Missy Robertson

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

I’m Virgil Grant. I’m the senior pastor here at Eastside. I’ve been here now for, I think, 33 years, the only church I’ve ever pastored. When I came to Eastside, there was a vision that was in place about reaching young families or young adults with young children in Madison County. And that vision has been the driving force of Eastside since day one. That’s the reason the church was planted, the reason it was launched, it was the reason it was incorporated. All of those things were this vision of reaching as many young families as we could with the gospel. And over the years, we’ve wavered back and forth on that. We’ve been light-hearted on some occasions. Other times it’s kind of leak. But we have known from the very beginning that if we were going to reach more and more people for Jesus in Madison County, there’s no way that we could do it in one location on the far Eastside of the county. And to be honest with you, we didn’t even know what that looked like. But until recently, last fall, we had something that unexpectedly happened. We had land that was donated at exit 95 for us to put our second campus on. Since last fall, we have been having meetings with leadership teams. We started in January and February, and even this month, having meetings in home groups or life groups in our serve team huddles, we’ve been talking about what this second campus is going to look like and about why we need it. And so we thought that it was getting close to Easter. And right after Easter, I’m going to do a sermon series on our whole vision. And we thought it’d be a good time to go and let everybody know that that’s coming. And our vision really stems from this concept of being legacy makers. What we mean by legacy makers is that there are people who went before us, and they invested their time, their talents, their treasures, and their plans. And we’re here today, standing on their shoulders. And one day, the goal is that when we are dead and gone, there be another generation that’s standing on our shoulders, and they’ll be talking about us, and how we risk and bet the farm in order to make possible more and more people get to come to Jesus. And I’m humbled today. They didn’t even know I was doing this, not even know they were coming. But for one of our founding members, Mr. Barbara Storey, who’s 89 years of age, who’s her days, are numbered. She’s in a nursing home, and we’re just waiting for the call at any moment that she will pass and go home. We talked about that last week. You know, she’s not leaving home. She’s going home, and her son and daughter in law and granddaughter, and great-grandchildren are here with us today. And we’re standing on the shoulders of people like Ms. Barbara Storey and many others who have gone before us. Brett, Ray and my dad, and others. And we’re standing here and legacy makers, we’re inviting everyone to be a part of to be a legacy maker and a legacy maker. Someone who believes in and joins in our vision to push back the darkness in central Kentucky by helping 10,000 people to be on the all-in journey. And I just want to break that down for you. And this is what we’re going to be talking about.

WHY PUSH BACK DARKNESS?

The simple answer is what, guys and girls.

It’s getting darker

And the world is getting darker and darker. It’s not getting happier and happier. It’s getting more depressed, angrier, more bitter, more rudeness; it’s just getting darker. And I don’t have to convince you of that. And then, you know, some people go.

WHY 10,000?

The best that I can calculate is that there are only 10,000 people in Madison County today who are attending church. That’s the best estimate, not mine, but other experts’. And we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could just.

Double the light

If we just have 20,000 people in our community who are following Jesus? And then, you know, some of you are saying.

WHY 2ND CAMPUS?

Well, there are a lot of different reasons we can’t add really a bigger building here. We don’t have enough parking. There are logistic problems with one campus, but we also want to be in close proximity. We’ll be in a close area with the communities that we’re involved in. And then we want people to be there. We got people that drive from Lexington. We have seven different counties that are represented here in our body of believers that attend on a weekend basis. And so we want to continue to spread. And then some people go.

WHY NOW?

The short answer is very simple, folks.

God has answered our prayers.

That is the biggest reason why now. Yeah. We’ve been talking about this for five years, plus talking about it, saying, God, how do you want to show up and show off? And, you know, the timing is now because he gifted us the land. He not only gifted us the land, but he’s also giving us blueprints from a church in Cleveland, Ohio, that saved us design and conceptual time. And so we were able to take this near-perfect building and begin to do the architectural plans. And so there are a lot of reasons why now. And the biggest thing is, is because God is moving our tendencies crazy. We’re averaging, right, 1100 people every single weekend. And if you’ve been here sometimes a moment too late, have you ever had a hard time finding a parking space? You know, all of those things that we want to have more people and worship. And so last Sunday, some of our leaders got together, and leaders around here, we go first. And when we do something, or we take the initiative, the leaders, they’ll go first. And so our leaders, they came together. And so far, we’ve had 47 families or leaders in our church. They’ve made a one-year commitment to give over $184,000. And it’s all going towards the second campus, and that is beyond the land that’s been donated. And in the month of the month after Easter, we’re going to invite all of you to consider joining us in increasing your giving or start giving or making a one-time gift to legacy makers. And this is the prayer that we’re asking you to pray. I’m not asking you for money, but I’m asking you to pray this prayer. And if you would, would you just read it out loud with me?

Lord, what do you want to do through me NEXT to accomplish your vision for Eastside?

And these leaders, they have stepped in and said, Here’s what we’re going to do. One-time donations we’ve upped are giving. We’ve had a couple of families who actually started giving at $20 a week, and they made a commitment to do it for a year. So we’re going to invite you to do that in the weeks to come. But right now, we just want you to pray this prayer. Lord, what do you want to do through me next to help each other accomplish her vision? And so, with that being said, would you pray with me? Father, we just thank you for the opportunity. To join in and be a legacy maker, not only as some of our previous generations have already set the standard for us. But more importantly, what Jesus did and the standard that he set when he went to the cross and died for our sins and paid the ultimate price and the ultimate act of generosity and father, we’re just grateful that you invite us to be a part of this. And Father, I just pray that people would feel compelled just to pray the prayer and do whatever you ask them to do. Father, we pray for Miss Barbara right now as she is struggling, and Father, we just pray that she will be at peace. There would be no pain. And then when she opens her eyes, the next time she will see you face to face. And so, Father, we pray for her, for her family in the days to come. And everyone agreed and said, in the name of Jesus, Amen and amen. Well, this morning, we have a special guest. I had this big introduction that I was going to give to her. She’s like, Oh, don’t do that is awkward. I go, I agree. So, Eastside, would you do a warm welcome to Missy. Robertson and let her know that we’re glad that she’s. Here this morning, and we’re glad to have her. So welcome, Missy. Welcome, thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be here. Yeah, we’re glad to have you as well. And we had Jace a couple of years ago and then had Lisa and Alan. Yes, a couple of years back in 2019. So we have a long-standing relationship with your family. So we’re so thankful that you get to be here. Yes. I have some really big shoes to fill, so you will have to give me a little grace on that after hearing from my family because they’re pretty amazing. They are. Well, we’re glad that you’re here. We have not had a chance to talk until this morning because you’ve been so busy. Bonnie, your aunt, and your assistant said, hey, she’s just on the go. Whatever questions you come up with, she’ll be fine with them. And I’m going, okay. Are you sure? And she goes, Oh, yeah. So what’s been going on that has got you going in a thousand different directions? Give us an update on the family. I will. I want to say a little disclaimer first. First of all, anybody can ask me anything because I have an answer ready. As the Bible says, be ready to give an answer. I do have that answer, and I’ll get to that later. But a disclaimer is that when you have a woman on stage, and you start asking her about our kids, get ready. Because I talked a lot during the last worship service about my children. And it’s really easy. You know, if you’re a mom and somebody starts it, you just want to talk about your kids, especially if they’re doing so well and they’re doing fantastic. All mine are grown, and they’re doing really well in life. And it’s just I’m proud. I’m a proud mom. And so, however, I will be talking through some of that again. But I got to thinking about how Jesus related to people, and he told stories. He tells stories because that was relatable to what was going on in their life. But at the end of that, he always pointed them to the father through him, to the father. And please know that when I am talking about myself, my life, my marriage, and my family, it is for one purpose. And that is to point you to know the father better. And you’re going to do that by knowing his son better. And that’s going to be my purpose today. Amen. Yeah. So I’m busy. Yeah, I’m waiting. I’m on the edge of my seat. Yes. So when you grow up in a very small town conservative household and then marry into a hunting household who is poorer than dirt, and I was as poor as dirt. They were poorer than dirt. If there’s a difference. There’s a difference. There’s a difference. My dad was a preacher my mom was a music teacher that volunteered for years at our Christian school and didn’t get paid. Was I like, wait, we were poor on purpose? You refused a paycheck? And then I met Jase, and I was like, Oh, that’s what poor looks like. Okay. So it was very different, even in our personalities and all.

Growing up with him because we got married at a ripe old age. I was 19, and he was six days from being 21. We couldn’t even rent a car on our honeymoon, but we were children. We’ve grown up together. Our marriage has seen very low valleys and very high peaks. But we always have, even since our teenage years, said that we are going to, with everything in our being, try to keep Jesus first and the Lord of our lives in every decision. And I do believe that because of that, God gave us instances in our lives throughout these last 32 years, two because he knew that we would try to do that. And in the last year, he’s challenged just beyond anything else that I could have wanted to ask or imagine. That is some of you may know, but we had basically a baby drop out of the sky to us. And when I say it’s like a foster situation, it’s because he was not in the foster care system. But a few years ago, I had a ministry slash business where I hired women who were coming out of sex trafficking and drug abuse. And some of them were succeeding, and some were not. And some of them I had to fire because they were going back to that life. And so I am able to tell this a little bit more now because the mom of this baby is doing so much better. I was not able to tell a lot of this before, but she was one of these women that I had to fire, and I had not seen her for over two years until I got a call from our local state-run hospital that she had been arrested and had been in jail and had a baby and wanted me to take him home. I had not seen or spoken; I didn’t even know she was alive. So we had to make a decision in just a few moments because Jace was also very busy as well. And it was actually the day that I started marketing a brand new book that I wrote with Brave Books called Because You’re My Family. Hmm. And it talks about the unconditional love of the father in a children’s way. And it’s a fictional story of parents that adopted a child. And this child disobeyed and ran away and then felt shame and was scared to come back. But the parents went and found him in a rainstorm, and he was about to lose his life. And they rescue him, bring him back, and with loving arms, warm him up and tell him they forgive him, and they will never stop loving him no matter what he does. But there will be consequences for his actions. He will have to go and do what he was supposed to do and say he’s sorry. And because he was saved like that and unconditionally loved and forgiven, he was able to return that service to his parents. He was so grateful that he wanted to serve his parents in a way. It’s a beautiful story. Yes, beautiful illustrations.

The day that I started marketing that book was the day I got the phone call. So when I took my sister-in-law, Lisa, with me. If you were here to hear her story, you know, about her sexual abuse, you know about her abortion, and you know about her promiscuity because of all of that before she married Alan. She is very open and honest about that. I took her with me to the hospital that night to meet with this mom because I said, before I take this baby, I’ve got to see where her heart and her mind are right now. And Lisa helped me through that process. And we took this baby home thinking we would have him for a few hours or maybe a night until I could find another place for him to go. And we had custody of him three weeks shy of a year. God did that, Not me. I tried many times to find a place for him to go. God started shutting doors all around us. Remember? I was about to start a book tour. I was about to be hopping all over the country, going to Fox News, going to New York, L.A., and all this stuff. All the doors started closing for a variety of reasons. Then the war in Ukraine broke out. Nobody wanted to talk about a sweet little children’s book. And I thought, what is going on? And every night and every day, I’m taking care of this brand new little baby boy who is perfect. By the way, that is why she was able to call me to come to get him because he did not have to go to Child Protective Services because he was born clean. She was arrested just long enough to get him clean before she gave birth to him. I think he’s a miracle baby. Now, we throw that word around a lot, but that’s what I call him. He’s our miracle baby. We knew from the very beginning that we were not going to adopt him. I’m in my fifties. Okay. I had a two-month-old grandbaby born at the time that we got the call, and we’ve had another grandbaby born since then. And this was not something that I felt like we were called to do, but we were called to do what we did. If you are dealing with the foster care system, which we were not, it was a private babysitting job that we weren’t being paid for and that we had to spend all of our money on. I’ve never known anyone else that went through what we did. I would love to talk to someone as encouragement for that, but I know how hard it is from our standpoint to work with other adults in this situation that feel like they have control or power or that they are entitled or have expectations over a child, a tiny baby child. And I would love to see and hear if any of you have ever had a foster child or if you’ve adopted a child. Would you raise your hand if you have? Yeah, I know a little bit about what what you’ve gone through. And it’s rough.

Now that he is gone on to another babysitting home, still not in the foster care system, the mother is doing better. The last few months have been the most tumultuous, I think, of trying to decide what this baby’s life is going to look like. And it and it fell on us to do that. There was a lot of responsibility, and we spent a lot of time on our knees in prayer every single day and sometimes hourly. In those days, the circumstances could be changing. And we were having to monitor, even do manipulation and some sort to try to keep people away from him, to keep him safe. And it’s a job, it’s a full-time job, and it’s very stressful. So I was able to talk to a foster dad in between services. And every story is different. Yeah, every story is dramatic because the reason that a child has to be in there is because their adult situation is horrible for whatever reason. We call him AK; we call him our angel kiddo. So I’ll say, AK, that’s who he is. But we do that to protect his identity. But his situation is horrible. And I knew whenever the mother called me from the hospital to come and get him, I already knew her story. Some of it. And I know he can’t go there. I know he can’t go there and be safe. And all of these children come from, you know, it’s ugly, and it’s selfish, and it’s evil, and it’s manipulative, and it’s every bad word that you can imagine. And yet the children. Are completely innocent and beautiful and pure and loving. And they just want what we all want. They want to be loved and protected. And so here I am about to talk about this children’s book to the world about unconditional love. And I was able to go to the hospital that night and tell her because we had shared Jesus with her before. And Jase baptized her on a cold February day at our church building in the baptistery, and she accepted Christ that day. And I was able to remind her. Even though you have strayed and even though you have lived a life of sinful behavior, the father has never stopped loving you. That’s right. And she just cried and cried and cried. And we have a really good relationship right now. And I’m hoping that she can get her life right to be able to be a great mother for him. But it’s not there yet. He’s got some places to go and things to do, and she has some things to work on and to grow on. But, you know, sometimes Jesus is not just the best answer. He’s the only answer. And he is the only way and the only one that can fix this. That’s why I’ve been busy and majorly stressed for the last year. And there’s more. On top of that, you know, there’s your daughter. In all the surgeries and procedures, there and then also controversy in reading at the library.

Yes, it’s over this book. So this book. Yes, it’s a series. It’s in a series with brave books. And it’s like they call it a saga, which is. Well, that’s a good word, actually. Some are sometimes about your life, and it’s a saga, but it’s a lot of different books in a series. And I’m book, I think it’s eight. And Kirk Cameron came out with a book recently in this series called As You Grow, and it covers the fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. What could be wrong with that? Right? Well, he decided with brave books that he could go around and do public readings of this book at libraries, local libraries all across the nation, and just invite the communities around to come for free. I’m like, man, I wish I would have thought of that idea. What a great idea. And I know that he is doing it because I’m in with the brave communication and brave books communication. And he did one close to Nashville and in a town called Hendersonville. And we have a place there. Our children a lot of our children live there. And Brave reached out and said, Do you want to join Kirk and read your book? Absolutely. So we got there, and we did some promos, you know, on camera. Kirk and I about go to brave books dot com and put in a code, and you get 20% off. We’re trying to do these promos with approved permission from the library, and the library staff starts causing a lot of chaos and noise behind us, and I’m blind. I walked into this totally blind. I didn’t know there was any kind of controversy or anything. I thought we were welcome here. There are hundreds of people standing outside in the rain, waiting to get in. And we were not only not welcomed by the library staff, it was they were trying to thwart this process and turning on really loud music and slamming books together and kicking cabinets, and laughing. All of this is on video because we were filming, trying to film, and the people outside and waiting in the adjacent room for us didn’t know any of this, and we didn’t talk about it to them. They were fantastic and wonderful. They were there, wanting their children to hear these traditional Christian values. And when I got home, of course, we had there was a little bit of a little back and forth with some of the brave staff, like asking them to be quiet, and they were just refusing. So we finally just kind of ended it and said we could just get this later, you know. But on my drive back home that day, I just kept getting angry about this. And I thought, here we are talking about standing up for our Christian beliefs because the people who are against us, their voices are really loud. Yeah. There are not a lot of them. And I think this is a lie that we are starting to believe that we believe that we’re being outnumbered. We’re not.

I don’t believe that, but I believe we’re being out-voiced, and I truly believe that. And I’m not one to start controversy. I don’t want to do it. I don’t like confrontation. I would rather just bow out and let somebody else handle it. But as Christians in this area with our children, and our grandchildren, we just can’t do it, can’t do it anymore. We have to stand up. And so my 40-minute drive home, I got to my house, and my middle son Cole was there. He’s my peacemaker. He’s me; don’t ruffle feathers. Let’s stay out of this child. And I started telling him about it. And he works for The Daily Wire in Nashville. And he said, Mom. I think The Daily Wire would want to cover this. And I said, I am not asking you to put yourself out there, but if you think I should, I’ll answer the call. And they called me Monday, and that’s when the question started. The interview started. I started talking about it on unashamed. Kirk was already talking about it with Fox, and it grew. This conversation grew. And I knew I knew. Because of my age and because of what we’ve lived through in the past before, when we’ve stood up for these values out loud and on purpose, there was going to be persecution. And there has been, verbally, for sure. But our God is bigger, and he deserves way more than we think that we should give him credit for it. And he’s going to protect us, maybe not in the way that we expect, but he is going to protect his children because his kingdom should come first before ours every time. So if we have to stand up and put our children out there or ourselves out there, I raise my kids like this. I raise my kids to be this way, and that’s one thing I thought on the way home. I thought, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this because, I mean, most of my children live here, and it might hurt their businesses, or Mia might get some hate at college or something. And I thought, no, my kids are grown, and they were raised to handle this. And they had they’ve reaffirmed what I thought when I was driving home, that I’m not going to let the devil silence me. So the controversy is that they tried to stop us from just reading simple children’s books about the love of the Lord, the creator of the universe, the one that created them, died for them, was buried for them, and raised for them so that they can live forever, eternally in complete love. That’s what they’re thwarting. We cannot let that happen. Amen. Well, thank you for standing up and telling the story. So how many of you knew about that controversy? Some of you, Yeah. Yeah. So give us an update on Mia. How is she doing? Mia has had 14 surgeries. She’s 19 years old. She was born with a cleft lip and palate. She is very strong-willed. Does anybody else have a strong-willed child out there? And if you’re not raising her hand, you have more than one kid; you’re lying. I’ve got a couple of those.

She’s our caboose, and she is very strong-willed, which as a child with a cleft lip and palate, was amazing because she was determined. She set her goals, and she followed the instruction. She did what she was supposed to do, and she didn’t care what anybody thought. That changed when she hit her teenage years, but she was not able to communicate that to us. Out of shame, out of guilt, out of anger for God and for us. And she went through a few years of a lot of bad behavior, a lot of challenges, and a lot of hiding, really. But I am happy and proud to report that she has turned her heart over to the Lord. And it was the year before that happened. I now understand I used to question and I used to judge, but now I understand how parents of teenagers who have gone against everything that they have taught them in their home about the Lord and about their behavior how they can say, we’re done with you. And that may sound really harsh, but we got to that point with her. We said, not only are you not going to be able to lie and manipulate to get your phone back, you have no account, so there are no devices, and there’s no account to get back if you want one. When you’re 18, you’ll have to go figure out how to get that yourself. Until then, you have no way of communicating. We did it right. Yeah, we did it. And we survived. We had a long battle with her and social media, and that’s going to be the ruin of this generation, no doubt in my mind. We are raising, and I just finished raising one of if not the most confused generations in the history of our world with not knowing what genitalia actually means when it comes to what gender you are. We are really, really low with that. We have to teach our children that they were created on purpose for a purpose. Stop saying that that was an accident or that oops baby, it wasn’t with God. All of these words that we now use that we used to use, they mean so much more now these days. We had someone refer to AK as the drug baby. Like those words are not going to be spoken over him. He’s not a drug baby. He was created on purpose for a purpose. And he is living out that purpose. This is not trying to figure out how to handle this situation that wasn’t supposed to happen. Completely opposite. We are trying to follow God’s plan and his will in this baby’s life. And we tried to do that with Mia. I would just say don’t give up in any of these situations. When we said, We’re done with you, we gave up to God. We did not give up on her. I knew in my heart of hearts because I have faith in the Lord that we raised her the way that we were supposed to, but we had to let God take the reins. We could not even tell her that we were in control anymore. We had to say you’re out of our control. Go get a life at 17.

And she did. And she’s doing fantastic. She actually spoke at a school in Nashville this past week to middle schoolers and high schoolers and shared her faith with them and her purpose in life. And people sent me pictures of it. And I was like, thank you, Jesus. Because she now understands and gets it, and she wants other people to get it as well. She is the face of our charity called the Mamu Fund. And these past couple of years, she has planned the entire Mamu Fund Day, in which we invite all of the families that we have helped since 2014 spiritually, economically, emotionally, and mentally, to come to our Christian camp in West Monroe. We take care of everything. And Mia plans the entire day’s itinerary. And the first time she did it, it was like pulling teeth. Last year because she was a new person. She had given her life to Christ and surrendered and understood what it meant. She understands what it means to be a child going through this process. And she’s like, I want to help them do it better than I did because everybody was born with a purpose, and every person is beautiful. And she did an amazing job. Bonnie is our coordinator over here, our executive director of the Mamu fund. And it was hard to let me take that from us. But when she did it, it was what needed to happen. So to see your children grow in the Lord and to go through those battles. Those are really, really tough things to do. But when you have the faith, and we do, it’s hard to show it sometimes. We had faith that God would see her through. Yeah. Well, great. Well, we rejoice with you and your family and the heart that you have for unconditional love. You know, there are people all across the spectrum here, spiritually speaking. You know, some are skeptics. Some maybe have confusion about God. They doubt God. There are others that are spiritually stuck. You know, they’ve made it so far down the pathway, and they’re stuck, and others are pursuing Jesus, you know, with their all in life. What would you say to someone here today who hasn’t stepped across the line, who hasn’t embraced Jesus as their personal Lord and savior? What would be your words of affirmation or confirmation or even challenging words to them this morning? Well, I would say here in Eastside or in Richmond, Kentucky, this is the Bible Belt. Am I right about that? Historically, yes. So it is in Louisiana as well. We’re right on I-20. It’s the south. There are churches everywhere. One of the girls that were in my program a few years ago, who was in jail, came to work for me. We were working on her heart a little bit, a little bit at a time.

I just one time came out and asked her, when did you have your moment with Jesus? When did you give your life to him? She said, Well, there is a church down the street, you know, that that came to the jail, and they would speak once a week. Okay. When was the moment that you gave your life to Christ? Well, one time, this lady spoke about X, Y, and Z. Third time. When was the moment that you surrendered to Jesus by saying, I can’t do this anymore, and I want you to be the Lord of my life because of what you’ve done for me? And she just started crying. And this is a misconception about the Bible belt, about the church. Just because you’re coming into a church doesn’t make you a Christian. That’s right. Just because you’re hearing us talk right here and just because you’re hearing me encourage you to do this doesn’t make you a Christian. There is a moment where you have to surrender and wave the white flag of surrender to Jesus and say, I have no idea what I’m doing or what I’m going to do in the future. But I surrender to you because you love me so much that you died for me. First, you created me and gave me all of the things that we see around us for our benefit. You died for me. You were buried. And on the third day, you rose for me to show me that I have hope of eternal life. And that I’m not going to have to live in this world and make these decisions for the rest of my life. What a blessing that our God and Father, King of the universe, would do that for me. That’s right. But we have to give it up in every aspect of our life. We have to give it up. But it comes at that one first moment. And if you’ve done that before, which I did that years ago, but now I look at my life now and all of the troubles and the controversies that follow us around and all of the decisions and the heartaches and the joys that have happened since then. And I’m closer to my Lord and savior than I’ve ever been in my entire life. But that doesn’t just happen. As you get older, you’ve got to work at that. And one thing is being in the world. Once you surrender to Jesus Christ and put him on baptism, Roman six put him on as the Lord of your life, you can reenact his death, burial, and resurrection. And once you put him on as Lord of your life in water, you get God inside of you. You get the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing more powerful than you walking around with God inside of your body. You don’t have to beg him to enter a room. He’s here, and it’s powerful and wonderful. But then every day, growing in your faith, talking to him, understanding how much he loves you, that you don’t have to hide from him, that you can read in here.

I love it when you know when I told you at the beginning that this is not about me. These are hopefully ways that I can relate to you, and you can relate to me to inspire you to get to know the Lord through here. When John the Baptist was baptizing people, he hadn’t even seen Jesus yet. He’d been telling everyone about his cousin Jesus that was coming behind him, ahead of him, as he says. And his disciples were like, Hey, there’s a guy over there that’s baptizing more people than you are. They were getting more caught up in the program. Yeah. Then actually, the Creator and the Savior, the Messiah that they had been waiting for and yearning for. And John the Baptist says he must become greater. I must become less. Yes. And that’s how, as Christians, we should always live our lives. Yes, of course. We want to inspire each other. I want to encourage you and inspire you. I wish I could talk more and tell you more things because there are so many joyous things that have happened through all of our trials and our struggles. Because he is victory. God is victory. That’s right. I must become less. He is greater. He doesn’t even have to become greater. He is greater. He’s the best. And we get to live with the greatness for the rest of our lives if we put our faith and trust in him. And that’s what I want to encourage you to do and encourage your children and your grandchildren to do as well. Well, thank you, Missy, for those words. Yeah, that’s awesome. You know, someone has asked me why God has really blessed Eastside? We can never come away with one answer. You know, if there’s one answer, everybody would just shout it out. Right. And so we usually come up with the laundry list, but. I have over the last couple of months, I’ve narrowed it down to a sentence where I think God is blessing us. And it’s not because of who we are, but it’s because of who he is. And we have this little phrase, and we say it like this. And I think this is what I heard from you in the first service. And what I’ve heard from you in the second service is, Lord, the answer is yes, even before you ask the question. That’s true. In an interview, a lady said, when she was talking to me about why we took AK in as she wrapped up and said, So if you’re like Missy and have a heart for foster children and I. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I did not go looking to foster a child. And there are many people who love to do that. I looked at my life and said, we don’t have a space in our life for that. God disagreed, and he disagreed really hard with us for a year.

So my challenge with that I was challenged was that when I say, God, how do you want to use me? I’m all in for you. I may not have thought I had a heart for taking a foster child, but I have a heart for whatever God calls me to do. And if you pray for that God, how will you use me? You better get ready because he’s fixing to do something that you never even thought possible. And it’s not. It’s not possible in your own mind and in your own life, but it is possible with him. And if you trust him and have faith that he will take care of you. He’s not going to use you and discard you. That’s what the world does. That’s what the devil is going to do. God will use you to his glory, and then you’ll be able to take other people with you in that glory. What an amazing opportunity to work for the creator of the world. Give me another job, Lord. I want to know what you are going to do with me. Now. I have told Jase I’m never doing that again. I’m not doing that. If the phone rings and a baby drops out of the sky, I don’t know that I’m going to get in this time. You know, in Jase, is like you better be careful, missy, because when you tell God that you’re not going to do something, he’s like, You better hold on to your britches, because that may be exactly what God is going to call you to do. So I am reluctant about that again, but I can’t say, God, I’m ready for you to use me except in this area. And those are really, really hard, hard, hard decisions to make. But if you know the creator loves you more than anything else, it makes it easier. Yeah, it does. So would you give it up for Missy and let her know that we appreciate her? Thank you for being here. Thank you.