Ask the man who has won. That's what the ads all say. Ask the man who has won, and he'll tell you right away whether it's good or bad, a blessing or a blight. Ask the man who has won, he'll give the answer right. But ask the man who's been won, a sinner bound for hell. Ask the man who's been one, and he will quickly tell that nothing here could help him. He had to look above. His only help, his only hope was God's amazing love. But ask the man who is one, a Christian through and through. Ask the man who is one and he will say to you, Christ satisfies that inner thirst things couldn't satisfy. Ask the man who is one, then act on his reply. And I'm glad I can say today I am one. I've been one a long time that is a Christian. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. My dad left my mom when I was about a year and a half. I never lived with him. I didn't go to church on a regular basis. And when I did, I didn't go for the right reason. I went to church because after church, we went outside and played football. And I thought it might be a good place to find a girlfriend. I didn't even go for the right reason, but isn't God good because I went and I heard the gospel and I trusted Christ as my savior when I was 12 years old and that was 60 years ago. So you know how old I am. I know I look younger, but anyway, how many of you know it's all right to smile? Well, I grew up in a broken home. I was saved at 12. When I was 16 years old, God called me to be a preacher of the gospel. When I got saved, it changed my life. But when I surrendered to do what God wanted me to do, that drastically changed my life as well. So I've been at it for 56 years now, preaching. And most of my preaching is not in English. Some of y'all might think I still don't. So this is really mission day here because you've already heard the gospel given in sign language. And now you hear it in South Carolina, whatever you want to call it. I speak French with a Southern accent. So next Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday this week, I'll be preaching in Montreal. I'll leave Friday morning early and fly to Canada and I'll preach my conference Friday, Saturday, Sunday in French. and I could preach it in the Wolfe language, which is the language of Senegal, because the assistant pastor there is from Senegal and got saved in Senegal. I want you to open your Bibles this morning to 2 Thessalonians chapter three, and I'll read the first five verses, and I wanna talk about, in whom are you putting your confidence? Now, if you're thinking, Brother Godfrey, it's mission Sunday, don't you know that? And you didn't say turn to Matthew chapter 28, or Mark chapter 16, or Acts chapter 1, or 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and 9. I love to preach from different portions of the Bible and let people know that it's not just a few verses that are missions. The Bible is a missionary book from the first pages to the last pages, because it tells us about a missionary God. I read these verses. I loved to read the Bible. It changed my life when I discovered the Bible, when I surrendered preach. Someone gave me an old hardback Scofield Bible, beautiful white pages, maps in the back, cross references. And I just, I'd had a Bible before, never read it too much, but when I got that Bible, I started reading it. And again, that was a long time ago. Haven't quit. I love it. But we, Americans, and I would say regardless of being an American, wherever you grow up, you read the Bible a little bit culturally. And I read these verses that I'm going to read for you in a moment. And I've read them hundreds of times, but I read it one day and it just kind of hit me that we Americans read these verses in a way that might not be the best way. And you say, Brother Godfrey, what are you talking about? Well, let's look at the verses. Paul writing this, now who was Paul? Paul was not just a missionary, he was a great missionary. Paul believed that every man, every woman, every young person, regardless of their country, regardless of their language, regardless of their skin color, they needed to know Christ as their Savior. So he was not only a missionary, but a great missionary, and he wrote these words. Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified even as it is with you. and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith. But the Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil. And we have confidence in the Lord touching you that ye both do and will do the things which we command you. And the Lord direct your hearts unto the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. Now you've read those verses and I've read those verses many times and I was reading them one day and then I just became curious. How many of you like to read? I mean, I've been reading ever since I, we didn't have, anybody old enough to remember you didn't have kindergarten? You just started school and went to first grade. But we learned how to read. Now, I shouldn't even have to say that, and I'll just leave that alone, but I learned to read in the first grade, and I've been reading ever since, and I've got thousands of books. And I read this from a missionary's viewpoint one day, and then I went back and pulled out all my commentaries on 2 Thessalonians chapter three. And I read, I have no idea, I probably read 25 or 30 different commentaries on these verses and not one commentator in English saw a missionary application in these verses. And let me tell you why I think that is. We read it with the thought that everybody in the world speaks English. Can I just remind you that the majority of the world today still does not work and speak and think in English? So when they speak English, I go to this place, I go to the Philippines and I go, I took 30 students, college students with me one year to the Philippines. And I laughed more that trip than I can remember laughing because the college students from America were speaking English. And the Filipino and Filipina young people were speaking English. And they didn't have a clue what each other were saying. Because often they study English in class in Japan or China or anywhere else and they really don't understand it. But I'm not against pastors, I love pastors, so this is not an anti-pastor statement. But a lot of pastors and commentators read this portion and all they say is how it applies in the United States of America. And Paul is writing to these people. trying to help them and encourage them about missions, enriching people. And I hope I can help you this morning, understand a little bit of what Paul's saying here. But before I get to, he gives us two great prayer requests. Now this Sunday, already today, you've been praying for your missionaries. And that's what this is all about. How do you really pray? And pastors giving out, I saw those, the cards back there, and you're gonna be praying for these people. How do you pray for them? Most of us, I've preached numerous sermons over the years on how to pray for missionaries, but Paul, the great missionary, here gives us, I think, the two greatest prayer requests that we missionaries have. But before I get to those, I just want to point out something else to you. Before we have these challenges before us, notice this. Paul's humility, finally brethren, Pray for us. Now, here's the way most of us say that. Hey, everyone, pray for me. And Paul said, finally, brethren, would you pray for us? And Paul's showing his confidence in his team. Have you ever noticed as you read the book of Acts and the New Testament epistles that Paul rarely worked alone? He had Barnabas with him, he had Silas with him, he had Timothy, he had Titus and many others. And you just don't see the Apostle Paul. And here was this great man, writing to these Christians in this church, saying to them, finally brethren, pray for us. God doesn't, let me say it this way. It's not our personalities and our abilities and all of that that really matters. It's God working in us. Paul was a missionary, but he desperately needed the prayers of God's people. Ephesians chapter six, Colossians chapter four, we can look back and see that. Paul recognized his own dependence on God. Knocking on the doors of people's heart is our job, but opening the doors of people's hearts, only God can do that. I hope you do witness. We heard a great challenge this morning in Sunday school about heaven and hell, and people are going to one of those two places in our need. But finally, brethren, would you pray for us? We have to understand, we missionaries and we pastors and pastor's families, we have to realize we desperately need God. How many of you would say this morning as a believer, I need him. I can't do it in my own strength. Now, missionaries, they can be weird, all right, missionaries? Missionary kids, I tell missionary kids all the time, they're weird. Not bad weird, they're just weird. Where it's not good or bad, it's not a question of that. It's just they're different. They don't think the same way. They don't do things the same way. Benita was born and grew up in Senegal, and out there, you point with your tongue. Where's Josiah? I've been wanting to do that ever since I got over here. They do things differently. They think differently. They process language differently. We missionaries are different. And sometimes missionaries, young missionaries starting out, they don't like the idea of having to go on deputation. I wanna help you a little bit here. Deputation is one of the best things that ever happened in the life of a young missionary or family. Brother Godfrey, are you serious? I'm totally serious. If we think, listen, if we missionaries think that we don't need the prayers of God's people, we're going to fail. And when missionaries come to your church and you take on their support, it's more than just giving them money every month. Are you listening to me? A missionary on deputation goes to a church to partner with that church, to get not just their support, but their prayers and their love and their encouragement. And the moment that we think we do not need that, we're destined to fail. Occasionally, I run across, since August, we haven't been home in our church since August. I've been from Seattle to Boston to Chicago to two weeks ago to Akron, Ohio to Omaha, Nebraska. I've often wondered, why don't the guys in Georgia and Tennessee ask me to come? Well, they do, but they ask me too late. I've already given whoever asked me first the meeting. The moment we think we don't need each other, are you listening to me this morning? You need these missionaries. Because you can't go, even if you can go to Ecuador, you can go to Peru, but you can't go to Ecuador and Peru and do what these folk have done. It shows on whom we are depending. Now, let me come back to my main thought. Paul gives us two, Big prayer request here. Finally, brethren, pray for us. Well, Paul, we'll do that. What do you need? Here it is. That the word of the Lord may have free course. When a missionary goes to the mission field or starts a church in America, it's all the same, and they plant themselves in that place, they desperately need God's ability to be able to speak the word of God clearly and with power. Help us, he says, pray that God would help us in our language difficulty. The word here, the word of the Lord may run, precede without hindrances. The emphasis being on the message, not the messenger. God's word is powerful and it will accomplish God's will. But if people don't understand it, nothing's gonna happen. God's not calling us missionaries to go to the mission field and get by. Now those of you who've been on mission trips, you understand some missionaries go and they just plant themselves in that place. I've had several people recently ask me, Brother Godfrey, what makes a good missionary? And my answer is always simple. It's someone who knows their call, and they move to that place, and they plant themselves in that culture, and learn their language, and love those people, when it's not easy to love them, because they do things differently. I tell the young missionaries, some here probably heard me say this, missionaries arrive on the field, because everything's different and curious, and they carry their babies on their back. Benita, she's ridden thousands of kilometers on an African lady's back. Our girls never played with baby dolls. They'd come home with an African baby strapped on their back. But unless we're willing to go and plan ourselves, can I just stop a moment there? It's just as important in America as it is on the mission field. The good pastor parks in that place and loves his people. Parentheses, you all need to thank God you have a pastor like that. Well, Paul said, finally brethren, would you pray for us that the word of God would have free course. Learning a new language and culture, and I know where I'm at, and I know, I look around this church auditorium, and there are many of you people that did not grow up here, and you understand the difficulty and the complexity of learning not just the language, but language and culture and that whole thing, it all goes together. And learning a language, now, you think this is a strange message for Sunday morning. No, I don't think so, because I want to help you know, how do you pray for these missionaries? Pray that God would give them an ability and a love to be able to share the gospel. Learning another language is uncomfortable. How many of you, I know a lot of you, have ever gone to a place where you couldn't understand one word spoken around you? There's not much in life more uncomfortable and frustrating because you go and God's called you to preach and you go and you reach in your pocket and you pull out a gospel track and you give it to someone and they look at it and you try to read it to them and they're just rolling on the ground laughing because you're making such a mess of reading a gospel track. It's uncomfortable, it's frustrating, it's embarrassing. People ask me, one church we were in, and they were having question and answer time, and they said, Brother Godfrey, would you please tell your most embarrassing experience? And I said, no. There is no way I can tell a lot of our embarrassing experiences. It's humiliating, it's difficult. I have a sermon I preach sometimes in English called Eight Words That Can Change Your Life. And then I looked in my Spanish Bible, and there are only five words. Same phrase. And then in Japanese, it's 15 words. So I just had to change my title to Words That Can Change Your Life. It takes a lot of time and work and effort. Are you listening? How do you pray for your missionaries? Do you pray God helped them get it? God, give them a love for these people. And the language is difficult, and they laugh at you. It takes a lot of time to learn a language. Anybody that listens to these advertisements on your radio and TV and says, buy this course and in five months you can learn, you can be speaking Japanese, they're lying to you. Anyway, enough of that. You remember back in Daniel chapter one, Daniel, the three Hebrew children, they had been taken into captivity, taken to Babylon, and they were being prepared to stand before the king of Babylon. Does anyone remember, I know this is a church full of Bible scholars, how long did it take Daniel and those three, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, how long did it take them in preparation and study before they were presented before the king? Somebody help me out a little bit. Three years, three years they prepared. Again, are you listening to me? Don't get frustrated when you're a missionarist when they go to the field and they spend three or four years and come back and you say, how many people did you win to Christ? Five. Now some places it'll be more than that, but other places it might not be that many. How do you pray for them? Do you pray, God, please help them. Look, folk, if the message is as important as we say that it is. And it is. We need to do anything we can to get that message out clearly without problems. And it's not just how well that national person speaks English. It's how well English speaks to him. Mark Lehman's a good friend to me. He's been in Taiwan all of his life. His parents were missionaries. We were together one time on Guam, and he's Air Force guys, Anderson Air Force Base, one of the most beautiful places in the world. But we were on Guam, and Mark Lehman was there, and Harvest Baptist Church there had a big Christian school, and they had a big group of Chinese, they were English-speaking Chinese students, But they asked Mark, would you come into our school and give the simple gospel message in Chinese? And he did. And when he finished, the Chinese students said to their teacher, now we know what you've been trying to tell us. because they spoke English, but they still were not quite getting it. Studying a language doesn't mean you can't witness in the meantime. We do the best we can. You read a gospel tract, they laugh at you. If you can't learn, if a missionary cannot learn to laugh at himself, he better stay in America. Brother David Harris, who took my place as Far East Field Director, he was in Japan for 25 years and all the Japanese would say all the time, all you Americans have big noses. And used to, Brother Harris, we'd aggravate, why do they say that? And one day he finally discovered that the reason they say that is they wish they had one too. I could stand here and I'm not gonna do it. and tell you horror stories about language and missionaries. I won't tell my own, I have to tell somebody else's. Brother Ron White, who's our dear friend, he had a stroke and he's not in good shape now, but many years in Japan. He was in Japan studying Japanese and it's not an easy language. Dr. Sisk rode with us on Thursday night to the viewing of missionary Robert Meyer. And he was telling us the story, which I've heard many times about David Markham arriving in Japan. And when he got there, he came to Dr. Siss and said, Doc, why didn't you tell me how difficult Japanese language is? He said, I did tell you, you didn't listen. But Brother White was learning Japanese and he got to the place he could write his message out. Of course they were, it goes up and down. And if you, have you ever tried to preach a message that you wrote down in a different language? And if you ever look up, you've lost your place, you can never find it again. So Brother White was frustrated. He said, I'm not gonna do this next week. I'm gonna preach in Japanese. And he got up to preach and they said he did a great job, except the word, the main word he wanted to use in his sermon was sumi, which is sin. But he never said it one time. He said suma, which is wife or wives. All the problem you all are having in your lives, it's these wives you have. All the sickness, all the heartache, all the bad, he just covered every bad thing in the world. Now you ought to laugh at, a Japanese would never laugh at you. Because in their culture, to laugh at somebody else and make them feel bad, so they're sitting there dying laughing inside, but they would never laugh. And if I didn't know this to be true, I wouldn't even tell it, but he preached that day and preached on getting rid of, chase all the wives out of your life, repent of your wives. And they had six people get saved. Not because he was using the wrong word. See, they knew exactly the word he was trying to use and should have been using. And I'm just saying, again, how do you all pray for your missionaries? I hope when you get those cards and you take them home now, when you're praying for those folks scattered all over the world, you say, well, these missionaries, they work in an English speaking country. Oh yeah. Tell them about English in Uganda. I've been in Uganda and they speak English and I was praying for a French speaker. I couldn't understand one word they said in Uganda. You go to Australia, you go to England, you go to places where English, it's not the same. How do you pray for your missionaries? Pray that God, Paul said, pray for us that the word of God would have free course. And then his second one was this in verse number two, and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men, for all men have not faith. Let me put this one this way. Paul said, would you pray that I would have the ability to speak the gospel clearly without hindrance, but pray also for helping our spiritual battles. Now you all look at missionaries and you do it in the right way. You love them and you heard that this morning. If that doesn't stir your heart to know how a family like this dear family could go out in Ecuador and over into Peru and change their world. And hundreds and hundreds of people have been saved and churches started. But any time we missionaries are ashamed to say we're not always strong. Do you think a missionary ever gets lonely? Well, brother God, if they're called of God, they've gone out. I know that. But they're human beings. And it doesn't matter who they are and how spiritual they are. But when they go out there, you can just mark it down. Take me as an authority, because Linda and I have kind of been all over the world with our missionaries. They get discouraged. Paul said, would you pray for us that we would be delivered from these unreasonable and wicked men? I was listening to the radio one day when I was driving, Dr. J. Vernon McGeeb threw the Bible broadcast and he was talking about deatrophies in 3 John. And he said, and not only did I meet deatrophies, I met Mrs. Deatrophies. But, sorry about that. Paul, was an expert in this area. Would you pray for us that we would be delivered from unreasonable and everywhere Paul went. They threw stones at him. They hated him. They called him names. They chased him out of town. Not one place, but almost everywhere Paul went, he was persecuted. He was an expert in this area. And when missionaries go out, you can just mark it down. The devil doesn't want them invading his territory and he will fight them. And it's often through these dangerous, unreasonable people. perverse and evil men, unreasonable, not rational, even in the new church that you start, that the missionary starts. So Brother Godfrey, you're telling us, we just thought, the missionary goes and people get saved and tomorrow they're spiritual giants. I wish that were the case. Maybe not, God knows how to build us and strengthen our faith. You know, in every church, there's saints, and they're ain'ts. In churches, they're believers and they're non-believers and they're make-believers. The Braggs, Ron and Donna Bragg worked with us our whole, those years we worked in Senegal, 16 years we worked together. And I remember in those early days, and Bragg had a young man that he was discipling and training, thinking he'd be the next pastor of our church. And that young man was just waiting on Brother Bragg to let his guard down so that when he got home with the money he got once a month, he knew exactly where it was at and it was gone. And so was the young man. I'm not trying to shock you. I'm trying to help us. How do we really pray for our missionaries? They go out in the midst of dangerous people. They go out into culture shock. Any missionary that says, I never, I'm not gonna have culture shock. All right, we'll talk about that next year. One of the first signs of culture shock is this. I wish I didn't have to say this, but you need to hear it. Depression, discouragement. Can a missionary ever get so discouraged he's ready to quit? I'm upbeat, I don't get discouraged very often. I see the funny, anybody like me, you see the funny in things around you. I see the funny sometimes when nobody else even sees it. And if it's not there, I'll create a little bit. But I remember back in our early days when we just got on the field and we were young and dumb and all young missionaries are dumb as gourds. they're not lacking intelligence. They just, they don't understand the culture and the way. So we're on the field and we started our first Bible study that turned into a church and God's blessing. And then one day we were at home. Now we lived in the Sahara. Every house had a wall around it. We were inside Sunday afternoon, baking hot, 110 degrees. And all of a sudden we hear a noise and it's, a mob of people on the other side of our wall, screaming and crying and going on. And we're standing there listening, thinking somebody's in a fight or somebody broke in a house. And as we stand listening, we hear one word that we understood. The word was Tubob. Now that doesn't mean anything to you, to us it did because it means white man. Every time I walked out my gate for 16 years, the kids follow me all over town, Tubob, Tubob, Tubob. So we're standing in our courtyard in a place when they're talking about the two bob, there is no doubt who they're talking about. Because we're the only two bobs anywhere around that. So we're listening to that mob of people come down this street, make the corner, come around to our 10 gate and they're beating on our gate. And I went to the gate and I opened it and here was this crowd of people. And at the front of it was the meanest woman in our neighborhood. She wore a knife and a leather sheath all the time. She started it on me. She called me every name you can imagine. She cursed me. She said, my son, Abdu came to your Bible study today and I sent my daughter to get him. He had work to do and he didn't come home. Just go back to America and leave us alone. We don't want you here. You're Christians, we're Muslim. Just go on back. Abdu can't come back anymore. Have you ever seen someone I call slobbering man? I mean, she's spitting. And you have to picture, I'm a little guy in my early 20s, I had a head full of curly hair. I know that's hard to believe. They all finally, she spit out all that venom and she left and Linda and I were standing there in the courtyard and spiritual Christians thinking maybe she's right, maybe we should just go on back to America. But we got down on our knees there in the sand, and we cried out to God, please God, help us. And there's advantage to not having enough support. Because you can't buy a ticket and come home, so that's when you really want to. And we didn't have a lot of support, and we prayed, but we really didn't believe. Honestly, have you ever prayed, but you didn't really think God was going to answer your prayer? And we prayed and then that night we went to bed, it was nine o'clock probably, we were reading. See, back in those days, nobody had a TV, nobody had a computer unthought of, there was no such a thing. Cell phone, we had a family. At night we watched lizards do pushups on the wall at night for entertainment sometimes. But anyway, about nine o'clock that night, we're in bed, somebody knocks on, well, they don't knock on the door actually, they stand outside and say, And I said out the window, koku kanla, that person out there, who is it? And this voice came back and said, manla, it is I. And I recognized the voice. And it was the voice of Abdu's mother. Abdu was, there's this woman that had cursed me and caused all that ruckus that day. And I slipped my trousers back on, I went to the gate. Have you ever been so afraid that your heart falls down where your stomach is supposed to be? And I went out in the courtyard, went to that gate, opened the gate, and there stood that woman. This time there was no crowd, she was by herself. She's standing there with a live chicken. My first thought was, she gonna beat me with that chicken. I could already see the headline, missionary martyred by chicken. That was not the way I wanted to go. She didn't beat me with a chicken. I opened the gate, this Muslim woman stepped into my courtyard. They called me Asanba, they couldn't say God. She said, Asanba, I'm so ashamed of the way I talked to you today. She said, I was upset. She said, I know you're doing what you believe is right. And she says, Abdu can come back. And she says, here's a chicken. And she gave me that chicken. I'm asking you today, how do you pray for your missionaries? They get discouraged. They won't tell you that. I mean, they come home. I shouldn't, all this stuff I'm telling you, I probably shouldn't even tell you. Missionaries lie. Brother God, what are you talking about? You get a group of missionaries together and they haven't seen each other for a long time. How you doing brother? Oh, it's wonderful, we're great. We've had people get saved, the church is growing. And I was, that happened one time in Japan, in Okinawa, and I was the director and I knew they were everyone lying. Everything's great, you know, and they're just going on and everything wasn't great. One of them's mother had died, one of them's sister got, they were in an accident, she was thrown out and killed. And we come home and I'm not, I'm not trying to, I think you, you kind of feel what I'm trying to say. We want to, we're spiritual, we love the Lord, we really want to serve him. But folks, we're just people. Missionaries get discouraged. And Paul said, finally, brethren, would you pray for us? that we can speak the language fluently, and that God would help us through these difficulties. And then I'm not gonna finish with that. My sermon's almost finished, but I'm not gonna finish with that negative thought, because I love the Bible. It didn't stop with those things. Paul said, pray for us about those two things. But then in verse three, listen to what he says. But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil. And we have confidence in the Lord touching you that you both do and will do the things that we command you. And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. Here's our great confidence. Here's the answer to our needs. I have let him down, but he has never one time let me down. And Paul believes God will answer the prayers of these believers to establish and to keep in whatever we may face, whatever we may need, our confidence, listen to me as I finish, our confidence must always be in the faithfulness of our God, because he is good and he is faithful. Dear Father, thank you. for loving us, thank you for giving us the privilege to be your children and to serve you and I pray as we finish today that you'd be honored and glorified and bless this dear church and their missionary outreach in this community and all over the world. We thank you for what you're gonna do in Jesus' name. Would you stand please, pastor's here. God's spoken to your heart today and you need to come to the altar, whatever you need to do, step out and do it, pastor.