People. Yeah. It is such a sweet fellowship with sisters and brothers in Christ. You know, you can just go anywhere in the world and meet someone in the Lord and immediately you have great commonality. Last week I spoke to a group of women in Brevard, North Carolina, and it was a non-denominational setting. And they had heard a tape of me doing a trusting God when the path is hard retreat, talking about trusting his sovereign plan, trusting his word, and trusting his character. And they asked if I would bring that to this gathering. And I said, yes, I would. And at first I thought, this is a group of, it was put on by a Catholic church. and Presbyterians and Baptists and Episcopalians and Pentecostals all came. I was just amazed at the turnout coming into a Catholic church, but they did. It was just, we had such a wonderful, just like we are here, wonderful time in the Lord. And I thought, you know, And he gave me this the night before in my heart, that the place of suffering is something we all have in common, whether we're rich or poor, brilliant or of average intelligence or below average intelligence. All of that really doesn't matter. when you're on a hard path, if you've got cancer and you meet someone else who's got cancer, you don't ask for their financial statement or for their intelligence quotient. You just want to share the thing that you have in common. It's the same with Christ. So the cross and suffering are the two places that we all have in common as Christians. I thought, you know, maybe we need to quit talking about how we can become more unified and alike and just share those things that we are unified in. And that suffering is one of the things. And I think the persecuted church so often, they do share a greater unity than we who live an easier life here in the states because they have to come together to worship. So anyway, it's wonderful to come together to share the sorrows and the joys. It's great to come together to share the possibilities that are ours, the good gifts that are ours in Christ. So let's go to him one more time and ask him just to bless our gathering. Oh God, you are great and good. And we give you praise, our most awesome and wonderful Father. You are so great. and so good that you determined in your heart before you ever created this planet and we, your people, you determined that you would save us from ourselves, from our selfish, sinful hearts. You determined before the foundation of the earth, that the Lamb of God, your precious Son would suffer that we might be able to come here right now and talk to you. And not only talk to you, Father, but find help in you through Christ your Son and our Savior. So, Lord, in these minutes let visit us again faithfully with your Holy Spirit, not only awaken our hearts to hear and receive and believe the truth and want you to help us live the truth, but Lord, also by the work of your Holy Spirit, just awaken our bodies We've had a full day already. I don't know that the mind and the heart can hold anymore. We've had a wonderful lunch. It's just our inclination would be to take a good nap right now. And so we ask you, by the work of your gracious spirit, to wake us up if there's something we need to hear. But Lord, sometimes we need to rest. So if there is one here who needs to just put her head on her chest and get a few minutes of just sleep before she goes home to who knows what, I just give her the grace, the freedom to do that. How grateful that we are free in Christ and so Christ Jesus. There is no other name by which we come to the Father. There is no other name by which we make our prayer except you, Jesus. And it's in your name that we ask that this prayer be answered. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Trusting God when the path is hard. Trusting His plan. He's sovereign. He's in control of everything. Trusting His Word, His every promise and His every prediction is true. And so it's when we are in intimate fellowship with Him in His Word and in His prayer that we not only learn about Him and His goodness and His greatness that we've just sung about, but we just get to know Him and love Him. That He's there. That He's just there. We're under the shelter of His wings. We're resting with Him there. And now to think about trusting His character, trusting especially His love. But before we talk about trusting His love, let's look at chapter 26. And just think about Judas for just a minute or two. And so one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests, these guys who had been plotting and planning to kill Jesus. And Judas said to them, what will you give me if I deliver Jesus over to you? And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment on, he sought an opportunity to betray the Lord. It's hard to believe, isn't it? He had lived with Jesus for, I guess, three years. I don't know any differently than that. Had participated in His miracles. He was there when Jesus fed the 5,000. He was one of those that watched the food just miraculously appear. He handed it out. That must have been thrilling. He stood there as Jesus healed thousands. He was sent out by Jesus to take a ministry of healing and the gospel to other people and yet he wasn't satisfied with that. I've wondered about Judas. Did he think, you know, I thought Lord, I thought he had come to reign and I wasn't planning on a cross and this just doesn't seem fair. Did he think it just doesn't seem fair that life was getting harder and so rather than coming to Christ with, Lord this doesn't seem fair, he decided to make his own way. And so he found his way just right into the heart of evil and evil found its way right into his heart. And you know sometimes when we live in the place of, Lord this just doesn't seem fair. We forget about God is just and God is faithful and so we can trust that God will be just and he will be faithful even in situations that don't seem fair. The day that I found out that Duane was HIV and I went to kneel with the Lord in the scriptures in Psalm 91 As I knelt, as I was going down on my knees, I distinctly remember thinking, Lord, this just isn't fair. I've been faithful to my husband. I haven't done illegal drugs. So why am I having to worry about being infected with HIV? And by the time I got to my knees, God gave me awareness of what I did deserve. And you know, it was worse than HIV. And so instead of crying out for justice, I cried out for mercy. And you know, it was a wonderful moment in my life to know that it was not justice I needed. It was mercy that I needed. And so I said, Lord, have mercy. And He did. He did. So sometimes life doesn't seem fair because sometimes life isn't fair. But God is just. And we can entrust what doesn't seem fair to Him. and trust Him to make something good and wonderful out of it. You know, He took what didn't seem fair to me, and He made it into the best time of my life with Dwayne. And we thought we had had a good life together, but we had only begun to live when Christ visited us on a hard path. And then we go, and to see the faithfulness of God and Christ, he goes on to serve the Lord's Supper. to men who are going to deny Him and who are going to scatter in their fear, but in His faithfulness. So, you know, we are unfaithful, but God is faithful. His character remains firm even when we fail. And then He goes on to say to Peter, after they had sung this hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives and on the way Jesus turned to Peter and He said there in verse 31, And he's talking to all of them. You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. And there's Peter. He's like I was before AIDS. He could handle anything. He didn't have a Dwayne to fall back on, but he was determined. His courage and his personal strength sufficient enough for anything that came along. And Peter answered the Lord, saying, Now all these other guys might fall away. They're not made of the same kind of stuff I am. Because I will never fall away from you, Lord. And Jesus said to Peter, Peter, truly, I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times And Peter said to him, just so convinced that he knew better than the Lord knows. And we're just stunned by this, by his arguing with the Lord. But don't we do the same thing when we try to weasel our way out of something the Lord's calling us to do that we just don't want to do? Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you. Listen to me, God. I know better than you do. And all the disciples, they said the same thing. Yes, we're going to die with you. You know, Jesus knows our heart. He knows the heart is deceitful, and that's why He came for us, and that's why He loved us. And you know, I guess the Luke passage or the Mark passage, it just won't come to my mind right now, but where Jesus says to Peter, Peter, Satan's asked permission to sift you. And Peter, I've prayed for you. And when you turn back, go and strengthen your brothers. And you know when you're on the hard path, and you stumble and you start to fall in unbelief, ask God to remind you Jesus is praying for you. And then when you turn back, go and strengthen your brothers. You know, we're not going to walk the hard path perfectly, because we're still people of the flesh as well as of the spirit. But we can go to Christ and say, forgive me. Come and help me. Go and strengthen my brothers and my sisters. And He will, just as He did for Peter. So Judas refused to trust God's faithfulness. He refused to trust God's justice. He refused to trust God's love and care for him. And so he refused to embrace God's promises and plans for his life. And what did he do instead? He embraced Satan's plan. for his wife, but God in his love for you and for me and by his sovereign will and by his divine power, God used Satan's plan to prove his love for us. He used the enemy's plan to cover the sins of his people with his love and he used the enemy's plan to ultimately defeat the enemy. The one who had planned it was the one who got defeated. And so what the enemy intended for evil, God intended for good. It's an extraordinary God that we have. And the good was just this outpouring of God's redemptive love. And what I learned along the hard path of suffering is that God's love is selfless. And His love is most always surprising. He just really surprises us with the way He visits us with His love. It's confounding and it's surprising. And His love is supreme over all things. And to talk about the love of God, we've got to go to the cross of Christ because that is the grand display of God's love, of just how magnificent His love is for His people. And you know, as we look at the path Jesus walked to the cross, do you notice that He stopped everything to pray? to go to Gethsemane, to talk to his father. And there at Gethsemane, he prayed and he asked the father if there was any other way, if there was any other path. And then forgetting about himself, perfectly selfless, Jesus bowed to his father's will and he walked the path to Golgotha. And there at Gethsemane, we see Jesus in all of his beauty and all of his perfection, first identifying with us, saying, is there some other way? just pulling back from the suffering. He was the Son of Man there. He was our representative. So he pulls back. But as the Son of God, just selflessly loving you and loving me and loving His Father, He embraced the Father's plan. So, you know, when our skeptical friends ask us if we really believe Jesus is the only way, we can tell them, you know what, Jesus asked that question too. Jesus asked the same question. And then in just selfless love and total submission to his Father, He walked to the cross. No, there's no other way. There's no other way. Because no other way has died for all the sins of all their people. No other way has done that. You know, as a young woman, I had denied Christ, like Peter. And as a young man, Dwayne, like Thomas, had doubted Christ. But the selfless love of Christ scooped us both up and caused us to trust Him in spite of ourselves. And so, no, there is no other way. Why would we want any other way? And you know, sometimes it's just not the skeptic that tries to make another way to Jesus, to God, to heaven. You know, sometimes we try and make another way. We try something outside of Christ to make peace with God. We try our good works. We try our intelligence. We think if we just go to enough Bible studies or if we go to enough Christian conferences, we even think if we have a good quiet time. It's not my quiet time that justifies me before God. It is only Christ and His blood. Nothing, nothing but Jesus. In Christ alone I stand. Then in chapter 27, Verse 33, the Bible says that they came to a place called Golgotha, and there they offered Jesus wine to drink mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. He refused it. Jesus was literally dying of thirst, but he knew that the gall would deaden his senses, and so he refused the sedative because he wanted his full mental faculties. Why did he want his full mental faculties? Why was that more important to him than his personal comfort? Well, it was important to him because he had a work to finish for the Father. He had a mother to care for and he wanted to tend to his mother. It's in John's Gospel that he tends to his mother so beautifully and asks John to take her home with him and care for her. He had a thief to save and so he wanted to be alert to that thief. He had put his claim on that thief before the earth was created and so he had to bring that thief on home to him. He had a cup of suffering to fill for my sins and your sins. So his thirst, his pain, his heartache, His hard path was not his focus. His mother was his focus. The thief was his focus. His father was his focus. And just think about it. He was thinking about you. You were his focus. I was his focus. And so as we gaze upon the cross of Christ, we learn that love forgets about itself. Love as revealed in Jesus is selfless. He refused the sedative out of love. You know, as you walk along a hard path, sometimes it is so tempting to want a sedative, just something to numb the pain, the hurt. Just hoping that this sedative, whatever it is, will fix the problem. I know how you feel. The day after we found out that Duane was HIV, I called my Bible study teacher and I asked her if she knew of a good counselor we could go to. And you know, I believe strongly in good counseling. But I tell you, at that moment, I think I was looking to a good counselor to be sort of a fix to the problem, something to help me numb the pain, and Nancy, my Bible study teacher, She recommended a counselor, but then she said, Jane, do you remember back in the fall I asked you to come and lead a small group of women, and you said no, you just couldn't do that. And I said, yes, I remember. And she said, well, Jane, I want you to reconsider becoming a discussion group leader. And I said to her, I said, Nancy, did you hear what I just told you? My husband has HIV. We don't know my status yet. And she said, Jane, I heard you. And you know what, Jane, you need something to focus on now besides yourself. And you know, that was some of the best advice I've ever been given. Jane, you need somebody to focus on besides yourself. Now, I've got to tell you, that day I did not have the desire nor did I have the ability to focus on anybody but myself. But you know what? I knew I was hearing truth from that woman. I knew I was hearing God's loving purpose for my life, that already help was coming from heaven. And I knew also that if I was to focus on others, I was going to have to first focus on Jesus. And so as I set my gaze upon the cross, bringing my heart to Christ, confessing my desire not to focus on anybody else, but to focus, I want folks to focus on me, Lord. That's what my desire is right now, and I just brought that to Him. He began to transform my heart. You know, I don't think I ever thought until that moment He had the power to transform my heart. I think I thought I was stronger than God. Now how did I, I don't know how I came up with that. I mean I had denied him all my life and all of a sudden I believed and so it had to be his power changing my heart. And so, but I think I, you know, I guess I believe that. I'm not sure. But I think at that moment I realized for the first time that God was stronger than me. And it was just what He revealed to me Himself. And some of you were talking to me in the line as we were going in for lunch about your lives being too busy. And you know you need to have more time for the Lord. You know that there are things that need to be filled away. And if your life's too busy, it's probably not only the Lord who's suffering, your family's probably suffering. And you know who else is probably suffering? You're probably suffering. You probably don't tend your own self. very well. And so how do we do that? How do we decide what to peel away and what to keep? I mean, there's certain things you've got to do. I mean, the clothes have got to be washed. The meals have got to be cooked. Somebody's got to take the kids to school if you've got a job. You've got to be there at 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock. I mean, there are just some things that have to be done. So how do I decide what is important and what's not important? Well, you just ask God and leave it with Him. That's what you do. Because He can show you. And sometimes it takes time. You know, sometimes it takes time for Him to peel away the unimportant. Not that it takes, that He could do it just like that. But for whatever reason, He wants us to understand that this is God directing our lives. So, you know, He's got the power to show you. So just ask Him and then wait. Wait for Him to reveal it to you. And so, He began to transform my heart. And so it is His love that is selfless. It's not my love. His is the power. asking, daily clinging to Christ for help. If I was to focus on others, it's Jesus poured into me. by the work of Jesus on the cross, and it's Jesus poured out of me by the work of the cross applied to my heart by the work of the Holy Spirit. And you know, this is a lesson that God just continues to teach me every day. And during much of Dwayne's illness, he was hospitalized at Walter Reed Hospital and they took wonderful, wonderful care of Dwayne and they took wonderful care of me too. And it was just three months before Dwayne died. in this particular time, and we had come through so much. God had shown me that he was sufficient to everything we needed. I mean, right down to the penny to make our house payment. That's another story that we don't even have time for today. But anyway, God had proved his sufficiency to me. So you would think that Jane would just be walking the path of trusting God with just sweet surrender and not having any struggle at all. So anyway, here we are. It's three months before Duane died, and we've been at Walter Reed for three months. Duane's doctors felt that it would be best for Duane in his best interest to take him home for his remaining days. And Duane was very ill at this time and the thought of taking him home alone just, well, it sort of panicked me. And I said to Dr. Churn, you know, I can't do this because, you know, he's having to have shots and And while, you know, the military insurance that we had would cover some things, it wouldn't cover a nurse coming in to give him the shots and take care of changing the Hickman catheter hookups. I don't even remember what they are, because I'm not a nurse by nature. But anyway, Dr. Chuck said, I'm saying you can take care of all that. And I said, well, I can't. You know, I can't and I won't. And he said, well, yes, you can. And, you know, they trained me up to be able to give a shot. And Dwayne said I gave shots better than anybody. And the reason I did is because they were Holy Spirit empowered shots. I mean, and that's the truth. That's the truth. But anyway, I wanted to stay at the hospital with all the doctors and nurses and the wonderful care. They really loved us. I mean, they took such grand care of us. So I told the doctor my fears and finally I quit saying, I won't do it. Because that's what I said at first, you know, no, I'm not. And I said, finally I said, Dr. Chung, I don't think I can handle it. Do I sound like a woman who God had shown his faithfulness to? No, I don't. I sound like a woman of absolutely no faith. And that's what happens to us one minute. You know, we're trusting God for everything and the next minute we say, well, I've hit the wall of trusting God. No more. And Dr. Chung, he just smiled at me gently and folded his arms and he said, Jane, you've already handled the worst. And I thought, well, you know I have. God has already carried me through the worst. And you know, just finding out was the worst thing. And you know, some of you have been walking a hard path and you're afraid of what's coming up next. Well, I just want to ask you, could it be that you've already handled, with God's grace, the worst thing that's going to happen to you? That there's nothing else that's going to be any harder than He's already given you the grace to handle? You know, I think by experience, And by the truth of the Word, I can assure you that you have handled the worst because His Word promises us that as we are conformed into His image, and I think this is in 2 Corinthians 2 or 3, somewhere around in there, where we are being conformed more and more, but we're being taken from glory to glory. So He's been at work in you. And by His grace, He's not going to let you down now. So it was Dwayne's best interest to go home. My best interest, I thought, to stay at Walter Reed. So that night I just continued to cry out to God. I still did not have God's peace. It was an intense time of wrestling and the next morning as I drove to the hospital, I asked God that when I walked in, could it be that Dwayne would just say to me, you know Jane, I've decided I don't want to go home. I think we're better off to stay here. So that was my plan and that was what I asked God. Can we, you know, just have Dwayne say it. Well, I walked into the room and Dwayne was sleeping, but he had been awakened earlier that day because his devotional calendar was turned over to that morning's devotion. And so, you know, I never went over to read his morning devotion. You know, what was on the calendar. I just, I don't know why. I've never done it before. But that morning I did. And that morning the passage was Ecclesiastes 4, beginning with verse 9. And the Lord said to me, Jane, two are better than one. When one falls down, The other one can pick him up. If two lie down together, they will keep warm. The one be overpowered, two can defend themselves. And then he put the exclamation point at the end of the sentence for me. He said, Jane, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Oh, my friends, Christ is the Word. Christ is in the Word. And as I gazed upon the Word, I gazed upon Christ. Selfless love said, Jane, you take Dwayne home. You can care for him. Jane, I've already handled the hardest part for him. Selfless love said, Jane, I'm the third strand. You're not going to be broken. Selfless love was going home with us. Selfless love turned my focus from myself to Christ, my help. God's love. Oh, it filled my heart. His love filled that room. His love filled our home when we got home. One afternoon, just sitting there by the fire, listening to beautiful music, Duane declared, Jane, I think I was born to live like this. And I mean, he was absolutely serious. He wasn't, you know, I mean, he said, you know, this is the best time of our lives. Now here is a man who thrived on activity and thrived on activity that would take him to dangerous places to do dangerous things. All of a sudden the thing that he said he was created for was to sit there by the fire and listen to beautiful music and that this was the best time of our lives. And so what I had started down on my knees thinking this isn't fair. God took what didn't seem fair to me for a moment and turned it into the best time of our lives. Talk about the transforming power of God. My sister and I were talking not long ago. She came up shortly after that. She was with us the last six weeks of Duane's life and she said it was the best time of her life. She said that she had never experienced a moment quite like that. You know, it was the best time of my life because I got to see God's love do for me what I could not do for myself. And you know, I think in God's love and mercy, He let me hit these brick walls of, I've come as far as I can come, I'm not going any farther, I can't do that. So that I would not get confident, well, you know, I'm handling this real well. I would hit the brick wall and would discover it's Jesus I need. It's not that I'm handling this well, it's that the grace of God is carrying me through. It was the best time of my life. Surprised, just absolutely surprised by God's love. I had dreaded going home, but those three months were the best time of my life. And I ask you, why is it that when God tells us to deny ourselves and walk a hard path, we think of what we might lose rather than what we might gain? God's got glorious gain for us. He's got the good gifts. He's prepared for us. But I consider what I might lose first. And so think about what I actually did lose. I did lose some things. I lost fear. I lost worry. I lost selfishness. That's what I lost. And what did I gain? I gained a deeper trust in God. I gained God's will being done in my life. I gained God's love taking me beyond myself. I gained the promises of Scripture being fulfilled in my life. I gained the best time of our lives. And so yes, God's love is surprising. We plan for loss. God plans for gain. The only thing he wants us to lose is the old, evil flesh. That's all he wants us to die to, is the flesh. He wants us to live to the good things of life. And as you walk a hard path, and going home, The hard path might still be hard, but what loving surprises do you think God has prepared for you as you go home, as you continue to walk the path with Him? Ask Him to give you eyes to see and record what He shows you, and ask a friend to pray with you that you will see the good gifts. And ask a friend to come alongside of you, that when you're not seeing the good gifts, that they'll pray with you then to encourage you. And tell your friend, if you see the good gifts, you tell me, Jane, this is God. God's doing this. This isn't just working out this way. This isn't chance. This is God. Ask your good friends to give you not only a place of somebody to be accountable to, but to give you a friend that can lift you to elevate your thoughts to God when your thoughts are just really down in the trenches trying to struggle and survive. You know, in Ephesians 3, God promises that if we cry out to Him in prayer, He's going to answer our prayer beyond all that we've asked or imagined. Again, it's my privilege to ask, and His is the power to accomplish. And His love will surprise us by giving us something far better than what we ask for or what we deserve. Do you have a fear that His love will not do for you what it's done for me? Friends, God's love is far greater than your doubt. He's more powerful than you are. And just think about the thief on the cross. Talk about surprising love. There in verse 38, there were those two robbers. They were being crucified with Jesus. One on his right and one on his left. And those who were passing by also hurled insults at Jesus. And in verse 44, in the same way, the robbers who were crucified with Jesus heaped insults on him. And then in Luke, he gives us the rest of the story. Luke's Gospel tells us the rest of the story. As one of the thieves heard Jesus pray, Father forgive them, this thief turned to the other thief and said, just out of the blue, we are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. It was out of the blue. One minute he was mocking God, and the next minute he was saying, You know, I deserve what I'm getting. This man does. It was like me going down on my knees one minute thinking I deserve better than this. I deserve justice, God. And the next minute thinking, oh God, have mercy on me. Love lets us see. Oh, let's just see deep into our hearts so we can see high into the glorious good that God has accomplished on our behalf. And so the thief said, this man's done nothing wrong. And then, and then he had such a heart change, he turned to Jesus and he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. He's asking for Jesus to go on to heaven and remember me. And then Jesus, going beyond all that this guy asked or imagined, Jesus said to him, today, today you will be with me in paradise. Today. It's beyond all that the guy asked or imagined. There is no situation that you face, no hard path that is beyond the surprising love of God. You ask Him, He's going to do more than you ask or imagine. One more thing about the thief that I just think is wonderful to think about is the surprise and shock of people when they got to heaven and the thief was there. And you know it's going to be fun because they're going to be people that we thought were hopeless. And we're going to say, yay, God, you did it. You answered my prayer. And I just wonder what precious mama or wife was praying for that thief and had given up hope and probably didn't even come to his execution because they just thought all was lost and just not going there. And it could be that they were there, we just don't have the record of it. We don't have the record of everything that happened. Who was it? John who said all the books of the world couldn't record what all happened during the time that Jesus was here on this earth as the Son of Man. So I ask you, have you lost hope for a loved one? Well, it's never. Don't give up hope, keep praying. There's no path beyond the hope of God's love. God's love is not only selfless and surprising, God's love is supreme. Supreme over everything, over good, over evil, over the devil that tempts us. over the evil that resides in our own hearts. We just look at what he did with the thief, instantly changed. And we look at Jesus there. Evil did not kill Jesus. In verse 50, Jesus gave up his spirit. not only did not kill Jesus, evil could not keep Jesus in the grave. In chapter 28, verse 5, the angel said to the women, do not be afraid for I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, he's risen just as he said he would. Yes, God's plan will be accomplished. Verse 9, suddenly Jesus met his people And so the death and the resurrection of Christ prove once again that God's love is supreme over good and evil. And this is why Paul could say Jesus is the yes to all the promises of God. He's overcome death. He's overcome evil. And evil aides attacked my home, scared me nearly to death, wasted my husband's body. But God's love is supreme. And God took what the enemy meant for evil and he used it for good. And it was just nine days before Dwayne. was to die and it was evident that death was at the door. There was no question that Dwayne was dying and Dwayne looked up at me that morning. Ginger was there with me, my sister, and we'd just finished cleaning him up and the bed was fresh and he was as fresh as we could get and his body was so sore at that time it was just hard to move him so it just, you know, As best we could, we tended him. And he was looking out the window. It's just a beautiful morning here in Richmond. And all of a sudden he looked up at me and he said, Jane, how much longer do you think it will be? And I said, I don't know, Duane. How much longer do you think? And he said, well, I think it's going to be sooner rather than later. And I said, well, Dwayne, how do you feel about that? And he said, Jane, I am so excited because I'm going to get to see Jesus. So excited. There was no fear. There were no if only's. There were no why means. There was no longing for more time at that point. Just excitement to see Jesus. Talk about sufficient grace. Talk about prayers being answered beyond all that we can ask or imagine. Talk about the power of Christ being more powerful than death that waited at the door. Talk about the transforming work of grace that goes on in our heart to be able to say, I am so excited I'm going to get to see Jesus. And then in a little while, another thing that he said was, I had always talked about my granny. And I just, in Sunday school, when they used to say that Jesus was the only perfect person, this was when I was about three or four years old, I would tell them I didn't know my granny. And I can remember the Sunday school teacher telling me, Jane, your granny is not perfect. Yes, she is. She's like Jesus, you know, and the lady would try and tell me, no, she's not. But anyway, she's like him now. She's with him. And Duane had just heard me talk about my granny. I only had her for the first seven years of my life, but she made such a profound impact on my life. And those of you who are grandmothers and who are going to be grandmothers, The influence you have on the lives of those children is just extraordinary. So scoop them up and tell them how much you love them and how much Jesus loves them. And one day, Jesus will grab their heart if he doesn't already have it. But anyway, later on that morning, he said, Jan, I'm going to get to see your granny. And then we talked about heaven just in a wonderful way. Duane was an adventurer and he loved to scuba dive and I was scared to death to scuba dive and I said Duane I'll get scuba dive with you in heaven. You know, I won't be scared of the equipment. I'll be able to do that. So we had fun. We need to talk more about heaven than we do. But here was a man who had doubted, who used to say, I wish I could say I believe, but I don't. And now he was a man who treasured Christ. I mean, it was just... He believed and trusted that the love of God was supreme and ruled over the death that waited at the door. He believed that now. In verse 18, Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And not only has the authority been given to him, in verse 20 he says, and love. In some of the translations, I love it, it says, Behold, I am with you always to the very end of the age. And so you know what's happened. We're right back where we started from, aren't we? Christ has authority over whatever we face. When you go home today, He has authority over whatever is ahead of you. And He's going home with you. He's the third strand. And He's more than the third strand. He's the Christ who's won every victory of every battle you will face. And you know hard paths are not meant to defeat or destroy us. They are meant to hem us in by love and the mercy of Christ for us to see Him in a way we would have never seen Him before. And my sister Ginger walked into Dwayne's room right after she had helped me get him ready and then she had left the room and she wasn't there when we had this conversation. And when she came back in, She said, Jane, there's just a radiance about Dwayne. He's glowing. And you know He was. It just wasn't imagined and it stayed on Him for about, not about, it stayed on Him for those nine days. Now the day that death came, the glow left, it did. Death came and took Him. But Paul tells us, absent from the body, present with the Lord, to live is Christ, to die is gain. So that body was dead. But Dwayne was not dead, he was living. But before death came, he was shining like the stars in the universe. There's a passage in Philippians where Paul calls us to stop complaining. He says we're to shine like stars in the universe, to be a glorious display of God's splendid work, and that was what was happening to Duane. The path was hard, but Jesus was there, and Jesus was glorious, and all things were working for good that we would be conformed into His image. And so that's why I can say to you on the authority of Scripture and by the experience of my own life, everything that enters our lives as an opportunity to trust God more. Everything. An opportunity to know Him better. Everything. Dying with AIDS. Preparing supper when you go home tonight. Your husband's lack of affection. Your singleness. Your illness. A child's problem. Just a leaky roof. A flooded basement. outside his care and his control. Elizabeth Elliott. I hope all of you know Elizabeth Elliott. You younger women, if you don't know about her, you talk to some of the older women here in this fellowship and you ask them to recommend a good book or two that Elizabeth Elliott's written. But Elizabeth Elliott was speaking at the Billy Graham Training Center a few years ago. And remember, her first husband, Jim Elliot, was martyred in South America. And the movie that was out recently, End of the Sphere, is sort of the rest of that story after Jim Elliot and the four other men who went in to the Wurani Indians were murdered. There's the rest, the End of the Sphere is the rest of the story, and it's good. encourage you to get that DVD and watch it at home and keep it and show it to your children. Because I think the greatest thing about that DVD, about that movie, is it shows that people go in to these Indians who kill their loved ones, not seeking revenge or vengeance. They go in to take from Christ. You know, and as we look at the world around us and see how it's, I'm going to get you before you get me, and I'm going to get you because you got me. Just what a different picture it is when Christ is carried. I mean, this whole culture was transformed by these two women who took Christ. First, these five men who went. And they died that others might live and just like Jesus did. But anyway, Elizabeth Elliott was one of the women who went in with her little girl who, I forget how old Valerie was at that time, she was just a toddler. Elizabeth had lost her husband, Jim, first husband was martyred. Her second husband suffered and died from a horrible cancer. You know, he even, I think, got to the place where he was so, Lord, are you there? You know, he suffered so greatly. So Elizabeth Elliot knows suffering. And she writes about it and used to talk about it beautifully. As I understand, she's suffering from dementia now. And it's hard to believe, isn't it, that that wonderful woman with that great mind and heart for Christ is suffering. from dementia, but she is, and God is over that as well. So anyway, Elizabeth was there and she was talking to this seminar about how she takes her sufferings and her sins, her hard paths, and she offers them up to God as a living sacrifice. And so later on in the morning, in a Q&A period, this young woman, her question was, Elizabeth, you say you offer your sufferings and your sins up to Christ. What do you mean by that exactly? And Elizabeth said, I get all my needs. And I cup my hands and I put whatever the issue is that's causing me worry or fear or doubt, and I put it in my hands and I offer it to Christ and I say, this is yours. This is a sacrifice to you to do with as you please. It's yours. I'm giving it to you, not to be mine anymore, but to be yours. that with him. There was a couple in the audience, they were missionaries to Africa and I happened to meet them the first day of the seminar and they were just this lovely couple but they were so worn out and they didn't tell me they were worn out. I mean they made no complaint about we are worn out and friends of ours have sent us here to get some rest. They just, they radiated Christ, but they were so weary, you could tell. And so at the end of the seminar, the last day, the couple came up to me and they told me their story. And he said that he had suffered from insomnia. for over a year and that he had taken sleeping tablets, as he called them, for almost that whole year. And he said they were doing things to his health that was worse than the insomnia. So he said, three weeks ago, I quit the pills. And he said, to my knowledge, I haven't slept in three weeks. And he said, you know, I realize I've probably slept because I wouldn't be alive. But he said, I don't know that I slept. I have been sleepless for three weeks. And so after the Q&A period, right before lunch, he and his wife walked the short walk down to the chapel, about a 15 minute walk down the mountain a little ways. And then they came back up and they had lunch and he said, but on the way down the path, he said, God just pulled me off of the path into the forest. And he said, offer it to me. And he said, I got on my knees and I put my insomnia in my hands and I just offered it up to him. And I said, Lord, I sacrifice it to you. I offer it to you for you to do with as you please. And Lord, if it's your will that I stay awake for the rest of my life, I just trust you'll help me with that. But it's yours now, Lord. and then we had lunch and then I went out on the deck and the rocking chairs and it was about this time of year I think and he said I fell asleep. And he said that night when we went into the third session with Elizabeth, he said, I slept through the whole session. I said, I am so glad I didn't see you. I would have said, look at that man over there sleeping through Elizabeth Elliot. Can you believe it? I said, I would have been judging and God would have been working. Oh, well, you know, I don't know if you want to call it a miracle, but I bet he calls it a miracle. And certainly extraordinary grace was being worked. And I would have been working extraordinary judgment. We can do that, can't we? Now, and he said he went on back to his room and he slept through the night. And I don't know what's happened to that lovely couple, but I know their story, Elizabeth's story, and their story has truly, truly meant much to my life and my walk of faith. I'm not telling you that if you put your sufferings in your hand and offer them up to God that you know the problem is going to be fixed that the illness will be healed or that your husband or you will get the job of your dreams or the child will return home today and say mommy forgive me and all is going to be well But what I do promise you is that God will honor your offering and he will work in your life bringing you good gifts from heaven. He'll bring you more of himself than you've ever known before. I can promise you that. And I can't promise you that one offering it up and it'll be done, never to worry about again. Sometimes it's a daily offering. You know, I told you, I had fear. God came in and helped me and then I'd hit another wall of fear and God would come in and help me. And I thought it was, as I told you last night at the beginning, I thought it was so interesting and so wonderful and so good of God when the doctor said, Jane, you've got a lump on your thyroid that I was visited with peace instead of fear. I just knew that it was God. And I was getting ready to teach Matthew 26, the offering a Mary to the Lord, where he turned and said, she's done a beautiful thing to me. This was Monday, and I was going to be teaching on Tuesday. And I remembered that two years ago, when I had started in this struggle about giving up the prayer ministry at the cove, I had been in that passage, Matthew 26, on a particular morning in my quiet time, and when I got to the part where Jesus says, she's done a beautiful thing to me, I said, I want to do a beautiful thing for you. And so I wrote down several things that it might be, you know, my plan. And, you know, I thought they were beautiful things and they were things that I would have been doing for him. And that day, right after I got the phone call, and I was in that passage, getting ready to teach it the next day, I went back to that journal, and it was October 5th, 2004, and when I gazed upon that page, Lord, I want to do a beautiful thing for you, I said, Lord, is this the beautiful thing? Is this the beautiful thing, to have peace? instead of fear. To have the desire for more of Jesus in this instead of just Jesus get me out of this. Is this the beautiful thing? Jesus in me, giving peace to my soul so that Jesus can come out of me. You know, I think that's the beautiful thing. It's Jesus. It's not what I do for Jesus, it's what he does for me. Let's pray. Lord, help us. Help us take the things that we struggle with and offer them to you. And then Lord, do the beautiful thing. Make yourself more precious to us. Make yourself our greatest treasure. Make us more glorious as we are filled with you. Conform us into your image. Take us from glory to glory. May we not only know the truth, but Lord may we experience the truth. May we experience the love of God with us in Christ Jesus. May we be a woman when someone says, how do you know that God is real? Help us be a woman who can say with just all truthfulness and all delight, oh, I know because I talked to him just this morning. And Lord, when life is confounding and we think, God, how could you be in this? Lord, break into the evil, break into the doubts of our hearts and show us not only are you sovereign over this, but that you're going to use it for a loving purpose in our lives. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. Lord, we trust you, but we don't trust you enough. Jesus, we treasure you, but most of the time you're not our greatest treasure. Oh, we are so grateful that you have mercy upon us and that you take us as we are. But Lord, you don't leave us that way. You take us and you help us and you transform us. So Lord, help us be honest with you. Help us tell you what we really need. Lord, as we go home today, whatever awaits us, help us when we encounter the next struggle, if it's, you know, two hours from now, help us to remember that not only are you on our side, but you love us. No matter how we fail you, you love us and you care for us and you're going to see us through the stumble so that we will not fall headlong. We thank you, Jesus. And it's in your name I pray. Amen. Amen. I feel very awkward saying anything. But I want to thank a few people who brought this all together. It was a great team effort. And so I thank, and there's some leaning out people, there's a voice in this, but I want to thank Nina Donko, she's back. We need to pull together registration, and I know there are some women.