look in the mirror and then I know I am. But on the inside, I don't feel old. but you think, well, there's nothing I can do for God. My goodness, there's everything you can do for God. You're not encumbered with raising children. You're not encumbered with paying off a mortgage. You've already paid it off. You're not encumbered with all those things you had to deal with that caused you stress throughout your life. You are free now to do nothing but serve God. Don't let your old age keep you away. My goodness, Moses was, what, 80 years old before he even knew who God was, before he even began to serve God. And there are many men like Moses. We have many preachers around the world that don't even begin to preach until they're in their 60s and 70s, but at that time, they have more wisdom than they've ever had, more ability to serve God than they've ever had, so they give all they've got while they've got it to give. And that's what you should do, whether it's with your wallet or whether it's with your mind or whether it's with your body and serving God. Find the need here at this church that needs to be filled and don't wait for somebody else to fill it. Push them out of the way so you can fill that need. Be anxious, be eager to serve God with everything you've got. And you know what? He'll let you do it. He'll let you do more than you ever dreamed you could do. I thought when I resigned my church that I was gonna move to Thailand, start a little church and stay in that village for the rest of my life. By God's grace, I've ministered in over 50 countries. I've started 12 or 14 churches personally. I've been with men as we've started hundreds of churches, personally. What a difference between what I thought I was gonna do and what God had in mind for me to do. And you know what? It wasn't me who did it. It was God working in me. Why? Because if you present yourself to God to be used, he will use you. You say, well, I offered myself to him last week and all week long, he didn't do anything. Well, how long did it take you to get that bachelor's degree? Did you decide you were going to go to college on Friday and on Monday they gave you a degree? You've got to go through some trials. You've got to go through learning. You've got to go through training. But if you stay on the track God's put you on, you've got nothing but a glorious ending. I don't care if that ending is having your head removed from your body. It's still glorious. Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of the saints. My goodness, don't settle for what the world has when you can have what God has for you. He went up from there. I'm so far off my notes now. I'll probably never find my place. So it doesn't matter. I'm too old now. I have to use notes when I preach now because I can't remember things. I can't remember things. Did I just say that? It was spring of AD 29 when this occurred. Jesus left from the Southern Eastern tip of Sea of Galilee, where you have Gadara, the Maniac, and so forth. Then he went up the coast to the very top of it, where there's a city named Bethsaida. Two Bethsaidas, but this is the one at the far North. This is where three of his disciples came from, Peter, Andrew, and John, I believe. They grew up there and they frequently would go back, if you pay attention as you read the New Testament, they'd go back to that area and rest and relax, take a little time off, that sort of thing. So it was a place for Jesus to go. After he healed Marcellus, the maniac, he was thronged by people. So he had to leave to get away from the crowd. And he took the boat and started sailing north. They knew where he was going, because they knew that Peter and that three of the guys were from that town. So they started traveling up. There's a 14 mile journey. He on the boat, them on their feet. He gets to the top. There's nobody there. He wants to rest. So he gets off the boat and he goes up on a hillside there with his disciples. And they're talking, he's teaching them things. And as time goes on, he begins to see people wander up more and more and more and more. And next thing you know, there's thousands of people out there. And they keep trying to climb up to get to him. So he goes down to talk to them. Here's a blind man. He heals them. Here's a leper woman. He heals her. Here's a child that's having seizures. He heals it. And he spends time healing, healing, healing. And then one of the disciples says to him, Lord, we need to send these people to go get something to eat. It's late, they haven't had anything to eat all day long. It was evening coming. The Jews had three evenings. The first one started at three o'clock in the evening, or three o'clock in the afternoon. That was called the first evening. Then they had something called between the evenings. And then they had the third evening, which started when you saw the first star in the sky. And when you could see the third star, that evening was over and it's now nighttime, the beginning of a new day. So they were there and it was evening time, probably around three o'clock in the afternoon, 3.15, 3.30. The disciples were hungry. They knew these people have to be hungry. Well, why didn't they just go home since Bethsaida is right there, a quarter of a mile away? Because they didn't come from Bethsaida. Oh, I'm sure some of them did. They had walked 14 miles to get there. They'd been walking overnight to follow Jesus. And let me tell you something, when you've grown up without Jesus, And you've not seen what he can do, and you've not observed his power and his glory. And then you get a little pinch of it. You want more. That's why the scripture says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. What's he saying? Take a little taste of Jesus and you'll see that it's delicious. You'll want more and more and more, even if you have to walk all night long to get there. So Jesus said to the disciples, have them sit down in groups of 50s, groups of 100s, and then you guys feed them. What? They said, did you tell us to feed them? Well, yeah, sure. Hey, if you read this passage, you'll find out that before this happened, he had sent his disciples out two by two to go and evangelize. They'd been gone for probably a few months. During that time, John the Baptist got a haircut and his disciples got all upset about it because he's not with them any longer. Those crazy super cut people. I mean, look at me. I used to look like you. They came back to Jesus. And what did they do? They reported to him. They didn't have a progress report, but they reported him all that they had done. They said, we gave sight to the blind. We healed the lepers. We healed the deaf. We did all these marvelous things. Oh, you should have seen, you should have been there, Jesus. Oh man, you would have been so proud of it. When my mom hears about this, she's gonna come talk to you and tell you that I need to sit on your right side because of all the mirror. Well, what about what I did? You held a leper, big deal. I had a guy with no legs, got up and ran down the street with legs. Beat that one, Peter. Yeah, I mean, the rock, stump heart is a rock. That's why they call him that. They're having all these, and Jesus just listening to them brag about all the wonderful things they had done. Now they're coming to him and saying, Lord, we gotta feed these people. So he says, okay, feed them. Big shot, feed them. Thomas says, but Lord, if we had 200 pennies worth, that doesn't mean $2. I was just saying, if we had a lot of money, if Bill Gates was here with us, it wouldn't be enough money to feed all these people. There's 5,000 men and there's some women out there, there's some kids out there. And Jesus said, what do you have? You get that? What do you have? When you think you don't have enough to serve God, what do you have? When you think you don't have enough financially to give to God's work, what do you have? Say, I don't have much. Oh, if you don't have much, then by all means, you should keep it. Because God hasn't been blessing you, and evidently, he hasn't found you a faithful steward, so he hasn't given you an abundance to use for his work. So keep it. Keep spending it all on yourself. No, that's not the answer. Whatever he's giving, you give. And so he sits them down and he says a prayer. He prays for the food. They pass it out, which was the custom to pray for the food. That's probably why we do it. Do you ever ask yourself, why don't we pray before we eat? Travel with me and you'll understand that. Because when that food gets before you and you look at it and you think, what is that and why is it moving? or you see mold with mold on top of it. You know, we better pray before we eat this. And so what became prayers of necessity in our ancestors' generations have just now become prayers of convenience. Thank you for the food Lord, let me, you know, see how fast you can pray so you can start eating. But it was different. Jesus prayed and thanked God and asked his father to feed these people. Because the son asked the father, the father acted. And that's why Jesus said, if you ask anything in my name, you will receive it. What does he mean by that? Well, that's why I always say in Jesus' name, amen. Well, that's nice, but that's not what it means. To ask something in Jesus' name means you're asking the father in the place of his son. You're asking on the behalf of Jesus. I've come to you, father, in the name of your son, Jesus. I'm asking you to do this thing because it needs to be done. In Jesus name, I'm not asking in my name, I'm asking in his name, would you please do this? If you don't mind, if it doesn't upset your plan, what you're doing, would you please do this and see the Lord God act? He's not acting on your behalf. You used his son's name. He's not gonna turn his son down for anything. The whole world He's given to Him. The whole universe He's given to Him. He's preserving a bride for Him. He's going to give Him a new heaven and a new earth. His name will be above every name. His name will be magnified. You're asking in the name of your elder brother Jesus. You say, well, I'm a son of God. I can ask in my name. Sure you can. But remember, you're an adopted son. That means God chose to let you into his family. But Jesus was born. He's the only begotten son of God. God loves you equally as a son or as a daughter. But remember, You're not just a son or daughter, you're also a slave. You're also a servant. He's not just your Lord, he's your master. And a slave does what the master tells him to do. A slave doesn't say, but, a slave doesn't say, yeah, but, you know, a slave just accepts the word of his master and obeys it. You know, in the ancient Chinese and Japanese culture, if an emperor or a landowner would write down something on a piece of paper to have it delivered to his servants, when the messenger got there, He would hold it out and the people get down on their knees while he read them what the ruler had to say. Why? Because those were the words of the ruler. Our master is telling us this. So we're gonna bow before his words. That's why we read in the scripture that Jesus is the living word of God. It's not just an expression. It's not just title. He is the voice of God coming out to us. Jesus said, I never said one thing that my father didn't tell me to say. I never did one miracle that my father didn't tell me to do. I have been 100% obedient to him. And that's why God blessed him. And that's why God will bless you. If you make the attempt to do just that. Let me find my way again. I'll end this quickly. See, this is why I can preach the same sermon at a church 15 times because, you know, it's like a root that just goes off in every direction. But no, this first time I've delivered this to you people. What they saw, what Thomas saw was the limit of his personal finances. Judas was carrying the bag. They had a lot of money in it, I'm sure. But he saw the limit of their finances instead of the resources of God's power. And when your pastor's asking you to give for the church or give for the missions or whatever, he's telling you to tap into the power that God Almighty has. He's looking, you know, you've got these big, I don't know what you call them, where they have all the power comes in and from there it goes on lines out in other places. Do you know what I'm talking about? What? Transformer? Isn't that a movie? Transformer, right? Substation, there you go, thank you. Substation. That substation has a lot of power in it, right? What good does it do it? It's not there for the substation. It's there for the substation to distribute it. So it's got to have power lines that run into houses, that run into microwave ovens and anything else having to do with food. That's the purpose of that power. God's got all the power in the universe. We're his substations. He's wanting to flow his power through us out to do what? To give the light to the rest of the world. It doesn't mean you have to go, and this passage of scripture clearly indicates that. If I could jump from page one to page five. You had two different people taking effect here. You had the lad, the little boy that had food, and then you had the disciples that were giving the food away. They were both serving God that day. The little boy had a couple of little, literally sardine type fish and some old, probably crusty barley bread. Because if they had anything good, it would have been given to his father and the kids would have gotten the leftovers. So he didn't have much, but he gave what he had. He's that poor kid. He went hungry that day then, didn't he? You know the story. He didn't go hungry. He may have eaten more than he started off with, but everybody else got to eat too. Don't you see what God is telling us there? Give me what you've got and let me fill you up with it and also bless other people. Do you honestly think if you sacrifice to get the gospel to somebody on the other side of the world, that God's going to let you suffer because of that? Well, maybe he would. Well, maybe you don't know him like I know him. Would you like to? Test him. Test him. See what he'll do for you when you've given your all for him. That little boy didn't say to Thomas, well, I'll let you have three loaves of bread, but I'm keeping this fish in the oven because I want a sandwich. I'm hungry. And my mama made it for me. And that's poor stewardship if I'm giving it away when she intended me to have it. He didn't say that. It's here. If my master wants it, let my master have it. I'll go hungry. Big deal. And Jesus took it and blessed it and fed everybody. Now I'll tell you a story that I may have told you before, but you don't remember. Chris never remembers anything I say. And I don't remember the money he claims I owe him either. So we're even on that. But Jonathan Goforth, a missionary to China and Korea said, talking about this story, he said, imagine if Jesus had taken the food or the disciples had taken the food. Can I walk down there? Well, I have to walk slow now. And give them the food. Here you go, enjoy this food. Chew with your mouth closed. And he walks back here and he's passing all this food out to everybody. Oh, excuse me, I'll be right back. He goes to get more food, gets it, and he comes right here again. And then he starts back to these. I can only carry so much at a time. And he gets back here. Oh, ran out. What a grief. He goes to get more food. He gets it. And it's not just him, it's all the disciples doing this. And once again, he comes right here. Is that the purpose of that miracle? The purpose of the miracle wasn't to give the food out. The purpose of the miracle was to give the food to everyone. It's still a miracle either way. We can glorify God either way. But wouldn't you rather do what he purposed you to do with what he's given you? Well, I would, and I don't think I'm any different from anybody else. Maybe better looking, but not any different from anybody else. What does God want you to do? Say, well, I don't have any fixed amount in my mind that I think God wants me to give. Good for you. So what are you gonna do then? Brother Mike and Miss Vicki took us out to eat last night. It was good. Chicken pot pie. I don't think before he left, he said, Lord, how much money do I have to spend on this meal? That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to go have the meal, not to worry about what it costs. Your purpose in serving God and giving to your church and giving to missions should not be what I can afford, but what is needed. So I can't give what's needed. How do you know? How do you know you can't give what is needed? Because there's something inside of you saying you can't do it, you can't afford it. That's that same voice you listen to that's gotten you in trouble all your life. Quit listening to it. If God says do it, then do it. You know, there's a verse I've stumbled upon lately that I've read all my life, I never meditated on it. And it's this, I don't know the address of the verse. Doesn't matter, it's still the verse. I know how to find my way to the house, I just don't know the street or something. The verse says is, no good thing will he withhold from him who walks uprightly. You know that verse, don't you? And I got to thinking, got to meditating on that verse. And I could imagine in heaven, God's got these huge warehouses. There's one with my name on it right there. And if I walk over there and roll the door up, has all sorts of wonderful, marvelous gifts, because every good gift, every perfect gift comes from above, from the father of lights. The scripture says, anything good you've got came from him. It didn't come from your hard work. He used your hard work to give it to you, but he's the one who gave you a body to work hard with. Remember that. He's the one that sucked that air down your throat into your lungs so that you could work. So everything you've got comes from him. He's got a warehouse in heaven filled with good things for Johnny Nelms. That's what he said. No good thing will I withhold. He's not saying if you do something good, I'll make something nice to give to you. He's already got it. It's sitting in the warehouse. And when I walk uprightly, hey, angel, bring that over here and give it to Johnny. Yes, sir. He will not withhold any good thing from me as long as I'm walking the right way, walking uprightly, living a righteous life. Flip the coin over. What if you're not living a righteous life? Does he not have gifts for you? Yeah, he's got gifts for you, but they're locked up in the storage room. He's gonna give them to you when you deserve them. Not just because he loves you. He gave you eternal life because he loves you. He's gonna give you these good things because you've worked for him. Your heart was pure before him. You tried to serve him. You didn't say, all I got left is $5. Well, give it to him and watch him give you 15. It's really so easy. You as Christians don't struggle with this. You shouldn't. You are a father, you are a mother. Do you not give good gifts to your children when they deserve it? Do you not withhold good gifts from your children when they don't deserve it? I'm trying to help you get blessings from God this morning. The way you do that is by... Serving God, giving him your all. If you've got two loaves, five loaves of bread and two fish, give it to him. If you keep it, that bread's gonna turn moldy and the fish is gonna stink. Just give it to him and watch what he does. As I told the church this morning, God, Jesus did not look at that little boy and say, okay, I really need your help today, kid. Give me that red lobster franchise you've got and the Sarah, what's that girl's name, the bakery? Sara Lee Bakery. He didn't ask for something the kid didn't have. He asked for what he did have. Now, if Mr. Lobster walked by, he might ask him for the franchise. I don't know. But he asked the boy for what he had, not what was convenient, not what he wished he had. Look at that. I'm falling apart. He was waving like a bell, ding dong, ding dong, time to shut up and go home. He asked the boy, give me what you got, son. Now, I wanna ask you a question. Let's go back in time. Sit down beside me on that hillside. Listen to Thomas say, Lord, we don't have food here to feed these people. And he says, what you got? Would you rather be Thomas Or would you rather be that little boy? Oh, we know Thomas's name. We know he evangelized much of India. He did a great service for the Lord, but in that day, at that time, for that effort, I'd rather be the little kid. And I'd go home saying, mama, you know that fish and bread you gave me? I gave it to Jesus. You did what? Then what did you have to eat? You poor thing. No, no, no, mama. He blessed it and gave me back more than I gave him. What? And he fed everybody was there. Thousands of people, he fed them all. From your fish and bread, mom. How do you think that made mama feel? I did something for Jesus. I did something that brought glory to God. And I didn't even know it when I did it. And the little boy thinks, I did something for Jesus. I did something that made people realize that he is the son of God. And I knew it when I was given it. Okay. You got your bread and fish. Take it home and lose it. Or put it in the basket and watch it multiply around the world for the gospel. You say, did the pastor pay you to preach like this? No, but I didn't think about that before I agreed to do it. No, of course he didn't. He wants you to be blessed as much as anybody. Because the more you got, the more you get, the more you get, the more you get, the more you get, the more you give. And it's a never ending circle. Folks, I'm sorry I strayed from my sermon, but I asked the Lord to do what he wanted to have done, and I can only hope that he answered that prayer. I got four minutes. I love God. I don't know his name. He hasn't told us his name yet. He gave us some names we can use to call him. I can't wait to know his name. And I can't wait to get to heaven. I don't know if he'll let me do this, but if he will, I don't want to sit on the throne to his right or his left. I'd just like to sit in his lap for a minute. If he's got a beard, I want to admire it. If he doesn't have one, I want to say, why don't you have a beard? Because you're supposed to have a beard. All the pictures, you had a beard. And I imagine he'll look to his right where Jesus is and say, what a moron. But we love him anyway, don't we, son? I want to see him face to face. Isn't that what Moses asked for? He only got to see the backside. Isn't that what the disciples said when they said, Lord, show us a father and it'll be enough for us. And he said, have I been with you this long and you still don't realize it? Do you know in John chapter six what happened after the feeding of the 5,000? Jesus got alone again with his disciples, and he said to them, who do the people say that I am? One of them said, well, some say you're Elijah. One of them said, some think you're John the Baptist. Herod thinks that. Some think you're a great prophet. And Jesus looked at them and said, but who do you say that I am? They just watched the maniac of Gadara be healed. Jairus' daughter be raised from the dead. They had gone out and done miracles in his name. Now they've watched him feed the 5,000. And he says, who do the people think that I am? Basically their answer was, they don't really know. They're not sure. So he says to them, then who do you think I am? And old hardheaded Peter spoke up and said, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. You got it, Peter. And that's the foundation of the church I'm going to build. Not the man, Peter, but what Peter spoke. He's a son of God. When I get to heaven, I want to hope that I did everything I could do to make sure that the whole world in my generation got to hear that message. If they accept it, praise God. If they reject it, I'm sorry for them. But I want him to look at me and say, son, you did good. Welcome. So is he going to say that to all of us? I don't know. Is God a liar? If you haven't done well, then he's not going to say, well done. I don't believe. I want him to be able to say, well done, Johnny. Of course, when he says well done, I'm going to assume there's a barbecue somewhere, and so I'm going to wrestle in and have my fill. I love him more than I love my wife. I love him more than I love my kids. I love him more than I love my own life. I love him so much that that's all I want to do. And when I've done all I can do, then I can do all I can do to help other people do all they can do. And so on and so on and so on. And I come to you today because God is my witness. I've done all I can do, but there's still more people I need to help. And if you'll help me, I'll help them. If not, I'm still gonna help them one way or the other because my father is not gonna let his servants go hungry. He's not gonna let his older kids go hungry. And it'll be a shame if God has to use his poor children in third world countries to do what his wealthiest children in history could have done with their pocket change. Don't think I'll be on the knee if that happens. I think I'll be down on my knees begging for forgiveness. But glory to God, He's a great God, isn't He? Aren't you thankful He saved us? Praise God. I went one minute over. You can take it out of my check. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. And during this prayer, would you just ask God what He would have you do? There's a world that needs to hear the gospel. And he wants to use every one of us to get the message out. And you may not be able to travel to the countries of the world, but you can send people that can. Heavenly Father, I pray that you'll touch all of our hearts. We live in the richest country of the world. We live like no other people in the world. Lord, help us to share of what you've blessed us with, to see that others hear about Jesus, our Savior, the only Savior the world will ever have, and help them come to the knowledge of the truth through hearing the gospel. Blessed now, dear Father, as a church and as individuals, we give by faith to worldwide missions. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen. I'm gonna ask all of us to stand. And if you will, first of all, just stand with your head bowed and eyes closed. But as you have prepared to give, I'm gonna ask you just to come out, fold up your card and put it into the globe right now. While the music plays, you come, step out from where you're at, put into the globe what God has laid on your heart to do for worldwide missions. If you're watching online, there's a number that you can text to the amount that God's laid on your heart to give. And we will add that to what we have here this morning and this evening. We'll do this one more time this evening, but take that pledge that you give to God, tear it apart, and slip inside the globe what God wants you to do, an act of faith, trusting God to supply. Others are coming, heads are bowed, eyes are closed, Christians praying. What would God have you do? If you're here this morning, do not know Christ as your personal Savior. Would you right now in the privacy of your own heart say, Jesus, please save me. Please forgive me of all of my sin. I trust you as my Savior. Please take me to heaven when I die. And if you in faith said that prayer and meant it for the first time, you became God's child. For all that cometh unto him he will in no wise cast out. God bless you. I'm going to have you be seated now. After tonight, we'll gather up all these cards and we'll know what we're doing as a church. It is my prayer that we'll be able to give several thousand dollars a month more to missions to what we're already doing, because the world's not getting smaller, it's getting bigger. The need's not getting less, it's getting more. And we've got to get the word out while there is time. We are going to watch the next video and then we'll dismiss our service. Good morning and welcome to our service. We hope this morning's sermon from Dr. Nelms was a blessing to you. Join us back here tonight at 5 as we continue our Missions Emphasis Day with Dr. John Nelms. Join us for a wonderful opportunity to help your child sing and develop their voices through a 2021 Children's Christmas Choir. This is for children five years old through sixth grade. We'll be performing during the Christmas Changes Everything program on Saturday, December 11th at 5 p.m. and Sunday, December 12th at 11 a.m. Bring your children to the service tonight at five for our first practice and they will receive a practice schedule to take home. Join us on Veterans Sunday next week, November 14th. We will have patriotic music and take time to recognize each veteran in our services. Every veteran in attendance will receive a special gift. There are invite cards on the welcome desk. Please consider using them to invite veterans to come. Coming up on November 14th, Sunday night at 5 o'clock, we're celebrating the Lord's Supper. We did want to mention that if you are watching our online services for the Lord's Supper, we do have some of those elements made up to go. And if you would just stop by the church office, we can get those to you so that you can join in as we celebrate the Lord's Supper coming up Sunday, November 14th at 5 o'clock. Experience Christmas this year at Grandview. Mark your calendars for our Christmas events coming up in the month of December. The Witness His Majesty Sermon Series, Ladies Ornament Exchange that will be on Monday, December 6th, and the Christmas Changes Everything Musical with Choir and Orchestra on Saturday, December 11th at 5 p.m. and on Sunday, December 12th at 11 a.m. There will be ushers at the back doors if you'd like to give your offering as you exit. If this is your first time here, we want to answer your questions and get to know you. Please fill out a connect card in the pew in front of you and bring it to guest services as you exit the auditorium. We would love to meet you and give you a gift card. Have a great afternoon and we'll see you tonight at five. God bless you and thank you for being here this morning. You're dismissed. do do do do