Children—Tim Wright
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But.
Good morning.
Who's got a song they like to sing? I unfortunately have the only book here.
Carolina.
36.
That's here, Christ calling, come unto me. Would somebody like to start that for me?
I will give you the rest I will give you.
I will make sure.
I will make you this journey. Come back and get your father.
All right, who's got another song?
46.
In the house and out of doors.
00:05:08
All right, does anybody else have another one?
Anybody else not in my family?
All right, Annie.
52.
All right, I need to see some hands. We're going to sing 52 and then I'm going to say, does anybody else have another song? And then one of you guys raise your hand. It's there's songs one through 104. There's a lot of choices, except we already sang a couple of them, but essentially 100 songs you can choose.
52.
Oh my God.
Hey, does anybody have a song you like to sing? There we go. Never see some hands, even the red sweater.
59.
All right, let's talk about Jesus.
Let's talk about.
It.
Jesus Christ.
Lord.
And shame on the ground.
And wonderful.
Jesus, my God.
We're going to say our verses and if we have some more time after after our talk, maybe we can sing a couple more.
We just thank you for the tremendous blessing of your son and the work that he did for us on the cross and dying and paying the penalty of sin, the penalty of death. And we thank thee for providing us an escape from this penalty. And we pray for the words that are spoken. We just pray that they resonate with the young ones and.
All ones alike. And we just pray for all these things. Amen. All right, we got a verse to say. It's found in John 647. And hopefully I can get a couple more volunteers than I did for singing.
But I'm only going to be able to pick a few of you and then.
Oh, look at that. We got some volunteers. We're only going to be maybe.
Maybe 5 to 10 people, I'll say it first and then we'll.
Dark picking some people.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647.
How about we pick about two people from each of these four groups?
All right, I got a microphone.
Verily, verily, verily, I say unto you.
She who, she who that believeth on the name on me.
Everlasting life.
Have everlasting life John 3174747 pretty good. Anybody else?
00:15:02
We had another volunteer from this row.
You want to be volunteering? Alright, OK. Verily, verily. I shan't. You. He that believes on me has everlasting life. John 647. All right, got to move on. All right.
Fairly, fairly I stand to you. He that believeth in me hath everlasting life drawn 647.
Verily, verily, I say Unsee. Yeah, he that believeth on me shall have everlasting life. John 10663047 All right.
All right, He that believeth on fairly verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647.
We'll do all three. Really. Really. I say unto you, he that believeth on me has everlasting life. John 647.
Barely, barely, I sand to you, he.
He that believeth on him hath everlasting life.
John, 647.
Verily, verily, I stand to you. He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life. John 647.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me have everlasting life. John 647.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me has everlasting life. John 647.
Job all right.
All right, our verse here.
Says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. John 647 So I want to talk to you kids about something I know a lot about.
And something I don't know a tremendous amount about, but that I am very excited to experience.
I want to talk to you about pruning and how it relates to eternal life. I don't know much about eternal life. I've never experienced it. I've only experienced 34 years of life and some have experienced more and some in the past have experienced tremendous amounts. There was a man who lived to be 900. I don't think I'm going to make it that long.
But maybe I'll make it to 100, so let's talk about pruning.
Does anybody know what pruning is?
No, maybe I've got some kids with some horticulture backgrounds. We might. A couple kids might know. But I'll, I'll explain it to you. We're going to talk about pruning as it pertains to trees.
Pruning as a potential trees is a very important job. It is necessary for the trees health and for the trees vigor and for the trees longevity. So vigor is essentially how well it grows. So this is going to be happy and healthy so as these trees grow.
And develop according to the tendencies that God created them.
They have what God created them back up a little bit as the trees grow according to the way that God created them. We have oak trees, we have Elm trees, we have Maple trees. We have all these different kinds of trees and each of these different species of trees grows a little bit different. The oak trees grow tall and they're broad, and the Elm trees have a tendency to grow narrow and they're kind of vase shaped.
And so.
Each of these different types of trees have different ways of growing, but as these trees grow, they each.
Have a tendency to develop branches on them that are hindrance to their growth.
And that is where the permanent comes in. We usually use.
The 5DS of pruning, when we address a new tree that we want to promote its health, its vigor, and its aesthetics, and those five D's are is there anything dead, anything dying, anything damaged, diseased or undesirable, Those are the 5DS that we typically look at. So everybody knows what a dead branch looks like.
00:20:26
And you want to take that off of the tree so it doesn't.
So it doesn't hurt the tree and anything that looks like it's dying, sometimes you'll see yellowing leaves or part of it is already dead. And so we have to take those off because those will end up.
Hindering the trees growth. And then there's damage. Sometimes we get big branches that get damaged by wind or snow or even lightning strikes and those we have to remove too. And then the last two are diseased and undesirable and diseased are typically caused by.
Where I live in Indiana we had a we could go with insects also.
We had a round of emerald emerald ash borer.
Up here from Michigan came in some packaging crates over in Asia and it came through and it killed all the ash trees.
We also had Dutch Elm disease that it went through and killed most of the Elm trees and there's a few new varieties out, but it killed most of them and that was a disease that wiped out large population of trees. And then there's things that are undesirable and usually those are things that are dictated, at least from my standpoint from a customer, they want these trees to look shapely, so we want to raise the lower.
Piece so that it gets sunlight and open them up so that the wind can blow through them and make them look nice and round. They always like them looking round. Occasionally we have to make them look square, but mostly just round.
And so we take care of these.
These 5DS and it's necessary to cut these off and we use tools when we cut them off so when a tree is very young, we don't do this but this is typically done in tomato plants and bums. You don't typically do it in trees, but.
When they're very, very young, you can do something called pinching, where you just use your fingernail as a tool and you can pinch little branches off because they're still green and soft. You ever pinch the dandelion? That's a.
To blow all the dandelions or seeds around, that's the same concept. You just pinch it with your fingernail. And then as it grows, where we typically start is with a pruner. So I've got.
Some Felco twos.
Great printer. Now what do we use these for? We use these to cut little branches off.
To the tree is small sometimes or the branches that we want to cut off are small and we typically take care of trees that are young with a pruner, a hand pruner, anything probably about the size of my thumb or smaller. Sometimes we get bigger in there if you squeeze really hard, but we got to take branches off. We got to take branches off that tree that that tree spent time growing that, but it was not.
For the trees best interests, and sometimes those we have to.
Get to bigger branches.
And so we, I like this, this is a Zubat. So we use this to cut branches probably from an, from anywhere bigger than my thumb to about two inches. And these are cutting bigger branches that didn't get taken care of when they were younger. They grew up. So now they're a bigger problem. They have a bigger, bigger scar on the side of the tree.
And they cost the tree more in resources to take it off, so we use these.
And sometimes.
These trees don't get taken care of as best as they can, so sometimes we have to climb up in them and we use a.
A chainsaw does that anybody know where the chainsaw is? So this is a climbing saw. We carry this open the trees and so I can cut anything up to about 16 inches or 18 inches.
So when we cut off bigger limbs like this, we're even cutting bigger parts of the tree. I'll go put this on the table because I don't want to carry it. So we cut this even bigger problems, bigger issues with the tree we have to cut.
00:25:10
To take care of the tree's health, to keep it growing well. And sometimes we get into issues of.
I just had to do one. I just had to take care of a tree.
Last couple weeks ago we had a big windstorm came in and the tree got hit and the big, big branch came out of it. It was a big old Maple tree and it was a big red Maple. And so it took the top out and we had to end up taking the whole tree down because of it. And so we used this bigger salt.
So we had to use a little bit bigger of a saw to take care of this. So this is about twice the size of that. And this is not fun to take in a tree. And so we have to use a bigger saw sometimes to take care of these bigger problems that arise because of putting off.
The early pruning that we could have done when it was younger if we it was a bad branch, it grew, it grew poorly and it got too long and it caught the wind and then it broke. So we had to take a big part of the tree out, actually the whole tree. So sometimes we have to use even a bigger so.
But oh, I'm showing my car.
Never guess what's under there.
But once in a while.
We have to takedown a very big tree because there was a big Maple tree. I didn't take it down, but I cut the stump out and it was a very, very big Maple tree. It was a big silver Maple and when it was young, it grew.
Up probably 5 or 6 feet tall. And then it decided it was going to split off into two separate branches. And those two separate branches grew and grew and grew for many, many, many different, many, many years. And it essentially grew 2 separate trees, but with one trunk and where they connected down, where they split off when they were young.
They got rotten and they got too heavy and they became dangerous because they one of those were going to fall and so they chopped it down. And so sometimes you have to even get a, a bigger pruning tool.
So I got a really big SO.
For pruning very big trees and this is not what we take up in a tree unless we were cutting Sequoia down maybe. But so this we can cut down 4 foot Long Branch, 4 foot wide trees or bigger. And so this is for even bigger problems. And if we have to use this, we're not pruning anymore, we're mostly removing.
And so that is.
Most of the tools we use for pruning.
Or taking care of the trees.
And so.
This pruning kind of reminds me of us as people as.
When we I was a child, I started out as a little young sprout.
And my parents, they trained me and they they did a lot of the pinching.
And every day I grew and I grew and I grew, and then I grew up to be a young sapling like some of these kids in the front row.
Yeah, and.
And as we each grew, and as I grew and developed, I grew some tendencies.
I grew. As I grew some tendency, I grew.
As the tendencies that God created me.
I'm a little bit different than than all of you guys and each one of you is a little bit different than the next person. We were each created unique, even more unique than the trees because they have different groups. But we are all individually made and as we grew, as we grow.
I grew.
I had a tendency to do things that were not.
And shall we say, not the best. I made some bad decisions and I didn't.
00:30:05
I didn't always please my mom and dad and sometimes they had to prune me and sometimes I got a spanking. I don't know if any of you kids have ever had to get spanking. Probably not. It looks like a bunch of good kids. But I had to get a spankin and.
These tendencies were harmful to me and.
They are not like the 5DS. I didn't have those problems necessarily. I had something called sin. I had a problem called sin. Does anybody know what sin is? Raise your hand if you know what sin is.
There we go. Few people know what sin is. Well, I'll tell you what sin is and then by the end you should be all be able to raise your hand.
So this sin.
Is a tricky thing. It stems from my old nature, you see.
My old nature comes from way back to a man and a woman called Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were perfect people, and these perfect people, they never sinned.
Until one day they did. And because of that, each one of us has that nature. Each one of us has that tendency to resist the way that God created us to be. He wanted us, each one of us. He has a plan for us. And we all decide at some point, no, I don't want to do that. I want to do it my way. I want to grow over here.
And so sometimes.
We have to get pruned.
And the Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Even thus some of you didn't raise your hands and didn't know what sin was. Maybe. Maybe you're just shy. But.
The Bible says all have sinned and these sins, these sins need to be pruned just like in my life.
My sins had to be pruned. Each one of you do too, because these sins have a tendency to take over and they will destroy us. And you say destroy us. Are you sure? I'm positive because.
In the Bible it says the sting of death is sin.
Because of these sins, there is death.
Adam and Eve were perfect.
And essentially, if they would have never sinned, they would have just lived on forever, but they sinned. And so the penalty for sin is death. And all of creation suffers because of that. Not just us, but the plants and the animals all affect are affected by that sin. So we all.
Will die, yet it says it is appointed unto men once to die. That's in Hebrews 9.
And so we will all die, and we will all have to pay the penalty for our sins.
While we can improve our lives down here, we can.
Sort of judge these sins, so to speak. We can take these.
Sins and say you know what I told the live, but I'm not going to tell another lie. You know that'll help you out a lot. Telling the truth will help you out. You will it'll help your life. It'll give you a good projection on your life. Not becoming jealous of something. Jealousy is you can't stand against jealousy and if you become jealous and you let it get a root of bitterness.
You can, it'll ruin you and you can judge that but.
No matter of being able to judge it, you can't get away from the death and you can't get away from the penalty of sin. You can judge that sin in your life and you can improve your life, but you still will die and you still have to pay the penalty for that sin.
But so how do we get these sins removed? Well and the Bible says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So we have to believe on the Lord Jesus.
And we can be saved from the penalty of these sins because He is our Creator and He is our pruner, sure to speak. And we have to submit these sins to Him so that he can shape us and he can prune them away and He can pay for the penalty of those. See, He sent his Son Jesus to die on the cross.
00:35:21
In John 316 it says For God so loved the world.
That He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So while we may never experience everlasting life down here because of the effects of sin, we have the promise that we can experience it if we ask the Lord Jesus.
To wash our sins away, we ask Him to save us.
From our sins.
And we also need to remember that we don't want to put that off until it's too late.
Sometimes.
We put it off too late and we have to take out this big saw here and it was, we had to cut the tree down. It was too late for that tree. It was too late to save it. It was broke, fell down. We couldn't save it. We had to cut it down. And there's many people in this world that.
They won't.
By choice, or sometimes they don't even know that they are sinners.
And they?
Have to pay. They grow up and they pay the effects of those sins and they have to. They get cut down.
So remember, it's not too late today to ask the Lord to save you.
All right, let's see what time it is. Got about 5 to 10 minutes.
Do I have any ambitious volunteers for some songs?
See 345 hands. That's pretty good.
May.
11.
00:40:41
Do one more.
All right.
#9 that's a good one.
I need some help.
All right, we have a breaking of bread at 10:45. Do you have any special announcements or anything anybody needs to know?
What?
Lord, just thank you for the many blessings that you've given to us. We thank you for this opportunity to.
Speak to the kids, we teach them about you and the work you did and how. It's not too late to ask.
For your forgiveness and for your salvation. And we pray that we can keep this afresh in our hearts as we.
Have breaking the bread and remembrance of you and we pray that we can keep the.
Busy thoughts of the week and of our lives on hold as we remember this important work and we thanks for all these things. Name Sanji. Amen.