The Making of a Missionary

Think you so much. I'm so excited about being here and worshiping with you and the ability addition to having the privilege of sharing from God's word just a bit and some other things with you such a joy to be here don't know of any church anywhere that is more involved in taking the gospel to the world and this church right here. If I were living around here. This is the church I would join I can tell you that right now. I would love to be a part of this church. I'd like for us to to hear from Bob Paul apostle Paul in second Corinthians the fifth chapter, and I would just want to begin with.

The 16th verse, a few verses here, especially that 17th verse.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. The old is gone you thing the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them, and he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away behold all things have become you. What a beautiful beautiful promise. I'd like to share with us today a little bit about some of the things that make us to become that new man and some of the things that impel us forth as it says here ambassadors for Christ, or as missionaries. I suppose if I put a title on what I would share this afternoon. It would be the making of a missionary God is blessed me with 52 years overseas as one of his servants and some very choice places in the world, and I count that the greatest privilege.

Sometimes I come home at night and I say to my wife, Rachel. I wish I had one more life. I'd give it just the same way as I have given it. Now there's some days that I wouldn't take anything for her but there some days that I would live over for anything in order but God is been so good to give me the life he's given me and I'd like to share some things that have gone into my own life to to mold and make me into that person that God wanted me to be and wants me to be and wants me to become because I'm in the process, always of becoming what he wants me to become and I hope it will stimulate you to look back and see the things that God has used to make you who you are in him and who are that that are making you who he wants you to be. Because you see we have experience every one of us are having experiences on a continual basis. Every day we have experiences so many of those things we experience and then we forget them. We've moved on and maybe sometime later down the road smell of something or a view of something will remind us of that.

But some of us it will all of us have some wonderful experiences in life that impact us in a major kind of way those experiences that we learn from and they make us into the person that we are that inspire us and drive us forth and then all of us inevitably have those painful experiences. Those negative experiences that come into our life that seem to wreck us that destroy who we are and they sometimes they become like a cancer and ours are sold in our life that eats away at us and if we're not careful we hold onto those negative things until we become a negative person and a person of anger and disappointment and discouragement and depression and all of those kinds of things. So much depends on what we do with the experiences that God brings into our life. Sometimes we process them in such a way that we learn from them long time ago I quit talking about why does God do this to me or why did God make me this way. Why did God make this happen. What I asked. Now is Lord, what are you teaching me through this. Let this be a training moment that I'm going through right now that will make me into something far more better than ever thought I could be in that type of vessel that you have shaped you can use in a much more beautiful way. Sometimes it's it's almost always those very difficult experiences in life that make us into a much more beautiful person than we ever thought we could be if we could just process them right and so this afternoon or today I want to just go into a few of those kinds of experiences that God is given to me that has impelled me forth to be the kind of a person that he is making me to be and I want to start back when I was just 13 years old and and what I want to say is that sometimes as little children, we have certain experiences that that make an impact on us. Maybe in a little mind. We don't understand it all, but we hold onto those things that we grow up and we carry those with us and and God uses those experiences to make us even as an adult to change us, so we go back and look at childhood sometime. I was just 13 years old from Liberty in Liberty, North Carolina not too far from here, and we were very poor family, and resources were very scarce, sort 13, I began look for a part-time job so I could help support my family and there was a place on the side of 421 it goes from Greensboro down to down to the coast past right by Liberty right through liberty at that time, there is place on the side of road. It is very typical place at a café in a beer joint and a service station and a grocery store and car dealership than a garage to fix cars repair car service cars resolve their net place and so I got a job there working in the grocery store and that sometimes it let me work in the café and as I worked in that café God boy he really showed me something that I needed to learn that helped me so much later because each brick all takers would come through and stop off there on their way to the coaster back from the coast. They would stop often they come into that café and sit down at a table or booth order their food and eat and maybe relax a little bit and then get back in their rig and go on to the coast that was true of the white drivers the Caucasian drivers but there were African-American drivers, black drivers of those same trucks driving the same hours a day. The same same problems that that the others faced but you know in segregation during the late 1940s when I was 13. In the 50s and 60s it was very difficult because they would come in, but they couldn't come inside they had to go around to the back of the café there was a little window back there and I would get their order.

I would write it down. Now take their food and give it to them and they would have to stand up in the back of the building there and eat or maybe sit out on the ground or maybe find a place. It was raining where they wouldn't get wet and eat and I got so angry about that is little 13 year old, I was a white boy, I didn't know that much about segregation and all that kind of thing and the difference between races.

I didn't think about it that much. I didn't have to but boy that work in that little café there taught me a great deal and I got so angry about that. I went to the owner of the café. The very first day I was so disturbed by this and I said you've got to change this is not right for these people to have to have to stand up back there when others are sit down and they drive the same hours they work just as hard this little 13 year old boy reading a riot act to that owner you know what he said. He said if you like this job.

Find another one somewhere.

I needed that job that I kept working there, but it kept teaching me a great deal about about life and about how we tend to separate people out and I I would go to Sunday school, some I wasn't a believer that at that time that I go to Sunday school seminar learn some about the Bible I you that God created every man he created us all equal. And he loves every single one of us that he created. He loved us with the with an unending love and he loves those people these people and other people of societal strata economic strata and colors.

Color and religion in all these kind of things God loved him.

I didn't forget. That is a 13-year-old now fast-forward some and I spent six years in the Navy came back out.

I found the Lord in the Navy and and I gave my life to the Lord to be a missionary.

While I was in the Navy came back to prepare myself for what Wake Forest University was a college back in and that they yeah this group from a rural church came and call me as pastor and just 25 years old I became senior pastor of the local rural church. Very few people there but God began to bless and so many people accepted the Lord and the church began to be crowded out just totally crowded out and an African-American church, Edwards Grove Baptist Church pastor came over to see him and he said would you come over and preach for us on Sunday night. I said man. Yes, I'll be there one over there. We had the greatest service you could imagine. There were just many people were saved that night and young men surrendered to the ministry later became pastor the church. It was wonderful service that I was so keyed up for that service of praise and in the word of God and I wanted to tell everybody about that service in the butt. Wednesday night I came to my church for prayer meeting and we usually had just almost standing room and therefore Wednesday night prayer meeting there wasn't a handful of people there. I said something wrong here. What what is it Sunday morning I went to church and usually it was just crowded people standing in the vestibule, even bringing out chairs that Sunday morning, there were 2530 people there. So I went to a trust. The lady whose wonderful prayer warrior in the church wonderful friend and I said this or something's happened here is something wrong with our church.

What is it and she said there people in this community who put out the word that you're trying to integrate the church and she said there calling you all kinds of names that you don't want to hear, and she said there not let their families come to church.

They hear that you're going to integrate the churches they not good like that.

These were tough days and those those times. In fact, just three years after that for little children were bombed and killed in Birmingham Alabama 16th St., Baptist Church. Medgar Evers was shot dead and not Mississippi.

Those were days that even shot out through the picture window of a nearby pastor when he said something about racial problems and so forth. Those were dangerous days and I began to really be concerned about this and I knew something had to happen so I call the whole community together. I sent out word I said Sunday morning.

I have an announcement to make. And I want everybody here to hear it.

You know, the church was full wasn't even standing room. There, my wife and my little eight-week-old daughter was sitting down the front row and I went in the pulpit and I was quite frightened. I was scared. I do know what was going to happen there. I looked down at my wife and with her beautiful smile. She smiled back at me. I felt that the support of a loving wife and she she just smiled and nodded her head and I had courage and I said folks if I've been your pastor for 2 1/2 years and I preached almost every service about how God loves all the people of the world the way the black the red the yellow of the Brown all colors God loves of you know that for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should have eternal life. If I preach that for 2 1/2 years here, and you still don't understand it then I can stay 10 more years and you may not understand, so I want you to think about something today, I want you to take a vote if you want me to stay, you're going to open this church to anybody who comes you going to welcome him here there gonna be a part of our family because they are part of God's family.

That's the kind of church we're going to have here in this day and age in this place. If you don't want that you vote no and I'll take my wife and my little baby and will try to find somewhere else where we can preach the word of God. So I will leave it with you and I got Rachel and her little baby and we went home. They took a secret ballot. Deacon came down to the house. 30 minutes later at a smile on his face and he said you know we took a secret ballot this morning. We talked about what you said you going to do this don't have a church that welcomes everybody sees everybody as a child of God than vote for a pastor stay if not, vote for leave and he said he'll go and is will it go. We know that he said they voted 100% not one ballot said no and I won't I just praise the Lord I needed a job, one faith because college student, poor student, I do know what I do tiny little baby. There, but God you and you know what he did. He gave me that experiences a 13-year-old, and I think he knew that one day I would be a pastor in the church and I would face some problems that that experience back there with feet into my life and help me to know what to do and how to do it and then he gave me this experience so that I would know that one day I'm going to go out yonder on the mission field somewhere and I want to have people of other cultures and every other colors of skin and other languages and other habits. Another customs and I'm going to be preaching God's word to them and he gave me those experiences to prepare me to train me for what he wanted me to do CQ having those experiences all the time God is training you just gotta deal with it. Gotta learn from it. You see, well, I went on in the Navy when I graduated high school six years a navigate on board a small aircraft carrier and we were docked in Yokosuka, Japan, big-city big port city and we were going to go through the inland Sea of Japan and I had to get some hydrographic charts so I was going up to Tokyo around Tokyo Bay to bother get those charts and bring them back and I got on the train. It was very crowded.

It was an empty seat beside me and this beautiful young Japanese girl came up and said may I sit beside you in the seat. It didn't take me one second say yes I was a single guy. He had no and she sat down and we talked about a lot of things. She stood in the universe. Yokohama very bright young lady could speak English fairly well. We talked about all kinds of things. But before we got to go, where she was going to get off. She looked deep in my eyes. She held out her hands and she said my professor told me to believe in Jesus. She said how do you believe how do you believe and why.

Set there I been in Sunday school quite a bit. I've been in worship services, but I didn't believe in GA's not that I didn't believe I just didn't. I just didn't think about it. My life certainly wasn't the life of a believer and I couldn't tell her anything she got up and still we got to go, and she bowed very politely.

She disappeared into the crowd and I went on to Tokyo, but as the train started up the wheels began to turn and every time I turn to sit. How do you believe how do you believe how do you believe how do you believe how deeply just echoed in my mind. I couldn't get it out of my heart was heavy. I was sober. I didn't know Jesus. I myself didn't believe I got the charts.

I walked the streets Tokyo just burdened with this got back on the train went back to my ship. It was all blacked out because the Korean War and I got a flashlight in the New Testament in a win in an empty ammunition room set on the deck and I shine the light on the Gospel of Matthew. I was so hungry I read the whole book of Matthew and I read all of Mark and I got to Luke and I read all of Luke all the way down to the last two chapters where he's talking about Jesus being betrayed and where he goes to the cross and he dies on the cross and these raised from the dead was almost like the first time I'd ever seen that and I just I just suddenly realize it was like the Holy Spirit was speaking through that word and I knew why Jesus was dying on the cross he was dying for me, a sinner. He was paying the penalty for my sin on the cross. I could see that clearly.

And God raised him from the dead to show that it was finished, it was done.

My sins were forgiven and I just bowed my head and I prayed and I said, Lord, I need that I need to do that.

I know all the words to say I didn't have anybody there to guide me, but I knew I wanted Jesus came into my life. I stayed there all night reading the Bible.

I couldn't read enough just so hungry. The next morning I had about 60 men in the division. When we mustard on the flight deck in and give out the jobs for the day and then I said before, I dismissed everybody I said something happened to me this morning early. I said I believed in Jesus is will you know in a group of Navy guys hardly any other believe it was a shock to the have some of them kinda laughed a bit nervous about it. I found out later taken bets on last one week or two weeks three weeks. It was a lot of money, I'd be a wealthy man today because it's been 62 years now.

But God did something my life.

I went up on the bridge of the ship that morning where my station was and I looked out of the city of Yokohama in question came to me you want to tell everybody about this.

Yes. Where you going to tell him pretty good to go. And I thought of my hometown liberty 1400 people seven churches in the city limits of liberty for 1400 people.

One pastor been there 28 years. You want to go back home and share the gospel. There is liberty not on your life because I got churches everywhere. They got radio they got books and got magazines and got all kind of availability to the gospel. What I want to do is go to place like this and I'm looking at where there's no sign of Christianity. This is right after the second world war, 1951, 52 and scars everywhere, the second world war and people lost, depressed, discouraged. They'd lost a war they lost their homes, they needed Jesus said, Lord, if it could be your will let me go somewhere like this and put my life and tell them this good news that is so thrilled my soul because when I said to Jesus, like the sun broke through the clouds and just shone right on my life and and I was so overjoyed having Christ in my life and I wanted everybody to know the Lord. Call me I want to share this where people don't know it don't have an opportunity to know another experience.

You see, God gave me that experience because he knew what was what he wanted me to do some years down the road after all that preparation college and seminary couldn't wait to get to the field that I knew I had to go through that in order to to become a servant. He wanted me to be and he took me on out I'll never forget the day we got on the ship San Francisco we would buy a shift in her were many planes going across the ocean. My wife 33-year-old daughter 18-month-old son and eight we cosigned and it was a great day.

But God had given us another experience before that that I had to go through my second son was born with the split over vanilla in a soft palate and the doctor said you gotta wait a year so we can repair that fork and go, he'll have problems with food. He probably always speak with them. Speech impediment.

But we can fix that into gear and the international mission board said, well, you'll have to wait a year to be appointed will here I was pastor of a rural church that was overflowing needed a new building now going to be delayed a year I could leave the field then leave them when I'm going to do five Lehman from Durham, North Carolina, came to see me.

They sat down. They said we understand you going the mission field in one year. Yes sir I we want to plan a new church in North Durham and would like to ask you if you'd come and help us plant a church. It didn't take me one second I said yes yes but you see, the Lord was going to make me into a church planter overseas, but I hadn't planted the church before so he arrange that for me to have an experience which would help me to know how to plant a church and I went with those five. Lehman and I want you to know the Lord taught me to trust Lehman find his soul winners that ever lived, they'd go out visiting and they sacrificed so much for the Lord and the church grew and it grew after set eight months we had over 250 people in 50% of my been baptized during that eight or nine months. They decided to organize into a church in March, named the Homestead Heights Baptist Church and I was so excited because we had the big inauguration service inaugural service that morning. That afternoon we left for Richmond, Virginia to the international mission board to be appointed missionaries to Vietnam.

Ready to go within and God had brought those experiences from 13 years old 25 years old.

All of those experiences that fit into life kind of bold this life and what he wanted it to be later I was so thrilled when I heard the new name of that church summit because I had preached more times than one, but I was hoping that church that we founded there plaintiff there would be a lighthouse like it was sitting on a hill and that light would shine into the darkness of the world into the furtherance corners of this earth some day right in the DNA as a pastor just said be that concept of missions that the gospel would be carried from this place to the uttermost part of the earth and the name summit. Soto said that were sitting on a hill here to reach the world for Christ. Well, God did take us to the field two weeks ownership third deck down below the water level with three little children know it was I thought the mission field is gotta be better than this, especially when you got a 18 month old who can't turn his clock back.

Every day you know and change times.

I'm on the deck at three in the morning walk in this little guy was terrible time but God told my patients well after years of Vietnam and I'm in a close with this story here.

After years of Vietnam. God revolutionized my life was New Year's Eve. We founded our seminary out a little village called to do it. 12 km north of Saigon, about 7 miles north Saigon, kind of an isolated village out there.

We founded our seminary out there New Year's Eve came. Our family gathered for prayer.

We sang some hymns. We saw the new year in. Went to bed at 3 o'clock in the morning I woke up I was very uneasy.

Something was wrong something wrong here. I got out of bed went down the hallway into our living room. There was a living room, kitchen, all combined and there was nothing there. I looked toward the back and somebody had cut the back door off had come in and stolen everything children had gotten bicycles for Christmas stole the bicyclist all the toys all the presents everything regarding the God within the kitchen, stole everything out the kitchen even frozen food out of the refrigerator hope it made him sick. Anyway I got everything off and say thereto, missionaries those who been stolen from of those who will be as it happens out there that long ago the field because the people are believers. They are followers of Jesus, they act like the world.

That's why I'm going to the field. They act that way will I was angry, really angry, stealing from me like that violate up ran out. It was dark. Nobody there. They'd already gone and we had no real police out there. War was everywhere week later. A few days later the students came over knocking on the door, went to the door.

They said all pastor somebody splendid seminary broke and they stole everything out the kitchen.

The chopsticks bowls, pots, pans, the rice bags. Everything's gone bags of rice.

Everything's gone when your office to call your office equipment. Nothing left.

Ran over there and sure enough, everything was gone. Now I'm doubly angry.

I may not come 12,000 miles to save you folks and what you do, you just dealing may blind you know I was really angry about that.

You've ever been stolen from you know what what it feels like well a few days later I went to get him a card going to town tried to start the engine wouldn't start us in the batteries dead went around the back of the Volkswagen microbus lifted it up and looked in it stolen my battery.

I can keep anything. I just unlocked my door and said y'all come whatever the hairs you horse. Oh, it was a terrible time for me will the Air Force called me and said were going to start an orphanage over here at Cam Ranh Bay for children who've lost both parents of the war and the government is not listening to us. They won't let us could you serve as liaison between us and the government and led help us open. I said yes is not my job Scripture, but I'll do it. I went down the Ministry of social services.

She gave me a sheet of stack of papers about that big. I took him home and I've had to call everywhere get all con information fill them all out. I brought them back put them on the girl's desk and she looked through them and she said your short one form. Okay, give me that form I had available the rest to fill out to come home, fill that out. Took a back laid them on her desk. She looked through them. She said you should've done it in triplicate. You only did two copies. Okay I'm angry now, but backfilled it all out to get back and wish I could say I just kind of put it gently on the table couldn't and the she said will call you well. Weeks went by, I went back to check on it. I said how about our papers. She said oh I remember you yes yes okay, an hour later she comes back and says I'm sorry I can't find that file. I still got a receipt right here, right here. Yeah, I got an okay yeah that'll be good when it back in their an hour later came back and said we lost that whole file. I'm sorry she gave me was stack of papers ethic. I went home to fill them all out. I came back in this time I really put them on the desk and she said will call you will that just I was just fit to be tied was in Saigon. My car is broken down in a took a taxi home. The taxi driver looked at me and he said you been in Vietnam a long time. Haven't you. Yes I have. He said then you must like the Vietnamese people. Well, it was a bad time to ask me questions like that and I don't know your preacher, your missionary, your pastor, your president of the seminary are all those good things.

What egos say what I had to say rather critically. I said I love the Vietnamese people.

Then he turned and looked in my eyes and all that traffic and he said what you love about us. I was a don't push it brothers is enough, but I thought of something wanted to little things and didn't didn't say much got out of the taxi when in the house.

Rachel had dinner ready, but I couldn't eat had this big lump in my throat because you see I believe if you could take the Christian faith and put it in a pot and ball away all of this excess what you have left in its purest form is love. God's love and I didn't have any more was gone tried to sleep. I got up middle of the night when in Delaware are couching stupidity and I poured my heart out to the Lord. I just poured muscle and I said oh God I don't love these people anymore. Too many things have happens just so many things that happen lost that love how can it be here and reach people for Christ. I have no message to give. If I don't let people I'm through tomorrow morning will pack up and go back to America. I don't have any any right to be here as you see, I think human love is very fragile and I had lost it and then that morning God spoke to me. It wasn't like thunder, lightning, but he just welled up in man.

This is what I want to shared God said to me in a very intimate kind away just welling up into my mind and heart. My son, you're not in Vietnam because you love the Vietnamese people you're here because I love them and I want to love them through you and oh how that hit me human love is fragile.

One look sometimes makes us so that we don't want to talk to the person again one word one gesture one little argument when little confrontation with her with the human love is fragile, but God's love is eternal for neither death nor life, principalities, nor powers of things present, nor things to come can separate us or any other thing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

That's what the Bible says is true, God's love doesn't depend on how much we love him. He loves us anyway. Even as sinners, lost, condemned. He loved us and gave Christ down the cross for us so much he loved us, and that was the night I got on the altar, as it were. I said Lord help me to be totally emptied, so that you can take up your life in me and and flow through me unhindered out to the people around here. Oh God, I want your kind of love that knows no reward and wants no reward and wants no response but to love as you loved us and God change my life that night.

The next morning I went down to the marketplace and just about through here was a leper lady sitting on a bamboo mat every morning I walked by her.

Her nose was completely eaten off all the cartilage gone is just holding her face no ears holding sides of her head. Fingers gone pads on her elbows and her knees to drag yourself out in the morning put little bold out there was a hideous looking creature every time I won't bother him weigh the seminary. I turned my head because it just made me almost sick to see her but you know that morning, I looked down at her new question came to my mind. I wonder if anybody's loves her.

I know God does. But I know if anybody loves that woman in that kind of condition, and I sat down beside her own that matters like most like Verizon is like Jesus.

Look into my eyes. My hands my heart and I began to tell her how this old body is human. It's temporary, and a school fadeaway is going passably. But God has made us so that we can be with him for eternity. He loved us, loves us. He loves you said one day he's going to wipe the tears from your eyes.

There be no more crying no more pain, no more sorrow because of what Jesus did in on talk to her but there was no response muscles in the face were gone, nerves were gone. She just sat there looking forward sometimes looking at me. I thought and I did know she understood but for months and months set on the side. Her so that she would know that God loves her. Somebody loves her one day I looked in her eyes and there was a little bit of water in the corner of Rye Road energy. I didn't know if it was a tear but I thought maybe it's a tear. I wanted kind of wipe it away but then I thought, that's too precious that it go and I realize maybe, just maybe she does know that God loves her but I want to tell you something.

It may be easier to love an old leper lady sitting in a marketplace like that with her body crippled, than it is to love a neighbor or somebody at the office. Somebody at school. Somebody sitting in his church who has offended you is not very sensitive whose hard to love made easy love that lady than it is to love somebody sitting right here in our midst, and sometimes the people who are the hardest to love are the people who need it the most. And you and I have to crucify ourselves that time we can increase fires that we have to say Lord just take me and fill me. I can't love with his human love, but God you can love through me. Take me found a and make me the kind of person that you won't me to be. I would ask you what kind of experiences have you had that has is making you and what God wants you to be. What kind of decisions that your experience is brought you to at this point in your life which is ready to change your life or is changing your life. Think back on those things. What kind of decision would you make today because God has given you some experiences in your life has taught you and trained you so that you can respond to him. Think about that spray will father you want to use everyone in this room in some way you've given us gifts and talents and abilities that are beyond our imagination and father. Today we want to give them to you. Take us Lord MTS break us Lord of all pride and all of that and just fill us Lord with court presence in your power will God made this church be that lighthouse on the Senate that because of those who are here and in all the places in which this church is worshiping this day of God.

Take these lives and help them to shine into the darkness of this world until they come to know the preciousness of Jesus our Savior and we want to give you honor and glory and thanksgiving and praise for it all in Jesus name, amen