It has been an absolute privilege and blessing to be here with the church this week. And I've said it before, I'll say it again, that it's been good for me. It's revived me in ways that I needed. And I've enjoyed deeply the fellowship I've been able to have with everybody here and enjoyed the dinner tonight with Brother Nick and Brother Phil. And that was a good fellowship and I'm thankful for that. And I appreciate Lila continuing to count the words. I got a breakdown last night of how many times I said God, and Jesus, and Lord, and Father, I think. And so we'll see what comes out of this evening as well. I know we've spent a lot of time in Acts chapter 17. And honestly, I thought it was done last night. And Brother Derek was talking about the difference between insurance and assurance. And I was like, there are things here that I have not yet I've not yet seen. And so Lord willing, maybe he'll preach on that tomorrow night, but I'm going to take a text in Ecclesiastes chapter 11. So if you want to go to Ecclesiastes chapter 11, I want to read a passage to you that's been on my heart. It was on my heart last night, not for last night, but it was been on my heart all day today as I've thought about this. And we're gonna read the first six verses of Ecclesiastes chapter 11. And it says, cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven and also to eight, for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth. And if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, and the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good. The application of the message that's on my heart tonight, the title of this message is Take a Chance, Take a Chance. And the application of this message tonight is really broad because I believe it can apply to the work of ministry. I believe it can apply to persevering in the Christian life. I believe it can apply to seeking the Lord if you are lost. Because in each of these different areas I'm talking about, there are potential problems. And the problem is that, that's common to all of these, is that if we're not seeing the progress we would like, We can get burned out. We can just give up. We can feel like we are spinning our wheels and just quit. And that's not God's will in any of those areas of life. Whether you are trying to do the work of the Lord, whether you're trying to simply live a Christian life, or whether you're lost and you've been seeking the Lord and you've not yet found what you needed, it is not God's will for us to give up in any of those circumstances. When you're doing the work of the ministry, when you're trying to serve the Lord, when you're walking in your calling, and we all who are saved have different callings, different ways the Lord would call us to serve Him. We're going to face difficulty. There's time we're going to invest our energies, invest our resources into things, and find that it doesn't yield what we hoped it would yield. and that can be discouraging. Or we can get burned. Talk about witnessing to a roommate and wanting them to come to church and maybe they mock you or maybe they don't come or maybe someone actually does something against you because you've tried to help them and your intentions were good and you tried the best you could to do the right thing and still they turn on you. And these things can create in us this sense of just a fear and a failure and can paralyze us in the work of the ministry. When it comes to persevering in the Christian life, we can face trials, things that we don't expect. Why, when I'm trying to serve the Lord, would this happen in my life? Why is this so difficult? We can experience deep pain in our life and brokenness from all sorts of different things that would make us want to give up. And sometimes, and I knew this very well, I had the t-shirt, when I was lost and seeking and praying and trying and trying to talk to God and trying to come before Him and pray and trying the best I knew how to ask Him to save me and not seeming in myself like I was getting anywhere, it could get very discouraging in my heart. And I could just feel, you know, when the opportunity came, when the burden of the Lord came upon me again, I had a temptation to be just, well, what's the difference going to be? I mean, I'm just going to go down and I'm going to pray and then I'm going to get up again and I'm going to be disappointed. These are real things, aren't they? These are real things that we can, every one of us, deal with. And the purpose of this message tonight, the theme on my heart, I've been praying to God to help me to be clear with this, as clear as I possibly can, is to move us to persevere in doing the thing that we need to do, rather than getting paralyzed. Perseverance rather than paralysis. That's the intent that's on my heart tonight. And what we're talking about when we're talking about paralysis and not moving here is not being lazy. That could be a reason people don't do things because they're just lazy. But what we're specifically talking about that this passage talks about tonight is being paralyzed because of fear and paralyzed because of discouragement. And I believe that's exactly what Solomon speaks to here in Ecclesiastes chapter 11. So I wanna start, I want us to look through this together tonight, because I believe all six of these verses have a common theme, and I hope I can show that to you as we spend some time here. So Solomon, I believe, is the writer of Ecclesiastes. He's the one who refers to himself as the preacher. And he starts off in these first two verses and he says, cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven and also to eight, for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. We're told here in this first verse to cast your bread upon the waters. Your bread to these people were your goods, your livelihood, okay? Talking about resources in a sense. And you're called to take these things, these resources, and cast them on the water. The thing about casting something on the water is water is very unpredictable. It's outside of your control. And that's one of the things that can be hard to us is to put ourselves out there in ways that are absolutely beyond our control. Because when we get afraid, when we get discouraged, what we want to try to do is to control everything. We want to make sure we protect ourselves. We want to make sure when we put our energies and our efforts out that it's going to yield what it is that we want. The thing is, that's not the way it works when we're trying to do the work of God. That's not the way it works when we try to seek God, because there's nothing there that's under our control except to call upon the Lord. We have to put ourselves out there. We have to let go of trying and holding on to things ourself and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. When we do the work of ministry, we have to put ourselves out there and put ourselves in the lives of people that we can't control. I can't control tonight whether you listen to me or whether you don't. I can't control whether you understand this. I can't control whether you like the way I present the message or you don't. I have no control over what happens out there. And sometimes I've gotten burned. Sometimes I've poured myself out there and you see absolutely nothing. And it gets scary. Right? And there's times in our Christian life, you know, where we want to do the things and we want to follow God and then there's these things that happen in our life and it's not what we expect and it feels like we're really struggling trying to do these right things. And so we want to hold on to our bread rather than casting it out upon the places that are outside of our control. But what does the Lord say? He says, cast your bread upon the waters. for thou shalt find it after many days." There will be a return of this investment, of doing the right thing, the thing that God has called you to do. If you don't give up in doing it, you will find this again after many days. You may not see it right away, I think even when the Lord is welcoming his children into heaven and he's saying, welcome, you know, you fed me, you know, when I was hungry and you gave me clothes when I was naked and you gave me water to drink when I was thirsty. And they're like, Lord, when did we ever do that to you? And he says, when you did it to the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. You see, the Lord saw The Lord saw everything that they were doing when they were trying to invest in doing what God had called them to do, and maybe they didn't see any return, anything happened from that right away, and perhaps they thought that was lost, but the Lord noticed every single time. He noticed every single time. I can tell you tonight, I do not regret a single time that I sought the Lord when I was lost. I do not regret a single time. And yeah, I didn't get saved until that last night back in June in 1995. That's when I got saved. But you know, I don't regret a single time I sought the Lord because through that process, I didn't get saved by a process, but the Lord was working in my heart to bring me to that place where I could finally just get up at the end of myself and let go and throw myself out there on Him because I couldn't do it and He saved me. I mean, not everybody has to seek forever like that. Praise God. I mean, there's people, you know, where I pastor, they're like, I just don't get it. I got saved the first time I saw it. I mean, I wasn't even lost that long. I'm like, well, praise God for you. That's not my story. You know, we've all got our own stories. We've all got our own stories. But what the Lord's telling us is there'll be a return if we throw it out there. It says, give a portion to seven and also to eight, for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. Giving a portion is about a generosity, about putting yourself out there. And he speaks about, you don't know what evil will be upon the earth. He's speaking about disaster. Disaster that could strike at any time in life. What Solomon is saying is use every opportunity you have to do the right thing. Because you don't know when difficulty is going to come. And I think here, specifically, he's speaking about generosity. And Jesus spoke a little bit about this, about making friends for yourselves using the means of unrighteous wealth, so that when that fails, you'll have them to receive you into eternal dwellings. Some people look at this passage and they say it's like an investment philosophy about diversifying your investments, but I don't think that's what Solomon's talking about here. I mean, it could be wise to diversify your investments. But I believe what he's talking about here is about being generous, about putting yourself out there and being willing to do that because you have no idea when God's going to use that and bring that back into your life in some way. You don't know when you're going to be needing to be on the other end of compassion. And so we shouldn't fail to put ourselves out there because you never know when disaster and difficulties going to come into your life. And then Solomon goes in verse 3 to talk to us and give us some lessons about clouds and trees. And let's look at this for a moment because he's going to go on and explain this. In verse 3 he says, If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth. We understand that. When the clouds get full, it rains. And if a tree falls toward the south or toward the north, and the place where the tree falleth there, it shall be. A tree is generally here, I think in this picture, you know, a big thing. And it's standing up there, and you don't know when that tree falls, which way exactly it's gonna fall. I don't know if you've ever tried to cut down a tree, and you tried to get it to lay in a certain place, and you didn't get it to go exactly where you thought it would. I don't know if that's exactly what Solomon's talking about there. I think he's talking about where the wind will take the tree. But he's saying, you know, when a tree falls, it will fall where it falls, but we can't predict where it falls. But when it falls, well, that's where it's gonna be. Why is he talking about these things? I believe he's taking us to what he's going to talk about in verse 4. Because the common cause, I believe, of the tree falling would be the wind. And he comes down here to verse 4, and he says, He that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. So he talks about the clouds in verse 3, and if they get full of rain, it's going to what? It's going to rain. Right? And he talks about the tree. We don't know which direction the tree is going to fall. What is it that typically makes the trees fall? It's the wind. And you don't know which way the wind is going to be blowing and which way that tree is going to fall. What is Solomon even talking about? Well, we expect rain, don't we? We expect rain periodically. It's part of life. It's part of what's needed in this world. And sometimes when we look out there and we think that it's going to rain, we change our plans. We alter what it is that we're going to do based upon an expectation of rain. And as far as a tree falling, usually that's never expected. It's something that's just kind of shocking and, you know, unexpected when it happens. The wind is blowing, a big windstorm comes at night and you wake up in the morning and trees have fallen. Or maybe, you know, even in the middle of the night, I know in Alaska there we had, our neighbors had some trees in their yard and we had this horrible windstorm. And I heard this big crash, but I didn't really notice anything. And I wake up in the morning and the tree has fallen down and it's right up against the doors of my deck. I mean, it almost took out that back wall of my house. And I had no idea, I mean, I had no expectation. If you had asked me whether I thought that tree would fall, if it fell, I thought it would fall in my neighbor's yard. But no, it went down and took down the fence and almost went through my house. I wouldn't have known that. I wouldn't have expected that. That was completely unexpected. And what I think Solomon is talking about here is that we can develop in life this kind of pessimistic attitude. It's gonna rain. It's gonna rain. I ain't gonna do it. It's gonna rain. You know it rains. It rains. I mean, it happens, right? I mean, rains happen. We expect rain, and I think it's gonna rain, so I'm just not gonna do it. Or we can develop this attitude about the trees, the completely unexpected things, because completely unexpected things can happen, right? Things that are not part of your plan, things that you didn't ever think or comprehend that might happen in your life. March 18th, 2021, I got a phone call that I didn't expect. Said your daughter was in an accident and she didn't make it. And I said, what? What? I mean, I was like, you got the wrong person. What? Tree fell. And it fell where it fell, and I never thought that tree would fall. These things can happen in our lives, folks. Difficult things can come into our lives, and our response to difficulty in our lives, our response to not getting what we desire when we put forth effort or unexpected things happen in our lives can paralyze us. They can stop us from doing the things that we need to do. Because we can take these things that have happened in our life and we can live in fear. We can live in discouragement. And that's exactly what I believe Solomon is talking about in this passage, is not letting fear and not letting discouragement dictate our lives. Because God has called us to do the right thing and to not grow weary in doing that right thing, no matter what. Because he says in verse four, the one who is always watching the wind, always afraid the tree is gonna fall, well, they're never going to sow. It can be a temptation in our lives to try to take away all risk. to try to move and to do things so that bad things never happen to us. We've been hurt by somebody, you know, something didn't go well, you know, I poured myself out and nothing happened, or this or that, or I prayed and I didn't get what I needed, or whatever the situation is, and all we do is we observe the clouds and we say, something bad might happen, so I'm not gonna. It's not God's will. It says, he that regards the clouds shall not reap. The one who's always afraid it's going to rain, the one who always has this pessimistic attitude that it's just not going to happen. You know, it's just not going to work. You know, it's just going to rain. It's just going to rain. I appreciate Brother Chris was telling me about this playground over here. and how you all were putting that in, and you thought it was supposed to rain that day. I mean, the forecast was for rain, and everything was pointing towards rain, but you had that day, you set it aside, you had the people to do it, and you all worked really hard, and the Lord held back the heavy rains, and He even gave you, what, double rainbow? But if you had simply focused on the weather, if you had simply focused on the weather, you would not have done that thing that needed to be done. And it can be the same thing on a night, you say, well, you know, the service wasn't like this, or it wasn't like that, and I expect the service to be like this when I'm gonna get saved, and oh, there's no point in me doing it, because I don't think it's gonna happen, I don't think, you're never gonna get saved if that is your expectation. You're never gonna get that if you always have this attitude, well, it just won't happen, it just can't happen, I'm just discouraged, or this or that or the other. When our eyes are on the rain and the wind, we never sow, we never invest. and we never reap, we never collect, we never invest, and we never collect, I can guarantee you this, if you do nothing, you will have nothing. If you do nothing, you will have nothing. That's a guarantee in ministry, that is a guarantee in the Christian life, and that is a guarantee when it comes to salvation. If you do nothing, That's what you'll have if you're always regarding the winds, if you're always regarding the clouds. Jesus told his disciples, he said, look around, the fields are white. The fields are white and they are ripe to harvest. We just need laborers to go out into the harvest. That's all we need. I mean, this is Jesus who was able to see the Father working. This is Jesus who understood, and you all have been talking about it, that God had moved human history to bring people to this point, that Jesus could be the gospel, and then for the church to be able to take forth the gospel. Jesus understood the significance of these last days, and he said, the fields are white. They are ready to be harvested. We just need people who would go out and labor. But if we, if we who could and who are called to labor to go out with whatever God's calling us to do, if we live in fear, if we live in discouragement, we have nothing and we miss the harvest that is right in front of us. One of the themes that run across all of these verses is found in verse 5. As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. There is a theme, as I said, that runs through all six of these verses, and the theme is this, you don't know. You do not know the future. You do not know how God can work. You see it twice here in verse five. Look at verse two as well. Give a portion to seven and also eight. For thou knowest not what difficulty, what evil will come upon the earth. You don't know what evil, you don't know when it might happen. Also look at verse five, you see it twice there. Look at verse six. In the morning sow your seed, in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not which shall prosper. That's the unifying theme. We really don't know. what God is going to do. We don't know how God is going to work. He points out, we don't know how God in the womb can go from the conception that occurs inside that womb to be able to make a child. I mean, God brings life into that womb, and then it grows into this baby that comes forth, that lives. I mean, every one of us went through that process. Some of us have observed that in our own homes. Some of you in your own wombs, you've seen this miracle, and it's amazing, and we expect as far as how it works, but let's not lose sight of how amazing this is, and we don't even know how it happens. I mean, it is completely amazing. It's completely an amazing work of God. And he points out to us as well, just like you don't know how that happens in the womb, you do not know the works of God who maketh all. how God does all the things he does. I was sharing stories with Brother Derek, you know, about services that we had been in, Brother Gary, and you know, one service I recall, The Lord was moving and blessing in our retreat out at Camp Maranatha in Alaska. And this was very early on in the work of the anchor and we had been investing a lot of time in people and trying to share the gospel with them. And people come from all these different lifestyles, all these backgrounds. We had a guy that was an atheist we've been trying to witness to. He was there at this evening service, and we had some other people, a guy who had been a really rough life, and he was totally confused about God, and another woman, and there's different things all happening at the same time. And everything was going so well, and I had such great expectations, and then somebody got up at the beginning of service, and they went off about how nobody was helping them with their kids, and everybody was just so selfish, and blah, blah, blah. And here I am at the pulpit going, What do I do now? And all I knew is I just said, we need to pray. And we went down and prayed. And I was down there, I'm just like, God, this service is just blown. And we were seeing you move it in such great ways. And now we just had this vomit thrown out on the entire service. And the Lord put this song in my heart for us to sing, Turn Your Eyes on Jesus. And we got up and I requested that song, and we started singing it. And it wasn't until that first or second verse that someone went up to that man who was an atheist, and he hit the altar. And then somebody else started singing, and somebody else started singing over here, and it wasn't probably 15 minutes, and he got up and he came over and hugged me, and he said, I love you, Brother James. And I said, what? And then God was doing all sorts of stuff, and there was rejoicing all over the place, and God was moving in a great way. And then my wife twisted her ankle when she got up. I was back talking to somebody else, and next thing I know they said, we called an ambulance for your wife. And I left the service in an ambulance. Crazy, crazy, but God was not stopped. I was in a service one time that was just so quiet, and it was preaching, and it was just like dead response, like nothing. And so we just had an altar of prayer. I was just down praying, and I just had such low expectations. And there was a guy who was lost who come up and just praying there right next to me. I didn't know where he was or anything. Afterwards he got up and said he just got saved and I was just so shocked and I think everybody was shocked because it was just such a quiet service and he became one of the most faithful members at that church. I mean it's just like we don't know what God's going to do. We don't know how God's works. We can think in our minds, oh this is how we got to get it to work. We don't know. We don't. This is God's thing. It's not ours. It's bigger than all of us. And what I want you to understand is the person who said this was Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived apart from Jesus Christ. This man was endued with all sorts of knowledge, and his testimony was, I don't understand how God does what he does. And if he didn't get it, what chance do we have? It is above our pay grade. And so because we don't know, because our fears and our discouragement, they don't dictate the future. Your fears and your tendency to be discouraged and negative does not dictate the future. God holds the future. God is in control. And so therefore, because we don't know, because we can't predict the future, because we can't make things grow, only God can, it tells us in verse six. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper this or that, or whether they both alike shall be good. All of these truths that Solomon is pouring out in these four verses are meant to take us to this point. That right thing that you need to do, do it. That right thing that you need to do. If you need to serve the Lord and your minister God's given you a calling to do something, you need to do it. You need not let fear, you need not let a pessimistic attitude control what you do. You need to do what God has called you to do. If it's about your life and trying to persevere in the Christian life and you're discouraged because things haven't gone the way you hoped, you thought, man, if I just, you did this and did this and I would expect my life to just be glory, glory, glory every day. My friend, that is not the Christian life the Bible paints. That's what people want to put on billboards, but it's not an accurate reflection of what the Christian life is. But still, our calling is to sow in the morning and in the evening and be faithful and seek to be consistent. And when it comes to seeking the Lord, my friend, if you know that you're lost, And you know that Jesus has called you to salvation. You know enough to know to do what you need to do, which is to call upon the Lord and be saved. And you don't know. You can't tell when God's going to do this or when God's going to do that. You must sow the seed. And what I want to point out to you, what I want to point out is as you look at verse 6, It says you don't know whether this will prosper, or you don't know whether that will prosper, or you don't know if both of them will prosper. You know what's missing? Nothing prospers. That's missing. That's not in the verse. That's not in the verse. You don't know whether this is going to be the thing that God uses. You don't know whether that's going to be the thing that God uses. Or God's going to bless both. But what it doesn't say is that nothing will work. It doesn't say that, because that's not what God says. We have precious promises in the word of God that there will be blessing toward doing what God has called us to do. There is not an attitude of failure in this passage. There is not an attitude of nothing matters in this passage. You know, we can think about the ten lepers that came to Jesus that wanted to be healed. You know, and he healed all ten, nine ran away, one came back, and that guy got saved. And you could say, man, what diminishing returns, how negative that, oh, you know, nine of them was wasted healing, so to speak. But look, there was one that was saved. Wasn't that worth it? Wasn't that worth it? I mean, wouldn't it if we got together, you know, for a year of services and one soul got saved, wouldn't we walk away and say, well, that was worth it. That's a person that's going to be in glory forever. Wouldn't we walk away and say that was worth it? You know, I don't know. I mean, we could be in service and we could see 20 people get saved in a night from just one service. We don't know what God's going to do. All we know is that if we don't grow weary and well-doing, we will reap if we don't give up. Right? We know that. God's promised that. And He's also promised that those who seek Him diligently will find Him. He's promised that, right? There is a positive promise of God, and God, after all of these thousands of years of human history, He has never yet broken a single promise. And let me tell you this, if you struggle with a negative attitude and you think, well, yeah, but you know, I know God can, I know God can, but I don't know that He will. You know, I mean, but what about me? I'm so messed up. I used to get in my head like this when I was lost and just think, oh, I'm just so messed up in my head. I'm just so whatever. God can't ever save me. You know, I know I've been seeking, I know I've been trying, but I just don't think God can save me. Look, God is not going to break a promise for you. He's not gonna mess up his character for you. He is who he said he is. And yes, you are worthless. And yes, you are violent. That is the honest to God truth about us. But he has promised, he has promised that he will be faithful. And so even if you don't find any hope in yourself and you shouldn't, you need to find your hope in God because God has put himself out there and he has sworn by himself that he will keep every promise he has made. And on that day of judgment, you will find that he is just. He is just, and He is fair, and He has kept every word. Every word, every word he's put out there to the lost, every word he's put out there to the saved, we should not give up. We should not let the clouds of discouragement and fear dictate our lives, but instead, what thus saith the Lord? Because with the command to go has come a promise of harvest, has come a promise of finding if we do not give up. So tonight, I leave you with this. Whatever it is that God is calling you to do tonight, every single one of us, do it. Do it. Do it with an expectation that there will be blessing, there will be fruit, that God is gonna keep his word, and that there is every reason, he's given us every reason to persevere. every reason to not give up. God bless you tonight. Brother Derrick.