Our selfish hearts recoil from the people that Christ most often reached out to -“the least”. And we’re often missing His ways right in our own homes.

National Family Retreat 2016: In His Steps

<p>Our selfish hearts recoil from the people that Christ most often reached out to -“the least”. And we’re often missing His ways right in our own homes.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Restoration International

Tom Waters

In His Steps

I'm surely thankful for all those prayers.

Of course, you just heard that 1, but we had prayer back there in the green room, and Paul had prayer.

It's kind of a custom, but it's more than a custom for Paul and I to always make sure that if we don't connect with the busyness of a retreat, that at least at the 11 o'clock hour we find each other and pray together.

I said to Vivian this morning, because she saw us praying together, Paul and Elaine and I, and then she says, do you still want prayer out here?

I said, you know that song, Standing in the Need of Prayer?

And so I would ask you as well, as I'm sharing this morning, that if the Lord puts it on your heart that you would lift Your hearts in prayer for me to be sensitive To the Holy Spirit as we share together this morning.

I want to also welcome our live stream viewers.

Happy that you're with us on this beautiful Sabbath day here in Oklahoma.

And it just warms my heart to see this auditorium nearly full.

I remember the first time we moved here and we're very grateful as a team for all that Oklahoma Conference has done and being able to use the facilities.

But I remember thinking the first time we were here, well, we have a lot of room to grow here.

And I'm just so thankful to see how God has worked in each of our hearts and that we're desiring to be here in this place today because God has special blessings and we are living in very unusual times.

And I think there's going to be some very unusual things that are continuing to happen as we see things closing around us.

But today we're gonna talk about being in His steps, which is our theme.

And I just have to tell you that my heart today is very full in terms of feeling my need of God, my need of a Savior, because as I have been over the months preparing my thoughts, no 1 will ever know all the thoughts that have gone through my mind and all the different ways of wanting to approach this, but I can tell you this very clearly, that today I stand before you recognizing more than I have ever recognized before how often I fail to be in the steps of my Savior.

That has been 1 of the biggest blessings for me in this theme, personally.

So when I say to you this morning that my heart is full, it's full largely because of what I have benefited from in preparing for this message today.

And it's 1 of the things, I guess I would call it a major blessing that many people are missing.

Maybe you would have more meaningful time with God if you knew you had to come up here and tell everybody about what God was doing in that time.

Well, and I take this, I take this privilege and this opportunity at this 11 o'clock hour, which is always, at least for the RI team, has always been a sacred and blessed privilege to be here.

I want you to open your Bibles to Matthew 25.

The Bible is full of the steps of our Savior, of our God.

But this is what I'm going to open with today, Matthew 25, and verse 34 to 40.

And then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world.

And this morning, as I read those words again, you know, I don't mind being vulnerable with you because I love you.

And I love you because I'm asking God to put that love in my heart.

But I read those words again this morning, words that I've read many times and the tears just started to flow.

He's saying to us as His children, Come, ye blessed of my Father, and inherit the kingdom that's prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

I was in prison and you came unto me in the righteous answer saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you or thirsty and gave you something to drink.

When saw we thee as a stranger and took thee in naked and clothed thee?

When were you sick and we came to prison to visit you?

And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto 1 of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

This is the passage that I'm sharing with you because when all things are boiled down at the end of time, when we stand before the judge of the universe, This is what it all boils down to.

It's not theologically complicated but Jesus is going to find out and we are going to find out.

The sheep and the goats will be separated, and we're gonna find out if we have really been following in his steps, not just going through the motions, but whether we have actually been following in his steps with the spirit that he wants to put in us to really have the attitude.

And I'm going to explain this as we go through the message this morning.

Because I want to just tell you that I do not always have the attitude that's conveyed in this scripture.

We were coming home late 1 evening from traveling.

We fly in and out of Las Vegas because for us It's the closest airport.

But the 99-Cent Store in Kingman, Arizona was still open.

And we needed to pick up a few things there because basically everything in that store is 99 cents.

Well, it's actually 99.99 cents, so it's a dollar.

But it's not the dollar store, it's the 99 cent store.

And so we went into the dollar store there, the 99 cent store, and we were on a mission.

Now I have to say this, that you men understand generally speaking, sometimes it's reversed we had a woman come up to us recently and she said, it's just the opposite in our home I'm the 1 that's just single focused and I'm the 1 that's just 1 track mind in my husband but generally speaking men are single focused.

So we went into the store we my wife and I kind of split up and I knew what I was looking for and she knew what she was looking for.

We want to get in and out of there as quick as we can and get home.

We like being at home because we're not home very much or sometimes not as much as we like to be home.

And so as I was walking down the aisle, I noticed a man.

He caught my attention and I was, you know, preoccupied, but he caught my attention enough to recognize, this was not your usual shopper in the store.

He was, his hair was pretty matted and quite dirty and he was, he was quite dirty.

And I found myself just in that instant having a thought, just, just a passing thought.

Well, it was the Holy Spirit trying to interrupt my preoccupation with my mission in the 99 cent store.

And you know, man, sometimes that's hard when our minds are preoccupied.

It's hard, and you know it happens in your marriage and with your children, and if we're focused on something.

But I just, you know, passed him by, and maybe he's 1 of these homeless people or something, but he doesn't have a sign saying, you know, I need work or hungry.

I just passed by and we got our stuff and we came to the line and My wife was in front of me and I was unloading things out of the basket.

And I didn't really notice other than I just saw eventually this guy was in the line in front of her.

And so we did our things and we went out and as soon as we got outside my wife is just looking.

She's looking, almost frantically looking.

For the next 2 hours, she told me, because it didn't end just with our drive home, it's an hour and a half drive home, but it didn't end there.

And she told me what was in her heart in that situation that was very different than what was in my heart.

She said, that man who was standing in the line tonight, She said, did you see how much dirt was actually stuck on his legs?

His skin was so sun-baked, dry and cracked.

She said, when I listened to the clerk, this is the 99 cent store, this is not a high end store where you're supposed to be very careful how you treat your high-end customers.

She said, I listened to the clerk greet this man as a gentleman, as a sir.

She said she treated him with respect and tenderness, and she said the Holy Spirit began to call to my heart as his items, 9 little items were all rung up for a total of 9 dollars.

And she said, I watched him fumble in his dirty, filthy wallet and she said, I saw him pull out the 1 dollar bills, 9 of them, and there was 1 dollar left.

And she said at that moment everything inside of me, I knew that God was asking me to stop this for a moment and say, I want to pay for that.

And she said, that moment was lost because I hesitated.

I hesitated because I thought well my husband should really do this I should ask him if it's okay because this is a man you know how we think right and I understood but when my wife is telling me this story on the way home, she is Weeping the tears are running down her face, and I said honey Okay honey, I mean I understand but but I mean, you're just overcome.

She said, I can't get this picture out of my mind.

I know what God wanted me to do tonight, to reach out to the heart of that person who is in need, and I missed that opportunity, and I never want to miss an opportunity like that again.

And by the end of that evening, my heart was so moved with compassion for that man and so aware of how preoccupied my mind was in that situation that I totally, almost totally missed it.

By the time my wife finished sharing with me the deep burden of our heart I said we So we need to do something about this.

Because everywhere we go, when we're traveling in our car, we seem to run into people, somewhere or another, that have this kind of situation.

There's people that actually, they just go out there with their little cardboard thing, and they make more money than a lot of people make.

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In His Steps

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