Transcript of a published conference session by Marrell Cornwell, transcribed from YouTube. An attributed primary source — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
Opening: another wave, and the conference commended
- He opens on the ocean: there is more than one wave in it, and he feels another wave coming. What brother Libby said that morning was awesome, he says, not only for what was said but for the presence of God that came with it — and his own message runs so parallel to Libby's that he felt no urgency even to get up.
- Since they started Wednesday night, the Lord has moved in every session, and they have gathered bits and pieces from each one. He commends the steering committee and the sponsors: the meeting reaches far beyond the crowd in the room, because tapes from sessions like these bless people anywhere in the world, and the presence of God this year is even more unique than in any year he has been coming.
The subject announced; the preacher who came back three times
- Mindful of the watch this afternoon, he announces his subject: the spirit of setbacks. Any task worth pursuing will be difficult, he says — the reason there are not more churches running five hundred or a thousand is that it is not as easy as it looks. Young ministers have gone out from his church with the grandiose idea that if Cornwell can do it, anybody can do it; they watched from the sidelines instead of rolling up their sleeves, had a momentary spurt of success, then faced setbacks and called him, mad that he had made it look easy.
- His answer to them is the attitude they carried out the door: I'm not going to do it for Cornwell — I'm going to wait till I get out on my own and do it for myself. One preacher is now in his church for the third time, having left twice with that attitude and met major setbacks each time. Cornwell called him in, had him bring his wife, and addressed him as "Jackalanter": you are not winning souls for me — if you are not winning souls for Jesus Christ, you are not winning them for anybody, and until you find out why you are having major setbacks you will always be set back. The change was the fastest he has ever seen; in the last year the man has become one of the most dynamic soul winners he has ever seen, and is now ready to go out on his own.
The Nehemiah text read
- He directs the congregation to Nehemiah chapter two and reads the opening of the chapter aloud: the month Nisan (captioned "Nissan"), the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (captioned "Arc Xerxes"), the wine before the king and Nehemiah giving it to him, Nehemiah sad in the king's presence though he had never been sad there before, the king's question, Nehemiah's fear, and his answer — why should his countenance not be sad, when the city, the place of his fathers' sepulchres (captioned "separate"), lies waste ("lith") and its gates are consumed with fire — the king's "For what dost thou make request?", Nehemiah's prayer to the God of heaven, and his request to be sent to Judah, to the city of his fathers' sepulchres, that he may build it.
- He stops the reading there — he is not going to take the time to finish reading it — and frames what follows: Nehemiah had setbacks before he ever left the king's house, orders in hand.
Scriptures: Nehemiah 2:1-5
Setbacks one and two: a secular job, and a slave
- Before the list he deals with rank: it does not matter what size church a man pastors — he puts his shoes on one at a time, needs no head table, and feels no more important than anybody else. The "big guy and little you syndrome" has to go; what builds great churches is the ability to overcome setbacks, regardless of who you are.
- The count, when he reaches it, is about fourteen things in Nehemiah's life that were setbacks. Number one (12:55): Nehemiah had a secular job — pressed against the excuse that a man cannot do the work of God while he works a job. A pastor in his office all day with dysfunctional people is doing what a psychiatrist does; every church has its percentage of "granola bars" — nutty, fruity, and flaky people, most of his on the front row — and the bigger the church, the more nuts it has.
- Number two (14:53): Nehemiah was a slave — and every minister sooner or later feels entrapped. He calls himself a bond slave, glad to be emancipated for a few days by the Alabama invitation, booked almost a year ahead. To the man who called him a dictator he answers with the 3 a.m. story: a member's little girl sick in the night, the call that was an order — "Come right away" — the hospital until seven in the morning and the call back when she worsened. He has a thousand bosses.
Setbacks three to six, and the Wichita tornado
- The list runs on: number three, Nehemiah had never been to where he was going — he was probably born in captivity, after nearly seventy years there. Number four, he had never built anything — with the riff that all problems are temporary, there are no permanent problems, and a preacher must get into the solution business, not the problem business. Number five, he had never been a leader of men — he was a butler to the king, used to taking orders, not giving them. Number six — introduced "Number seven. Number six." — he had never seen a broken-down wall or a city burned with fire.
- From the burned city he turns to Wichita: a tornado there at the same time as the one in Oklahoma City, in his telling. Families in his church lost their homes and there were deaths in the church; a little girl had her legs cut off; one of their kids was thrown over a mile and landed on his head in the street. His church stood on the tornado's fringes and immediately became the Red Cross Relief Center — the federal government, the state government, and the National Guard working out of it for about a month, with nearly everybody affected by the storm coming through its doors.
Setbacks seven to fourteen
- Number seven: Nehemiah had never dealt with discouraged people — and God called ministers to encourage the people, not the people to encourage the preacher, and the church to encourage the world. He reaches back almost thirty years to a conference of five thousand preachers, a ministerial training week, not apostolic, where the speaker — whose Sunday school had run 30,560 the Sunday before — said the one word he still remembers: "I determined years ago to use my ministry to build people rather than use people to build my ministry." He sat right here for one hour a few minutes ago, he says, and sucked brother Libby dry; there are set-aside times to receive, and then a man goes back out and gives.
- The numbering slips as the rest come fast: "Number eight. Number nine," he had never stood by himself; number ten, never dealt with people who would not cooperate; then number eight restated — never dealt with enemies, who always had somebody else fighting his battles; "Number 10. Number 11," never motivated anybody; number twelve, never dealt with volunteers — God does not use volunteers, he drafts; a volunteer can quit any time, and the man who goes AWL (AWOL) after God calls him is in big trouble; number thirteen, never dealt with debris or rubbish; number fourteen, never dealt with setbacks. Without those fourteen situations in his life, Nehemiah still rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in record time — fifty-two days.
Moses: the birth read, his own almost-adoption, and the ego
- The second movement is the life of Moses. He directs the congregation to Exodus chapter two and reads: there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi, and the woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw he was a goodly child (captioned "a god") — and stops: "I don't have to read all this." Moses was set back from the start: he could not be hidden, was put in a basket in the river, and then was adopted.
- Cornwell tells his own almost-adoption: his mother had so many children she ran out of names and let the nurse name him; his father's boss came and offered — "Walter Laner, y'all have so many kids and we can't have no kids. Would y'all give us this one?" — and would have paid all the bills and given them money. His parents kept him; he is still mad about it. All his father left him was a few dollars and a Prince Albert tobacco can.
- Moses first operates out of an ego, and most God-called preachers start with a huge ego. At Crossroads, Mississippi, pastoring fifteen people, he could not figure out why the Mangans did not resign and let him pastor — he would have had that church running a thousand; later, running a thousand himself, he wondered if a church running nineteen was open. Do not try to knock the ego out of young preachers; let God do it. The young Mexican preacher in his church now, whose ego is bigger than the building and who irritates everybody, is exactly what he was: "He's just like you was. Leave him alone." And circumstances do not call a man — not the mama who tells her boy that when he was a baby with pneumonia the doctors gave him up and God spared him. "Shut up, mama." Only the calling of God carries a man through the setbacks that come.
Scriptures: Exodus 2:1-2
The Egyptian killed, the forty years, and Ruben
- Moses went out and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and his ego killed the Egyptian, on the stupid idea that the brethren would stand behind him. Cornwell's own version: the brethren got him to introduce a resolution on the district conference floor — "We're behind you" — then got up and spoke against it themselves; the vote was 47 to 1, and he wishes he had changed his vote. Moses' mother (captioned "Jacobed") had told him his fate sealed his calling; the next day the fighting Hebrews rejected him — "We don't know your mama. Who are you?" A major setback — "a minor setback for fact 40 years."
- Brother Patterson gets the encouragement for the older men: more than seventy percent of the fastest-growing churches in America are pastored by men over fifty-five. Moses may have forgotten how to talk in forty years, but he went to the burning bush (captioned "burning bullet") and was renewed in his vision — this time not from ego, but from a calling.
- His own son closes the movement: Ruben, ten years old, adopted, who loves science and dissecting — when you kill a deer he gets right down on the ground to watch and name the body parts, so his mama had been saying he would be a doctor. On the way home from church she asked him, "Ruben, you still want to be a doctor?" "No, I don't want to be a doctor." "Why?" "They have to go to work every day. ... I think I'll just be an assistant pastor."
The called man's setbacks, and the Bible-study joke
- He dramatizes the confrontation: "Let my people go." "I don't know your God. Who is this God?" Moses throws the rod down; the magicians throw theirs down; one miracle is not going to be enough — one battle is not going to get the war done, and some things you have to keep going back after, time and time again. He tells how he was kicked out of the first four Bible studies he taught, for using a Pentecostal Bible instead of a Baptist Bible, and demonstrates the teaching: the student is told to turn to Genesis chapter one, verse one, and read — "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." His punchline turns on the student's Bible: Apostolic Bibles read like this — "In the beginning, God created Acts 238." The verse itself is read aloud in full as text; the punchline is his joke on the shorthand.
- With a Baptist Bible, a Methodist Bible, a Presbyterian Bible, and a Church of Christ Bible he started winning people. Then his own flat statement, carried as his statement and not as a reading: the Bible says you have to be baptized in Jesus' name or you will go to hell. He had setbacks because of his own stupidity, he says; God's word as he quotes it is to be harmless as doves and wise as serpents (captioned in his form, "wise as rattlesnakes") — and he has the congregation stand.
Scriptures: Genesis 1:1
Standing close: Kadesh, the bully, and the foundation
- Standing, he gathers it up: Moses finally got the people out of Egypt and had setbacks all the way to the Jordan, to Kadesh Barnea, where he made a foolish mistake — he should have gone over into the promised land himself, sneaked over at night and come back and said, "Fellas, this is going to be easy." From knowing whether the other fellow can beat you, he tells of the school bully: he was the smallest kid in school from kindergarten through the twelfth grade, five foot seven as a junior, and the bully kicked his bicycle over with him on it and beat him up for years.
- A man's ministry is not built on the people, he says — it is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone (the wording voiced, no source named); strength drawn from people leaves a man discouraged and set back for years, but a ministry built on the calling of God stands. He used to go to seminars that taught how to close the church's back door; now he goes to seminars teaching how to open them back up — he does not want to keep everything that comes into his church.
The couple sent to the other three churches; the Wichita layoff
- A couple moved to his church last month on a job transfer and sat in his office wanting to join. Before he would accept their letter, he gave them the addresses and pastors' phone numbers of the other three churches in the community: "You can't come here yet." "Pastor, you don't want us." "Not in the shape you're in. ... As long as you think you have other choices, I never will be your pastor" — and they were not going to threaten to leave every time something went wrong. They went to the other three churches first.
- Then Wichita's own setback: the aircraft collapse. Cessna fallen from 25,000 employees to a captioned "to500," Boeing from 25,000 to 9,000, over thirty-six months in which his church lost ninety families — and still came out three hundred ahead, with a new building just built and needing money.
The close he chooses: the platform Bible study
- He has eight more pages of notes and no time to preach them, so he chooses his close: the Bible study he once taught on the platform, before the whole congregation — better quality, he jokes, than the one twenty years ago; the jokes are the same. At the end of the eleventh lesson they baptized thirteen, and in the twelfth the family bowed their heads and repented, unaware there were seven hundred people watching. People came afterward saying, "Pastor, this is how you do it. ... This is what I do ... in every home I go in," and some of their greatest Bible-study teachers came out of that training session. He has it on audio tape and on videotape (captioned "videape"). He blesses the congregation and thanks them for letting him come to Alabama.
Scripture index: Nehemiah 2:1-5; Exodus 2:1-2; Genesis 1:1.
Transcript
Can I remind you that the ocean has more than one wave in it? And I feel another wave coming. Turn to your neighbor and say, "There's still more." I want to say first of all, wasn't that awesome? It's it's not just what brother Libby says, but it's the presence of God that's with him when he says it. Amen. I want to take just a few moments because my message or what I'm going to do is so parallel to what brother Libby has already done that I did not feel an urgency that I even needed to get up here. But can I remind you that since we started Wednesday night, the Lord has moved in every session. We have got bits and pieces from each one of those sessions. Can I have an amen? And I want to commend first of all the steering committee and the sponsors of this meeting that the this meeting is far more reaching than just the crowd that's right here or here last night. the kind of tapes that are produced especially from a sessions like today it will bless anybody anywhere in the world and there's been a very unique presence of God this year even more so than any of the years that I have been coming and I I think maybe there might be some reason for that. I understand first of all that you just finished a tremendous camp meeting with brother Suber here in Alabama and that has carried over into this meeting. I praise God for that. Secondly, I want to commend brother Lewis and the district board for being a part of this meeting. I understand there are board members that's on the steering committee. brother Lewis our district superintendent has been so much behind this meeting and where where there is unity there is strength. Can I have an amen? No one fire can do it all. No one match can do it all. is when we we add each thing that happens in our meetings and each thing that adds to our lives only makes the district and revival that much closer to being real. Can I have an amen? Praise God. I want to take a few minutes and I am cognizant of the time and I certainly do not feel that I need to have all the time that there is available and I'm going to be cognizant of of the watch this this this afternoon. I'm just going to take a few minutes but I want to talk about the spirit of setbacks. Has anybody here ever had a setback in your life? Now, I'm not I didn't take brother I did take a lot of notes from brother Libby, but I'm not using his notes. I have my own set of notes. And all I know to do is do what I feel when I prayed. Can I have an amen? Any task that is worth mentioning or or any task that's worth pursuing is going to be a very difficult task. The reason that there are not 500 churches in the United Pentecostal Church not running a thousand because it's not as easy as it appears to be. And the reasons there are not more churches running 500 is because it's not as easy as it seems to be. I've had a lot of young ministers that have gone out from our church with this grandiose idea that if Cornwell can do it, anybody can do it. And they have watched me do it. And rather than rolling their sleeves up and getting in to the filth and the grime of hammering it out, they observed from the sidelines.
And then when they got out there, they had a momentary spurt of success and then they faced setbacks and they called me up and say, "Pastor," I said, "Yes. I hope you don't mind me calling you. I said no I don't. I said it has been a long time since we have communicated. He said well he said a number of them have said well I I I really never intended to communicate with you again because I thought it was going to be easy out here. And he said I'm really mad at you. I said why? He said because you made it look so easy and it's not as easy as you make it look. And he said, "Do you by any chance have a word for me?" And I said, "No, but I got a few sentences." Some people's problems need more than a word, folks. Praise God. And well, what is your word? I said, "You had an attitude when you was here coming up that bless God. I'm not going to get in there and do it for Cornwell. I'm I'm going to wait till I get out on my own and do it for myself. Does that ring a bell? And I have one preacher that has been in my church twice. He's in my church now for the third time. And he came back the third time with the same attitude that he left the first two times. And I decided that he was going to leave again anyway. So I don't have anything to lose. I love to get in those positions of nothing to lose. And I called him in and I said, "You have got probably the worst attitude of anybody I have ever seen in my entire life." I said, "You've come here a number of occasions and you've left and each time you've left, you've had major setbacks. You did not survive those setbacks and you're back here again." I said, "Would you like to know the truth?" And he said, "Yes, sir, I would." I said, "Well, you bring your wife in. Let's talk about the truth of both of you, cuz y'all both seem to have this minor problem." And so, he went and brought her in, and I said, "Did you say to some of our other preachers in our church that you're just not going to do it for Cornwell? You're going to wait till you get back out on your own. If I'm g if I'm gonna win souls, I'm gonna do it for my own self. I said, ' Let me tell you something, Jackalanter. I said, you're not winning souls for me. If you're not winning souls for Jesus Christ, you're not winning them for anybody. And until you find out why you're having major setbacks in your life, you're always going to be set back. And I have never in all of my years seen a preacher change so rapidly and so quickly as this young man and his wife did. It almost like I hit him with a sledgehammer. And in the last year he has become one of the most dynamic soul winners I have ever seen. And now he is ready to go out on his own and probably will not experience the setbacks that he has been experiencing before. Look at Nehemiah chapter number two with me, please. Oh my God, there's an anointing up here. There's just a presence of God that's in this house. Amen. In Nehemiah chapter 2, it came to pass in the month of Nissan, in the 20th year of Arc Xerxes the king, that the wine was before him. And I took up the wine, and gave it unto the king, and now I had not been before times, sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said unto me, why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart. And then I was afraid, and said unto the king, Let the king live forever. Why should not my countenance be sad? When the city of my when the city the place of my father's separate lith waste, the gates thereof are consumed with fire. Then the king said to me, for what does thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, if it pleased the king, if thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou would send me unto Judah to the city of my father's separate, that I may build it. I'm not going to take the time to finish reading that. You already know the story of the Nehemiah. He was the cup bearer to the king. his brothers came and he asked their welfare and and he they said, "Well, the city's burned, the gates are burned, the walls are torn down, it's nothing but a rubbish pile." Now, he had heard this many times in his life, but this time it something was different and he could not sleep. He could not eat. He went into a spirit of intercessory prayer and he came back before the king the next day. He was sad the king's presence. The king recognized
and said, "What in the world is wrong with you?" And he blurted out this burden of wanting to go back to Judah and Jerusalem and rebuild the walls in the city of Jerusalem that was so dear to him. I think we all have a burden to do what God wants us to do. Can I have an amen to that? Nehemiah had about 14 things that was going to make it very difficult for him to do what his burden wanted to do. I know that you may not believe this. Brother Libby has said a little bit about it this morning, but it doesn't matter what size church you pastor. We're not fellowshipping on the basis of the size of our churches or congregations. Can I have an amen? I don't feel important because of the size of my church. I don't feel important because of the size of our budget. I don't feel different than anybody else. I put my shoes on one at a time and I put my socks on whether they dirty or not. One at a time. I don't feel like I'm supposed to have special privileges. My wife knows how to bring me down the sides if I get too lifted up. I mean, do you understand what I'm saying? I'm here because I simply I was asked to come and said yes. I don't deserve to be here. I didn't ask to be here. I'm not imparted because I'm here. this just happens to have fallen my lot and so I'm here and we're sharing together. Can you have an amen? You got to get rid of this inferiority complex that we're in. Like I'm not as important as the next guy. That's a bunch of hogwash. Amen. I mean, when I leave that pull pit, I like to fellowship with people and shake hands, shoot the breeze, praise God. I don't feel like I need to sit at a head table nowhere. Nobody needs to wait on me or serve me. I got two hands. I can serve myself. Praise God. But we got this big guy and little you syndrome that needs to be dealt with. But there's not a small class of people and only them can build good churches. What builds great churches is our ability to overcome setbacks regardless of who we are. Can I have a witness? Now, let's talk about some of the setbacks and some of the things that we feel set us back. Number one, Nehemiah had a secular job. Well, if I was full-time like some of them other guys, what do you think pastors do all day? What is the difference between a psychiatrist sitting in his office listening to dysfunctional people and a and saying he's got a job and a pastor sitting in his office all day working with dysfunctional people? Every church has a certain percentage of people that are just pure nuts. Every church has granola bars in it. Nutty, fruity, and flaky people. And most of mine sit on the front row. Can I have an amen? I have one row that is nothing but people and and and they worship God. They don't even they don't have the foggiest idea what they're doing. And it but they anoint the preacher. He thinks they're there with him. And every altar call, you got eight people automatically in the altar because they all come up every service. I had to explain to our preachers, look, leave the fruitcakes alone and pray for somebody else. Can I have an amen? The bigger your church is, the more nuts you have. Amen. But we got this idea that we cannot do the work of God because we have to work on a job. Number two, Nehemiah was a slave.
Now, I can elaborate a lot on this one, okay? Because every one of us sooner or later feels entrapped. I am a slave. I am a bond slave. I was so glad when I got the invitation to come to Alabama. I looked f as soon as I got the invitation. I called the travel agent and said, "Book my ticket." That was almost a year ago. Praise God. She said, "Well, you need to wait a little while. because it was so refreshing to know that for a few minutes somebody's going to emancipate me. I am emancipated. Hallelujah. I didn't come to Alabama sad. My God, I was liberated from Kansas because I know when I get home Sunday night or Sunday morning with a service over, they're going to line up outside my office by the droves want to enslave me again. Someone someone got mad at me the other day and said, "You get to do anything you want to do. You You're always dictating. You're a dictator." As if though that was a bad word. Yes, I am a dictator. My God, what do you think authority is? But I'm a wonderful dictator. And when everything's going wrong and there's no answers, I just stand square in a pulp and say, "I be the bishop here." And that usually solves a lot of problems. When there are no answers, I am the answer. And I said, "Well, first of all, who's telling you what to do?" Well, really, it was his wife doing it, but he wanted to blame it on me. I said, "Well, first of all, let me share something with you. Do you remember when your little girl got sick in the middle of the night and y'all had to take her to the emergency room and it was really serious?" "Yeah." I said, "Who did you call?" I called my pastor. I said, "What did you happen to tell me at 3:00 that morning?" "Pastor, my baby's sick and we're at the hospital." I said, "That's not all you said. You said, "Come right away." I said, "That was an order." And I had to get my carcass out of bed at 3:00 in the morning and go all the way down to the hospital and stayed with y'all till about 7:00 that morning. and and everything. Your baby got stabilized and and I came home and and before I could get three more hours of sleep, she took a turn to worse and you called me and made me come back again. I said, "No, I don't have any bosses. I got a thousand bosses are always telling me what to do." I said, "You're lucky. You've only got me and your wife to contend with." Can I have an amen? Nehemiah was a slave. That's going to be a hindrance to the work of God. Nehemiah number three, first of all, he had never been to where he was going. He was probably born in captivity. After all, they had been there nearly 70 years. And so, he's going to go to a place he's never been. I could elaborate greatly on that one. Number four, Nehemiah had never built anything before. God gave you a burden and you've got all these hindrances that's going to be in your life to get the job done. And and building that church is going to depend on how you overcome each one of these obstacles that's going to appear to be setbacks in your life. Now, I want everybody to repeat with me something that that that just eaten my guts out. I want you to repeat problems. All problems are temporary. There are no such things as permanent problems. The problems you have tonight or this morning or today or this week were not the same problems you had three months ago. You got a brand new set of them. And I got news for you. We're spending so much time on the problems we have right now that three months down the road, the ones we are in right now won't being deadly squat. Hallelujah. Can I have an amen? And if we're not careful, these problems that we have now become setbacks in our life that prevent us from going to our new set of problems down the road that's got to be solved. If you're going to be a preacher, if you're going to be a soul winner, if you're going to live for God, if you're going to make progress, you got to get in the solution business, not in the problem business.
Can I have an amen? He had never built anything in his life. Number five, Nehemiah had never been a leader of men. He was a butler to the king. He was only used to taking orders, not giving them. Number seven. Number six. Nehemiah had never seen a broken down wall or a city burned with fire. Oh Lord, I'm gonna get in trouble right here. If you Has anybody ever seen the aftermath of a tornado? I had a a man call me up. We had a tornado in Witchah at the same time we had the one in Oklahoma City. And we had a number of families in our church that lost their homes. And we had some deaths in our church from the tornado. And we had a little girl had her legs cut off in the tornado. And we had some boys that was thrown one one of our kids was thrown over a mile and landed on his head in the middle of the street one mile over from where he was. And it was it was quite destructive. This man called me up. said, "I got a bunch of money I want to give." I said, "For what?" He said, "For the tornado victims." And he said, "You know, if that would have happened to me, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea of where to pick things up and start over again." And when you drive through the debris, it's not even comprehensible, first of all, where entire brick homes are just swept off the slab and nothing but the concrete slab left. Where hundred-y old trees are look like toothpicks. where it it hit the trailer court that has several hundred mobile homes in it and it picked about eight or nine of those mobile homes up, literally picked them up, ripped them from their mooring and dumped them into the lake. And in just a matter of moments, hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and and and here's C automobiles sitting up in top of trees and and and the rescue units are finding kids a mile from where they were and and and and and there's pandemonium and chaos. But when the sun rises the next morning, and it does rise the next morning after a storm, the the debris and the and and everything is so overwhelming that it crushes people's spirits. And it usually takes someone from the outside to come in to organize the cleanup and the start over. Our church was on the fringes of the tornado and we immediately became the Red Cross Relief Center and and the federal government came in, the state government came in, the National Guard came in and they used our our church for about a month as a Red Cross relief center. So almost everybody that was affected by that storm had to come through our church. And I I I would go down to the relief center in our that was set up in our gymnasium and in our kitchen and in our office complex. And and I would watch those people come in with this blank stare on their face without a clue as to what to do. And Red Cross understands the devastation of the aftermath and they would simply meet them at the door and guide them from table. We're talking about educated adult people that's got good sense, had good jobs, good cars, and good homes, but was guiding them around like little children because the storm and the aftermath of that storm was so devastating. And Nehemiah's got to go to a town and that he's never been to before. He's got to go see a rubble pile that he's never he has never even carried the garbage out. Much less seen a rubble pile. And it overwhelms you. And you're going to have to overcome the obstacles of experiencing things that you've never experienced in your life. Can I have an amen? Number seven, Nehemiah had never had to deal with discouraged people. Number eight, Nehemiah had never had to deal with enemies. He was a cup bearer to the king. He didn't weld the sword. He held a cup in his hands. But now, if he's going to do what God wants him to do, and this burden is calling him, he's going to have to learn how to deal with discouraged people.
God called us as ministers to encourage the people, not the people to encourage the preacher. Boy, that went over like a lead balloon. God called us as the church to encourage the world, not the world to encourage us. Almost 30 years ago, I sit in a conference with 5,000 preachers. I sat on the front row. It was not apostolic. It was not Pentecostal. It was a ministerial training week. And I was sitting there and I thought, I'm the only Pentecostal here among all of these whatever they were. But the preacher said one word. I don't remember anything else about the meeting except one word. And and and this man the Sunday before I got there had 30,560 people in Sunday school that Sunday. And he said, "I determined years ago to use my ministry to build people rather than use people to build my ministry." And that gripped me. And that's exactly what we must do if we're going to do what God wants us to do is that we God gave us this ministry. It came from God. And we've got to use what God gives us in order to minister to other people. If God gave you the ability to teach a Bible study, I want to tell you something. If you'll use that ministry, you will encourage others and you will build others. But as long as you're always wanting somebody else to encourage you, you're never going to have the ability to minister to somebody else. You say, "But preacher, don't we have to bring things in for ourselves?" I sat right here for one hour a few minutes ago and friend I sucked everything dry that I could get out of brother Libby. We do have set aside times when we have to receive. But after we receive, remember, we've got to go back out there and give out again. And we cannot be always set back by the spirit of discouragement. Can I have an amen? Number eight. Number nine. Nehemiah had never had to stand by himself. Number 10. Nehemiah had never had to deal with people that would not cooperate. Number eight, Nehemiah had never had to deal with enemies. He always had somebody else fighting his battles for him. Number 10. Number 11. Nehemiah had never had to motivate anybody. Number 12. Nehemiah had never had to deal with volunteers. I love this one. God doesn't use volunteers. You don't volunteer to work in God's army. He drafts you. He calls you. Doesn't give you a choice. Well, pastor, I'm going to volunteer my time. I hate those kind of people. They're irritating and aggravating and nauseating. If God didn't call them, tell them to go on down the road. Y'all don't believe that, do you? I just ran into a wall. You can't do nothing with volunteers. You can't do that with people who think that they are really giving themselves. Well, pastor, I don't really want to come Saturday. I wanted to go fishing, but I guess I'll come help you nail sheetrock to the new church for a while, but I want you to know I'm volunteering. Volunteers can quit anytime they want to. Volunteers can go home and lay the sword down anytime they want to. But friend, when God calls you and God drafts you and you go AWL, there's going to be big time problems in your life when you go AWL or when God calls you. I had a pastor one time, my neighboring pastor about 25 miles away. he came was crying on my shoulder and how much he hated his city and and his city didn't want God. And and I said, "Why are you there?" He said, "The only reason I'm there is because God's making me be there." I said, "Friend, if I was you, I'd just pack up and leave." I said, "Cuz you are never going to build a church in that city, and your attitude smells the high heaven." I said, "You smell worse than Jonah when he climbed out of the whale's belly."
He was mad at God because God called him. I'm not mad at God because God called me. And the reason I I cannot afford to stay discouraged very long is because God won't let me stay discouraged very long. Number 13, Nehemiah had never had to deal with debris or rubbish. Nehemiah number 14 had never had to deal with setbacks. Without 14 situations in his life, he still rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in record time of 52 days. When setbacks come your way, then you find out, we find out, and the world finds out what kind of man or woman you're made of. I have said this a thousand times and I get people mad at me every time I say it. And and I I don't mean to be offensive, but the United Pentecostal Church could do a lot more with a lot less preachers because most of them aren't called. They was on an ego trip thinking that the pullpit was a limelight and they had a loud testimony but no substance. and we license them and then they go to towns and tie up towns for the rest of their life. Always bickering about how bad things are and they never learn how to overcome deadly squat. Now, brother Libby, he you don't know it, but he had to he had a surgeon scapel in his hand. All I've got is a rough butcher knife. They both cut. You just feel it worse when I do it. Amen. If we're called of God to do a work for God, we must always learn how to encourage our own self in the Lord. We must find out where to go to get encouragement. Can I have an amen? But after we get encouraged, we got to get right back in the b in the battle where we're going to have more setbacks to deal with. Can I have an amen? Go to Exodus chapter number two and let me share a few moments with you. There went out a man of the house of Levi and took a wife of the daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bare a son and when she saw he was a god. When this is Moses I don't have to read all this. This is Moses being born. Exodus chapter 2. Do you think Moses is going to have any setbacks in He started off being set back. I mean, he had problems the first time mom and daddy made love and he was born from it. He was put in a basket in the river. They couldn't hide him anymore. He was a problem to him. And finally, he finally does something good happens to him and he gets adopted. Mean, my mother's been around about this before. My mother had so many kids that she run out of names and so she had to let the nurse name me when I was born. And right after I was born, my my my dad's high boss and the and the and the big big boss came and he said he said, "Walter Laner, y'all have so many kids and we can't have no kids. Would y'all give us this one and we'll pay all the doctor bills and we'll pay for the child and we'll give you money." And I'm still mad because my poor mom and dad didn't sell me. The only thing my dad left me when he died was a few dollars and a Prince Albert tobacco can in the bottom of a deep breeze. And I could have I I I could have inherited a fortune from those that wanted to adopt it. But no, my mother figured I need to have hard times in life. She bloated big time. I'm still mad at her for that. Moses is going to have some tremendous setbacks in his life. First of all, he's on a he's he's going to first of all operate out of an ego. Now, hear me carefully. I'm going to step on dangerous ground here for a moment, but I got a feeling that most God called pastors and preachers first start off with a huge ego. When I was pastoring in Crossroads, Mississippi with 15 people, I couldn't figure out why the Mangans did not resign and let me pastor that church. I couldn't figure it out.
I did believe in women preachers and brother Mangan couldn't preach very well and I just figured why don't he resign and let me have that church running a thousand. And then one day I woke up and I was running a thousand wondering if there was a church running 19 that was open again. It's not wrong to have an ego. I beg your pardon. Boy, that quietened the crowd, didn't it? Quit trying to knock the ego out of all these young preachers. Let God do it. He does a better job than you can. But God will use that driving force of your ego to get you in places where you would never go if you had good sense. Amen. You understand what I'm saying? I got a little Mexican guy right now. He's got he's got his ego is bigger than this whole building and he's irritating a lot of people. Just irritating them to death. But that's exactly what I was. My wife said, "He's just like you was. Leave him alone." God will take care of the rough edges. He did it to you, didn't he? wives have a way of telling you the painful truth. But you know what? Over the last few months, that ego had got him in bad situations that he had to work himself out of. And it was working himself out of those bad situations and those setbacks in life that's going to make him the preacher that God wants him to be. Can I have an amen? Do you remember? Do you remember the story of of of of Moses when he gets to he comes to years and he goes out? He's got this huge ego. God saved me from the sword when I was a baby. God really must have something for my life. Circumstances don't call you to preach. Only God does. Mama can't call you to preach. Son, when you was just a little baby, you had pneumonia. The doctor said you wasn't going to live. And we prayed and God spared you. God's really got some. Shut up, mama. You going to put that kid in a place where he wasn't called? Mama can't call no kid to preach. Daddy can't call you to preach. If God doesn't call you, stay home. Because only the calling of God is going to help you face the setbacks that are going to come your way. Hello. I got to I got to quit. I'm not even going to get started on this message here. Amen. And you know what? He went out and he saw this Egyptian beating up on this Hebrew. What did he do? His ego killed the Egyptian with this stupid idea that the brethren were going to stand behind him. That's so funny. Oh my god. How many How many times when I was a when I was a young preacher, I was the biggest idiot that ever walked in shoe leather. Stupid. I've done some stupid things. The brethren got me to introduce a resolution one time on the district conference floor. Woo! We're behind you. Praise God. And and oh yes, they were mild back there. And them idiots, I got up and and and and gave that resolution and and and said my part, praise God. and the opposition and them idiots that got me to put in the resolution realized that the tide had turned and they got up and spoke against the resolution. The vote ended up being 47 to1 against the one that voted yes. And I wish I had changed my vote. Hallelujah. Moses had this stupid idea that when he killed this Egyptian, he was saved from he was saved from the water and he was saved from the sword. And Jacobed told him, "You're really called to God, and you're really going to do a great work for God. And I'm telling you, your fate,
your call, your your fate has has sealed your calling." And did you know what? The next day, when he tried to separate the two who he the two Hebrews that were fighting, they said, "We don't know your mama. Who are you?" And he had a major setback in his life in delivering Israel from bondage. Oh, he had this grandiose idea that he was a deliverer. Had a minor setback for fact 40 years. Brother Patterson, did you know that more than 70% of the fastest growing churches in America are pastored by men over the age of 55? That is so encouraging to me because most of us has got strength do stupid things. These young whippers snappers. We used to be one, didn't we? Well, you think different when you turn 50. are trying to convince us that well when you get 50 you're too old to pastor anymore. Move over and let the young ones take over. No, Moses might have had a 40-year setback. In 40 years, he might have forgot how to talk, but then he went back to the burning bush or he went to the burning bush and what happens? He gets renewed in his vision. But this time is not coming from ego. It's coming from a calling. My little my little boy is 10 years old. He's adopted. He's a Mexican and he's adopted. And we was on the way home the other night from church. And mama said, "Ruben, when you He loves science. He loves to dissect things. When you kill a deer, he likes to get right down on the ground and watch you rip that belly open and he wants to name all the body parts. So, mama just been putting in he's going to be a doctor or he's going to be what, you know, whatever. And she said, "Ruben, you still want to be a doctor?" He said, "No, I don't want to be a doctor." Mama said, 'Why?' He said, ' They have to go to work every day. He said, 'I think I'll just be an assistant pastor. Now, just because he goes to this burning bullet, now we can justify the setbacks when he wasn't called. But what about the setbacks to those who are the called? let my people go. You know what Pharaoh said? I don't know your God. Who is this God? Moses said, "Watch this." throwed that rod down, turned into a snake, and the magicians came and throwed their rods down, they became snakes. We're going to have a minor setback here. One miracle is not going to be enough. One battle is not going to get the war done. Y'all miss that. I said one battle is not going to get the war done. There are some things you got to keep going back after o time and time and time again until you get past that. When I first started teaching home Bible studies, I got kicked out of the first four Bible studies I was teaching. You know why? Because I use a Pentecostal Bible instead of a Baptist Bible. If you're going to win people, you got to learn how to use a Baptist and Methodist Bible and not an apostolic Bible.
What kind of Bible you got? let's let's see if you got turn to to Genesis 1 and1 and let's see what kind of Bible you got here. Read verse one. Oh, that's a Baptist Bible. I thought you had an apostolic Bible. Turn to Genesis 1 and one and read for me. You got a Baptist Bible or an apostolic Bible? All right, let's see it. Let's just just see what kind of Bible you got. I bet you got a Baptist Bible, too. Read it. Verse one. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. That's a Methodist Bible. Apostolic Bibles read like this. In the beginning, God created Acts 238. And you know what? I got kicked out of the first four Bible studies using the apostolic Bible. But when I got me a Baptist Bible and a Methodist Bible and a Presbyterian Bible and a Church of Christ Bible, I started winning people. I want to tell you now, praise God, the Lord's coming. And before we get too far in, the Bible says you got to be baptized in Jesus name or you know you will go to hell. Had a few minor setbacks. I had setbacks because of my stupidity. God said, "Be harmless as doves and and and and wise as rattlesnakes." Can I have an amen? Let's stand together. There's no way I'm gonna get time. He got He finally got them people out of the promised land. I mean, out of Egypt, and he had setbacks all the way to the Jordan to Kadesh Barnea. And then he made a foolish mistake. He should have went over to the promised land and himself. Hallelujah. Praise God. He should have sneaked over at night, came back, said, "Fellas, this is going to be easy." You know, when you get in a battle, a fight, if you know the guy can beat you to a pulp, you're not even going to start the fight. But I never will forget one time there was a bully, a bully in our school. And and and for years, I was the smallest kid in from kindergarten all the way to the 12th grade. I was a junior in high school, 5'7 as a junior. And as a freshman, I was barely five foot tall. Everybody else had outgrown. Even the girls had outgrown me. And this guy was a bully. He was I couldn't drive. I couldn't ride my bicycle store without him coming out of his house and kicking my bicycle over with me on it. I couldn't go at night because he was always watch out the window and he would come out and beat me up. And one day at school I was only about 5'7 and I was coming down the stairs and he put his foot in my back and shoved me down the stairs. I come tumbling down the stairs and I hit the crash bar at the bottom and rolled out in the yard and boy everybody was dying laughing and his little gang was dying laughing and they wanted to see how much damage they had done and he opened that door. When he opened that door I was standing there. I had tears in my eyes, blood on my nose, my my shirt was torn, and I coalcocked him right in the kisser. And when I hit him, it knocked him down. And by this time, I realized how stupid a thing I'd done. But I was committed. There ain't no turning back. And God's not going to, he's already start already preaching, so I don't have to repreach this. God's not going to tell you what battles you're going to fight till you commit yourself and then there ain't no place to go except fight. And I just stood there and they said, I stood there stunned that I had done such a stupid act. But he was on his back and his eyes was closed. And I crawled on top of him, grabbed him by the the shirt collar, choked him half to death, shook him until his head bounced off that concrete he was laying on. And I said, "If you ever touch me again, I'll kill you graveyard dead. You understand that? I'll knock your teeth slapped down your throat." Well, evidently he heard it. And before we graduated, we became close friends.
And and you know what? I look back, I'm 6'3, weighed 230 lbs, and that pipsqueak is only 58 and never did gain no more weight. What am I saying? Setbacks are going to come your way and and and your and your ministry is going to be determined by your ability to say, "This is a temporary setback." Any pastor here ever lost people out of your church? Come on. If you've lost people out of your church, praise God. Anybody ever had somebody leave that was your right-hand man? Isn't that discouraging? But your ministry is not built on them. It's built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. If you're getting your strength from the people, you're going to get discouraged and be set back for years. But if your ministry is built on the calling of God, I used to go to seminars that taught us how to close our back door. Now I'm going to seminars to teach us how to open them back up again. I don't want to keep everything that comes in my church. Can I have an amen? We had a couple move to our church last month and they sat down in my office, explained they were coming, that they had a job transfer and they really liked our church. And I said, "Now before I accept your letter," I said, "Let me give you some addresses." Addresses to what? I said, "There are three other churches in the community." "Well, we want to come here." I said, "You can't come here yet." I said, "I want to give you the address of the other three churches, the pastor's phone number and their address, and you are to go to the other churches before you can come here." Pastor, you don't want us. I said, "Not in the shape you're in." I said, "As long as you think you have other choices, I never will be your pastor. But go find out what the other things like, and then if you decide to come here, then I can be your pastor. but you're not going to threaten me to leave every time something goes wrong. And they went to the other three churches and they came rushing back and they said, "Now, what did you say your standards were?" And I said, "This, this, this, and this." And they was willing to do my standards because they had the alternative of going someplace else that they didn't want. You know why? Because there's going to be setbacks in our church. Everything's not always going to be hunky dory. We had a layoff. Brother Libbyy's has already mentioned this. We had a layoff in our town. We have aircraft, agriculture, and oil. Wheat's $2 a bushel and farmers are starving. Oil went to pot and airplanes. At that time, Cesna laid off 20,000 people. They had 25,000 employees and and they went down to500 employees before they finally recovered. Boeing had employed 25,000. They went down to 9,000. People left Witchah like flies. Somebody put up a sign at the city limit said the last one out turned the lights out. And and and and that that layoff lasted a period of 36 months. And we lost 90 families over a period of three years. And it didn't look like the exit was ever going to stop. And a major setback. The only way we overcame the setback and and and we had just built a building and we was needing money big time. A terrible place to be. But did you know what? With us losing 90 families, we grew by 300 over that period in in in in net people because we realized that the setbacks was come. And the only way to combat the setbacks was put the one foot in front of the other and keep doing what you're supposed to be doing. Regardless of what your feelings are, regardless of what the circumstances are, just keep on plowing. That doesn't make me a superhero or make me some super spiritual guy. Just somewhere along the way I learned that regardless of what anybody else does, you're only in control of your own destiny. Can I have an amen? Okay, I got I got eight more pages and time. Let me just look one Let me just look right here just just for a moment. Oh, hallelujah. That's good. That's that that one is good. Here's a better one. Good grief.
Thank you. If I get started, it's another hour. I will I will say one more thing. Praise God. Turn to your neighbor and say, "No guts, no glory." I made a boast one Sunday. You You know, sometime when we preach, we don't mean what we say. My little kid, my my boys have asked me many times, "Dad, did that really happen or was you just preaching?" But I would preaching one Sunday night and I was aggravated because it didn't seem like enough people was involved in soulwinning. And I said, I said, "Y'all gonna mess with me and I'll go get me I'll drag me a sinner up here on his platform and I'll teach him a Bible study right in front of God and everybody." So when I got home that night, my wife said, "Do you know what you said?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "You're going to have to do it." I said, "Well, I didn't mean it. I was just trying to threaten the people." She said, "You said it and you're going to do it." And so I went out and I it took me about three weeks to find a new family that would let me teach them Bible study. And then I had to convince them to let me teach them on the platform. The way I did it was I told them, I said, "I'll build your living room and dedicate my my platform as your living room through the Bible study." So, we shut church down for two weeks. And I did nothing but Bible study on my platform. And I and and I said, "Y'all can come to to y'all can come and observe. Y'all can peep through the window at us, but you cannot participate. But I'm going to peek this Bible study and I'm going to win this family to God and show you that for the last 25 years, I'm going to do it exactly what I've been doing for 25 years the same way. You're going to be real disappointed. Thank you for buying the tape, but you'll be disappointed because the same stuff I had on tape 20 years ago. It's better quality. Yeah, the jokes are the same. The anti-women's lip is the same. And and When I taught that family, we got to the end of the 11th lesson and we baptized 13 spectators. And in the 12th lesson, when this family bowed their head and rep, they weren't even aware that we was even in the auditorium. They weren't even aware there was 700 people watching. That's how intense it was. It's a when you see them repent or hear them repent on that tape. And and when it was over, a great number of people came and said, "Pastor, this is how you do it." Said, "This is what I do." in every home I go in. And they said, "We can teach Bible studies." And some of our greatest Bible study teachers have come out of that training session. And I have it on audio tape and also on videape for for you who are backslid. God bless you. Thank you for letting me come to Alabama.
Scripture references as spoken: Nehemiah 2:1-5; Exodus 2:1-2; Genesis 1:1.