One of the reasons I'm standing here tonight, beyond Craig being ill tonight, is today is May 29th. 22 years ago, at 718 EDT, we were sitting in Trinity Missionary Church in Petoskey, Michigan, just having gotten the call about 12 hours before that our son had died. And Craig wanted me to talk a little bit about that, this being the anniversary. And I want to talk a little bit about three things related to this. I want to talk about prayer, I want to talk about providence, and I want to talk about comfort. I know a lot of you have never seen a picture of him. We don't have a lot of pictures of John. But we do have one that AI has been able to enhance a little bit for us and make it clear. I don't know if you can see it on the TVs or anything. OK, that was not too long before he died. He was 19 when he died. OK. And I won't go into the story about how all the things led up to the prayer that I prayed, where I prayed, God, if you need to break me to use me, break me. Well, a month later, John died. When you pray, be ready for God to answer. God may not answer in the way that you have planned for Him to answer, but He does answer. I did not plan on this being the method by which God would break me, because I'm guessing I was pretty confident that God would break me very nicely, that it wouldn't hurt too much. But it hurt, okay? It hurt a lot. I had been knowing that ever since I got involved in the prison ministry, six years before that, that I needed some compassion training, because I'm by nature, I know I'm the only guy in here like this, I'm by nature very much a get-over-it kind of guy. Our three youngest children are very much like their dad, too. They're very much a get-over-it kind of person. And I had been talking with the chaplain at the hospital in Petoskey, Michigan about going through some chaplaincy training in the hospital, but that never came through. But I got my compassion training on May 29th, 17 years ago. So what do you do? Now, I'm not the only one. Cheryl's not the only one who gets news like that. We've had other people in this room get that call. What do you do for them? Well, the first thing you can do is pray, because you can't change anything. When that call happens and you get that news, words are not going to change anything. And what do we do with prayer? Well, we can pray certainly for the people involved. We can pray for the lost people involved. I mean, our youngest son was 13 when this happened, and he was lost. And he spent the next six years furious at God because his big brother had died. But people were praying for him. Six years later, he was in college, and the story about how he got to that college is interesting. He wanted to go to Michigan State. Well, he's on the way down to register to go to Michigan State, and it's a three and a half to four hour drive from where we live to Michigan State. And he gets about an hour or two down the road, and he goes, I can't go to Michigan State. Now remember, he's lost. He says, I can't go to that place. because he remembered what his big brother had said, not the one that died, our oldest son, who's in his early 50s. Our oldest son went to Michigan State and transferred out of there after a year because of how pagan Michigan State was. Well... our youngest son is on the way down to Michigan State to register, and he's gonna pick up our middle daughter on the way, so he's swinging by to get her in Saginaw, and he gets to Saginaw, and he tells Sarah, Sarah, I can't go to Michigan State, I gotta go to Bethel. Bethel College was the denominational college for the church that we were attending at the time. So they turn around and come home, and we make calls and get him into Bethel College. Remember, he's lost. He's lost, he's mad at God. He goes through his freshman year. Chapel, mandatory, three times a week. He's still mad at God. He goes back for his sophomore year. And during a chapel service, he's sitting with two guys. And the Lord saves him. Providence, one of the two guys sitting with him, is now our son-in-law. And he and Hannah have seven children. Providence. Well, after John died, he died on a Wednesday. You know, Wednesday and the 29th of May don't happen every year. Providence, here we are. Wednesday, May 29th. That the next day was Thursday, and it was the day that I would usually go to the prison. Now, it's been 24 hours since John died, and I tell Cheryl, I'm going to the prison tonight. Now, she wasn't exactly thrilled. But I know that we don't like subjective impressions. But I had this subjective impression that I knew I needed to go to the prison that night. So I did. I called up Terry Carrente, said, you got room in the car? Yes. We go. And the guys had already known that John had died. They had been praying. I go and I just told them how I felt and how bad it was and a bunch of stuff. And I also told them about the love of God because, man, God sent His own son to die. I get it now. My son has died. I know it's a different level and I get it. So as a result of that, one of the guys there, you know, we know the Bible says murderers shall not enter the kingdom. Well, you got a bunch of murderers in that particular prison. One guy who was a murderer had never addressed the pain that he had caused his victim's family for 20 years. He was from northern Wisconsin, went across the border into upper Michigan, killed a young girl, and was due on his time. He was a friend of mine by now. But he said, I never knew what the family had gone through, the pain that I had caused until that night. So he writes a little article. He's considered himself a writer. And he sends it out to these publishing houses. He wants to make a little bit of money. Well, Mennonite Publishing House takes him up on his offer and publishes his little article. He sent him 35 bucks, and he thinks he's got all the money in the world. But the thing is, 12,000 of those newsletters went out with the story of what happened in a prison that night. Then Nazarene Publishing picked it up. They ran the same article, Providence. 145,000 people heard the story of what happened in the prison that night. of me seeking comfort from men who've caused the kind of pain that I was going through. And there are multiple other providences that I don't want to spend a lot of time on because this could go on forever. But I'll tell you about one. Six months later, going into another prison down the road, I'm going to do a message on Saturday morning, late Saturday morning. The prisoners attending have not heard the story yet. Well, one of the prisoners asks to talk to one of the spiritual counselors, of which I am one, and they come up to me and say, Jeff, so-and-so wants to talk to you. And I said, well, who's so-and-so? I don't know who so-and-so is. Oh, he's over there. OK, yeah, but he's going to have to wait until after I get done. OK. So I get done, and I tell my story about John dying, and about God's grace, and people praying, and one of the issues I had to deal with in the message was death. So we go down to the end of the hall after I get done, and I sit down with him. Well, when John died, his best friend, who was later arrested, was looking at three felonies with each of a seven to 15-year sentence, one of which was driving drunk, causing death. I sit down with this kid, young guy, and what does he want to talk about? Well, he now wants to talk about the fact that he says, Jeff, I did what killed your son. I'm doing 7 to 15 for driving drunk, causing death. Why, out of the 52,000 prisoners in Michigan at that time, was he in that prison at that time, picked by the chaplain, not knowing what was going on, picked me by the volunteers who were assigning counselors so that he who has committed the very crime which killed my son, he can talk to a dad of a victim. Providence. And what about comfort? 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4 talks about comforting others with the comfort with which we have been given in Christ. I mean, people can identify. Not everyone can feel the pain, and that's good. That's good. You don't want to feel the pain. But let's be frank, death is a reality in this age. It's appointed for man to die once, then face judgment. May 29, 17 years ago, made me very focused on one thing. We all need to be ready to die now. You can't rest on being ready yesterday. You've got to be ready now. Not everyone gets old like me and dies. Because this is serious. The people involved with us back then, they get it now. One of the guys who was in the chaplain's office with us when what happened that instigated the prayer that started this whole thing. He was a volunteer and he ran a housing unit. His daughter was killed. a few weeks ago in Minnesota, around age 40. Our pastor at the time, who did John's funeral, his 43-year-old son dropped dead, and they still don't know why, two or three years ago. It just happened. People die. When I've told the story about the three guys coming to our house that morning, the first guy who showed up, he just died a couple weeks ago. We don't get to take a day off from being a Christian. We can't put in for PTO or vacation. We've got to be ready now because none of us know if we're going to make it to 730. I know I talk about death and dying a lot, but that's why. Because I want us all to be ready. And I want us to pray for each other that we are all ready Because a lot of people that we thought were ready over the last 20 years are no longer ready. And it's scary to see people walk away. It's scary to see people who you thought were firm in the faith walk away. So we need to pray. Yes, we pray for people to be saved. But let's pray for people to remain saved. I know that sort of flies in the face of our Calvinistic doctrine. But if we use means to get people saved, we use means to keep people saved. We pray for each other. We pray that we persevere. We pray that we endure to the end. Because we don't know how long our race is. It might be a sprint. It might be a marathon. We don't know. But we've got to finish the race. So we need to pray for each other. We need to comfort each other because we are going to have people die in this room. You're all going to die. People we know and love are going to die. How can we comfort them? One way is to pray for them. We felt it. People have asked, how did you deal with it? Well, the way that we have dealt with it is that God answered people's prayers and gave us abundant grace and has given us abundant grace for 22 years. How does Scott deal with his mom dying? How does Bob deal with his wife dying? How does Shemeika deal with her brother dying? You've got to have grace to get through it. Because it hurts. It's always going to hurt in this life. But God will grant grace when God's people pray for grace for the afflicted, for the people who are grieving. So, I just wanted to say that. And I thank people to this day who pray for us. This is not an easy day. Our family text thread is, there's no joking around on May 29th. It's pretty somber on May 29th every year. It's pretty somber for my wife on Mother's Day every year. It's a little bit somber for me on Father's Day coming up every year, but We all deal with things like this differently. And you know that I have quoted Revelation 21, the first four verses, a gazillion times. I'm not going to do it now. But that has been my passage for 22 years now. Because there will be a day when there will be no more crying, nor pain, nor tears, because the former things will have passed away. And praise God when that day comes. So, let's pray right now. Oh, Father. Father, we ask that you incline your ear to us. Father, in this age, we know that your word says we enter the kingdom through much tribulation. And tribulation might look differently for one person as opposed to another person, but tribulation is still tribulation. Trials are still trials. Pain is still pain. Father, we know some people enter the kingdom through much physical pain. Some people enter the kingdom through much emotional pain some people through, financial trials. But Father, there are trials, there are tribulations. They're real, and Father, we don't want to minimize them in other people's lives. Help us to be compassionate with other people. Help us to understand, even though their problem is not ours, their problem is still a problem. Their trial is still a trial, and their tribulation is still a tribulation. Father, help us to bear with one another in love. Help us in being patient with one another, Father. Father, we ask for more grace today. We can't just pile it up from yesterday and take it out of the closet. Father, we need today's grace today. Father, we're all going to need more grace tomorrow. We're all going to need more help tomorrow. Father, help Your people to help each other. Lord, as stuff happens, it can be easy to be this army that shoots our wounded. We don't want to shoot our wounded, Father. Help us to nurture and comfort and come alongside our wounded. Help us even when we don't know what to say. Help us to know when to be quiet. Help us to know what to say. Help us to be wise. Help us to be discerning. Help us to see the reality of tears that people experience in this age. Father, we ask this in Christ's name, amen. Okay, what do we need to be praying for tonight?