Never Give Up

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. All right, I have a picture for you. Everyone picture an old broom. Okay, I know for some of you young people, you've never seen a broom before.

All right, it has a lot of little things. Bristles. It has a lot of bristles, and it's wrapped up by some kind of like a band or something. Each bristle, if you were to take a bristle out and try to clean the floor, would it work? No.

Two bristles. Three bristles. Four, five. But the broom works. Why?

Because all of them are bound together by some type of strap. And when you have it all bound together, and guess what? There's only one handle. Because there can only be one vision. And when we use the broom, it works because we're all together.

My dad taught me all together. My dad taught me that illustration. He's a preacher. So if it's not very good, don't blame me. But it's just a simple illustration.

It takes all of us working together, bound by unity of vision, with one handle to get the job done. Okay? Amen. Now, if I can just find a scripture for that, pastor, it'd be a pretty good message. So I have three scriptures I just want to share with you.

One more thing I want to say, Salt Church. What to expect? A friendly, welcoming environment. Check. High energy worship music.

Check. Relevant Bible-centered teaching. We're not sure yet. But I'm sure on the other Sundays for sure. Fun, engaging content for your kids.

Let's all jump up and down to be kids. Check. So we're about God. We're about community. And we're about mission.

And that's what we want to talk about this morning. God, community, and mission. Because the greatest challenge we face as humans is having a goal, having a vision, understanding our destiny, believing God has a dream for us, and to get from where we're at to where we want to go. How many have a dream of something in the future? A goal?

An idea? Something you want to accomplish? I'm getting ready to build a house. In the meantime, we're living in a one-room apartment. It's not even an apartment.

It's the office. It's a room downstairs in our office. I moved everything into containers this past weekend. The house is going to be built. It's going to take five months.

But you know what? I can see the house built. And all the stuff I'm having to go through to get to there, I'm willing to do it. Why? Because I have a dream.

Well, really, it's my wife's dream. But I've been married 39 years, so I know that when the wife has a dream, you have a dream. So we're working on this dream together because when the wife ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. And when daddy ain't happy, nobody cares. So I learned that a long time ago.

So I've got this, we got this vision and I'm going to try to get to there. So I'm willing to go through the mess, the circumstances, the situation, because there's something bigger in my future. As a pastor, as a leader, as a person, as a father, as a husband, all of those principles have affected every relationship I have. Do you find that to be true? We all have promises or dreams.

But before we get to the promise or before we get to the fulfillment of it, between the promise and the fulfillment, the promise and the provision, what is in between? Problems. Everyone say problems. Problems are between every promise and every ultimate provision. So what does it take?

It takes never, never, never, ever giving up. Write it down. Never, never, never, never, ever give up. That's what it takes. Because if you give up, you will not accomplish that dream.

My parents are from Canada. I was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and which is about 120 miles from Erie. Go down to Buffalo, cross over the Peace Bridge, and go to Niagara Falls, which is where my mother, who was born in Manitoba, and my dad, who was born in Prince Ariel in Canada, met. Honeymoon capital of the world. Well, they actually met before they were married.

So it's more than that. They met there, and my dad's brother of eight met a girl from Georgia. They married, and they moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, kind of like halfway between Prince Ariel in Canada and Atlanta. And so he sponsored my dad and my mother to come over. Immigration status.

Back in those days, you just crossed the border. There was no walls. There was nothing going on. You just crossed over. It was very easy from the north.

And we would then, every couple of months, I would think maybe once a month in the summer, a couple of months during the year, would pack up the three kids, and we would get in the LT, what was it, a Ford. What kind of big Ford? Anyways, it was a Ford. It wasn't a stationary. It was a four-door sedan.

We got in there, packed it up, five of us, all the luggage. We left Erie, Pennsylvania, and we began to go along the coast for all the grapevines, and about 30 minutes down the road, you know what happened? Everyone in the back seat, my brother, myself, and my sister, we said, are we there yet? How many have been in a car with kids, and you're on a destination, you take off about 30 minutes down the road, an hour down the road, what's the first thing they say? Are we there yet?

How much longer? Yeah. So imagine when we took our kids, and we went from Greensburg, Pennsylvania, all the way down to Orlando. Three kids in the car. Three girls.

That's four humans filled with estrogen. And one male. This car was wild. I mean, we stopped every hour. I finally tried to put them on a potty alignment, because if you don't do that, it's potty break.

I got to go. Potty break. Oh, I just went. Oh, I didn't have to go then. Oh, will you come with me?

We barely met. It took like two days to get down there, and the spoon as we got on the road, the first thing they said was, are we there yet? I think a lot of times when we come to Jesus, we're trying to do something, what we begin to ask is, how much longer is it going to take? Are we there yet? And what I learned as I got older, and my dad tried to help us that, he said, kids, we're not there yet.

I'll tell you when we get there, but in the meantime, look out the window. There are grapevines. Now, at the time, grapevines didn't mean a thing to me, but now when I . . When I travel on that road, the grapevines are amazing.

The trees. You can see Lake Erie just on the other side. I go down, I look at church steeples. I don't know why, but I love church steeples. And I notice the surrounding now because I'm paying attention because you know what?

It's not just the destination that counts. It's the process and the beauty and the journey to get there. So one scripture verse has made, has been my life verse. It's Philippians 1-6. This has been a life verse for me.

It's what got me past my previous drug addiction, my hellish living, my dropped out of high school, my rebelling from my parents and doing all this stupid stuff. How many had a spirit of stupid ever come on you? Okay, I'm in the right place. And it comes on you and you do these things that later on, you know what I'm doing. When in life, you say, what in the world did I do?

So the scripture says, being confident of this. Now, Paul, right before it, he's actually talking to them, trying to encourage them that you're going to finish. I remember pouring the scriptures in you, but I'm confident in what? I'm confident in the fact that the Lord who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion. Or as one translation has, will complete it until and up until the day of Christ.

So the promise is Christ is coming back. Paul is encouraging them. I planted the gospel. There's a promise there. But between this and that, there's this long journey.

But Paul reminds you, I'm confident. Now, see, I came from a very strong Christian home, very, pretty strict. And my dad pastored a small church of 15 people. When he went there, there was nine in the church. There were six in our family.

We left a church of 500 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and came down and took this church. My dad sold his business. He was in automotive sales. He owned a company. We were doing very well.

And so he's, you know, the call of God. He called, came down to this small church and nine people. The youngest person was 42 years old. When our family showed up, we all became the youngest people. My dad was 36 at the time.

We had three, two, two other siblings, three children. I went there. Now, I left a group of like 75 teenagers and 500 people. We used to go out in the boat in Lake Erie and played ball and I was on the all-star team. And things were really cool.

And I left all that and came to this small little town, Greensburg. Didn't know anybody in ninth grade. Things didn't work out that good for me. I didn't have friends. And early on in that church, a family came in that didn't have any really church background.

It was from a very dysfunctional home, an alcoholic home. And they had two sons. One guy was older than me and the other one is a little bit younger, one year younger than me. His name was Chico. He was part Indian.

And he was cool. I mean, he was cool. When he showed up at the school or at the mall, all the girls came around Chico. And, you know, I was this, like, white kid and kind of goofy. You know, my pants came up here because we didn't afford a lot.

And I had a weird haircut. And I didn't know how to be cool out there. And, man, I just loved hanging around with Chico. And before you know it, Chico's showing me how to sniff glue. Chico's showing me how to do this.

And before I know it, I'm in a big pot party up on a ridge. And they got, like, trash bags full of marijuana. And I'm smoking this stuff. And I'm going to church on Sunday. And just within three months, man, I'm, like, doing everything in my conscience I know is wrong.

Because I allowed the dream thief of friends to rob me of my promise. And I gave up. I quit. I struggled. I got worse.

I became a dealer. Eventually got kicked out of high school in 12th grade. Took off to California. Went into Mexico. On the way back, the car and everything breaks down.

We're in the desert drinking tequila and peanut butter. And it was not a good day at a hundred and some degrees. And, man, I called my dad. Finally said, Dad, can you help me out? Now, my dad could have said, Son, when you left the house, you swore at me.

And you spit at me because he arrested me and put me in a juvenile center. He could have said all this stuff. But he said, Son, I'll be glad to help you. And he sent me some money so that we could get the car the spindle had broken and all that. And get home.

Us, two and three, two other guys. When I got home, did I have a dad in my face telling me I told you so, you stupid idiot, pay me back? No. I had a dad who opened his arms and said, Son, I am so glad to see you. I'm glad you're safe.

I didn't cry in his arms, but inside I felt like crying because I was really loved. Well, that didn't end my journey of running from God and being rebellious and holding on. A few months later, I'm getting arrested as an adult, probably on my way to prison because I'd already been on probation. I was running from the law and all this other stuff. But I went to church.

My dad required me to go to church every Sunday or I could go find another place to live. So I went to church. And somehow, when that preacher, it wasn't my dad, was preaching, I would sit in the far back over there. Back pew. And in those days, when them holiness preachers preached, them Pentecostal preachers preached, they preached hard.

It wasn't like this calm it down nowadays. It was in your face. It was just the culture of those days. And I was getting convicted. I was under this, man, I know I'm wrong.

I got to do something. Now, I would have come to the altar right away, but the problem was I had already done that dozens and dozens of times before. Come to the altar. Oh, God, forgive me, Jesus. I'm wrong.

But the last time I came to the altar, I came up there and there was nothing. No crying. No sorrow. No nothing. I was dead.

I didn't feel any remorse. I didn't feel any repentance. I didn't feel anything inside me. I went back to that pew in the back there and I felt like God was saying to me, don't play games with me. So it was just a few weeks later that I had that experience.

I rushed up from the back of that pew and ran down to the altar on that side there. And I totally surrendered my life. And instead of trying to cover up my drugs, instead of trying to hide myself and be a different, be fake, I had this green jacket on. I took, it was summertime, but, you know, when you're drugging, you always got stuff on you because you can, like, put stuff in there. And I took all the paraphernalia out.

And I took it. Good-bye. that would come up there not really much. Okay? Nickel bag, dime bag, put it all on here, right in front of everyone, so the whole church could see the preacher's son is a drug addict.

Because I knew that I could not get to where I'm going until I first agreed to identify and accept what I was. Now that's not my ultimate identity, but I have to start with reality. I got to start with honesty. And I started with honesty and put it all out there. And I tried and I tried.

I tried to do good. I tried to do good and it just wouldn't work. And then this scripture came alive inside me one day. And it was like I finally said, Paul said he was confident that the God who began a work in Dayton. It was like my dad was saying, son, I'm confident that the God who works in you will complete it.

You're not going to do it on your own. You got to let it go. You got to understand the circumstances don't dictate to you. If you've come to the place in your journey and you've kept trying and trying, the only place to start is at rock bottom. And just say, I can't.

I used to live by the motto. I can't. God can. So I think I'll let him. I lived the three steps of AA.

I can't. God can. So I think I'm going to let him. And I just surrendered it all to God and started this journey that God will bring it to completion. Several years ago, an experiment was was conducted at the University of California at Beckley.

And what it involved was placing some Norwegian field mice in a tub of water. And they would have to focus on swimming. They were forced to swim or they were going to be exhausted and finally drown. So this first group, they they discovered that on the average, the rats were able and capable of swimming for about seven hours. And then the rat would just give up and drown.

Well, they use, you know, an experiment. You always have a second group. So they had this second group and they experimented and they found the same type of rats. But instead, when the rat got so exhausted just before it was going to drown, the researcher would reach in, grab the rat, take him out and let him regain his strength. And then put him back in again.

And what they noticed every time is going to drown, it can't bring it back out. What they noticed is that those rats were able to swim 20 hours before they perished. And the researchers concluded that the rats were in the second group were able to swim so much longer than the first group because of one factor. The rat had hope. It pulled it out once.

Once you're rescued. Once you're rescued by God. God, I believe God can rescue me the rest of my life. No matter what happens in my life, if he's rescued me once, he's going to pull me out again and pull me out again and pull me out again. If you feel like quitting, he's going to pull you out again.

If you feel like giving up, he's going to give you strength. If he's given it to you once, he'll give it to you twice. He's done it twice. He'll give it three times and four times and five times. And that's what saved my life.

That's what got me off of the drugs and not just onto heaven by believing. But it helped me live a total victorious life because day after day, week after week, Jesus rescued me from myself. That was when I was 19. Here I am, 62. It's been working ever since.

Have I failed? Oh, yeah. Did I have some relapse? Yes, I did. Did I screw up, mess up, do stupid stuff?

Yes, I have. I don't do those things anymore, but I do different stupid stuff. You see, hope combined with faith increases your ability to endure and that will produce the character to change and take you to the ultimate outcome. I want you to look at this verse of scripture and I'm trying to see. Is there a time up there?

I see it. Okay. What time? You forgot to tell me what time. Okay.

Perfect. Hebrews 10. It's actually supposed to be 34, 35. Hmm. That doesn't look like it.

Let me pull it up. Hebrews 10, 35 and 36. It says, therefore, do not cast away your confidence. Notice the word again, being confident and casting away your confidence. So my dad had confidence in me.

Paul had confidence in the Philippians, but the Philippians had to have confidence and Dayton had to have confidence. So God has confidence in you. He has confidence in this church. He has confidence in your life, but you have to have confidence because what happens is we throw away our confidence. And it's interesting that this particular phrase here cast away your confidence.

It describes, like, if you take a fishing pole, the big one on the shore, like my son, and they just cast this thing way out there, man. Get rid of it. Or if you were to take something valuable to you, I'm so stinking mad and I just throw it out in the ocean. That cast away, that word means to throw it away. I don't need it anymore.

It's no good. This faith thing ain't working for me. This preacher thing you taught. Pastor Leon, you've been telling me for years and for months now to trust God. But you know what?

I'm shucking this whole thing because this faith stuff ain't working for me. I'm casting away my confidence. It says don't do that. And the second thing it says here, because it says if you don't do that, there will be a what? Reward.

A reward. A benefit. This word reward is the same word that we often use for wages. You work, and what do you get? Wages.

I get earnings. I get a check. The idea here is there's a reward that in direct proportion to your continued, faithful, confident, obedience in Jesus, there will be a reward. So remember I said between the promise of God and the ultimate provision, what's in between? Problems.

Everyone say it. What's in between? Problems. So I'm facing a problem, and every problem has a principle attached to it. The principle is the if condition in the scripture.

Every problem is a test of a certain principle from the scriptures. Jesus says, God, or the Old Testament says, test me. Try me in tithing. Scripture says, give and it'll be given. Be kind to another person.

It'll come back. So this whole thing is, during the circumstances that seem to be obstructing me from getting to where I need to go to, I have to be confident. I have to keep pressing forward. Now, what do I do, and how do I press forward? It says here, for you have need of endurance.

If you're ever into the Bible translation, it probably says patience. Endurance speaks more about circumstances. Patience often speaks more about people. So. I need patience with my kids.

I need endurance in my life. Okay? So as a group we need to endure the challenges between our current circumstance and our ultimate vision of having a significant church with a facility that can service our vision. So here we are I don't want to throw away my confidence. That word confidence actually means bold declarations of faith.

It's kind of like people saying we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that or God's gonna do that. We have that. Don't throw that away. But instead, endure. Endure.

So this idea of enduring is described in many, many ways. You'll see it all around you. For example, I think it was Spurgeon or some preacher said one time. By endurance, the snail made it to the ark. Or another way, by endurance, the turtle made it into Noah's ark.

Whatever is the slowest thing, it made it. Now, I can imagine, I like to dream of things, imagine things here. When it was time for the door to open in Noah's ark, you heard about all those animals went in two by two, you know, male, female. And so I'm thinking about all the other ones that didn't go in. How did the ones know to go in?

Well, apparently somehow, God, nature, something like a, like a, goes into something with a bird to go south. It said, go into the ark. So I can see this male, female, cheetah go into the ark. They're fast. But then again, I can see the male, female, turtle go into the ark.

Where are we going, bro? To the ark. Two by two. By perseverance, it made it to the ark. See, every step of obedience you take brings you closer to the fulfillment of the promise.

Never take lightly the small steps of obedience. What we tend to focus on is big leaps of faith. They're going to get me. That's what I was focused on. I wanted to come to the altar.

And in one time, God just cleaned me all up. I would leave there and I just thought I'd have no desires anymore. Wouldn't have any challenges. Wouldn't have any problems. But every time I did that, I would go back.

And then the next morning, I'd be faced with the temptation. I'd be faced with a smell and thought and music and things would trigger it until I came to the place that it's like, I've taken the step. I've accepted the promise of God. Now what do I do? I have to walk it out.

So I've never, ever gone back to any of those old friends. I've never been to another part. I got saved on Sunday. Two weeks later, I left and went to a manual college. Without a high school diploma, I've never taken an SAT test, but I graduated.

Now that first year, I only made it two semesters and I started cheating on my Bible exam. So I figured, that's no good. I'm going back. So I quit school. My dad picked me up and he said, and we're stopped in the mountains up near Seven Springs and we're stopping there.

And he's looking at me. He says, how are you doing? I said, okay. He says, the Lord told me you're not going back to a manual, are you? And I looked at him and said, how'd you know?

He said, I just, the Lord just showed me you're not going back. I said, that's right. I'm sorry. I failed you. He said, no.

So we get, get home the next morning. He wakes me up early in the morning. He says, come on, son. Let's go get some breakfast. You know me.

When you've been, I was like, I was an acid freak. So I was burnt out. I literally had no brain, very little brain cells left in me. I would like, I would move around. Oh, wow, man.

This is cool. You know, my mother would send me to the store and I go to the store and I was like, oh, wow. I don't even know what I'm here for. I have to call my mom. I mean, I was acting this way.

This was after I'm off of drugs, LSD. I mean, lots of it. It destroys a brain cell. When you don't get brain cells, don't grow back. So my dad took me in the next morning, breakfast.

Then we got in the car. We went to his office. He sat down. He pulled a book out of his library. He said, here, son, I want you to read this.

It was a little paperback called Life is Tremendous by Tremendous Jones. No one will ever know it here, but it was a little paperback about being confident. See, my dad graduated from the Dale Carnegie School. How to win friends, influence people. He was in sales.

So all he gave me was how to be positive, how to encourage people, how to be, how to believe. And I was given those things. Then he would pull out another book by Earl Roberts, Seed Faith. Then he'd pull out another book by another person, autobiographies. Every day I'd go to the office with him, go to breakfast, go to lunch, go to funerals, go to weddings, go to ministerial things.

I did that for six months, finally went off to a school where they required scripture memorization. And in one class, personal evangelism, I had to memorize 500 verses of scripture in the King James, dot every I, cross every T, every colon, semicolon, every capital. And if you didn't get it right, it was minus one. Every punctuation, 500 verses of scripture. I finished that class with a straight A.

I memorized 500 verses of scripture. Now, understanding, before then I couldn't. I would write it out on a card. I'd put it up on my mirror. I'd put it in my shirt.

And every day I would quote it. I would quote it. I would quote it and read it. And I'd pass it on the test. At the end of that personal evangelism class, God renewed my mind.

I had straight A's. I could remember things. I no longer slagged around and act around like a druggie or like someone affected. My back, my mind was clear. I was a brand new person.

Perseverance. Perseverance. I eventually went back to Emanuel College without an SAT. Graduated from junior college. Graduated from SCM, School of Christian Ministry.

My last semester I made my first merits list. No, dean's list. I had made merits list twice. Deans is like A student. One time in four years.

I decided to go back to help my dad. And then a year or two later decided to go to graduate school at Regent University. At the time it was called CBN. I was one of the first students that were admitted in what they called bib studies back then. It was on provision because I failed the GRE, graduate record exam.

My score was so low that they didn't know I took it. And I refused to take the Miller's analogy, if you know about those. And I had no SAT test, but I had a degree from Emanuel. And they said, well, we'll just let you come in on provision. Well, I want you to know.

It took me a while, a couple years, but I graduated magna cum laude from CBN University. You see, by perseverance, it takes diligence and perseverance. I would never have gotten to that place. I didn't want to even be a pastor. I was willing to help a pastor, but I never, ever wanted to be a senior pastor.

Why? Because I was a preacher's kid and I knew how. Part it was to be the pastor. Then I decided, okay, I'll be a teacher. So I went back to my dad and I taught.

Then I started a Christian school, a preschool, a daycare, Liberty Christian Bible Institute. We bought a building bigger than my dad's church building. And that was where the school was at. I never wanted to be a senior pastor though. And then lo and behold, I came here in graduate school, started attending a little church down in Norfolk.

The pastor resigned. And the next morning, some of the people from the church, said, would you consider being our pastor? Now understand, I'd only preached one time in 18 months at that church. Most of them didn't even know I was a licensed minister because I was studying for a Christian school administration. I said, well, think about it.

We have our structure and process. Completed that, ended up becoming a pastor there, 1986. Started with 88. This day, there's a beautiful sanctuary. We got as high as 280.

We had three building programs. We had three building programs, two services. We reached drug addicts, heroin addicts, every kind of sexual brokenness you can imagine, every kind of addiction. We were a very dysfunctional, recovering church. Why?

Because their pastor was recovering. By perseverance, you can make it. I want to make it. I want to make it. I want to make it.

I want to close with this. There are, I'm just going to give you several things that stand in the way of the promise and the provision. Real quick, I already mentioned one. One is time. Delay.

Another is family. Your family knows you best and sometimes they're your most painful critics. A third group is friends. A third group is friends. Time takes longer than you ever thought.

Family, the very ones you needed to believe in you. Friends. If you're not careful who you choose as your friends, they're either going to, it's like a bank account. They either make deposits or they make withdrawals. Fourth, we can't dismiss Satan.

There are devilish, satanic oppositions. But finally, and maybe the most difficult dream thief we'll encounter is you. It's me. And that's why Galatians 6, 9 has meant so much to me. So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good.

At the right time, we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up or quit. Therefore, every time you get the chance, let's work for the benefit of others. Closing with this story. Back in the 1880s, one of several children, the oldest, took care of the younger children, cooked for them at a very young age of age 7. His father died when he was young, leaving them even greater responsibility.

He worked several types of jobs in his life. Reading his story, you'll recount about 20 different types of jobs and careers that he pursued. At one point, he became a ferry boat captain. At another point, a railroad conductor, even a lawyer, a tire salesman, a gas station operator. He even became a restauranter.

And he finally served in the U.S. Army. Known as a man with a temper, hard, harsh, a flare-up to get angry. Obviously, he had a difficulty with different people around him.

And this made chances for his success to seem a lot less unattainable. Therefore, all the jobs that he had. After a failed attempt to own his own restaurant, he went into the business of instructing other people how to prepare and how to cook his food his way and the way that he wanted it. His name? Colonel Harlan Sanders.

His brand? Kentucky Fried Chicken. Eleven herbs and spices. And after 73 years of endurance later, he sold his company in 1964 for multi-millions of dollars. You see, the gift of endurance doesn't quit.

It doesn't say no. It doesn't say we can't. But we've got to figure a way. And folks, whether you're at it, wherever you're at in your individual journey or wherever you're at in your church journey or your family, I've come to give you just one sentence, one statement. Never, never give up.

Just pause for a moment. Maybe you want to close your eyes. That's fine. But I want you to just think about the thoughts that you've had in your mind, the things that you've been feeling in your heart. What is it that you need to overcome?

What dream thief do you have to say no to their negativity so that you will pursue? What obstacle is it that you need to endure, push through, and get to your promised land? With the help of Jesus Christ, you can overcome any obstacle, defeat any giant, crush any weight, and make it. When you give your life, surrender yourself and depend upon the help of Jesus Christ.