Tear Off the Roof: When Faith Refuses to Stay Comfortable

I'm glad we're together today in this space. My name is Mark Cummins. I'm the pastor at Church of Hope. And if you're a regular attender, welcome. So glad that week after week, we join together in this space. And if by chance, this is your first time, I'm really glad that we're beginning our friendship today. Understand that this broadcast literally goes around the world for free. See, we believe that life's at its best when people discover hope in Christ. There are people who give generously so this broadcast can be reached across every continent. If you've never given, I would invite you today to give. You can go to our webpage, hopeinOcala.com and drop down on the giving bar and give a one-time gift. Or you can give generously beyond just today. And if God's blessed you, help us as we give hope around the world. But for now, I want you to open up your heart and your mind. Let Jesus speak to you. Because what I believe is that when we open up our minds and let Jesus speak to us, life doesn't become perfect and all the problems don't go away, but you experience his presence in you, with you, and for you. Open up your heart. Let Jesus speak to you today. Peace.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said, here am I, send me. The two most important days in a person's life are the day that they're born and the day they find out why. If what you're doing isn't working, then why not try something different? I tried the pills, I tried the counseling, I tried the MMA and jiu-jitsu. None of those things worked. It was time for me to try something different. And so I submitted my life to Christ in the most authentic way I could. I have spent most of my life, 30 years, 30 plus years, in or around the military, whether it's as a service member, as a contractor, as a work in a humanitarian space, as a surrogate for the military, or even at Mighty Oaks. You guys know, for those who know about my work at Mighty Oaks and the veteran service organizations. And in my time staying around the military, I've got to see the most amazing men and women who serve our country. By the way, if you don't know, only half a percent of our country actually serve. So it's a very small percentage of our country that serves, who defend our country day and night around the world and keep our national security, keep us free. Go around the world to defend people

who can't defend themselves. And as I observed that 30 years, there's lots of lessons that I think as civilians and just the American culture can take from a military and probably none more than the lesson of service and sacrifice. If you look at America as a country and as a culture, we have a lot of problems in our country. But I think the single fundamental problem that we have in our culture is the problem of selfishness. That's a harsh word, no one likes to be called selfish. And I promise I'm a patriot, I love our country. But if you love something, you want to call out the weaknesses so it can be better. And so I will call out ourselves that we're a selfish culture, we're a selfish people because we're blessed, we're privileged. We live in this amazing little vacuum bubble of safety. And many times we don't travel outside of it, it's hard for us to see how amazing it is to be an American. And it leads us to this kind of selfish behaviors that we have. And if we're honest, most of us, me included, we live believing that the world revolves around us, right? That we are somehow the centers of our own universe. Our culture has long lost its heart for sacrifice and service. And your life, as important and precious as your life is, your life is not about you. John 15, 13 says this,

greater love has no one than this that someone would lay down his life for his friends. That verse is very popular and many people use it. Men's conferences, usually like banner at a men's conference on t-shirts, but how does someone truly get there? To be willing to lay down your life for someone else. What's it even mean, right? It could mean, how most of us probably interpret it, to physically and permanently lay down your life by being willing to die for someone else. But if you think about that for a moment, beyond the bravado or the heroism of how it sounds, choosing to die, the risk of death is one thing. Most of us in our life, we do things that are kind of crazy and risky and we risk death, but actually choosing to die, believing you're actually going to die and then choosing to lay down your life to trade it for someone else, the gravity of that is tremendous. The best example that we could have is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane before the cross, that you could see the gravity on him, pacing back and forth for over an hour, falling on his face, crying out to God for three times to take that cup from him, yet he chose to do it anyway for us, right? I've witnessed so many men in my time overseas traveling around the world in combat zones, men reconcile the gravity of that decision to die.

Men with wives and children at home, many of them with lives and futures ahead of them make the decision, not just for our national security or for their brothers to the left and right of them, but for all of us, Aaron and Shrum, all of us to be able to live free, for people in other countries that's not their own, that they never met before. Many don't even believe the same thing as them, willing to die for others. Most recently was just a few years ago in Ukraine. I know many of you have heard my son, Hunter, come here and talk about his time in Ukraine. I did 10 trips to Ukraine. If you don't know what happened in Ukraine in February 24th of 2022, President Putin put up about 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, Eastern Ukrainian border, and as a flex to see what we would do, not what Ukraine would do, what would America do? And when he did that flex, our White House made the decision to close our embassy and consulate, remove our dignitaries and our troops from Ukraine. What that created was a movement of all the European Union to do the same, and that gave a green light for President Putin without risk of what it's called an Article V violation to move into Ukraine, and since then, an invasion of Ukraine has taken place, and a war has taken place that's cost over a million lives,

and it's still going on as we see it here right now, by the way, and so when that happened, we made a decision, I say we, me and my friends and those I do humanitarian work with, made a decision to help get Americans out, because unfortunately, when our White House made these decisions, they made it several times the last years, we've left Americans behind, and so two weeks before February 24th, we had a friend of mine, Sea Spray, in the country there. I went the week after the invasion, and I've went 10 times since. Our team has went a total of 30 times, and before I move into the story, I'll tell you that I've gotten a lot of hate from mainly the Christian and conservative community of why we're going to Ukraine, and maybe some of you guys in here, maybe someone sent me an email. Why would you do that, right? 250 billion of our taxpayer dollars has went to Ukraine, and it's being corruptly misused, or not going where it's supposed to be. We have all the problems here in America. Like, why are you supporting this war? And I'll tell you, like, President Zewinski, in fact, is corrupt. I believe he's 100, like, totally corrupt, but so are people in Washington, D.C., and if you're surprised that a politician is corrupt,

you should probably read a history book, right? That's the history of politicians, right? The victims of that corruption are innocent women and children, and so for me, in the position I'm in, I don't care about President Zewinski, President Biden. I don't care about any president or political figure. I care about people, and as Christians, those who share my conservative views, if we ever let our politics get in the way of our compassion for people, we should probably change our politics, right? It's about people, and that's why we went to Ukraine, and that's why we did what we needed to do to go help these people, and so we're there for a couple of months. We're moving Americans out. We're doing our missions, growing and continuing, and on March 15th of 2022, my team, there were all about 10 of us. We're in a safe house in a town called Krakow, Poland, and we're planning, we're getting our gear together. We're just being guys, like in the house, having fun, laughing and joking, getting our gear together, and a call comes in. Usually how it works, it's usually late at night, because now you got to stay awake all night, right? Call comes in, and my buddy Seaspray is kind of leading our operations there. He gives the hand signal for us all to shut up

because it's an important call, like he's on the phone, and he's taking down notes, and we could tell, we're all waiting. He could tell us something important, and when he hangs up the phone, he notified us. He was on the phone with the Pentagon, and the Pentagon had reached out and told us about a Fox News reporter named Benjamin Hall. Many of you have probably heard about Benjamin Hall's story. This is kind of the behind-the-scenes story of it. Benjamin Hall had been catastrophically wounded. At that time, Kiev, not at that time, at that moment, Kiev was the catastrophe. the capital city of Ukraine was being taken by the Russians. It was their offensive to take out the capital city. And if Kiev fell, the war was over and Ukraine became the property of Russia, right? So there was a big offensive going on. Tanks coming in, ground troops, aircraft. Imagine, when you think of war, a lot of times you think of like Iraq, Afghanistan, but Ukraine's a first world country. I mean, when you think about a town like Kiev, think about Miami or Orlando, Washington DC, like apartment skyscraper buildings and MiG fighter jets firing rockets into places like you would live. Movie theaters, pizza parlors, daycares. That's what's going on. And so Benjamin Hall is covering it.

A rocket hits his team. The two Ukrainian escorts were killed immediately. The Russian, in the Ukrainian Fox News corresponded that Sasha was killed immediately. Couldn't even, we couldn't even find her body. Pierre Zizewski, incredible guy. Everyone at Fox News loves Pierre. A 25 year cameraman for Fox. He was in, he covered Afghanistan, Iraq, just incredible human being. He died instantly, but Benjamin was still alive. He had lost his feet. He had lost a hand. He lost an eye. He had shratten on his throat, had a brain injury. He was in bad shape. And as he's probably indicated, he probably had about 48 hours to live. And the White House, or the Pentagon had notified us that the White House was not gonna allow our special operations to go recover him or the CIA to go to recover him. So we were being asked to do it. And as he told us this story, he's like, he has about 48 hours to live. He has a wife and two little girls at home. If the people in this room right now don't decide to go get him, he's gonna die. Who's in? And everybody in that room raised their hand

and was willing to go. No one knew Benjamin. No one knew his wife or daughters, but everyone was willing to lay down their life and roll into that offensive in Kiev to go get him. And it was an amazing place to be in a room full of men like that that was willing to lay down their lives. And I'll tell you, like Pastor Mark talked about earlier, people around the world had helped provide the resources, including this church in Ocala, and God orchestrated that moment to be the exact timing to be capable of going get him. You can't just roll into a war zone as a civilian. You have to have thought about logistically how you're gonna do it. And we talk about this a lot. I talked about it in the business conference, access and placement, like how do you get there? And as we're looking at how we get around Ukraine, I mean, it wasn't very systemically organized about getting past checkpoints. We couldn't get a permit from the government to be able to do that because they have militias and different people like protecting these roads and access in their cities. The one thing that got around the country without restriction was emergency services, ambulances. I say it funny because I'm from Louisiana, ambulances. And so we bought two ambulances.

You guys helped us buy two ambulances that we got about an hour before we got this call from the Pentagon. And that God orchestrated this perfect timing. So we got some fluorescent yellow vests and some EMT caps, right? We're playing it up. We made some ID cards and got a stamp and some lamination. By the way, if you wanna know some tradecraft secrets, if you get a stamp and lamination, you could be pretty much anywhere in the world with that. It's too good. So we were ready to go, man. About an hour before we get this call, we got it. So we were ready to go and we rolled across that border. And it's not a quick trip, like 18 hours to get to, I mean, the roads are getting blown out from rockets. It was a haul to get there. Two teams, myself and C-Spray led two different ambulances and teams, and we got there. And when we got to Benjamin, he was on drip ibuprofen. That's what he was on. His body's like blown apart. I just showed Pastor Mark the pictures of it. He was in bad shape. And the hospital that he was in didn't wanna let him leave because we weren't doctors. So we stole him from the hospital. And we got him back to the boat. When we got him, we were talking,

coordinating with the Pentagon the whole time. When we got him to the border, we were able to hand him off to the 82nd Airborne of the United States military, put him in a Black Hawk helicopter. They flew him to Air Force Aeromedical Unit, which is like a flying hospital. They took him to Long Shoe, Germany, got him stable. And then eventually, one thing our government didn't do well was they treated him like a service member and got him to Brooke Army Medical Center where he was treated for his wounds. And if you guys hadn't heard Benjamin's story, he survived. And he has an amazing video of him on his prosthetics, dancing with his two little daughters. And got him home to his wife and little girls. It was an amazing thing to see. But we get back from this operation. We're like high-fiving, huge success. We're tired, we're about to go to sleep finally from being awake, from doing this. And then we get a call. Jennifer Griffith at Fox News. If you guys don't know, she's Fox News' White House Pentagon correspondent. And she had with her Pierre Jacewski's wife. And they wanted us to go get Pierre. And I made the decision. I'm like. We're not gonna go get Abadius.

As tragic as it is, I'm not gonna take our team, put them back at risk as Chias fall. And we thought Chias was gonna fall and take them into that risk and risk their life to go recover our body. We're just not gonna do it. But she said, Pierre's wife, Michelle, wants to talk to you. And he put her on the phone. And she, you know, in tears, sweetest lady. She said, I want my husband back. And I said, yes, ma'am. And I told the guys, the plan changed. We're going to get Pierre. Who else to go? And the guys, we put together a tootsie ball team. We rode the cross back into Ukraine. And we got to where Pierre's body is. It's not very easy to move a body out of a country. It might sound, you just throw him in the back of the car and drive him out. It's actually moving the remains of a human body across international borders around the world. There's a lot of restrictions on it for tons of different reasons. One is, you know, is something being smuggled inside his body? Does he have infectious disease? Right, who is he? Like all these things.

So we got all that coordinated. And one of the things I had to do was actually look into the coffin to make sure it was actually him. And I remember opening the coffin. He was like, it was, I was really happy to like, he was so dignified and treated so well. It was cleaned off. And as I put the lid back on, I noticed an Irish flag in the corner of the car. When I noticed this flag, I'm like, man, like it took me right back to our service members. When we come home to our families, how dignified we do it. We put the stars above their head. The red and white stripes go down to their feet. It's crisp, it's clean. It's a dignified way to bring our service members home and honor them to their families. And I thought, I need to get this flag on Pierre's coffin because he was Irish. But I didn't know if it was like green, white, orange, or orange, white, green. And so I Googled it. By the way, if you're wondering how I Googled it from, you know, war zone to Ukraine, this may upset you like it does me. Cell phone service works better in the mountains of Afghanistan or Ukraine than it does here in Ocala.

I don't know how that works, but it does. And so I Googled it and figured out the right way. And I started putting it back, putting it on. I got some rigorous tape, some duct tape, and placing it on. I was taking too long. So Seaspray came and he's like, what are you doing? What's taking you so long? And he saw me and my hand was like shaking. I was just like really worked up. And he's like, he grabbed my hand. He's like, you okay? And I'm like, no, I'm not. Like I need some help. So he helped me put that flag on. I put that flag on Pierre's body. And I had the honor of driving Pierre Zishesky out of Ukraine. We drove him to Krakow, Poland and, you know, delivered him personally in the middle of the night to Michelle, his wife. And it was just such a privilege to be part of something like that. But things like that, moments like that in my life has given me the honor to serve along such selfless men and see that willingness to people to lay down their lives for others. But aside from the sacrifice of physical death, laying down your life could mean more.

It could mean putting your needs, your goals, your hopes, your dreams, second to those you love. It could mean inconveniencing yourself for the benefit of others. It could mean putting in the hard work to rescue those spiritually lost. For me, those could be even more difficult. I mean, risking my, the risk of physical death is kind of an occupational hazard of the jobs I've chosen. So it seems like more inconvenient for me to selfishly lay down my goals and desires. That could be a struggle for me. I think most of us, if we're really honest, we could all be individually pretty selfless. But there's no place for selfishness in God's plan, right? The world and culture, right, it calls us to be selfish, to be happy, and to follow our dreams, set goals and ambitions, and put those above others. But the Christian life is sacrificial. For those that don't know, the founder of Mighty Oaks Foundation, where we've served hundreds of thousands of warriors from the military and first responder communities with these Christ-centered resiliency and recovery programs. Yeah, I was the founder, but it didn't start off with me as the founder. What started off with me was me falling on my face, and then God using people to do hard work to pursue me. By the way, even when I didn't want to,

when I was unwilling and refusing to get help, but God sent people to lay down their life for me, to pursue me and lead me to having a radical encounter with him, where my life would be changed forever. People that were willing, again, to lay down their lives. And when I finally got up, I turned around and helped the next guy. And that guy did the same, and so on and so on. That process of discipleship, as the Bible calls it, played out for a period of about 15 years, and over half a million warriors and their families and their communities have been impacted because of it. Now, that's not just the story of Mighty Oaks Foundation. That's God's remedy for our culture, and it's his plan to rescue the world and build the kingdom of heaven. Usually, when I travel around for Mighty Oaks and speak, I often get asked to share my personal testimony, and I'm asked to be able to make sure that as a spokesman for Mighty Oaks, I go to different communities and reach out. That way, they know Mighty Oaks is a resource. If a veteran, a first responder, or a spouse needs a program, that we're gonna be able to take care of them. No strings attached. As Pastor Mark said, we pay for the flights, everything. We get them that program to have that same encounter. for Jesus that I did. And as I go around the country and do this,

I usually have a flyer and I'll stand in the pulpit and make sure that everybody sees that flyer and I'll say, it's at the back table, right? If you're a veteran, a first responder, or a spouse and you need this program, come get the help you need, right? Let us lead you to hope. And always from this privileged kind of view that you have on a pulpit, I could see the wife nudging the husband, right? Like, hey, you need that, right? And in this one moment, this one day I was in a place called the Assembly at Broken Hour in Brooklyn, Oklahoma, and I'm given this message. It's a big congregation and there was two couples in there. And one was Pete and his wife, Heather. And Heather says she gave Pete that nudge. He was a Marine dealing with PTSD. He was having some substance abuse issues, anxiety, depression, he was suicidal. All of the things that he was dealing with, but Pete did like many veterans do. He gave all the reasons not to come. He said, I wanna take a spot from someone else. So he chose not to come, he was unwilling. Six months later, I got a call from Pastor Ron Woods, the pastor at church, and he told me what happened. Pete had stood in the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by police officers, held a pistol to his head.

And he said this, he said, tell my wife I love her and I'm doing this for her. And he took his life. And he said, Heather, the wife wants you to come, and you and your wife to come and talk to her. She wants to tell you about the other side of the story. And so we did. And I went there and Heather, one of the most courageous women I've ever met in my life. She's talked about how when she went to the morgue to see him, the police officers didn't wanna let her see him because he had a gunshot wound to the head. But she demanded it and they couldn't stop her. And so she wanted to see her husband. She could not reconcile and believe that he was actually dead. Even witnessing the gunshot wound that he had, she had to put her head on his chest as he laid on that cold metal table, try to summon, like hear a heartbeat, which she obviously couldn't find it. So she had to call the mom. He said how when she called Pete's mom, how she screamed, it would never be the same. She talked about being in her home and in the grief that she was having for losing her husband, needing her husband's comfort, but he wasn't there. And then she said this. She said, Pete thought that by killing himself,

he took away the pain, but all he did was transfer his pain to everyone that loved him. And Pete had a decision and he made the wrong one. Tragically, he made the wrong one. In that congregation, there was another couple, Reed Hastie and his wife, Amber. And Amber says she did that same nudge, but Reed made the decision to come get help, right? He became willing to get help, but there was a lot of obstacles in the way. Reed was in bad shape. He had anxiety and PTSD so bad that many days he would have to spend the night in a VA inpatient clinic where you're behind a thick glass because his panic attacks were so bad. He talked about how humiliating that was to have been an army soldier in charge of men and millions of dollars in equipment. And now he's behind a glass and can't be trusted with his shoelaces. And how he wanted to come to the program, but he couldn't get on the airplane because his claustrophobia was so bad, it would induce a panic attack. So we drugged him, right? We gave him some Ativan and got him on that plane and we got him to our camp in California. And we were not gonna let any obstacles be in the way

of leading him to hope and leading him to have an encounter with Jesus. And that week when he came, he had a radical encounter with Christ. His life was changed forever. He is an incredible human being. He's taught over 75 programs at Mighty Oaks. He became not only a team leader, but he became our instructor trainer for team leaders. And over the years of him doing such a great job, he heard about me going to Ukraine and he reached out. He's like, Chad, I wanna go to Ukraine with you guys. And I'm like, absolutely not for two reasons. One, I had not recognized how much healing he had because you always see people where they were and not where they are with human eyes. I'm like, man, you couldn't go to California. Now you wanna go to Ukraine? And two, most of the guys was bringing with all special operations guys. Reed was a combat engineer and he didn't have some of the training and stuff to be in an environment like that. But something in my heart said I needed to say yes. And so Reed came, the same guy, remember, couldn't go from California, from Oklahoma to California, flew to me with Houston. And we flew all across the world to Krakow, Poland, got in a car, drove across the Ukrainian border when everyone's driving out, right?

The customs agents are like, good job, good luck. And we drove all the way, 15 hours across Ukraine, past Kiev, once you pass Kiev, you're in Russian, you're getting into Russian territory. We got to a town called Kharkiv, which at that time was getting rocketed by ballistic missiles the size of telephone poles 14 times a day. As we're driving in, it's at nighttime, it's super eerie. Like if you turn the lights on your vehicle, you're going to get rocketed. So we're like, kind of, you feel like you have to whisper, like you're creeping through. And as we're creeping through, it's super quiet and real eerie. And one of my Ukrainian buddies comes on radio, breaks the silence and he says, welcome to Kharkiv. The only thing that lives here is Will Smith and his dog. If you remember the movie, I Am Legend, right? The apocalyptic scene of going there. That's what it felt like. That night we stayed in this compound that was for survivors. And man, we get rocketed in the middle of the night. And I wake up and the first person I see is Reed, who was like cool as a cucumber, not shaking at all. Next morning, we drive out to the front lines where troops are living in trenches, like mud, like trenches, like World War II. They're fighting.

I mean, they're like dying every day. The guys to the left and right are dying. We're like right there on the front line where they're fighting the Russians. And we get asked to speak to the troops to encourage them. And guess who these guys' jobs? What it was, the same job as Reed Hasty, combat engineers. That's what they were, combat engineers. I'm like, man, how could God not orchestrate the more perfect person to talk to them? And we got in this little building and Reed pulled up a chair. And I got a picture here. And he starts ministering to them and telling him his story about this encounter he had with Jesus. And as he's ministering to them, I'm looking at him and thinking this complete circle that God just doesn't bring these warriors to Body Oaks to get well, he puts them in position to do exactly what Reed was doing, sharing the gospel with them and encouraging them in the worst possible circumstance they could ever be in. And I thought, man, what if Pete didn't take his life? Would he be sitting here right here with us sharing that same story? You know, when we were back in that church that day in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, there's a lot of commonalities that could take place, us all being in the same building, us all being veterans.

But the most thing that all three of us, you know, Pete, Reed, and myself had in common is that God had a plan of purpose for us. He has a plan of purpose for all of us, right? But Satan knows that too. And Satan knew he had to take them out. He didn't want Pete to be a world changer and a kingdom builder like Reed Hasty is. And so he made a plan to take him out and he succeeded with one and he didn't succeed with the other. You know, there's a quote by Charles Spurgeon. I love this quote. It's so accurate. It says this, consider how precious a human soul must be that God and the devil will fight over it. Consider how precious a human soul must be when God and the devil are fighting over it. That's each of us. Every day, God and the devil are fighting over our souls and the souls of those to our left and right. We have to fight for them. We have to lay down our lives and risk everything to get them to hope, to get them to have an encounter with Jesus. There's eternal impacts if we don't. Is it hard to do that? Of course it's hard, right? Satan will put every obstacle in the way

to stop you from leading people to him or leading people to Jesus. It's gonna be difficult. And not just because of Satan, by the way, but because of culture and because of people. Pastor Mark will give me amen when I say that ministry would be easy if it wasn't for people. Like, we're the problem. Bringing broken people to a place of hope is difficult, but it's worth it. Now, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, and God must love it too because it's in three of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is a story of five friends. And one of these friends are paralyzed. And if you go to Luke 5, verses 17 through 19, it says this. One day, Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, and they had come from every village in Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Now, some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. And when they could not find a way to do it, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the towels

into the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. Now, if you're like me, right, oftentimes we just breeze through stories and we don't hit the pause button to realize how rich a story like this is. You could spend a week digging into this little, this little 30-second thing that I read. And, you know, we get on these Bible reading plans and stuff like that. I'm super organized. I love to do stuff like that. Some people say I'm OCD. I prefer to call it CDO because it's an alphabetical order. But we don't hit the pause button. This story's like so rich. First of all, you have a story of these amazing friends. Like, how much did they love this guy? That they were willing to do anything to get him to hope, to get him to Jesus. They didn't know who Jesus was, by the way, like we do, right? We get the privilege of reading after the fact. They just knew that this guy, Jesus, was healing people, right? Healing people in the name. And they thought, man, our friend's paralyzed. He needs healing. If we get into this guy, Jesus, our friend could be healed. Now, there's a lot of obstacles that go, that are in the way of them doing that. One of the biggest obstacles was probably

that he was unwilling. If you've ever been around a sick person or someone that's maybe paralyzed, right? They don't typically, they don't have the best attitude. They're probably pretty cynical. I mean, sure, he tried a lot of other things. He's been on that mat his whole life, right? The healthcare system was probably even worse than it is now, if you can believe that, right? He probably wasn't very willing. They were like, hey, we wanna get you this guy, Jesus. I'm sure he was rolling his eyes. Like, just leave me alone. Let me lay here on this mat, right? And he wasn't very thankful, probably. We get that a lot with the veterans. Everybody thinks that, oh man, you guys do this amazing thing for the veterans. They must be so grateful for you doing that. And I'm like, no, they actually hate us. Like a lot of them, a lot of guys who need it most and don't wanna get the help, they don't wanna hear about Jesus Camp, right? We have to bribe them with like steaks and cookies and four-wheelers and horseback riding. Or the military tells them, we can put you in a brig or the judge is like, we'll put you in jail. Or the wife's like, I'm gonna divorce you. Like all the things we have to bribe them with to get them there, right?

To get the unwilling to a place of hope is difficult. And those are the ones that we probably need to reach the most. The most difficult ones are the ones we have to put the hardest work in too, right? But in this case, this guy in this mat, he didn't have a choice. Why? Because he's paralyzed. His friends could pick him up on the mat and carry him. I'd say he probably might've went kicking and screaming, but he probably wasn't kicking because he's paralyzed, but they got him there, right? If you ever, again, imagine like, they had to be committed because they're carrying him on a mat. He's a limp body. I don't think anybody's carried a limp body before for an adult body. Don't raise your hand if you did, but they had to carry him, not just next door, but across town. And then they get there, right? And when they get there, the Bible says the room was so full, so crowded, they couldn't get inside. Sold out crowd, right? Jesus is speaking. And you think at some point they would say, okay, we'll try another day. These guys were committed to getting their friend

to a place of hope, to getting to Jesus. And so the Bible doesn't say how, but somehow these jokers figured out a way to get him on the roof. And then they got above where Jesus was. I think they looked inside and said, okay, Jesus is probably like 15 feet back. So they paced it out and they got over where Jesus was and they do something crazy. They start tearing off the roof. Like they're gonna get him to Jesus. And my mind gets the best of me at thinking how this took place. Because Jesus is in their packed out house and he's giving a message. And it was probably really good because it was Jesus, right? And all of a sudden a piece of dirt falls, light starts shining through, right? And some crazy guys. I mean, I get distracted if a baby's crying in the back. Jesus has four crazy dudes tearing a hole in the roof. Not a little hole, big enough to shove their friend through. Imagine what the homeowner who hosted this thing's thinking. I got tearing off my roof. And it's not like, I mean, you think of a roof, right? We got like a, here in Ocala, you probably got some track homes with a piece of plywood, tar paper, shingles,

Middle Eastern roof, thick mud, sticks. Like it's a scene and you're tearing off this roof. And then the Bible says they lowered him to Jesus. And again, my mind gets the best of me. Like how'd they lower him? Did they make a pulley system? Like some of the pictures show? I don't think they took the time to do that. I think, what I think happened was they're like, hey, he's already paralyzed. Jesus is gonna heal him anyway. You shove him through, he bounces, right? Nonetheless, so however it happened, they get into Jesus and Jesus heals the man. But a lot of things happen before Jesus heals him. In that room where Jesus was with the paralyzed guy, there were some fans of Jesus, but they were critics, right? They were skeptics. The Pharisees, the religious leaders, the haters. There were some haters in the room with Jesus and they wanted to catch him doing something wrong. So not only does he allow that, but he makes the greatest lesson for everyone in that room and for those who read this story today. Jesus does something crazy. Before he heals the man, he forgives him. He forgives him for his sins. In verse 20, it says, when Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven. Like, why would he do that?

Why would he forgive this guy of his sins before he heals them? If I took a paralyzed guy and put him on the floor before all of us and gave a pop quiz, like, what's his biggest need? We'd all get it wrong, right? Obviously, he can't walk. His biggest need is to be able to walk, make his legs work, right? That's his biggest need. But Jesus sees something more important and he demonstrates the priority of spiritual healing over physical healing, right? Why does what we do at Mighty Oaks works? The VA, I bash it a lot on the news, right? Because they do a lot of things right, but they do a lot of things wrong too. And the truth is, as good as the VA is with physical wounds and burns and prosthetics and all that stuff, you can heal someone's body and you can heal someone's mind, but until you heal someone's soul, they're never truly gonna be well. And Jesus heals the souls of men and nothing else, and no one else can do that besides him. Jesus said, your sins are forgiven, prioritizing the spiritual wound and healing his soul. And the haters in the room begin to think, blasphemy, right? Verse 21, they say, blasphemy. Who is this to forgive sins?

Only God can do that. And Jesus is like, yeah, that's the point because I am God, right? And Jesus knew their thoughts. And he says, you think that's a big deal? I'm kind of paraphrasing now. Like, hey, paralyzed guy, stand up and walk. And the man stands up and jumps up to his feet. He jumps up to his feet. In verse 26, it says, the people were amazed and they glorified God and they were filled with awe. And he said, we have seen remarkable things today. Listen carefully, because this is for all of us. When you stand up from where you were to where God has taken you, people will be amazed, right? And God will get the glory. Not me for a message or Pastor Mark or this church or Mighty Oaks. We all get to be a part of it, right? But God gets the glory and your story will bring hope to others. It will change our culture and our world and be part of building the kingdom of heaven. Like we have a responsibility, a duty, to bring others, if we're Christians, right? To bring others along the journey with us. We have a responsibility to get the unwilling to a place of hope, to get those who are lost and hurt and broken, whether paralyzed or spiritually lost or sins need to be forgiven.

We have a responsibility to get them to a place of hope, to have a radical encounter with Jesus, to be changed and transformed, so they could be the men and women they were created to be, to do things like Reed Hastie did, by being a world changer and a kingdom builder, right? We have a responsibility to do that, to tear off the roof for people. Is it gonna be easy? Of course not, that's not gonna be easy. You're battling a spiritual battle against someone that hates all of us, right? Satan, he wants to put every obstacle in the way. Here's a closing thought for you, as we kind of wrap up on the debate between selfishness versus selflessness. When you die, and by the way, you will one day, right? You can't get out of this world alive, you're gonna die. So when you die, I pray you find yourself in heaven. And when you do, you will be there because someone cared enough about you to be selfless and tear off the roof to get you to Jesus, right? That's why you'll be there. But the question is, who will be there because of you, right? Who will be in heaven because of you? Who are you tearing off the roof for? Who are you laying down your life for so that they see eternity? Your life, as precious as it is, it's not about you, right? You have a duty.

And the men that are in this room, I'll tell you, I think I was talking to Emily about the number of people that are coming tonight. After these three services today, you should be challenged by that and say, you know, at least someone that you could go out and that needs to be here tonight that you could tear the roof off for. You could, if they're unwilling, do everything in your power to have that so that they will have an encounter with Jesus. Thank you. Being together in this space today is really good. If you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, I'd like to invite you today to start following Jesus. It's not about your behavior. It's not about your church attendance. It's about the reality that Jesus is for you. God's not mad at you. He's madly in love with you. Would you right now pray this prayer with me? Hey God, it's me. I've sinned and I know it and I can't fix me. But today I receive you, Jesus, as my savior. I believe that you died on that cross for me and that you were buried for three days and then you became alive again. And I invite you into my life to guide me and direct me all the rest of the days of my life. And with that prayer, my friend, welcome to God's family.

I'd like to continue our friendship. If you would email me, pastor at hopeinokala.com. I'll follow up with you and together we'll celebrate Jesus in your life. Peace.