Testimony of Daniel Ritchie

Well, for those of you who were not here in the early service, our speaker today is Daniel Ritchie.

He was born and grew up in Julian, North Carolina, not too far from us here, and born with a very serious handicap, and he really struggled with that, as he'll tell you. But God saved him by His grace and is using him marvelously. And so let's bow and ask the Lord to bless this service. Father, thank You for bringing us to this appointed time. Thank You for bringing us this appointed messenger.

And now, Father, use His words to be Your words to speak to our hearts as we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, church, how are we doing this morning? Good. Man, y'all are a chatty bunch.

After first service, it's like pastors trying to wrangle cats, man. So it's good to know. It's good to know we're feeling fresh. And, man, it's my honor to be here with you guys this morning in a lot of ways. This is a little bit of a homecoming. This is home turf for me. I literally grew up just a few miles up Highway 62 down in Julian. So, man, I used to burn up this part of Highway 62 because, man, you had to get to Olive Garden on the regular.

And Burlington had the closest one. So, man, this is great for me to be home. It's also great to be able to preach in a sanctuary where, man, I get to see full faces again. Because it's like for probably the past year, you're preaching to a whole bunch of masks. All you can see are eyes. And there's a very fine line between happy eyes and, like, I want to murder you eyes.

And so I can never really tell where I was with people. But now, now I know. And so if I have to run in a minute, your faces will tell me. But if God's doing good work, man, we'll also know that. But this morning, what I would like to do is, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open to Philippians 4. Philippians 4 will be there in a little bit.

But before we get there, I do just want to take some time and just share with you guys just some of my story and what God has led me through. Because, you know, I'll be the first to acknowledge that people are just naturally curious about the whole armless situation in every way, shape, and form. Because people almost always assume that some sort of animal produced this exterior appearance. Like, they think some sort of critter robbed me of my arms. You know, if I'm at the beach, people are like, was it a shark? Or, you know, one dude, he asked me one time, he was like, was it two sharks at one time? And I'm like, bro, if it was two sharks at once, there'd be a movie about me, I'm fairly certain. Right before COVID, I was in the Denver airport and I was shuffling on a plane.

And there was just this guy and he was just, he was staring and staring at my empty sleeve. And now listen, like, I'm all about love God, love others. But let me give some background because it's like, I'm a grumpy flyer in every way. Because it's like, you guys, you know, you get leg room on a plane, man, by God's grace, you can just sit there and you can wiggle them ankles and your feet won't be stiff. If I don't have leg room on a plane, I can't eat my in-flight pretzels, I can't drink those two ounces of soda that they give you like halfway through the flight. I can't get on my cell phone, I can't read. I literally just sit there. And not only do I just sit there, if I get put in a middle seat, the people around me 10 minutes into the flight realize, huh, we get extra arm rest. And so, you know, now I'm like snuggling with people I don't know and I can't do anything for four hours.

And so I'm already like done with life in every way. And so homeboy's staring at me, I'm getting ready to say something really sarcastic. And before I can say anything, my dude goes, was it a bear? And I'm like, was it what? He's like a bear. Did a bear get your arms? I look at this dude and I'm like, is this like me and you when we get that bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and we're just thinking, you know what, today I'm just not feeling like a chicken thigh or chicken breast, like I only want the chicken legs. Did this bear wake up and go, you know what, not in the mood, not in the mood for like people head or like the squishy people middle.

I just want some good old-fashioned people arms. And so you're telling me, you're telling me that I crossed the wrong bear at the wrong time? And he just got really quiet.

He's like, no. And I'm like, that's right, that's not what happened, moron. And then I get on the plane and I realize it was called a human being, a moron.

And so, of course, God in his justice puts me in a middle seat. I snuggle with two people that I don't know for the next four hours from Denver to Charlotte and the plane lands. And that dude, Mr. Bear eating my arms, he was like at the very front of the plane. So we get off and he's way in front of me.

I sprint through the Charlotte airport. And I can't tap people on the back, so I sort of headbutt him. And I'm like, hey, buddy, I'm sorry I called you a moron. And he's like, sorry, I thought a bear ate your arms. We had a moment together. But then it was just really cool because I got to sit with this guy and just, I mean, truthfully, lay out for him, okay, this is what happened. It wasn't a bear, it wasn't a shark. And I got to share with him just my story, but it was cool that, you know, just that initial conversation morphed into a 25-minute conversation where we ended up sitting down at a gate there at Charlotte Douglas that wasn't even our gate.

And I get to share the gospel with this guy just because of this exterior that God in his grace has given me. And so, you know, to dispel all the thoughts of bears and sharks and tigers, oh, my, you know, I was just born this way, you know, no sort of fancy story or, you know, crazy twists and turns in there. But one of the things that I think sets just even that part of my story apart was, you know, leading up to when I was born, nobody knew that I was going to be born without arms.

You know, Mom had a healthy pregnancy, my mom had two ultrasounds, and so the thought was all along the way, hey, we're going to have this healthy baby boy. And so nobody knows that anything is wrong literally until the moment I'm born and the doctor is holding an armless baby boy in his arms. And then in that moment, not only am I armless, but I was lifeless. I wasn't crying, I wasn't breathing, I wasn't moving. The doctor tried to find a pulse and he couldn't find a pulse on me, and so he just really quickly turns to my dad and he holds me up so Dad can see that I don't have arms.

And then he just asked my dad, do you want us to let him go? Because from a purely worldly sense, my life doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Truthfully, we exist and operate and live in a world made by people with arms, for people with arms. I mean, seriously, think about your morning so far. Think about your iPhone went off in the wee hours of the morning, so you reached over and you slapped it so you could get those extra nine minutes of sleep, and now you wake up nine minutes later than you wanted to, and so you're in straight panic mode, so you start to get ready, brush the hair, brush the teeth, throw the clothes on, make breakfast, literally physically throw the kids in the car, speed here as fast as you can, come into service, shake hands, grab coffee, all that good stuff. And this is just the first couple hours of your day. But hit the reset button on your Sunday. Start the day over, but don't use your fingers or your thumbs or your arms, elbows. How much of that seems productive, if not altogether implausible? I think in so many ways in just this world we live in, our arms are some of the most forsaken parts of who we are.

We assume it's the standard equipment, but that wasn't the case for me. And in that moment, that doctor's looking at me and he goes, what's the point? What's he going to do?

Why bother? But in that moment, I'm incredibly thankful I had two parents that, no, they wanted to bother, and my dad looked at that doctor and he's like, no, that's my boy, and you're going to do whatever it is that you can do to try to bring him back, and so the doctors rush me out and they start to work on me, and a couple minutes later, the doctor walks in with a little kicking, screaming, armless baby boy, and God in His grace had truly brought me back from the dead and brought me to life, and I think for my parents, in that moment, that fear that existed that, man, is our little boy going to live? Is he going to be okay?

That fear subsided for a minute, but then what started to happen is word started to spread through the hospital right there in Greensboro. Hey, there's a little armless boy up on the third floor. He should go check him out, and so all of these doctors started to pour into our room, and it's like pediatricians, orthopedic specialists. There was a dude that walked in.

He was a hand specialist, and my dad's like, you're barking up the wrong tree, and the guy's like, you're right, yep, he doesn't have any of those, does he? And he saunters off, but it's like in this three to four hour span, there were probably 15 to 20 doctors that come in and check me out, and there was one man that had something positive to say about the course of my life, and the rest of them, it literally ran the range from my parents were told I'd never feed myself, I'd never write, I'd never go to normal school, never graduate, never get a job, never be a fully functioning, independent adult. One doctor, he pulled my dad out in the hallway, you know, a man-to-man conversation, and the doctor just told him, listen, you should just give this kid up for adoption, because he's just going to be in more trouble than what he's worth. And man, for a lot of us, you know, in this room that are parents, you know, the day you have your kid or your kids, it's one of the most memorable and joyful days of your life. I mean, for my parents now, the story is different, but it's like then, when they think back to the day that they had me, it was honestly one of the scariest days of their life, because it's just like, here it is, just twist and turns, bad news after bad news, fear after fear, and worry, and tribulation after tribulation, and they're just sitting there, the night finally winds down, everybody goes away, they're just left to themselves with me, and they're like, what are we going to do?

You know, how do we even like begin to navigate this? And for them, the one promise that they held to in the midst of everything that night was, you know what, God brought this little boy back from the dead, and so he's not going to do that, and they go, all right, I did my job, y'all figure the rest out, like that's not what God's going to do. God's got this. And guys, like truthfully, the best way I can explain it is that that's incredibly true, because it's, you know, for you guys, God made y'all listen to deluxe models, you know, like you got all the fingers and thumbs and arms and all the fun stuff.

I'm the economy model, you know, like I didn't get the cool stuff you got, I'm just more aerodynamic than you are, you know, that's about the only benefit I have. But it's like with the armless hardware, it was like God gave me the armless software too, and there was just this clear understanding, even in my little heart in those early days of my life, it was just like God had inscripted on my little heart, hey buddy, I didn't give you hands, but I gave you feet, so go get them tiger, you know, and so nobody, growing up, nobody had to teach me, if you sat a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in front of me, nobody had to teach me how to stick a spoon in between my toes and make that ice cream vanish into my face. It was just like God wrote that on my heart, or nobody had to teach me how to stick a crayon in between my toes and color in between the lines and write my ABCs, God just wrote that on my heart.

And it was just so amazing to watch that all of these things that the professional opinion of man said I would never do, God in His grace and His kindness just said, watch this. And man, I was able to feed myself and write. I went to normal school, you know, I went to Nathaniel Green Elementary, right up the highway from here, you know, graduated, graduated from Southeast Guilford High School with honors, you know, got my license at 16 just like everybody else, you know, grew up like every other boy in Southeast Guilford County, you know, dad raised me fishing. I remember probably being eight or nine years old and he looks at me and he's like, son, we're going to teach you how to shoot, because we can't have an unarmed, unarmed man, you know, because that's a double negative and we can't have any of that. And so, you know, in so many ways I had just a normal childhood growing up here.

You know, I went to college on a full ride, met the girl of my dreams, you know, as a junior in college and we were married at the end of my senior year. We'd been married 15 years, got a nine-year-old boy, five-year-old little girl, and man, these days I have a ministry that I wouldn't trade for the world. And all of that for a kid that the world said in minute one of my life, I wasn't good enough. The world looked at me and said, should we really bother? Should he really take a breath?

Should he really even be alive? And it's like whereas I think in a lot of ways my physical body hasn't been overly full of struggle, what my struggle was then, what my struggle continues to be now is just this feeling that I'm not good enough. This perception of viewing myself through the eyes of the world, which at times it can run the range of, oh, man, look at this armless dude, he's such an inspiration.

But then it can also be just as quickly, look at this freak, look at this weirdo, look at this circus act. And I just found myself I think trapped in just this prison of worth and insecurity, and I was starting to judge my life and my worth and my purpose all determined by my circumstances. And so what that started to do for me is that created all sorts of insecurity in my heart. It led me to hate people, led me to hate and question God, because I'm starting to keep score of God's love and God's grace toward me on my terms.

And so I'm looking around going, God, I'm the only kid in my middle school that has to eat pizza with his toes. And I know, yeah, Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so. My parents wrote that on my little heart in those early days as a kid, but I remember thinking, well, God loves everybody else because he gave them arms. Why doesn't God love me like he loves them? And man, that just created just so much tension and turmoil and hurt.

And honestly, as I got into my teens, just like depression and isolation. And man, as a 15-year-old, God used this kid in my chemistry class in high school. I thought he was my friend because he invited me to this thing that his youth group was doing. I was like, oh, that's cool. And I show up and he neglected to tell me that this was a youth group dodgeball lock-in. Now, armless people are good at a lot of things.

Dodgeball is not one of them. And so the whole night I just basically get beaten to death. I was like an armless pinata for four hours, just get hammered. And then halfway through the night, the youth pastor, he gets up, and of course he talks about, of all things, God's love. And as I'm putting an ice pack on my face, I'm like, yeah, I feel that totally. And so the night winds back up, the guys go back to playing dodgeball, and I'm just like, I'm going to sit out. I'm done.

I'm just going to watch them do their thing. And so I'm sitting on the sidelines and a student pastor comes up to me. He starts to talk to me. And he's feeling me out, just kind of getting a sense of what's going on in my life.

And I think he could sense that insecurity and that hurt and that brokenness in my heart. And so he just straight up asked me, Daniel, you don't really like your life, do you? I look at this guy and I'm like, no. There's nothing good about this.

There's nothing good or glorious or redeemable about this armless packaging. I don't see how God can love me or I don't even see the evidence of God loving me. What good can come of this? And it was amazing how for the next couple of hours, literally, the student pastor just sits with me. And he lays out God's love for me, not only in the fact that in my mother's womb that God was forming me and shaping me, and that it's not like God turned his back for a little bit and then turned back around and was like, oh no, I forgot the arms.

The Lord didn't do that. When he fearfully and wonderfully made me, he crafted me, even in my armlessness, for a reason. And as this guy started to explain to me, Daniel, you're a perfect creation in the hands of a perfect creator.

He didn't miss a stitch when he stitched you together in your mother's womb. But not only does God love you in that, but God loves you in this, is that even when you question him and doubt his pursuit and his love of you, he sends his son to live the perfect life you could not live, to die the death that you most certainly should die as a sinner and a rebel. And God raises him to life to show his victory over both sin and death and to all who trust in him.

He adopts into the family of God and sends out on the mission of God. That's how much the Creator and Sustainer and Savior of the world loves you. And man, to see the Gospel like that, I mean, truly it changed my life for the better. And man, to trust and rest in Christ not only as my Savior, my Lord, my King, my everything, but then, man, he started to be my purpose, my hope. And I remember in those early days growing in Christ, my favorite verse that I leaned on was Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength.

And it was something I leaned on, I think, is this overly motivational verse. And in the months to come, I'll never forget sitting down and studying through the book of Philippians for the first time, like chapter 1 to chapter 4. And man, to watch that Scripture truly come to life and to realize it's far more than just, man, do better, try harder, don't quit.

But what we see just through the Word of God is the power of God and the purpose of God shown in and through his people. So if you have God's Word this morning, turn with me to Philippians 4, and we're going to read verses 11 through 13. And now, listen, before we dive in, we've got to remember that this is a prison epistle. Paul pens these words to the church at Philippi as he sits in a prison cell, not knowing if he's going to live or if he's going to die.

Paul doesn't know what tomorrow is going to hold, but he does know the one that he has trusted his life with, and that jumps out in a very apparent way in this first verse we're about to read. So read with me Philippians 4, starting in verse 11. And God's Word says this, Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation that I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance. I've learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

It's wild to me that a guy who doesn't know if he's going to live or die can pen a verse like verse 11. I'm content in whatever situation that I find myself in. I'm content when I'm preaching. I'm content when God is using me to plan a church. I'm content when I'm being beaten.

I'm content when I'm sitting in a prison cell, not knowing what my night or my next day will hold. But I know the one that I trust. And that secret there in verse 11, that secret's not so secret. He sort of sprinkled the reality all through this entire book of Philippians, that for him, his everything, his secret to being content, his worth, his value, his hope is all built on the person and work of Christ.

Paul says in the very first chapter, Philippians chapter 1 verse 21, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Man, that's a wild way to live for a guy who's being persecuted because ultimately that's a really annoying person to have to persecute because for Paul, if to live is Christ, then his everything is built on Jesus. So you can take his money, his job, his freedom.

He don't care. He's got Jesus. And then if you kill him, all you give him the opportunity to do is see Jesus face to face. So it's like no matter what, Paul wins.

No matter what, you can't really beat the guy up or steer him off course because he has focused his entire life toward Christ, his hope, his value, his strength, his everything on him. And as we see, even the psalmist says in Psalm 73, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Church, we live in a day and age that says your worth and your value comes from what you do and what you have. And unless you've reached a certain decimal point in your bank account or a certain amount of square footage in your home or the right truck or the right boat or the right vacation or the right platform or the right power, then you haven't made it. And that you've got to chase after all of those things to finally be happy, to finally be content. But you know what? We can look across the landscape of this planet and we can see people that have all those things.

They have platform, they have power, they have money, they have all the stuff, and they're still just as miserable as they were before they had it all. Hope doesn't come from the things of this world. Contentment doesn't come from things that I can see and touch and taste and smell. Our hope, our purpose, our worth, our contentment comes from Christ and Christ alone. That's why Paul can say in Philippians chapter 3 that I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord. And when Paul says that, Paul can say it from experience because honestly the worst earthly thing that happened to Paul was meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. Because before Christ, he had the tier 1 education, he had the job with power, people knew his name, they respected him, they feared him. And then the moment he met Jesus, came thorn in the flesh, persecution, beatings, imprisonment. But Paul can look in the rearview mirror and say, I'll do it all again in view of knowing and trusting and resting in Christ as my everything.

Church, hear me out. We don't have to sit in here this morning and have to meet a certain income requirement or meet a certain platform standard or meet any sort of expectations of any other person on this planet to feel like we matter or we're worth it or we're loved because the creator and the sustainer of the universe has already proclaimed both your worth, your purpose and His love towards you. And that is a promise that does not fade and will not go anywhere and that is why we can hope. That is why we can trust even in the worst of circumstances because secondly what I want us to see this morning is this, is God is at work and you're hurt.

God is at work and you're hurt. If you flash back to chapter one in Philippians, Paul is saying, listen, I know that this will work out for my deliverance. And Paul goes on to say either he's going to be delivered physically and in being freed from the bonds of prison or that he'll be delivered from this life. And in death, he will meet his savior face to face. And regardless, Paul says, I know that my imprisonment will work out for your good and that even if I gain my freedom, that that also will be for your good and for His glory. And that even in the worst of circumstances, we see this refining that God works and moves in and through us and it's a refining I've seen. Paul talks about in 1 Peter chapter one, he says, in this and just talking about trials and hurt and the things that we have to face in this life, he says, in this you should greatly rejoice even though now for a little while, you have to face various kinds of trials. It's so that the proof of your faith which is more precious than gold, even though it perishes by fire may be found a result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And sometimes the worst thing about us is the best thing that God uses to remind us how weak we are and how sovereign He truly is. One of the most common questions people ask me all the time is like, hey, if you could like jump in a time machine, go back, start this whole life thing over again, would you want to like start life over with arms? Or people ask me, hey, you ever wanted to get prosthetics?

And the prosthetics question, there's one little asterisk there. Like if Tony Stark was real and I could have like Iron Man arms, that'd be cool. I could be like, I could be one quarter of a superhero. Like that'd be kind of fun. But considering he's not real, that's not a likely scenario for me. In all honesty, if I could go back and start it all over again with arms, would I? No.

I really wouldn't. Would life be more simple? Yeah, absolutely. But for me, like when Paul says right here, I know the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I know I can do all things through Christ that gives me the strength. My trial and my tribulation has allowed me to not only know that God is strong and mighty, revealed through His word, but it's like I know how strong He is because He's shown up in ways that I never could have seen coming. I can hear people preach about the hope that God brings. I can see His hope revealed in Scripture, but He has cemented that reality in my heart that even when the world looks at me as a lost cause, I see a God who has used a broken and jacked up life, and He's used me for His glory, for His purposes, and I wouldn't trade that for the world. Does that mean there's still hard days?

Yeah, absolutely. I got saved at 15, and I woke up that next morning. You know what happened? I was still armless. I didn't sprout arms overnight. My whole physical situation didn't get better. But God has given me a hope to navigate it. Now there's still bad days, especially as a daddy. There's times where I wish I could scoop my kids up and hug them. Or I've got a nine-year-old little boy that loves football like the desert loves the rain, and he wants nothing more than to go in the backyard and play catch with his daddy, and he just can't. Or I think of my little girl that one day, by God's grace, she'll walk down the aisle, and I will walk right beside her, but I won't be able to hold my little girl's hand.

Stuff like that still stings, and it still hurts. But I know that God is working in the midst of that to remind me that my security is not in ten fingers and two arms. My security and hope and strength are all provided by Him in ways that oftentimes are really intangible.

Because for me, He crafted me like this for a purpose, y'all. And ultimately, that verse right there, verse 13, when Paul says, I can do all things through Christ that gives me the strength, that's not this penultimate motivational verse. If you walk into any Christian bookstore, you're going to see Philippians 4.13 on pencils, on garden gnomes, on doormats. It's just like this overly sensationalized verse that people use to run that last little quarter mile on their jog or to not murder that co-worker that's really annoying. We'll almost recite it as just this little motivational push, but truthfully, what this verse is about is it's not about me. This verse is not about you. Look down, if you still have your Bibles, look down in verse 19. Paul says this, My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To God and Father be glory forever and ever.

Amen. The strength that He gives is about His glory and not yours. And that's the whole push of this entire book. Even though theologians will call Philippians the book of joy, this joy is about the opportunity for people to see the fruit and work of Christ in your life and to taste and see that the Lord is good. And oftentimes that opportunity comes by us just simply putting our yes on the table before God and to go, God, whatever you need of me, God, wherever you call me, whatever tough conversations you ask of me, here's my yes. Because I know that by your strength and by your grace and by your hope that I'll be able to approach this. That for us the strength that God gives is for us to walk in the mission that He's called us to in the first place.

And y'all, sometimes that mission's hard. I'm saved at 15, God calls me into ministry at 16. And if I'm to be totally honest, even at 16, I'm a recovering people hater. I grew up, I was very wary of people. Anytime I met new people, they're going to stare at me and point at me and say rude things. So it's like, Lord, I don't like humans.

Why are you calling me to take the gospel to groups of humans? Like, Lord, this is not my wheelhouse. But I just remember going, all right, this is not going to go well, but okay. And it was, it was a struggle. And the Lord grew me and stretched me. But I put my yes on the table before God and to watch how He just took that simple obedience and He used my brokenness and my weakness to display His glory. And He continued to do that throughout the course of my life. You know, now 20 years into trusting and resting in Christ as my Lord, He still continues to put me in situations that I'm woefully insecure about.

You know, a couple years ago, I'm sitting on my back porch, I'm sipping on some iced coffee, you know, just having a chill afternoon. And so I start to scroll Twitter. And so I just tap on this one, like, random news article. And of all things, in this news article, it's describing this abortion legislation that's going through the Virginia legislature at the time. And in this legislation, they're offering up protections to abort children with disabilities all the way up until the point of birth. And even beyond that, the governor of Virginia goes on to say in this interview that they were offering up protections in this legislation that even kids with disabilities could be born. And in his words, they'd be kept comfortable and a conversation could ensue between the doctor and the mother as to whether the baby should live or die.

And now, listen, I'm not an overly political person by any stretch of the imagination. But I read through this article and, man, that flashes me back to that conversation that was had over my lifeless body in the first few moments of my life and all the things that my parents were told that I would never do and never be and how woefully wrong they were. And I'm sitting there thinking, how many other mothers are going to be told what their kids will never be, what their kids will never do, and their little lives are going to be snuffed out even before it starts.

And I'm like, man, this can't come to be. And so I did what every self-respecting millennial would do, and so I shot a video on my phone and I posted it on Twitter. And so in this video, I mean, it was 90 seconds. But I just lay out biblically why this is utterly jacked up and why human worth is stamped on each and every human life in the womb from the moment of conception, that God fearfully and wonderfully crafts each and every person, disability or not, as image bearers to be used for His glory and His purpose and that our disability does not negate that.

And it was wild to watch how in just a matter of hours this little video had been seen tens of thousands of times and people had liked it and retweeted and all this stuff and so much so that a person from Fox News reached out to me and they were like, hey, man, we saw that video. Could you turn it into an 800-word piece? Just write out an 800-word article and we'll post it on our website tomorrow. I'm sitting here going, now, listen, I'm not a college professor.

I'm not an ethics expert. All I've got is who God is, what God has done and what He's shown me from His Word. So if you're cool with me preaching, that's all I got. They're like, we're cool with you preaching, I guess.

I'm like, you're lost. And so I type up this little article and I send it to them and they post it the next day and it was wild because of all of the things that Apple News picked up as a push notification for that day. It was that one article that I wrote on the sanctity of human life in view of the author of life.

And in just 24 hours, almost 4 million people had read through this article. And so Fox doubles down and they're like, hey, man, can you be in New York City in 12 hours? And I'm like, uh, and they were like, listen, we want you to come on a show and just talk about this whole pro-life thing.

Your story is really timely and we just love to hear your perspective. And I'm like, listen, I'm not wordy or smart or anything like that. All I've got is just God and His good news.

And if you're cool with that, that's all I've got. So they're like, all right, come on. I'm like, dang it. I was hoping the whole gospel thing was going to scare them off and then they're already booking the plane ticket. I'm like, great. And so I get on a plane, I fly to New York City, and so I touch down and they literally pick me up from the airport. They're driving me to the studio. I'm like, what did I get myself into?

This is terrifying. And so I call my best friend who lives in Pleasant Garden and I'm like, hey, man, what am I going to do? And I called the wrong human being because all he says was, listen, you screw up, seven million people think you're an idiot, so don't screw up.

And I'm like, what a jerk. And I hang up and so now I'm just freaking out. And so I'm just playing through in my head just everything they're going to ask me because in these shows everything's laid out in advance. And so I know all the questions they'll ask.

They'll know all of my responses. And so I'm just playing it through in my head like a little newsreel. And so I get there and I walk into Fox and they put me in this tiny little green room and I walk in and there's three human beings in the green room.

It's me, Congressman Doug Collins, and former Governor Chris Christie. And I'm sitting here going, I'm the dumbest person in the room. And just even more I'm feeling scared and freaked out. And so finally the time comes to go upstairs and we do this quick little four-minute interview. And the first three questions is all about sanctity of human life, abortion legislation, rights of the child, stuff like that. And then in the fourth question this lady totally goes off script, asks me a question that we hadn't gone over before, and it sent me scrambling because she asked me, she says, listen, something happened when you were 15 years old that changed your life. What was it? And now listen, I'm here to talk about like abortion and pro-life and I'm going, I didn't do nothing with abortion as a 15-year-old.

Like what is this lady? And then it just clicked. It's like, man, this woman wants me to talk about the day that I trusted in and rested in Christ as my Lord and my Savior, my King, my everything. And so for 45 seconds, man, I preached the gospel of God's grace to 7 million people. And I think that I could preach 50 more years.

I won't preach to 7 million people. And in that one moment, in the midst of my weakness and my insecurity and my woeful insufficiency, God kept putting me in situations where I had to put my yes on the table and put my yes on the table and to watch how God took my fragile life and used it to show the world His glory and grace. And now listen, your yes on the table might not look like a Fox News interview, but your yes on the table might mean having tough conversations with people you love or your yes on the table before God might mean loving really unlovable people.

Your yes on the table might mean serving this local church in ways that aren't very comfortable for you. But God has promised that if you just simply walk in what He's asked, that He's got your back. He'll carry you along. He'll use you in the midst of your weakness and your insufficiency and your brokenness. And He'll use you for His glory and His kingdom and His purpose. And I think the simple question is, will you? Will you put that yes on the table before the Lord?

Because it's only through the body of believers doing something like that that in another 48 years, there'll be another person standing in this pulpit talking about the previous 48 years that God has shown His glory and grace in and through Beacon Baptist Church. It only comes through people who are willing to say, here I am, God. I'll give you all I got. It might not be much, but I'll give you my time, my talents, my relationships, my Mondays, my Fridays, my Thursdays, all of my days. God, use me to show the world you. That's all God asks of us. That we take what He has already given us by His kindness and grace and use it for Him.

So this morning, the simple challenge is just that. Will you? Will you say, here I am, God? Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you so much. God, for your glory, for your grace. God, we thank you for your love and pursuit of us. Father, this morning, in light of all of that, in light of your pursuit and grace and love towards us, Father, I just pray we would all say with one voice, God, here we are.

Here's our yes. Where you send us, we will go. What you ask of us, we will do. The words you give us, God, we will say. All for your glory, all dependent on your strength. Father, we love you and we thank you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.