You saw the fall here in this past trip here, wasn't able to be given a vision of heaven. I know. The average independent fundamentalist preacher today were brought up into the third heaven and given a view of the third heaven. He would come back and write a book. And he was kind of a keynote speaker. He sold out his farm to make a lot of money. That's how we would function today. All right? And so how did the Apostle Paul handle it? Because the Apostle Paul is much more spiritual and deeper than I am. All right? He was something. He was a greater Christian than most of us. So how did the Apostle Paul handle this? In verse number six, it says, for though I was desired through glory. Now, this is that grace. The Apostle Paul was desiring glory. He was wanting to brag on himself. We teach and preach in churches like ours, but we ought not to do that. We ought to humble ourselves and put others first. We're not just getting more and more highly of ourselves, but we ought to be able to see others better than ourselves. And we get that, and we try and guard ourselves in that environment, right? And here we got the great Apostle Paul. He's telling us that he had a desire to glory, to pride on himself, to lift himself up, And what are you doing for God? Now, have you ever said things like this? My kids don't know how lucky they have it to have a parent like that. Right? I've got these kids, they wouldn't know what hit them if they get dropped in this home, in this family. What are we doing? Right? Have you ever said that? My wife is so lucky to have me. Right? One of the things about fostering is you get to counsel couples that And sadly, sometimes your marriages are ready to fall apart. I've never counseled a lady without my wife there, so sometimes we come home and she says, I'm so thankful I'm married to you. Every time you see somebody go through a terrible, terrible time, that guy, you're saying, yeah, she's not supposed to be married to me. All right, then. And what are we doing in those states? It's times as a pastor. I took over a church that was dying, and we started fixing up the building, doing different things on the building. And there was times I'd walk in the hall and go, man, look what I'm doing. And that's a natural tendency. Those thoughts come to our mind. Now, when they come to our mind, we've got to make sure we get right and fix it. Because Paul goes on here in verse number 6 and says, He says again, with all your desire and glory, I shall not do any fooling. See, we are being foolish when we say, boy, this church wouldn't be here if it was, or it is, or nothing of the sort. This pastor wouldn't know it, but who would it be like to be here if my family wasn't here, or if we weren't here, or my wife, or our kids, or whatever the case may be. When we start lifting ourselves up, Paul says he's desired. See, he's flashed. wanted to brag and glory and lift up himself. However, he realized how foolish that would be. He realized that it would be a foolish thing for him to uh... You are no more safer than anybody else in this building, all right? And so if somebody else led you to Christ, you're good, all right? The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who made it all, did it all. And the one who led you to Christ is not the key thing, all right? And that's what's going on, though, in this business. It's a debate. I'm of Paul. I'm of a Paulist. Paul gets up and handles it so well, and he goes, who on earth is Paul? Who's appalled? He's reminded the jerks that we're nobody. We're just the instrument. We're just the tool. I can think of a soccer ball game. Your favorite team is playing in the final game, the championship game. And your team is down by one point. You sing those games where your best player throws the ball up in the air. falls up in the air while it's in the air the buzzer goes off everybody knows if it's in to win if it's out to lose right and uh maybe you saw the crown of raptors For the Raptors last year, remember the guy bounced four times off the rim? I know from Canada, the entire nation of Canada watched all four bounces, all right? And wanted to know what was going on. And in it goes, and the nation as a whole went crazy. You know what they didn't do? Can you imagine your team, that ball goes into the net, and the fans go wild. They come down onto the floor, and they pick up the ball, and they put the ball on their shoulder. They're pouring a Gatorade all over the ball. Everybody's bragging about the ball. The ball is on the front page of the local newspaper. No, I've never seen yet where the ball goes. I'm sure there's people out there that go and get that ball and it becomes a historic ball. But what everybody does is you jump on the guy who shot the ball, right? The shooter. And everybody's jumping all over him. And there's a team photo. And that makes you surprised. It makes you, not the ball, the folks in the penitentiary who shot the ball. Paul says, some plants, some water, put shots in the penitentiary. You and I are the tool that God has that we want to use to reach our communities, to reach our Judeas, our Samaria. At the outermost part, we are the instrument that God wants to use. The local church is the key instrument that God has chosen to use. Our ministry helps The fact is that for the first 26 years now in the ministry, and I say to people all the time, it's very cool that we started anyway. They look at me funny. If you're trying to raise support, your ministry's been going for 26 years, and you haven't partnered with any church. I go, yeah, isn't that great? And they look at you real weird. And the reason we say that is we, as a ministry, have no authority to start churches. That authority has been given to the local church. We come alongside the local church and help them. So the local church is the tool. the instrument that God has chosen to use. Of course, the local church is made up of its members. And so God has chosen to use as an instrument and tool to resist Jerusalem, to be in the area, the members of this local church. We are its tool. We are its instrument. And that's why it is God that gives the inquiry. It is God that accomplishes everything. And some of you, listen, I believe we should honor our pastors. I think we should give honor where honor is due. But I know your pastors will not get up here and say, this is all me. God came here. And God worked through this early ministry of this church. It was God who saw soul change. It was God who drew people together. It was God who built up this church. It was God who worked in the hearts and lives of people to give the mission, to go old school and just God doing the work, God doing the saving, the Holy Spirit of God working in hearts and lives and moving people and moving individuals through the local church. And I say, I went over there by myself and enjoyed that. You say, how on earth would a guy like you enjoy that? Well, I did do it. I had something that helped me to accomplish that. And again, in our walk with the Lord, it is us surrendering our hearts and our lives, picking up our cross daily, and following Him, and allowing God to work through us, allowing God to work through the local church, that accomplishes great things. Paul understood that. And so when those thoughts pop into our minds of how lucky church is that I'm here, or how wonderful all of the things that I have accomplished for Christ in my life, that I need to remind myself again how foolish that is to lift myself up. He goes on to say in verse number 11, he says, for I will save the truth. But now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above what he sees. I don't want people to build me up, lift me up. I don't want people to drag on me. I don't want to be a working guy, alright? And sometimes we have that problem, we will or or or I am going to put something in your life to help you to stay humble, right? Now, you know, I'm the type of person that when I'm not feeling well, I want it done with now, okay? This has been a terrible year for me. I never get straightened out with these things. Every old issue is a ton of pain, a lot of pain. And I was in California in January, and they got a super bloom because of all this pain, right? You've never been to California? You've been to Brown Mountain. They were actually treated when I was there. And so I'm there. And so I got an allergy in January. Then we went to Texas, and I got them in February. Then we went to Tennessee, and I got them in March. And then I came up to Michigan, and I got them in April. Amen. So praise the Lord. Four months free of allergies. And then now, because of all of that superglue and all of the extra foliage growing, as you drive down the highway today, you see the beautiful goldenrods and everything blooming in the sides of the highway. Burn them all. Amen is my attitude, because, you know, I always pray in this call, because I can fall out if you don't support us. It goes this year. And my mentality is, You know, a frost kills all that stuff. So I was praying the first day of fall that we would get a frost just for one night. You can go back to whatever you want after that. Just give me one night of frost, kill it all, and I'm good to go. But, of course, no. So I'm having super allergies this fall, all right? Praise the Lord. I'm not taking all the stuff. But I'm the type of person who's just like, God, get this out of me. Heal me now. Jeremy, don't you know I have things to do for you? Don't you know I'm trying to serve God? I'm trying to do great things for you. You've called me to travel all over the country. How can I travel all over the country when my head's foggy from all of these allergies and everything else? And like I said, I'm trying to take the drugs and do all that stuff to combat the thing. We want difficulties out of our life the second they come in, right? We live in a culture today, guys, you got an ache, go to the doctor, he gives you a pill, and you can, Lord willing, get out of it, right? We don't want to suffer, we don't want to go through hardships, but so in our Christian walk sometimes, we say, God, I want to serve you, I want to do great things for you, I want to be your servant. And God brings things into our lives and into our ministry to help us with that, right? He makes things more difficult than we thought they ought to be. You know, as a young person, when I first got to Asia, my passion, it was a lot of passion, too. You get the keys to a box, right? And then you're going to be a bus worker, all right? And so I'm now a bus worker. I remember one time, I was so excited. I had about 15 people come up to me on the bus. And on Sunday morning, I'm going to quit. All right, that's not the way to do it, right? Alright, so if you don't let God teach you, you might get kicked in the foot more than this. Alright, so let God teach you something. Here's God trying to help the Apostle Paul. Now, the Apostle Paul, I don't believe, is wrong by saying that there's no grace for this thing. I've just got the Lord's right that it might depart from me. So, we give our hearts and lives to God, difficulty is in account. Right? I tell people that I travel the nation at fifth-wheel drill, and I picture them in the people's minds, and they think I'm sitting at the side of Rocky Mountain with my own lid in front of my RV, and that a small eagle flies over the top, and I drink my coffee and drink my coffee. Right? That's not what it's like to travel the country, at least not in a certain way, all right? I sit in the back of a church parking lot a lot. There's this guy who said, I went to my hometown, all all all all All right, so these things happen, right? And so we right away, God, please, take this out of my life. God, please, I don't want to face this. God, please, don't make my life so difficult. I don't believe there's anything wrong with asking God to get you through something. But ultimately, are you willing to accept God's will? If you've ever had a very but I'm going through a terrible time you come to me and say Why? Because we are dealing with this situation in our own power, in our own strength, we're dealing with it in the flesh, and we did not appreciate that reminder because we're being told not to be very biblical about this, right? And sometimes, too, I think the Lord has sent humor on who we actually have to be, right? It's not your best friend. It's that person that maybe you think is a little pious, or kind of is a thorn in your saddle, right? And you, that's the person you say you like. And you just want to go. Here's the apostle Paul. David and God, three times, Lord, please take this out of my life. Please take this out of my life. Please take this out of my life. And God says to him, my grace is sufficient for thee. I am all you need. And that little sentiment that somebody says to you, and it sounds pithy, it sounds like, well, they had nothing better to say. What greater thing could they say? Right? That, oh, you're good. You can get through this. Man up. You're tough. You can handle it. You want somebody to encourage you that you can get through your problem yourself? Well, that's not great. What does that mean? We are saved by grace. We are saved by grace. When I was 16, that's when I got sick, alright? I was 16. If there's any teenagers here, you might understand what I'm saying here, but when you're young, I was 16, I had kidney dysfunction. So I had it all figured out. And I figured out my own way to heaven. I was raised going to church. I'm not a Bible preacher or a gospel preacher. So I was raised going to church. And I thought they talked about hell because they wanted to scare us into coming to church. And so I came up with my very own way to get to heaven. Now, this is going to blow your mind. You probably never thought of this one. But my thought was, if I did work, outweigh my bad work, I can go to heaven. I honestly thought I was the only person on earth that could come up with that. Yeah, well, I think so. Well, why is it? Well, I'm a pretty good person, right? Right? It's just good work. And of course, you know, most of the way, you know, the next year, you're going to be doing a little bit on that one. And, uh, somebody had to scare them with paint. As I came to the conclusion, I was taught, the Bible teaches me, that I'm saved by grace. That means Rick Ross did not do anything. I could not go to church enough. I could not be baptized enough. I could not serve enough. I could not give enough money to earn my way to heaven. I needed to be saved by God's grace. That means His enablement, through His ability, through His provision, I am saved. He sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Jesus Christ paid it all. He was buried. He rose again victorious over death, hell, and the grave. Amen. We all understand all of these things. And so Jesus Christ paid it all. And all I have to come to the conclusion is that Rick Ross did not get himself to heaven. I need to call upon Jesus Christ to save me. And he saved me. He empowered me. He enabled me. He did it all. And when Jesus Christ says here, my grace is sufficient, the day after I got saved, we were told how to grow in grace, the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So I was 16 years old. I knew nothing. I didn't know there was an Old and New Testament. I thought there was a Bible. uh... uh... uh... I'm thinking, man, I'm doing pretty good here. I'm cleaning up my language. I just called somebody a fool, and they said, well, I just called one man a fool. Right? I knew absolutely nothing about the Word of God until I entered the world of grace. I had become more like my Lord Jesus Christ. What am I going to do? Pull myself up on my bootstrap, work hard, dedicate myself, be committed? I can do this, I can do this, I can do this mentality? The power of positive thinking? That if I think it's me, it's going to happen? Is that what God wants us to do? Now sadly, since age 16 to 64, There's been several times where I've said, you know what? I don't care if nobody else does it. I'm going to do it. I don't care how committed other people are. I am going to make this happen. And I try to do it in my own time, but I don't care. And every time I did it, I felt proud of myself. The thing is, I've been doing this. I've been on my feet. I've been in the industry. God wants me to do it. And it's time to initiate it. What does that mean? That when I become weak, I become strong. What is that talking about? Well, weakness is, I've got to stop saying, you know what, Rick Ross has certain skills and abilities. Rick Ross has certain talents. Rick Ruskin, you know, I've learned a lot in draft and design, and so I've designed a lot of things. So I've been, sometimes as a pastor, I put a program together, and I go, if this doesn't reach this city, for Christ's nothing will. Because I tell you, this is amazing, right? What I kept doing, you're thinking, my skills and my abilities, we're going to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I've studied and I've seen things, and you know, When I was younger, I'd hear a preacher preach, and I'd say, well, that guy doesn't know how to preach. Boy, he doesn't preach when I teach. Boy, he doesn't just go to church. He just stands there and talks. And he'll never stop talking, right? And then I'd go to the church, and I'd talk to some people, and God would preach to them. And I've learned a lot of things. It's not us. It is God working through us. So we came here, then, when I say, listen, preach to us, We're moving on. We are following the leader. You're humbling yourself before Jesus, and you're going to allow me to work through you. You're going to allow me to work through your local church. You're going to allow me to work through the ministry. That's when God gets a big smile, because when God has the ability to work through your life, through this church, when God is the one in control, when it is His power that's being exuded through the membership of this church, What cannot be accomplished for the honor and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ? I hear all the excuses in church planning that, you know, we don't need more churches in America today. It's too expensive to start churches in America today. I have been told that this, again, does not need any more churches. There's enough churches in Michigan. And I tell people, you're absolutely right. Detroit is a very gonderous city, a beautiful city. You should move there. There's no drugs. There's no crime. It's just gloaming with Christian smiling. Opened a new door for one another. The gentlemen laid their jackets over the puddles for the women to wash their heads. It's a beautiful thing to go through, right? We all know that's not the case, amen? She made the city, the city. I was taken by the military, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. And somebody yelled at us, and he goes, welcome to the city of brotherly love. And that wasn't me. Don't yell at me. It was one of you guys who told me that. But, hey man, there's places, there's cities in this state. Well, we come up with all of our excuses why it can't be done today. How can we accomplish this? Hey, you know, we just need to hold on to what we have. We can't go on and do more. We've got to listen. We need to empty ourselves of self. And when we become weak, we become strong, because it is God that's going to work through us, and God is going to accomplish that. He goes on. I love this. That's the verse number nine. Most gladly, therefore, will I drive the glory of my infirmities, that the power of Christ They rest upon me. Now, I'm 54 now. Some of you can understand that. You wake up at four in the morning, and all you're doing is worship. I remember asking somebody in my church, I understand, I wake up every morning at four o'clock, and my young sir, and he was such an encouragement, he said, don't worry, it only gets worse. Good, all right, praise the Lord, right? And so I've had mornings where you wake up, And, you know, it takes four or five steps to stand up straight, right? So, you might have experienced that. It takes four or five steps for your feet to stop hurting, right? I've had, sometimes in the morning, I wake up, now, we live in a fixed wheel, so we have a staircase. Three steps. And I'm 54 years old, and I'm taking them one at a time. It's sad. terrible. I don't want to test all my sins here. I should be in better shape than I am, but I'm not. I'm literally holding the rail, taking my steps one at a time, three steps. Come on. Jumping out first thing in the morning. But just that, you know, your first thing in the morning, your sore, your shit, your feet are still in the air. Once you get going, you're fine. You know what I've not done yet? Get up and I'm reaching my back up straight. I'm not grabbing the railing. I'd rather glory in the sword in the flesh that I have Why? Because when I have these problems, it gets me on my knees, it makes me empty myself. See, if I was just so vibrant to do everything on my own power and my own strength, I'd just go up there and just take the bull by the horns and just kill everything in my way. Right? But instead, it makes sense because I go down on my knees to God and get empowered. And why was all glorying in His Eternity that the power of Christ would drag us apart? it could be that god has chosen to make this music difficult as paulie says sometimes you gotta God's will in some person's life. We like to like victory, victory, victory, victory. Win, win, win, win, win is our mentality. It's not always God, but I believe the crux of the whole thing is Him. It's that young man working that church. It's the power of Christ in that young man. Not just that young man. It's the restitution of the church. Just think, churches all across the state can stand on God's word, They stand on the doctrines. They stand on standards and separation from the world. How many of them across this nation are there? And with the power of Christ resting upon them, if they were reaching their Jerusalem, if they were reaching their Judea, if they were reaching their Samaria, what do you think could happen in the United States of America today with churches across this land and the power of Christ? How many of you use cartwheels when you have an infirmity or when you're being reproached? or that you have necessities. In America, most of us don't even know what it's like to wonder how we're going to feed the people tomorrow. Paul had many of those days, how we feed tomorrow, right? The necessity in persecution, right? Persecution to us today in America is, we knock on the door, hi, I'm from Mount Zion Baptist, I'm playing. That's persecution. We're not being beaten, all right? We're not, you know, having to be shipwrecked and bitten by scorpions and all this other stuff that these guys went through. We're just some guys told to be quiet and get in our own corner. And we, woo-hoo, it's so tough. Why did Paul warn us? We would have churches. I'm not going to give it all up and give my life and job to some crazy guy.