Embracing the Season, Finding Fulfillment in your purpose.

Welcome

Welcome everyone, it is an honor to stand here today, speaking to such a distinguished crowd. Another 18 months and I will be sitting there with you.

I love the term “Prime Time”. It made me think of Prime Time Television. The best 3 hours on television, where it is understood, you will reach the largest, most diverse audience of any time during the day. In our time zone it is the hours of 7pm to 10pm and if you are a producer your desire is to get your show in that time slot.

This applies to each of us in this season. We have access to the largest, most diverse audience because our kids are grown, we are in the back end of our career and if I am honest I care less today about what people think about me, so my level of courage has never been higher.

I also believe this was God’s plan for us. Sure we can talk and share and serve when we are young, but we lack the wisdom of the years. Psalms 71:14-18

Psalm 71:14–18 ESV

But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge. With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come; I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone. O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.

You see in this season, you/we are needed more than ever. God desires to use us to reach and raise up this next generation. It is fitting that there is such a focus here at Gateway around reaching the next generation, because Gateway is so blessed with abundance of wise servants, experienced by the seasons of life to guide them. I have had many mentors and examples in my life that gave of their time and devotion to speak into me and prepare me for life.

Sir Isaac Newton said this: “If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. In every instance in history, that is the case. And it is generally not the extravagant or the special, but the simple, fundamental things of life that make the difference. There is a saying attributed to Robert Shuller that goes something like this. “any one can count the number of seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed”. You just never know the impact of single seed, a single life invested in another.

I want to close with a story to illustrate this point. I want to introduce you to a man named Edward Kimball. He was a Sunday School teacher with a class full of roudy, rambunctious teenage boys. Edward was an older gentlemen who cared so much for these boys that he was determined to personally lead each one of them to Saving faith in Jesus. There was one boy in particular that seemed resistant, who didn’t seem to grasp the gospel. One Saturday, Edward decided to visit the young man at the shoe store where he worked. Edward poured out his heart and the Gospel to this young man and in the stockroom of that shoe store, Dwight L Moody gave his heart and life to Jesus. We know that Moody would go on to touch two Continents for Christ, but there is more.

Under Moody a young man named Wilbur Chapman was saved and discipled for Christ. He began his own evangelistic efforts and was holding a street revival outside of a mission in Chicago.

A professional baseball player named Billy Sunday happened to be walking by and stopped to hear the message. This man who was given to drinking and various other sins, gave his heart to the Lord and gave up baseball to follow Jesus. He too began evangelizing across the US and was known for his unconventional preaching style.

At one of his revivals a young traveling salesman named Mordecai Ham was saved and he too began to evangelize and share the gospel. in 1934, he was conducting a revival in Charlotte NC. A young man named William Frank was in high school and had vowed that he was not going to attend. Through God’s providence, he wound up attending and God got a hold on him. Because of this, 2.2 billion people are said to have heard the gospel message from his mouth, I and possibly many others in this room were likely impacted in many ways by the man we know as Billy Graham.

A decision in the late 1700s by a Sunday School teacher to give of his time on a Saturday, led to a move of God this world had not seen before. What might He do with this generation? The answer to that may lie in your willingness to serve. You see I have long believed that the only ability God needs from any of us, is our “AVAILABILITY”. Thank you.