Open—Sam Ludvicek
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Galatians 61 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you eat her spiritual. Restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 5.
Verse 14.
For the love of Christ constraineth us.
We've had a lot to encourage us in this conference.
And the first brother who stood up in this meaning.
Spoke of.
Will you go away too?
If this were a conference of military leaders.
Talking about a military campaign, they might talk about the victories and the good things, maybe the kinds of weapons they had and so forth, and there be a lot of encouragement.
But they certainly would talk about one thing that is going on. We hear this coming from our government leaders. We hear it from those who are climatologists and so forth. They use the term existential threat.
Well, brethren.
Evangelical Christians are losing their young people at a rate never seen before. Why?
Now, if I were this were a military conference and I knew that a certain area of the battlefield that the the soldiers were being slaughtered vast numbers, I'd want to know why. What's going on over there? Why are we losing them?
Now, if you're rebellious in heart and your young person or an old person doesn't matter.
You know you've got a problem in your heart.
If you've been attracted by the world in a way where you're taken up with those things, I don't need to tell you. You already know.
And I don't need to wag my finger in your face about something like that. You already know what it is.
I saw something that pierced my heart.
In this regard, I watched a video of young people that had gotten away from, stopped going to their evangelical church and had gotten away, but we're coming back and they were being asked why did you leave? What was going on? What happened?
And there were those who had just gotten with the wrong company. That happens. They've gotten their eyes off, but a goodly number of them said something like this.
This one young lady in particular. This pierced my heart.
She said I had a mother and father who loved the Lord.
And they had devotionals in her house.
And they loved us and they they didn't get a divorce.
And they had us at services on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday, and they gave to missionary efforts and so on. But she said, you know what?
Now this may be an indictment of North America in the West.
But you know what?
Their Christianity costs nothing.
And their Christianity was boring.
That pierced my heart.
She said she loved her parents.
But she said I didn't want any part of that.
Wanted something else?
I don't know her full story, but that thought I know that there are thoughts like that that go on in young people.
They're looking for something authentic, something real in front of them.
Are we to blame? Somewhat.
Are we authentic?
Does our Christianity ever cost us anything?
When we go about our way.
Do we pay a price for it at all?
Certainly different brothers who've gone to other lands have told us about what they see there, and there's often a price to pay.
00:05:02
When Brother Bill talks about going to India.
You can lose your life over there.
Other places.
The first verse I read about restoring Section 1.
Had a nice chat with Bill at camp about.
How we get ideas in our head about some things, and I said, I heard a brother say.
About I mentioned this verse and he said, oh, you know, I heard this from an old brother that the Lord restores people by He just gets ahold of him and he restores them and he brings them in and they come down, they bow down before their brethren and they're done. It's fixed.
No one is ever involved.
Does not the Lord use his servants?
To go after them, to pursue them.
This brother I was talking with, he said, no, it's the Lord, he does it, He does the work. You just shut him up to the Lord, pray for him, but you just shut him up to the Lord. And he told me the story of David and the prophet.
And I kind of shook my head and I said, brother, you just proved my point, that whole story.
The prophet came to Daniel, sent of God and told him a story, and he said, Thou art the man.
And he recognized it, and he did repent.
Are there not those worth going after?
I told this group of young people at camp, I said I don't know what what it is, but I love the verse that Jonathan Lebanon quotes over and over again. And it's one I just.
Read here The love of Christ constraineth us. Romans 55 in the middle of the verse says The love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts.
Can somebody looking at us tell that?
There's a brother back home we I have a very good relationship with. I love him.
And we do have a good relationship and we're friends.
And I enjoy being in his home and with him.
But he has a tendency to be what I call the get off my lawn guy. Wag, wag, wag, wag, wag, get off my lawn. And we kind of joke about it a bit. You being that guy, you know what? That's never convinced anybody of anything, ever.
So I told this group of young people, and some of them are probably here, I said I don't know what it is, but I know that what's coming down the road for you, and some of you are already in it is very difficult. Some of you're in a battle nobody knows about.
And you're suffering, and you don't even believe you can talk to anybody about it.
Because they might just wag the figure in your face.
But I said, I want you to know.
That I love you so much that I ate inside.
When I look in your faces.
And there are others that do too. Maybe they don't show it very much the.
And some of you are headed on out.
And your parents don't even know it yet.
George Barna, who collects statistics on what's going on.
Amongst Christians said that most young people check out by the age of 13 or 14.
They still go to the youth groups and they still go to the young people's things and they're still coming to church with their parents, but they've already checked out.
Now I have told people that when I was a young man, I got away from the Lord as a teenager. In my case, it wasn't because I was interested in the world. It wasn't because.
Of whatever multitude of things can get ahold of people is because I gave up.
I couldn't live the Christian life. I'd never been taught deliverance.
And I didn't know what that was. All I knew was that I couldn't do it.
And yes, I did get with wrong people, people that led me astray and so forth. But the real reason, and I know that there's many like that that are gone.
You parents that have lost some already, you grandparents that have lost some, you grandparents that have great grandchildren that are gone or going.
A lot of that is because they don't understand deliverance and they've given up and they're gone.
Now the Lord is going to tea. If they're really his, He's going to teach them through failure, and he's going to draw them back.
00:10:06
Who knows what kind of wreckage will take place in between? How much better, if prayerfully?
We could do something like Galatians 6/1.
Few years ago, I think it was 2014 at Kiev.
I said to Bill Prost. I said, you know Bill.
We've gotten pretty good at putting people away, but not very good at restoring them. And his answer to me was we're not very good at either.
We're not.
But how much better would it be if we got pretty good at going after people that have gotten away from the Lord?
Especially young people. How much weeping? I think there's some parents and grandparents that do a little weeping.
Do you weep for your other brother and sister's children?
In the prayer meeting on Wednesday nights.
Is there some weeping going on about those kids and those young people that have gone?
Maybe we need to have a few more tears on that.
And maybe some of the young people that are bored in that fair meeting.
My whoa, that brother, that that brother really cares.
He's praying not just for his own kids, for somebody else's. And there's some tears in them.
Can we not do that?
We can enjoy so many things that we have. We have such great treasures.
And we can share those things.
But those are the young people that are leaving in droves.
From Christian homes that profess the name of Christ, the.
That really hurts my heart and I don't have all the answers for that.
But maybe, just maybe if there's a bit more authenticity, a bit more.
Showing of love.
A bit more going after them, a bit more going the extra mile and someone sees that they might respond to it. Now we know nothing will work without the Spirit of God guiding and leading in those things. But I I dare say there's some people here, maybe some older ones.
That have said will say that some point in their life there was restoration that took place. We all go through things where there's a drifting or coldness that comes in, and then we need restoration. Can you not remember someone who came alongside you and put the arm around the shoulder and it was a great help to you at a moment in your life? Yeah, I'll bet you can. And I bet you can tell me the stories.
We need more of that too.
Let's go after some of those.
Right from our knees and in our prayers and cry out for them.
I don't know the answers to all of this, I just know my heart aches.
Can we pray?
Father, I know their aching hearts and moms and dads in this room.
And our grandparents too, because someone in their family has drifted away, her gone away, has gotten themselves into circumstances that are of the utmost difficulty. And sometimes, Lord, we are perplexed as to even what to pray.
And we hardly know sometimes what to say.
And maybe at times we've done the wrong thing. Well, Lord, we confess that we have failed.
And we can do like Daniel and identify with all thy people and.
Say I we.
Have seen we've fallen short.
In caring for one another and going after those who are hurting.
Lord, your example in the gospel of going after that one that gets lost in the wilderness and going after them.
Perhaps we can learn from that and seek.
As your children.
To go after those who wander and seek to find them.
Bind up their wounds and help them to come back to the place where it's safe.
00:15:02
And where they can be well cared for.
Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for what we have in you.
You are our Lord, our God, our Savior, our friend.
Father, we thank you in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.