I want to give you a couple of reports that are somewhat related to what we're talking about here. I was able to speak with Pastor Tim Davis this week, and he and his wife were both there in the hospital with their daughter, Elena. Her name is spelled A-L-A-I-N-A. I had received a lot of emails with a different spelling, but if you want to jot that down, that's the correct spelling. He pastors a small church over in Scranton, South Carolina. I'd never heard of Scranton. It's over near Florence on the east side of the state. It's amazing the improvements that have been made in treatment of burns, and as he described to me some of the things they were doing and what Elaina had been through. Thankfully, she had enough area on her body where she was not burned that they have been able to take enough skin grafts to close in the third-degree burns that she had on about half her body. That was the thing that made such long delays for my wife and daughter because they had to harvest the skin over and over from the same places, and it would have to heal and then harvest it again. But Elena is doing very, very well. And there's a possibility she's going to be able to get to go home and do some recuperation there even this week before she comes back for additional treatments. But it's going to be a long, difficult road. But he was so thankful when I spoke to him. And so we're putting a little package together with a, sorry, there's something loose here under my feet. It may be this wire here. I don't know. But, nevertheless, they're going to be very encouraged. We're going to send them a book and a letter and the offering in the morning to their home in Scranton. That's going to be the most effective way. I think, Pastor Carver, you mentioned that we got a good offering. We got about $3,500 for them, and that's going to be a big help to them, I know. And also, I want to share a prayer request with you, and I want you to just take this to the Lord. I mentioned to you about five or six weeks ago that sometimes we were a little hesitant to share needs because, especially if they're for our family or something like that, sometimes, I don't mean to be unkind, but They don't always want us to put them in the spotlight, okay? And they certainly don't want anyone to add to their burden or their pressure. But I want to ask prayer for Becky. And I'm asking you right now not to say anything to Becky. It would mortify her if she knew that I was mentioning this. But she needs prayer with her schoolwork this semester. She is an extremely diligent student. She is a very hard-working student, but she is really struggling more than she ever has before this semester with the courses that she's taking, and it has been discouraging for her. We've been praying about it a good bit. She needs your prayers, okay? Don't ask her questions. Don't, I mean, really, it'll embarrass her if you talk to her about it, so I'm asking her not to do it, and if you find out you did, I pray you get the hiccups, okay? So just don't do it, all right? But do pray for her, if you would, and pray that the Lord would humble her, okay? Now, I know you say, humble her? Yeah, right. Because when you get discouraged, you need to be humbled, okay? And so pray the Lord will work in that situation, okay? and give us wisdom as we seek to help her and encourage her. Thank you for your prayers for me. I think I've turned the corner this week. Sunday night when I got home, my leg was swollen, but Monday, the swelling was down and I haven't seen any swelling since. And boy, I'm telling you, it's amazing how loose that knee has gotten since it quit swelling. And I'm very encouraged and all excited about getting back to normal. some semblance of normalcy. Thank you also for your prayers. I mentioned to you a few weeks ago how overwhelmed I was with some obligations I had committed myself to. About, I think it was 1993 or 4, I started working on another degree and I'm almost finished with it, but I was in a course that I just had no time to work on and time had run out on me. And I had gotten several extensions and I couldn't with integrity get any more. And, um, today I turned in my paper and took my final exam. And so I'm going to take a little break now. And, uh, uh, somebody asked me, well, how's that feel? I said, feels sort of like new Orleans after the storm had stopped. Now I've got to clean up everything else. and a lot of stuff that's been piled up that I've got to get to and a lot of things I've got to take care of. So I'm going to not enroll in anything for a little while until I get some of these other things taken care of and some organizational issues and things like that. All right, now all of that is building us up to this. in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 16, the theme verse for our conference. And I'm going to read a few verses here and make just a few comments about it and kind of get us a little bit prepared here maybe for what we're going to begin to do at the men's retreat and then in our missions conference next week. So thankful to have Dr. Dave Barba here. What a tremendous testimony he has been to all of us through church planting and still involved in helping to plant churches around the country and strengthening the home base so that we can continue this great missions enterprise around the world. But here in Ephesians chapter five, it says, redeeming the time because the days are evil. I was in the doctor's office earlier this week, and I was picking up some paperwork, and I was making an entry in my calendar. I use the little calendar like this. A lot of people say, well, why don't you get yourself one of those electronic things? Thank you very much, I like this. I have a cell phone that has all that electronic stuff on it, and all those other kinds of things, but nobody in here can boot up their calendar as fast as I can. You see that? Just, boom, like that. It's really easy, and it's all right there in front of me, and there's a lot of writing on it. Now, I understand, you know, I've tried the PDA thing, but this works really good for me. I have, I don't know, close to, I guess almost 30 of these that represents 30 years, and I can tell you just about what I have done throughout the day. First, second, third, fourth thing, all the way through the evening for all those years. And it really helps me. When I was working on the testimony book that we wrote some years ago, I used those calendars to help me remember when things had happened. And about... Probably, I would think around 1980, we started ordering these calendars, or maybe sooner than that, we started ordering these calendars from Daytimer. And on the front of that calendar, we have Ephesians 5, 16. And every year when we order our calendars, they've got the die already set to put Faith Baptist Church and our address and the words, redeeming the time because the days are evil. And when we look at the calendar or when we look at the clock or whatever else we do, we need to remember the admonition of that verse. And I want you to be thinking, and I want all of you to be here and bring everyone that you can with you from our church and anybody else that you can get to come to, to this conference that's going to start on Sunday and throughout the week. The focus is going to be on redeeming the time, and I want you to think of it in a sense… in a sense like the halftime huddle of a team before they go back out for the rest of the game. You know, I never played sports much. I watched some when I was in high school. I mean, I watched our teams at high school. But I know enough to know about football team that if the score is tight or if the team is behind, that when they get together in the halftime, the coach talks to them about what has to happen in the next two quarters before that game is over. Because it's not going to last forever. I read the paper the other day where there was a baseball game, I believe it was here recently, that went, was it 18 innings? 18 innings? Somebody probably stayed up and watched that, didn't you? But 18 innings, I can't imagine that. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, they'd probably run out of pitchers and run out of players and everybody would be exhausted just hoping somebody would score or something just so they could go home. But, look folks, regardless of how long this lasts, it's not going to last forever. We're going to stand before the Lord. And if I were to ask you here tonight, how many of you believe that now that you're saved, that it doesn't matter what you do, because you're guaranteed to go to heaven? I don't think anybody in here would say that that's right. You would say that even though I'm saved, especially because I'm saved, I need to enter into this spiritual warfare that's taking place within me and do my part to support the cause of Christ in the world around me. Isn't that what you would say? And the same thing is true in world evangelism, in missions. Here we are at halftime, supposedly, or that's how I want you to think of this missions conference, and we're going to get in the huddle and we're going to say, okay, we've only got so much more opportunity. If that, we don't really know how long we've got, but we've got a little while. And we've got some resources and we've got some opportunities. Where are we going to be able to use them strategically to accomplish the most for Christ? I preached to you several weeks ago about our missions program and how I wanted to start plugging in more accountability from our missionaries as well as accountability to our missionaries. I want to commend the people of this church for their sacrificial giving and that needs to continue and it needs to increase. I want to commend you for the communication that you give to our missionaries through correspondence. I want to commend you for the prayer I want to commend you for the many, many people that we send out on missions teams and relief teams and work teams every year. I don't know that we've ever put anything like that in the paper. I don't know how we decided what we were going to put in the paper or not. And I'm not trying to fault those people who do put articles in the paper about how they sent some people to a foreign country to do a certain thing. You know what I'm talking about. Churches that'll send them, and I hope they do a lot of that. But folks, we'd have to start our own newspaper, honestly, if we were to start doing that because of the number of people that go out. I'm thankful for those things. I really am. But we need to realize that as the American economy is under the challenges that it's under, we're all looking to pay about 60% more for natural gas, and gasoline prices have gone up tremendously. That's going to affect every church in America. It's going to affect every family in every church in America. Therefore, it's going to affect our missions programs, too. Now, I do believe that we can trust God and we can give by faith. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves if we are being good stewards. And we have to ask others to ask themselves if they are being good stewards. What I'm saying to you is we have got to realize that missions is a very, very important ministry, and it requires a very severe level of accountability. It really does. When I think about the people that we've sent out, I was talking the other day about the next issue of Frontline Magazine with Dr. Gordon Dixon. And I recall when he left in 1994 to take another pastorate. And he and I talked about it. He had been on our staff for 10 years, a great man, a strong man, a very capable man. And I asked him at the time, and I was talking with him again about that this week when we were talking, or I guess it was last week. But I asked him, I said, how do you know for sure that God is moving you from Faith Baptist Church to Calvary Baptist Church? And he said, oh, that's simple. And he said, if I were to put it in one phrase, I would say stewardship. I said, okay, explain that to me. He said, stewardship of gifts. I have to be where I can most effectively use what God has given me and will hold me accountable for using. And I thought, that makes perfect sense to me. I've thought about Dr. Dick Shumate, who is now the Executive Director of the ministry that was led for many, many years by Dr. Dick Mercado, and thinking about the fact that men move on, that we would love to be comfortable by keeping around. Had we been able to, you think about the men that are very capable, that could help us here, who are now serving the Lord elsewhere. I mean, I think about the job that Dr. Heron's doing out in Guam, and I'd like to go work for you, brother. I'm serious, I'm not serious about that, but I'm serious about the job he's doing, okay? In other words, he's doing a remarkable job out there. And folks, we, I think, have a tendency here, to get comfortable, to rest on our laurels, to get in the mode where we think we can coast for a while. Well, I think if anything is happening in America today, it's that God is telling us coasting is over. What he was talking about a minute ago when he said persecution, you know, American people are very resilient. I heard a preacher say one time they can put up with just about anything for about six weeks. And then they want change. They want something to happen. I hope and pray that there's still enough fiber in the character and backbone in the people of America to take the stand that's needed to protect our lives from those who would destroy us. I hope that's true. Frankly, haven't seen many indications of it in the last few years. Since the media went to war, we're losing our national resolve. You asked yourself, those of you who were around in World War II, you tell some of these younger people how many pictures of bodies you saw in the newspaper during World War II. Did you ever see one? There was a code of honor in those days that you didn't undermine your own country. That's gone. I'm concerned about us, I really am. But I'm not just concerned about us politically, I'm concerned about us spiritually. I really am. And America has been the anchor point for the missions enterprise of the 20th century. It wasn't always that way. Great Britain is where it started. What's going to happen? What's going to happen if the anchor point gives way? Well, the Lord will raise somebody else up. I've been telling you for a long time. I think he may be raising Latin America up to take our place. He really might. But we better pray that God will give us revival. And I think one of the things we need to do is realize, just like all of us do when we start getting a few aches and pains and realize that age is encroaching upon us, we do not have forever. We don't have a limitless supply of strength and resources and hours. We have got to redeem the time. I know we love to say, well, listen, you know, our God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He'll pay for it. Now, wait a minute. Is He under an obligation to constantly pay for what might be careless spending. I'm not saying that supporting missionaries is careless spending, but I'm saying we need to let everybody who goes out to serve the Lord, wherever they go, know this is not a Christian welfare system. We are not going to invest all of our money for the rest of your life unless your heart is really sold out to God. I think we have to do that, folks. And I think we have to have some accountability. I'm not saying, I'm not going to mention any names or say, well, I think we need to do this or that. I'm saying you and I need to realize that when we don't hold ourselves accountable, very hard to hold other people accountable. I read an article in reader's digest recently that disturbed me greatly. Reader's Digest used to be a relatively conservative magazine, and it gave you a lot of exposure to a lot of other publications in very little time, but it has become just a silly, shallow publication. And there was an article in there about how foolish it is for us to have this three strikes law for felons, and how many people who are going away for long periods of time in prison for relatively simple things And I'm listening to an argument where people are saying, now look, all they did was, you know, I mean, it wasn't a violent crime. I mean, it was just robbery and breaking into somebody's house and, you know, and things like that. I mean, it's not like, I mean, why should these people be locked up for so long for little things like that? And here was the foundation of their logic, because there are other people who are committing far worse crimes that are getting less time. What does that have to do with anything? I do not understand the liberal mindset today that says, What a contradiction. We have the lowest crime rate in the history of our country, and we have more people in prison than ever. Well, figure that out. You understand what I'm saying? My point is, when we start devaluing, that is an indicator that we are lowering standards across the board. When Christian people in churches today do not have a heart for souls, How are they going to know who to support and how much to support them for? What I'm saying to you is I'm seeing a lot of evidence, not just here, but in a lot of places that it's easier to give somebody else some money to go do it than it is for all of us to get in the game together. Does that make sense to you? I'm saying you and I need to get really on fire for God about taking what time we have left and using it for the Lord. We need to be concerned for our neighbors. We need to be concerned for our loved ones. We need to be concerned for the people of our own church. We need to be zealous about truly discipling others. And you're going to be hearing about some ministries during this missions conference that are very much zeroed in on disciple making and leadership training and helping nationals. And we've got to understand in our own minds that church planting is not the same as church building. And we've got to be able to identify who these people are and connect them to a pipeline while keeping this one strong ourselves. There needs to be a steady influx of people that are coming to Christ. When my wife and I went to Couples Retreat at the Wilds this last weekend, as I got up to speak that first session on Friday night, I looked over here on my right, and next to the glass wall there in that lodge in the Wilds, I saw Jim and Denise, who were saved in our bus ministry two years ago. And they have grown. You should have heard them singing. You should have seen them and their responses. Let me make a shocking statement. They look just like one of us. You understand what I mean by that? God has worked in their lives and they have taken their stand for Christ and they were growing. And I was so thrilled, they moved up to North Carolina, they joined a church up there, and they're serving the Lord, and here they were at this couples retreat, and two summers ago, two summers ago, they were an unsaved, struggling couple who knew nothing about what we teach and preach here. And somebody from our bus ministry knocked on their door, and there they are going on for God. Now if they're out there, I wonder who else is out there. You understand what I'm saying to you? Let's never allow ourselves to stay in this business of thinking, let's let somebody else do it. Here, we'll give you some money, you go do it for us. That has to be a part of it. But we'll never really have what we need as a missions program until we have a true missions heart as individuals. So let's have a little halftime huddle during this missions conference, and let's decide what are we going to do when we get back out on the field. Let's redeem the time. Remember this. While we're in the halftime huddle planning on how we're going to win this game, the other crowd is in their halftime huddle planning how they're going to win this game. OK? So let's don't forget that. We're not just having a pep rally here. We're going to go out and we're going to take on somebody who's big and tough and determined. But with God's grace, we can accomplish a lot of things in whatever time we have left. Let's redeem the time. And let's be here for this conference. Let's support it, and let's learn. All right? Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have us on missions and to realize, Lord, that we have got to be wise. It's right to make sacrifice. It's right to do all the other things that we're doing. But Lord, let's be serious about truly getting involved in the cause of Christ right here at Faith Baptist Church. And I pray that you would burden our people. that they might not just think about what's happening elsewhere, but what's beginning right here. Have mercy on our country. Have mercy on our churches, I pray. We thank you for the wake-up calls that you've sent us. Now may we awake, and not only wake up, but get up and do something about it. In Jesus' name, amen.