Restoration 2012: Restoring Power

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Restoration Ministry

John Bradshaw

Righteousness by Faith

Our Father and our God, we come to you in the name of Jesus, and we are thankful that we may.

I'm glad that there is a God in heaven who is a God who is love, a God of grace, a God of kindness.

You know, Lord, I'm just glad there's a God in heaven to begin with.

Imagine if we were just on our own down here.

Imagine if it was really survival of the fittest, or the richest, or the biggest, or the baddest.

Imagine if life was just random and there was no real cause.

They are worth everything because in the beginning God created you placed us here intentionally Purposefully with a reason in accordance with divine plan.

Thank you that everybody here tonight Anybody watching at this very moment anybody listening right now is worth something because you carefully designed that person or to exist for the purpose of spending eternity with you we have so much to live for tonight we thank you for your presence we pray that you would lead we ask you to speak and we beg of thee give us grace to hear Thank you for this time we pray in Jesus' name.

We are here in the shadows of an eminent and august academic institution.

We are here in the shadows of an academic institution through which have passed, I cannot say innumerable because obviously that would be hyperbole, but many scholars who have gone on to do great things in this world and great things for God.

It causes a person walking around a place like this to reflect upon one's academic opportunities.

I got an email just today from my brother who has a master's degree in public health and has been trying to cram his doctorate into about the last third of his life.

He's been doing it, it reminds me a little bit of a chipmunk nibbling at the base of a sequoia in the hope that 1 day the sequoia will fall over.

He's doing it just a little bit at a time.

We talked once and he said, you know, I just think I'm gonna apply to Loma Linda and just get my doctorate done.

I'm gonna come over there and just get my doctorate completed.

And he emailed me today and he said a friend of mine just said you'll regret it man if you don't get that done.

So he said he's going to throw his hat in the ring again and see if he can work it out financially and all that kind of a thing to take a couple of years and come here.

You think about academics around here and I've been reflecting, I've been reflecting on 1 of the, 1 of the low points of my academic career.

Happened a few years ago when I was undertaking, I was undertaking a math assignment.

1 of the low points of my academic career.

You see, in New Zealand the school year starts in February, it finishes in December.

It's not like in the northern hemisphere in the United States where you go from summer to summer.

Well, it is, you get from summer to summer, but it's a different configuration.

And my birthday was in the middle of the year, and so I got through the first 2 grades or so in the first 2 years, a year and a half, and then the nuns decided that it would be a waste of my time to bother with the third grade and I agreed and so they put me right up to the fourth grade at the age of 6 years old.

And I was, I spent 4 years in fourth grade.

Fourth grade, they put me up to fourth grade.

I didn't spend 4 years there at all, I'm just saying that.

But we jumped third grade and I was 6 years old and I'm in fourth grade, and we're doing math, it's the very beginning of the year.

And I looked down at either the book or the page, I know not which now, And I realized that I was stuck.

It might as well have been hieroglyphics.

And the other students were busily working their way through the stuff.

They were like 8 years old, all grown up, maybe 9 even.

And there I was, a six-year-old kid, wrestling with this deep, difficult academic assignment in math class.

Now the good thing about it was I was in Mrs.

Mounsey's class and she was just the greatest teacher anyone ever had.

She believed in kids and she was, oh she was a wonderful human being, but there I was fourth grade looking at this stuff and I realized I'm not going to be able to do it and I felt terrible and I looked over here and here's some big kid doing the work and I look over there and there's another 1 doing the work and I look down and my page is blank.

That's the reason they bumped me up a class, is because everything just came so easy.

And now I'm looking at these math equations, oh, advanced calculus, if I remember correctly, it was fourth grade.

And I look at this and I'm thinking, oh man, I'd never had this problem in my life.

And I looked and they were showing me no sympathy.

They were just pushing ahead and I felt terrible.

Mounsey empathized, recognized the trauma I was experiencing, came to my side.

I'm sure she put a kind hand either on my shoulder or on my back.

She was Miss Ingalls when I first met her.

Mounsey because she met Lloyd Mounsey and they got married.

And I'll never forget that wedding because the wedding was not in our church.

She was not of our faith and the wedding was in a funny little church because if they weren't our church they were all funny little churches down the street and we had to get a special dispensation to be allowed to attend the wedding.

Because it was just not the done thing for us kids from St.

The way I was raised, I was raised to believe that if you didn't go to my church you were going to hell.

I mean nothing personal, it's just how it was.

If you don't want to join us, you've made your bed, you lie in it.

They gave us special permission to go to Mrs.

Mounsey's wedding at the church down the street, actually down 2 streets.

It was only a little town, down 2 streets, and we could go to that wedding.

She was just a wonderful person and I hope 1 day I get the opportunity to tell her that she positively affected my life.

Well, she came to me and she said, John, what's the problem?

And I said through tears, I mean real tears, Mrs.

The truth is I can remember the very problems we were doing.

I'm not going to tell you what they were, but I can remember them and looking at them and going, what is this?

And she explained, she put her finger on the page and she said, will you see this?

She said, well this means this, and then if you do this with this and you do the thing, and I said, oh really?

And in just moments, I breezed on through, got finished, the rest of the kids were still toiling, and I said, hey, I'm better than I thought.

I had such a difficult time with that math assignment to begin with.

I don't know if any of anyone else here is from a civilized country, but we call it maths.

There I was toiling with that traumatizing maths assignment, and I couldn't get it done.

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Righteousness by Faith

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