problem. And tonight I want to, we're here for, we call it revival, don't we? Now it says up here, old time revival. Now I didn't know how literal that was going to be when all the power was out. I thought we were really going to have an old fashioned revival with candles and everything. But I Revival. So, I want to bring just, listen, tonight is just going to be a very, very simple point, very simple thing tonight. And I ask you to turn in your Bible to the book of Matthew chapter 17. Matthew 17, and with me at verse 14. Now let's stand, we'll read this, and we'll have prayer. And then we'll turn to one other passage of Scripture in the book of Luke. But Matthew 17 of 14, And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic." In the Greek that word is teenager, alright, just in case you were wondering about that. And he's sore vexed, all right? For oftentimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. And Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? Who do you suppose that He was directing that to when He said, faithless and perverse generation? Who do you think He was talking to here? Who do you think He was? Who? Yeah. I mean, I brought them to your disciples and they couldn't do anything. And it said, oh, faithless. You know, faith is an interesting word. You know, sometimes I have people having trouble with assurance. And you know what faith simply is? Faith is simply saying, I believe what God says. That's basic faith. And I act upon that belief. A lot of times, when it comes to salvation, we have, we act upon that belief that Jesus died for my sins. I'm a sinner. I can't save myself. Nothing I can do. He must save me. I must... And we act and we believe, we trust that and we place our faith in that. But oftentimes, when it comes to other things concerning God, We often will say, I believe, but we don't act upon that belief. He said, oh, faithless generation. And notice in verse 17, he said, bring him a hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, why could we not cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, because of your what? Now, you just called them faithless, you know. It's just your unbelief. And for veritas sandia, if you have what? There it is, faith. As a grain of mustard seed, you shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you. Now, there's a stipulation that's put upon this kind of work and he gives it in that next verse. How be it? This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. And he said now, if you want to be able to have this kind of power, then it's going to cost something. And if you're not willing to pay that cost, then don't expect to have that. And so let's go to the Lord in prayer. We'll turn to another verse and read it. And then I want to say some very simple things tonight. Father, I pray your blessing tonight. Lord, may we ponder in our heart tonight the truths of thy word. May we, in our mind, formulate, think upon, and Lord, even make a decision upon what we would like and what part we would like for you to have in our life, in our work, in what we do. And I pray that we'll make choices that would honor you tonight. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. The more valuable something is, the more it costs. Isn't that true? We don't normally give something valuable to someone who might be irresponsible or who may not recognize its value. You wouldn't give to a little kid, you ladies, you wouldn't give them your diamond ring and say, here, take this, go out in the yard and play with that. You wouldn't do that. You'd give them some little... worthless or very little valuable toy into them. Because you wouldn't want to give something very valuable into the hands of someone who would not recognize its value. God at times, He reveals to us His price tag for highly valuable items. For instance, would you like to reap in joy? How many of you would like to reap in joy? Would you? Well, then, okay, then you're going to have to sow in tears, okay? How many of you would like to come again with rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves? Would you like that? Doesn't that sound exciting? Come rejoicing. Well, then the cost is you're going to have to go forth with weeping, bearing precious seed. Would you want power to do what mankind would call the impossible? Well, in this passage of scripture we're told that, this cometh forth but by what? Prayer and fasting. Who doesn't want revival? I mean, how many of you here would really want revival? Alright, how many of you really want revival? Alright, good, good. Most of us, we really, we would like to have revival. All right? Now, let me ask you another question. All right? Can God give revival? Can He do that? Amen? God can do it. All right? Okay, now the next question is, what will we need to do? What will it cost? in order to have that revival. Now we want it, we know God can do it, but what are we willing to do to pay the cost for it to come? See, the truth is the cost of things determine most of the areas of our life, all right? And I didn't realize, if you think about it, how often that we either said or thought or calculated the cost of something or how much does that cost, all right? We say that, don't we? How much does that cost? usually, usually there's not many of us that can say this, money is no object. Alright? The cost doesn't matter. The cost is immaterial. Now, if that is you here, I have a building I'm trying to build and I could use some building funds, alright? Alright, if that's you. But the question is, how many of you eat at a restaurant where the prices are not on the menu? Yeah. Not too many of us, right? And when we do get a menu, what's the first thing we do? We look to see what it costs, don't we? We do a lot of things that way. The cost determines often what we will do. When you're shopping, what do you do? You look at the what? The price tags, the labels to see. When I sometimes go in a convenience store and there's some chips here, I look to see if there's no tag to what it costs. I usually just walk away. I have no clue what they're going to ring up at the register. I don't want it, all right? The cost of something often determines my interest in it. I love to ride motorcycles. I have a Honda NC750 DCT model, which means dual-clutch transmission. It's the first one that I've ever had. It was a little freaky to ride it at the beginning because dual-clutch transmission means it doesn't have a clutch. But it shifts on its own. You give it the gas, and it will go first gear, then second gear, all the way up to sixth gear on its own. As you slow down, it shifts on its own as you slow down. You can put it in three different modes. It has three different drive mode, sport mode one, and sport mode two, which means that it shifts depending upon the kind of driver or kind of feel you want. You know, if you want that really, you know, curve and high RPMs before it shifts, you can put it in that third mode. Now, if you want to put it in drive, which drives me nuts to put it in drive mode, it goes first gear, second gear, third. It's in sixth gear by the time you reach 30 miles an hour. I can't stand that one. And so I have to go up on that. Now, when I went to get one, and by the way, if you ride a motorcycle, you're so used to shifting, when you don't have to, you're still doing like this. You're like, oh, there's no clutch. It's so weird. But when I went to look at motorcycles, I really wanted one called the Africa Twin Honda has. I really wanted that one. That's what I went to look at. Man, that is such a beauty. The problem was that one was $16,000. The Honda NC750 was $8,000. It was half the price. You see, the truth is I really wanted, but the price determined which one that I bought. The cost of something also determines what kind of car you drive. It determines the clothes you wear, often the kind of food that you eat. So whenever you consider purging something, our first consideration of it is the cost of it. Amen? That's what we do. Now this is interesting too. Even when you haven't considered purchasing something, when you find out the price is low, you might all of a sudden be interested in it, all right? Because of the attractiveness of the cost. Man, my wife gets trapped on this one every time. Why did you get that? It was just so cheap. Do you need it? Not really. What are you buying it for? See, she didn't really go to buy it, but the attractiveness of the price got her. No intention, but how many of you know people like that, all right? Yeah, all right. Mom, right? Oh, they're all pointing to her right over there. It becomes attractive. When I was in Bible college, one of the jobs I had, I worked in retail. Now, I grew up with the age that you did not throw away anything, okay? I mean anything that actually became a problem in my marriage, all right? I am what you call a hoarder, all right? I mean a genuine hoarder. Now, I don't know if you've seen those shows where you can't walk through a house. I'm not like that one. But like for instance, just to give you an example of that, all right? I've stayed in hotels lots of times through the years. Now, I take those little bottles of champagne. You know what I'm talking about, the little bottles? It's like, you know what? They're going to throw those away because you've used it once. So I take them with me. I finally had to go through my cabinet. I had almost 300 of those bottles. My wife was like, let's throw them away. I said, it's just wasting. I can't throw it away. Please get rid of it. And I was like, I can't throw something away like that. And so to satisfy, I was thinking, I was looking at all those bottles, I mean hundreds of them. What can I do? I don't want to throw it away. And finally, I went and got a big jug and I started squeezing them all in there. I mean, you got all brands of all kinds of shampoo in one bottle. I don't know what, I mean, I don't know what it is. Man, when I do my hair, half of it's this way, half of it's that way. I don't know. But I just couldn't throw away. Listen, my dryer caught fire one time. We had to shove it out the back door and it was flame, I mean, flames rolling everywhere. And you know what I had to do? I had to go take the screws out so I could keep the screws to it before I chunked the rest of it out because those screws. You know, that's just to give you an example of how much of a hoarder that I am. All right? I don't throw things away. So, when you consider purchasing something, one of the first consideration is the cost of it. And even when you haven't considered purchasing something, When you find out the price is low, you might suddenly become interested in it because of the attractiveness of the cost. So I'm working retail, and in those days, you know, they put stuff on clearance. If it didn't sell, then they'd go put it in the dumpster. I mean, they'd just go put it in the dumpster and throw it away. And so one day, my store manager, Terry was his name, and he came to me and there was two carts, buggies, what do you call them down here? Carts, buggies? Shopping carts, all right. There was two of those completely full of canning lids. Now I grew up in a family, we canned. We canned everything. We had acres and acres of gardens and green beans and tomatoes. We canned tomato juice and green beans and corn and all that stuff. We grew up canning our food. I can't tell you, I think one year we canned 500 quarts of green beans as a kid. I mean we canned. And so he told me to take those two shopping carts and go back to the back and throw them in the dumpster. I said, I can't do it. He said, why not? I said, I can't throw, I mean, that's some valuable stuff. He said, valuable? I'm kidding, Liz. He said, how's it valuable? I said, man, my aunts, my uncles, my grandma, me, all my family, we can stuff. I mean, I can't throw away these, Liz. And he said, well, I'll tell you what, you give us two bucks for all that and it's all yours. You take it. Man, two dollars. Now, I didn't go that day to buy a Canon Ledge, but for two dollars and two shopping carts full of them, at that time I had a little Toyota car. Man, when I was going to Illinois, I called him up and I said, man, don't you buy another cannon lid? And I'm talking about the lids plus the rings. You know what I'm talking about, the rings? I had the whole, I said, I had wide mouth, small mouth, I had them all. I said, don't you buy another cannon lid or a ring? I've got enough for the family for quite a while. And I loaded them up in the trunk of my car. I feel, my car going to Illinois was sitting down on the back, I mean the weight of the cannon lids. But man, when my family got there, they were so excited to have those cannons. See, but the cost of it, it made it become attractive. Some years ago, I was down in Cairo, Illinois. And I had a little small truck with a camper on top of it, a camper shell. And it was a little S10. And I just got off the highway and was stopping maybe for some gas or something. But I drove by and I saw a little yellow Yamaha motorcycle, a little small one. I kind of made a little U-turn, came back, got out, looked at it. I said, boy, it was just a little bitty thing, enough for my boys. They'd love that. And I said, hey, a guy came out. I said, how much you want for that? And he said, I'll tell you what, I'll take 500 for it. I said, well, I wish I could. That's a little bit much. He said, man, and it was spotless. I mean, it didn't have a scratch on it. It was used as an airport hanger. They just went from one hanger to another hanger on that thing. That's all they did with it. And he said, well, what would you give me? I said, look, I'll give you 400 for it. And he said, all right, I'll take it. I said, now, here's a problem. He said, what? I said, I don't have any money. He said, yeah, that's kind of a problem. I said, now, I do have a check. He said, well, you look honest. And I'm living in Arkansas. He said, you look honest, I'll take the check. I said, OK, now I got a problem with the check. He said, what? I said, I don't have any money in the bank. He said, okay. I said, but if you'll wait five days, I'll have money in the bank and you can cash that check in five days. He looked at me. I don't think anybody's ever done that. He looked at me. They said, all right, you look honest. I'll do it. I mean, I wrote that guy a check and said, no cash till five days. And I put that thing in the back of that truck, and I took off with that thing. Now, I hadn't planned on buying that. I didn't go there to buy that. But the price and the value of it for what I'm getting for the price, I bought that at the spur of the moment. So suddenly, you can find yourself shopping something that you're not interested in because of the low cost. Now, let me get into this message. How much is being a disciple of Christ worth much? Is it worth much? Does it appeal to you to be a disciple of Christ? What will it cost? What did He say that you cannot be My disciples except you what? We didn't turn to that one. That was one we didn't turn to yet. Keep your commandments, but unless you forsake father, mother, I mean lands and houses and all for my sake, you cannot be. How many of you think that's pretty costly, isn't it? Now, let's suppose to be a disciple, what if it went on sale? I mean, then would you be interested? See, the truth is, the trouble is, that's never going to go on sale, okay? And having revival is never going to go on sale. It's not even going to be reduced. It's always the valuable things of God are always going to cost. You know, and what I love about the Lord is that He never tries to hide the cost, okay? You ever buy a car? I mean, I've bought some cars through the years, and it's hilarious what they do, I mean, when you go buy a car. They'll say, the first thing they'll ask is, well, how much payment can you afford? I said, don't ask me that. Well, how much? I said, that's not the question. I want to know how much you'll sell that car. But what's your payment? Now, look, here's all they're trying to do. They're trying to figure out to put you in a category of, say, you can say, well, I can only make a $250 a month payment. And they'll say, okay, that's fine. We'll work that out. The only thing what they don't tell you is the hidden cost. Now the interest is higher or the extent of the payment is longer. Now you're paying for a car over eight years and you're paying a lot more for the car, they hide those costs to you. And now you'll eventually have a car that's not as valuable as what you still owe on the car. They always hide those costs. I don't know down here, in Arkansas they have them all the time, but you ever, you know what these timeshare things are? Anybody here ever been to a timeshare presentation? All right, some of you have been to them. I went and they started off, I said, look, I'm just here for the free gift. That's it, all right? I told them on the front end, they said, but you've got to sit through the presentation to get the free gift. I said, all right, but I just want you to know, I'm here for the free gift. That's it, all right? And so they come and you listen to them, and man, they're very convincing. I mean, some of you have sat there, they're very, I mean, they'll play on your senses and they'll talk about, is family important to you? Now, who's going to say no? You know, yes. Is taking a vacation important to you? Well, you know, it's having time off. Don't you need sometimes just a getaway place? Who doesn't sometimes? Amen? But you say, price is a factor, right? That's what you're all saying right now. Price is a factor. And then they go down. Then I watched this chart they were doing. They said, now here's hotel costs, and here's what is going up every year. It goes up 15% every year. And in 10 years, you'll pay $250 a night for a hotel. And they go down to that. And then they'll say this, our plan is it stays the same. And you can take a vacation the rest of your life. Your family's going to be happy. And you can even will to your family. And they start breaking this all down. It pays for itself. It's a smart investment. And it's a safe bet. And it's easy to sell it if you don't like it. And if you choose this, you can vacation wherever you want to vacation to, Australia, Florida, California, everything else. But here's the problem. They only show you part of the cost. They never add the airfare in going on that vacation. They don't add the yearly maintenance fees, the insurance fees, the fuel costs, the annual membership fees. They don't add all that stuff in. They don't tell you about all that stuff, all right? And by the way, that's exactly the way Satan always works himself too. He never tells you all the costs. Some of you guys are like that as well, you know that? You go fishing. Why do you go fishing? Oh, to save money. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. $30,000 boat, you know, fishing license, gas to get there. Congratulations, you just got an $800 a pound fish, you know. I tried to tell my wife that. That's why I go deer hunting to save money. Uh-huh. You got to buy the gun, you got to go on the trip, you got to do all that. Next thing you know, it's $50 a pound for your deer, all right. But Jesus is always honest about the cost. He says, if you take up the cross, You take up your cross, you follow me, and that cross means you've got to die. All right? That's what it means. He always is honest to us. He's never untruthful to us. Being a disciple is a high cost. And I want to ask you the question tonight is simply this. What are you willing to pay for God to use you? What are you willing to pay to have God do something in your life. How valuable is it to you to have God to be able to work in your life? And how valuable is it to this church to have God to be able to send a revival? Now, you're going to have to consider the cost, and God doesn't lie about it, and there's never a reduction in the price. It's never 50% off. It's never reduced. You remember Paul? over to the book of 2 Corinthians, if you would, in chapter number 12. I want you to see this, and then I want to close this down by just saying a few simple things here. But look at 2 Corinthians chapter number 12, and look at what Paul said. Look at verse 6, Now notice what happened. And lest I should be exalted above measure, Through the abundance of the revelation, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may what? Rest upon me. There was a cost for the power of Christ to rest upon Paul. And God had to do a work in Paul's life to keep him in a place so that God could use Paul the way he wanted to use Paul. You know, I think oftentimes our problem, you know, years ago in 2006, May the 25th, there was an Australian mountain climber by the name of Lincoln Hall. On May the 25th, 2006, he made it to the summit of Mount Everest there in Nepal, 29,029 feet. This mountain climber made it. On the descent, just barely going down at 29,000 feet, he lapsed into unconsciousness. And my wife, a few years ago, I decided to take her up to South Dakota. We made our way down and come back down through Colorado. We went up Pikes Peak and then we climbed the second highest peak in Colorado next to Pikes Peak. And when you start climbing those altitudes, boy, she started getting out of breath, and she had to sit down for a little bit, and she started getting dizzy and all that. And at one point, it had a little thing, symptoms of altitude sickness. And I went down that, dizziness, and rapid pulse, and problem sleeping, and all that. And then I got to number eight. I said, honey, you definitely have altitude sickness right here, number eight. She said, what does number eight say? It says you get irritable behavior and grouchy. I think you've got it. That didn't help a thing, all right? But here, Lincoln Hall, at 29,000 feet, he lapsed into unconsciousness. And he had a severe, severe form of altitude sickness known as cerebral edema. The accumulation of fluid on the brain, that swelling of the brain, it's crippling. It causes hallucinations. His Sherpas, his guides, tried to revive him. They worked and worked on him, and after two hours, Hall showed no signs of life at all. The Sherpas were, they were exhausted. They had no success. Now their oxygen is running out, their snow blindness is starting to set in, and their lives are now in danger. And so they radioed down to base and they said, man, you've got to get out of there. And so they left him for dead there on that mountain. They looked for some rocks to cover him, they couldn't find any there. But they went ahead and took his coat, his gloves, and all of that because no need for him to have any of that. They took all that, took his sleeping bag, all that stuff that he had. Twelve hours later, May the 26th, a group of ascending climbers were headed up Mount Everest and they were told to expect to find Hall's body there. The only problem was Lincoln Hall was not dead. After a few hours, he had come to. He had no clue where he was at, at all. And this crew that was going up, it was led by a man by the name of Dan Mazur. And he was astonished when he came across Lincoln Hall, sitting there. He said he had no coat, he was changing his shirt, he had no hat, no gloves, no glasses, no oxygen, no food, no water, no sleeping bag. And he couldn't believe that he was there. He was disoriented. He had been left for dead 12 hours earlier. He greeted Dan Mazur and his party, and I quote what he said. I imagine you are surprised to see me here. No, no joke. I mean, Dan said he couldn't believe it. He's not even fully clothed. And he's still alive. Dan radioed down back to camp for a rescue party. A rescue team of surfers arrived. But when they got there, unfortunately, Lincoln began to hallucinate again. He imagined that he was on a cruise ship. And he was telling them all about the ship, about the water. And as they tried to rescue him and bring him down that mountain, he began to fight them off. He said, I don't want to leave the cruise ship. And he began to fight the rescuers. And he used up all this precious strength. See, he's not understanding his predicament. He attacked those who had come to rescue him. He did not see his true condition. Now folks, I want to tell all of us, part of our problem is we don't see our true condition. We don't see our true need. And God came down to Job and God came to Paul and said, Paul, I'm going to have to do something if I'm going to use you. I'm going to have to give you a thorn in the flesh. And Paul said, I don't like it. Would you take it away? And God said, I won't, but I will give you grace to bear that. And Paul said, I'd rather have this than the power of God in my life if that's what it takes. And God said, that's what it's going to take. If you want my power and the power of Christ to rest upon you, you're going to have to go through this. It's going to cause something. You know, Job and all that he went through. You know, number one, God was just trying to show Satan the power of salvation. of a man who would love him above everything but there was a second purpose in there and that was God wanted Job to know him in a way that he had never known him before. Job didn't, remember Job didn't realize the predicament, or where he was at. Listen, Job, if you read the book, Job went through all of it, and he was a good guy, wasn't he? He had to be a good guy, or God wouldn't have told Satan, hey, hey, go ahead. If you want to put your hands on him, go ahead. He's not like... So he had to be a good guy, but even being who Job was, Job came to the end of the book, and he said, I've heard of you with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes seeeth thee. He didn't realize that what he was missing until he went through what he went through. And then he realized, boy, there's a lot more to God. And I see God in a way I've never seen Him before. I want you to know something. When you begin to pay the cost, when you begin to say, you know what, I'm willing to pay the cost, some valuable things will take place. But it won't take place until you pay the cost. Let me close. I have something here. I told you I was going to bring it tonight. I think about six years I looked for this and I couldn't find it. I looked and looked and looked and looked and looked. I was told when I finally found it, do not take it to the airport, do not go into the Philippines with it because The Philippine government has told all police officers, all military, that if you see anybody with that, you are free to shoot and kill them. And we won't ask any questions. It's just they had that. You're free to kill them. I'll show it to you here in a moment. What's the world's most valuable Commodity. What do you think the world's most valuable commodity might be? What? Money. Money. Gold. How about diamonds? Very valuable. The Amazon rosewood grows in the Amazon forest in Brazil, Peru, Colombia. It's very expensive. They make guitars, knives, different things like that. There's a wood called ebony. Have you ever heard of ebony? Yeah, in East Africa. It's jet black. It's very dense. The cost is $10,000 per kilogram. It's pretty expensive. African blackwood is a slow-growing, it's black, it's gnarly, they make clarinets out of it, but one log of that is about $9,000, one small log of that. There's something called red sandalwood. It's in Asia, it's $80 per pound. Woods are expensive because of their hardness, they're expensive because of their beauty. So some of them, they're expensive because of their rarity. And there's a lot of reasons. Exceptional beauty, incredible strength, their durability, their demand, workability, appearance, and their odor. But the most precious commodity on Earth is, we would maybe say gold or diamonds, but it's something called agarwood. This is a small piece, cost me a lot of money to get this piece. It's called agarwood. It comes from the acularia tree. Not all acularia wood or trees become agarwood though. To become agarwood, okay? It must become infected, or attacked, or invaded, or scarred. Insects or ants bore into the trunk of that tree, that Achillaria tree, and they bore into the roots. They wound it. It brings in then, it brings in bacteria and spores into that Achillaria tree. When it's injured or when it's attacked or when it's wounded, when it's scarred, it responds to that attack. It secretes a resin, a dark, aromic resin called oleo. The resin or the oil becomes exceeding complex and it produces 150 chemical compounds or fragrant molecules. The infected wood Once it's infected, it turns ordinary wood. into agarwood. It becomes the most expensive commodity in the world. In its natural state, it's not valuable. Prior to infection, prior to being wounded, prior to scarring, prior to invasion, it's pale, it's odorless, and it's worthless. The same as any other tree. It's used for kindling or firewood. But when it's injured, when it's infected, when it's diseased, when it's malformed, When it's stretched, it becomes the most valuable, expensive wood in the world. First grade agarwood, by the way, this is not first grade. First grade agarwood, according to 2010 Wikipedia, is $100,000 per kilogram. Now, to put that in perspective, a quart jar, 32 ounces, a kilogram is 35 ounces, so you take a quart jar. Gold at 35 ounces is $65,000. But a garwood is $100,000 for that same weight. In its natural state, it's just firewood. But when it is wounded, When it's attacked, when, let me tell you something, when God does things in our lives, we often don't recognize the need that we have. God, like Joe, will bring things into our life, into our church often, into our families. You know why? Not because He dislikes us, but He wants us to make us into something that's much more valuable. Many of you have heard the name Fanny Crosby, blinded, but could see more than most. Fanny Crosby. How many of you have heard the name Charles Weigel? Heard the name Charles Weigel? Charles Weigel was an evangelist. His wife said, I've had enough of this life. She left him and said, I won't be an evangelist's wife. He became so despondent that for years, He said he sat down many times and contemplated suicide. But from his broken heart, from the darkest period of his life, he wrote the song, No One Ever Cared for Me, like Jesus. Paul said, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. I want you to know something, that if you so choose, to pay the cost, and it'll cost. If you want God to use you, if you want revival, it'll cost, but it'll be much more valuable. that cost you pay. I'll close with this. Now, this piece of wood, my kids asked me now for $5 after the service, I'll tell you how much this cost me, all right, if you're interested. I'm just kidding. But they actually wanted I think it was $75 for this piece. Now this is not even, this is like 6th or 7th grade. It's not even used for what they do at Agarwood. They get the oils out of it. They get the liquid that it produces, the fragment molecules out of it. So this is not even near that, but it's still. I finally got them down to, I think it was bought, but I think it was somewhere around $45 just for this little piece. My kids asked me, when you die, what do you want us to do with that expensive stick of wood? Finally, one of them came up, they're going to burn it as incense at my funeral, this piece of agarwood. We had a lady in our church by the name of Patsy Beatty, and Patsy got cancer, breast cancer. I watched as her little body You know, what's amazing to me is how healthy people cannot find time to go to church and be in God's house, but Patsy never missed a service. Through chemo, through radiation, her back would be so painful. I'd see her come to church and she'd be, she would, I'd see her lean forward because it was too painful for her back to touch the back of the pew. She came with a towel. wrapped around her head because she lost all of her hair. And I'd see her sometimes grimace in the service from the pain that she was feeling, but she never missed a service. Patsy Beatty went to see a doctor by the name of Dr. Jack Sternberg. He's a cancer doctor. He's a Jewish cancer doctor in Little Rock, Arkansas. You can look him up. You can research Dr. Jack Sternberg, and you'll find this. Dr. Jack Sternberg was a Jewish guy, and he hated it when anybody would tell him about Jesus. And he would just turn them off. Nobody talked to him about Messiah or Jesus, all right? And that's the way he was. Anybody that tried to witness him. But the problem, enter Patsy Beatty and others like her. When told that they had a diagnosis of cancer, they smiled and said, if this is what God wants, it's all right with me. And I'll be going to heaven anyway, so it's all right. If you look up Dr. Jack Sternberg and read his testimony, he said it drove him crazy. It was only the Christians that would smile and say that it's alright that I got cancer. It drove him crazy. It drove him so crazy to the point that he finally went to a church service and he heard the gospel and he got saved. And what led him to, and now he witnesses and preaches and talks about Jesus all the time, but he said what led him to Christ was some people with cancer that were dying and said, it's all right that I got cancer. God used her, the fragrance and the perfume of a dedicated life, that agarwood, that one that was injured and diseased and hurt, the aroma of that life went to the nostrils of a Jewish doctor and he got saved because of that. Expensive, yes. Very costly, yes. But valuable. so valuable that many, many people have come to Christ through Jack Sternberg's ministry because a little old lady that sit in our church and was dedicated her life and said, it's okay, I'm gonna keep serving my God and I wouldn't have to use me in any way that he can use me. It's okay if he wants me to have cancer, it's all right. And God used that little old woman. to help lead a doctor to Jesus Christ. What are you willing to pay? What are you willing to... If it went half price, would you do it then? I mean, would revival... How about if we reduced it 75%? Were you willing to pay the... What are we willing? To let God use us. How about you? I want Him to use me. I want him to use this church. It's not what one day when you get the glory, God looks at this church and this congregation and says, hey, woo, boy, I was able to use you because you were willing to pay the price. But until then, we have to decide. You've got some decisions to make. All of us do, daily. But as a church, what do you want? When I went to India, I was in a place called Dandipali. I got there. I preached that service. That week, we had 200 that got saved that week, 200. And it was a country setting. It wasn't even a big 200 saved. Down the road. down the road, we went down to Baptize, there was a little village down there. I don't think any white people have ever entered that village. We got there, the whole town came out. And there was a potter there. And on my second trip, I wanted to go back and see that potter. I began to study pottery, and I wanted to go back and see him. But that potter, he had a wheel, he had a stick that he did the wheel with. I mean it was the old time way. When I got down, I asked the potter. I said, has this potter ever come to that potter? And he said, no. And so some of our missionaries took him aside and led him to the Lord. He got saved. So we had 200 save the tent. We had them get saved. The potter got saved. And after that, there was a lady with the potter. When he got saved, it was a lady. She's about 80 years of age. And whenever he got saved, I didn't know what was going on, but she walked out over to him, and she started talking to him, and she's going like this, and she goes like that. She'd do it like this, and do it like that again. And I said, man, what in the world are they talking about? And my interpreter said, she's telling Him that the last time we were here that she got saved too and she took the red dot off She was no longer Hindu and she was saved too and she's telling him what wonderful it is to be saved to be a Christian Man, we we had a fantastic I mean you're talking about God coming down and working in a village and the multiple of the village people got saved and you telling me this, preacher? I'll tell you why I'm telling you this. Because one night where I was staying at, I got woke up in the middle of the night, and I heard some wailing. I heard some crying. I heard stuff like I never heard in my life. I mean noises and sounds like I never heard. I didn't know what it was. It actually sounded scary. Something was going on somewhere and I'm completely deaf in my left ear. So I have a problem with knowing where sound comes from. I don't know what direction that was. I heard the noise. I didn't know if it was coming that way from that way. I have no idea. When a train blows its whistle, I have no idea whether it's coming from the right or the left. That's from being deaf in one ear. So I didn't know where it was at. I couldn't go investigate. I couldn't tell where it was from. I said, Matthew, in the middle of the night, two o'clock in the morning, I heard, I woke up, I heard the wailing, I heard crying, I heard all kinds of stuff. What in the world was that? He said, come here. He took me outside, walked me down a little pathway, took me over to a little building where livestock would be at, little gate, little entryway, little building there, took me around the side of that, and let me peek into the little gate thing, and I looked in there. There sit a whole bunch of Indian women. And they've been there all night long. And every day of our meeting, 24 hours a day, these women and groups of women would pray that God would bless the meeting, pray that people would be saved. And they are weeping and wailing and fasting and begging. I come to find that it wasn't my preaching that God honored. He honored the price that some women were willing to pay to stay up all night long praying to ask God to do something. And a potter's going to heaven because of those women. You're willing to pay. You know what the problem with Christianity is today? It just costs us nothing. About the only hardship we have is on the way to Sunday, trying to decide where we're going to eat after church. That's the only hardship we have. Listen, if you really want revival, it's going to cost. If you really want to see your soul saved, it's going to cost. If you really want God to work in your life, it's not going to be reduced. There's no going to be 50% off. You are going to have to make a choice. if you're willing to pay that cost. And he said you have to give up lands and houses and all of that. Can I let you on just a little secret before we pray? I realized something. It dawned on me one time. I am going to have to give up everything I have when I die. You understand that? Forcibly. I decided one day, I think I'd rather just do it voluntarily rather than forcibly. I want God to use me. And I don't want anything, hold on to anything that would prevent Him from being able to use me. It's going to cost you. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to hide the cost. It's gonna cost you. Now you have to decide, are you willing to pay that cost? Let's stand to our feet, our heads are bowed, our eyes are closed.