Back in 2023, we had a guest come and share with us from far-reaching ministries,
a ministry that our church and the Calvert Chapel movement has been very connected with over the years.
And one of their representatives is a guy that's going to come and speak with us today.
but he took us to Costa Rica.
And we got our eyes open to some horrific stuff going on on our world.
I knew the enemy was wicked and the spread of wickedness was great, but I had no idea.
I tell people when we went down there, I cried for a week.
And so he's back with us, and he's going to come and share with this and kind of just give us a little update
on some of the things that far-reaching ministry is doing.
So please welcome Jonathan Domingo.
So all right.
Good morning.
If you have your Bible, if you can turn with me to Luke chapter 5, and it's an honor to be back with you.
I've been working for far-reaching ministries for about three and a half years.
And for the majority of that time, I've been speaking at a different church every weekend.
And so I get to meet a lot of churches and meet a lot of pastors.
Some of those pastors will become friends.
Some of them will become just acquaintances.
But I just want to tell you, I love your pastor Scotty.
The time we spent in Costa Rica, like you said,
and just every single time we've gotten to connect over the phone,
I know I've only been here once,
and I know it's been over two years since the last time I was here,
but I really feel close to this church.
So I feel like you guys are family,
and it's just an honor to be back with you guys.
And so as you're turning in your place to Luke chapter 5,
I want to do two quick things before we get into the word.
One is give you a quick summary of what we do as a ministry
in case you're not familiar with our work.
And then two is give you a brief update
in what we're doing around Latin America.
So far-reaching ministries was started almost 30 years ago
by our founder, West Bentley, who was a missionary in Russia.
But before that, he was a Marine.
And so he had this background that the agency he was working with
in Russia asked him to get involved
because there was a civil war in Sudan
where the Muslim North was doing raids
into the Christian South
and they were kidnapping children primarily.
And so that's why they wanted to get involved.
And so with this background,
what we began to do is we began to train
the local pastors to protect their villages
and that evolved over time
to where it became a chaplain's corps.
And so we've trained about 700 chaplains.
We have over 400 active chaplains right now
and they are pastors in their villages.
they're warriors and soldiers on the front lines,
and they're also chaplains within the army.
So a very interesting setup
because in Europe or in the United States,
chaplains only do religious activities,
but in a third world country like Sudan,
they're frontline soldiers and good soldiers at that.
When there's an attempted coup on the president's home,
our chaplains were called in
because they're seen, you know, with the training they received,
they are seen as kind of the elite forces,
of the South Sudanese army.
Anyways, North Sudan is Muslim,
and so with our experience there,
we began to develop a know-how
to be able to work in Muslim countries.
So about 15 years ago,
we started something that we called Ghost Operations.
Ghost operations is the invisible hand
of the Western Church training and funding
the underground church in the Middle East.
Say that three times fast.
And I've been training for that one.
And so we've been for 15 years
in some of the most dangerous countries,
Islamic countries around the world,
If you can think of a dangerous country, we're there.
We have many, many missionaries and pastors and doctors.
And so we've just been active in these kinds of places when Afghanistan collapsed five years ago.
We had about 20 pastors there.
And between their families and small churches, we had about 200 people that were targeted to be killed by the Taliban.
We were able to mount a rescue operation, rescue them.
And to this day, six years later, pretty much, we're still rescuing people.
We've rescued about 2,000 people out of Afghanistan.
Yeah, it's incredible.
And not just rescuing them, but legally relocating them, which has been a really, really difficult process.
We're also rescuing people in Syria.
If you've watched the news right now, the Syrian government collapsed maybe six months ago.
And so that country is once again in shambles and civil war.
And there's targeted killings of both ethnic groups and Christians.
And so we've been able to work there.
We're working in Myanmar.
We're working.
We have 100 missionaries in Nigeria.
We're active all over the world.
We're working in Ukraine, which we're heavily involved there.
I know that whenever we talk about Ukraine, especially in a politically charged atmosphere,
there's a little bit of a cringe because there's just, it's a very political word just to say Ukraine.
But we believe that wherever people are suffering, we're called to help.
And there is pushback.
We've gotten people that have asked us, hey, should we be involved in Ukraine?
Isn't the government in Ukraine corrupt?
I'm Mexican born and raised.
I still live in Mexico.
My first language is Spanish.
And so, sadly, Mexico is infamous for having corruption within the government.
And so as someone who has been around corruption their entire life,
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there's corruption in the Ukrainian government.
I've also heard that there's some corruption in the United States government.
Don't quote me on that one.
I don't want that one on record.
But we understand that around the world, governments have their, you know, the way they operate and, you know, their agendas, and it's not necessarily the kingdom of God's agenda.
And so we work through local pastors, through chaplains. We have about six, or rather, 36 chaplains in Ukraine.
We've built over 200 homes, temporary homes for those who have lost their homes in the war.
We have several small orphanages there.
We bought, I think it's 17 acres overlooking a lake that we're going to build the largest home we've built anywhere.
in the world. They say that Ukrainians, that 200,000 children that are Ukrainian, have been removed
by the Russians and sent to Russia to be educated in the Russian ways so that after the war,
they can bring those children back that are ethnically and linguistically Ukrainian,
but their worldview is Russian. So that's one of their strategies to take over Ukraine.
And so they say 200,000. The official number is about 50,000, which is still crazy that that many
children have been pretty much kidnapped. And
And then there's about 40,000 children in Ukraine that have lost both mother and father in the war.
And so when we think of Ukraine, we think of a Western European country and maybe the major
cities feel that way.
But like I said, I live in Mexico.
Ukraine is a similar country to Mexico as far as infrastructure and economy.
It's not a very rich country.
And so they have a hard time, you know, attending to the needs of the most vulnerable and
the best of times.
And at war, we've been in places where entire cities.
have been pulverized.
It's only rubble.
It was 40,000 people before the war,
and now there's 100 people living in basements.
And what prompted our founder to start this big home
is that we found living amongst the rubble,
a young man, maybe older teen, early 20s,
living by himself, and he was a mentally handicapped.
He had Down syndrome.
And our founder has a Down syndrome,
or rather a handicapped child.
And so just to see him in the rubble and in a basement and just trying to find water with all his limitations just broke his heart.
And so, like I said, even though we understand that it's a politically charged place to be involved,
once you go there and you see the brokenness and you see the pain and you see the body of Christ loving people and preaching the gospel and seeing people saved,
you realize that there comes a point where you need to put politics aside and say, hey, we are the
kingdom of God. We are the light of the world. We're called to be a city on a hill, bringing hope
to the places that have been most devastated by cruelty and by sin. That's something that we've also
been doing in Latin America. Pastor Scotti talked about. We were rescuing children from sex
trafficking and organ harvesting. We started that a little over three years ago. And about two years
ago, we transitioned our focus because we realized that we can rescue the children, but they
have a way to get more children. So let me explain briefly.
In the United States, when you think of human trafficking, you assume that it's a child that was abducted by a family that is now frantically looking for their child.
And they're putting posters all over the city.
Have you seen this child?
That's not how it works in impoverished countries.
The way it works in impoverished countries is in indigenous communities where just like in Indian reserves here, or African American reserves, or rather Native American reserves, they kind of have autonomy.
Same thing in Latin America.
The federal government can't really go into these places.
And so what happens is a lot of the criminals will be able to do their crimes kind of without any repercussions.
And one of the things they do is that they'll go to girls that are 13, 14, 15, 16 years old that have been impregnated,
and they will purchase the child off of this mother.
And so they will now have their possession children that are months old,
and they will hold them until they're old enough to sexual abuse or,
organ harvesting, and it's just brutal.
And so for them, it's, like I said,
it's not difficult for them to acquire another child.
So with the daunting reality that that brings,
our question is, okay, how do we actually move the needle?
How do we actually make a difference?
And you and I both know that the hope of the world
is the message of Jesus Christ.
And what we believe is just like you know
what it's like in a personal level
to go from darkness to light,
that is what we need to happen culturally.
And so just across the board, there's so many things that need to go wrong, so much broken,
so much sin that needs to go wrong for this to be tolerated, whether it be the customers
that fly in from abroad to abuse these children, whether it be the mothers that are selling the
children, whether it be the criminals that are buying and trafficking the children,
there's just sin all over the place.
And you and I both know that the remedy for sin, we're just saying it, is the blood of Jesus Christ,
is him washing and cleansing us.
So what we've done over the last, this is the third year we're doing it,
is that we're targeting strategic, criminally controlled cities in Latin America
and planting churches there.
So two years ago, we planted seven churches.
Last year we planted six churches.
This year we're planting 13 churches.
We started in Mexico.
Now we're in about probably six different countries around Latin America
because we understand the hope of the world is the message of Jesus Christ.
And what I want to see this morning in the passage that we're going to read is the transformation of Peter.
And the transformation of Peter is a brilliant story because it does two things.
One, it shows us how we can be transformed and not only transformed from people that are far from God to people that know God,
but rather people that are far from God to people that are used by God.
Peter is a great example of that.
Because if you ever feel that you're not qualified to be used by God and you read the Gospels and you see Peter and you're like,
if God could use Peter, there's hope for me.
I love the sort of Peter because I, I, I, I,
I don't feel like I'm the brightest bulb or the sharpest tool in the shed.
Neither is Peter.
And so if God has a plan for Peter to use him, I believe that God has a plan for me and for you as well.
So Peter is a great example of how God can take us from brokenness to purpose,
but it's also a blueprint to what God wants to do not only in individuals, but culturally.
People that are far from him that might be transformed by the power of the gospel.
So what I want to do is I want to read through the story that we're going to consider together.
It's 11 verses, so it'll take a second.
And then we'll pray and we'll consider it together.
It says, so it was, as the multitudes pressed about him, this is Luke chapter 5 versus 1 through 11.
To hear the word of God that he stood by the lake of Gneserath, and he saw two boats standing by the lake,
but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets.
He then got into one of the boats, which was Simons, and it asked him to put a little bit out from land.
And he sat down and taught the multitude.
from the boat. When he had stopped speaking, he said to Simon, launch out into the deep,
and let down your nets for a catch. But Simon answered and said to him, master, we have
toiled all night and caught nothing. Nevertheless, at your word, I will let down the net. And when
they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their net was breaking. So they signaled to
their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so that they
began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he followed Jesus' knees, saying, depart from me,
for I'm a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all who were with them were astonished to the catch
of fish which they had taken. And so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners
with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men. And when
they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed him. Jesus, I pray that you
would speak to us this morning as we consider your word, as we remember.
what it was like to be called by you.
I pray that we would be reminded of that.
I also pray for people who haven't felt that calling before,
who are going through life,
desiring a greater purpose.
And I pray that they would be open to the reality
that the greatest purpose is you
in your calling for our lives.
So I pray a blessing over our time together in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I don't know about you,
but when I read this story,
I get the sense that this is Luke telling us
how Peter and Jesus met,
that Jesus is an itinerate speaker.
He's very popular.
He's got multitudes that are following him.
And he asks a fisherman to use his boat so that he can get into the boat and use the shoreline as a natural amphitheater.
Have you ever been to the Sea of Galilee?
And so you can sit on the boat and have the beach be an amphitheater.
And he's preaching to the multitudes from the boats and from the boat.
Peter is so impressed by the catch that he launches himself at Jesus' feet and says,
depart for me, for I'm a sinful man, O Lord.
Jesus doesn't, Jesus forgives him, transforms him, says, do not be afraid.
From now on you'll be a fisher of men.
Peter abandons all and follows him.
And it just reads like this is Luke telling us how they met.
But this is not how they met.
People that pieced together the gospels to have kind of the chronology of it will tell us
that the way they met is actually in the book of John.
And it's not in the Sea of Galilee.
in the Jordan River.
And before Peter was a disciple of Jesus,
he was a disciple of John.
And so Peter begins to follow Jesus
likely a couple months before this episode
in the Sea of Galilee.
So that then begs the question
because what's happening here is obvious
that Peter is having this eye-opening moment
where he's realizing that he's in front of God himself,
what took him so long to realize
that he was walking with, learning from,
you know, spending time with God himself.
And the reason I say that is because when Peter says,
depart from me for I'm a sinful man, oh Lord,
for a first century Jewish audience,
it's very clear what's happening.
Every single time in the Old Testament
that somebody believes themselves to see God,
they think they're going to die.
Because the Jewish worldview is different
than the Christian worldview.
Because we have access to God through faith
by the death of Jesus.
Paul tells us, or rather the author of,
Hebrews tells us that we can approach the throne of grace boldly.
We sing about it.
We desire his presence.
That's not the Jewish worldview.
The Jewish worldview was before the death of Jesus.
They believed God to dwell in a light that was so radiant and so powerful and so holy
that if a human being were to find himself in God's presence,
he would get zapped like a fly trying to land on the surface of the sun.
Just incompatible.
And so that's why every single person in the Old Testament that sees God thinks they're going to die.
And so this is the reaction of Peter.
Depart from me from I'm a sinful man.
Oh, Lord.
This is a blatant declaration that Peter believes Jesus to be God.
That Jesus is his Lord.
There's people that will say that the Gospels don't claim that Jesus was God.
All you need to do is understand a little bit of the Jewish worldview.
See, from the very first story between Jesus and Peter, Peter is saying,
your God in human form and I'm scared to death.
But the question is, what took him so long to come to that understanding?
So I have four points for us based on the passage we just read.
And the first one is being with Jesus does not necessarily mean you know Jesus.
And I don't mean this aggressively at all.
I mean this in a very, very frank way.
As somebody who knows a lot of Christians, it is possible to love Jesus.
And I'm just going to describe Peter for you.
Love Jesus, sacrifice for Jesus.
Peter left everything to follow Jesus already.
Have your worldview set by Jesus' teachings?
Be genuine about your faith.
All these things, it's possible to have all those things
and still feel like your relationship with Jesus
is not where you would long it to be.
No, I don't want you to raise your hands.
I don't want you to feel uncomfortable
to expose anybody.
But does this describe you?
You love Jesus.
You follow Jesus' teachings.
You come to church.
You're around God's family.
But in the deepest part of your heart, you feel like your relationship with Jesus is still superficial.
It's still not where you wish it were.
I've found that to be the case with so many people.
And the question is, how do you break through that superficiality?
How do you break through that lack of intimacy?
Point number two is, it is in deep waters where you will find him.
So after Jesus gets done teaching, he invites Peter.
and I really like how it says it.
He says,
launch out into the deep.
No.
Every single Bible story
is a story of what happened,
but it's also,
it's also packed with spiritual meaning.
And so when Jesus says,
let's go deeper,
it's not just that he wants to go fishing,
is that he understands
that Peter's relationship with him
is superficial,
and he's inviting him to greater depths,
to go into the deep part of the ocean,
to trust in him.
And I like how it works in English
It's an idiom.
If you say that somebody is going through deep waters, what does that mean?
Through a season of uncertainty, through doubt, through maybe confusion.
It's interesting that the place where we most intimately meet God is usually in the place of confusion, of pain, of uncertainty, of doubt.
Let me say it this way.
The intimacy that you long for is on the other side of the trial that you're dreading.
That came out so negative.
But it's true.
It's true.
It is impossible to have the intimacy with God that you desire without going into deep waters,
without facing a storm or two to have a different analogy.
I was in Ukraine recently, and we went to the front lines, and it was crazy.
In Latin America, I've had guns pull on me.
I've had bullets whizzed by me.
I've never felt so unsafe as when,
We got to the front lines and we were evacuating people and we were taking supplies to our chaplains.
And we got to the first city and maybe every two or three minutes we would hear like bombs going off at the distance.
And it sounded like thunder and it was ominous, but it felt far enough to where you didn't feel that unsafe.
And then we went to Pokroft, which was recently cut on a city that was destroyed and conquered by the Russians, but it wasn't at the time.
And there, there wasn't a second of silence.
We were driving past craters that still had fires in them.
We were with two of our chaplains,
and the whole time they were jovial and laughing,
and as soon as we got to Pawcrofts,
they turned on the rock music,
and they were just, like, gritting their teeth
and gripping the steering wheels,
and it just felt really gnarly.
And so we were evacuating people out of Pawcrofts,
and then that night we went to a separate city.
We were in a hotel, probably on a 10th store,
10th story, rather, pitch black, dead silent.
And we had gone that afternoon to see an apartment complex
that got completely destroyed by a ballistic missile.
An artillery hit will take out a car.
A drone will take out a car.
A ballistic missile goes out into outer space,
comes straight down hypersonically,
and we'll take out a complete city block.
It's a massive thing.
And so dead silent, midnight.
I can't sleep, so I'm like watching YouTube videos on my phone.
And all of a sudden, within a couple blocks, a ballistic missile lands.
And I've been in earthquakes.
It shook my hotel like an earthquake.
And the sound was deafening.
I don't think I've heard a sound so loud.
And the other sound sounded like thunder in a distance.
This, it felt like somebody was, you know how you rip a sheet of paper and it goes,
it was like that, but just a sound.
of the crashing of concrete
is just so hard to describe.
It was so close
that people started flooding out
into the streets with flashlight,
seeing where the ballistic missile landed.
We weren't sure what to do.
Obviously, I'm praying,
and a couple minutes later, another ballistic missile lands.
And a couple minutes later, another ballistic missile lands.
And it felt like the Russians were doing this,
and I was just hoping it wouldn't land on my head next.
And for the first time in my life, as I was praying, I felt maybe the next words that come out of my mouth, I'm going to tell Jesus in person.
A very prepared to meet your maker moment.
So we left, and we left the front lines.
And we went a couple hours away, and we had breakfast with some chaplains.
And to my right, there was a senior chaplain who was in his 50s, but looked like he was in his 70s, just war-weary, very, very, very,
heavy face. And we shared what happened. And to be honest, like I said, the third time I say it,
I'm Mexican. And Mexico sees a lot of violence. And there's a lot of bad things that happen in Mexico.
And I'm not saying it to be proud of us. This is just the way we are. One of the ways we deal
with tragedy in Mexico is through humor. When something bad happens, we find a way to laugh about it.
As I've shared this, I've heard that is very similar in the United States in the medical field.
When you're around death, when you're around brokenness all the time,
one of the ways you keep from falling into deep depression
is just finding a way to crack a joke.
And so after the gnarliest experiences in Latin America,
people laugh.
And sometimes it's a nervous laugh,
and sometimes that's just the way you cope.
It's well known in Mexico that if you want to hear the best jokes of your life,
go to a Mexican funeral.
That's just the way we are.
And so I expected that from the Ukrainian chaplain.
that there'd be like, he-he, ha, ha,
they almost got blown up by the Russians kind of thing.
And so when I was sharing this war-weary older chaplain,
he looked older, he wasn't that old, he started crying.
I was very surprised because this was unique to me.
It wasn't unique to him.
This is their life experience all the time.
And as he started crying, he said through an interpreter,
Jonathan, you will never forget this moment.
Because you feel so small.
He said, look around you.
Every single person at this table knows what it's like to be close to a ballistic missile when it lands.
And you realize in that moment that the majority of people live for something that does not matter for any eternity.
And I saw him.
And I realized something.
His faith is greater than mine because the waters he's traversing are deeper than mine.
His storm that I wouldn't wish upon anybody has forged his faith to a level that I wish I had.
But at the same time, I'm glad I don't have to go through that.
But that's the reality.
That's the reality.
Jesus said, in this world, you will have tribulations.
I grew up as a Christian in the 90s.
I was born in 89, 90s, early 2000s.
And there was a fad that I kind of miss.
You'll remember it.
most of you that have been Christians a while,
we used to put Christian bumper stickers
and Bible verses on everything.
You know, the promises of God
and we would have it on magnets on our fridge
or embroidered on a pillow or on a calendar somewhere
and just Bible verses everywhere.
You know what promise of God I never saw
embroidered on a pillow?
In this world, you will have tribulations.
You know, printed on a coffee mug.
You're pouring your morning coffee,
dreading the day ahead.
And that Jesus promised it.
But that's only half the promise.
In this world, you will have tribulation,
but be of good cheer.
I have overcome the world.
I even like it better how David said it.
Yay, a little bit more poetic maybe.
Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil for you are with me.
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Gosh, like I said, I do not wish that kind of pain on anybody.
But when you see the intimacy that they have with God, you realize it.
You realize that it's beautiful.
It's worth it even.
That's one of the mind-blowing things.
Have you ever been around somebody that's been through so much suffering?
And they say, I do not wish this on my worst enemy.
But I wouldn't change it.
Because it forged me into a person that actually believes the promises of God,
that actually holds on to the love of God,
that actually knows firsthand what it's like to, like David,
say, who have I in heaven but you and on earth?
I have no one I desire but you.
I'm belaboring this point.
I'll go a little bit quicker with the other two.
I want to use one more example.
There's a phrase that I heard from a pastor,
and I did not like the phrase,
but I did like what that phrase made me feel.
So let me explain it real quick.
He said that sometimes we feel close to God
But in reality, the reason we feel close to God is that we have props under us that lift us up,
that make us feel close to God.
And so if you have a stable family life, that might be a prop that holds you up.
Or if you have health, that might be a prop that holds you up.
Or if you have financial stability, that might be a prop that holds you up.
or if you have a great job, that might be a prop that holds you up.
Or if you travel a lot for pleasure, that might be a problem that holds you up.
And what this person said, that I don't know if I agree with the way it said,
he said, sometimes God will kick the prop out from under you
so that you can learn that he is all you have.
And so you can learn to hold on to him for dear life.
The reason I don't love it is I don't know if God is actively kicking props out from under people.
But the reason I do like it is,
if you've been a Christian for more than 17 minutes,
you've had the prop kicked out from under you.
I don't know if it was God, maybe.
But in this world, you will have tribulations.
I remember I was a pastor for 12 years
and love seeing people become Christians,
but especially in Latin America,
there's a little superstitious kind of vibe
where people think that when they become Christians,
it's like this good luck charm
that things will turn out better for them
because they're Christians now.
And so I had so many people that would come up to me
and be like, Pastor, I don't think this Christian
anything's working.
My life's getting harder.
Now, just look at them with as much grace as I can muster,
and I'd say, brother, sister, don't worry.
It gets worse.
At least that's been my experience and it's been the experience
of most of the people I know. It's not that the burden gets lighter.
It's that God gives you wider shoulders and gives you the ability to push through.
But life gets difficult.
But in this world, Yoaha'Hah revelation to be of good cheer.
any time you face the fire, you need to know that your faith, which is much more precious than gold, is being purified.
And you can see it. Sometimes you've seen it. I know you've seen it. You have people that are in their 40s or 40, 50 years as Christians.
You know, their whole adult life as Christians. And you just see the beauty and their demeanor. And you know it's not because it was an easy life.
You know it's because the fire forged, the beauty in their life.
I'll do the last two points a little bit more brief.
So point number one is being with Jesus does not necessarily mean you know Jesus.
Point number two is it is in deep waters where you will find him.
Point number three is before he commissions you, he will allow you to come to the end of yourself.
Meaning this.
Jesus tells Peter, hey, let's go fishing.
Let's go to deeper waters.
And Peter has an excuse, which is an okay excuse.
Master, we've toiled all night and have caught nothing.
Now, I don't know how good the fishing is in Idaho.
I'm assuming it's pretty good.
I live in a sea town where fishing is a really big deal.
It's a fishing town.
And so, you know, I've gone fishing plenty of times.
And so I know sometimes you just have bad luck.
You know, you just don't catch anything.
You know, one day you can get more fish than you can know what to do with.
The other day, you don't catch anything.
But this is different.
These aren't people that are surfing, that are fishing as a hobby.
These are commercial fishermen.
they have two boats, they have large nets, they're doing big circles, and they're expecting
to pull out many fish every single time they cast the net. And so this isn't a person bobbing
up and down into the Sea of Galilee with a rod hoping to catch something. These are people
that do this for a living, have done it for living their whole life, and they have an entire
industry backing their experience. And so for them to come up empty-handed all night as a massive
failure. So I could see Peter being absolutely frustrated with himself. You know, we told all night
caught nothing. He worked all night. I don't know if you've ever worked a graveyard shift,
but the next day, you're not thinking straight. Your mind's thinking one thing. How do I get some sleep?
And so in that state, Jesus says, hey, can I borrow your boat? Peter's like, go for it. And he's
exhausted. He's hearing Jesus preach. I'm sure that Jesus' message is wonderful, but I'm sure there's
a part of Peter that's like, okay, let's wrap this up. I'm ready to go to bed. And then after
Jesus is done preaching after the nets have been washed already, he's ready to go home, just to say,
do you want to go fishing? To me, it's totally understandable that Peter says, ah, Jesus, we toiled all night
and caught nothing. This is one of Peter's good moments. He says, nevertheless, at your word, I will let down
the net. And they have the biggest catch of their entire life. This is the idea. And this might be
reading too much into the text, but what would have happened to Peter?
if he hadn't had the failure the night before,
and Jesus said, hey, let's go fishing.
He's like, yeah, let's go fishing.
Great at this.
You know, I've been doing it in my whole life.
You want to go fishing?
We'll catch a lot of fish today, Jesus.
Then he has the best catch of his life.
Do you think he assumes that Jesus did it?
Or knowing Peter's personality,
do you think he sees that catch?
And he goes, I am the best fisherman in the history of Galilee.
But it was his failure the night before.
that showed him that the catch was not the product of his own effort,
but it was a gift of God.
This is the reality.
Just like nobody wants to face the storms,
nobody wants to go through failure.
But God will allow failure in your life
so that when he uses you, you will know
it's not because you're great and it's not because you're talented
and it's not because you have a great work ethic,
and it's not because you're a great Christian.
It's because we serve a loving and gracious God.
and it will convince us that every good and perfect gift comes from above from the Father of Lights.
Few things are as dangerous to the Christian as being used by God without having failures in your rear room mirror to know it wasn't because of me.
There's actually a scripture that says this.
It says, don't let elders, it might say deacons, become leaders as not.
novices, lest they fall into the snare of the devil, meaning this.
If you give leadership to somebody who hasn't gone to two or three failures before and God
uses them, it will hype them up so much and fill them up with so much pride that they'll
just assume that God is using them because they're all that.
That's a dangerous place to be because Jesus says, humble yourself before the Lord,
and he will lift you up.
whoever exalts themselves will be brought low.
So let me say this.
Have you gone through a season of failure?
We all have.
Sometimes it's worse, especially as a man.
I think when you go through a season of failure,
you just feel like double bad because you feel like you need to have everything
figured out for you, for your family, for those who depend on you.
And just going through a season of failure is so emotionally difficult.
Let me say this.
There's two things that are.
emotionally difficult about failing. Failing and feeling like a failure. Let me say this.
If you have failed, it's not because God is done using you. It might be that God is preparing
to use you, just like Peter. Went through failure because God is going to use him. And not catching
anything is a pretty superficial failure compared to the failure that he's going to do in a couple
years when they asked him, do you know him? And he says, I don't know that man. And then a couple
weeks later, Jesus says, if you love me, feed my sheep. I wonder, I might be once again
reading too much into this story, but I wonder in that moment where he's hearing the restoration
that Jesus has for him, that he remembered that day in the Sea of Galilee, where I was a failure
the night before and God showed up the next day. And maybe I was a failure, you know, at the
crucifixion, but now it's past the crucifixion, now it's past the resurrection. And now I know
that God, even after I have failed, has a plan to use me.
And he gets up boldly on the day of Pentecost and plants the first church.
And God uses him to see thousands of people become saved.
What would have happened if he thought his failure was ultimate?
It would have said, no, God, I don't believe you can use me because I messed up.
But he knew.
He knew.
God allows failure in your life, not because he's done using you, but because he's preparing
to use you.
He wants to use you.
and he wants to use you in such a way that when he uses you,
you're not sabotaged by your pride.
Final point, and I end with this.
We ought to leave all to follow him.
So in the story, they go fishing, they have a miraculous catch.
And then Peter, it says,
abandoned all to follow Jesus, including the miraculous catch.
No, I'm just going to make up numbers at this point.
But there's another Bible story that says that with one boat and one net,
they brought out 153 large fish.
I don't know what a large fish is,
but let's say, oh, I'm just throwing out a number.
Let's just say 20, 30, 40 pounds.
I don't know what a large fish is in the Sea of Galilee.
20 pounds.
So that's with one boat, one net, no boats are sinking, no nets are breaking.
So two boats, larger net, boats are breaking, or nets are sinking.
Probably a couple hundred large fish.
So let's just give it a number.
Let's say this is $20, $40,000, $40,000 worth of fish for a middle class.
middle-income person.
How would you feel if I gave you a $40,000 check this morning?
Most people would be pretty excited, to say the least.
This is what's happening to Peter.
In one moment, he's getting a $40,000 check.
But remember, these are fishermen that need to sell the fish at the market to make a profit.
If I were Peter and Jesus said, I will make you a fisherman, I would say, Jesus, I love the idea.
give me 48 hours, I'll sell the fish, and we'll leave with some money in the bank.
He abandons all, even the miraculous catch.
What does this show us?
It shows us that following Jesus always comes with the cost.
Salvation is free, but obedience is costly.
Because we're not saved by obedience, but we're saved by faith, or rather by grace through faith.
Salvation is free, but to be used by God, to obey him?
I mean, ask Daniel a little bit as costly.
ask the apostles that 11 of them got murdered of those costly.
There's always a cost.
Dietrich Bonhofer who was murdered by the Nazis for opposing the Nazi regime said this.
When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.
We've had, like I said, we have 100 missionaries in Nigeria.
Nigeria is probably right now the most dangerous place on earth.
We've had Christian missionaries that have been killed within weeks of arriving in northern Nigeria.
When I said that once, somebody said to me, that is so stupid.
Literally, I have a table out here that you can visit in a second.
I was at the table, and they came up to me angry.
And they said, that is so stupid.
Why are you sending these men to their death when you can send them to other parts of Africa
and they can have a fruitful 50 years of ministry?
And you're sending them to a place where they'll die in weeks.
Have you ever had somebody to tell you something that you can't think of a, you know, a response in the moment?
And then you're just mulling it over like you're in the shower and you're sleeping
and you're trying to figure out, like, oh, like, well,
and then they got it.
Like, days later, like, I was trying to, like, figure out, like,
I felt stumped.
Because what he said?
Yeah, of course.
Like, if he's 20, 25, 30,
and he can have 60 years of fruitful ministry in Tanzania,
why don't we send him there?
And they got it.
It's so stupid, he said.
Why are you sending him to his death?
My rebuttal would have been.
Should have been.
You're asking the wrong person.
Ask them if it's stupid.
Ask them if they regret it.
Or will they say, I am happy to give my life
so that my country and my countrymen might meet Jesus.
And I don't care if I have to be a Stephen
so that somebody else can be a Paul.
Do you get that reference?
Stephen was the first murder of the church.
Saul, who later became Paul, witnessed it,
It's the first step in his conversion process.
Gosh.
We're so obsessed with making it 280.
We're so obsessed with having a 401k and a retirement plan
and living too old age and saying,
you know, looking at our spouse and saying, we made it.
Nothing wrong with that.
It's not wrong.
But when somebody decides to say,
I don't care if I live to 80 or 40 or 20,
all they care about is hearing well done, good and faithful service.
enter into the joy of your Lord.
And if that means that when I arrive at paradise,
I will start seeing these other Nigerian people
come to the kingdom of God
because I trusted God enough to go and share my faith.
Ask them if that's a life well lived or not.
Ask them if that's the sacrifice
that they're willing to make or not.
So we're doing this in Latin America.
I called a pastor who had 12 people killed them
around two blocks from a church,
about two blocks from a church.
He's an American missionary.
He's got three young kids.
And I live close to where I live.
It lives about an hour away.
And I call him, I was like, hey, are you okay?
He said, yeah, it was pretty gnarly, but we're okay.
I was like, I told him, are you concerned about your family's safety?
And to be honest, I didn't like his answer.
He said, you know what, Jonathan, we've been so busy.
I haven't really had time to think about it.
You know what my response was?
That's stupid.
I'm just kidding.
I didn't say that.
I honestly thought, I didn't say it out loud.
I thought that's irresponsible.
What do you mean you haven't thought about your safety?
And that was the end.
It hit me.
Are our Nigerian missionaries overly concerned with their safety?
Or do they realize we have a task at hand?
We want people to meet Jesus.
We understand it's dangerous.
We didn't come here because it was safe or easy or convenient.
We came here because God caused.
All this to become fissures of men.
I felt bad for a second that I don't have that same level of faith.
It says, I'm here and I'm doing what God's called me to do
and I'm not going to psych myself out by being overly concerned with my personal safety.
I'm just going to do the work that God has entrusted me to do.
When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.
When I was a pastor, I had somebody show up to church on a midweek,
it was a Tuesday asking for prayer, and they had a bullet wound in their foot.
and I said, I'm happy to pray for you, but why are you wounded?
And he said, I was a top hitman.
He was about mid to early 40s.
I was a top hitman for the most well-known Mexican mob member.
You probably know who he is for 20 years.
And I was great at my job.
Didn't want to ask him what that meant.
Stellar performance reviews, you know.
And I was great at my job.
And my wife and I became Christians.
And so I approached my boss and I told him, hey, I can't do this anymore.
I'm a Christian.
And he allowed me to retire.
And in that line of work, that's unhard of.
If you know faces, you know names, they don't let you out of their sights.
And so they allowed him to retire and live a regular life.
And he did that for a couple years.
But then his former boss's son found him and said, hey, I need you to work for me.
Once again, he was still pretty young.
He was in mid-40s.
I need you to work for me.
And he said, I can't.
I'm a Christian.
So he shot him in the foot.
And he said, you have 24 hours to change your mind or you and your entire family are going to die.
and he came to church to ask for prayer.
And to be honest, I thought he was going to say something like,
I need to go in hiding.
But there's no hiding in those scenarios.
I thought he was going to say something like,
pray for me that I might have wisdom to know what to do.
Didn't say that.
He said, Jonathan, pray for me that I might have the courage to die well.
They gave him my number.
And I said, if you're alive in 24 hours, police call me,
and he never called.
and I know what happened to him in his entire family
and that's an hour and a half across from the border in Mexico
and you realize
I love the United States
I'm American as well my dad's an American missionary so I'm a U.S. citizen
and I love this country I love Mexico too
and I love American Christianity
but at the same time I'm I know that
a lot of the issues in the American church
is because we're not facing the struggles
that other places are facing.
And so it makes us really inward focus.
You know, you go to Iran,
and do you think they're fighting over denominational wines
or are they just happy that another person met Jesus?
And I think the comfort within the borders of our country
it's not a bad thing, but it's a dangerous thing
because it can disconnect us from the reality
that around the world it is dangerous to be a Christian.
In many places around the world, it is a death sentence to become a Christian.
But in the majority of places, it is highly uncomfortable and likely to produce in you real persecution
just for having a Bible or calling yourself a Christian.
So what do we do?
We understand that God has called us not only to have a personal transformation, but to be part of a greater transformation.
Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
That is in my estimation, probably the most misunderstood Bible scripture.
Because when you hear that, you think, oh, this is talking that God will protect us.
You know, the gates of hell will not prevail.
That's not what it's saying.
The gates are not a weapon.
This is not a promise of protection.
If you think of an ancient city, they had walls.
And if you wanted to take a city, you had to storm.
the gates.
And so when it says the gates of hell will not prevail, it's not saying we will be protected.
It's saying that when the church decides to stand up and take ground and storm down the gates of
hell, there's no power in hell strong enough to stop the church from advancing.
It's a promise of power.
There's other promises of protection.
Don't get me wrong, but this is not a promise of protection.
This is a promise of power.
of the Holy Spirit backing us in an offensive move to see more people know Jesus.
But this is something that we do collectively.
I will build my church.
I can say these things and it's so daunting.
But the way we change the world is not by changing the world.
It's by changing somebody's world.
When we do for one, what we wish we could do for all.
And we do that collectively as the body of Christ, we will change the world.
And there are several ways you can get involved.
you would choose to do that with us.
Like I said, there's a pastor that gives this image that if a man falls in a well,
you need two people, one to go into the well and one to hold the rope.
And so we have missionaries around the world, and one of the ways that you can be involved,
bringing the light of Jesus around the world is by holding the rope in the sense that
you're allowing them to focus on their work by financially sponsoring them.
So we have three areas of opportunity to sponsor.
The first one is the one that I'm involved with.
These are pastors that are planting churches in cartel control territories.
It is $75 a month to sponsor one.
Obviously, that doesn't come close to providing for their needs.
So we need to raise several sponsors per pastor, but if you'd like to sponsor a pastor, it's $75 a month.
Then we also have the pastors in the Middle East.
And so if you'd like to sponsor a pastor in the Middle East, you can do so as well for $75 a month.
And then we have the home in Ukraine that I talked about at the beginning of the message.
This is going to be the largest home that we've done anywhere in the world.
Once again, it's also $75 per month.
A couple things that I also want to make clear.
One, as we travel and speak, it is extremely important to us that we make.
clear that we don't want you to take money that you're currently giving to your church and give
to our organization. We don't believe that that's the way of missions works. We believe that the way
missions works is that you're faithful to your local church and then you give to missions above and
beyond that. And so I know that this is very compelling and you think, oh, I get sponsored
a missionary on the front lines and while I'm already giving this much of the pie to God and
well, I just take from the pie that I'm already giving, I would encourage you not to do that.
I would encourage you not to diminish your weekly contribution to your local church.
We'd rather add to it if you would like to sponsor one of our missionaries or one of our pastors or one of our children.
That's one.
Number two, we get asked all the time if this goes directly to this person.
And the way we do this is that we raise finances separately for our operational cost, flying out here, doing operations, rescuing people.
That doesn't come out of the support that we raise for the individuals.
100% of what you give goes either to the missionary or to the home.
It obviously doesn't go to a kid.
If it's a kid, it goes to the home where the kid is.
And so other organizations will do 8% or 12% of whatever you give goes to organizational costs.
We don't judge that.
We understand that there's needs.
The way our founder has decided to do it is to raise those funds separately.
And so if you choose to sponsor, it goes directly to that person.
And so for some people, $75 might not be doable.
I think for the majority of people it's possible.
I live in Mexico, I have a family of five, and we go to dinner and I spend $75, I did really, really well.
You know, for dinner with a family, I can make a big difference in the life of somebody.
And so for some people, it's not doable.
For most people, I believe it is.
For some people, if you want to do a child and a pastor, it doesn't cap out at one.
But this is the idea.
We ought to do for one, what we wish you could do for all.
We have code names for all we do, and actually the home that we went to in Costa Rica, the code name for it is little starfish.
And it's based out of a story that there was a storm that pushed a ton of starfish out on the sand.
And there was a kid that was throwing them back in.
But there's tens of thousands of them.
No way he's going to throw them all in.
And somebody yells at a distance saying, you're wasting your time.
There's too many of them.
You're not making a difference.
And he throws one and he says, I made a difference to that one.
We got to do for one, what we wish we could do for all.
And so doing it will change the world.
Jesus, I thank you so much for the opportunity to be with this wonderful, beautiful church.
I pray a blessing upon them.
Scotty, his family, the leadership here.
Just pray that you would continue to do a work here.
I talked about reaching around the world, and it's something beautiful,
but they're also reaching here, and they're doing a great job at it.
So I pray that you continue to bless them.
Jesus' name. Amen.
God bless you.
Thanks, brother.
Let's all stand.
I ask the prayer to come up,
and maybe the Lord's knocking on the door of your heart
and moving you to do something.
something. Maybe this was just confirmation. I know a lot of times the Lord will just bring somebody
along to, uh, ka-ching. That's what he's been telling me. So that's what I need to do. So,
uh, let's sing. I think the words will be up on the screen. Some of you know this song.
Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and hoarse. And
holy, tried and true with Thanksgiving, I'll be a living, sanctuary for you.
Lord, I pray that you would just settle that in our hearts, Lord, just knowing that
You have plans and purposes and people in our future, Lord, that need to hear this message of your good news,
of the gospel of Jesus.
Lord, so help us to be your faithful servants.
In the time that we have left, Lord, that we would occupy until our Lord comes, that we would be able to hear those words one day.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Enter into the joy of your Lord.
So be with us this week.
We pray in Jesus' mighty name.
Amen.
God bless you.
Have a great week in the Lord.