You are invited to look past societal labels and see the body of Christ in unexpected places like prisons. Consider how you can partner with ministries reaching into these communities to bring hope where it is needed most. Your involvement helps transform lives for eternity.
Welcome to the Real Church podcast. Our mission is for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your God given purpose. Now join us and listen in to the latest message from pastor David John Phillips.
Well, welcome. Welcome. Welcome to Real Church. I'm John Phillips, and I get to be the pastor here at Real Church, and there's nothing that I would rather be doing. There's no place that I would rather be on a Sunday morning than here with you guys.
If this is your first time at Real Church, don't worry, I'm not gonna call you out. But if this is your first time, everything that we do here is for you. We we exist so that you can experience the love of Jesus, experience his goodness, and you can walk away from here today encouraged and with a deeper understanding of how much god loves you. We pray that you experience his love from the time that you drove into the parking lot until the time that you made it to your seats. Hopefully, you got to see our dream team out greeting you in the parking lot and our our kids team which are amazing.
They've prepared services just for your kids, age appropriate services that are safe, fun, and awesome. So, you're as as parents, you can drop your kids off, take a breather, and come enjoy service and know that they're experiencing the love of Jesus at the same time. Isn't that awesome? It's a big deal. *God*'s good.
And our our kids team deserves that hand clap because the they have a lot of fun doing it, and they take a breather when they get done. Amen? It's awesome. And then, our host team, we got hopefully, you got to to get some donuts and some coffee and then our production and and our ushers and we we have a setup team that that comes here at 7AM and and I just wanna say thank you to the wrecking crew, the setup team. Thank you for everything that you do.
We couldn't do this without you. Could you guys give them a big hand? And then for our band as well, just leading us in worship and the production team with them. I just I'm I'm super thankful for the team that God has surrounded us with and, that man, they are a real church. They they are real church living this thing out in a in a, in in their daily life, day in and day out.
So, as you came in, you probably got a couple of cards. 1 of them was a connect card. It says connect on the back And if you would, if this is your first time, if you'd fill that out, you got your name, email, and phone number, we're not gonna come knock on your door and, you know, and and and anything like that. We just want a record of your visit. And, we we want to be able to to just invite you to upcoming events that are coming up and keep you up to date on that.
Then also, we have, let's see, a prayer card. It's kinda awkward. Let me there we go. Prayer card. If you have prayer, or if you you have prayer needs in your life or your family, whatever, please fill that out.
We have a prayer team that prays for these by name. They prays for each individual thing, and and we care. Prayer matters. Prayer is powerful and effective, and we believe in the power of prayer. We want to pray for whatever you're going through, because we care and God cares.
And then also, if you've been coming for a while to real church and you're like, you know what? I don't know how you guys put this on, you know, how you guys do this every Sunday morning but but I wanna know, I wanna be a part of it. You're invited to serve. You can you can serve every Sunday. You can serve twice a month.
You can serve once a month. You can just try it out 1 time and see if you like it. But, if you wanna you wanna just get connected and get involved and be a part of be a part of making Sunday morning happen, And and it's the dream team that that the people that are serving here, whether the greeters or whatever, it it's because of them that we're able to reach people with the love of Jesus in the way that we do, and we wanna invite you. You can be a part of that. As a matter of fact, there's different gifts and talents and abilities that you have that that will make us better at reaching Clearwater for Jesus.
And, yeah, you, even you, absolutely. God God has gifted you with amazing things, and, you you might not even know what they are until you just start. Take a step. So I encourage you to fill that out, and and then you can put that just in the giving boxes in the back, if you choose to do that. Now, as promised, we have something special today.
I'm excited. I'm as excited about today or maybe even more so than any Sunday before. And I get that way, when when God does something like this. I, I shared vision 2020 last Sunday. I shared about the vision of real church, and part of that vision is is getting into, reaching into the schools, but then also reaching into the prisons.
We we want to to minister to people, and and part of the thing that God put on our heart is reaching into prisons. And 1 of the ways that he did that, Mister Gary, would you come up real quick? I just wanna introduce you to Gary Godby. I told this story last week. I'm a tell a shortened version of it, but John Krueger, Josh Cortez, and I were sitting at a coffee shop in Largo and just doing some bible study, And we hear this this guy across the way, you know, we're we're sitting, I don't know, way over there.
We hear him. He say, hey. I just wanted to let you guys know you're encouraging me. You know? And and I was like, man, that's awesome.
I look over, and it was mister Gary Godby. I had no idea. I'd never seen him before in my life. And I just had the thought. You know, the Holy Spirit speaks to us in this this "still small voice" and you won't know it's him unless you take the step.
I had the thought, hey, why you go sit by that guy? So we go over to sit by mister Gary and next thing you know, he he says, hey, I just want you to know you are encouraging me just to see you guys studying the Bible in the public and praying and and I shouldn't have been able to hear you because the way my hearing aids work but but but I could hear you clearly at that distance, and I shouldn't have been able to. And because of what I heard, I'm not gonna retire this month. I'm gonna keep going. And and God encouraged me in that way.
But then he started sharing about his ministry, the ministry he's a part of. It's called Life Without Limbs, and and, and he just he felt it felt like there's a a major connection there, and then he wouldn't leave me alone. But but in the best kind of ways, it's the kind of relationship you you want them to not leave you alone because god puts you together and, and be because of that, he connected me with, with pastor Jay who's pastor Jay, would you come up as well? Pastor Jay is gonna be speaking. These 2 are mighty.
Yeah. Would you guys give a big hand? These 2 are mighty men of God, just mighty men of God. We when you when you meet someone and it's the same the same Jesus is in them that's in you, the same spirit, there's a connection there that that is just deep, and you know that you're gonna be, in relationship for eternity. And that's how it is with these 2 gentlemen.
And I'm excited about the word that God has. It's it's through, what they're doing that we're gonna get to to be connected into to some of the prison ministry, and God has a lot of stuff for it. We're just we're just gonna see what happens. It's gonna be fun. And I'm not gonna go too too much into the ministry there.
I'm a let pastor Jay do it, but I I just want you guys to know we love you, that that we're excited, and, I know God has amazing things from you. And and and, what you say today, I know that you know it's not about you guys. It's about him. And and so just prepare yourself because you're gonna hear not from them. You're gonna hear from Jesus.
And and hearing from Jesus means that your lives are gonna be transformed for eternity. Alright.
Well, II wanna echo what pastor David said and thank him and his wife, Courtney, and the rest of the team for the hospitality. A great thing that I get to do is travel sometimes from my away from my home church and and speak in prisons and go to other churches and and every once in while, you walk into a place like this. I don't care if it's a high school or wherever but you feel the love of Christ when you meet the people and it just feels like home and that's the way I feel today. So, thank you for that and that allows me to just really share freely that's what I'm gonna do. God's doing something amazing in this place.
In this place right here and I'm going to share about Life Without Limbs Ministry. I'm going to share a little bit about my story but I I just want you to know and maybe pastor David has said this before and and it's not just something pastors say that that you're here for a very specific reason. It's not by accident. That you have to own that a little bit today and and know that God is really preparing you for something great for his kingdom. And it get it it is exciting to think about that.
As as David said, my name is Jay. Jay Harvey. I'm a pastor. I am a writer. I'm a speaker.
I'm a husband. I'm a knucklehead. I'm also an alcoholic that is no longer an alcoholic because in 1999, I I said yes to Jesus and got baptized and I came up out of the water and about 3 days later, he said, Jay, you'll never drink again And I said, okay. And I haven't, it's been 21 years. Now, I must say, I say, I don't take any credit for that.
He did deliver me from that. I still have issues that I work on. He doesn't deliver everybody the same. I don't drink anymore, but I still wear socks and sandals. We've got all eternity to work on that though, so it's okay.
I'm a work in progress there. But 1 of the reasons I think I found out later on is he was calling me to ministry and and a more specific ministry and my testimony about that is is unbelievable. I was really wrestling with god and do you really want me in ministry? You know, when you're a young Christian, everybody says, oh everybody feels that way. Just, you know, bloom where you're planted or some something like that.
A nice little lady comes along and says, no, no, you're not called to ministry. Just, you know, keep doing what you're doing, provide for your family but god was calling me to ministry and I I just couldn't get away from it. So, I prayed and 1 of the things my pastor taught me was to pray with specificity, ask specific questions, and I said, okay, lord. This was about 2000 year 2000, 2001. I said, lord, if you want me in full time ministry like with a cross on the paycheck and everything like that, you gotta tell me for sure because my wife was freaking out at this point.
Neither of us grew up in the church and she said, I'm not married to a pastor's wife and I said, well, I'm not a pastor. Don't worry about it. I'm gonna pray. God, if you want me to be in full time ministry, then you tell me tomorrow. That was my prayer.
You send somebody to me tomorrow and let me know. Childlike faith. Walking out of church, 1 of those nice little old ladies that I just mentioned walks up, says, Jay Harvey, you know, you're just doomed for full time ministry. I began to cry actually because when *god* speaks to you and affirms something that's that he's planted in your heart and you know it's real, the the world stops for a minute. And I I began to cry and I told her what I'd prayed the day before and she began to cry.
My wife walked up and said, why are you guys crying? I said, you're married to a pastor's wife. Are you you're married to a pastor? You're a pastor's wife. And she said, no.
I'm not. I said, yes. You are. But see, it didn't start the next day. I went through a series of serious issues in my life as he began to prepare me for ministry.
So, the phone didn't ring the next day. You know, Franklin Graham didn't call me the the next day and say, hey, we got an opening and we'd like for you to fill it. You know, Joel didn't call the next day and said, hey, you wanna be in my next book? No. I suffered.
I began to understand that just because you're a Christian doesn't mean that life immediately gets fair. That's good. So I ended up losing my job, losing my house, because if you don't have a job and money, you usually can't pay your bills and all the stuff was going on and and I I remained faithful and and people were looking at me like, what what's the deal with this guy? I mean, yeah, he doesn't drink anymore and he was he was a real handful but what's going on in his life? Then, I came down with adult chicken pox.
Anybody ever had adult chicken pox? It can be deadly in in adults and a buddy of mine called a doctor and said, you know, you wake up a minute with a stiff neck, could be meningitis and and you really gotta be careful with adult chicken pox. And so all this after the fact that he had called and said, you're gonna be in full time ministry. All this stuff started to happen and everybody was trying to tell me what it was, what it wasn't, and all this but I just knew that god had told me what he told me so I did not lose faith And I kept going and I kept studying and and he'd given me the gift of of teaching and evangelism and reading his word and understanding it. I didn't read a book in high school y'all.
Okay? So so when I was breaking out stuff in my group of friends from Leviticus and and and this and I just assumed everybody knew because I I you know, that's just the way I am. I'm very assumptive and they're like, dude, what is happening to you? And I said, I, you know, it's just god. I made it through the chickenpox.
I woke up 1 morning with a stiff neck and and I had to go to the ER and I remember asking this question. Lord, all my life have been running from you and I finally give my life to you and now, you're gonna take me out. What's the deal? And I said those 2 words, why me? And this is exactly what I heard back immediately in my spirit.
Why not you? Who are you? It was defining moment because god was saying, let's get 1 thing straight. I love you but you're mine and if I wanna use your life or death to bring more people to me, all your friends that still party and do drugs and drink and get in trouble, they've seen the change in you now over the last 18 months. They've seen you go through this struggle.
They've seen you not lose faith. They've seen you make a positive impact for my kingdom and at your funeral, if that's the way it turns out, if if 6 or 7 or 8 of them come to know me, won't that be worth it? And I was like, yeah but as you can see, he spared me. And I'm here. What led after led after that was a call to full time ministry and to reading and writing books and and reading.
Yeah, reading books, writing books, writing books, and and and pastoring and doing jail ministry and I began right after this episode that I just told you about. *Discipleship* pastor called me and said, Jay, you wanna go with me to go do county jail ministry? I was still a young Christian. I was like, yeah, and I hung up the phone because back then, we actually had to hang up the phone. You had to unwind the cord and hang up the phone.
My wife said, what did you disagree to? And I said, I'm not sure. Something about jail. So, I go into the county jail ministry and from that moment on, I was hooked. *God* had shown me what my ministry would be and yes, I still pastor a church.
I planted a church in my hometown about 3 years ago. I pastored a large church for many years in my hometown of over 1000 people and then god called me to leave that church, plant an inner city church right next to a homeless shelter and that's what we did Amazing things have happened but all throughout that I've I've always had a "first love" of jail ministry which is now prison ministry so through a course of events I met a guy named Nick and we have a picture of him up here if you don't know who he is he's the 1 with no arms and no legs. He is born in Australia, now lives in California. He's a worldwide evangelist. Most of his evangelistic events are outside of the country, but he does a lot of work here in The US.
How many of you have heard of Nick? Okay, good. Great. This guy over here is Gary. You just met.
The guy on the end is Todd Scoggins who is a videographer and a photographer that goes with us sometimes and sometimes we get to go into prisons where they allow us to take pictures And so when Nick said he wanted to start a prison ministry, and I said yes, and I'll tell you more about that story in a minute through the way that we met. 1 of the benefits was that was last year, out of the 111 prisons that we've been in, 1 of them was in Hawaii. Somebody has to suffer for the kingdom. So if you show the picture there, I wanna show you a picture of this this beautiful picture that Todd took of these women in Hawaii who received Jesus that day that we were there over over 300 in in this prison and it and it's amazing thing to see because here's the thing, when you do prison ministry, 1 of the mistakes the institutional church makes and I'm not criticizing them is that they assume they're bringing Jesus in with them in their little backpack. The fact of the matter is, Jesus is already there and has already been working in these people's lives and you're there to just affirm that in them and help them surrender to that and the testimonies that come out of this are just incredible.
We also like to have fun. So, we shoot videos, sometimes I get behind Nick and we do little poses like that 1. Nick is a very very humble guy, a funny guy. He was born with no arms and no legs. He's spoken to millions of people all over the world.
1 of the biggest evangelistic outreaches that you've never heard about because the media doesn't want you to hear about it was just about a year and a half ago in Kyiv, Ukraine. Nick went with his team and had approval to do an evangelistic event in the town square. They planned for a 150,000. "800,000 people" showed up. Now, how's that possible?
They lined the streets. If you if you're familiar at all with just like a a a circle in the middle of town and then streets that that feed off of that. They were coming out of the woodwork and it's interesting now what's going on in Ukraine and and Russia and and the world of events but but see, Nick's roots are Serbian. That's where his parents were from and so he has a love for that part of the country and he went to do that and they kept setting up more monitors and more monitors and and beefing up the sound stage and beefing up the but he did an evangelistic event there where 800,000 people heard the message of Christ. You just don't hear that on CNN or Fox.
But it happened. I saw the pictures. We have people on our team that were there. Hundreds of thousands of people raised their hand to say yes to Jesus. We we don't we get so caught up with counting sometimes and measuring and how did we do that?
All I can tell you is 800, 0 people were in Ukraine 1 day when Nick was there preaching the *gospel* and hundreds of thousands of hands went up to Jesus. So, see, things are going on. So, you might be saying, why am I here in Clearwater? Why am I at real church? Well, Gary met David and now, we're here and over the past 3 years, we've been going into prisons all over The United States and I'm here just to tell you what's going on inside the prisons, okay?
Because god is doing something very very cool inside the prisons. We got hooked up with Nick and we've started this *ministry* and he said, I wanna do this right. I wanna I wanna do an effective prison ministry and I want to do something that that is needed at at for such a time as this and so we developed this curriculum and we did that by going into prisons and asking inmates questions and so for 6 months, we took surveys and we asked questions about what they needed to hear, what they needed, not just religious programming. Like I said, the institution of church sometimes goes in assuming that they just have the answer for that person and that they don't know anything about Jesus and and nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing can be further from the truth.
1 of the things that we discovered was they need time to reflect back to people. They need to talk about their faith and they need hope and so we designed this curriculum called "Free in My Faith", and there's copies of it out there for you for free to take if you want. That's why I brought the books. Just if you would like to grab 1, you can. I'm also a writer.
1 of the book first books I wrote was called the goof principle, and it's the story of Jonah, the story of Jonah in all of us. It's a story I tell in every prison that I go, and we send them these books. It's my story about alcoholism, but it's a bigger story about Jonah because most people think that like I did when I was young, when my grandmother used to take me to church and they would take me to hear about stories like Jonah. They didn't realize that little kids get a little freaked out when you tell them that if you disobey god, you get eaten by a fish. But when I got saved and I started reading Jonah, there's this little line in there, chapter 1 verse 17, it says, but the lord provided a fish and I go tell prisoners that the fish is not the punishment, it's the provision.
Let me
say that again. The fish is not the punishment, it's the provision. Because if the fish hadn't come along, Jonah would have drowned. So if you find yourself in an unpleasant place that you don't wanna be and they don't want you there for a short amount of time, you can bet it's god's way of saying, I'm not really in too moved by your discomfort right now. I'm thinking about eternity and so we gotta get some things straight.
Once we get them straight and you realize that I'm the priority again, I'll spit you back out. And here's the great thing about that story, he doesn't make Jonah go sit in a corner and find somebody else more worthy to do the task. He gives Jonah the exact same job that he gave him the first time. You can't outrun your purpose no matter what you do. So the fish is what saved him.
There's other kind of fish out there too. It doesn't have to be prison. It can be debt. It can be drugs. Can be relationships.
It can be wearing socks and sandals for all I You know? But that's kinda different because that's just unpleasant for other people. By the way, I love the creativity of this church. Hiring 2 people to stand over there and vape while you're playing the drums. That was awesome.
Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. That was awesome. Is he okay? Get up get up.
Can he get up? Okay. It's a long set for the 1 guy. I mentioned I left a I left a big church, and when I did, I went on sabbatical. And for 3 months, I asked God what he wanted me to do.
How did he want me to continue on in prison ministry? How did he want me to continue on in in in this thing I was sensing in my heart about what he's doing in the prisons? And it led me to write this book, which is A "brief moment in the sun", which again, there are a few out there. They're on Amazon. I'm not here to make money.
I wanna bless you, and I want you to take a book if you want 1. But the title, do wanna make mention to, it's called a brief moment in the sun, s o n. And but it's a play on a quote from W. B. Dubose who wrote about slavery and and he said, the slave went free, stood a a brief moment in the sun, s u n, but then was relegated back to slavery through Jim Crow.
And my book is called A Brief Moment in the Son, S O N, obviously referring to Jesus. What we tend to do in America at least is compartmentalize and we love to put our armor on somebody who gives their life to Christ and if they're a minority or somebody doesn't have status or worships in a different way or is a drug addict or is a felon or somebody like that, we stand with our arm around them for a brief moment in Christ in the son but then we relegate them back to wherever it is that makes us feel the most comfortable. And that's not God's way. A 111 prisons, 115 actually. Thousands of people to hear the gospel thousands of men and women who will come out of prison In 1990, the population of prisoners in The US was 325,000.
1994, Today, it's 2,600,000. Crime really hasn't gotten worse. Violence hasn't really gotten worse. You can read, you can listen to propaganda, you can read all that stuff, but if you really do the homework like like, you know, I've done the homework. It's just the way the laws are written.
Mass incarceration is is a tool. Now, 99.999% of the people that I talk to on the inside of a prison have no problem admitting their guilt and telling you what they did. What they struggle with is the stigma that gets attached to them when they're trying to change their life and come out. Okay? The Bible says, if they are a brother or sister in Christ, then they're my brother and my sister in Christ.
Their burden is my burden. Okay? Now, I know that gets uncomfortable sometimes but here's the reality Life without limbs *ministry* is committed to not only going in and evangelizing but empowering those people not to just come out and find a church that will welcome them and not judge them but actually, we've recognized that what god is doing is empowering them with gifts because his church is suffering on the outside. He wants to release a lot of these people which by the way, when that many more people are in prison now, that means 10 to 17000 per year are now out on probation or parole. We just don't want to welcome him into the church.
They need to be leading the church. Amen. And I've seen it. They can lead the church. *God* gives the same people just like me just because I was an alcoholic who never spent more than a weekend in jail and now I'm leading ministries.
There are people who are going to spend life behind bars that are leading churches behind bars with a smile on their face but then those that get out, we never give them the opportunity. You know why? Because we just really don't they have anything to offer but they do. They do. That's a hard shift for the institution of church.
And and again, I'm not criticizing it. God is always doing something a little bit new, a little bit different, and that right now, I really believe that he is saying, look, yes, Sunday mornings is the most segregated time in America and it's about time for that to end and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to flood your communities with so much diversity that you'll never have the option anymore. To go to an all this church or an all that church. Amen. That's what's coming.
It's good. That's what's coming. I promise you that's what's coming. So, knowing that, after I got back from sabbatical and really wrestling with god and and begin to say that to my church, they smiled but they were really comfortable and so, I ended up like I said, resigning from there and starting the inner city church which now has led me to partner with an African American church in my hometown and I come from a very deep rooted racist type of environment in Indiana and like I was telling some other people earlier, it it's not we hate people, we wanna hurt people but it's just ingrained, okay? What they don't know, they don't know.
And so they're they're just very cautious and very territorial. So I'm breaking some new ground in my hometown by partnering with an African American church. We share a building. We do different church services at different times but we're blending in together because I I truly believe and I write in my book that it's the body of Christ's responsibility to model racial *reconciliation* for the world to see. We've always done it backwards.
We've tried to programmatically do the reconciliation of race and and attack racism from a program side in when actually the gospel gives you every tool needed to defeat that. So, it has to come from the church out and and that's what god is beginning to do. The message I want I wanna share with you briefly about the type of reconciliation that god speaks of in the Bible can be found in in *Acts-3* and and I'm just gonna read a little bit of that for you. *Acts-3:7*, starting in 7. I'll I'll tell the story first.
This is Peter and John going into the temple and they're going in for afternoon prayers. 3PM. And there's a beggar that that has placed outside the gate called beautiful. Now, the Bible tells us that this beggar was probably a Jew because he's outside the temple gate. And that's his job.
He begs for money Leviticus tells us that if you are lame or disabled or have any defect in those days that you couldn't go all the way into the temple. So, this guy was actually just where he was supposed to be. He had no other use supposedly except to beg for money and the Jews would walk by him and part of their almsgiving was to give him money so that they felt better about themselves as they went on into the temple or church for prayer. I want to stop for a second and just ask you to to to think about this because there are lots of people in our community and around the world that think they found what it is they're supposed to do in their brokenness, in their disability, in their addiction. You know, just if I could just do this, you know, I know I have no hope of anything ever really changing.
I'm just gonna do the same thing over and over again every day. I'm gonna say the same thing. I'm gonna hear the same thing but this is just kinda who I am. There is no hope for any kind of change that would lead to anything really more as a as a wholeness or a peace or or something that could truly I I mean, I think about it sometimes but not it's just never going to happen. This is what had to be what this guy was thinking.
This is this is me. I'm going to be the guy who sits outside and begs. Well, Peter and John walked by him and they say, look at me because he's kind of got his hand out asking for money. Look at me. That had to be something new.
What? Maybe he's expecting something big. Maybe a check. Maybe a gift card, you know, to Golden Corral. He could eat for days.
You know, maybe it's something, hey. No. Peter says, gold or silver, we we do not have and I won't talk too much about why they didn't have it but if you just read the verses prior to the story, they had surrendered everything to the church. That's why they didn't have any money on em but I won't get into that. He says, gold or silver we do not have but this is what I do have.
In the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk. Now, this was weird for the guy but then it says, taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, Peter, and instantly, the man's feet and ankles became strong. I wanna stop right here for just a second because taking him by the right hand. How many of you know the Bible is very specific? The right hand.
Did a little study on that. There's nothing really can, you know, like the consensus is that Peter saw Jesus do this a couple times, taking people by the right hand and so he did it. There's something about the right hand though because where do we say Jesus is now? He's at the right hand of God. Jesus is our help.
He is the right hand of God. He is what gets us up. He is what pulls us along. I mean, the right hand is strong. So that's why the Bible keeps saying, look, there there's there's something you need to know about the right hand and so Peter says, I took him by the right hand and he got up and it and his feet and ankles became strong.
Wow, miracle. Everybody always focuses on the miracle and then they miss this next part and this is what the church needs to understand going forward into the next season of the kingdom of god. Keep going. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then, he went in with them into the temple courts walking and jumping and praising god.
That word with does not mean alongside The Greek word means 1 of There had been a *status* change. So when he went in with them, you could say he went in as 1 of them. He not only got healed physically, he got healed spiritually. Now he had listen to this. Now he had every right to be right in the middle of everything that was going on.
That's right. Not
only every right, he had status. What the church often misses is that not only is sin forgiven, which is a great equalizer, but when sin is forgiven, **status is given**. And that's also just the same for everybody. Different gifts, same status. Everybody freaks out because this guy now is going into the temple courts leaping, jumping, and praising god for his healing but because he's now on the inside.
He's 1 of them. So, let me ask you something and I'm as guilty as anybody and I've been doing this for years. There's still times in my life when I see somebody that I want to embrace as a brother but my flesh says, it's it can only be for a brief moment because I'm not sure about the status thing. I'm not sure what what what to expect with with with him because I've I've seen him in this other state so many times. Do I risk just giving him the status that god gave me or do I have another job with this person and see that always ends up in a bad way.
*God* always says, **bear your brother's burden**. Sometimes, we get taken advantage of. Sometimes, we get conned. Sometimes, we get hustled. You gotta get over that.
Because I'm sure none of you have ever hustled anybody maybe in a different way but I'm sure none of you have never lied to anybody. I'm sure none of us god fearing Christians have never, you know, manipulated anybody or or said something that made us appear to be something that we're not. I'm sure we've never done that. So, so actually, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should be the keeper of the status.
Oh, there are many churches like that. There are many Christians like that But there's also many churches like real church. There's also many Christians like that who are still listening to the voice of god and saying, no, no, no, no. I've got somebody in a prison in Miami that just needs somebody to affirm them of who they are in Christ. 1 more time and then I'm gonna use that person to save 6,000 other people when you're gone.
Come on. That's the way god thinks. And I still have trouble thinking that way sometimes. You think after 21 years that I would have it all down, I don't. I don't.
I'll tell you a story about what happened in Miami real quick. We had an amazing time down there not too long ago and God was working in people's hearts. And and and look. My job is not to question whether or not people's hearts are transformed. But when you see it, you just see it.
You just know. You know somebody that's been touched by God and surrendered their life and and and and now are just on fire for Christ even though their their next parole hearing won't be till 2037, which is such as the guy who came up to talk to me. And when he came up, everybody else kind of parted and I was like, oh, okay. Talk about status. I get it.
But he gets right up this close. Literally, this close and and Gary knows me and and not none of you know me that personally but my space is my space, dude. I I I I always know the way out and I know, you know, it's just part of who I am, and I that really makes me uncomfortable. But I also know that if I start backing up from the guy, that that was gonna send a bad signal too. So I just stood my ground, and it got right here.
And this is all I heard. In in the next 17 seconds, all I heard was, are you going to see Nick? This is what is CIA, CNN. I went, yep. Amen, brother.
Tell me that again. What? I'm sorry. What? Slowed him down long enough to say, are you gonna see he says, are you gonna see Nick?
When are you gonna talk to Nick again? He's from Cuba. When are you gonna talk to Nick again? I said, I'll talk to him pretty soon. Why?
Because you tell him. You tell him his video saved my life. We shot a video in Texas. Nick doing an an hour evangelistic program Texas. By the way, Gary Godby was told we would never be able to go do prison ministry in Texas.
So, when we're in Texas doing prison ministry, they said, you'll never be able to bring a video crew in to to to do this. Too much red tape and you gotta get waivers and all this stuff. So when we so when we got all that done and we started setting up for the video and we had Nick up there, we captured an hour message that now goes out to almost every prison in The United States. It's a DVD from Telford Unit, Texas, and it's Nick doing an evangelistic event and telling his story. The guy that was talking to me this close to my face was saying, I was this close to killing myself.
And I went down and that video was on and I sat down. 2 this was 2 years ago. So we'd sent the videos out, you know, probably 2 and a half years ago. And he said that video saved me. He goes, I found hope.
See, he just found a little bit of hope. A little bit of hope and then that led to him finding out that Jesus loved him and then when he found out Jesus loved him, his hope grew and his faith grew and he began to be surrounded by people that could help him and now, he's 1 of the guys that leads this church ministry that they do on the inside down in Miami at Everglades Correctional Institute and and we just embraced and and he said, so you tell Nick and he was angry. I don't know why he was so angry at me. I hadn't done anything wrong but he said, you tell Nick, don't ever stop what he's doing because just even the video to the power of god. He said, save my life.
And so I was like, I will. I will. Had to go back the next day because it was a 2 day thing that we were doing there. And I walked in and I as soon as he saw me, he started coming. And he got this close again.
Said, you talk to Nick? I went, not yet. I will. I promise. I will.
I promise. I'll email him tomorrow. He goes, you tell him. It's passion. *Jesus* creates this purpose and this hope and this passion that that all we're supposed to do as as his people is is share.
Share. Give god the capacity to work in other people like he's like you've given him to work in your life no matter what label that you think that they have when they come in and this is something that has way more to do not just prison, not just homeless, not just addicts. I'm talking about even those who seem to have it all together. I promise you, there there there's something in their life where where they're struggling. Love is the only thing that breaks through all of that and meets them where they're at.
I I just love the fact that when god talks about relationships and *reconciliation* in the gospel, the gospel has consequences. That's the mission statement of the church I pastor. City Church, we preach the gospel and then deal with the consequences. That's what we do. And when I begin to write and think about reconciliation, God's way that led me to plant a church and partner a church with African American church and then continue to expand this prison ministry which which real church can be a part of in so many different ways.
Because it it's just spreading. The more people they lock up, the more people we're going to go preach the gospel to. We just got a call from somebody in Georgia that said we have a lot of illegal immigrants here that are being detained and we heard that you might be interested in coming and preaching the gospel to him before we send them away and we said, absolutely, we will. When you think about *reconciliation* from this point forward, which is a real buzzword right now in the church, I want you to remember 1 thing. Reconciliation done god's way is usually a little bit different than than what we think.
So reconciliation, point number 1, is is more than tolerance. So you can tolerate somebody for a while, but you're not reconciled to them. Right? *God*'s reconciliation is more than tolerating us. He says we've been reconciled to him through Christ.
Correct? So if he just tolerated us, what kind of relationship would that be? Right? I mean, I can tolerate watching the bucks, but I don't wanna be reconciled to them. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I was talking about the Milwaukee Bucks. Where are your heads at? Okay. So *reconciliation* has gotta be more than tolerance and you know what?
Reconciliation, I'm just gonna say this the only way I know how to say this when you're talking about white suburban community institution of church. It's going to cost them a lot more to become reconciled to the real world than than than it's going to cost the real world. Okay? Whoever has something, It cost them to be reconciled. It cost god his son for us to be reconciled to him.
So, if you have something that somebody else doesn't have and you're in the kingdom in the body of Christ and you want to be reconciled to that person in relationship, it's more about kinship. It's going to cost you more. It's going to cost you your comfort. It might cost you your resources. It's going to cost you some friends maybe but that's god's way of reconciliation.
Point number 2, it's gotta become more than tolerance. Reconciliation is more than a good testimony. Just because somebody comes in and maybe gives you a good testimony sometimes and then you still keep them at arm's length but you've heard their testimony and now you go out and pretend that you know them and that it's a it's a major thing. That's not reconciliation either. Reconciliation is deep in the eyes of God.
Here's what usually happens. We think we reconcile with people when we meet together with people who are not like minded or different color or different economic *status*, ethnicity, whatever, and then we go back our separate ways. That's "fellowship without communion". And you know what that does? That divides more.
When you fellowship with somebody but you really don't commune with them, it's actually a bigger barrier. It goes back to tolerance. When Jesus broke bread and did communion, I don't mean the act of communion when you're with people, but I mean being in relationship with them. And and and spending time and it just takes time but that's the only answer I can give you. I get to ask that all the time.
Well, how do you do? It takes time. It takes investing in people. Letting them into your world and seeing what god does but when Jesus actually sat down and broke bread, they were all at the table. Even the 1 that betrayed him There was communion there more than food and drink.
There was friendship There was brotherly friendship. There was emotions Think about it. When you really get to know somebody and know their story and that takes time, you automatically think of them differently. Look at them differently. Pray for them differently.
You can't do that with the whole world but whoever god sends in through these doors, that's your call. Reconcile with them. Get them reconciled to god and then reconcile your relationship with theirs. It might cost you more. Maybe somebody comes in that cost them more.
Don't know but this is the definition biblically of *reconciliation* and finally, reconciliation is god done god's way equals that status change. Training your eyes to see a new creation in *Christ* as an equal member of the **body of Christ** will do more for your spiritual development, your discipleship, than any study anybody can ever write. Here's the final point, what we learned over the last 3 years going into facilities, some of which I would never wish on my worst enemy. Until the church, until Christians, until people who love Jesus and and were in process but until we can not just go and try to bless them and help them until we can go expecting that if they know Christ, if they know Christ, then actually they have something that we need. How often is that the way that we think of it?
What can I possibly need from somebody in prison that hasn't been out in 15 years? I'm going to bless them. No, no, no. See, that's your assumption that Jesus isn't in there working with them and that somebody came along and evangelize them and now they're on fire for Christ and now they have a word for you. Well, that's just arrogance.
That's what god's doing in the prisons right now. I promise you. I didn't know it till I got in there but the more that I go in, the more I see the body of *Christ* on the inside ready to come out and affect the body of Christ Christ on the outside. I told pastor David last night, 1 of the most heartbreaking things that I hear too often is guys that that get out and can't find the body of Christ like they've experienced on the inside, genuinely, out here. That's not blaming.
There's there's all kinds of variables here but I'm just telling you what's coming, what's happening, this merging, this this what god is doing to to bolster up and prepare his church for the next season which will be so diverse and and and so powerful. Beginning to strip away things that aren't needed. And it breaks my heart to know that there are some still out there that say, well, prison ministry is just prison ministry. It doesn't affect the recidivism rate. And so that's 1 of my buttons that when it gets pushed, I'll get up into somebody else's face this close and I'll say, let me tell you a story.
I know a man in Florida at the federal prison in Ocala who gave his life to Christ, became such on fire to Christ, had never even heard of the word forgive, had no idea what real biblical forgiveness was. He was taught that word while he was in prison. A student of the word now and now on fire for Christ. He gets set free. He gets released.
His dad is in a different state but he has to go reconcile with his dad. He has to go ask his dad for *forgiveness* for some things that he had done. That's what the Holy Spirit was prompting him to do. He had a decision to make. Should I go across state lines and violate my parole and seek *reconciliation* and forgiveness with my father or should I just stay where I'm at?
Well, he chose to go the state line. He knew what he was doing. He didn't care. He wanted to go and have that moment with his dad before his dad passed away. By a lady's parole, got put back in prison.
So that some guy in a white shirt nothing against white shirts, but some guy in a stuffy white shirt can say, your your ministry doesn't really affect the recidivism rate. Blah blah blah. Gotta think bigger. Gotta think more supernatural. You gotta think more about how God is not really that concerned about your happiness.
He's concerned about your holiness. You gotta think more about his ways not being our ways, his thoughts not being our thoughts, and the desperation he has for each living soul on the planet. That's what matters. That's all that matters. We coming here, if you don't know, Nick Voyageich in Life Without Limbs *Ministry* doesn't charge a dime for us to come here and do this.
It's not costing real church anything except David taking us out to dinner last night and he splurged. We went to Taco Bell. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding.
It was Burger King. But here's the thing, we're in a partnership, and now we absolutely consider you immediately a partner of Life Without Limbs. We don't need we're not asking you for money, we're not asking you for anything, but we just know that that this church is beginning out with a DNA that is the same type of DNA that that Nick has to go in and and reach prisons and and to do something different for the marginalized in our society because if you think about it, I'm not Catholic but Mother Teresa had a big impact on my life because I read her book that she never thought was gonna be published and I'm gonna wrap up. Her letters. She said something in there that it's easy to find *Jesus* with the poor because that's where he's always at.
It's easy to find Jesus with the incarcerated because that's where he's always at. It's it's easy to find Jesus with the oppressed because that's where he's always at. And that really hasn't changed. He's with us too. But when you start to get spiritually dry, you wanna find him, you go to 1 of those 3 places and you'll find him.
We're so appreciative of you allowing us to come and take this time. I know what it's like to be a pastor and to give somebody else the platform that you've never met. It can be a dangerous thing but we feel a kinship here. What we're doing, what you're doing, it matters. It matters a lot.
And hopefully, something I've said today has inspired you to even maybe look at the scripture a little bit different in that that "blind guy who never had a chance" for anything to change. 1 moment with Jesus. Through Peter, not only healed him but it changed his *status* forever. Always remember that. Thank you, guys.
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