It is good to be with you this morning. Have you ever had one of those weeks where you just felt anxious? Some of you have? Anxiety, depending on the circumstances, is one of those things that can get any of us. And anxiety can cause a lot of damage to our insides, can t it? We find ourselves worrying about things that are ultimately in God s sovereign control. I find in my own life, when I have those weeks where I am anxious, I am internally worrying, that I have to turn that worry into worship, and to trust in God. Because the moment I quit trusting God, I sink in the midst of my worries and in my anxieties. And I know for me, that if you were to ask me what is my favorite negative emotion, without a doubt I would say it is anxiety. Now some of you are like, what is this deal with a favorite negative emotion? I mean it is the one that would be sort of your go-to emotion. For some of you if you are stressed out it might look like anger. Others of you it might look like fear. Others of you it might look like worry and anxiety. Others of you might sink into depression. But when we don t feel emotionally even, there is this go-to emotion. And for me, the emotion I will go to will be the emotion of anxiety. I find in my own life when I feel that way that I am struggling to trust God. And maybe some of you are struggling with anxiety in your own lives today. Maybe you find yourself getting anxious about your children being safe, so you create all of these policies and all these things in their lives to ensure that your child will never get hurt. But really it has a lot more to do with your anxiety than you can possibly imagine. Maybe others of you are anxious about how in the world you are going to pay your bills this month. Others of you might be anxious about finding a job because you know that you are unemployed and you are wondering how in the world you are going to get through this. And you worry and you get anxious. And at these times of anxiety we need to be reminded of Philippians Chapter 4 and verses 6 through 8 where it says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, present your request to God, and the God of peace will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. We need to be reminded of Jesus words in Matthew Chapter 6 and verse 34, Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. We know that tomorrow has a lot of its own things to worry about, as we see in the book of James. And so this idea of worry and anxiety, we have to realize when we slip into it, we slip away from trust. We slip away from a quiet confidence in the sovereignty of God. I don t know how you all are doing today, but I know for me, with the passages I wrestled with this week, I came to the realization that this is the application that I need. Page 1 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
Calm my anxious heart, God. Calm my anxious heart. And it is a lot more fun to be a pastor and get up and preach on a topic that you don t feel like you are currently struggling with. You know what I mean? And it is not much fun to have a topic that you feel like you need it just as much as maybe some of those you are going to be teaching to. At the end of the day, there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and that is not counting the verses. But none of us have mastered all of the Canon when it comes to living out the Scriptures in our thoughts, in our emotions, and in our deeds. So I invite you to turn to the gospel of John and we are going to be looking at John Chapter 14. We are going to see this incident where Jesus is going to go about seeking to calm the anxious hearts of the disciples. Jesus and His disciples are still in the upper room. And you know in John Chapter 13, this is the place where Jesus meets with His disciples and He breaks bread with them. They have this meal together, and then He washes His disciples feet in a great act of humility. And then He points out that one of them will betray Him, and that one was Judas. Judas was going to betray Jesus so he leaves and goes out into the night. And then as we talked about last week, Jesus laid out a vision for a new commandment. And that commandment was that they would love one another, just as Jesus loved them. And I shared how Jesus upped the bar on the love factor. The love factor just really increased right there. In the book of Leviticus in Chapter 19 and verse 18, we see in the Law that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And I shared that that was a lofty goal and it was a stellar commitment to love. That is quite a grand vision. But this idea of loving our neighbor as ourself, as big as it is, it is not as big as the new commandment to love one another as Jesus loved us. Jesus really raised the bar because He loved us enough that He would go to a cross and He would die for us. So we finished John Chapter 13 after Jesus has been giving this instruction. He pointed out that one of them would betray Him, He has laid out a new commandment, He has washed His disciples feet, they have shared a meal, but He has also told them that He is leaving. And Jesus knew exactly what that meant, that He was going to die. And as we come to John Chapter 14, you are going to see that Jesus knew there was anxiety in the room. And maybe there is anxiety in this room right now. Maybe some of you have struggled with lifelong anxieties and worries. How would you like Jesus Christ to calm your anxious heart? How would you like Him to speak serenity into your soul so that you could leave here with a vision of rest, with a vision to trust Him? Well, unfortunately what I have learned about life, it is usually just not that easy, is it? Great, Pastor Bobby spoke, I got my helpful tips, and now I am good. No more anxiety. You know what I have found? I have found that it just comes in seasons. Certain emotions are triggered by the circumstances of life. And what happens is we Page 2 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
have to take those emotions to Jesus. So I am not saying that you are going to leave here and be fixed forever. But I am saying that you can have some tools to help govern you through the storms that come along in your lives. So we come to John Chapter 14 and we look in verse 1 where Jesus says, Let not your hearts be troubled. Don t have troubled hearts. And this begs the question what is He getting at here? Why would their hearts be troubled? Well, if you look in John Chapter 13 and verse 33, Jesus indicates what is going to take place. What happens in verse 33 of John Chapter 13? Let s check it out. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I say to you, Where I am going you cannot come. And then look down to verse 36 and Peter missed the whole sermon. You will remember Jesus laid out the new commandment in verse 34 and 35, but I said you could read verse 33 and then go to verse 36 because Peter just completely missed the sermon to love one another just as Christ loved them. Why? It was because anxiety fell into Peter s heart. He got anxious, he got worried, and he began to panic. And that is what anxiety can do. Anxiety in full throttle can create panic in your life. You can become paranoid. You can become totally paralyzed in your anxiety. And Jesus knew that had happened to Peter. Because Peter is like, Hey, where are you going? Can I come with you? What is the deal here, Jesus? And Jesus says, Let not your hearts be troubled. I love that about Peter. Peter is this guy who is filled with vision. He is impulsive. He is the first one to speak. He gets himself in trouble all the time with what he says and he struggles with bad anxiety at times. But what we need to understand with Peter is he needed this message of Jesus to, Let not your heart be troubled. Circle that word troubled if you will, because basically when you look at this word it is important for us to understand that it is a word that means to stir up or to have inward turmoil. And Jesus knew that there was inward turmoil, that there was anxiety in the hearts of His disciples. Now put yourself in the disciples shoes. They have spent three years with Jesus. This is a solid relationship. They have connected together. They have spent time together. Jesus has loved them. Jesus has shown Himself to them. And this is no ordinary man; this is more than a man. This is God in the flesh. And they have seen the miracles that Jesus has performed. He provided fish and bread for many people. He raised Lazarus from the dead. There have been moments that they have had together that were powerful. Peter would obviously remember Jesus healing his mother-in-law. He saw Jesus do many amazing and astounding things. And now Jesus tells them that He is leaving. Page 3 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
Have you ever had someone in your life say they are leaving? Maybe it was a loved one and you were with them in the final hours of their life. And they were trying to tell you to not have a troubled heart. Maybe it was your dad. Maybe it was your mom. Maybe it was a brother, or a sister, or a friend. And they were trying to tell you not to let your heart be troubled because they knew that they were about to die. They knew that your relationship as you knew it was coming to an end. It was going to take on a different shape. And so Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled. He was telling them to stay calm. Jesus knew He was going to send His Holy Spirit to them once He left and it would empower them to carry on His mission. We will see later in John Chapter 14 that He is going to send them a comforter, to comfort the troubled, to comfort them in their worries. Saying goodbye is never easy, is it? I can remember when Heather and I were dating. She was living in Arkansas and I was living in California. I had been in Arkansas for a little while and that is where I met her. I grew up in California but I had moved out to Arkansas and that is when I met my future bride. We dated for about five or six weeks before I ended up going back to California. And when I moved back to California I had my bedroom in my parents garage. And I loved it. It was my space. And I remember I had a picture of Heather and I would go into my garage bedroom and I would spend time in prayer, and then I would just stare at this picture of Heather, because I didn t want to forget what she looked like. Now as crazy as that sounds, when you know someone for five or six weeks and you don t know how long you are going to be apart, you want to keep looking at that picture. I just didn t want to forget what Heather looked like. My heart was anxious being away from her. I loved her. I remember when she would fly in to see me, or I would fly out to see her, we would just try to maximize our time together. Have you ever be in a long distance relationship? Then you know the feeling, right? I can remember when I went out to Arkansas to visit her, and on the day I was leaving we were there on Nell Brook Avenue and it was about 2 o clock in the morning. And Heather had this hole in her stomach because I would be flying out in just a few hours. And I was feeling sick to my stomach because I didn t want to leave her. But the good news was I knew that I was leaving with the hope of seeing her again soon. We would go to the airport just dog tired with just that sick feeling of having to say goodbye and hoping we would be together again soon. And the difference is that even though I had a hope that I would see Heather again, Jesus guarantees that those who believe in Him WILL see Him again. So Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. He is Page 4 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
telling us that the cure to calming our anxious hearts, the cure to our anxiety, the antidote to our anxiety is this to trust in God. I think of Peter when he was trusting in Jesus and he was walking on the water. But the moment he took his eyes off of Jesus, and he looked at the waves around him, what happened? He got anxious, he got paranoid, and he got paralyzed. And as a result he started to sink. And that is what worries and anxieties and fears do to our lives. They paralyze us. They cause us to sink. And we need to re-direct ourselves. Just do a study on the emotional state of Peter. The guy is just wheels off. I mean he just continues to have these struggles and these bouts. I will never betray you, Jesus. And then he denies Jesus three times. I am going to cut this guy s ear off. He is just impulsive. He is a piece of work. But God would work through him. God would calm him. Even well in Peter s ministry after Pentecost, he goes and forgets what it is all about, and he is disassociating himself with the Jews, and he is the one that got the vision in Acts Chapter 10 to intermingle, that the gospel was for all. I take a lot of comfort in a guy like Peter, don t you? Knowing that Jesus would use someone that could just continually blow it over and over again with failing to trust gives me comfort that God can use me too. You know yesterday I was so anxious, and again as I share this, in general I am doing pretty good. But sometimes I can just have a little fit of anxiety and usually it is when things are out of my control. Like I am going to be preaching in three hours and I have no idea what I am going to say. We had a Saturday night service last night. I had done lots of sermon prep. I am the kind of guy that doesn t like to wait until the last minute. I will do my message prep early in the week so that by Friday I feel pretty good. Now I still will have stuff to clean up on the weekend. But here I am and I have not a clue yesterday at 3 o clock, and I have a service that is going to start at 6:30 last night, and I am still not sure which angle to take this message. So one of the things I ended up doing was I texted Matt Hatfield, and I told him I was struggling trying to figure this thing out. And we started talking together via text and then Matt sent me this point. Ironically you are scared and Jesus is with you. In other words you are experiencing what the Bible talks about right there. Now scared might be a little bit of a stretch, but it was a sense of feeling just anxious. Have you ever experienced that? I am going to step up and talk to people in a few hours, and I am not exactly sure which way we are going here. That will create anxiety. And it was that little text from Matt that just freed me. Believe in God, believe also in me. Trust in Jesus, experience His peace. And that is what we need to remember to do when we feel stress. That is always the key no matter how anxious you are. Page 5 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
Look with me if you will in verse 2 where Jesus says, In my Father s house are many rooms. Now Jesus is going to give them a great benefit for His leaving. Number one, Jesus had to die so that our sins could be forgiven. Number two, Jesus was going to send His Holy Spirit. Number three, Jesus assured them that they are going to do greater works than He would. That is to say, that through their combined efforts they would be able to spread the message even further. Number four, Jesus would go and prepare a place for them. In my Father s house are many rooms. You can circle the word house which is referring to Heaven. And Jesus said there are many rooms. Who is Jesus speaking to here? He is speaking to His eleven disciples. Notice what Jesus didn t say. In my Father s house are eleven rooms. No, He said there were many rooms. And He would encourage them with that vision of the Spirit of God coming and they would be going to tackle the world with the gospel. And He is telling them that they can proclaim to others that there are many rooms in His Father s house. Isn t that great? They could tell others that. We can tell others that. We can let people know that there are many rooms. We can go about sharing Jesus with others and letting them know there are many rooms in Heaven. Now guess what, this was not going to be an easy ministry. All but one of the disciples would die a martyr s death. This ministry was going to be the real radical. We listen to stuff that is coming out today and I love Francis Chan and his book, Crazy Love and David Platt s new book, Radical. And I would encourage you to get these books. But at the end of the day what we are calling radical was the normal Christian life for the disciples. Francis Chan shares this and I will kind of paraphrase this. He talks about Hebrews Chapter 11, which is the great chapter with all of the people that did great exhibits for the Lord. They were used in amazing ways. But one part of it talks about how many were tortured and sawn into. And Francis Chan is saying that what he is doing is not all that big of a deal. Francis drove a Subaru instead of a Mercedes Benz. It is not that big of a deal in light of the whole big thing, right, if you think about it. Francis sold his house and he bought something smaller and it is not that big of a deal in light of the grand scheme of things. That is not real radical. We have to remember that the disciples lived it. And what they needed was a vision that would help them to suffer the way that they would. And so Jesus told them, Let not your hearts be troubled. He knew what they were going to go through. He knew that they would die for their faith. He knew that they would be persecuted. And He said, In my Father s house are many rooms. He was going to die and go away from them but He is letting them know that they will meet again. They will be together again. Page 6 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
Now you might be wondering what kinds of rooms He is building. We really don t know, right? But we just know they are hand built by Jesus. The carpenter of earth becomes the carpenter of Heaven. And He goes and prepares these rooms and I am sure they are going to be stellar places to go to. In fact one of the greatest things about it is it is free lodging. I just got curious about it, and I wondered what it might cost to go and stay in the most expensive suites in the world. So I did a little research and I discovered that the Plaza Hotel in New York City, if you wanted to stay in their Presidential Suite, you would spend twenty thousand dollars for one night. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine how important you would have to think of yourself to spend that kind of money in light of world hunger? I am going to treat myself to a twenty thousand dollar night while people are starving to death. You would have to think really highly of the environment you deserve to be in in that moment to spend twenty grand. In one month you could buy my house many times over. One month would cost six hundred thousand dollars to stay in the Presidential Suite in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. I am sure it must be ornate, and beautiful, and it probably would be wonderful. But you have to pay. And Jesus offers us a place that is going to be so much better than the Presidential Suite at the Plaza Hotel, and it is free. It is a place in glory forever where we can live with Him and be with Him. Anxiety free - what a gift. Jesus didn t say, Hey you know what, I am going off to prepare a place so you need to start saving your money. Go invest in a Roth IRA. And hey, your credit score is a tad down, so you need to get it up to about 800. This is prime real estate, and if you want it you are going to have to up your credit score. He doesn t say that, right? He just gives it to us when we believe in Him. This is exciting stuff, guys! I mean we could get really excited about where we are going Heaven. I could just stand up here in the pulpit and say very quietly, Jesus has a grand vision for us. If you believe in Him you can go to Heaven. He will cure your anxieties. You can t imagine how glorious this place is going to be. But I think it is okay, church, to shout and get excited! We need to be happy in Jesus. I mean we are going to Heaven, just imagine it! I think about those Publishing House sweepstake commercials. What is the name of that dude that shows up and brings you that big fat check? Ed McMahon. If Ed McMahon knocked on our doors and said, You have just won free money, can t you imagine the reaction? I mean those people get so excited, they just go nuts. Jesus comes along and says, How would you like all of your sins forgiven? How would you like to go to Heaven? And people just say quietly, That would be good. Jesus is the Heavenly Ed McMahon. He shows up and says, Surprise. You can have this, if you will just believe. Page 7 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
I just think it is okay for some joy in the church. And I want to preach like I am going to explode with happiness when I talk about this concept. I think I would be doing a disservice to Heaven if I talk about it very soberly and say something like, Hey folks, check it out. You know we are going to Heaven. And this idea of what it will be like when we get there is great. Have you ever planned on this vacation you were going on and you just couldn t wait? I mean you are thinking about it, you are googling places, and doing research and checking stuff out. And you are thinking, What is this place going to be like? When I get there I am going to go sightseeing, and I am going to see this, and I am going to see that. What if we got that way about Jesus and going to Heaven? Like being excited that we are on the way to Heaven and knowing it is going to be unbelievable. I am going to check out Michael the Archangel, and I am going to ask him to sing a great Christian song. And then I am going to go see Peter and ask him questions. And then I am going to go find all of my loved ones. And then I can just kick back for a trillion years or so and listen to the angels singing to the Trinity. And I will have perfect emotions, and I can play tackle football and not break a bone. I can eat good food and not feel guilty. This is going to be amazing! And if you know Jesus Christ, you are on your way to Heaven. And guess what? That can calm your anxious heart. Your anxious heart can be calmed when you realize that this place - earth - is not our final home. And when we start struggling and getting wheels off with our emotions, we need to step back and think that it is okay because at the end of the day, we have been forgiven of our sins, our guilt has been taken away, Jesus loves me and He will never forsake me. He tells me I am His very own, and He is taking me to Heaven. At the end of the day that is precious to know. And it should have a lot to do with our peace. When we lose sight of that, and we think that life is just all about the here and now, then we can spin out in our emotions. Heaven - we need to understand this is an awesome opportunity. And what is greatest about Heaven is this: It is being in Heaven with Jesus. He is the person that we will be with. If I was inviting you over to my home for dinner, I hope you would be more excited for the fellowship with me than just being in my house, and vice versa. So we need to think about how great it is going to be to live forever in the presence of Jesus. Truthfully, I am not sure how excited we are to go to Heaven. Kenny Chesney, the great theologian, (laughter) wrote a song Everybody Wants to go to Heaven. But listen to the lyrics of his song: Page 8 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
Preacher told me last Sunday mornin Son, you better start livin right You need to quit the women and whiskey And carrying on all night Don t you wanna hear him call your name When you re standin at the pearly gates? I told the preacher, Yes I do But I hope they don t call today I ain t ready" Everybody wants to go to heaven Have a mansion high above the clouds Everybody wants to go to heaven But nobody wants to go now I said, "Preacher maybe you didn t see me Throw an extra twenty in the plate There s one for everything I did last night And one to get me through today" Everybody wants to go to heaven Get their wings and fly around Everybody wants to go to heaven But nobody wants to go now Someday I want to see those Streets of gold in my halo But I wouldn t mind waiting at least A hundred years or so Everybody wants to go to heaven Hallelujah, let me hear you shout Everybody wants to go to heaven But nobody wants to go now I think I speak for the crowd Nobody wants to go now. Do we want to go? Because the way he paints it, it is as if this earth is Heaven. We live in the cocoon of our sinful nature, and we are blinded from the glorious reality that Heaven has for us. But I hope that the cocoon would crack and you could just take a snapshot of the Heavenly plaza, the place that we get to go for free. It is God s celestial kingdom. Death is a promotion for the Christian. In Philippians Chapter 1 and verse 21, Paul says, For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Paul got the gain. It is promotion. I love what D. L. Moody, the great evangelist of his day in the 19 th century, once said. He told people, Once of these days you are going to read in the newspaper Page 9 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
that D. L. Moody died. Don t you believe a word of it. At that moment I will be more alive than ever before. And that is the case for us as Christians who believe in Jesus Christ. Look with me if you will in the second part of verse 2. In my Father s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. Jesus is saying, Look, I am shooting straight with you. This is the deal. We are going to be together again. And that is how He comforted His disciples anxious hearts. He let them know that there would be some time when they would be separated, but He would send them His Spirit, and they would be together again someday. He is telling them He will prepare a place for them and they can come there and be with Him. I remember when I was working at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, and thankfully Jesus doesn t operate like they did. Now the Ritz Carlton operates pretty fantastically, I mean they have some great stuff going on. But one of the things that I didn t like that they did is they would sort of estimate, We need to book about five rooms over capacity because we will probably have four or five people who won t show up. And that is one of the things that they would do. It is called overbooking, so that when people start canceling out they can make sure they are still full to capacity, and able to make all their money. I remember one night when I was working, and this bride and groom showed up late at night. They had just gotten married. The Ritz Carlton in Dana Point is rated as one of the most beautiful hotels in the world. It sits on a thousand foot bluff, and on a clear day you can look out and see Catalina Island. It is a spectacular view. There is nowhere else like it in California. And this bride and groom came walking into the hotel late at night, and I knew what was coming. I watched them hear the news, We are sorry, but we don t have a room for you. Now can you imagine this? Here is the bride with her beautiful dress on and they are both just stoked about staying at this beautiful hotel. They have researched it and figured out this hotel would be the very best place of all to go for their honeymoon. And then when they finally arrive, they find out that there are no rooms left. There was utter devastation in that moment for this bride and groom. But here is the good news. Here is how Jesus is unlike the Ritz Carlton Hotel. When we shoot up in glory, as long as we have our RSVP, when we stand before Him, Jesus is not going to say, I m sorry. There are no more rooms here. If you are the bride of Christ, the Bride will always have a room in glory. The bride may not always have a room at the Ritz, but there will always be a room in glory. Verse 3, And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also. Now Jesus hasn t come back yet, but we believe that He is coming. We don t need to be doing any of this date setting like Harold Camping who advertised that Jesus was going to return on May 27 th, 2012. If anyone starts telling you a date that Jesus is going to return, just run away from them. Because the Bible tells us that we don t know when Jesus is coming again. But we know Page 10 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
that He is coming again, and then there is going to be a glorious moment where the entire church will be brought together under His perfect sovereign leadership. And the greatest thing about going to Heaven is going to be seeing Jesus. And then we are also going to be seeing our loved ones that have passed on who believed in Jesus as well. Lyman Coleman, as he reflected on the death of his beloved wife, Margaret, wrote this letter, The most painful decision of my life was asking God to take her home. She had been suffering from repeated brain seizures and her body was wasted. I whispered in her ear, Honey, I love you, I love you. Jesus wants you to come home. We are going to be alright. We give you permission to let go. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. As I write this letter I realize I am without my editor, my greatest critic, my teammate, my soulmate, my prayer mate, my partner in everything. We traveled the roads less traveled together in hard times and in good times. Honey, I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I will keep the lights on for the kids. I will be there for your friends. And one day we are going to join you, all of us, because Jesus promised it. Lyman Coleman took the anxiety he was feeling, separation anxiety, of being away from his bride, and he found that his anxious heart was comforted, was calmed, by remembering the promise that Jesus had laid out, that one day they would all be together once again. In verse 4, Jesus says, And you know the way to where I am going. So now Jesus is going to get at this idea of His going to prepare a place and now they need to understand how they can get there. And the next time we pick up in John you are going to see that Jesus IS the way there. But oddly enough in verse 5, Thomas said to Him, Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? If I am Jesus and I am going to die within 24 hours, I would be thinking, What just happened? If Jesus was getting His business reviewed before a corporate board, they would obviously say, You did not do a good job communicating your vision because they don t understand it. You are fired. But that is not the case here. Jesus has been plenty clear throughout this entire book, but they did not get the vision at this time. And we are going to look at that. I want to close by just sharing a story with you. This past week Josh and I flew out to Arkansas. And we went to Arkansas to spend some time with other church planters that are a part of our network from our mother church in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is the Fellowship Bible Church. We went up to the Rockefeller Center and it was a great time for the two days we spent together. We talked about leadership, we talked about our unique gift sets, and we talked about walking with Jesus. And what happened was we landed probably around 11:40 at night in Little Rock, Arkansas. Thankfully Debbie had already made arrangements for a rental car for Josh and I. But when we proceeded to the car rental areas and walked down to the Enterprise Car Rentals it was looking kind of dark, and we noticed that no one was there. I thought, Oh this isn t good. One of the reasons that it wasn t good was because we hadn t gotten Page 11 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
a hotel yet. I thought we would just find one when we got there. It would be an adventure to drive until we found one. But here it is, it is late at night and there is no one there at the Enterprise Car place, and we need a car. So we decided to walk down and check out the other car rental centers and we found a couple and asked them if they had any cars available and they both said they didn t have any cars left. So Josh and I are just kind of hanging out wondering what we are going to do next. We finally made our way back and as we passed by Enterprise, there was someone there. I was so glad he was there. We told him we had a reservation and we wanted to pick up our car. And he said, Sorry man, we are closed. And I said, But dude, I have my reservation right here. And he said, Yeah, I know, but we have already closed all the boxes up and everything is shut down for the night. At this point I am thinking he just needed to put policy aside and open the box and get a car. We have to go. But he literally said, I can t help you. I looked at Josh and we just couldn t believe it. And the guy said, Sorry, I just can t give you a car tonight, but if you come back at 7:00 in the morning someone will help you. I told him we didn t even have a hotel room yet. So now we have a conundrum here. Are we just going to get a cab to find a hotel and then have to come back to get a car in the morning? And I am feeling a little bit anxious. So we started walking again, and finally we noticed the Hertz rental place, and there was someone still there. And so we asked there if they could please hook us up with a car. And the guy said, Actually I can. I do have a car available. So he ran through the whole process, and we were able to make our way out. And I told this Hertz guy, Thanks so much, you took the hurts off of us. And here is what I want you to know. For those of you that place your faith in Jesus Christ, believing that He died on a cross to forgive you of your sins and three days later rose from the grave, when you believe in Him, guess what is never going to happen? You are not going to show up in Heaven where Jesus is going to say, Sorry you are too late. I can t let you in. He is not going to do what they did to the bride and groom at the Ritz Carlton Hotel and tell you there are no rooms left. No, He has a place all set up for those who believe. The question is do you believe? Let s pray. Father, thank you for your Word. Today was just a practical talk from your Scriptures on the importance of trusting in you to deal with our anxieties, of remembering that earth is not our final home. And God, I want to pray that you would meet people in their anxieties today, that you would meet them in their worries. I pray that you will turn their worry into worship. I pray, Father, that you will do a powerful work in each of our lives. Maybe you are here today and you don t know Jesus in a personal way. Maybe you know in your deepest heart that you are without Jesus. Have you ever asked Him to forgive you of your sins? Have you ever asked Him to be your Savior? Have you ever placed your faith in Him? The Bible says that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If you don t know Jesus, that means you need to be saved. The Bible says that those who don t believe in Jesus will spend an eternity apart from Him in hell. It is Page 12 of 13 pages 10/31/2010
described as a place of eternal torment, a place of fire. You may think that sounds pretty bad, and it will be. But Jesus provides a way out. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one gets to the Father except through me. You can go to Heaven or you can go to hell. There are only two options. What is it going to be for you? We can t go to Heaven without our sins being forgiven. They will have to be dealt with in hell if you don t trust in Jesus. Maybe you don t know how to become a Christian. If you will, in the quietness of your heart, just pray, Jesus, I believe in you. I believe you died for me. I believe you rose from the grave. And I give you my life. I surrender it to you. I want to repent from my sins and turn away from them and walk with you from this day forward. In Jesus name. Amen. The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases Page 13 of 13 pages 10/31/2010