Living a Legacy

I'm really not preaching tonight. I don't know why Lance didn't tell you. I'm in the middle of a book tour, and I'm here to sell you a book tonight. Now, I don't want anyone to leave until I explain a little bit more about the book, but I am really trying to sell you a book tonight. I want you to know that. It's a very special book, and it stems from the fact that since leaving pastoral ministry, I've been concerned what I see in the churches. And as Rose and I have gotten a little bit older, we've become concerned about our children, our children's children, and we're in the area of great-grandchildren now, 13 of them.

So I'm concerned about that, and I'm concerned about what we pass on. So I will tell you how I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna use some scripture up front that I'm gonna ask you to turn to with me, and then the scripture that I refer to later on, I'm gonna go through rather quickly, but I hope you'll take time to write some of them down because you're gonna want this book. Believe me, you're gonna want this book. So let me ask you to begin, let's pray first.

I thought Lance was gonna do that. You know, he's backsliding quite a bit since this COVID. I have to tell you, the COVID thing, you know, I'm from Florida. It's a little different there. We don't wear masks. We go to church rather freely most of the time. There are some churches that tend to be a little bit legalistic. I walked into church two weeks ago, and I didn't have a mask on, and this woman came up to me and said, you're supposed to have a mask on. And I said, I'm fully vaccinated. She said, you still have to have a mask on.

And then pastor announced that week that there would be no more masks. But when I heard all that Lance was doing, and I know that your governor seems to have a problem with the freedom of the church or whatever, I told Lance that I would be the first one to donate to his legal fund if anything comes of that.

But let's pray, shall we? Father, I just want to thank you for life today. I thank you for the privilege Rose and I have had to be with family. In one case, to celebrate the life of one who's gone home, and now to be with Lance and Lori and their children, and their children's children, and just to enjoy all that family is. But I thank you for the one thing that makes our life different as a family. I thank you, Lord God, that on the 30th of March, 1968, grace touched our lives, and you changed us forever.

And I thank you for that. And I pray tonight that people here would understand the things that I'm trying to share, as well as the importance of them, and that each one of us would take it to heart. And I thank you for that. Spirit of God, do your work in each of our lives, and I'll thank you in Jesus' name, amen. Can you turn with me to a very sad portion of scripture, the book of Judges, the second chapter, and the 10th verse.

Judges chapter two, verse 10. Just the one verse at the end of the paragraph. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which he had done for Israel. And I find that so sad that there are some parents that will look and see that their children don't know the Lord. That might be the case of some of you. As I sat in here early tonight, I watched an older woman come in with her walker, and I think that her mind has to go back the furthest, that she has so much to recall, and so much to pass on.

And I saw a young woman, a couple of them, that are obviously expecting babies in the very near future. And then I heard a mother request prayer for one of her children. And so I know that children should be on all of our hearts. And sometimes we don't realize that, you know, you only get one shot, and you've got to do it right. And sometimes when we haven't done it right, by God's grace, we can go back and pick up, but it's the most important ministry that you can have in this church, and that's the ministry to your own children.

And I want to read that again, and just think of the sadness there. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which he had done for them. Turn with me to Isaiah 38, if you will.

Isaiah 38, verse 19. It says, it is the living who gives thanks to thee as I do today. A father tells his son about thy faithfulness. And I want to speak to men and say to men, you know, there's no passing the buck here. The job of raising our children is laid primarily on us as men, as the head of our homes. And in some situations where women are here, and they may be the wife of an unsaved or even an uncommitted Christian, but an unsaved person or uncommitted Christian, that mother has a very significant role.

Not that she usurps it, but she has to do everything possible to show the children how they're to live. And so I look at that and I see the faithfulness.

Let me tell you something. One of the thing that concerns me as I travel, and after 40 years of active ministry, is to go to the number of churches where everyone is a professional. We've hired all these professionals to come in and do the jobs. You know, when I went to my first church, a little church in Windsor, Vermont, we had a Sunday school superintendent.

And that was good. And that woman ran the whole Sunday school. And she motivated the teachers and she met with them. And everything was done by the body. But we're in a day now where we have all the professionals that come in. I want to tell you a couple of myths about your children. First of all, it is wrong to think that they're going to get it by osmosis.

They don't get it by osmosis. And secondly, it doesn't fall to the professionals. Scripture knows nothing at all of that. They lay the responsibility on the parents. That becomes so very significant. So here's the book. I'm in the middle of two manuscripts that I probably will never finish, but two that mean a great deal to me. I've got three books that are finished, but these two mean a great deal. And I may never finish them. And in the middle of them, a little more than a year ago, Rose came to me and said, you know, I wonder if you'd help me with a project.

And I said to her, well, what's that project? She said, you know, I want to write something for our children and for our children's children. I want them to know what Jesus Christ has done in our life. And I'd like you to help me. I said, I'll be glad to help you. But here are the conditions. You have to write the outline. You have to look up all the scripture. You have to tell me what it is you want me to write, and I'll be glad to write it. So I'll be the stenographer, but you've got to be the one that dictates it.

You look at the letters of Paul. Paul had what was called an amanuensis, someone who wrote it all out for him, but he dictated it. So I was the amanuensis. Rose dictated everything to me pretty much, and I wrote it. And so this is the book that I want to tell you about, and it's the book that I want to sell you. Not mine, but the one that I really challenge you tonight to read, and you are not so old that you can't do it. As a matter of fact, if you're old, your memory is going to go back the furthest to bring into view the things that someone needs to know.

So with Rose and me, we were only able to go back to my mother and father and Rose's mother and father. We couldn't go much beyond that. We had a sense that maybe, maybe Rose's grandparents knew the Lord, but that was only a sense. We don't know. We're not the judge. And my grandparents, I'm sad to say, I don't think they knew the Lord. I really don't. But we could pick up with my parents and with Rose's parents, and we did that. And so we wrote the book, and it's called Our Legacy. And I want to challenge you to think about your legacy.

And Rose did, as a subtitle, a verse that really touched her, that runs through it. And you have to pick it for yourselves. But her verse was, as from me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And that was special, because after my father became a believer, after more than 50 years as a strong, devout, practicing Catholic, and he came to know Jesus Christ, that was a verse that he claimed. As from me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And when dad went to be with the Lord on his tombstone or grave marker in a little town in Windsor, Vermont, there's this huge tombstone, grave marker for the whole family, and it just says, as from me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

And under that, we took my father's signature and had it blasted into the stone, because that's something he lived. So Rose was concerned about, as from me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So that was the subtitle. But now I need to convince you that it's your responsibility. Now, one of the scriptures you know very well, it's Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four to nine, where God speaks, and through Moses, and says, hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your might, and these words which I'm commanding you today shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children.

You shall speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hands, as frontals on your forehead, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Seems pretty clear to me. And you shall teach them to your children, these things that are on your heart today. So turn with me also now to Psalm chapter 22.

Psalm 22, you know, I always think of this as the great Psalm that says so much about the crucifixion of our dear Lord. And when I preached my father's funeral, I went to Psalm 22 because he had underlined verses 30 and 31, and beneath it, he had just said, it is finished. But listen to what it says. Posterity will serve him. It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They will come and will declare his righteousness to a people yet to be born that he has performed it. We're supposed to be telling our children about the faithfulness of God.

And for Rose and me, it began on the 30th of March, 1968, when we knelt down after the gospel had been presented to us, and we confessed our sins and asked Jesus Christ to come into our life. And I have to tell you, I can sing that song. What a wonderful life, what a wonderful change has been made in my life. I am not all that God wants me to be, I know that. But thank God I'm not what I used to be. And he made that change. And I want my family to know it. And the legacy in that book is very simply one word.

It's Jesus. And I want to challenge you. I don't care how old you are. I don't care how gray your hair is, or if you don't have any, all right? It doesn't matter. This is the time to do this and to record as much as you can so that you can pass on what Jesus Christ has done in your life. Because maybe you have it, and maybe your children have it. And I look at our grandchildren that have it.

But I'm concerned about down the line. And so our book is projected, and we even say several times in the book that many of you who read it will not even know us, and yet we only printed 75 copies for our family. And I can tell you, there's nothing I want to stress on you more and more, that you pass on the legacy. But you have to understand something. I'll say it again at the end. A legacy is not something you leave. A legacy is something that you live. It's not something you leave. It's something that you live.

Turn with me to Psalm 78. It says in the first verse, listen, all my people, to my instruction. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I'll open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not conceal them from our children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wondrous works that he has done. Verse five, for he has established a testimony in Jacob, appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children.

You count it, that's five generations. God says, I want you to tell it to your children, so the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God, not forget his works and keep his commandments.

It comes back to us. It's not gonna happen by osmosis. I don't care who you have in this church that pastors the little children, that pastors the youth, the high schoolers, or the college, because they only have them for an hour or more on a weekend and maybe an activity, but you have them all the other hours of the day, and it's responsibility is yours, and you get your life to do it. The most important thing about our life is Rose and I reckon with the fact that the pages in our final chapter are getting fewer and fewer right now, and we realize that, that the most important thing we can do is continue to invest in our children, even when they're grown.

It doesn't stop because they're out. We try to have an impact in the lives of our daughters and their husband. We try some way to have an impact on the life of our grown grandchildren, and then we look at these great grandchildren, and all we can do is love them.

We're not gonna be here. We won't see them walk down the aisle. We won't hear about them coming to faith. We won't hear about their baptism, but somehow I wanna believe that something that we've said and done will impact their lives. Let me ask you to go to a Psalm that Rose and I read yesterday on the 145th day of the year, Psalm 145.

Will you turn there? Psalm 145, called the great te Deum. You know, we praise the old God. We extol you. We lift you up. We have to do that before our children. You know, in the day that we're living, COVID, this present administration, the violence, the lawlessness, the anti-Semitism, all the junk that's in the world, you know, we have to give them some hope, and the hope is only on Jesus Christ. If they're looking for someone to come riding in on a white stallion, read the book of Revelation. His name is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, but no one else can do it, and in the meantime, it falls to you and me to live the way our God wants us, to walk across the street and dare to be able to say to a person of color, you know, the world says you and I can't get along because you're black and I'm white, but I know differently.

I know at the place of the little people, we get along real well. It's when the media gets in there, it's when the government gets in there that the whole thing gets messed up, but if I live the way Jesus wants me to live, then I can cross any color line. I can cross any financial or educational status that we might have. You have to believe that. The answer is not gonna be found in our government. We make the changes in our own little sphere of influence. So it says in verse four of 145, one generation shall praise thy works to another and shall declare thy mighty acts.

My generation, I want Laurie and Lance to know what God has done for me. I want them to know what my life was like before March 30th, 1968, March 31st, I'm sorry, when Rose told me just a little time before that, three years into our marriage, we may never make it. We're not gonna make it this way. And that's when we came to know Christ. And that was 53 years ago that she made that statement. A total of 56 years because of what Christ has done. We never should have made it, not the way I was going.

And so I commend that to you. You wanna see how it's your responsibility? Go with me to 2 Timothy chapter one. And I hope this will be a blessing to some of the godly women who are here whose husbands may not share your faith or your perspective because Timothy's daddy was a pagan, but his mother was completely other. So in 2 Timothy chapter one, verse five, Paul writes to his young student and he says, for I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and then your mother Eunice.

And I am sure that is in you as well. You know, it was a faith that was passed on. Ideally, it should be daddy to children, but the father was an unbeliever. And some of you women here may know that reality of being married to someone who doesn't share your faith, but that doesn't mean it can't be done by you. You know, there are so many godly women. My first church that I went to was a little church in Windsor, Vermont.

And on that first Sunday, I walked into the prayer room and there were five or six women. I just had a seminary and I go to the prayer room, five or six women. Where are the men of the church? And that Sunday, that first service, there were maybe 40 people there at most and almost all of them women.

But you know, it was that band of praying women that kept the doors of that church open. And when we left two and a half years later, there were over 300 people there and the prayer room was standing room only for men. But until that, it was the godly women that kept it open. And so Paul says, Timothy, I am mindful of your faith that's in you, but I know it's there because your grandmother invested in your mother and your mother poured it into you. Hold on to that faith. Look what he says in chapter two, verse two.

He says, in the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You know, in the home of three of my granddaughters that we visited while we're here is a beautiful banner that says, bloom where you are. And you know, the whole idea of witness is to witness where you are. You know, it's pretty easy to go out on the streets and share a tract with someone, arrest someone if they're saved or any of the witnessing techniques.

It's another thing to sit down with your children and you be the one who disciples them. By the way, throw out the word mentor. It's a pagan word that comes from Greek mythology. Jesus mentored nobody, he discipled. And we need to restore that word to the church instead of hearing pastors speak about mentoring all the time. If you look it up, you'll find out that it comes from, you know, the Odyssey and Telemachus when he goes off to war, leaving his son with Mentor. Mentor was to take care of him.

I'm sorry, Telemachus was the son. But you know, you take a look at it, it's pagan in its roots, but discipling is something that we do with our children.

We ought to be the ones to do it. So I want to digress a little now and go to the book. Because in this book, we really had five sections. And I say this because I'm hoping that if just one of you, but I hope it'll be more than that, will decide to do this, this becomes, you know, a very precious treasure. So in the first part, we wrote about how we started.

We began with our parents. And then we talked about how we grew, how God brought Rose and me together. And then from that, how the two became five. There was Laura Lynn and then Natalie Ann and Janet Marie, and then how they grew with their families. And then after that, we take a part in the middle where we say, meet our family. And I'm afraid that most of the family is spending most of the time on this, but there are 30 pages of pictures that go back to our grandparents and starts. And so someday, I think they'll turn to a page and it might be a page that has Rose and me on it.

They'll say, who is that? Well, that was your great-grandfather and your great-grandmother, whatever. But the story doesn't change because the story's about Jesus. So that's the third part.

And the fourth part was where Rose took this phrase, as for me and my family, and she went through the Bible and found all of its different uses and spoke about the godly men who used it, who said, as for me. And then she wrapped it up with when God himself says, as for me, and God speaks. And so it becomes important. And we're trying to impress on our children and our grandchildren that as for us, the most important thing about our lives is to see our children walking with Jesus Christ. Nothing else matters.

Really, I have nothing to boast. You know, I have no big church to point to now. I'm a retired pastor doing another area of work, caring for people that are terminally and chronically ill. But even when we leave this place, Rose and me, and I don't mean here, but when we leave planet Earth, when God calls us home, I don't want anyone to point to anything like that. I don't want them to point to a bookshelf and say, oh, I have a book he wrote. I'd like someone to be able to point to my children and their children because that's what we really leave behind.

There are only two things that are gonna outlive you, the word of God and those who follow you. Those will be the only things that will outlive you. So this becomes really sacred. And then after that fourth part, as for me and my family, you know the way Lance is, he's a master of alliteration. You know that, don't you? What you don't know is when he gets stuck, he calls me. I just want you to know that. But so we took the word legacy. It's something that Lance and I have done with so many different words.

We've done it with Christ is risen. We've done it with the word integrity, the word purity. Well, we took the word legacy, Rose and I, and we decided to spell it out. And that's the key part of the book. And for you, you have to determine what that would mean. And can I tell you something? You can use any of these ideas. If there's an idea that works with you, use it. But please, your kids someday are gonna ask the questions and you're the only one that's gonna have the answers that go back beyond your own life because I can't talk about my grandparents, but I can tell them about my dad and how he came to Christ.

I can talk about my godly mother and how she never missed an opportunity wherever she was to witness to the Lord Jesus and the burden she had for God's people, the Jews. I want my kids to know that. I want the grandchildren to know that. I want them to know that I was on my way to hell until a couple named Ned and Margaret Thomas shared Jesus Christ with us and invited us to kneel in their living room and ask Christ to forgive us and be Lord of our lives. That's all that matters. So we took the word legacy and you can write it down if you'd like.

This is what we did. The first was for the letter L, to live in God's presence, all right? Actually, we took Psalm 91.1 and it says, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. So we really said, live in the shadow of the Almighty, but always in his presence. So that's the call, to live in the presence of God. And I think of that great, I was reminded as we wrote this about Jim Elliott, the great missionary to the Akha Indians, really the Hurani Indians of the greater Akha nation in Quito, Ecuador, and how they went down after graduating from college, most of them from Wheaton College, five young missionaries on fire for Jesus Christ and they wanted a witness to these.

And the first time they actually touched their plane down to talk to them, the five of them were killed.

But Jim Elliott had read Luke chapter nine, verse 24, where Jesus says, he who would keep his life must lose it.

And he who loses his life for my sake will keep it. And that prompted him to say this, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he can never lose. That's what Jesus was saying. You try to hold on to your life, you're gonna lose it. But if you give your life to me, if you give it away to me, you're gonna have it forever. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he can never lose. And that became the purpose of his life, to give everything he had for the Lord Jesus. I know that Lance has talked to you about Lot.

Lot is a great example of what we ought not do. You know, if you look at the world and the way the world presents itself, I think the world presents itself as something very desirable.

But I want you to know it's very deceptive and terribly destructive. But to the young person, you know, the world beckons and not just to the, you know, I look at Psalm 119 where it says, how can a young man keep his way pure?

You know what I wanna say? How does an old man keep his way pure? How does any man keep his way pure? You know, we need to be able to say that. So if you look at Lot, Lot is a bad example because Pastor Lance has told you, Lot looked at the world and then he longed and lusted for the world.

He actually leaned toward the world until he decided to live in the world. And then he led in the world. He loved the world. And because of that, he lost everything he had in the world. You've gotta know that and you need to follow through. If you're not familiar with that, you'll find that in Genesis 13 through Genesis 19. And it's a tremendous reminder. So I wanna somehow to live in the shadow of the Almighty, but always in His presence. There was an old discipline in the church that was called practicing the presence of God.

And to remember that, you know, when you walk out here tonight, take a good look around because your Father made it all. Look at the beauty of the sky.

Look at the life that you see all around. Your Father made it and live in His presence. Be thankful for it. Take every time, you know, if you could get in the habit of walking out the door and saying in the presence of God, because we're always in His presence, but not always consciously in His presence. So the L was to live in the shadow of the Almighty, but always in His presence. And the scripture I put with that is Psalm 91 verse one. And the second is to embrace God's will for your life.

I'm spelling legacy, L-E-G-A-C-Y. So live in the shadow of the Almighty, but always in His presence. Now embrace God's will for your life. And I think of Romans 12, where Paul writes and it says, I urge you, my brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, which is your reasonable service of worship. Don't be conformed to this world, rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

So we ought to live in a way that we prove the will of God. And I know that Pastor Lance has told you that when we talk about the will of God, there's the general will of God. We all know that. And we find it in the gospels, we find it in the epistles. We find it especially in the Sermon on the Mount. You find it in the book of Proverbs. You find it in the 10 Commandments. This is how we know the general will of God. And the general will of God is that you and I be saved, that we be sanctified, that we be sexually pure, that we be separate, that we suffer for righteousness, we suffer for the sake of righteousness, that we submit to God, to the authorities that are in, as well as to one another.

And then beyond that, that we speak with thanks for everything, for everything that happens. God never gives us second best.

You and I may not understand it, but I had an opportunity one day this week while we were driving with Lori to speak about something that so many times, a snapshot is taken of some point in our life. And if we could, we would reject it. But life isn't a series of snapshots. It's a video. And while you might find this frame really tough for you, 10 or 15 frames down the line, God's gonna make it clear. And I knew that when I was a young lieutenant in the army and also in seminary. And my Lori was very sick.

And I remember the night that Dr. Leon Robin came to see Rosamie late in the hospital that night. And he said, Lieutenant, Mr. Zakariot, he said, I have to tell you, this can kill your daughter. Boy, that's the last thing I wanted to deal with. Gave up everything to go to seminary. And now he's telling us our Lori might not survive this. But you know, if I could take that shot and take it out of my life, then I would have. But God was gonna interpret it later down the line. He taught us, you know, about sensitivity.

And that we're up with people that are in situations like that. There are so many different types that you don't have the words. That sometimes your ministry is just one of presence. And if you are gonna speak, the only word that will really settle that unsettled heart is the word of God. So those are some of the things we learned through it. So that's the general will of God. You know, the specific will of God is really tough, isn't it? I know the general will of God, the things that I just told you.

But the specific will, what I'm supposed to do with my life, someone says you have to triangulate. There's three aspects of it. I wanna see with the word of God how the word of God will guide me. I wanna pray and talk to my father in heaven about it and ask his Holy Spirit to lead my steps. And then I might wanna rely on the advice and the counsel of a godly elder in my life. Some godly person that is willing to speak truth to me. Because when it comes down to, you know, really embracing the specific will of God, first of all, you have to acclaim his person.

You have to say God is God. And you gotta deal with that. God is God and you and I are not. So it's time to just deal with that. So you begin by acclaiming his person. You acknowledge his purposes. Affirm his plans for your life. Assert his promises. I love that, the promises. You know, Chuck Swindoll said 7,474 promises in the word of God. I don't know if that's true. I don't have time to count them. What I know is that there are a lot of promises there and they're for you and me to claim, each and every one of them, to just take them.

In 2 Corinthians chapter one, verse 20, Paul says as many as may be the promise. He said 700,744, whatever there are, as many as may be the promises of God, they are all yes in Christ. So we have to acclaim his person. We have to affirm his purposes. We have to assert his promises, right? And then we have, I'm sorry, we have to acknowledge his purpose. Affirm his plans. Assert his promises. And then you have to anticipate his invasion at any moment into your life. Because if you call on him, he's going to lead you.

You have to believe that. God doesn't want you to stumble around, but he wants you to call out to him for guidance. So L is to live in the shadow of the Almighty, but always in his presence. The E is to embrace God's will for your life. The G is to go to God daily in prayer and in the word. To go to God daily in prayer and in the word. You know, I think about the word of God. David writes in Psalm 119, verse 97, oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day. You know what that word meditation, I'm sure pastor told you what it means in Hebrew.

It's the idea of ruminate. It's what a cow does. A cow chews her cub. It goes down into one chamber of the stomach. She brings it up, chews on it for more nourish. Goes down into another chamber. She brings it up and chews on. You know, that's what we're supposed to do with the word of God. You know, but you can't chew on it during the day. If you haven't, you started your day with it. So in Mark chapter one, verse 35, it says, early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus went out from that place and went to a distant place alone and there he prayed.

And if you look through the gospels, each of the gospels show that that was a pattern in the life of the Lord Jesus, that he spent his time in prayer. So I look at the word of God.

I spent nine years in monastery living as a young Catholic monk. And I chanted all of scripture in Latin, but it meant very little to me. And it was after I got saved that I was introduced. I remember when my mother and father really first tried to share the word of God with Rose and me, my mother said to us, you gotta read the Bible.

I said, mom, we don't have a Bible. We have the St. Joseph's and the St. Andrew's Missal, but we don't have a Bible. So she sent us one. And I would come home from work and see Rose reading the Bible with tears streaming. This was before we accepted Christ, just tears streaming down her face. Well, I came to love the word of God because in the word of God, I was saved. Through the word of God, I was sanctified. You know, through the word of God, he soothes my spirit. He satisfies my longings. He scrutinizes my life and he safeguards my work.

The thing I like most about scripture, I love most about scripture is in it, I see my savior. You know, how often are you reading the book? Are you in it every day? Because if you're only getting it on Sunday and Wednesday, and I don't know anyone that packs more into a sermon than Pastor Lance, I really don't. But I'll tell you, if all you're getting is what he gives you on Sunday and what he gives you on Wednesday, you're starving. It's not enough. You take a look at the athletes.

Do they eat just two days a week? How would you do physically if you ate just two days a week? You can't do it. So it's something you really have to bite into. So the word of God becomes important. And prayer, you know, it says in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 17, pray without ceasing. And so you've all learned that little memory device, right? Prayer is acts. You familiar with that? It's adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, right? Someone say yes. Yes. Everybody say yes. Yes. I just wanted you to wake up one or two people that were sleeping there.

But acts, but I'm gonna tell you, acts is the wrong order. It is not adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. A better word is cats because prayer needs to start with confession because the prophet Isaiah makes it clear. If we have not confessed our sin, there's a wall between God and us so that he cannot hear us. So it begins with confession. And if you wanna be honest, you know, again, one of the disciplines of the church years and years ago was called the examination of conscience.

But how often do we do it? How often do we sit down and say, you know, God, let me just start with those big 10 commandments you've given me.

You know, God, I've taken your name in vain and that I call myself a Christian, but I don't always live that way. God, there are other things I worship in my life. I see the way I worship in my work, the way I worship my children. Don't do that. God will take away from you anything that you put in a place that belongs to him. So you go through and you find out that each one of us, if we take time, there's reason to go before our father and to confess our sins and ask him to forgive us. And then once we've done that, then we can adore him.

You know, we can engage ourselves in adoration and tell him how beautiful and lovely he is. I asked Pastor Tim the other day, when I was speaking to him, if when I speak in July, I said, there's a song that I'd like to sing at the end. And I know that we seem to be moving away from the hymns, but there's a song, oh God of loveliness, oh Lord of heaven above, how worthy to possess my heart's devoted love. So sweet thy countenance, so gracious to behold that one, one only glance to me were bliss untold.

You know, adoration is loving God. Think of the things that you might wanna tell your spouse. Think of the way you tell the children you love them. But to just pause and to adore God, to just let him know that you love him and why you love him. And that adoration will lead into thanksgiving. What do you have that you haven't given, that you haven't been given? And if you've been given, why do you go along without thanking him for it? So thanksgiving for every breath, had a couple of scares in the past month, past six weeks that have caused me to really examine my own mortality, that I'm gonna die.

And I have to tell you something. Yes, I'm a Christian. I know that the tomb is empty and I'm trusting Christ for my savior. But I have to tell you, I was frightened with that realization and it really troubled me, you know. And then I realized how much I have for which to be grateful and to be thankful, so many things. And just this day, just today, to thank him for today, to thank him for the privilege of seeing you all, for meeting some of you for the first time, to seeing some of the people that I've known for a long while and some people I never saw before.

It's good to see you here. COVID has a wonderful way of bringing us together despite what the government says, doesn't it? So it's good to see you all. So many reasons for which to give thanks. And you know, it shouldn't be the same thing every day because morning by morning, we read in Lamentations, new mercies I see. Well, if I see new mercies, then I ought to sing those new mercies and tell God how thankful I am for them. And then supplication to be able to take time and to pray. So Rose and I have, did I tell you that they told me to go late today?

No, you're laughing, but they did, you know. And you know, it's very hard for me to go long. You know that when I'm here, I never go long, right? So what they told me to go long because the kids are having an ice cream party. So I'm gonna take advantage of that. Let me tell you what Rose and I do every morning.

You know, because when it says go to God daily, go to God daily in word and in prayer, that talks about a quiet time. You know, if you're gonna have it at night, I'm gonna tell you so many things come up at night that'll put it off. But so we start in the morning because unless there's a death among the people we're caring for, our phone doesn't ring that early in the morning. So we get up at four o'clock in the morning and we spend that first hour.

We start with the, we read Psalms every morning because most of our patients are Jewish. And so I can read something in the Psalm that I can share with my patients and say, let me tell you what King David said.

And you'd be surprised how many of my Jewish patients don't know who King David is, you know? And so, you know, we start with something and then we go through the New Testament. So right now we're in second Thessalonians and we read these together.

And after that, we read Charles Spurgeon. And I think I've said this to you before and I'll say it again. You know, it's a great little book. It's called Morning and Evening. Great little devotional book. And if you want one, if you tell me after the service, I will make sure that I send you one. I'll send it to Pastor Lance and he'll get it to you. But it's just a tremendous devotion, morning and evening. If you read some of Spurgeon's sermons, if you have a hard time sleeping, read his sermons.

I guarantee you'll sleep, all right? Because they just go over your head so much. But his devotions, it's the heart of a, no, it's the mind of a theologian wed to the heart of a poet. They're absolutely beautiful. So we read that together. And then after that, there's a song that we sing each day and from a hymn book that we use that we have sent to all of our children who somehow have misplaced those beautiful hymn books that we've sent them. But we, so even on a trip like this, before we leave, I Xerox them so that I don't have to carry that thick songbook with me so that we have them.

And then after that, so that's our time in the word, even though it includes that song because the songs that we sing are based on the word of God. And then we go from there to prayer. And our prayer starts, first of all, at the cross and thanking God for all he is and all he's done for us.

And we go from there to the people who labor in God's courts. We base that on Psalm 134, where it says, bless the, you know, where they're leaving Jerusalem and they're saying, bless you. Those of you working up there in the temple, we're leaving, we'll be back, but God bless you for your service. So we take time to bless those that we know. We begin with Lance and Timothy and Drew and AJ and Cade. And then we name our pastors and some of our pastor's friends that we've known through the years. We pray for their health and their wellbeing.

And then we pray for certain missionaries that we support. So we go on from there to our next step, which is praying for the people who work with us, some of whom are unsaved. We have 150 people that work for us. And then if we prayed for them, we pray for the people for whom we work, our patients who are chronically or terminally ill. And then we go on from there to pray for our friends close at hand, the people that live in the condo we live in and the people far away, people that we've known in 40 years of ministry that we still pray for because they're praying for us.

And then from there, we go on to pray for my brother and his family. His three beautiful children, a doctor, a lawyer, and a medical student. And they don't know the Lord. And it's a heartbreak to my brother. I pray for my sister. I just had the funeral service for her husband last Saturday in Reno, Nevada. And I pray for her children. Not sure that all of them know the Lord. And then we pray for an adopted brother and sister that have been very good to our family. They're special to us. And then from there, we go to Lori and Lance, and we pray for all of their children and their children's children.

We go to our middle daughter, Natalie Ann, and her husband and their four children, and our baby, Janet, and her husband, Matthew, and their four children. And then I typically wrap up by praying for Rose, who's been so good to me. But when you do that, suddenly your morning devotions take on a new life and a new vigor. You know, I want to challenge you because that flavors the day for me. And it's not easy because I get to work. And as soon as Rose and I get there, a little after six in our office, you know, we pray right there.

And then during staff meeting, I pray with my staff. And I can be 10 minutes into the day and I blow it. I need that morning time. I want to challenge you to realize that when, you know, the scripture does call us to follow the example of Jesus, who used scripture so much. I love that verse. You know, oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day. And the example of Jesus. Can't you see him leaving everyone to pull back, to get up early in the morning because he knew what the day would hold, that he would be pressed by people.

And so he sought his father's face and they communed together in a lonely place. And in Mark six, he challenges men to come apart to a lonely place. He reminds them that. And it says that because there were so many people around him, you know, that he needed that time alone. So I want to encourage you to think about that. So the L is to live in the shadow of the almighty, but always in his presence. C is to embrace his will. The G is to go to God daily in word and in prayer. And the A is to align with God's people and God's causes, regardless of the cost.

And I take Psalm 16, verse three for that, where David says, as for the saints who are in the earth, these are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight. And you know what I find in the Christian church? We hook onto the celebrities. You know, we love it when a celebrity comes to faith. We should, but because he comes to faith doesn't mean that we immediately give him a platform to speak. They have to prove themselves in that faith. And somehow we want to be associated with the bigger people. So in James chapter two, verse one through nine, he warns us about that.

He said, don't be prejudiced. Don't judge someone by the externals, but take people as they really are. You know, and I see in God's pattern that God prefers the little people. Take a look at Bethlehem.

Look at who was there, the little people. And by the way, the Kings weren't there, right? You know, they come two years later. I mean, Hallmark likes to put them in the picture, but the Bible doesn't put them in the picture till two years later, after the slaughter of the holy innocents, those little children. So you've got to see that he prefers the little people. And then he prepares them in lesser places, on the backside of a mountain for Moses, on the backside of a mountain for David. You know, you take a look at his men and where he prepared them.

So he prepares them in lesser places. And then he promotes them to greater prominence based on their faithfulness. I have to tell you something, with God, there are no little people. There are no lowly places. There's no lesser prominence, only a limited perspective. And we have that limited perspective because we look to the big people. Let me tell you something.

The work of Jesus Christ in most churches goes forward because of the little people. The little people whose names you don't know who are working in the wings. Yes, you have the upfront people. Thank God for their ministry. But this church would not be all that it is without the people who work in the wings. And you have to know that. And you look in the world today, I want to align with God's people. I am, I can tell you that in hopefully a right way, I am angry about what's happening to the Jews today.

I am angry about what's happening in our country. And I see little people being stepped on and I want to stand for them. So we need to understand that we align with God's people and they're not, you go to 1 Corinthians chapter two and he says, it's not the wise, it wasn't the mighty, it wasn't the rich, it wasn't the famous. God chose the little people, the people that are nothing, that he might confuse the things that are. God's way is always with the little people. So I want my people, I want my family to understand that, that we have to be careful about whom we line up with.

It's so easy to be impressed with someone's credentials, but some of the greatest servants in God's work today have no credentials other than the fact that they faithfully work in the wings. You know, one of the things that I wrote down in the book that I think is really important is that to be is important, to be important is not. To be is important, to be important is not. You have to remember it's who you are in God's sight. It doesn't matter what men ascribe to you. And God knows me better than anyone here.

And at times that makes me shudder, especially as I stand and share his word of God. You know, when you think of the little people, remember what is said of Moses in Hebrews 11, verse 24, great verse to write down. But it was said of Moses that he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to align with the people of God, knowing that his suffering was far greater than all the riches of Egypt. Keep that in mind, the little people. So align with the people of God, with God's people and God's causes regardless of the cost.

And then I move on to the C, which is to commit yourself to passing on the legacy. No one's gonna be able to pass on your legacy as well as you. So yes, you can be here tonight and say, my children already know. Well, what about your grandchildren? What about the ones that are gonna follow them? Do you care about them? Psalm 78 that I read to you, you know, said, included five generations. How are they gonna know? Leave them a legacy. But a legacy is not necessarily something you leave unless you have first lived it.

So we said that we want them to commit to passing on the legacy. And that's all the scripture that I shared with you. Second Timothy chapter two, verse two.

Second Timothy chapter two, verse, Second Timothy chapter one, verse five. Psalm 22, verses 30 and 31. Psalm 78, verses five through nine. Psalm 145, verse four. Deuteronomy six, four through nine. All of those verses say that we're to be passing this on. And let me tell you something.

When I left ministry because of a commitment Rose and I had made about the way we would live, I had no retirement. There was nothing in the bank, nothing at all. And I didn't know what I was gonna do really. But my brother, who's a very successful surgeon, his wife's also a surgeon, said, I want you to think about coming and starting a ministry, caring for the terminally and chronically ill. You know, God has really blessed us in that. I have to tell you, we're able to do things for others and for missions and for people along the way that we would never thought we would be able to do.

There's a lot of joy that comes from that. You know, if there's anything good about having money, let me tell you, it's giving it away.

And I mean that with all my heart. If there's anything good about it, it's being able to give it away and knowing that God's gonna take care of you. But third John four, write it down.

Third John four. I have no greater joy than this, that my children are walking in the truth. So if there's anything that I wanna point to, I wanna point to what Laurie and Lance are doing and what they've done with their children. I wanna point to what Natalie and Trent are trying to do with their four and Janet and Matthew with their four. I wanna be able to point to that because I have no joy. You know, and as I think about closing my eyes for the last time on earth, I will be a happy man if I know that my children are walking with the Lord and instructing their children that way.

Nothing will make my life more meaningful or having any greater benefit than to know that they're walking with the Lord. And so when we wrote the book, we shared with, we took time in this book. Rose and I rewrote the four spiritual laws so that we would be able to say to them that they're gonna have to accept Christ. And we put it in our words, but you know the four spiritual laws. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Man is separated from God, can't know and experience God's love and plan for your life, but it's only through Jesus Christ that you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life.

And so we have to individually and personally embrace Christ as Lord, because I have no guarantee that Laurie and Lance's grandchildren or great grandchildren are gonna know Jesus Christ. But I'm hoping that Laurie and Lance will pass this on because we've given the copies to their children and grandchildren, but now they have to write in it. They have to make it more. And I want them to be able to say to their children, this is the most important thing in life that you give your life away, that you give it to Jesus Christ and he will make life fuller and richer and more joyful than you'd ever imagined.

So I gave the family a prescription there. I told them to walk the talk. You've heard that. Well, the reason is the walk is always more effective than the talk. My kids hear me, but what they've seen sometimes hasn't matched what I've preached. And that's to my shame. So we've got to walk it. And you always have to be mindful of who you're following. I mean, of who's following you. You have to be mindful of those coming behind. So when I was an army chaplain at Fort McClellan, we had an option. We either wore the uniform or we wore a collar.

So I know the collar is kind of foreign and Lance would throw stones at me for wearing the collar, but I would occasionally wear the collar. And believe it or not, it was good for the young soldiers because they saw me not as a soldier, but they saw me as a pastor. And I remember one day coming home and little Natalie was just a little bit of a toddler coming out of her room and she had taken my collar shirt and put it on. She wanted to be like daddy and the collar shirt was on. You know, you have to be, they're watching us every minute.

They know every inconsistency. And that's why we have to be honest enough to go back to them and say, I was wrong. I love you and I'm sorry, please forgive me. And try to rectify it and let them know it and be sincere about it. So walk the talk. Be mindful of those who are following. Remember that you make the journey once. Only once, so you make it count. When I was sick a couple of weeks ago and I was concerned for my health and my daughters were. And Lori came to see me. I can't tell you what that meant to me.

The kids will tell you that I've had a history of surprising them all their life. But she called me and she said, dad, did you get my card? And I was in the living room and Rose was taking care of me. And I said, no, I didn't get your card. When did you send it? And she said, well, I know I sent it. Why didn't you get it? And I looked up at that point and there she was in the dining room. You know, it was so special. And I realized then, you make the journey once. You gotta make it count. There's no do-overs.

You don't get another chance at it. Don't buy that lie. And so all of us, the clock is racing, especially now, it's eight o'clock. And the last is along the way, dare to take risks for Jesus. Take the risk, whether it's giving yourself, giving your stuffs, no matter what, take the risks. I wanna tell you, I told my kids in the book, the risk takers prayer. You know, I shared the risk takers here in this church once and not too long ago, I got a telephone call from a young man who had been a kid in this church.

And he called and said, Dr. John, I have to tell you something. I wanna thank you for sharing the risk takers prayer with me. It's made a difference in my life. Here's the risk takers prayer. Do you know what it is, Rachel? Okay, the risk takers prayer is this. Yes, God, my answer is yes. Now, what are your questions? Tom, can you see why that's a risk takers prayer? You see, before we give an answer, we wanna know what the question is. But the risk taker says, God, my answer is yes. Now, what are your questions?

What a difference that'll make in your life. And it's a way of committing to passing the legacy on. The last point, I'm really not gonna have time to go into as much as I'd like. I'll tell you that I've taken, that Rose took it from Luke chapter 10, verses 39 to 42. All right, and that's the story of Mary and Martha when Jesus comes and visit. And Martha gets all upset because she's out in the kitchen getting everything ready, and Mary's sitting down at the feet of Jesus. And she goes in and says, Jesus, don't you care that I'm out there doing all the work and Mary's in here sitting with you?

Remember what Jesus said? She chose the better part. Here's the thing. Yearn for the better things in life. And the better things are always the things that you'll find in Jesus all the time. I want you to think about writing that book. You know, I love it. We didn't put everything in this book. We got to Lance's side of the family. It was his great granddaddy. I have to tell you, I was so embarrassed. And Rachel, I'm telling you this because you're joining the Sparks family. But you know, his great granddaddy had three famous sayings.

The first was, be good or be dead. Man, can you imagine someone? And the second is, I love children, barbecued.

I don't get that. And the third was this. He said, you will get more things done with a smile and a gun than you will with just a smile. So that's a part of the family that you're gonna have to, you have to live with that. But that's yours. I wanted to say more, but I couldn't. I remember when we came here, Rachel was a little young woman on the platform. And I always thought she was, you know, really a sweet girl, very refined. And you know, obviously very committed. And now she's with Cade. And I'm thrilled about that.

I'm thrilled about Rachel. Let me tell you something. I give her that book because she's coming into our family. I want her to know what the legacy is. I want her and Cade to understand it's all about Jesus. It's all about Jesus. You know, I hope that just one of you say, it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to have it published. You don't have to have it bound. But you put something together to pass on to your kids that they can pass on. Because we all get to that place where we want to ask about the third, second and third generation ahead of us.

And we don't have answers. Well, we're given the second and third generation to follow some answers. Remember this one thing, whether you write a book or not. A legacy is not something you leave. It's something that you live. And in my legacy, I want to point my family and any who come to know me, despite all my failings, and they are many, and they are wretched, that it is Jesus who's made the difference in my life. And I love him and thank him for that. And my prayer tonight will be that some of you will think about doing that.

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for giving me the privilege to speak to Lance's people. I thank you that they're your people. I thank you for the way you've assembled them. I thank you for the joy of seeing so many new faces and so many of those that I've seen before. I thank you for young people that have greeted me, that have been to Israel with me. And I thank you for the many opportunities that this church has afforded me to minister. I thank you for the note that Debbie, in the midst of all of her pain and all of her loss, sent to me when she heard of the challenges I was facing.

I thank you for people like Jack that you've taken to be with you, like Bruce and Tom, the Flores family, Jayla and Serena, so many that have given so much of themselves to me, and I thank you for that. But God, the work is not done for any of our children. Our work is not finished. And I pray that you would remind us that, that even when they leave the home, we're still to be involved, to guide them, to help them, to support them, above all, to love them and to lead them to the Lord Jesus, our greatest ministry in life.

God, please help us to do that. I pray that you continue to empower Lance for years of ministry here. I thank you for the way his family supports him. I thank you for the way this church loves him, and I pray your blessings on them. So God, I commit them to you. I commit them to you with their concerns and their burdens tonight, the resolves that any of them may have made, and I pray your richest blessings, the blessings of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit on each one, now and until the Lord Jesus comes again, as he most surely will.

Amen.