We Are Witnesses

Well, welcome back to Ignite and I want to pick up on this subject of you are in full time ministry and you are, whether you know it or not, you know, all of us are witnesses, some of us are witnesses for the prosecution, okay? We are witnesses. Everything you do, everything you do and say, from the moment you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed, everything you do and say throughout the day is moving, everybody watching you closer or further away from God. You can't get away from that. You can't. I mean, you can say, I'm going to be a witness today. Well, you're going to be a witness today, one way or the other. So keep that in mind first, okay? But when you understand that you realize that there are no coincidences, that God is right there with you. He never leaves you or forsakes you. He's always right there. And to think that there's no coincidences, I mean to think that there are coincidences would say that some things happen outside the purview of God that he wasn't in that. Oh my God, you know, wow, I'm so lucky. That just worked out. I just worked there to just work down. It's just perfect. You know, and I heard this. They weren't at coincidence. I heard the pastor saying this, that I heard on the radio, what are coincidences? Where those kind of things happen, listen up because God's speaking to you. There are no coincidences. And with something odds starting to happen, I got to tell you, wouldn't you understand this concept? When something odds starts to happen, you can pretty well figure out the gods up to something. He's up to something. And that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I looked up the definition of coincidences and it said a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent connection with one another, okay? No apparent connection. But God, no apparent connection. You don't think those things have anything, most of them we don't. If you're not sensitive, if you're not, if you're not realizing you're in full-time ministry, if you're not realizing that everything's happening, you're, I mean, it changes everything in your life, folks. This thing of sharing your faith. It seems so mundane. It seems like it's for somebody else and I don't have the talent, I don't have the knowledge. We have all these excuses. That's all they are as excuses. But God said, Isaiah 43 said, I've appointed you as my witness so that you will believe. And you'll believe it when you connect the dots, when you see these are not coincidences. They are God's intervening in your life and setting up opportunities for you and it changes everything, okay? It just changes everything. This whole thing of loving our neighbors as ourselves, you know, Jesus was asked what's the most important commandment and he said, love me. I just love him. Love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And when you do that, you automatically love your neighbors as yourself. A brand new Christian, you can't stop a brand new Christian that's made God their first love. You can't stop them from sharing their faith. And that's how God wants you to live your life every day of your life. When you love your neighbors as yourself, you're as concerned for their salvation as you are your own. And so wherever you go, everywhere you go, you know, most people lost think about wherever you go, you're in the store, you're in a waiting room, you're on an airplane. I go to the Rosemoll. I've already missed four Rosemoll games since 1949. And every year when it starts, 99,000 people and everybody's yelling and they're for their team and they got their beers and they're, you know, all this stuff. And I think back to Jesus when he when he was on the donkey on Joseph and he any wept. And I don't totally understand what always going through his mind, but I need you to that a little bit, particularly at that moment, because I look out and I know that 80% of those people are on their way to hell. They're on their way to hell. They don't know it. And how are they going to know unless somebody tells them? We got to get busy, okay? And we do that. Then God used their lives every moment of every day. And when we do that, we're living for God's purpose. The most used scripture I use, you'll hear me. I'll probably put it in 99% of all of our podcasts. This Romans 8, 28, one of the most known and most absolutely most misunderstood scriptures of the whole Bible. Oh, all things work together for good. Well, God, that must be for somebody else not for me to get it and working together for good for me. And it hasn't for a long time. Either you're just doing for other people. I haven't achieved that yet. I'm not good enough for that. Or maybe the scripture is a true. Maybe I can trust you. Maybe I can't. It's because from the pulpits we just hear the first part of that scripture. Well, I'm telling you right now in my 80 years of going to church almost every Sunday for 80 years and Sunday nights of Wednesday and to whatever one we had those kinds of services. And I heard servants preach so often on this scripture, but they just quote the first part. All things work together for good. I've asked hundreds of Christians, quote that's verse. And about three four seven get this for those who love God. Almost nobody quotes that last part, which is the most important part. You know, if pastors, if you're you're listening to me right now, I I I can't imagine being a pastor and not repeating this every single time I'm in the pulpit. It goes on to say for those who live for my purpose. There's no there's no confusion about what God's purpose is. He came to seek and save the lost. I talked to some of you. I'm trying to find God's purpose. It's not about your purpose. There's only one purpose. It's God's purpose to seek and save the lost. He has a plan for your life, much different than planned for my life. How we do that. But make no mistake. He has a plan for your life. How you can live for his purpose to seek and save the lost to move everybody every day closer to Jesus. Okay. And Romans 8, 28 says, when you love me and live for my purpose, I tell you I promise you for now until you get to heaven. John 360 is the most important scripture, but I can't find a one that's second to it more than this one. For now until you get to heaven, I'm going to make everything in your life work together for good. That's everything. That's the little things. That's the bad things. There are no there are no coincidences. I have so many life stories. Just thinking of this. I was just pondering this morning. I can't be I have so many stories. I can't I'll tell you a few. I got a million of them. Karen, I moved to Detroit when we were first married. Our business was all over the country, but it was our biggest customer's Buick motor division. And we lost our rep in Detroit and we needed a new rep and I sold the family on the concept that Karen, I would move to Detroit. And quite frankly, there was about 12 people in our little family business. All relatives that was it was a bit stifling and I wanted to break out and get out of that and do something that extraordinary. So we moved back there. We found a pastor. We knew the pastor of the church back there and he took us out. We'd start looking for homes. I'll just speed it up real quick. We found a brand new neighborhood perfectly situated and he helped us find and we actually bought the first house in that neighborhood. Okay. When that neighborhood filled up, we were ended up being the only Gentiles in that neighborhood. He was a Jewish neighborhood and we're the we're the neighborhood Gentiles and they loved us and loved us and everybody had a cousin or somebody could get us our sod or storm windows or whatever. We were the young married couple that we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know you needed anything about storm windows, those kind of things. And they came out and just loved us and we became close friends and we've been to understand their culture and their humor and everything. I mean, I started to feel like I got Jewish. I really love these people, you know. I had no idea we're going into retail at that point. That was 1965. I went into retail in 1973. God's inspiring me to do that. And particularly at that time when you called on retail, it was almost an entirely Jewish world and had I not known the Jewish culture and their humor and what excited them and what offended them had I not known that? I kind of made a whole bunch of mistakes. Okay. But as I happened, I walked in and I felt like home. And even there were some rough things that were said to me. They were loving me. They were just trying to correct this young kid and nobody's doing it. It was so pervy. Was that a coincidence? No, it wasn't. God was directing Karen and my steps in 1965 for a world in retail, which started eight years later in 1973. I felt God was leading us into the retail business. I didn't know anything about it. I finally tied a family. It's all against me. We're a professional brand. We sell car dealers and bodyshots. We don't want to be in that gypo and discount business. And somehow I managed to convince them that with the truth that car guys are like professionals. They're just like us. They want the same kind of results we achieve. And they don't care about price. They'll follow our directions. They'll do everything. There are kind of guys. I just want to sell them. They reluctantly let me go. And I got the approval that I walked out of that board meeting, not having a clue about retail. I just didn't have a clue. I didn't have a clue. I didn't know the first thing about it. And I said, God, you know, I just kind of have to trust you in this. You've got to bring me the knowledge. I was in a waiting room down in Dallas, Texas. And walked in and sat next to a guy about, I don't know, maybe 15 years by senior, 20 years, perhaps, name was Craig Benson. And we had an ice conversation. Then when you're traveling, you're going these boilers into you, all the buyers, all the sellers, all the traveling sellers were in this room. Then the buyer calls different buyers, call each one of us in a different time. So he went to his buyer. I went to my and we said goodbye. Two weeks later, that was Dallas. Okay. Two weeks later, I'm in Seattle. And I walked into a waiting room. And there's this same guy, same guy. What are the odds? So we started talking to, so tell me about your business. I said, well, I'm trying to get into retail. I have this great price, the best product in the world. But I don't only think about retail. And so I'm struggling with that, but he's, oh, I could help you with that. I said, how so? Turns out he's the general partner, one of the general partners, the largest ad agency in the United States at that time. He's where do you live? And I told him, and we ended up, we met in Dallas and Seattle, but he lives about 10 miles away from me. I'm an everybody. And he's a new part of each. And he said, well, let's get, I said, I appreciate, I have no money. I can't afford you. He said, well, let's get together for a conversation. He just had lunch. I said, okay, so we had lunch. And he said, you really need help. I said, yeah, I do. He said, what? How about I come over to your house next week? Got a night's. Let's pick Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday, whatever, I forget. One Wednesday, I was in church. So he started coming over once a week and spending an hour or two with me and gave me a full education, like a massage degree education on the retail market and design and what I look for in discount structures and marketing and how strong your ad is and your product and all this stuff. I got a, and I just brought him into my life. Was it a coincidence that I met him in Dallas and then Seattle? I don't think so. I got a million stories like that. You know, you're driving along, you're caught in traffic, you're late for an appointment. Also, you have a flat tire. You can say, really God, I mean, you know what, where are you when I need you? You know, and then you realize God's in it and the chip way guy comes and he's in a mess personally and you get to minister to him and God gives you the right words. Yes. Give him back to your car. You make the call. You fight at that point. It was canceled anyway. This is the way God works. You know, a couple of this right quick. There are no coincidences. Okay, so Karen, I are flying to Manchester, New Hampshire to go on a car rally. There was a really close friends of ours up in New England in the fall. And we get hung up in Chicago. Easy to do. And we end up being the last flight that comes in to Lanson Manchester. Okay. And now we're the last flight, but all the bags came off the plane and our bags weren't there. Finally, if a long pause and we had almost given up, we said, God, we know our bags are going to be there. The last two bags, you know, you've probably had that happen sometimes. Two bags come off. So we walk out to get into a car. We got a car organized. We walk out there. He's not there. So I call the guy that organizes our cars. He said, I've been trying to reach him, Mr. McGuire. We can't find our driver. We've been calling him for the last two hours. We can't find our driver. Really? Yeah. He says, so hanging there, we'll keep trying to find him. But now it's, it's right about one o'clock. Okay. In the morning. And I get the phone. And also, and we hear the airport is now closed. And we were so focused on what this phone call was. We had not looked around. And the lights go boom and they're out at the airport. The doors are locked. And there's not a soul. We were so focused. We looked around. There's not one person. There's not one car. No one person. It's deserted and barely large airport. They're sweeping horseshoe. Not one person there. It's one o'clock in the morning. But Karen, I had been through this so many times. And so we laughed. And Karen says, I wonder what he's up to now, meaning God. And I said, yeah, you know, he must have somebody for us to talk to. So, um, finally, my secretary Kathy called me. She said, I found somebody. He, he's had her right up. He took some folks up to Boston. He's dead heading back. He lives in your area. He lives in Manchester area. And he's heading your way to pick you up. So it's funny. Well, we were waiting. We were laughing. We were relaxed. We didn't know what God was up to. We never gonna be fine. We were wondering. I mean, we talked about, well, when you live in this world, it's like God's always there. So that there's nothing to get upset about. There's no bad news. God's in the bad news. In fact, he's more in the bad news than the good news sometimes. And I joke with Karen. I said, hey, guess why there's two benches here. There's one for each of us. And it was warm that night so that we wouldn't have been called. I said, okay, that works for me. My wife has been with me through this. So we share this experience together. It's freedom, folks. When you're when you're when you're in the business, when you're in the life, when you're committed to moving everybody, every day closer to Jesus, you live in the favor of God. You live in the fog. I call it the favor of God where you just know there are no coincidences that everything's happening for a purpose. And finally, someone came by and he picked us up and we're driving down the road. And he said, well, what was going in your goal was going through your mind. I said, funny. You should ask that I tell you we just barely must be somebody that needs to know more about Jesus needs to be brought closer to God. He's that's amazing. I said, what? He said, my life is a wreck. I'm having all kinds of problems. I haven't been in church for years. And I just praying to God the last couple of several days. I need to get back to you God. I need to get into church. I need to talk to somebody and I'm picking you up at two o'clock in the morning. We drove for the next hour. And that ride seemed like about 10 minutes. We had so much fun. We got out. We prayed with him. Loved on him. And we walked into our bedroom. We're getting into our bedroom about three o'clock. You know, instead of being exhausted and worn out and upset or whatever, we're just praising God. We were so excited. We could hardly go to sleep. That was not a coincidence that all those things happened in a row. You think they're not related. We got hung up in Chicago. What's I have to do with getting in the later? What's the have to do with their bags being the last bags off and all that stuff? You follow my trip. But every day is an adventure. There is no bad news. I got to tell you, there's no bad news. There's no coincidences. When you see bad things happen, look up and say, okay, God, buddy, you have to because you know he's into it. And he's going to turn the bad news into good news no matter what it is. And the key for all that is moving everybody every day, caution to Jesus. See you next time.