Are we going to take our Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 11? Luke chapter 11. I want to again say thank you for having me. And, you know, it was a blessing when your pastor told me that you folks had been through the many of you have been through the simple soul winning steps program. And then another round of people went through it again. And so that was a blessing to me. You know, sometimes you're right and you work on things, you wonder, Is this doing much good? And then get to see some of the fruit of it and say, well, yeah, obviously is doing some good because people are being reached through it. So praise the Lord for that. All right. We're going to be in Luke chapter 11. I thought maybe I should tell a snake story for the kids tonight. Would you like a snake story? All right. So we have plenty of snake stories, but I got to get onto the sermon real quickly. So Let me give you this one. My son got a wrist rocket for Christmas. It was sent from the States. And in the box, it came with a little pack of marbles. And, you know, we took it outside and, you know, It's basically summer year-round. Even when it's winter, it's almost summer. And so we're out there, and we're along the fence line, and we're shooting the wrist rocket. And they're little white marbles. We didn't want to lose them. I mean, you never want to lose your marbles, right? And so he'd shoot the marble, and he'd go run and find it, try to find it somewhere on the ground. We'd try to keep the grass cut so that Not too many snakes gonna be around. If they did come around, we could see them. And so he's running down the fence line, and I'm standing there along the fence line. We got a chain link fence, kind of, not exactly chain link, but we had a chained, anyway, we have a wire fence with some reed mats on it to kind of give us a little bit of privacy. And so he's running down there, and then I see him in full stride jumping and turning and saying, dad, snake. And as he's jumping over the snake, a spitting cobra raised up and he cleared the snake thankfully. And that there was an old reed mat on the ground and it went underneath the reed mat. And I said, you stay here. I'll go get the gun. And I came back. And I didn't tell him to stay too close. But anyway, he's from Africa. He knows what to do there. So we kept an eye on it. And by the time I got back, I pulled that thing open. The thing was gone. I don't know. It was like Houdini. It just disappeared. I was like, that was one snake that got away. And I wasn't real happy about that one. But there are many more that didn't. They met their fate when they came into our yard. You say, well, would you kill a snake? Well, do you want the snake to kill your children? Or would you rather have your children? Well, don't answer that one. All right, we're in Luke chapter 11. I love this passage of scripture here. Verses five through 10. We're gonna read this and you're gonna say, this has nothing to do with missions. Don't worry about it. It does. In Luke chapter 11 verse number 5 it says, And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth, and he that seeketh, findeth, and to him that knocketh shall be open. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the time. Thank you for your dear people have taken time out of their week to be in church and to be here for missions conference. Lord, I pray that your people's hearts would be stirred by your word and the testimonies, Lord, of others who need it. and those who've been reached by it. And Lord, I pray that you'll do a good work tonight. And I need your help. I need your strength. I need clarity of mind. Thank you, Lord, for what you're doing around the globe and what you're doing in this community. It thrills my heart to see. and hear about the people who've been reached in this community, and seeing the map back there with all those pins, and the people who've, those areas that have been covered with the gospel. Lord, thank you, and I pray you'll help that continue, and you'll continue to build your church, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. So, when a lady needs, you know, she's baking something, and she runs out of sugar, And she needs it right now, and it's a little far to go to the store. And she's got a good neighborly, you know, neighbor. And what does she do when she needs a cup of sugar? She borrows it, right? And a guy, he's out there, he's, ah, I just can't reach that, but my neighbor's got a ladder. So you go to the next door neighbor, you say, can I borrow your ladder, right? So when you need a cup of sugar, you borrow. And the guys need a tool. They go ask their neighbor. When you go visit someone's house and you forgot your toothbrush, what do you do? Don't borrow. You go buy one, right? But you get the point. The point is, if you need something, you borrow it. When someone wants to buy a house, they just pull out the wallet and just pay cash, right? Maybe you guys have done that, but that's not a normal thing. Same thing in most cases. Most people just don't go buy a car, especially the price of cars these days. My, oh my. So people, there are times when you don't have enough, you have to borrow something, you have to get a loan of some nature, whether it's a cup of sugar or whatever it is. And so the message is titled tonight, Ask for Alone. Ask for Alone. God has more of everything that you and I need than we can even imagine. He has everything. And he has more than everything. And I want you to see these three friends in the passage tonight. The first friend is traveling. He's traveling along, he gets to his friend's house, and he says, hey, I need a place, I need something to eat. So the second friend, he doesn't have anything. So he goes to the third friend and says, hey, can I borrow some food? My friend has come and I'd like to give him something. So you got first friend, he's the needy friend. The second friend, he's the seeking friend. And the third friend, he's the mighty friend, he's the giving friend. You already can figure out who the needy friend is. This would be a lost person. The seeking friend is the saved person who's going to the mighty friend, who is our heavenly father, to get something to go and bring and give it to the needy friend. So there you go, there's missions right there. But along the way, we can see a little bit more into this passage. God is the friend who can loan us what we need. I don't wanna just primarily talk about money here. We'll touch on that. But I wanna broaden this a little bit. So I got just a few points. The first one is this. When we go to the Lord, and I like this, if you would look there again with me, at the end of verse five, those last few words, it says, friend, lend me. So he has a need, he wants to help his friend, but he doesn't have what he needs to give to him. And that is a good place for us to realize we are destitute. We don't have what we need to give to others. So we need to go to God and get what we need. What do you lack tonight that you wish you had, that you wish you could do for someone else and you just don't quite have it? Maybe, first of all, you lack a burden. There are times that we do lack a burden. And there are some times where it's just, You know, it's as easy as anything to pass out a tracker, engage in a conversation. And there's other times it's just like, it's really tough to get that thing started. And it all boils down to sometimes we don't have the burden that we need to have. So I think the first thing we could ask for a loan is, Lord, lend me a burden. Because the mighty friend, he'll give you one if you want one. Because someone over here needs it, needs the help, but if we don't have what we need to give to them, well, we better go get something from the Lord. You know, there are people that we know, we all know, that need to hear the gospel. We come into contact with people who need the gospel. There are missionaries who are trying to get to the foreign field, and I understand that there's a missionary came through Mexico City who's on the field, I don't know if he's fully supported. I know when we left for the field many years ago in 2002, we were not fully supported. We were getting close, and I just sent out a letter to all the churches I've been to that said, we're going. Here's the date. This is where we're at as far as support. We're going. And I figured, we'll just have to trust the Lord to bring it in. Well, if God puts it on someone's heart, then I got to bring it in, right? But anyway, sometimes we lack that burden. So what do we do about that? If you go with me to Romans chapter number 10. Romans chapter number 10. You know what you can do? You can ask for a burden. We can say, friend, lend me. Lord, please lend me a burden. I need a burden. I'm lacking a burden. Maybe there was a time where you were more on fire for souls. You were more interested in helping people. And it thrilled my heart to hear that the missionary who has a need for the laptop, that has already been covered. Praise the Lord. God's working. But ask for a burden. In Romans chapter 10, verse number one, this is Paul speaking, he said, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be what? Saved. You know, our prayers reveal what our heart's desire is. What do you pray about? Well, I need a little bit of money, I need this, you know, I got a hangnail, it really hurts bad. Whatever it is, you know, we do have a lot of things to pray about, don't we? But one thing we should be praying for is for people to be saved. And we need to be able to ask the Lord for a burden. And here we see Paul, brethren, my heart's desire, he had this heart's desire, and it was his prayer to God that people would be saved. We need to ask God for that. And, you know, the more we look around and see needs, you know, Jeremiah said in the book of Lamentation, my eye affecteth my heart. You want to get stirred up? You know, our church is getting into more nursing home in the area. We have nursing homes calling us these days saying, can you send someone over and have services at our place? And so we don't have enough people to go to all the nursing homes. We have a lot of nursing home ministries. And I've been able to go to a couple of them recently. And what a blessing to get in there and to present the gospel and talk to people and help them. come to know the Lord. Some of those people are going to die in the next few years. And without the gospel, where will they be? And so the mission feels not just over in Africa or down in Mexico. It's nearby. It's all around us. And if you want to get a burden, your eye will affect your heart, go visit a nursing home. Take a stack of tracts. Go out on the bus route and go visit some of those homes where some of the kids come from and see where they live and get a burden for them. Take a mission's trip. Mexico City is not that far. I've gotten to go to Mexico City a couple times. It's not that far. Traffic is horrible. Food's good, don't drink the water, but it's not that far and you can go and you can have a good time and you can see that there are other places where you can go and you can even speak English and actually get something accomplished. You might have to spend a little bit more money to get on a plane ticket, but where we were in Zambia, Africa, you know what the national language was? English. So people say, did you speak the national language? Absolutely. There were 72 tribal languages, which they spoke in the rural areas. But yes, go out there. Go start knocking on doors. But I'm afraid. Knock on doors. You'll find some people who have some real needs, who are hurting. We have opportunities to get the gospel out. Friend, lend me a burden. I don't have the burden I need. In 2 Corinthians, chapter number 5, it says, in verses 14 and 15, for the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead. So his love will constrain us. That word constrain means to grip us. Just, I need to do something. Our pastor not long ago was preaching about soul winning, and one of the college students just got really burdened, and he said, I need, it was Sunday night, Sunday night after church, he says, I need to go witness to somebody. I don't know, I'm just gonna go down, go down to the local grocery store in the area, I'm gonna go, I gotta go find somebody. And so he got permission from the dorm supervisor. They got a pass. Him and another guy, they went down there. He's finding some guy in the parking lot. This kid's from Alaska. And he finds someone in the parking lot. He goes up and starts to witness to him. Come to find out, of all places, the guy who he was witnessing to was from Alaska. So he did that. He didn't stop there. He went in. He got to talk to someone. By the time the evening was over, he got to see someone saved. Amen. Amen. He responded. God convicted him. He knew he was lacking. Lord, give me a burden. But then we need to do something with the burden, amen? And so the love of Christ will grip us, it'll constrain us. And it says, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. When I got right with God many years ago, that verse gripped me. I had lived my life for myself and it says that he died for all that they which live should not henceforth from here on out should not live for themselves but for him who died and rose again for us and so we can we can ask the Lord please lend me a burden secondly If you would turn with me to Acts chapter number four, Acts chapter number four, not only lend me a burden, but lend me boldness. Do you ever get timid? Let me ask you, do you ever chicken out? You ever chicken out and giving those tracts out? Oh yeah. Let's be honest. It happens to everybody. Sometimes you'll size someone up and say, no, they're not going to take it. How do you know? Well, we're really good at negotiating with ourselves, talking to ourselves. We talk ourselves out of a lot of stuff, don't we? Now, it's real easy to talk yourself into sin, but it's, boy, we don't like to get talked into doing what's right sometimes. That's why we just need to be honest. Lord, please lend me a burden. And then lend me some boldness. In the word boldness in the scriptures here, oftentimes it just simply means confidence. Confidence. Look with me in chapter four, verses 29, begin 29. And now, Lord, behold, they're threatening. So the disciples were threatened. And grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. So they had a problem. They're being threatened. Now, most of us aren't being threatened if we go and preach the gospel. I mean, someone might not take a tract. They might slam the door. My wife and I were out canvassing this summer, and we were coming down. I hadn't even gotten to the guy's I was just getting to his crossing on the sidewalk, crossing on his driveway, and he's in there with his buddies. That's always a bad sign. And he's the big souped up, you know, fancy pickup trucks and all that. And he just, keep on walking. And I said, well, have a good day. No, keep going. It's like, I just laughed. What do you mean, no, I'm not gonna have a good, well, obviously, I didn't say that to him, but I just turned to my wife and I smiled. I said, okay, he doesn't wanna have a good day. But people are hungry. But you know, that guy's lost. He needs salvation. And we kept going and it wasn't far down the road, we came across a man who talked to us and took the tract. And we got to witness to him. And he said, hey, I might be interested in coming out. And he was a Spanish-speaking fellow. And so we had one of the people from our Spanish ministry go and talk to him. And so you just never know. You just keep going. But lend me some boldness. Now, there would have been a time where that would have been, oh. I don't like to get rejected. You like getting rejected? I like it when everybody likes me. But I found out that not everybody likes me. And sometimes, to be honest, I don't even like myself sometimes. So I understand it. I really do. But you know, we can pray and ask for boldness, and that's what they did here in verse number 29. They said, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. Look at verse 31. That was their prayer. Here's verse 31. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they did what? They speak the word of God with boldness. You mean God answers prayer? I think so. You know, let's just face it, like Pastor said, it's not easy sometimes to go tell somebody, hey, you know, you're a dirty rotten sinner, you're gonna die and go to hell, you need to get saved. Now, we don't say it that way, do we? But that's how they take it somehow, that's why we have to show a little bit of tact and show some concern and really have some concern. We need to ask for boldness, and God's willing to give it. And he gives it when he fills us with his Holy Ghost. But here's the problem. Sometimes we can pray for boldness, but not gonna get it. Well, that's not very encouraging. Well, if you would, please, with me, turn to 2 Timothy chapter number two, and I'll tell you why. Because God doesn't fill dirty vessels. Now, I get to eat lunch at the cafeteria at the college, and they have a whole tray of cups there, And this is just me, OK? I'm one of those clean freaks. It doesn't matter. I do the same thing at home. I do that when I'm there. I just pick up the cup, and before I fill it with my water or whatever I'm going to drink that day, I always look inside. I don't know if you're that way, but there might be last week's green beans stuck on there or something like that. The dishwasher didn't get off or something. I don't know. I just like to pick it up and look at it and make sure. almost all the time is clean, you know, but every once in a while you might find something that just, that happens, right? And so I am not going to use something, like I said, with last week's caked on green bean inside the cup. I'm not going to fill it up. You say, you lived in Africa. Yeah, but I didn't, I didn't drink out of dirty cups in Africa either. Doesn't matter where, I'm gonna try to drink out of a clean cup. Here's the point. When we're filled with sin, God's not gonna fill us with his Holy Spirit so that we can go, we can pray all day long, oh please, give me boldness. And we've got some sin we're hanging onto. We can't expect a filling of the Holy Spirit because the boldness doesn't come from renewed energy of ourselves. It comes from the Holy Spirit controlling us and he won't be in control until we yield our life to him. Is there some sin that you're hanging on to? So in 2 Timothy 2, verse 19, it says, nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in the great house, there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, That's like clay pots, you know, the earth. And some to honor, some to dishonor. There's some vessels that are used for wonderful things, and there's other vessels that are used to take the trash out. if a man therefore purge himself from these purge ourselves from sin he shall be a vessel unto honor sanctified and meet that means fit for the master's use and prepared unto every good work we don't prepare ourselves by saying here here i am no we say lord please Forgive me, please fill me. And when we are clean, then God can help us. Listen, we do lack a burden. We do get timid. We do need boldness. And we can come and say, Lord, please, you know I'm weak. This is difficult for me. This isn't easy. I need help. Would you please open up an opportunity for me to talk? Does God wanna do that? Sure He does. And if you wanna do that and He wants to do that for you and through you, do you think it's gonna like meet somewhere in the middle? Sure is. But we have to be clean if we're going to expect God to help us. Is there something, some sin you're hanging on to that's getting in between you and your service for the Lord? I'm thankful for missions conference, but tonight would be a good time to make sure we're right with the Lord. How are we gonna decide how much we're gonna give? How much we're gonna go? How much we're gonna pray? How are we gonna decide all of that if we're hanging on to something that God doesn't want us to hang on to? He can't fill us with his Holy Spirit. God would rather have your heart than all your money. You know what happens when he has your heart? He's got the money. That's really not the thing, is it? Let me give you the third idea, and that's friend, lend me a blessing. Lend me a blessing. Just give me something to give to somebody else. You ever find yourself at a loss about what to say, or I don't know what to say? I pray that prayer so many times, friend, Lend me. Most of the time before I get up to preach, at some point I'm going to pray and say, Lord, I need something. I have nothing to set before them. But you do. And I'll be honest. I don't know you folks. I'm asking your pastor all sorts of questions. I'm just trying to figure out what the needs of this church are, and I'm praying, and I'm praying, and I'm praying. And I came with a stack of sermons, and I had a couple that I thought I might start with, and I'm like, Lord, please, I need to know. It's getting closer to the service tonight. I'm like, Lord, I really, I really need the right one. I want the one that he wants, not, hey, what do I think's gonna wow him? Nothing's gonna wow you. Nothing for me anyway. Lord, please give me the sermon that you want your people to have. And you know, when God finally confirmed, I was like, okay, praise the Lord, now I can get up and preach. It doesn't matter how many sermons I have. It doesn't matter how long I've been at it. It doesn't matter any of that. What it matters is, is you have a need I can't fill it. He knows. I need a blessing, Lord, to give to your people. And you need a blessing to give to people, whether it's in your home. Do you need something to give to your children? Do you need something to give to one another as a husband and wife? Do you need something to give to your neighbor? Do you need something to give to an extended family member as far as a spiritual blessing? Someone in the church who's going through a hard time? We need help, wisdom, strength from the Lord to be able to give to other people. Friend, lend me a blessing. And he wants us to be a blessing. We sing that song, right? Make me a blessing. to someone today, friend, lend me. I have nothing to set before them. Nothing. I remember there was one young man. He was studying to be a Catholic priest in Zambia. And he was the brother of a lady in our church. She was a widow lady, young widow lady. And she had a couple kids at home. But her brother, O'Brien, was studying to be a Catholic priest. And he was living with her for a short time. And he was hard and pompous. And he got sick. And it started softening his heart. I'd go and witness again. And he got a little softer, but he was still holding on to his religion. And then he got so sick. A couple different times I had to take him to one clinic and another time to the hospital. The time I took him to the hospital, they put him on the examination table. They took his shirt off. He was a skeleton wrapped in skin. I just couldn't believe it. He was in such bad condition he couldn't even talk. He just looked at you. I said, O'Brien. And I had been praying that this guy would get saved, and I think God was working on him, wearing him down. And I said, O'Brien, you need Jesus. We've gone through this. You've been trusting your works. It's not your baptism. It's none of that. You need Jesus Christ to save you. And I said, you can pray a prayer like this. I'll say, I'll pray it, and you can pray it in your heart if you want to. I led in prayer. He couldn't respond. They took him. He was awake, all that. He just couldn't talk. He was shutting down. They took him in. I walked into the ward. And the ward was full. And there was no beds. And they put a mat, literally a mat, a reed mat on the ground and laid him on that. That's comfortable when you're dying. And I left there. I thought, well, thank you, Lord. At least I got to witness to him one more time. And I thought, I'm never going to see him again. I hope he got saved. Believe it or not, a couple of days later, he got out of the hospital. Now, he wasn't well, but he was able to tell his sister that he got saved. And they took him back to the village. And in the village, the idea was, well, if you can't, the doctors can't fix him. We'll just take him to the witch doctor. And he said, no. I'm not going to the witch doctor, which was a pretty good sign to me that he had made a decision for Christ. Lord, what do I say to this guy? Lend me a blessing. There's somebody that you know. that needs something from the Lord, it's up to us to go get it from him and give it to them. Last thing is this, lend me some bread. And what I'm talking about there is some money. Lord, let me just read it to you. We don't have time. In 2 Corinthians chapter 8, 2 Corinthians 8, You know, you can't give what you don't have. you can't give money you don't have, the Bible teaches that. In 2 Corinthians 8 verses 10 through 12, and here I give my advice for this is expedient for you who have begun before not only to do but also to be forward a year ago. Now therefore perform the doing of it that as there was a readiness to will so there may be a performance also out of that which you have. Give out of that which you have. You can't give something you don't have. Then he says, for if there be first a willing mind, that's good, it is accepted according to that a man hath and not according to that he hath not. Well, you can't give something you don't have, so how do you get it? Friend, lend me. Because a friend of mine in his journey has come, and I have nothing to set before him. There are some missionaries who have a need. Lord, could you give me a little extra that I can give? So I can't afford to give. Well, God can afford to give. Can I have a little extra, Lord? And when he gives you that little extra, give it to him. I know this is going to sound, I was grossly underpaid when I was working at a nuclear power company. I was working in the engineering office, grossly underpaid. I was hired through a temp service and all that. And I knew it was, I really was gross, and we all say that, right? But I was really grossly underpaid. And I was like, Lord, please give me a raise. I need a raise. I, you know, in my mind, I deserved a raise. So I prayed God would give me a raise. And I said, well, that's kind of selfish. I said, all right, Lord, if you give me a raise, I'll give it all back to you. He gave me a raise. I got a 55% raise. And you know what I did with it? I gave it back to him. Some of it was in tithe and a big chunk of it was in missions. Because I was getting all greedy. I deserve more. I'm not being paid what I should. OK, Lord, I'm sorry. I'll give it to you. Ask God for a little extra. See what he'll do. Friend, lend me.