YP Sing Address—D. Mearns
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So an hour ago we spoke to your parents.
Now we're gonna speak to you.
I trust to all of our hearts.
I had uh.
An interesting thing happened.
Arrived here, spent the night.
Got on the elevator to come down to the first meeting and I'm on the elevator with UMM.
With a couple of the Saints and.
Man gets on, he's got a baseball hat. Gets on with two kids, looks like mid teens.
They both got their bugs in their ears.
Umm, got shorts on all of them, obviously headed somewhere. I'm standing there with my Bible under my arm and uh, the man looks at me and he said uh.
You have something for me, obviously, that's a Bible.
Umm, so I said, well, umm, I said you must know the Lord. Yeah, I know the Lord. So what do you have for me? Thankfully I had something and I shared a little something with him. I just, umm, been meditating a little bit on Samsung and I said, you know the greatest victory in Samson's life, We read this, it says he bowed himself. That's when he took those pillars down and he slew more in his life at that point than he had all the rest of his life.
Anyway, I shared that with him, so I said to him, so, uh, you know, how many, how many minutes do you have between floor six and the bottom?
So we're getting to the bottom? I said. So, umm, how long have you known the Lord?
He said. Well, I've known him for 13 years.
Umm, nice. Uh, how did that happen? So we're getting on the bottom floor. We don't have much time. I'm about to hear, he said, well, you know, umm, I was at uh, a youth meeting. Somebody invited me to a youth meeting. There's a whole bunch of youth there. And I gave my heart to Christ and he walked out the door. I'll never see him again till the glory. But I thought, you know how city here we are tonight, a youth meeting.
My exercise tonight is not.
If there's someone here that's not the Lords.
But my exercise is.
For anyone here.
And you have not decided.
That you're gonna follow wholly after the Lord? Yes, you belong to the Lord.
Yes, perhaps he's known the Lord for some time.
But you haven't yet said.
Yes, Lord.
I'd like to look at 3 scriptures.
The first one is in the book of James.
Book of James.
Just so you pick up on where I'm going.
The three scriptures have these 3 words in them.
Or two words rather, and it's this.
Another way.
Another.
Way and incidentally, Ron and Melissa, you're off the hook tonight. The Benoit family stories.
James Chapter 2.
And we read this in verse 25.
Likewise, also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works?
When she had received the messengers and.
I've sent them out, sorry.
Another way.
Well, I kind of feel the responsibility tonight of presenting the word and to direct perhaps someone here to go another way. You know the concept, you're going this direction and it takes the exercise of heart and the change of heart to change direction and go another way.
When it came to the spies in Rahab's life, she sent them another way.
Well, we can try to do that tonight. We can try to send you another way.
It may or may not work. Let's turn to 1St Kings.
00:05:03
I'm not gonna be as long tonight as I was this afternoon.
First Kings, chapter 13.
So there was a man of God here in this chapter.
And there's a discussion between him and the king.
And we read in verse 8, The man of God said unto the king, or rather the seventh verse, The king said unto the man of God, Come home with me, refresh thyself, and I will give thee reward. And the man of God said unto the king, If thou art give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee. Neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place. For so it was charged me by the word of the Lord, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest.
So he went.
Another way.
And return not by the way that he came to Bethel. You know, this is a little different than the scripture that we read in James, the Scripture that we read in James.
Rehab sent the spies another way, but here we find it says it was charged me by the word of the Lord, saying eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest. And perhaps there's someone here tonight.
And it's a struggle for you.
Because you really would like to wholly follow the Lord. You really would.
And if there's real life, that's the desire for every one of us.
But there are so many things in our life, there are the cares of this life that the enemy would use that to tell us that, you know, it's just not worth it or that I just don't have the strength to do it. And I just, although I'd like to go another way, I'm just going to carry on going the direction that I'm going. You know, here it says the charge comes from the Lord. Now let's go to the book of Matthew.
The Book of Matthew.
Matthew The.
The second chapter.
Book of Matthew, chapter 2.
And we'll read at verse 11 it says, when they are coming to the house, they saw the young child with Mary as mother, and fell down and worshiped him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold, and frankincense and myrrh, and being warned of God in a dream, that they should not return to Herod.
They departed into their own country, another.
Way.
You know our desire tonight.
Is that every one of us?
Well, after being here at these meetings.
We would return home.
Another way.
The Lord having worked in our hearts, perhaps in conversation with different ones between the meetings, perhaps something that was said in the meetings, but our heart touched so that we would return home.
Another.
Way I'd like to share a story.
It's about my dad and I told part of this story at the Saint Thomas meetings, the last conference at Saint Thomas.
I'll tell it as I told it there, plus the end of the story, which I did not tell there. When we were young, we used to love to umm, on Saturday morning, all pile up. Five kids pile into my dad and mom's bed.
I'm listening to my dad tell stories.
And we used to push him to tell war stories of which he was very reluctant to do. He saw some things that you and I have never seen. But he did tell this one story that I appreciate it. And that was he was in the Navy.
He was stationed.
00:10:02
Just off the Orkney Islands, which are some islands just.
At the top of Scotland.
And sometimes for, just because of boredom, they would take a lifeboat and go into the islands and they spend some time with the, the people in the villages there. And my dad met an older couple that they were believers and they were older. And they, it's interesting. They, they used for fuel there to heat their house. They used peat and they used to cut it out in the field. They cut these, these squares of peat and they, they, they'd haul it to their, their houses and they'd, they'd.
Stack it just like we would stack wood in a woodshed.
And they would burn the speed. And my dad did this with the for these, this older couple. And while he was working with them, he said to this umm, this older man, he said that So do you have a bomb shelter here in the village and the umm.
The older, uh, gentleman said that, yeah, we have, umm, we have, uh, we have two bomb shelters. We got one made of cement and we have, umm, we have one made of feathers. So that tweaked my dad's interest. And the man said, well, would you like to, umm, would you like to have a look at them? So they headed off into the village and they took the stairs down into this concrete, umm, uh, bomb shelter. And the man told them that this is the bomb shelter. It's the one of concrete.
And he turned to my dad and he said, you know.
This bomb shelter, I really don't have too much confidence in this bomb shelter, but the one of feathers I really have confidence in, and my dad sort of wondered what this one was. The man had a little Bible in his pocket and he pulled it out and he turned to this verse. Turn with me to the Psalms.
Psalm 91.
And he read the fourth verse of Psalm 91.
He shall cover thee with his feathers.
And under his wings shalt thou trust, his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
And he closed his Bible and he looked at my dad and he said, you know, the shelter that we're in right now I don't have much confidence in. But that shelter of feathers I have a lot of confidence in.
Well, my dad hopped on the lifeboat, took it back out to the, the ship that was the Nelson that he was on. It was the sister ship umm that went after the Bismarck actually. And my dad pulled away and entered the war and was there for another few months. And after several months, it was his portion to come back and to be moored outside just on the top of the Orkney Islands. And in the meantime?
The Germans have bombed the Orknes.
And my dad thought, well, you know, I know it's a mess in there, but I'm gonna take this little boat in. And he took the lifeboat in, went into the village.
Went to the home.
Of this elderly gentleman.
The whole place had been bombed.
Is the only home standing?
The only home standing.
He went up to the door.
The elderly gentleman met him at the door, invited him in.
They talked about the devastation.
This is what sent my dad.
Another way.
The man said the sirens went off and the people were running and the bombs started to fall.
And he looked at my dad in the eye. He said, You remember that bomb shelter I told you about? The bomb shelter of feathers?
He said we never left this house.
We never left this house.
You know, as my dad told me that when we were in bed.
It's not like I'm telling you to, you know? He was pretty choked up because it was a turning point in his life to realize that here was a man and a woman.
Whose faith was attached to something at the other end.
And it matters not so much, young person, how much faith we have, but what matters is what it's attached to.
00:15:07
At the other end.
I trust that everyone of us here this evening.
Would be found leaving this room.
Another.
Way we pray.
Our God and our Father.
We thank thee for thy tender care for us.
Well, thank thee for thy desire toward us.
We know that that is desire for us.
To follow wholly after thee.
And for us to leave this room going another way.
Father, we pray for special grace for each one here.
There are those here who perhaps have a harder Rd. than others.
But we know thy desire is that our confidence would be in that bomb shelter of feathers. Give us the grace our God. Give grace to each one here.
To be found going another way. We'd ask these things, our God. We'd ask thy blessing upon each heart here, and we'd ask it as we give thanks. And we give thanks for this food too, and the worthy and the precious name of our Savior, the Lord Jesus. Amen.