This Is Christ

Hi, I'm Joanne Vickner, Memaw with It's Storytime Memaw, an answered prayer for stories that point children to God on the Truth Network for kids. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into Kingdom Pursuits. Now live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore.

Welcome to Kingdom Pursuits. Oh, I'm so glad that you chimed in with us today. We have such a wonderful program for you. I love Christmas time and Christmas programs. It's always very fun.

And so we've got some stuff along those lines today. We have Jeremy Chandler with Triad Baptist. This is Christ Christmas event coming up, actually coming up tonight, December 10th and Sunday, the 11th. I think tonight they both start at 5 30.

Am I right, Jeremy? Tonight at Triad Baptist. Yeah.

It's there at 5 30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow night. So this is Christ Christmas event. It sounds like you're trying to put Christ back into Christmas. Yeah, we're trying to keep Christ in Christmas. There you go.

There you go. So what could people expect as they make their way out there tonight and tomorrow? So it's actually, it's a free event and it's a choir concert. So our choir does a concert every year.

This year's a little different because it's got some live drama in it. And so our drama team here at Triad Baptist would be depicting the Christmas story. And it was written, this is Christ, was written and composed by David and Elise Averbeck. And they're kind of local to this area. Elise grew up in this area.

She met her husband, David, in California at Bible College. And he moved back here. But this is, he wrote this and published this three or four years ago. And so we're doing it this year.

We're excited about being able to do something that was sort of local grown. But it's beautiful music. It's traditional Christmas hymns and carols.

And with, of course, the story of the story is of Anna and Simeon encountering Mary and Joseph and seeing the baby Jesus. Oh, wow. How awesome. So you really can come see it tonight at five thirty at Triad Baptist, which if you're listening in Ohio might be a long drive, but it's okay. It'll be worth it.

Maybe you can catch a plane. It's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And so Triad Baptist, what's your address, guys? It's 1175 South Main Street. And that's actually Kernersville. Kernersville, North Carolina. Shows what I know. Triad Baptist. It's in the Triad, though, which is in the Triad. Exactly.

It's right there on Main Street across from Wal-Mart and Kernersville. There you go. And also with us today, we have John Priest. And John is a multi ministry person, and he's got all sorts of different ministries he's involved with, a prison ministry. He's got a daily devotion. But he's also a big Stu Epperson fan, comes to Wednesday in the Word every week. And everybody seems to know him. But welcome, John.

Thank you very much. Yeah, so we'll see if that's that mic, I think. We've got so many new mics, we've got to see what we've got. Let's see if you can get on the mic, John. Is that working?

Test one, two? Yeah, there you go. Okay, yeah.

Thank you for this privilege. Yeah, so excited. So we just got a Morning Sword devotional this morning. Everybody did. And it seemed to have something to do with Christmas, maybe. Well, as a Christmas baby, you can count on it. Were you born on Christmas?

I, you know, God has a sense of humor. I not only was born on Christmas, but my first name is John. My last name is Priest.

And I actually share the name with John Priest Sr. and John Priest Jr. So, you know, at Christmas time, it's a special day, but I learned right off the bat that sharing is a very big part of my life. So I enjoy it, but I also take it to heart.

Right. And, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Perfect Gift. You ought to see it because it's about a little girl named Noelle who was, her birthday was Christmas Day. And she gets visited by Jesus and she's complaining to him that nobody celebrates her birthday. It's always about all the shopping and all this, which gets back to the whole idea of Christmas. So, Christian, as you might imagine, you know, there comes a point where I have to tell my riddles. So speaking of Christmas. Now the fun begins, cause now it's time to play shenanigans.

Yes, it is. For those of us who've been waiting on Robbie's riddles, here they come. So, you know, we have some good riddles for you, John or Jeremy, if you feel like jumping in. You may have heard this one.

I like it a lot. It says, what do reindeer say before they tell you a joke? Feel free to jump in there, John. I'm totally clueless. I can't wait for the answer. Jeremy, do you know what reindeer say before they tell you a joke? No, I'm trying to figure this one out.

They say, this one's going to slay you. Oh, you know why it's harder to be buying advent calendars? It just keeps getting harder and harder to buy those advent calendars. You know why? Oh, they're sitting in a cargo ship? Ah, they could be in China, yeah.

But from what I understand, their days are numbered. This reminds me of the Verizon commercial I've seen lately, which makes me absolutely laugh. It said, how did Scrooge win the football game? How did Scrooge win the football game?

Come on, Christian, you got to know that. I have no idea. The ghost of Christmas passed. And so we have quite the prizes today, if you can call in and guess my one riddle.

And so today's riddle you can call in and win is, why is Christmas a terrible pun bonanza? If you can guess that, you call us at 866-348-7884 and Christian, tell them what they'll win. They're going to win one of Jeff Messick's poem prize packs. Yes, Jeff Messick's poem prize packs include not one, but two wooden plaques with Jeff Messick's poems and a Jeff Messick poem t-shirt. Jeff Messick is the poet that I quoted a poem from that show right in the Christian car guy. He's got some amazing poems. This particular poem is broken that's on these plaques, which is a wonderful gift in order to put up in your house.

And then you've got the t-shirt so you can walk around. And all you have to do is tell us, why is Christmas? And you might remember that nobody has ever not guessed a riddle on Kingdom Pursuits.

Never happened in the history of the show since I've been hosting it for a long time. You can guess 866-348-7884. So getting back to you, Jeremy, tell us your role with Triad Baptist, which is in Kernersville now that I've waken up and smelled the coffee. Well, I'm the creative communications director here. So I do a lot of special events and social media websites and productions, concerts, so we do a lot here.

I know you do, and I don't know why my brain just checked out to lunch, because you guys do something really cool almost every Christmas. I've had you on with different events over the years. So how did God, you know, get your attention, Jeremy, to get at Triad Baptist? Well, I had taught high school for 15 years and had always done a lot of the creative stuff and different events for that high school, but I was sort of ready to make a change. And one of my best friends, Dad, the pastor here at Triad Baptist Church, and so when he heard I was kind of going to make a change, he wanted to create, this was about ten and a half years ago, he wanted to create a new position. The church was growing, so he kind of created the position for advertising, marketing, and like a creative communications director.

A lot of churches have those positions now, but ten years ago that was sort of maybe a new thought or a new idea. And so the school, we have an academy here, an awesome academy, and it's growing, and so I work with them as well. So I kind of work on both ends, so I get to sort of keep my feet in the Christian school as well as work for the church. So I enjoy it. Wow, that's beautiful. So in your case, John, so you said you had a number of things you wanted to share with us today, so we'll just let you go with what you want to do first.

Well, thank you. You know, anytime we have an opportunity to talk about the gospel, to share the gospel, it's not only a privilege, but it's an opportunity to sharpen my pencil, because I always think there is someone who has a need to hear God's word. And so oftentimes our dialogues are probably what's going to do the most, not only to share the heart of God, but also to get the sword of the Spirit, the word of the Spirit into someone's heart. And so Christmas itself is a very special time for my family. First of all, being a Christmas child, I always jump in right in the middle of this, but you can see we're going to come back with a lot on the sword of Christmas here. When we come back, we've got so much more kingdom pursuits coming up, plus we need you. You've got to guess this riddle.

Why is Christmas such a terrible pun bonanza? You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. And I love, love, love doing this show.

I get to meet so many amazing folks that are doing just that. We have Jerry Chandler with Triad Baptist Church, which is in the Triad in Kernersville, North Carolina, kind of between Greensboro and Winston-Salem. And their Christ in Christmas event, which I learned, is a whole, you know, event that was written by some local folks. And so they're performing this whole thing. This is Christ Christmas event.

So how cool is that? December 10th, that's today. And the 11th, which is tomorrow, and they both start at 5.30. And then we have John Priest, who is with us. He has got an amazing prison ministry he's going to talk about, and then he does the morning sore devotional. But when we left our hero, John, he was in the middle of pontificating and got set off by the break.

So carry on. So Christmas is a very special time to my family. December of 1995, we got a little surprised. My daughter Rebecca had been ill for a number of months. We wondered what was going on with her, and sure enough, we found out December 21st, 1995, that she was diagnosed with leukemia. So that Christmas became a very different Christmas for us. And then lo and behold, about a year and a half later on maintenance therapy, healing going well, she relapsed. And we found ourselves back in the hospital at Christmas again with this time for a bone marrow transplant. So Christmas as a Christmas baby has always been very different for our family. But let me say this.

We have always had opportunities every Christmas situation, regardless of where we are, not only to share the gospel, but to see Christmas as God truly meant it oftentimes in very humble situations. So I'm sure everybody listening has the same question. I do. What happened? I mean, your daughter had it, and then it relapsed. What happened? So she was on maintenance therapy, and that's one of the things about cancer, especially leukemia.

She had ALL. In fact, our friend brother Chad Tucker has shared quite a bit about his daughter Roro's journey. And Chad actually came down to my road one day doing an interview with a neighbor, and I saw him parked on the side of the road and said, hey, is Chad Tucker around? And he said, he's sitting in that car.

He was on my road, the gravel road. And we got to share our stories and pray for each other as fathers of leukemia, of kids with leukemia. And so what happened? So with my daughter Rebecca, she got my son's bone-mirror transplant, and she thrived and survived up until six months before her wedding.

My wife and I got off a missionary trip, got off the plane, turned our phones on in Miami coming from Guatemala, and there were urgent phone calls from Rebecca, and she had thyroid cancer. So this third go-around was just, we just literally fell to our knees. We just prayed. We said, you know, God, this doesn't take you by surprise. Why now? Why right before her wedding? We've gone for years with medical treatments, medical issues, but why this? And he just told us, Psalm 46, 10, peace, be still.

Be still and know that I'm God. And so what happened? So she survived the thyroid cancer surgery. She had her thyroid removed. She had a parathyroid transplant, and six months later, she was married to my son-in-law. And she's still with us? She's still with us, yes.

Rebecca is primarily deaf, and she teaches at the American Sign Language School in South Carolina. Wow, what a story. But you just don't share the whole thing. That's okay.

It's okay. But I know everybody wanted to listen and hear what God's done through that. And, you know, it's amazing, Jeremy, how many times through what appears to be really tragic circumstances, right?

Oh, yeah. Which I'm sure that that has to do with what you guys are celebrating there at Triad, right? It's been a really difficult year. It's been a tough year, and we've tried to do things this year intentionally to get the gospel out and to bring hope and happiness to a lot of people. We had a new song, Francesca Botticelli, with us last weekend. This weekend, of course, we're doing this presentation that's really focused on the birth of Christ and the true meaning of that and how Jesus is the only one who can really bring us the hope and the joy that we need and that we crave in this day and age.

Wow. So how did it go with the concert last week? Well, it went great. It went really great, and we had a good crowd here. We had six get saved last week at the concert, so we were really excited about that. Wow. And felt really good about that.

Yeah, isn't that amazing? And so can you kind of walk us through that? How, at the end of a concert like that, did six people get saved? Well, you know, New Song, they've been around for a long time, and they're pretty powerful as far as presenting the gospel and being true to that.

It's not all about entertainment for them, which is what we really enjoyed about having them here. Russ with New Song, toward the end of the concert, just gave the gospel presentation and talked about the darkness that we're living in in the world today and how important it is, if we don't know Christ, to have a relationship with him because he's the only hope. And as a result of that, you know, he just kind of did an invitation. And so from what we know, six people came to know Christ that night. Of course, that led into their big hit, Arise My Love, and that was just a really exciting moment, too, just to really celebrate, you know, to kind of even get out of the Christmas spirit a little bit and just celebrate Jesus and focus on that and not necessarily all the glitz.

I can hear the boom-boom arise. Yeah. How amazing. And I would guess, I'm just guessing, that probably at the end of Christ and Christmas or your event coming up tonight and tomorrow night, you're going to have a similar type of opportunity, right?

Yes, yes. Our Family Connect pastor will speak tonight briefly, and then our lead pastor, Pastor Rob Decker, will speak tomorrow night for about 10 or 15 minutes and just give the gospel presentation and just talk a little bit about that theme of hope and the importance and power of having Christ in all that we do. And so this is an amazing opportunity, I would just say, for you to invite your neighbor or your friend or somebody that you know, like, man, I bet that they would enjoy a really cool Christmas concert over Triad Baptist.

And guess what? Just through what the Holy Spirit's guiding you to do right this minute by inviting them, and then they're going to obviously get a gospel presentation. And, you know, that's like, wow, you were just talking about that, John. You know, what's interesting is it turns out that we're friends on Facebook, and I actually pray for you guys every morning along with a variety of people. We're sending out a ministry called Morning Sword. It's based on Ephesians 6, the full armor of God. We pray with our devotions.

We take photographs from our travels and throughout the world, and we pick a photo that God supplies to us, pray over a verse, put the verse together, have a short devotional. And then I say, sincerely, I'm praying for you, and then we send a blessing, and it says blessings, priest. So it's so really nice to actually hear your voice and know who you are now because I've seen you and I've seen Decker's picture on Facebook, and now I know the guys that I'm praying for. That's awesome. Yeah, it is.

It is. And again, you know, it's just cool that we have this opportunity, right, that you guys are taking this wonderful play or the drama, I guess would be a better way to put it, that was written locally and are producing it with your whole team, right? And so it's going to be quite the event. And in doing so, you know, who knows the light that'll get shined and generations that could be changed forever. And so there you go.

If you're in the Winston-Salem Triad area or, you know, Greensboro or maybe even in Burlington or who knows, you know, you might make your way over again. It's coming on tonight at 5.30 and then again tomorrow night at 5.30. Are they identical events with the exception of the pastor? They are.

It's the identical concert and just different pastor each night. How awesome. How awesome. So, you know, it is cool that you sign those devotionals.

I get one from you in my text every morning. And I did the text. It's there at KingdomPursuits.com, by the way. If you go to KingdomPursuits.com, you're going to see both the event on, you know, Christ in Christmas as well as John's devotional.

It's there at Kingdom Pursuits if you need more information on either of those. But, you know, when you do those, I did not realize that the pictures are from your travels? Yes, most of them.

Yes, sir. Interesting thing about this. I've been witnessing to my college buddies that I hadn't seen in 45 years and I went for a college reunion this past year and some of the guys are not saved. So it was kind of interesting how these former 18-year-olds got together as old men. Down in Key West, we even jumped off a bridge together just to rekindle some of our childhood exploits. And so now I'm getting some photos on occasion from these guys. And today's photo, actually, on Morning Sword is from Athens, Greece. And one of my roommates, who is professing Jesus as King and Lord and Savior, sent that picture to me so we'd have it for today. Oh, cool. So, yeah.

And so you put that together with some verses and away you go. And so also, we haven't even gotten to your prison ministry, so tell me a little bit about that. So a few years ago, I had the privilege, I was approached and asked to be part of a campaign, and I'm not a fan of politics. I was raised in politics and knew some of the pitfalls, but I was really struck by a guy by the name of Richie Simmons. And so Richie is now our sheriff. The guy that does all the exercises?

No. That's Richard Simmons. Big difference.

Vast difference. Yeah, this is our Gideon sheriff, Richie Simmons. And so Richie actually introduced me to Stu Epperson, and that's how we all kind of know each other here. So long story short, we were active, I'm a Gideon, and we were active in the jail ministry before Richie became sheriff. And so as we got further into his campaign, we began to understand that not only was he a blood-bought, mercy-sought, strong Christian, but he was also some who wanted to enhance and help us with this prison ministry.

Plus, he exercises a lot. No, just kidding. Yeah, he's heard that. Anyway, we have a riddle that has yet to be riddled. You know, why is Christmas—oh, what a prize pack we have for you.

You know, why is Christmas such a terrible pun? Bonanza 866-348-7884. We've got so much more Kingdom Pursuits coming up.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Well, welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. But I've got to just say, coming out of that break, I'm pretty sure that was Smokey Barrett. Anyway, we are so blessed to have with us Jeremy Chandler with Triad Baptist Church and their Christ in Christmas event that's coming up tonight and tomorrow night, as well as John Priest, who, born on Christmas Day and has a ministry there to the jails, as well as the sword. You know, he said something to me during the break that I can't let go, man.

I'm like, man, how cool is this? That you came to Christ in 1984? In New Year's Eve, 1983. 83, okay, so it's just about 84. Yeah, going into 84, yeah, it was.

It was a transition. And you were a Catholic, right, at the time? See, it can happen, just letting you know. I know a lot, a lot, a lot of Catholic, wonderful, wonderful Christians. Actually, one of our producers right back behind me is Rachel, she's amazing Catholic.

Anyway, and Beth Ann, who does our morning show. Anyway, there you were, an unsuspecting Catholic, as you put it. And what happened? The Holy Spirit did something? The priest was praying the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer! And he says, you know, our Father who art in heaven, and God says, you call me your Father, but you're using it like a pair of shoes. You put me on and take me off. You'll pray when you're prosperous, but you don't have a relationship with me.

Why is that? And that was the first question that came to mind that night, and the tears started flowing. Like a pair of shoes you take on and you put off. Wow, that's pretty awesome. Absolutely awesome. But in your prison ministry, right, you recently had a, you got to witness one of these events, right? So, you know, every time we go into the jail, the jail itself. I should probably interrupt you right here anyway and say, you now, right, are not a Catholic, I guess. No, I'm a born again believer, Protestant, and I go to actually Faith Church in Midway, which is a Protestant non-denational Bible preaching church, yes. So I got saved that night, yes, and started looking for a church. Well, however, some people get saved and they find it in the Catholic church. You know, there's some amazing, but anyway, what happened in the prison ministry?

Sure, so just one thing, my mom and dad and my grandmother all got saved and stayed in the Catholic church, and we were absolutely fine with that. So with the jail ministry, it's always very humbling. It has been two years because of COVID that we've been allowed back in the jail.

You know, and just like the wise men went to visit the baby Jesus when he was two years old, this was a night that was meant to be. And so this past Monday night, we went to the jail, and of course, we were only allowed in one area. Well, it turns out it's an area called the hole. Well, the hole is actually some secluded cells that are a story and a half below grade.

There's a little window, and it's a very dark, dank, cave-like place, very secure. And these are the guys that are not only a big— Solitary confinement. Solitary confinement. These guys are a real problem to society.

They're a real problem to themselves, and they have acted up and misbehaved in the jail, so they're absolutely in timeout. And God used this as a tremendous opportunity. That's awesome. And so you got a chance to see somebody come to Christ right there in the hole. So we went down to the hole, and we actually brought the gospel message, but we brought it a little differently. And I started off, and I just want to read the scripture passage, so I quoted accurately. We went to Micah 5, too, and I said, You know, Jesus was actually born in a very dank setting. We have this picture of the manger as a wooden stable and a wooden trough, but if we go into history, and I've spoken with a friend of mine who's actually a Hebrew scholar, he said, Go look again at Micah 5, too. So I read this, and I said, But you, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for us the one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old from ancient times. So Bethlehem Ephratah is actually a mile away from the city of Bethlehem, and Jesus went in, and Mary and Joseph went into what are called shepherd's towers. And if we read Micah 4-8, it says, and we quoted this directly, we said, you know, he talks about the shepherd's towers in Micah 4-8. So these towers were there, and they were ordained by God, used for centuries. Well, of course, I talked with the guys, I said, you know, you're down here in the hall, this is cave-like setting, I said, but Jesus himself was born in similar circumstance.

Because the hole itself, it's dark, it smells terrible, it's dank, it's probably the most disgusting area you can be in. Now, there's going to be a new jail built, and some things are going to get better, but God used this as a ripe opportunity. So 11 men then read with me the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus in Luke chapter 2. You know, and it talks about how Jesus' family came out of Nazareth and made their way to Bethlehem, and how Mary and Joseph found, there was no room at the inn and then the stable, and I said, God hasn't forgotten you guys any more than he forgot his own son. He brought his son into this sheep's tower, into this cave-like setting, like what you're in, because a miracle was going to happen. I said, that same miracle is available for you tonight. And 11 men got on their knees and asked individually, can I accept Jesus as Lord and Savior?

So we always walk through 1 John 1-9, if you confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and we pray it vividly, and then we go to Revelation 3-20, Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man come in and invite me, and I will sup with him and he with me. And I said, this is your appointed time. And 11 men with tears in their eyes are praying out loud forgiveness, and the gospel became live and vivid.

Wow. And Jeremy, I hate to give you such short time, but in what we've got left, can you get said whatever we didn't get a chance to get to about your event, or whatever you want to share, Jeremy? Well, I think we said a lot. We're just excited to have the opportunity to do this at our church. We're blessed to have over 100 volunteers participate in these kind of events, and it's really all for us, it's all just an intentional way of trying to spread hope and spread the gospel, the love of Jesus Christ, and salvation. And so that's kind of our main goal, our main mission. On Main Street, you've got to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing, right, right.

We're not professionals, we're just doing our best to serve the Lord. I love it. And again, it's December 10th, that's today, and tomorrow. That's today, tonight. Yeah, it's at 5.30 right there on Main Street. It's the main thing right there, Triad Baptist Church in Kernersville. And so it's at 5.30 tonight, 5.30 again tomorrow night. And wow, if the Holy Spirit's putting it on your heart to invite these different pastors, these different folks, here we go. Right, yeah.

Love to have you come out. You know, apparently I got myself mixed up, didn't I? That I thought this was the last segment, but there's actually one more segment, so we're not even close to done. We got a whole, we got a lot more to go, John.

That's good to know. So are you married, Jeremy? No, I'm not, no. So you're a young guy, right? It sounds like it.

Well, I try to be. So you obviously have a friend that's got you connected there to the pastor. And so, you know, I'm still a little bit curious about your own experience there at Triad since you've been there, how you felt, God. If you had a moment where all of a sudden you went, okay, God, this is why you have me here, now I see.

Have you had that sense of something that's happened since you've been there? Well, I've always been kind of a creative person, and just finding an outlet to do that. I write myself, so I write productions every year for the church.

And that was just something that I wanted to do, was be able to use my creative ability to share the gospel with Christ. And coincidentally, Stu Epperson's mom, Nancy Epperson, was my speech teacher. Oh, wow. Amazing, amazing. She really taught me so much.

And that's where Stu gets it, I know, but she's awesome. All right. And so Pastor Rob and the church just gave me that opportunity here to do more creative things for the gospel. All right, so we're going to be back with one more segment with John and Jeremy. And we're going to find out what that means to write production, because I know I'm curious.

How about you? Yes. What does that mean that he writes production eight? Yeah, and you may wonder about puns, 866.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Well, welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom and where we specialize in terrible puns. And so, you know, as I was sitting there thinking about this, that actually my guest today, John, he was a Catholic priest. I think that's going to really offend some friends of mine, because they know me.

Yeah, so along those lines, and I don't want to offend anybody, because what I think is beautiful, I learned this when I first got on radio. You might know I was a car dealer, just a shenaniganser. I'm the son of a car dealer.

Yeah, son of a car dealer. Okay, me too. On so many levels. But anyway, I was interviewing this guy in Lebanon, and he was talking about the war. And he said, you know, in Lebanon, we used to be all divided.

We had the Catholics over here, and then there were the Anglicans, and we had the Protestants, and we had, you know, they were Baptists, and they were Pentecostals. And it was all separated, until the bombs started to fall. And the Catholics had the best place, because they were behind gates and all this stuff. And we all fled, and where did we all flee?

We all fled into the Catholic Church. And he said it was amazing that when the bombs started to fall, all of a sudden, you know, the lines weren't so, you know, drawn. And that we all sat down, and we were praying together with all our heart, because we all knew who Jesus was. And we were—and I've never forgotten that description of, like, okay, you know, here you go. When things really get serious, then we're going to find out, right?

Are these people, you know, in Christ, or are they not? And so the fact that, you know, you've had such a different experience there, because you've got good, close family and friends. Oh, absolutely. You know, the thing is this. When we're out sharing the gospel, God says to me, I don't care what church you go to.

I want a relationship with you. We're going to find out on Judgment Day. There are going to be people in heaven we're going to think, huh, I'm surprised to see you here. I don't think we're going to be missing people, because God doesn't want any tears in heaven.

But I do know this. Come Judgment Day, he's going to look at my heart. He's going to see what was there. He's going to see, did you accept me as Lord? Are you living for me?

He knows the heart. And the beauty of this is that when we're sharing the gospel, whether it's in the jail, through Morning Sword on the internet and through texting, or when we're out, you know, we take our Gideon ministry, we go to the bus station here in Winston and share the gospel. It doesn't matter to me at all where you worship right now. I just have one question to ask you. Is Jesus your Savior?

And a lot of times that dialogue gets challenging, to say the least. But again, we have to put down and judge, because God tells us in the Lord's Prayer as well and throughout Luke, you know, don't judge. God's the judge. I'm not.

So I have learned wholeheartedly. Put aside the judgment factor. We're dealing with addicts. We're dealing with recovery folks.

We're dealing with folks that have been through tough stuff. And God is using this cross cultural ministry. I love, love, love, love that you were saved in the Lord's Prayer.

Right? Because, you know, I told a story a few months ago about, you know, when I was supposed to give this gospel presentation, and God honed me in on the Lord's Prayer, like, Robby, you don't get it. Our Father. In other words, I had never seen it that Jesus, it's His Father, too. Right? And so when you pray, Our Father, like, man, Jesus right there, you arm in arm with Him.

Our Father. Holy. Hallelujah. You're not putting on shoes, right? And taking them back off. Like, that is the whole deal, man.

Like, I would love to get to the point where I never take off them shoes. Amen. You know? And therein lies the beauty of that, of the Lord's Prayer. Is that if we could just always feel like, man, we're arm in arm with Jesus saying, Our Father. Yeah.

That's an amazing thing. And by the way, I've been in a Catholic church when they said the Lord's Prayer. It's the same thing. Same thing. I mean, they do trespasses and stuff a little different, but hey. Right.

Right. Well, we sat in the Methodist church recently. We sat in Episcopal church recently and heard the Lord's Prayer.

The beauty of the gospel is it transcends every aspect of society, of generation, and of culture. And the Lord's Prayer takes it and breaks it down. Not only is in heaven, He's holy.

Thy kingdom come, but He says, Forgive. You know what the neat thing about holy is? Holy has to do with proximity. Yes. And the closer you get to Him, right, the holier you get. And so when you really can get arm in arm in arm, you know, whatever, that not only do you get close to Him in space, but you get close to Him in time. Yes.

Have you ever noticed that when you get really deep in prayer that all of a sudden, oh, wow, how did an hour go by and I didn't even know? So all the listeners who are sitting there and just like, what in the world? Jeremy, what does it mean that you write production? Well, I have written about 12 different shows, musical shows. We call them shows because most of what I write is comedy, has a lot of music in it. Are you serious?

Yeah. And so the last eight years I've written productions here for the church, we do full stage shows. We've been blessed to have, you know, we have a nice facility and, again, a lot of great actors and singers, volunteers.

And so we typically do that the first weekend of December every year. We took this year off, the actors, myself, my musical producer, we all took the year off to bring in new songs to do that concert. And so now we've got a new year coming up and Jeremy has got his pen out and he's fixing to write some production. And let's pray that God will give you a download that just blows your mind this year on what you do. Yeah.

I've got to make one of these Jeremy Chandler productions, man. How exciting. How exciting. Yeah.

We're doing a dinner theater in April, a dinner show in April. Awesome. Awesome. Okay.

I'll send you information. We've got to have you back on. That's what we've got to do. Well, thank you, John, for being with us today. Thank you, Jeremy. Wow. We're so grateful for you listening because you get to stay tuned and hear, right, encouraging prayer.