Missions 101

I didn’t know that. So anyway, maybe it won’t be news to you because I understand this church has had a missionary background for years and years and I appreciate that. Our church in Georgia had that background too, but most of the people didn’t know much about missionaries. So anyway, if I can get the staple out of this. Y’all turn to Acts chapter 13 with me please. Very familiar passage and well, I’ll get it out here after a while.

Raise the mic up. How about that? Is that better? All right, good. Sometimes we preachers are known to, we’ll talk loud and then we’ll talk down and we think everybody can still hear us, but it’s not the case. Acts chapter 13 of course is the story of the calling out of Barnabas and Saul. And I want us to look at that just for a few minutes. They said, now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers.

This was Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene and Manian that’s been brought up with the tetrarch and Saul. Did you notice who was first and who was last? I don’t know if there’s a pecking order there or what that was, but Saul who became Paul is last and about the time you get to 13, it changes. And now Paul and his company is going to leave.

So anyway, that’s neither here nor there. That’s free. So as they ministered and fasted, they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Let us separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where until I’ve called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them away. Let’s pray just a minute. Father, thank you for what’s going on here thus far.

And I pray God that you might teach us from your word tonight and Lord help us to understand in Jesus’ name. Amen. So you have these men that are ministering to the Lord in that church’s Antioch. And some people say, well, how do you find the will of God? Or how do I know that God’s called me? Or how do I find that out? That’s the number one question we get across the country.

How do you know that God’s called you? And what’s the will of God for me right now? If you’re a member of this church, the will of God for you right now is to be faithful in the ministries of this church. I’ve had people say, well, maybe God’s going to whisper. Maybe I missed it. I’m going to tell you, in my experience, you don’t have to worry about missing the call of God.

It’s not a question of will I know, it’s will I go. That’s the point. So if you’ll just be faithful right here in this church, and that’s where the local church has this obligation. Let me back up a little bit. How many of you have been in the Army? Well one or two of you has. Maybe this is the wrong generation. Yeah, well, we won’t go that.

There you go. When you’re in the service, you have what’s called boot camp. And that’s mostly where they kick you with the boot. In boot camp, they train you. And this is, I mean, they train you to listen to orders and they drill it into your head. Man, I got off that bus in Georgia and this old mean drill sergeant said, son, you just walked your last step.

Man, that’s truer words. We’re never smoking. I’m telling you, they ran me to death. But you learn when that man talks, you listen. Amen. The guy beside you here, you better take care of him because you might be in a foxhole with him in my day. It was in Nom. You better know because you’ve got each other’s back. And if he’s got a problem, you’ve got a problem.

So look out for each other. So in boot camp, what they do is they take that raw recruit and they mold him into a soldier. That’s exactly what the local church is supposed to do with believers. The local church, better for worse, is a boot camp for the army of God. That’s what it’s here for. And they go out and they win people to Christ. They get them in here.

They disciple them. They teach them the right doctrine and the right Bible and how to reach people and how to approach people. And then they send them out. And you’re going down to the street on Saturday. You are going down to the street on Saturday, are you not? Two of you are. Amen.

But that’s what you’re here for. And you take these raw recruits and the job of the church is to disciple them and get all the rough edges off. Whereas used to, I don’t know what your guy’s background is, but you might spend Saturday night roaring in a bar somewhere and getting in a fight. Well, you’ve got to get those edges off. And so God can use you.

I mentioned Sister Angeline last night and the fact that she was just in your face. She’d witness to you nose to nose, man. She just, and we just had to say, honey, slow down a little bit. You can’t do that. You can’t threaten them. She stood down at the market one day and she told all these people, she said, if you go to the Baptist church, God will sell all your produce down here.

I said, no, Sister, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t say that. And she said, well, they ought to come anyway, you know, but you’ve got to get those rough edges off. And that’s what the local church is supposed to do. And as those rough edges get off and God blesses your life and you’re involved in your local church, this is where missionaries come from. The Holy Ghost said, not the preacher, not some missionary that’s come through.

It’s not a sad story or a song. The Holy Ghost said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul for the work where unto I have called them. When the Holy Ghost speaks, you better listen. When the Holy Ghost calls, they’re not going to take your words, folks that just come to church Christmas and Easter or somebody who’s just been here a month. He’s going to take your best. He took Barnabas and Saul.

Can you imagine the look on that pastor’s face? I mean, man, they had a good thing going there. They had revival. And here God is taking two of the best men out of that to use them somewhere else. But it’s not about us. It’s about him. And it’s about his will and what God wants and who God uses. You say, well, God never used me, brother. You’d be surprised who God will use.

Would God use a liar? Yes or no? A fellow named Abraham. Pharaoh said, who is this? That’s my sister. Trying to save his own skin. Yeah, you’d be surprised who God would use. But we need to be, according to the book of John chapter, I believe it’s 14 verse 17, If you’re willing to do my will, that’s the key right there. Are you willing to do what God calls you to do?

Are you willing to get involved right here in this local church? Now a lot of us give lip service. Yeah, glory to God. Yeah. Amen. I’ll be there and we’ll see you next Sunday. You all with me? I’m trying to help you tonight. These men were given their lives to God. It’s not in PNG, we call them skin Christians. They just get saved on top. They’ll pray a prayer and you’ll never see them again.

Skin Christians. We don’t need to be skin Christians, man. We need to be in. I mean, we need to get all in. Did God save you? Did he just save a little bit of you or all of you? All of you. Well, how much should we give to serve God? Half of you? You have your whole heart. You give it to him. Yeah. You say, man, you’re a fanatic.

Praise God. I used to think that too until God got a hold of me. And then I found out that, man, I wasn’t nowhere near a fanatic. Then I got into the will of God and I found the most productive, the best, most satisfying life that I have ever had in my life. These years that we spent in New Guinea, these years we spent serving God since then have been wonderful years.

And we’ve seen God move in our lives and take care of us. That’s what we all worry about. Well, hey, if I go somewhere, what’s God going to, how, where am I going to get finances for it? Well, that’s what this mission’s conference is all about. Is financing the will of God. Amen. So anyway, so God calls missionaries out of the local church and it’s the local church’s responsibility to refine them, to try them and prove them in the local church.

Say, what’s that mean? That means somebody doesn’t come in here and said, well, I got a real sad story. My other church wouldn’t send me. Would you folks send me my pastor over there? Blah, blah, blah. No, you won’t because you don’t know them. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know what their back trail is. People out of this church that God calls and you try them in the ministry, you give them work.

They teach the Sunday school class. They organize a Sunday school class. They teach the ladies groups. They teach in the prisons. They preach from the pulpit. You’re trying all these things. Do they tithe? Do they go soul winning? Is their church, is their family faithful to the church? You do all these things and you try those individuals. And when the time comes, you lay hands on them as a church.

And that shows that you have confidence and witness the call of God on their life and you send them away. That’s a serious thing. When you do that, that means you have confidence that individual. Let me put a little thing in here. If you’ve got a missionary out of this church, he ought to be the heaviest supported missionary that you have because I’ve heard pastors say, well, I got this guy out of my church.

I’ll support him. Fifty dollars a month and we’ll see if God’s called him or not. Man, if God hadn’t called him, why are you sending him? If you don’t have any confidence in him, don’t send him. That seems pretty simple to me. But if he’s a God called man that you have raised in this church, you have trained in this church, you have tried in this church, then you ought to support him on a level that shows that support.

If I had a missionary come here and his pastor said, well, I just support him $25 a month, I would tell him and I have told pastors that before. I said, if you don’t have any more confidence in that of that missionary, I said, just keep him home. Just keep him home. So anyway, that’s where the missionaries come from. Churches placed are proven. They’re taught, their families taught, they get educated in the scriptures and the functioning of the local church and how it works and what they’re supposed to do.

The characters refined, they’re taught the fundamentals of the faith. Again, as I said last night, the reason for the existence of this church is to reach the world for Jesus Christ. We have in America this thing where we think the existence of the church is some place we can go on Sunday. Throw two bucks in the offering and say, oh, what a good boy of mine, go on back to next Sunday.

It’s not like that. It’s a training ground, not a social service. We’re here to reach the world for Jesus Christ. The individual, the church has confidence, the church recognizes and the church is happy to send him out. I was in New England one time and this fellow came to me and he said, brother, he said, God’s called me to start a church in this place. And I said, well, go start it.

And he said, my pastor won’t send me out. And I said, well, why not? And he said, well, he wants to start another ministry. He wants me to use that ministry. I said, what’s God want? And he said, well, God wants me in this other state. And I said, well, man, we’ll ordain you to go on, you know. And when he finally told his pastor that, he said, somebody else is going to ordain me if you don’t.

And I didn’t have a church. I wasn’t going to ordain him, but I was just going to say, what’s that song? Got to know when to hold him. Anyway, so his pastor said, oh, OK, well, we’ll do it. We’ll do it. That fellow went and started a church. Man, he’s doing great. I mean, he’s been there probably 20 years, but now doing great in a hard place in New England, man, that’s a hard place to preach.

But that’s where God called him to be and that’s where he needs to be. The church is responsible now when you send these people out, you’re responsible, number one, to pray for them. You’re responsible to support them. I don’t know if you know it or not, but when you go into a lot of these countries, you have to be sponsored into the country by an entity already there, like a church already functioning there or another missionary or whatever.

But to get your visa, a lot of times you have to have what’s called full maintenance and repatriation. Say, what’s that mean? That means you’ve got enough to live on and repatriation. If we’re going to kick you out, you’ve got enough money to get home. We’re not going to buy your ticket. Now, I said that because sending church, you’re responsible for that. If this guy goes to Sardinia or wherever, if he was out of this church and he ran up a bunch of bills and he skipped the country, guess who gets the bill?

So you better be careful about who you send out. You need to know that, I mean, God is in this thing and we’ve put prayer into it and we’ve seen the growth and we’ve used them in the ministry and they’ve been a blessing to church and a blessing to God. And we just sent them away as God has asked us to do. You’ve got confidence in them because there’s a lot of things riding on that.

Again, you be careful if a family just shows up and you don’t know them. The call of God is the anchor that keeps that missionary on the field because it’s not easy when you get on the field. You’ve got a lot of things going on. Man, I could not even imagine learning Italian right now. There was a fellow out of Brother Ralph’s church who went to some place in Africa and they used this kind of a language where a lot of times they click their tongue.

And I thought, man, I’m glad God didn’t call me there. There’s a lot of work to it when you go to these places, even if there’s a missionary there when you get there to show you the ropes. There’s still a lot to learn. There’s that language study. There’s cultural study. There’s the fact that you have to get your family settled and you’re starting a really a new life somewhere else.

You’re starting over. Y’all remember when you were newlyweds? Some of you gray-haired folks, remember that? That’s been 100 years ago, hasn’t it? You remember how hard it was when you first got started? We rented a little apartment for, I don’t remember, $100 a month or whatever and all this kind of stuff. But we were 18 and 19, so we could live upstairs and carry all the groceries up the steps and the refrigerator and the stove and all the stuff we had to put in there.

But when you start over like that on a foreign country, in a foreign field, you have to have set-up money, and that’s expensive. That’s what deputation is for. They have project money, set-up money, transportation money. And we were talking, I think Brother Bach and I were talking about cars and what they call land cruisers and all that stuff. I’m telling you, some of these places, New Guinea puts 100% import duty on a car when it comes in.

You say, why do they do that? Because the government owns 15% of all the car companies that operate there. And so they just get more money. But it’s expensive. And you’re sending a missionary out not just to go live there, he has to minister there. And ministry takes money. It’s not free. You know, you’ve got to have the lights and the air conditioning. And I think you said $100,000 or so that you all put in this place.

OK. Where’s that money come from? Well, it comes from the tithes and offerings of the church. A missionary’s support is not his salary. People get confused about that. A missionary comes in and they say, where are you going? And he says, well, I’m going to Denmark. How much money do you need? Well, I need $10,000 a month. And that pastor goes, man, my people don’t even make that much money in a month.

Well, the missionary doesn’t either. That’s just the cost of living in a place like that. We get this idea of I had a cousin that went to Canada and her and her husband. And I said, son, you don’t have enough support. He said, well, we’re going to live in the bush. As if living in the bush is cheaper than living in town. I guarantee you it is not.

Years ago, we’d buy a dozen eggs and it was $7. Well, we haven’t got it home yet now. It has to go excess baggage on the plane because there’s no roads where we live. We’ve lived up in the swamp. You had to fly in there. So you had to pay the airline excess baggage on that dozen eggs. It ended up costing about $12 a dozen. And when you get them home, maybe they’re good eggs and maybe they’re not.

You don’t know till you get them home. I’m just saying it’s not cheap. All right. So when we invest support into these missionaries, I just want you to understand they’re not just putting that money in their pocket and going and gambling in Vegas. That’s not what it’s about. I had a church one time. They gave me a check for $10,000. And one of the guys said, man, it’s like Christmas when you missionaries come through here, you get all this money.

And I said, no, it’s not Christmas. And he said, but you got that big check. I said, do you understand we have to stand judgment before God for what we do? That’s God’s money. These people have sacrificed to give that money. We appreciate it. God bless you for giving it. But I’m telling you, it’s just not ours to spend any way we want to. Amen. Trying to help you here tonight to get an understanding of these missionaries and what they have to do and what they have to go through when they get that sponsorship program.

Sometimes that’s a little sketchy. Visas are hard to get. Used to they say, well, I’m an American. They had it wasn’t any problem. I’m talking 50, 75 years ago. You had an American passport, man. You’re in no problems at all. Not anymore. Not anymore. I had a friend that went to Cuba and this has been a month ago.

He felt like God wanted to go. He’d been 20 years in China and has been home for a while. And he said, I just feel God’s burden me about Cuba. I want to go down there and check it out. Well, he was on the plane flying down there at the same time Trump was saying, you know what happened in Venezuela, Cuba doesn’t straighten up.

So he got off the plane and they saw that American passport. They said, man, you’re CIA. They grilled him for 12 hours. Just one team after the other asked the same questions, took copies of all his documents and he told him the absolute truth and wasn’t any problem. They said, you got 12 hours to leave this country. 12 hours. So it’s not always as easy as you think it is.

There’s a lot more to it than that. So these missionaries go and we’re happy to go. Listen, we’re happy to do that. That’s not a hard thing for us. This is we’re in the will of God and God has raised our support and God has opened that door and hallelujah, let’s go because I’ve been all over the country saying God’s called me to New Guinea. Look at these pictures and look at these pictures and look, this is what I’m going to win souls and I’m going to disciple people.

I’m going to plant churches and you know, you go to two or three hundred churches and you say that time after time, you look at those same pictures and you’re heartbroken for those people. And then you have to get off the airplane. And man, I got off or we got off in New Guinea and that smell hit me. It was about 110 degrees on that tarmac. I’m telling you, everybody was jabbering in a language.

I hadn’t a clue what they were saying. And my first thought was my soul, what have you done? This fleeting thought went through. You’ve given up your job, you’ve given up your retirement, you’ve given up your home, you’ve given up your land, you’ve given up your family and you sold everything you have. What have you done? You have ruined your life. I’m telling you, you get on that airplane, the devil will go with you.

Got off the plane in the highlands, there was supposed to be a missionary there to meet us. He wasn’t there. He had gone home to America. Now, what do you do?

I mean, it’s easy going around the country saying, I’m going here and I’m going there. It’s another thing, get over there and not have a clue what to do next. But God worked all that out and I didn’t lose my life. I found it. I found the best life that we have ever had in our 50, I don’t know, 57, 58 years of marriage. Our best years were the years we spent in Papua New Guinea.

Because you’re in the will of God and you’re seeing God work and you’re seeing souls saved and you’re seeing revival happen in the villages and young couples coming and meeting. And young couples coming and they’re wanting to serve God and the young men want to preach. The brother asked me tonight, what do you miss most in America?

I miss the sincere heart of the believers. Because we had preached in New Guinea on a place that had a tile floor in town. And after the invitation, they had to come up with towels and mops and mop up the tears of the people who had responded to that invitation. I can’t tell you the last time I saw, I’ve seen some tears shed, but not many in America.

I’m telling you, brother, God is working. And we want to be a part of what God’s doing as a church, do we not? We want to be a part of this. I believe that we’re on the last edge of the last days before the trumpet blows. And I don’t want to be sitting home doing nothing. I don’t want to be just a church member. I want to get involved.

I want to watch what God is doing. I want to work in my local church. I want to do what I can do to make this church a success. I want to do what I can do to get the gospel to my community. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing? I mean, it’s more than just coming to church. It’s more than putting a few dollars in the offering.

There’s more to it that we have more of a responsibility than just showing up. Now, they say, well, I’m old and sick and me too. But we can pray, can we not? They ask for prayer for that brother. And some of us put our hands up. I don’t know if you did or not, but if you didn’t, shame on you. You ought to at least say you’ll pray for this man.

It doesn’t cost you anything to pray. It costs you some inconvenience. If you’re going to be a blessing to somebody, it’s going to cost you money. It’s going to cost you time. And you’re going to be inconvenienced in doing it. No other way around it. There’s no drive through blessing.

You have to give them your heart and let God lead you in the things that you do. The local church, that’s what we’re here for, man. Listen, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You probably know all these verses and all these things. But as missionaries, we’re going to be here for you. We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to be careful in all these things.

But as missionaries we have to be careful what we do on the other side. We have to make sure that we don’t run up debts. We have to make sure that we work within the culture. We are not trying to make them Americans. We’re trying to start a work in Italy, if you will. But we don’t want that work depending on this missionary. We want that work depending on God and the spirit of God and the Word of God.

the Word of God. So with time the missionary leaves, man, that church goes on. It really, the mark of a good missionary is not what you have while you’re there. It’s what you leave standing when you’re gone. You all with me tonight? You cannot make them Americans. I’ve had missionaries come to New Guinea and they want all their preacher boys to wear white shirts. Man, I’m happy they wear clothes. You kidding me? White shirt don’t make you spiritual. Missionaries go to the field.

They have to learn from a veteran missionary. That’s the way they’re supposed to be done. Didn’t work that way with me. But some of us we learn differently. Some of us can read a book. Some of us we need a big kick in the pants from God saying, hey son, that’s the wrong way. Turn around, go the other way. We need that. So God give you what you need. It was hard going when we first got there. We went back to that bush and man, I’m telling you, it was frightening. And I know, you know, I’m standing up here 40 years later and telling you all these tales and saying, boy, this is one brave spiritual guy.

Let me tell you something. My first trip to the bush took my wife and my son and a couple of guys from town and we went back there. And these people said, we want you here as our missionary. We’ve got six men here who went to the coast and got saved. But we don’t have any church and we don’t have any preacher and we don’t know what to do. And we’ve prayed and asked God to send us an independent Baptist missionary. And I had this fellow came up to me. I’ll do this to my wife, not somebody else. And he’s got a bow in his hand and an axe in his hand and he’s going, I couldn’t understand a word he said. And I backed up a little bit and I said, turned to my wife, I said, get Jeremy over here. We might have to get out of here quick. And the guy that was with me said, man, they like you. I said, I’d hate to see if they didn’t like me. He said, you can have this piece of land if you come and be our missionary. Put a church here, put your house here, come be our missionary. Listen, these guys are coming, these little kids are coming up. Let me have your hand brother. And they’re doing this. They want to know if that white’s going to rub off. And I couldn’t talk to them. I couldn’t understand what they were saying to me. And you know what, American, you weren’t in control anymore. And I’m, listen, I’m telling you the truth tonight, how this spiritual missionary, I went back to Mount Hagan with my family and I got alone by myself. And I said, oh God, please don’t send me there. I said, I can’t do this. And you know, sometimes God doesn’t answer you real quick. Man, sometimes he answers you too quick. He says, that’s just where I want you. And I thought, phew, I can’t do this. And you’re right, you can’t do it. God always gives you something to do that’s farther than you have the ability to do it. I always give the illustration of, y’all remember the little rascals on TV? And those little boys had a goat card and they had a goat on this cart and they’d put a stick over his head with a carrot on it. And that goat would chase that carrot and that carrot swing and he’d just keep running. All God wanted us to do was go. I didn’t have to be in control. All I had to do was follow the will of God. But it’s that control thing that’s in Americans. We don’t like to give that up. We don’t, I mean, we’re happy to give our money and we’re happy to give half our heart, but control, you mean to tell me I don’t have a say in this? And God said, that’s just where I want you. And it’s amazing what God can do if we will just step out and do what we can and let God do the rest. Honest before the Lord, I preached one night and eleven people walked the aisle and I got off alone with God and I said, God, please slow down a little bit. I don’t know what to do with these people. And God said, just get out of the way. Get out of the way. You go to Pangaea tonight and this is not because of me because other missionaries come in there after me, but that was the area we were in. There are now 54 independent Baptist churches, a printing ministry, a Bible college, and a Christian school, K through 12. That’s not glory to Ted, that’s glory to God. And that’s God using other people besides myself and the American church saying, yes brother, we’re with you. We’ve got a bad habit of saying, yes brother, we’re with you. Go and you get over there out of sight, out of mind and we forget about them. Listen, these people just, they’re not going on a vacation.

They’re giving their life and we as a church are supposed to be praying for them and holding the ropes. Amen. Trying to help you tonight. So you give your support or you give to missions and you’re going to support some missionaries and that money goes to either their local church which handles their finances or mission board which handles their finances and they get their support through that. But the mission board doesn’t send that missionary. They are not under that mission board’s authority, they’re under your authority. And that missionary, if he messes up on the field, it’s up to you as a church to call him home. That’s part of the responsibility we have as a church. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. The missionary has to learn the language first, then learn the culture, learn why they do what they do. Not just that they do it, but why they do it. I’m going to have to quit because the time’s getting, going too fast. But that missionary has to be careful that he doesn’t try to build an American church and that he doesn’t gauge everything in that culture by the American culture. Because our gauge isn’t the American culture, our gauge is the Bible. Amen. And again, different is not wrong, it’s just different. That missionary has to take out of his vocabulary, well in America we do it this way. Well cowboy, you’re not in America now, so you do it the other way. I don’t like it that way. I don’t care what you like. You’re there, you’re in, be in, be one of them. Amen. So you fit in that culture, you’re accepted by those people and it’s not a, I’ve seen missionaries come in and they’ll get behind a fence and not talk to the people, not shake hands with the people.

They’ll just come out on Sundays and preach to those people. Man, that’s not a missionary, that’s just a preacher. So how much fruit does he have? Very little. You cannot separate yourself. Those are the people that God has given you and you have to be accepted by those people, accepted by that community. Little example, and I’ll quit here. I was at the market one day and we had a priest that lived down the road and he drove by the market and the people were waving at him, hey, Padre, you know, and he just drove on down the road. And I was sitting there with him, you know, I was sitting there with the men talking to them, asking them questions about their culture, why do you do this, etc., etc. And I said, Brother Ted, they said, why is it that you go by and you’ll wave to us, you’ll come down here and sit with us, but he won’t even wave his hand. I said, because he’s from Poland and I’m from here. This is where I live.

These are my people. You’re my people. I’m part of you. Man, you should have seen the smiles. You know, this white man will come and he’ll eat our food and he’ll talk to us and he’ll be a part of the community, a social obligation to that and I don’t have time to get into all that. But as a missionary, that’s what you have to do. If you minister in Greenville, where are we?

South Carolina. That’s what you have to do. You can’t just sit down here and say, we’re independent Baptists and we don’t believe like anybody very much. That’s not the way you reach people. You can’t be ugly about them. You know, I wouldn’t go and witness to a Catholic and say, man, I don’t like the Pope. What I always did in New Guinea, we’ve won a lot of Catholics to Christ. My question was, I believe one way, you believe another. What is your belief doing for you in your life? How has it changed your life? For the better or for the worse? And they think about that for a while and they think, man, their pigs had litter and they have to pay the church. They have to go and they have to pay for their communion. They have to do all these things. But they come to the Baptist Church and all we do is preach the gospel. We give them a Bible, teach them the Bible. And that life changed, that family changed, their children changed. And that old man inside takes a beating.

He’s not the boss anymore. I’m going to follow Christ. That’s the best witness in the world. And most of the time it works. I was walking up with one of my guys, Tareepi, and he was a head man. His niece had gotten married and they changed pigs. Well, as the head man, he’s supposed to be the one that scales out the pig to all his uncles and brothers and all that. So everybody gets a share. Well, he was at church and they did it without him. And so I’m walking up there and I got his arm. I’m real proud of Tareepi. Man, he’s a believer and a big man in the village. And somebody told him, well, we’ve already scaled out the pigs. I’m telling you, man, he cussed the brew streak. It don’t always work out the way you think it’s going to, but I’m telling you, God’s still God. And listen, those churches are there. Those believers are there. Why?

Because somebody in America cared to send a few dollars their way. The gospel was preached. Lives were changed. Families were changed. Villages were changed. A whole tribe was changed because of the gospel of Jesus Christ sent from the independent Baptist churches in America with a missionary. I don’t know about you, but I want to get involved in that. How do you find the will of God? Be faithful in your local church.

What would God have you to do in this church? You can give, you can go, you can pray, you can minister at the hospital, you can help the preacher, you can cut the grass or whatever it is you can do. You will allow God to lead you and you’ll be faithful in doing it.