All right, here we go. Third session. Third and final one. Hey, we recorded a podcast this morning, which was a lot of fun getting a chance to do that with Jake. I'll just throw this out. One question that came out of the crowd, and it was a question that many had. What did I mean when I said the two greatest things keeping people from overseas going among the International Mission board was porn and parents. What did I mean by porn? Here's what I meant. It's the crippling addiction to pornography by those who would want to go keeping them back. Because just like no wedding ring solves people's addiction to pornography, neither will where you live. Wherever you go, you'll find that you came. And the reality is needing to find victory in that area that is crippling so many people that that's the thing. That's that's what I meant. So it was a question that came on up. And if you don't listen to the podcast or whatever, then, um, then at least you got the answer there. Hey, it has been so good to be together to talk about what would it, what would it practically look like to live this stuff out? You know, the reality is, yesterday morning, I told a story about a man who cast a huge vision. He had a wayward daughter heading towards, uh, immorality in that in a drug scene. And he cast a vision for her. And as soon as he did, he didn't need to tell her anything else. He had invited her into a better story. And I said, God is doing that. He is interrupting our lives and inviting us into a better story. The story of the scriptures is one, a better story where God's inviting us to play a part, blessing us so that we would be a blessing to all, to all peoples. And tonight, I just want to continue and make it really practical. Um, you know, I was thinking about this in World War two. I don't know if you know this, but for every one soldier that fought on the front lines, there were at least ten, fifteen people who were playing an auxiliary role to that. Even if I broke up this room, I was sort of looking around the room earlier, and I thought if we had to go to war right now, who would head to the front lines and who would be like, ah, that's not me, but I'd have a part to play in World War Two. There were people, everything from feeding them to training them, people back working the factories stateside, people near the front lines, but not on the front lines. The reality is it took the whole country to win this war. And sometimes when we think of missions, we think one application, are you going to go or not? It's too simplistic. God is calling every single Christ follower to follow him, and Jesus is taking the gospel to all peoples. We know how the story ends. So to say we're serious about following Jesus is to literally follow him where he's going. And we saw last night that where Jonah failed, Jesus succeeds, and he breaks through all kinds of barriers to bring the gospel to people who most need it. Not just Samaritan women, but the least reached peoples on earth. So tonight really is going to be an opportunity for you to grab two or three things. That's it. You were already in groups. You're going to turn back to those groups and probably just a subsection to two or three people. You're going to say, here are the ways I think God is moving me to engage in this unfinished task of bringing the gospel to all nations. So get ready, because when we're done, you're turning around and sharing that with people. Before we close the night, um, in worship, I found like six ways and different missiologists. I mean, you can kind of categorize this in different ways, but I think there are six different ways that you can play a part in this. And I'm just going to give you those categories one at a time, and tell a bunch of stories of what your church is doing, what our church is doing, what other churches are doing in ways that you could engage and be a part of the story. Six Ways Jake loves to ask a question. I've stolen it from him at the end of messages. He loves to ask, what would it be like if we took this seriously? What would it be like if we became a church that fill in the blank. And tonight we're asking, what would it be like for you, the person sitting in your seat, to take just two or three steps forward to follow Jesus, where he's going towards this unfinished task? So let's first talk about prayer. Here's step number one prayer. Um, guys, one of the things you can do just ready for story time, one of the things you can do is pray daily for unreached people. So I'm going to throw a QR code up on the screen. If you got a phone, that's a good one to snag, just go ahead and take a second. Get that one downloaded. The reality is there are people, thousands of people around our country. Some of them set their alarms even for like ten oh two in the morning, you know, and ten oh two is a prompt towards Luke ten two where Jesus said, ask the Lord of the harvest. This is the only prayer request Jesus ever shared. He says, ask the father to raise up more workers. Well, that will drop on your phone. A group of people that you probably won't be able to pronounce. I can't pronounce them either, but you will find yourself praying for the harvest field daily. And you don't have to. You didn't do. Ten oh two or not one way. One little step that I just took forward. If I had to share one of my application points, even as I got ready for this, is I got that app down and I committed to just once a day, I got a little half mile track around my neighborhood, and I put on my daily prayer rhythms, the Unreached people group of the day. I pray for different things. I try and pray for different things daily. Maybe do some things like that too. But I put unreached, unreached people group on that, so I just use that app. Boom. Who am I praying for today? It is shocking how sometimes prayer. It not only changes the world, but it begins to change your heart towards the world. Prayer. Prayer. You can pray with your children. Let me tell you a quick story. I remember one time we had a gal live with us as a renter for six years when I was in Ames. Her name Yukiko Yamada, and she came to faith, a Japanese student grad student who came to faith because Leatha Aaron Mark, Aaron's wife, led her to faith in Christ when she was finishing her undergrad degree. She then moved in with us, and one of the things she did was she watched our kids like one night a week while we went on a date. It was sort of part of the rent package. Honestly. I'll never forget coming home one night. Jenny and I are taking our coats off. We're at the front door of the house, hanging our coats up, and I look into the living room and I have this etched in my mind forever. My kids are sitting on the floor around our plastic like laminated map of the world. They've got a book opened up and I look and Yukiko has Operation World or something like that. Opened up some prayer resource on praying now it's apps or whatever. But like she had that opened up and I was like, what's what's going on? She goes, well, we do this every day. When you guys leave, someone throws out a letter, someone gets to pick a letter. Then we find a country somewhere in the world with that letter. Then once we find it, then we open this book up and we learn about them. We read about how much they need the gospel. And then me and the kids, we pray for the world. And I stood there, just put it all together. I stood there, someone who had known Jesus for a while, and I went. God brought an international student from the ends of the earth, from a country where so few follow Jesus, Japan to our country. Someone shared the gospel with her. A friend of mine, she knows Jesus. She moved into my house. She is teaching my kids how to pray for the nations. Wow. I'm. I'm done being consumed by guilt. I was inspired by that. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? I thought, man, I want more of that. So pray you can pray with your kids. You can do the unreached people group with your kids. Um, you got to get them around. Uh, got to get them around situations like that. So, um, guys, we have different groups in our church. You do also, um, we, we have groups that pray. We have a nine month group. I'll tell you about them a little bit later, but they spend the first two weeks of their semester praying for an hour a day at six a m they're really serious about it. And then throughout the course of the semester, they meet three days a week and they pray for an hour a day together at six a m in the morning. They clock hundreds and hundreds of hours every week praying for the lost. We have all night prayer. Uh, not all night prayer meetings. We have all church prayer meetings. Uh, I got a couple pictures. I think, um, of, uh, that's not an all church one. That's actually the the early morning group praying and seeking the Lord. Um, they do that a lot. Um, so we have some groups like that and then there's an all church prayer meeting. Um, I think this actually just happened when the Nepal, uh, flooding was happening. A group just said, let's get together. Let's pray for Nepal guys. You have prayer groups at your church. I want you to know this is happening at Veritas Church. Global Prayer Veritas is the third Sunday of every month, nine thirty a m third Sunday of the month. You can come seek the Lord with your church for lost people. Pray, pray. I love what Spurgeon said. The slender um. He says, prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscles of omnipotence. Did any time you can put T on the end of a verb, that's killer. Prayer is the slender nerve that moveth the muscle of omnipotence. I'm telling you, when we just talk out loud to God about the loss. It's like sending a signal up and God is on the move. He is somehow in his wisdom, in some way, limited his work to the prayers of his people. I don't have that figured out, but God uses prayer. Number two, we can give. I talked about this a lot, actually in a message earlier, how we. We kind of fail to give right out of ten thousand dollars given at most Western churches, only one dime makes it to the least reached peoples on earth. There are a lot of numbers that we track. If you're a quarterback, there's a quarterback rating, you know, and they they plug in probably a lot to get that right passing percentage. And you can't throw a lot of interceptions. And now a big metric among NFL quarterbacks is how quickly you can release the ball. Like that is becoming a big deal. Can you get it out in two seconds? Hike one two ball's gone different ways that you rate an NFL quarterback. What are the numbers that matter to this church? What are you counting? A lot of churches count how many people come to a service. We do. Every service. We know how many people came. That's not bad. I love how JD Greer says it. We we, um, are not so much consumed with our seating capacity, but our ascending capacity. They're just counting something else. Not just how many people are seated. Sometimes we count that or we count giving, or what percentage of our people are in equipping classes or connection groups or whatever. Not bad things at all. It's worth counting. Are we counting how we are growing as a church towards a percentage of our budget, going to the least reached places on earth? They're called unreached people groups. They're predominantly in the ten forty window. I should have a slide of that. It's where the gospel is least known. I think that's a good metric. I think it's a good number. It's one worth counting is a growing percentage of our budget. Getting out of these walls, going to the least reached places. Our money's a reflection of of our priorities. So give honestly, you can get your kids involved in this. When my kids were small, I don't know what you do with your kids, but sometimes you just got to make it really tangible, right? You can do compassion, you know, and oh, we sponsor a kid compassion. Come Christmas time, it's a great time to sit down with your kids and go, all right, what are we going to what are we going to purchase for them? And maybe it's Bibles. Maybe it's like, how many chickens are we going to give? Are we going to purchase for these kids in need? Maybe it's we're going to our whole family is going in on a goat, you know, like whatever it is, like kids have got to get in on that. You got to get them spending the little amounts of money that they have, not all of it, but some of it. And their hearts, our hearts always begin to move where our money goes. Jesus knew that where our treasure is, there your heart will be also. So you got to show your kids, you got to walk them and bring them into that. At our church, we do Operation Christmas Child, right? It's part of Samaritan's Purse packing shoeboxes while our families are now going, hey, order these things. And then we're getting together soon at our church. And all the kids, all of us will be packing shoeboxes, just sending out the gospel and some gifts at Christmas time. I don't know that any of them are going to the ten forty window. What I'm saying is it's an expression of giving that we're trying to help our children to get involved in. So it's not just the praying, it's also giving as a church and as individuals. Um, let me talk about going. I hope all of you get to go to the nations at some point in life, even if it's a short term trip, something happens when you become the minority. Something happens when you are walking in New Delhi and you're walking past thousands of people moving in one direction and you realize none of them know Jesus. Something begins to change in you. Break in. You. Mess with you. I hope all of you at some point can go. Not everyone can. But I hope all try to. Short term going is huge. Within our church. I told you the other day that a four hundred thousand global missionaries. Only three percent of them are actually going to. Those who haven't heard about Jesus, ninety seven percent of missionaries are going to places that already have Bibles, churches. The gospel is near them. So there's a misallocation. Three percent of global missionaries are going with less than one percent of our church's budget to three billion people. We can change that. You can change it. You can be a part of the change of that. Um, yeah. Our goal is to see indigenous churches planted among the least reached people. That is where we are focused, laser focused as a church. We began during Covid. I mean, it's just what our church got going. And then Covid shut us down immediately. And I'm like, are we going to send anyone during Covid? Like the world shut down? And one guy, Jordan Smallridge, I wish I had a picture of him, squirrelly little freshman. He's like, I'll go. And I'm like, by yourself? Are you sure? He's like, I'll go. It's a modest start. You got to start somewhere. Our summer going, one student went, Jordan went. And I said, when you get back, you have to steward what God did in your heart. You need to to raise up people. Well, then next year we sent one team of four. Way to go, Jordan. Just multiplied yourself fourfold. Awesome. The next team we. The next year we sent four teams. Great. One person to a team of four to four teams By Christmas. We'll have sent this year seventy five people in this past year. It's just growing. It's just taking off. And we'll send our first community trips to unreached people groups. And we're going to try and send our first children like our youth ministry. I don't know that we're going to get them abroad. We might do something just south of us in the sort of same, same time zone, maybe in South America, Central America. But go, it's it's amazing the the amount of work that God does. The impact of a freshman trip. Let me give you one. Here's a here's a picture up, up on the screen. Um, we just started freshman trips. We thought, well, no one's, no one's doing this, but, but, um, but we'll start a freshman trip. It was wildly successful. Um, freshman to Spain just last year during this next picture. Doreen um, and Taylor. Okay, so that's Taylor in the middle and she is with a girl from China, Mia and her friend Doreen Doreen is black and she is came from our team and she was sharing Jesus. Here's here's what it says. Um she was sharing with me who'd never heard before of Jesus had never held a Bible. Um, never knew that anyone could own one. It was the first time she'd ever heard the good news. And she said, I've never felt so much peace before. And then she said, wow, Jesus is a good God. It was clear to her. And it was clear to us that that, that Jesus was pursuing her. Just people don't know, you know, and, and we were able, they were able to give her a Bible for the first time in Mandarin, her first language, so she could see that Jesus was for her, Taylor said. As we read with Mia. She looked over, saw Doreen. Doreen was crying. It was the first time Doreen had ever experienced that reality that not only. There are people who've never heard, but there are people that if they did hear, they would want to know more. It's happening. It's happening just one person at a time. It's just a freshman trip. So we're trying to send every college student overseas at least one time in their college career. Um, below, here's a picture of, um, of the forty one students that we sent to seven locations this past summer. Um, we, we hope this year to send ten teams to ten unreached people groups. Um, this summer. Um, so, so we're doing it, we're trying to get there. There's a few more pictures, I think, uh, maybe this, but guys, Veritas is doing the same thing. Veritas. Yeah, we got a few summer team pictures. Egypt. They're kind of all over the place. They're not going to easy places. They're going to hard places. But God is at work in those hard places and people are desperate for the gospel. A couple of the gals who I took with me, um, most recently to Nepal just became long term goers. We're just commissioning them from the stage and going to very sensitive places for the gospel. And we won't call them their names and all that kind of stuff. And, um, but, but the reality is this, um they're going and they first went on a summer team trip and that turns into long term goers. You guys are doing this to Veritas. You sent eleven salt, uh, summer, uh, team people this year. And right now the applications are open. So if you're a student especially, I mean, if you're a student, get in on this, like the applications are open. What would it be like? What would it be like for you to go, I'm doing it. I'm going to figure it out. We'll figure out how to support you. You can. God's got money out there. That's not the issue. Would you be willing to go? It could change your life. I know it will change theirs. Um, long term goals. We have a lot of long term goers, but almost all of them, maybe every single one of them was first a short term goer, first a short term goer, and had become long term goers. Um, Jordan, right, was telling me, hey, look, if you're considering moving overseas, Join. Go! Next. The go! Next step is becoming a missionary. Guys, there's a. There's a go! Next step called becoming a missionary. It's coming up for your church. You need to jump in on that tonight. It's a great time to learn about that. So I said, you can get your family overseas. You know, a lot of people have different goals for their kids. You know, I just want to take my kid skiing before he graduates high school or whatever. The thing is, you know, you want to do something with your kid. I always want to take up fishing. I want to do this. I'm sure Matt's going to kill a big buck with every one of his kids before they graduate high school. Here's an idea. Get every one of them overseas with you. Why not? I got two out of my three overseas, and Josiah was just this squirrelly high school student. I don't know what all it did in his soul, but when you get your kids around the lost, it's powerful. My other daughter had to go on her own with another team, but it could be cool. You could figure out how to bring them with you. Summer vacations are great. I do great summer trips with my family. What about taking one to the nations? That could be amazing. Hey, by the way, Veritas is taking a cross-cultural exposure trip to the Twin Cities in June. You could do that. You could jump in on that. Engage global is what it's called. It will be mind blowing for you to get around that. That could be your next step. Okay, I'm not thinking yet overseas, but in June, you could get on that trip. That'd be amazing. Um, mobilize. Here's another one. So you can give you can go, you can, you can pray, you can mobilize. Here's our pipeline at Salt Church. Um, launch global is a group that works with us. We discover, develop and deploy people. So discover you're in a discovery type thing, like a class A, a church wide equipping event. You're learning about some things for the first time. Some of the things in, in our discover groups, um, we do different things like secret church, um, is one of them. You know, that's, uh, that's David Platt. You know, it's six hours. Your church comes together and you go hard from six to midnight or seven to one in the morning, like it's just a one night thing. We've done things like that as a church. We have classes. We have seventy people signed up this year. We had seventy people last year for a mobilized class like this. But just like a ten week long class, guys, we were part of disciple making initiatives. We started one of these in my living room where it's like some some people got together. This was students in community. We got together three, two, one every week for ten weeks. We are going to abide in Jesus for three hours a week. So that's kind of like your devotions two hours a week. We're going to be doing evangelism together. Yep. We're just going to go out and share Jesus with people one hour a week. We're going to pray specifically with someone else for lost people. These dmy classes, one of them started a handful of years ago. Now there's tons of them going. There's, um, twelve of them have happened, eight to ten people. We've even had an all Spanish one. People are sharing the gospel, last I heard. Um, just the last four of them that went through. They clocked five hundred and ninety nine hours in prayer for lost souls. It's pretty cool. They're just like interceding for people who need Jesus. So this stuff's taking off. David Hayes, this one guy, said, I came into DMI as someone who felt afraid and unequipped to share the gospel. Ten weeks later, thanks to this class and the men and women who lead it, I've grown greatly in my ability to live confidently for Christ on campus and in the workplace, understanding that I have a part to play in the Great Commission. Through the equipping, I've received a DMI. I felt prepared to bring my excitement and passion about what God is doing in my future leadership. I hope to lead a connection group next year. He's a college student. I've been prepared to emphasize outward facing, lost reaching faith that will help to further the gospel on our campus and beyond. This is a freshman who just jumped into a class. Got to share Jesus. I tell you for a second about Callista. Callista is someone who is a part of a monstrous connection group that meets in our house every week. Callista is a local school teacher at Salt Church. A couple pictures of Callista up here. Um, yeah, that's, uh, that's a night for radical or whatever in our facility. Um, yeah, that's some of the missions classes that we have going on. Uh, um, another one of that. Yeah, a lot, a lot of training. Okay. Callista is back to the left. You see Josh Afro, you know, then Lauren, his wife, two more down. Callista. Um, Callista is a Callista is a student, not a student. She's a teacher who is in that connection group did DMI. She says this having been a part of a launch global training through Salt Church, I can say how how this has shaped her, she says. I see both community. Um, I'm sorry. As someone with a heart for the nations, it helped me to realize that my mission isn't just going overseas, it's every day in the community. I've grown to be more intentional, present, and others focused. It taught me how to genuinely invest in people, not build surface level relationships. As a teacher, she's a school teacher in Gainesville. It changed how I lead and serve my students. Overall, it's made my faith active, not just personal, and that's affected every space I walk into. Callista grew a heart for the unreached at DMI. That ten week class, she joined a nine month gathering and then headed to Southeast Asia. This nine month gathering. Get this real quick. The. This equipping environment. A lot of these ten week people jump into a nine month group. If you want to head overseas, like with Salt Church, we don't want. Right now the IMB sends a lot of people and they ricochet back because they're not done. Adulting. They don't make it on the field long. Maybe almost half of them come back for reasons that wasn't like it got too hard. So we're trying to do better training in house. So here's what we do in our equipping efforts that funnel that that, that equipping one of the stages into the nine month group. Get this. If you're a college student, you give up your lease. If you're a homeowner, you somehow rent out your home to someone else and you all move into an apartment complex in Gainesville, the one where six thousand six thousand internationals live. It's the greatest concentration of like Indian, um, you know, students, Indian, Chinese students in our city. So so community people like kids and all like college. You all move in together for nine months because that's how you're going to live when you're overseas. You're going to have a house with a yard and a swing set. Like you're going to live in, in an area like that. And then we train you in that. That's, that's the group that gets together three days a week to pray before work. And by the way, if any of them have a conflict with a work schedule somewhere between six and seven, they go earlier and three days a week, they seek the Lord for an hour, twice a week they go out and evangelize. And one night a week for like three or four hours, they do equipping. And over nine months we see how people are really doing. They have conflict, they have interpersonal struggles, and we train and we work through that nine months. You know, if someone is battle hardened, gospel sharing, faithfully praying, like you just see a person. And by God's grace, we're now sending better long term goers who you're buying one way plane tickets and and by God's grace, they're not coming home early. They were ready to leave. You can do that. You can do stuff like that. There's some place in in thirty miles around here where there's a pocket of humanity where you can go and train. Like I'm just there's just ideas, but it's helping us be better long term senders from our church. Calista went on, um, God's using her in tremendous ways. I'll, I'll keep moving. So she's part of that nine month group. Um, here's something you can do. Here's something you can do. You can welcome people. How many of you have homes like, okay, yeah, there's a lot of people in this room who have homes. Get this. Of all the international students who come to our country, the number is somewhere like around eighty percent of them never get invited into an American home. They would love to. And if you go to their country, they they will quickly invite you in. They'll kill the chickens. They will. They will do their very best. They'll give the very best food for you. They will sit and eat rice and they will. They will give you the best meat that they have. They'll give you anything. It's unbelievable. I don't know what to do with my Christian faith when I'm in Muslim countries or when I'm in Hindu countries, and I see that they love strangers more than I do, and I'm the Christian telling them, but you need to know Jesus. I'm just undone by it. But we have an opportunity to be like that towards internationals here. We have a big day coming up where we eat a lot of food Once a month. Once a year. Thanksgiving is coming. Guess it's powerful when. When you open. It's been. I think it's been a good thing for my kids when I have filled our home with international students. Okay, like, here we go. Here's an opportunity to put Jesus on display. We can open up our homes. There are people and you guys are doing this. There's already a group here at Veritas doing this, but more of you can get in on this. This is just low hanging fruit. You can open up your homes to welcome in the nations. A couple pictures here for us. We've got we've got nineteen students trying to reach international students, just like I think outside of our staff. But right now they have seventy people coming in regularly every week to people's homes. If the group got so big, no one's home was big enough to do seventy regularly. It was just killing homes. So now it's like groups, maybe two or thirty five. So here's a picture. I think there might be another one. Um, yeah. So you just see people of all ethnicities around and they're hearing about Jesus of that group. In one of the houses, there were forty students, and they said ten countries were represented in that one night, some from China and Taiwan and Japan, India, these are the least reached places on earth. So get this. The world is sending the best and the brightest to our country. Most of them never get invited into our home, but they are open to Jesus. It's so easy to talk to an international student about Jesus. I'm not joking. Just like you can say, man, the weather's awesome, the weather's awful. Do you know Jesus? You can just like, I'm not joking. You know, like you you don't have to do anything creative. Nothing at all. The nations will speak very openly and often about, especially Muslim and Hindu people. They will speak so easily about spiritual things. It's all a part of their life. They all talk about spiritual things. It's it's super easy. I think I got another picture here. Yeah, check this out. Taylor again. She's making in all the pictures. So she was helping me with this talk. In fact, she wrote most of this talk. I'm like, Taylor, you are on the staff help me. And we interacted a lot to put this together. This is Japan to Gainesville. Yuna and Ayo heard the gospel for the first time after being in the US for just two weeks. And this is how Ayo responded. I don't know if this is true, but if it is, it is so amazing. And she's now learning the Bible weekly with some of our students. Taylor goes upstairs to her house. Here's this next picture. And, um, you know, we're asking Jesus to to make us laborers. Well. She hears this noise going on upstairs in her in her apartment complex. She goes up there, the neighbors and actually invited her. So she steps in and they're worshipping some false god, you know, um, she says, the other night, my neighbors invited me to their house to see the festival. They're celebrating right on the balcony, one floor above mine, an idol of offerings was set up and forty Indian students gathered together to worship this God. Because it was the God's birthday. They worshiped millions of gods. And for them, they're like, oh, Jesus. Yeah, just throw him in. We'll worship him too. Now they need to know it didn't work like that, but but they're quite open initially. Likely none of these students had heard of Jesus before, so she just jumps in. Pavitra was an Indian student who began coming to our ministry a while ago. Pavitra encountered Jesus because the Mala came to know Jesus. Another Indian student, Satvik de Mala, was just playing soccer one day. He was like nearly a professional like athlete and a college girl. No joke, A college girl on in our ministry felt led by the Lord to walk across a park and go up to an Indian student and invite him to salt company. She boldly walks across a park. She goes right up to Mala and she goes, I don't know you. And she gets into a conversation. She goes, would you like to come to salt company? This college ministry? He says, yes, goes to our spring kickoff. We do a fall kickoff and a spring kickoff. It's always warm. You can do whatever. So we do a spring kickoff. We fill this room up on campus. Safa Mala, for the first time, hears this one verse is taught on that night. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. He wrestles with the gospel. Within a few weeks he is soundly converted to Christ. Safa de Mala has gone on to thrive in his relationship with Jesus. He just came to know Christ a couple of years ago. We have been discipling him, pouring into him. We've hired him. He's on our tech team. He has led much of our international ministry. He is the one who shared Jesus with Pavitra, who I'll talk about in a second. Esophagectomy just preached for his second time at Salt Company last Thursday night and is being used by God. Yeah, it's worth it. And get this, his father, his father says to him, who do you think you are? You think you're the apostle Paul? Someday you're going to. All of a sudden, God's going to use you or whatever. His father is chastising him from the other side of the planet. Unbeknownst. Any of that story. Andy Kampman is preaching in our ministry to a bunch of students. South Dakota is in the front row, and Andy Kampman calls him out and says, who knows but that you will be the Apostle Paul to all of India. And in that moment, that slanderous comment from his dad that condemned him for his faith was in a prophetic word spoken over him that God is going to use you in power, and it's my privilege. Now we're offering him a full time job. Don't tell anyone. I wasn't supposed to say that. No one knows that back home. And I hope to raise him up either to be a national or an international church planter that goes out among us. That's all. I was going to share any of that. That's just how Pavitra came to faith, because Karthik is telling everyone about Jesus, including this gal Pavitra. Um. One more. Um um. Pavitra is in the tank. She was witness to by Suffolk. Suffolk was sharing with many. She gave her life to Jesus. Listen Pavitra attended our international student ministry, began studying the Bible, revealed that she had a desire to know Jesus when she was back in India. But her Hindu family was very. Against her attending church, especially labeling herself Christian. They made her promise Pavitra's family. You never be baptized and you remain Hindu. The more Pavitra learned about Jesus, the more she realized that she could no longer follow other gods in her words. She stood on the stage. This is one of the most powerful baptisms I've ever been a part of. Because she got in the water, she stood on the stage and with clarity and conviction, she said this. I realized that Jesus is not one among many gods. He is the only God. And guys, she followed Jesus in baptism. Her new found faith led her to follow Jesus. She was worried about her family no longer. Now she follows Jesus among us guys. We're seeing students, Japanese students, her Indian students. We're seeing people come to faith who just came from the nations who could be eating Thanksgiving at your house. I don't care if they like white or dark meat. I hope dark because we all know it's better. But listen, they could be at your. They could be at your at your tables. Pavitra could be at your table. What would it look like to take a step forward? Next picture shows her her family might be against her. Pavitra is right in the middle with her flowers, but she just got pulled into another family that is stronger than blood. The family of Faith and Akash Dhamala got to be a part of winning her to Jesus. There's Callista right next to us. God's doing so much in that. In that group of people. Um, guys, at Veritas, you have an international welcoming ministry. It's a family group. There's thirteen community members seeking to welcome people like Pavitra from unreached places. In fact, just last Friday, here's a couple pictures from your church. Just last Friday, you had seven people from five unreached countries in a home for a meal, worship, and Bible study. Listen, every elder, by virtue of his qualifications, needs to be known as hospitable. Hospitality does not mean you make brownies for kids in youth ministry, and you love Christians doesn't mean that at all. Hospitality means you're a lover of strangers. So elders are called to be front runners of missional engagement, loving people who are outside the family of faith. Right? That's that's, that's like a qualification for being an elder. What I'm saying is you got people among you who are leading the way, leading the way in loving strangers, even some strangers that aren't even from this country. It's happening right here in your church. What would it be like for you to open up your home and get in on that? You feeling guilt or you feeling invitation I hope only invitation. Um, here's the last one. Care. You are just about to turn to your crowd next to you and say, this is what God's doing in me. So. So here's my last one. Care. Um. How will we care for those that God does send overseas among us? Um, I was telling Jake I think it was Jake this morning that, you know, Cheney, one of our long term goers, he's now on our staff team. He said, I was overseas for like a year and only one person emailed me and they didn't even email me. They just hit reply and said something to one of my messages, one full year and one person hit reply and said something. In seventeen ninety two, um, Carey, uh, was part of a small group of Baptist pastors, and they were discussing just the enormous task of reaching the world. Right? And he's the one, to my knowledge, who came up with the idea of holding the rope. Have you heard the phrase who's going to hold the rope? And Carey put it this way some of us are going to descend down deep into an unexplored mine. We're going down deep. But if I go down, will you hold the rope. I can't go unless you hold the rope. His point was, I'm willing to head out and be that guy. But I have to know. And there were five pastors back home who said, we will never let go of the rope and all their names. And there is significant as the goer, William Carey. All I'm saying is this your goers need more than an occasional response on email. And what's cool about this church is you are already caring for the goers. Right now at Veritas, you have missionary care teams who help hold the rope. If you want to know more about that, you can do. You can go to that next step on missionary care. Like you can be one of those in our church. We hand them out to connection groups. So my connection group just got Pavitra. She's in Princess. The work that she's doing among refugees is unbelievable. This little gal, she probably weighs a buck. Oh five. You know, like she's just this slight gal who is as fierce as a lion. I don't know if I've ever met a girl more bold than princess for the gospel. But here's the thing. Who's going to hold the rope for her? Well, she just got handed to Mike, and I thought, man, I got a lot of details going on. And one of the members of my connect group said I will represent her for the group. We'll send her presents. I will call her. I will bring her up in prayer. We will know her. We'll hold the rope and we'll care for her. Some of you. My word. There could be some others in here who's like, oh, you know what? Because I'm just getting close to being an empty nester. I would love to share that kind of. I would love to have that kind of care for a long time ago. Wouldn't that be beautiful? It could be someone else who's going to hold the rope for your people. Guys, here's what I'm saying. The task is so huge. The world is so big. Three billion people. But God has you here. God has you here, and God wants to use you. He's inviting you into a better story. What would be just a couple tweaks, two or three possible applications, way that you could take a step forward and be engaged in this better story? I'm telling you, God has a way of not only pushing us towards obedience, but blessing us as we take those steps of faith. So here's what I'm gonna do. I told you I was going to do it. You got to get just turn around to two or three people around you and go, here are the two or three ideas that God, I think might be leading me towards. You got to say them, get those words out of your mouth. There's something about that. When you get to say what you think the Lord's doing in your life, that will push us, I think, towards steps of obedience. Go ahead and do that for a couple minutes. And in about three, four, five minutes or something like that, I'm going to then close our time in, in prayer for all of you. So ready, set, go. Some members. Came here for a short while. My mom passed away. And my daughter came back. Some. Of the family We came here. Derek didn't like it. And then he got deployed. Covid hit. Daughter couldn't do math, so he started coming back here. He came home. We love this. I think for me is. We have we have history. And then. I'm so excited. I can still enjoy that. But. I think mobile is the heart. And everything else can just happen. And I think. You know, And. We're in the opposite end here. We have six granddaughters, thirteen to one from one family. We have eight grandchildren. Yeah. So our daughter. Yeah. I think that's possibly what. I love. I think I don't know. Yeah. So don't be. Don't be. As long as you love them. Yeah. Well, I can just see it. Yeah. Well. Jordan. Right. So I think. Analogy is like I was friends with her before two years ago and. Through WhatsApp. So she's. Like, well. Hey, I'm going to I'm going to close us in. I'm going to close us in prayer. So, um, let's do this as, as we bow our heads in prayer, let's, let's just symbolically, um, open our hands before the Lord. Let's, let's do that. But what we're symbolizing is we're saying, um, God, our hands are open, Our hands are open. Um. If Jesus is Lord. The answer is always yes. The answer is always yes. Even before we know what question he's going to ask, we're just leaning in. He's never trying to steal. He's never trying to diminish joy. He's never trying to rip us off. He's inviting us into a better story. So, God, we open our hands that symbolic of our wallets and our schedules and our abilities and our influence. God, we're saying yes. And it feels scary at times. But God, your perfect love casts out fear. And fear is not of you. That's of the enemy. And there's no guilt in following you. There's His invitation. But God, we obey before we have emotions even to do it. We say yes because you're the boss and we see you heading a direction, and we see you receiving the worship of all nations. And we see you saying to a Samaritan woman that there is something that your father seeks worship of all nations and God. Three billion people of the world are worshiping rocks and sex and money and a Western dream, and Hollywood and God, you are not receiving the worship that you deserve. You are a consuming fire. All glory, all glory is deserved only towards you. And so Jesus, we're saying, yes, God, for people whose hands maybe are trembling. The young women that I just met with that started talking about going, God, people who are saying prayer. People who are saying, I can care, I could mobilize, I could, I could give more. Oh God may in faith and in the power of your spirit and with our eyes fixed on you, not only the author, but the perfecter of our faith. God, let us follow you for the joy set before you endured the cross, scorning its shame. You sat down at the right hand of God. You're the one who claimed it is finished, and yet the work isn't finished. For those who still need to know you, the cross is finished. But there is an unfinished task and we just want in on it. We just want in on it. God, I pray for your richest blessing on Veritas Cedar Rapids. I pray for Jake. I pray for Matt. I pray for the elder team. I pray for Jordan. I pray for just men, women I'm meeting. Oh God. I pray that their hearts first would be the softest towards you, that they would, when no emotions precede, follow you in faith and obedience. And then God, like a wave of strength coming behind them. May. May your joy and your power and your blessing be pushing them forward. And God, may the church follow their example. Oh God bless our little efforts. Bless our little attempts. We long to be a part of a better story. The story is written once we see it, we cannot unsee it. It's hard finding Where's Waldo once you find him. He's right there. God, we've seen what you're about. And God, I pray that you would bless this church and our network of churches. Yes. To consider this nation. Praise God, but to consider billions more who desperately need you. We need you. Like Jake even said. We need you to want you. Oh God, rescue us, help us. Set us on your path. Bless us God. Amen. That blessing overflow to the nations. We ask this in your name for your glory and our joy. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.