Hope in a Culture of Chaos

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What a treat to sit down with one of my favorite people. He's a baller. He's a North Carolinian. And he's a man of God, loves Jesus. And he preaches the word. He's written some amazing books. He is Pastor David Chadwick. Pastor David, good to catch up to you, sir.

Hi, Stu. So good to see you again and spend some time with you.

Well, I am. I've been encouraged by you and your preaching, and there's so much to discourage us out there. And I wanted to talk to you about kind of what's on your heart kind, your passion for for the kingdom. Amid all the chaos in the culture, we have racial unrest like we've never seen. We have people literally choking each other out on politics, on hot topics like that. We've got all kinds of acrimony and there's all kinds of anxiety. And then there's this little virus thing that I'm sure everyone knows about now, which we even get tired of talking about. But, Pastor, how do you keep your mind as a pastor, preach and do a camera shot to a crowd of folks?

Right. I've developed stoo an internal perspective. You know, I live seeded with Christ in the Heaven leaves Ephesians two six and next to him as he rules over everything. He rules over me. He rules over this world. It's all in his hands. And I remind myself constantly that the church, for example, trying to infiltrate and be salt and light to the Roman Empire, dealt with far worse problems than we're experiencing today. They had the same kind of racial issues. They had misogynistic issues. They had slavery issues. They had the problems of being dealt with in incredible persecution. So the problems that the early church dealt with in Rome were much bigger than ours today.

But I think the Christians then need to speak to us today and remind us today that our call is to be the church, not to do church, not to go through the motions, but be the church of Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, we don't need a facility. We don't need walls. We can be the church wherever we may need to be the church. And that means if we're sheltering in place, we can think in ways of loving our neighbor. Maybe it's a text, maybe it's a phone call. Maybe it's an email. We can still love our neighbors. The church I pastor here in Charlotte, moments of Hope Church quarantined. We said, you know what? We can't meet, but we have money. We have a lower overhead because we're a new church startup. So we committed to give a one million dollars away to feed the hungry. We can do that without a church wall. We were meeting in a middle school. The middle school said you can't meet here anymore. We're closed. Well, we're still the church. And so we were able to bless people enormously. You can still pray. You can still have Bible studies, the assume or personally, you can still care for other people. You can give your money away to the poor. So we can still be the church. And that's what changed the Roman Empire. It was the church being salt and light salts hidden in the meat. But it's tasty. It's light in the darkness. And over time in the Roman Empire was transformed, gave up its slavery, gave up its misogyny. It gave up its racial differences. It allowed Christians to become a part of the culture. Why? Because the church was the church. It lived as the people of Jesus not thinking buildings and bigger and betters better. What they said was, we're going to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And the culture was transformed. What happened then can still happen today. I don't care how many race riots there are. I don't care how big the disease is. I don't care about the divisions that are in our nation. Jesus is bigger. Jesus is stronger. He's on the throne. Have an eternal perspective. Be salt and light. We can transform this culture as well.

And the timing of your two most recent books, the first one is these should be on everyone's shelf from superficial to significance. And then this next book hit right when this crazy epidemic hit this book on anxiety, moving beyond anxiety. Yeah, I remember I got to enter. I was one of the first radio hosts. I got to interview you on Truth Talk. But what timing to to talk about this this anxiety that's literally gripped that's just ravaged our culture. Even Christians. I mean, we you said earlier our citizenship is in heaven, yet sometimes the stinking thinking gets in there.

You know, stoo the word anxiety means a divided mind. Wow, that's fascinating. Anxiety means a divided mind. It means your mind's trying to focus on. Lord, while also focusing on the problem, you just can't live there anymore than you can stay forever with one foot on the dock and one foot on the canoe, you just can't do it. Essentially, at some point, you've got to make a decision. I'm gonna be in the canoe or I'm going to be on the dock. We as believers in Jesus have to have both feet in him. And when we do so, we don't have to have a divided mind. We have a totally devoted mind focused on the Lord. We have the mind of Christ. We have what Paul said in Romans twelve to be transformed by the renewal of your mind. We in Colossians three two language set our minds on things above. Second Corinthians 10 five language. We take every thought captive. We will not allow an anxious thought, a divided thought to come into our mind. Our minds are totally focused on the Lord of the Universe. He's in control. We're not gonna let anything get in our minds. It causes any kind of fear. If he's in control, we have total faith. And then what flows out of faith is love, joy, peace, patience and all those wonderful fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Well, Pastor David, are you telling me that that God's big enough to stay up all night and worry about all the mess in my life while I sleep? I mean, surely I got to carry the load here. I mean, he can't. He's not a big enough guy to do that, is he? Come on.

Jesus slept in the back of the boat to tell us in the middle of the storm. We can, too. I think that was an example on his part to say to us, if you trust me and I'm in the boat with you. I've gone to sleep. You can go to sleep. And the beauty is we can sleep well at night because we know in Psalm 121 language, the father who never slumbers and sleeps, oversees everything.

And I hear people say sometime, well, the devil never takes a day off. Well, that's true. He's always attacking. Well, neither does the father in heaven take a day off. And he is sovereign over the devil. Let me remind all of our listeners, the evil one is a creature. God's the creator. And he has the evil one on a leash. He's even controlling his antics today for our good and his glory.

Awesome to talk to the pastor of Moments of Hope. Church here in Charlotte. The Web sites the same moments of hope. Church Dorji.

Yes, sir. Go there and you can get all of the information. My sermons are online. John Casey, the former Panthers, a place kicker, is an associate with me. His sermons are there as well. You can get the book there. I also have something called Moments of Hope, a daily moment of Hope that can't be sent out through our Web site to people if they'd like that.

I just got the email. I just gave you my e-mail personally. So we have evidence here and I'm going to get that in my inbox tomorrow morning. I'm excited to read that.

And you can go to moments hope dot org and sign up for that. And it will give you a daily moment of hope, folks. Hope is the answer. God's on his throne. We focus on him and not the problem.

You know, I love the thing you always tell me is so encouraging. And you spoke recently, not recently, couple years ago. You spoke at an event we had and we thought things were bad then. You know, things just can't seem to get worse. But you talked about so many folks prognosticate about the end times. Wednesday's just coming back. Man, this is gonna be the end. Armageddons around the corner, seven year tribulation, mid trip poster preacher. What about the dates and this and that? But you have changed that conversation, which I want you to give this challenge to everyone about the the two billion plus people in our world that have never heard the gospel. Your church is about reaching UN reach people groups, your radio broadcast, which comes out of your church. That awesome preaching the word Monzo radio. You're all your vignettes, all the things you do on WPT, which is such a legendary place you've been for years there in the city of Chicago. Yes, sir. Lifting people up. Bring in the king's message to the Queen City all these years, Pastor David. But what talk take us to this this priority of the the need for the gospel to go was never bad.

Right. Jesus said that we are supposed to be his witnesses first in Jerusalem in a kind of the local setting, then summary of the broken places of the world and ultimately to the ends of the Earth. Before Jesus ascended, his last words were make disciples of all the nations. And it's astounding that two thousand years later, there are still two billion people who've never heard the name of Jesus. This past year, Moments of Hope Church gave money away and we ticked off two hundred and fifty three of those unreached people's proven that have never heard. And the reason we're doing that's do is I look at the signs and the seasons. Jesus said to do that, I get a general sense that we're living in the days of Noah and the times of lot. I can do that. That's perfectly permissible. What I can't do is try to predict the day or the hour. Only the father knows that when he's going to send the son back. So in that between time of Jesus ascension into heaven and his second coming, I am called to take the gospel to all the nations on all of the places on the earth. And what has happened is we've got so many people anxious about the times we're living in. They're asking the question, are we living in the in times? And my statement is be less concerned about. The end times be more concerned about the ends of the earth, because Jesus said in Matthew 24 14, I'm not coming back until every people, every tribe, every ethnicity has heard the gospel. So be concerned about the ends of the earth. Then the end times will take care of themselves.

And you preached recently, not too long ago, an acts on how Ax one eight was fulfilled in a very uncomfortable way in Acts Chapter eight, verse one.

And that said, there's a message there we need to wake up is to that Jesus said an ax one eight. You will be my witnesses. Jerusalem, Judaism, Arie Uttermost Ends of the Earth, concentric circles outward. Well, if you read the Book of Acts got spirits moving, the churches growing. But in Acts one to seven, the people are still in Jerusalem, in Judea. And God had clearly said through the angel about Jesus. His desire is that the message be taken to then Samaria and the uttermost ends of the Earth. So in Acts eight one, it begins by saying, and there was persecution in the church and the disciples stayed in Jerusalem and the people went to some area. And that's what's so interesting is I've always said, look, folks, if you don't do X one eight. And that's Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost ends of the Earth. If you're just hanging around Jerusalem, Judea, in your comfortable little Christian setting, God just might bring X eight one upon your life. He might bring some persecution, some disturbance, some difficulty to get you out of your nest and take the gospel into Samaria and the uttermost ends of the Earth. Again, if you don't do X one eight, God just might bring X eight one.

Wow. Something to the message being intentional, being ambitious about the gospel of Jesus.

It's about the gospel stoo. The one message the church has that nobody else has is the gospel. There are a lot of organizations that do feeding and caring for people, maybe even better than the church. But what they don't have is the gospel. We need to make the main thing. The main thing. Our main thing. The tip of the arrow is the gospel. Everything else, the shaft and the feather support that main tip, the gospel. So make that the primary thing than everything else we do. We feed people so that we can preach the gospel. We give clothing to people so that they can know the gospel. We give clean water to people so that they can know the gospel. Jesus said, well, what good does it do to inherit the whole world when you lose your eternal soul? We're about souls. That is the call of the church. And when we make the main thing, the main thing, we then have an impact upon the world.

Well, we need to pray for our pastors. You guys are on the front line bringing the word of God, bringing the gospel challenge. Yes. You're mobilizing warriors to go out into the world to be attraction's all to share the good news to the ends of the Earth. Makdissi. Yes, sir. Tell us how we can pray for you as a husband, as a pastor. You lead this awesome. You know, the radio program, your. Your books are tremendous. Pastor David Chadwick, real quickly, how can we pray for you and speak for all the pastors out there who are looking at looking into cameras instead of looking at their people and their wanting to give hugs and they're tired of Zoome funerals and other things? Tell us real quick how we can pray for you.

Well, first of all, folks, your pastor spend enormous amounts of time praying for you and loving you. They are frustrated right now that they can't be with you like they want to. So pray that this crisis would end soon and we can be back together A.S.A.P. but also pray for your shepherds who just spend countless times concern for you. They do so much behind the scenes, you'll never know. And I would ask you to pray for them, to give them strength. Keep them healthy. Keep them covered free. And also to pray that they would have enough time to invest in the study and the presentation of the word of God. You know, as a pastor of now 40 years, too, if I didn't visit somebody in the hospital, I'd hear about it. If I didn't spend enough time studying the scripture for the presentation of the word on Sunday, I'd never hear any complaints. So make sure that you pray your pastor has enough time to feast upon the words so that he can feed you well from the word of God. And finally pray that he would be a good husband, a good father, a good grandfather. If that's the case, I have seven grandkids. I just pray that he would be faithful because folks, bottom line, the family is still God's unique structure that he formed for the purpose of making a society healthy. A pastor needs to model that. Pray that he'll have time to love his wife and love his kids and grandkids.

Well, meet Pastor David Chadwick at Moments of Hope Church Dorji, listen to his messages, check out his awesome books, meet his family. And thank you, Pastor David, for you're just a bundle of encouragement, man. I just I could talk to you all day.

So do I. Love Jesus. I love people. I'm not sure there's much more that needs to be done, as one called by Jesus Christ.

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