The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 1: Compassion

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Amen. Amen. It's good to see you, church. I'm Ryan Britt. I'm one of the pastors. I'm excited to open God's word for us today. We're going to be studying Psalm chapter 67. So if you want to go ahead and make your way there, that'd be great.

We are kicking off the Advent series, as I'm sure you've heard multiple times. And we're doing so by focusing on our longtime ministry partnership with an organization called Compassion International. And as a church, over the last 10 years, our church has sponsored about 14,000 kids. around the world through Compassion International. That's pretty incredible. And so we're excited to continue that today. And as always, we do this every year.

As always, our goal is to get as many kids sponsored as possible. And so if you're attending one of our campuses, there are tables set up in all of our worship centers that have packets, just like this one, with a child's information and child's name, where you can grab one at any time during the next 30 minutes. You can just get up and grab a packet. You won't be distracting.

And if you are, it doesn't matter because the child's worth it. So go ahead and get it. the packet and you can be praying over that and thinking about it if you're joining us online you can do the same thing by texting 8333 texting the word sponsor to 83393 and hopefully in Jesus name we will set a bunch of kids free from poverty today amen amen amen it is advent time which is awesome I love Christmas I'm one of those people that make you feel weird I'm so into Christmas you know what I mean and it hasn't always been the case but I love it. I start negotiating terms with my children around Labor Day as to when we're going to put our Christmas tree up.

That's true. The first Christmas song was played in my house this year the day after Halloween. You know, Bubele. I'm into some Bubele Christmas, you know? Strangely enough, the most requested song in my home this year by my daughters has been Dolly Parton's version of I Saw Mama Kiss and Santa Claus. I don't know what that's about. Uh-oh. And so somebody need to pray for me. I love Christmas. We have a Christmas party coming up as a church next weekend, next Sunday night, 6 o'clock, December 12th. All of our locations around the city, we would love for you to come, bring your family.

You can drop in for as long as you want to. There will be some awesome people there. There will be some other people there. And so we would just welcome all of you, whether you're awesome or other. You come on, bring your family, bring somebody with you. We'd love to celebrate Christmas that way. It's first time we've ever done it, so don't sit at home watching Netflix. Come join the Christmas party.

You know what I mean? So December 12th, that's coming up. When we think about Christmas, we inevitably think about gifts. And so let me ask you this question. What is the most valuable gift God has ever given you? Not just at Christmas time, but in your life. What is the most valuable gift God has ever given you? I want you to think about it, and we're going to come back to that at the end.

me that Psalm 67, that's where we're going to spend our time today in the first couple of verses. Psalm chapter 67 says this, may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known upon the earth. You're saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, oh God, let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the people's praise you. For you judge the people's praise you. You judge the people's with equity and you guide the nations upon the earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you.

I've loved Psalm 67 for a long time. It is a why passage of scripture. In any time that we can stop and we can back up and we can begin to understand God's motivations, God's big why, it often brings a necessary perspective that we need in order to experience the full life that Jesus offers us. You see in John chapter 10 verse 10, Jesus says that we have an enemy

and that that enemy has come to steal, to kill and to destroy, meaning he wants to steal your joy. He wants to kill your purpose, and he wants to destroy lives. But Jesus said that He, Jesus has come that we may have life and have it to the full. And see, full life is about thinking hard.

It's about deep, meaningful commitment to God and to others. It's about feeling deeply. Full life is full in every direction. There is nothing fuller than full, and what Jesus offers us is the full life of what it means to be a child of God. But in order to get there, we have to kind of back up and begin to understand God's motivations behind God's activities, God's big why. And ultimately, if you dig into anything, you'll find that why is a very powerful question, and that pretty much all of the people, you're going to be able to God's why is God's motivations. If you dig into them, eventually you're going to land on this, which is God's glory. God's big why is God's great glory. And this is really good news, because if at any time

God chose to value something or to be motivated by something other than his great name and his great glory, then all created things would begin to come unraveled. I mean, think about this. I, if I were left up to me and I was eternally responsible for me, this would not be good news. Do you know why? Because I can't find my keys most days. I mean, think about this right here. I have one of these little things on my keys. It's a tile. In half the days of my life, I have to find my phone, which is a whole different thing. I have to find my phone. I have to push a button on that phone to get my keys to start singing out somewhere. There's an entire industry because evidently I'm not alone

that's created whereby it just exists to help us find our keys. It's really good news that I'm not eternally responsible for myself, much less everyone and everything else. But God he is. You see God's the only one that's big enough. He's the

only one that's strong enough. He's the only one that's loving enough. He's the only one that's kind enough or powerful enough to hold everything together forever. Amen? So when we think about God's glory, we think about his significance. Glory actually means weight. And so when you think about God, number one, whatever you think about, that's the most important

thing about you. And number two, when we think about his attributes, his character, his nature, his love, his goodness, his compassion, his kindness, his justice, his holiness, his perfection, his sovereignty, his intentionality, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, all the things that is God, the things that we can speak and the things that we can't speak, all the weight. of who God is when he puts that on display that is his glory. When he puts his manifest holiness on display for the world to see, that is his glory being revealed so that the world would see him and believe in him.

And so we spend a lot of times in our life thinking about what we want or figuring out how to have our desires met. But I want to encourage us today to think about what God wants. See, choosing to want what God wants and choosing to line up our motivations to God's motivations is the road to a full life. This is the road to a joy-filled life. It is the road to the life that Jesus offers.

And so in Psalm 67, we see what God wants. We see that God desires three things we find in Psalm 67. Number one, God desires to be known, God desires to be praised, and God desires to be in joy. among all the nations. God desires to be known. Verse 1 of Psalm 67, it says this,

may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known upon earth and your saving power among all the nations. You see, this prayer would have been in very common usage at the time that this Psalm was written. It pops up a few different times through the Old Testament, but its anchor goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 12,

when God makes a covenant with a man named Abraham. God looks at a man named Abraham and he says, I am going to bless you and through you, I'm going to bless the world, meaning through your children, the line of your descendants, I am going to bless the world. And this was the birth of the nation of Israel and that God chose the nation of Israel

to show his glory to them so that by blessing them with his presence in their life, that they would be a blessing to the world and that he would show his glory through them. And so God blesses them, they bless others. This is a covenant promise made from God. And anytime God makes a covenant, what it ultimately is is God saying yes. And so in Genesis chapter 12, God says yes to the nation of Israel.

He says, yes, I will be your God. Yes, you will be my people. Yes, I will unconditionally love you. Yes, I will always be faithful to you. And so a covenant is God saying yes. And so that covenant ultimately finds its fulfillment in the Advent, in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, when he came to earth, lived the life that we were supposed to live,

died death on a cross, and then rose again three days later, that is God's final yes to his children forever. Jesus is the yes and amen to every one of God's covenants. And so when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, we get grafted in to the yes of God in our life. We get grafted in to the promise of God fulfilled. And so this is how it works. From Genesis 12 through Jesus to now, here's how it works.

God blesses people by and through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then they bless others in the name of Jesus Christ in response. This is how God is redeeming all things. This is how God is putting everything back together. He is restoring the world. He is doing it through his church, everyone who believes on the name of Jesus. He blesses them, and they bless others. When we study Psalm 67, it's fascinating, this imagery we see.

It says that God would be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine upon us. What kind of relationship would you find yourself in where you wanted to give someone your face? Where you wanted to lean in with your face. You wanted to get face to face. So now there's some weirdos in this world that are like close talkers, you know what I mean? They just get all up in your space and evidently every close talker on the planet only ever drinks coffee. What's that about? You know what I mean?

So there's some of those, but for the rest of us, normal people, in order for us to get face-to-face, to touch faces in a way that we would feel the warmth of another's face, that we would feel the textures of their face, that we would know their nearness without having to open our eyes because of how familiar we are with their face, to get face to face, this is a really unique kind of relationship. And as I was thinking through this sermon, there was a moment I had with my oldest daughter a few years ago that I think will help us get a picture in our mind of what God's trying to get us to see. So indulge me as a dad for a minute

and kind of take a look at this face-to-face encounter. All right, where's daddy? You got to go open it, see if he's out of there. Come on, guys. You know she's cute. I mean, who do you give your face? face to. Someone that you love. I love

my daughter. I love her. And I don't want my daughter just to know about me. I want her to know me. I want her to have felt the warmth and the realities of my face near hers as many times as possible in her life and so that she will never have one second

of her life where she will not know that I am near. I want her to experience my face and if I'm like this in my feeble, broken, imperfect ways of the Father, to an infinite degree, the Father, God in heaven wants this relationship with you and me perfectly. He has caused his face to shine upon us. This is really what Advent's all about, that Jesus, who is the exact imprint of God, that He is the full measure of the character and nature of God, that He has come. He is Emmanuel God with us.

Jesus has come. And so you're sitting there and you're thinking, okay, pastor, thank you for that short theological dissertation and cute video. But I thought we were talking about compassion today. You were right, we are. So the question is, if God wants to be known, how does sponsoring a compassion child help God be known? If that's God's desire, how does sponsoring a compassion child help God to be known?

Well, that's really what it's all about. You see, of the two million kids around the world that are sponsored through Compassion International, every one of them live in a reality that is known as abject poverty. And abject poverty is one of the measures is that you live in a household, that your household income is less than $2 a day. And so every one of these children face tremendous physical obstacles. We're talking mud huts, we're talking lean-toes, we're talking lack of water, lack of clean water, we're talking lack of access to things like food.

Majority of the children that are waiting a sponsor or live in abject poverty don't know where their next meal is coming from. Many of them don't live with their family. Either their family members are dead or they have been abandoned or there's only one person to care take for them. They face tremendous physical opposition. And it's not just physical opposition in the terms of lack of physical resources. It's the physical realities of always feeling unsafe.

of walking down the road and not sure if you're safe of living in a place where there are not opportunities for education. There are not opportunities for you to step into development, social, physical, economical, educational. That these things just don't exist. And if they do exist, you're one of the younger ones in your family. And if your family can somehow afford it, which almost certainly they can't, only one child would get access to opportunities like this, and the majority of the rest of the children would be left out. And so they face tremendous physical obstacles, no doubt about it, but it's not just physical. You see, poverty is not just a lack of resources.

Really, when you get down to the core of what poverty is in its effect, it's a lack of hope. Poverty is a lack of hope. And so these children are growing up in places where there's a spiritual and emotional realities that are very dark and that are very, very hard. A majority of the 2 million kids sponsored through compassion are being raised in areas of the world. world where Islam, Hinduism, ancestry worship, or the activities of the occult are the dominant spiritual practices of those communities. And as God's people, when we see these injustices and when we see these realities, we want what our dad wants, which is that we want everyone everywhere to come to repentance and

trust in Jesus Christ and to live the full life that he offers them. That's what we want. Our heart is moved and compelled. And one of the things that makes us radically committed to the ministry of compassion, It's not just the fact that they address the physical needs, which they do. Praise God. Praise God, I used to travel a ton. I've been to Africa 25 times.

And I used to travel, and I used to do pastor's conferences over there. And I remember one time I was doing a pastor's conference, and a friend of mine, one of the African pastors came up to me. And he says, we're going to take a long break for lunch. And I said, but pastor, we just, I said, we're just now getting into it. You know, let's just skip lunch and let's just keep on going. Number one, he looked at me like, are you crazy? You know, skip lunch, and he's like, he's like, son, it's hard to hear the gospel when you're starving. And I thought, let's have lunch, you know?

You know, it's true. Not only does compassion address physical realities, education, social, food, water, all of the needs met to create an environment whereby a child can grow. The real thing that I love about compassion is how the ministry of compassion is delivered. You see, the ministry of compassion is delivered through local church. is all over the community. And as a church, we sponsor more than around 14,000 kids. And there's no community you're going to walk into whether we sponsor two there or we sponsor 1,000 in that community. You're not going to walk into that community and see a sign that says 1122. You're not going to walk into that community and see a sign that says compassion and international.

What you are going to walk into that community and find is a local church who is filled with local believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit of God that are dedicated to raising one more generation in the gospel. That's what you're going to find. And so the fact that God is breaking the chains of poverty through local believers like you and me partnering with local believers in communities all over the world. Praise God. God blesses people so that in and through them,

they can be a blessing. This is how God redeems the world. This is how God redeems the world. And so if one way I can help someone else come to know and to trust that they are loved by God and that they can have full life through Jesus is through child sponsorship, then sign me up. I actually have signed up three different times.

And so I would love to introduce you to the compassion kids that my family gets to joyfully be a part of their life. The first one, his name is Ame. Amay lives in Burkina Faso, which is consistently one of the five poorest countries in the world. And we have been walking as a part of Amet's life since 2007. He's grown now, and he's about ready to graduate the compassion program, and we are so proud of him.

In the face of tremendous obstacles, Amay has grown to be a man of God. He is pursuing God. He has learned skills. He has learned education. And he has opportunities now that the course of his life was not set toward it. So we are pulling for Amé. We love him.

We pray for him. Every time Amay and I write letters back and forth, he asked me, is it hot where you live? And it's usually like in July, and I'm sweating bullets down here in Florida. And then I think about writing him back and I'm like, wait, this brother lives in Africa. So I'm not sure I want to get into like a debate over who lives in the hotter place. But he's doing great and we love him.

So Ami is a part of our life and so is Fuen. Fuen lives in Indonesia. Indonesia has one of the highest percentage populations of unreached people in the world, people who don't have access to the gospel, to a Bible, to a local church. Flynn happens to live in a place where there is a local. church. And so it is our joy to partner with FWinn to create an environment whereby he can believe and trust in Jesus Christ and see him grow to become the man that God wants him to be. I mean, who knows what God's going to do with Fwinn? You know what I'm praying? I'm praying that through Fwinn, God would raise up a pastor, a missionary, a Christian leader who is radically

sold out to the gospel of Jesus Christ and that through Fwinn, his leadership and his friends, that thousands upon thousands of people in Indonesia would come to know Jesus Christ. That's what I'm praying. And that's what I'm hoping. I don't know what God's going to do. I don't know that God's invited me into Fulin's life and it's my joy to be a part. My family, we also sponsor a little girl named Guadalupe. Guadalupe is the newest part of our family. And I'm a dad to daughters. And so Guadalupe has a very special place in our heart. And I need your help with something. Today is Guadalupe's birthday. She turns seven today. So, happy birthday Guadalupe.

So here's what we're going to do. I wanted to take a minute, and we're going to carve it out, and we're going to send Guadalupe a very special birthday message. And so at all of our campuses, somebody's walking out on stage right now with an iPhone. They're not weird. They're supposed to be there. My main man's walking out here with a camera. Here's what's going to happen.

I am going to send a personal birthday greeting to Guadalupe to – this is Brian. Everybody say, hey, Brian. Brian. Everybody, hold on one second. I need y'all to say out loud, Guadalupe. Or one, two, three. Hold on, wait, wait. On the count of three, everybody say Guadalupe.

One, two, three. Guadalupe. We tried this on Thursday night, and we got to the port. We said happy birthday, too, and it was happy birthday, too. It was a Greek tragedy. And so I need y'all to clean up this mess. That's what I need, all right? And so we're going, I'm going to talk to the camera,

and then I'm going to start singing happy birthday. And as soon as I start singing happy birthday, the camera is going to turn and you all are going to sing happy birthday with me. Number one, don't y'all dare leave me hanging out to dry. You know what I mean? And number two, I want you to sing. I want you to get rowdy. I want you to be pumped about it.

I want you to sing happy birthday like you're at a party and you've had one too many because I know you know what I'm talking about, all right? So here we go. I'm going to send a message. We're going to sing. I'm going to talk and then we'll edit all this together, translated into Spanish and send it to Guadalupe and hopefully it'll be awesome for her. Cool. All right, you ready? Big moment, how to look. Why he laughed. All right, here we go. Ready? One, two, three.

Happy birthday Guadalupe. It is Ryan and I just want you to know that we love you. On behalf of myself and my wife and my kids, we heard it was your birthday today and we just wanted to send you a very special birthday message. We love you. We are praying for you. We cannot wait to see all the things that God has plan for you and we are so thankful to be a part of your life. So me and some of my friends are here and we're going to sing happy birthday to you. So here we go. Ready? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Guadalupe. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Guadalupe. We love you. We hope this is the best you've ever had and that you know you have thousands of people in Jacksonville who are praying for you and believe in God's best for your life. Happy, happy, happy, happy birthday.

Good job, church. Good job, my friends. You crushed it. You see, partnering with compassion is about way more than just picking up a packet on a random Sunday in the middle of the year. It's about a relationship you get to form. It's about God's invitation. for us to be a part of what he's doing in somebody else's life. And so God wants to be known is what we see in Psalm 67. God wants to be known, but he also wants to be praised. The psalmist writes this, let the people's praise you, O God. Let all the people's praise you. Would it be okay this morning if we do some God praising in this place? If we praise God a little bit together, here's how we're going to do it. We're going to continue with this exchange, this interaction.

And if you're at all of our campuses, if you're joining us online, here's what's about to happen. I'm going to point at you, and when I do, you're going to say, praise God. And then I'm going to say some things that I hope and believe give God praise and glory, and then I'm going to point at you and you're going to say, praise God. But I need you to say it like you believe

that a dead man went into the tomb and came out alive. You know what I mean? And so here we go. We're going to practice round. Ready? Praise God forever put chocolate and peanut butter together for the first time and called it a dessert. Who can always be?

argue with that, you know? For all you people who are getting busy doing Christmas baking, don't forget about your pastors. All right. All right, here we go. We're going to do it. Ready? I'm going to point at you, all of our campuses online. If you're sitting, you've got your earbuds in, you're at a coffee shop. When I point, you just go, praise God. And don't worry about what everybody else says. It's going to be great. Let the people's praise you, oh God. Let all the people's praise you. Let the people's praise you, oh God, what peoples? All the peoples. Let everyone everywhere, every tribe, every tongue, every nation, praise God because he's worth it. You ready, church?

One, two, three. Praise God. Who has eternally existed in three persons. Father, son who is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And in his eternal existence, he has always been holy, fully, completely, and totally satisfied and of himself. He has need of nothing. And if you peel back all that he is and all that he has ever been and all of his eternal

joy and his eternal completion of himself at the core of his reality is the fact that he is love. And he is love and from this place of love, this overflow of love that God has for God's self, he decided and desired to create. And he began to create so that he could share himself in love with his creation. And so he looked out across the eternal expanse of nothingness that was formless and void and he began to create. He hung the stars and the skies and he knows them each by name. He put the sun and the moon in their place and he gave them rhythms. He gave the birds, he gave the birds winds on which to soar.

He made the oceans roar. The rivers run. The mountains stand tall. He made the grass grow and the flowers bloom and praise God that he's never grown, he's never grown tired of doing it. Every morning he says, wake up and it listens. Every morning he speaks into existence, creation. Oh, he starts it over and over and over.

again. All the beauty and all the goodness and all the glory that is God's creation. He looked in the middle of it and he said, you know what? I want to do my finest work, my masterpiece. And in the middle of creation, God created his pinnacle, which was man and woman. In his image, he created them both. And he breathed life into the man and they lived joyfully and they found their worth, they found their identity, they found their purpose in and through relationship with God, where they were able to receive his love face to face from their father in a way that was unrestricted and uncontested

and they were fully and completely satisfied in him in the same way that he was eternally satisfied in himself. God is love. Praise God that even though a man and woman chose to go their own way, they turned their back on God, they rejected his relationship. They stepped out from under his protection,

his provision, his rule, and his reign and they got very self-focused. They get very focused on what they wanted in meeting their own desires and they abandoned God in doing so. But praise God that when they turned their back on him, he did not turn his back on them. That immediately he intervened and he showed up and he made a promise. He said, listen, one day, one day, even though the enemy has dealt a striking blow, one day there's going to be a baby born. And this baby is going to be the great rescuer. He is going to be the one that is going to come and bring all things that are now in chaos, back into order. All that is broken, he is going to restore and he is going to make right again.

He is going to create the opportunity for man to get face to face with his creator and enjoy him once again. Praise God that after the exodus from Egypt and through the conquest and the victories and defeats and the wanderings of the promised land, through the judges and the prophets through the temple and the tappernacle, the kings and the establishment of the kingdom of Israel, was laying the foundation for the one who was to come. He was making every crooked play straight and every rough play smooth, knowing that one day the world would be ready for the word to come, for his final yes, to put on skin and to seal forever the promise that he made to his people.

Praise God that he is faithful, that even though Israel wandered and they were completely faithless, that when his people are faithless, God constantly remains faithful. And church, don't you for one second believe anything. remotely resembles the lie that God has ever been anything but faithful to you. He has been faithful to you every second of your life, and he will be faithful to you every second of your eternity through Jesus Christ. Praise God that after 400 long years of silence, a star hung in the night sky above a little town called Bethlehem. And in a manger, there was a baby born to a virgin.

And this baby was unlike any other baby that has ever been born. We know him by a thousand names, and he deserves every single one of them. One of the names we know him by is Emmanuel, God with us. You see, Jesus came as the full and final yes to all of God's promises. He came as the full and final payment, delivery, reality of God on the earth

so that God's people, by faith in him, could be restored into right face-to-face relationship with God. And so this Prince of Peace, this Messiah, Jesus, the Christ, he had finally come. And he grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and man. And the entire time he grew, he never took his eyes off his mission.

He never took his eyes off his purpose, and he never wanted anything except for the glory of God, which is going to be delivered to God through the redemption of man. And so Jesus Christ kept his eyes on the cross. For 33 years, he walked to this earth, and his time finally came. And he who knew no sin became sin so that we might be. become the righteousness of God, that even though the wages of sin is death, Jesus got up on that cross and he paid full price so that by faith in Jesus, we could enjoy the gift of God that is eternal life in and through him. You see, Jesus pushed up on his nail-pierced hands and his

nail-pierced feet on that cross, and he cried out the three most powerful words the world has ever heard, which is, it is finished. And then he breathed his last, and they took his dead body down off the cross, and they buried him in a rich man's tomb. But after three days, just as he said, by the power of the Spirit of God, his lungs began to fill with air. And his body came back to life. And that stone rolled away. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory?

Hell, you have forever been defeated. Jesus Christ is the king. Praise God. Praise God that Jesus walked out of that tomb, and he made himself known to more than hundreds and hundreds of people. He looked at his apostles, and he said this. He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. so that one day you can be where I am. But I'm not going to leave you alone.

I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit. And on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit filled the church. And that from that day to this day, all those who believe in Jesus have been signed, sealed, delivered, redeemed, restored, forgiven, and they have been given. If Jesus is the yes to God's forever promise, hold the Holy Spirit is his amen. And God has forever birthed and breathed his church into existence.

And the church is unlike anything the world has ever seen us, the most supernatural force in the world because it is indwelt by the power of the Spirit of God. It has God's presence and it carries God's purpose on the earth, which is that God would be praised and praise God that over the thousands of years of the advancement of the church as we have pushed back darkness in Jesus' name and we have seen the chains of poverty, the chains of spiritual oppression, the chains of the lives of the enemy. We have been working together with the Spirit of God to destroy the works of the enemy on this planet so that people could go free so that people could walk in the full life of Jesus Christ and over the last 2,000 years

somehow God in his specific grace saw it right and fit that this supernatural force would make it all the way to Jacksonville, Florida. And here we are church. Look where we stand now. We are firmly secured in the right hand of God and he's never letting go. We are held tight in his grip and he has a purpose for our life. He has a purpose for this city. He has a purpose for this church and this purpose is that he would bless us in and through the

gospel of Jesus Christ. so that we would then be a blessing. And I praise God that thousands of children who were going to go sleep tonight with hopelessness and fear looming out in their future, with the enemy working against them trying to steal, kill, and to destroy

at some point in the next couple of weeks, someone's going to come up to them and say, hey, you have a sponsor. And in hearing those words, it's going to be like God pulling back the blanket. One time of many in their lives where he's making himself known to them face to face. He's giving them an opportunity to see and to believe because in that moment they will know that they are loved, that they are seen, that they are cared for, and that God, somehow God has a plan for their life.

Praise God that He's invited us into his work. One of the most powerful ways to give God praise is through testimony. And so I want to introduce you to my friend Owen. My friend Owen radically changed through the ministry of compassion. He is our brother, and I think his testimony will cause us to continue to praise God. Hello, church. My name is Owen Githanga, and I was born in Kenya. I was born in a family of three boys and my mom,

and she would make about $5 to $10 a month. So I grew up in what you would call object poverty, that I woke up in the morning and I had no idea where the next plate of food would come from. One of the worst things about growing up in poverty was that every time we got sick, my mom told us that just hope and pray that you're going to be okay because I do not have the money to take you to hospital. I mean, poverty is bad, but the absolute worst thing about poverty is the hopelessness that comes from poverty.

My life changed when I was about eight years old, when my mom had about compassion and that they were taking kids in. And so we ended up in this church. And so I got sponsored through compassion. And in my first letter, he said three words that no one had ever said to me before. I love you. I couldn't understand how someone from a different part of the world

would seem to think that I am lovable. And then he went on to talk about Jesus. The hurt of what compassion does is Jesus. It's from the first day I stepped foot into that church. These people wouldn't shut up talking about Jesus. And, you know, at first I was skeptical. But the more I went to the church, the more these people shared with me, you know, all the scriptures that talked about a God who knew me before I was even conceived in my mother's womb. They talked about a God whom nothing is impossible to.

Until one day I decided I'm going to go to the church and I'm going to accept their Jesus because I want to see for myself if what they say about this Jesus is really true. And so I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. That was the best gift that compassion ever gave to me. Because when I accepted Christ and I began to study the word and I began to know the truth, the truth started to set me free. And I'm standing here today representing what compassion does is I have been released from poverty in Jesus' name.

So today, church, you get an opportunity to sponsor a child and I hope you take it because when you do, you get an opportunity to sponsor one child and change not only their story, but change the stories of their families, the stories of their communities around. I believe in the Ministry of Compassion. I believe in their integrity.

I believe in what they do. I am proof. My life was changed. So I hope you take on the opportunity to change another child's life today. God bless you guys. Praise God. Praise God that Owen, like you and me at different points in our life, he was being lied to by the accuser, God's enemy, Satan.

And Satan was trying to kill Owen's joy. He was trying to steal Owen's purpose and destroy Owen's life. But praise God through compassion's work, through Owen's sponsor saying yes to God's invitation. And the local church in Owen's community, Owen now gets to experience the joy of being a child of God. He gets to live out his purpose as given by. God and make God known by declaring God's victory to us and to the world. So God wants to be known. He wants to be praised and he wants to be enjoyed among the nations.

The psalmist says, let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and you guide the nations upon the earth. You see, God wants the nations to be glad, not sad. One of the most joy-robbing realities in the world is when we're we spend all of our time thinking about us. It's a recipe for disaster, actually, but when we can take our eyes off of our circumstances and we can look to a God of whom our circumstances

are firmly placed in his right hand and he has it under control. And when we can look to him and we can line ourselves up with his desires, oh, that is a recipe for joy. That is the recipe for the full life. God wants the nations to be glad, not sad, and the fact that God loves you so much

that he sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life. That is still the best news in all the world. It is still the most powerful, most radical, most transformative, most important, and most valuable message in the world. And so how do you say yes to God?

If God is extending an opportunity for you to partner with him in his work, how do you enjoy God? How do you enjoy Him? well the answer is this, say yes to him. You say yes to him over and over and over again. He has said yes to us in and through Jesus Christ, and we say yes to him by choosing to trust him. We see his invitation to join him in his work and we say yes.

Author and Pastor Henry Blackaby says, if you want to experience God in your life, then all you need to do is look around and see where God's at work and join him in that work. So the invitation for us today to join God in his work is through sponsoring a child in and through compassion. And in just a moment, we're going to have the opportunity to respond. And you may say, well, Pastor, doesn't this yes come with, isn't it like a part of it a financial yes? And the answer is yes.

Part of it is financial. And so for $38 a month, you can help partner and set a child free from the chains of poverty in Jesus' name. And to that, I would specifically encourage. you this way. One, what other plans do you have for that $38 a month? And what other plans do you have for that $38 a month that are going to go to joining God in his work of setting people free from poverty and advancing the gospel around the world? But also this, that every time you say yes to God in your life, it has power. But every time we say yes to God in the area of finances, it has a particular power. You see, Jesus taught on money all the time. And one of the things

that he taught about money was that money is the number one competitive. for the human heart. It is the number one thing that wants to tempt humans to believe that it has the power to give them the control that they desire. It's the number one thing that wants to work against humans to create anxiety, to create worry, and to create false sense and realities in our life. But Jesus says, money is not a trophy. Money is a tool. And that God has given money and blessed people in his church with resources like financial resources. So by through that, they can be a blessing. And so when we put our financial yes on the table, whether it be through tithes and offerings and advancing God's love and God's mission through the local

church, or it be through things like sponsorship, this yes has a particular kind of power because it reminds us and it reminds anything that needs reminding that the throne of our heart, money can't have it because there's someone greater on it and it's the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. So financial yeses have a particular kind of power. And so I would invite you to respond today with yes to the Father's invitation. So the very beginning I asked you a question. The question was this. What's the most valuable gift God has ever given you?

Some would say family. Some would say the church. Some may say things like their salvation. All of those are good, right, true answers. But there's something immensely more valuable than anything else we've ever experienced as a gift from God. what's the most valuable gift God has ever given you? The answer is himself. He is the most valuable gift he has ever given you

and he has given himself completely to you in and through Jesus Christ. Unreservedly, unashamedly, he has made himself absolutely known and absolutely near through Jesus Christ. So the reasons we respond with a yes today one, the glory of God and our joy. You say, well, Pastor, that's two things.

No, it's not. You see, our joy is completely married to the glory of God. For God to get glory, that is our joy. So the glory of God and our joy, when we line up our desires and our motivations with His, that is where joy is found. So the glory of God and our joy. And number two, God's praise among the nations. We want every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every child, in every community, and every village, in every situation.

We want everyone everywhere to know and to believe and to see the glory of God as revealed through Jesus Christ, and we want their life to be forever changed because of it. So the glory of God among the nations, the praise of God among the nations, every time a chain of poverty hits the floor. And a child of God joins God's family, all of heaven rejoices. in praise. And for every praise that God would get, he deserves a million more. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to respond like we always do, which is we're going to respond by singing. And so our bands are going to come and they're going to sing. Our team here is going to lead us in singing. And I would encourage you that while you're singing, what I want you to do is sing your

way all the way to the table to where you're going to pick up a packet. And you're going to grab you're going to grab a child's information, and at that time you can grab a packet and you can take it back to your seat. And if you take it back to your seat, here's what we're going to do. We're going to pray over these packets. So we're going to sing while we're on our way to picking up a packet. And then we're going to pray. We're going to pray over these children. We're going to pray believing and knowing that prayer works. That of all the yeses that we could ever say to God, the most powerful yes, the most powerful tool we have is the weapon of prayer. And that prayer moves the heart of God. And so we're going to sing while we're grabbing packets. We're going to pray over

kids. And then we're going to bring our first and our best. We're going to put our financial yes on the table through ties and offerings and by signing up to commit to be a part of a child's life through sponsorship. And so we are going to sing. We are going to bring and we are going to pray. And so as soon as I start praying, you can go ahead and stand up with me now at all of our campuses. Let's go ahead and stand together. As soon as I start praying, you start walking towards a table, you grab a packet, knowing that God's going to have you grab the exact right packet that's going to be transformative in your life and in theirs. Father, we love you. And as we move to say yes to you, we pray that you would hear it, you would receive it, and you would be blessed

by it. Father, we pray that right now thousands of children would be set free from poverty in Jesus' name. I thank you for my brothers and sisters. I thank you for how radically generous they are. I thank you for how blessed they are and how aware they are of your presence in their life. And, Father, I pray that right now as they take a step in this direction, that they would hear your voice inside of them speaking your love and your joy and your peace over them. Father, I pray that many days from now, weeks from now, after all the things are filled out and the sponsorship has started, Father, that one day they're going to be having a hard day, my friends here. They're going to be walking through a struggle. and they're going to walk by their fridge and they're going to see the face of a child hanging there

and they're going to be reminded in that moment that you love them so much that you've invited them to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And I pray that joy would come from it and that joy would be produced as we step out and we bless others in Jesus' name. Jesus, we thank you for your name. It is above every name.

There's no one like you. There is no other but you and this is all for you. and all God's people said, amen. Amen. Let's respond by grabbing a packet and following the leading of God as he would compel us.

Let's respond together.