I Was Lying
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
All right, the Thing that I want to impress upon everybody tonight is that Basically the verse I'm going to talk about is the one that Really brought me to our knees or to my knees When I was introduced to it By a guy that came into my life and it is first John 2-4 and And 1 John 2 for says, whoever says I know him, but does not keep his commandments, is a liar. And the truth is not in him. So that's why with the suggestion from Sean, that I decided that I would call this, I was lying. Because when that verse hit me up the side of the head, when I read it, I realized I was that person, even though I thought I was another person.
So what I'm gonna try to do in about the next 30, 40 minutes is kind of give a background how I came into this world and the influences that influenced me. I've really been struck as we've done omnibus to realize the gospel influence in the world and what it's done and how it had to percolate for sometimes 300 and 400 years in monasteries for it bubbled out again into the world and actually changed it. And then it would sit what some people would say dormant but underneath that it was always percolating and changing people life by life, life upon life, which I believe is, the real gospel message, is go into the world and make disciples.
And if you make a disciple, that person will be like you and then they will follow in that thing. So back to my bigger picture, I'm trying to project, this is, you know, crazy Dave thinking, But the idea of all of the history that influences us and has brought us here to Marysville, Washington to start this church in 2010. How did that happen? Why did that happen? Is that God ordained or are we some black old people that don't get it? And I think it can be clearly demonstrated that we really do get it, even though we don't know we get it. So in other words, we think we know what we're doing, but do we really know what God's plan is?
And I think one of the great illustrations of this is we've been introduced, if you hadn't been before, to Francis Schaeffer. His wife Edith wrote a book called Tapestry. And I think it gives a picture of what I'm trying to talk about. She said when you view the tapestry from the front, you see this beautiful unicorn tapestry or a tapestry telling some kind of story that's been woven into this rug. But if you turn it over, you see all these threads going crazy ways. And you have no idea if you saw the backside what the picture would be on the front side. And I believe that God doesn't show us the front side of the carpet or the tapestry until we get to heaven.
He works through all those little connections through people that bring you to the Lord, bring you to a saving knowledge, bring you here, bring you there, give you this job, make you sick, make you well. All those things are all those little threads, all threaded together. So I wanna kinda give a background to how my parents met And then out of that comes my sister and myself, and then out of that comes Morgan and LD, and Morgan and Marysean, and off we go. And all of that ties into how in his crazy plan, at some point, he brings us to him, meaning God.
Another important verse before I give kind of the background is that John 1, 10 through 13. And Sean taught through this as we went through John, but it says, he was in the world, and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him. I mean, just not alone, right? God himself is living in the world now. He made the world, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, the Israelites. And his own people did not receive him. But all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
Remember, if God wants to save you, he's going to do that. I don't care how much you bucket, how much you run, he will find you. He will make that happen. And sometimes some of us have people that we know and have prayed for that just don't seem to get it. And the thing is, we have to do recognize, we worship a sovereign Lord that can reach down through any kind of situation and save that person. So don't lose hope, all right?
So back to the beginning of the story, I kinda wanna start in my family history. My dad's side of the family, my actual name is David Moody Light III. The Moody was put in there because of D.L. Moody. And they were people from Missouri that were basic pretty raw hillbillies, but they had been influenced by those things. And that family name carried on. And that was from D.L. Moody. Okay. That's Moody Bible Institute and all of that. Around 1910, the fundamentals of the faith were published in America. That was brought about because of the money that Lyman Stewart, the founder of Union Oil, gave to print those fundamentals.
He also was the money behind the starting of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. That's what Biola was started out to be. Out of that becomes John MacArthur, all those kind of people. So there's these foundations that the ripples go out and all kinds of people are influenced by. On my mother's side, Billy Sunday, who was an evangelist in the 1920s, he was a baseball player that quit baseball to become an evangelist. And he would stand on chairs and scream at people that they were going to hell and they need to make a decision. And he scared my grandmother into making a decision as a young woman in Indiana. And she got saved.
And then their family moved out to Los Angeles. And she met my grandfather, Ernest Minty. And they got married. They had five kids, my mother, her brothers and sisters, and all of that. Out of that connection, my grandfather got very involved in ministry in Los Angeles. And in the book Daws, which is about Dawson Troutman, the guy that founded Navigators, my grandfather is where all these little flickers are in there, and talking about his influence with Daws and what he did down in Long Beach with the Christian businessmen in the Los Angeles area. During that time, Dawson Troutman introduced Bill Bright to the gospel.
And Bill Bright got saved under Dawson Trautman's ministry, which later became navigators. Out of that also was Billy Graham. And my grandfather was instrumental in the first Billy Graham crusade in 1949, and all of that kind of stuff. Now out of that family, my mother marries my dad, who has a Christian influence of his family. My dad and his brother, my dad was in show business. He was a radio guy. He was Dexter on Corliss and Archer, which was like a family show on TV where the young guy meets the next door neighbor girl and they fall in love. It's that kind of sitcom. But it was on radio. He would come out of that studio, and all the girls would be screaming, oh, Dexter, oh, Dexter.
My mother would be in the car screaming, get in the car. We've got to get home. And so that's the kind of background my dad had. They then had me. We lived in Glendale, California at that time. Then we moved to Arizona because his brother had started a bearing distributorship in Tucson right at the initial phase of the copper boom. And they started a bearing store in Tucson, Arizona. And my dad came over to be the salesman. And it became a successful business with many outlets. And then my uncle went back to start California bearing, which started the number of chains. And that then was bought out by King bearing, which is, I think, still around.
I'm not sure. But that's kind of the background that they came out of. So my dad moves to Tucson with my mom. I'm five years old. We show up in Tucson. And we start going to First Baptist Church of Tucson, because they're good Baptist people. And my grandfather had been in the Temple Baptist Church in downtown LA, which is a sister church and the church in the open door and all of that stuff. And that all is a product of Biola, Lyman Stewart, and all of those people, RA Torrey, that started that all in the first part of this century. So very conservative people that they were brought to the Lord, a lot of them through evangelistic preaching through DL Moody, people like Billy Sunday, a lot of evangelists across the nation.
Out of those evangelists, there was also Amy Semple McPherson, who was a charismatic lady that came out of the South, came to Echo Park in Los Angeles, and started the four church of the, no, I can't think of what it's called now. What is it? Four square. The four square churches. and they are charismatic and all of that. My grandfather knew all those people. He would go to all the meetings and just mix up all that theology and try to sort it out because four square churches were very charismatic and that was also started in the 19 teens up in Azusa, California, the city where everything in the USA, A to Z is made and the USA is in Azusa.
And out of that became the modern Pentecostal movement when they spoke in tongues to prove they had the Holy Spirit. So all of those people are all emerged in all of that upbringing. But the strongest thing was they realized the Bible had the truth and they needed to stand behind the Bible. But then as they tried to sort it out in the 30s and 40s, what about these charismatic people? The Bible says this and the Bible says that. And I would ask my grandfather and my grandmother about that and my grandmother always just dismissed it. Oh, don't worry about that stuff, they love the Lord. And I would come back and say, what are you talking about?
This is really important. They think they're getting additional revelation. But anyway, she would dismiss it and all of that. So that was kind of the background that I was raised in. So now we're retreating back to when I'm five years old. We moved to Tucson, Arizona. We start going to First Baptist Church. I have a sister that's four years younger than I am. My parents are big, quite successful people in Tucson and all of that kind of stuff. His brother is the same way. So at nine years old, I'm listening to the pastor of First Baptist Church, a guy named Dr. Beale, and he's preaching and he says, anybody that needs to come to the Lord needs to come and all of that.
And so a good Baptist kid, I walked the aisle. I got up, I came down, I walked down, I got saved, I got baptized in the first Baptist Church of Tucson at nine years old. About three years later, my sister did the same thing. She came down the aisle and got baptized, and about four years after I got baptized, my parents quit going to church. They decided, okay, the kids are saved, we're saved, we don't need that anymore. Now his brother stayed in the church and was a lead deacon of that church at that time. The Baptists have a kind of a weird polity the way they run their churches, but deacons are the kind of the movers and shakers when that happens.
But out of that, we quit going to church because my parents felt they made a decision, they are saved. Now I'm nine and my sister got saved probably when she was eight, you know, a couple years after I did, and all of that. So they quit going to church. So out of this, I walk the aisle, I get saved, I think I'm a Christian, and we slowly migrate into the social life of Tucson and upward mobility and all that kind of stuff through the 50s and the 60s, and end up having all kinds of toys and stuff, which is really good. We hit show horses and race horses and all kinds of stuff. And I thought I was going to be a cowboy and all that kind of stuff.
But I always, in the back of my mind, I always thought I was a Christian because I walked the aisle and made that decision. Now, my grandparents and all of their children, who was my mother and her other four brothers and sisters, they were all brought to the Lord in the 40s. They went up to Lake Arrowhead. Every summer they had their Christian camp up there. And Donald Gray Barnhouse from 10th Avenue Presbyterian would come out and preach to them from Philadelphia. And he was like the radio preacher of the 40s. He was like John McCarthy was on the radio. And most of my aunts and uncles and my mother and my dad got saved listening to Donald Gray Barnhouse at Lake Arrowhead at Christian camps.
And so they were also decision oriented. So as that generation got raised up, they had kids, and then they wanted to make sure their kids were saved. So what did they want? They wanted them to make a decision. And so all my cousins, and nephews, and all their, no, they would be cousins to me. All of that generation basically came to the Lord. And lots of them were leaders in their youth ministry. Van Nuys First Baptist at that time was run by a guy named Fickett in the early 60s. It was the huge church in the San Fernando Valley. I mean, it made Grace Community look like a teeny little nothing. Its senses become church on the way, which is totally charismatic and kind of goofy.
But in those days it was good. And my uncle was the music pastor. He created the Christmas tree, the thing he did. He's got the whole world in his hands, which was a huge hit song in America in the early 60s. And all of that. So all of that Christian influence I was raised up in. But because nobody discipled me, nobody came along and taught me what to do, we drifted. And our family drifted away.
We started doing all kinds of other things, getting very busy, doing all kinds of very good things and yada, yada, yada. And on it went until I got to be in high school and I turned out to be a pretty big punk. I mean, I showed up being National Honor Society as a freshman and ended up graduating like 527th out of 529 when I ended up at the fourth year of high school. I ended up going three years to the university, or I mean three months to the University of Arizona. I don't think I drew a sober breath. I ended up then in the situation that it's 1965 and if you're not going to college, you either get to go to Vietnam or choose your way.
So I chose to join the Navy from 65 to 68. I was in the Navy, went to Vietnam, ran around the world across the date line, across the equator, did all the stuff you're supposed to do in the Navy, went to Vietnam, came back. During that whole time, I was exposed in the Navy to some Catholic guys that came from Chicago. They became my friends. I ended up hitchhiking from Norfolk to New York to be with one of the guys' friends who was going to Fordham. And he was teaching third grade in the Bronx. And in 1967, he would show up with a 38 revolver loaded in his coat pocket to go teach third graders in the Bronx in New York City.
And he was very liberal. I mean, he introduced us to the people that started the SDS, the Students for Democratic Society. Now here I am in the Navy having fought in Vietnam, coming to New York and then starting to go to the meetings that started the SDS, which was an absolute radical organization that ended up to be the ones that built the bombs that blew up the townhouse in Greenwich Village and all of that because I had been so disillusioned with our country and Vietnam and all of that. So all of that is going on and I, while I'm meeting with all these people and always declaring, you don't understand, what you need is Jesus.
And they would laugh and always put me on the spot, oh, you believe he was born by a virgin. And I'd go, well, I don't know if you need to believe that part, but you really need to believe in God and all of this kind of stuff. So I'm the typical, absolute, ignorant idiot of what the Bible says. And I'm trying to defend that I'm a Christian, realizing I don't know anything about it. Now, did I turn to the Bible to find out about that? No way. I just kept declaring that's a good thing, but oh yeah, by the way, tell me about all this other stuff. So as all that went along, my life went along and God didn't kill me, so I guess that was very fortunate.
And we moved along and I ended up coming back to Arizona because I wanted to get the music business and my dad had some connections. My sister was the secretary to the President of Columbia Records. And I got an interview with Capitol Records and I got a job there. So I moved back to Arizona. During this time I meet Gail and I see her. She comes out of the bathroom. I look at her. I saw her across the room at a friend's house. Who's that? He says, oh, that's Gail Reed. I said, oh, she looks pretty good. And he says, yeah. I said, is she hooked up with Mike? Because she was learning how to play chess from a guy named Mike Moody, who became the attorney general of Alaska at that time.
And she just landed away. And he said, no, no, no. Mike's just teaching her chess, because she's going to babysit some stupid kid that she's got to play chess with. I said, OK. So I watched her go to the bathroom. So I beelined it for the hallway in the bathroom. So I'm out of the bathroom in the hallway. She comes out of the bathroom, and I said, hi. My name's Dave Light. I think I'm in love with you. you marry me. And she looks at me and goes, I don't know about the marriage, but you can take me to dinner. Five months later we got married. We would have been married in three months, but her middle sister felt she needed to get married before we did. So she had to insert her wedding in between ours. So during that time we then moved to L.A. because I'm I'm going to be a big dude in the record business.
And I show up for work on the first day. We move from Tucson. We get married on, was it Saturday? Yeah. Then we drive to Yuma, Arizona with our U-Haul, dragging our Volkswagen. And then we show up in LA on Sunday, move into the Kewinga Palms in North Hollywood. And then Monday morning, I have to show up at work for Capitol Records. I show up. I'm all dressed up and I'm ready to rock and roll, you know. And I come up to the receptionist side and said, I'm here to see George Jones. Not the George Jones, the country singer, but the guy that was in charge of the A&R department. And she looks at me and goes, Mr. Jones is no longer with us.
And that Etragon has bought Capitol Records and he's fired everybody that's here. And I said, what? I said, you don't understand. I just got married. I just moved from Arizona. I need this job, I gotta go. Well, you need to fill this form out because that department's gone and all of us don't know what's happening. So I took the form, filled it out. So I come back home and it's like, I don't know, 11.30, Gail says, well, I was very short and I said, you won't believe what happened. And so I told her and she went, oh.
So there we are in North Hollywood without a job. And I'd lived in New York before and all this kind of stuff. And I thought, oh, man, this is bad. So anyway, we went through all this stuff. And we did all kinds of things. She worked for a law firm. And I worked for my uncle crawling through air conditioning ducts, vacuuming out in aircraft plants. And we just booked it together to assemble enough money so we could move to New York. So we worked for a year, sand-holding our money. And then we went on Thanksgiving weekend break. So we show up in New York, and I knew a bunch of people there for myself. And Gail had gotten, you got it from your dad, right?
The recommendation. So she got some publishing recommendations that way. And I show up to some people I'd worked with in the art gallery. They said, oh, go to this frame maker. They're looking for people. I went, I got a job. Now, this is Thanksgiving weekend when everything's closed. So it's like crazy to go clear across the nation from Los Angeles, a bunch of punk kids. We don't know what we're doing. So I got a job, and then Gail ends up getting a job at a law firm, because she had worked at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in LA, and they were doing a suit for Pfizer in New York, and she got hired on as a paralegal. So we ended up moving to New York.
So we go through the whole, this is now the early, late 60s, early 70s, we got married in 71, so it's 71, 72. We're living in New York, and all of a sudden, we decide this is not good. We wanna start a family, what's going on? My dad gives us an opportunity to move back to San Diego. We start a company, we come back to San Diego, we move back, it's a crazy story. I'm supposed to be representing this company. My first call, I find out that the product that I'm selling is illegal in the Navy, And they buy another thing, so I have to learn how to make all these drawings of this stuff. I know nothing about any of this stuff.
And I learn it, and we do it, and we become successful. So we end up having a business in San Diego. We start up an office in Los Angeles. So we move in San Diego to Los Angeles. Everything is booming and going and blowing, and it's good for the world's standards. But all the time, I'm always like, is this all there is? Just get more junk and do all this kind of stuff. So it's 1983, and I go back to Tucson, and I meet with my dad, and I say, is this all there is to the world, is just getting more stuff? We'd already traded three houses up. We had a house that overlooked Catalina. I had a full-size pool table, all the toys I wanted, get a new car every two years, the company buy it.
And I said, this is all there is to it. You just get more stuff. Oh, and I also had a mule that I kept at a place on Enrolling Hills, which is the big mountain. When you go to LA and you fly in, it's the mountain near San Pedro. And I had a mule up there, and I'd ride around all that place with all these guys and go on these fancy rides with all these people. And so we had it all knocked. So I go back to my dad and I say, is this all there is to the world? He said, he's walking through his property that he built in Bass Pond and all this stuff. He goes, yeah, pretty much. And it just floored me. So this is it. You just get more junk and that's it.
And he said, yeah. Now at this time I'm 36. And so on the way home, I'm talking with Gail and I told her, I said, this is crazy. This is all there is to it. And she kind of, I don't know, blew it off. But at that time, you weren't all that happy with what was going on either, right? And so we came back, and we realized we needed to have another salesman. And we were going to open up an office in South Carolina, do all kinds of stuff, because we were booming and going. And so we put an ad in the newspaper for a salesman. And Daryl Darnauer answers the ad. And in comes this guy with a pocket protector, the glasses, I mean, super geek.
And he shows up and Gale and I, it's like 4.30 in the afternoon, we're drinking a beer, we got our feet up on the desk, Gale's reading the biography of Elvis, and I'm just sitting there, and in comes this guy. Hi, I'm Daryl Darnauer and I'm here to interview for the, oh yes, we're expecting you. And I told him what we were looking for. Oh, I can sell anything. I will learn the product. I'm your guy. And he said, but I have to warn you. He said, I'm a Christian. And I said, oh, no problem. I'm a blinkety blank Christian. And I used very colorful words to describe what kind of Christian I was. And he like, whoo. And he said, well, that's good.
But he said, I have to warn you that I would actually witness on a sales call, possibly. And I witnessed. What are you talking about? We're not going to court here. We're trying to sell mechanical seals. And he goes, no, no, I mean, I would actually tell them the gospel and try to lead them to Christ. And I said, oh, well, I guess that'd be all right. I don't know. And I said, well, do you want the job or not? He said, well, I have to go home and pray. And I said, you gotta do what? I said, if you want the job, take the job. If you don't want the job, what do you need to go home and pray for, what's all that about?
Oh no, I do everything. I would go home and pray with my wife. And I said, well, that's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. I said, that's what you gotta do, do it. And I said, call me before 10 tomorrow or whatever. So up he goes, I looked over at Gil, and I said, that's the craziest guy I ever heard. So, like nine o'clock in the morning, we get the call. This is Darryl. My wife Debbie and I have prayed and I've decided to take the job. And I said, oh, okay. So he shows up. The product I'm selling, you need to ride around with me in the car to sell and learn about it. So he's riding around and he's slowly eking in.
Do you ever go to seminars? Do you ever go to meetings or conferences or anything to learn about things? about what? The Bible. Oh Bible. Oh I took a class on the New School of Social Research in New York City. I took a class on how to be a shaman and I went down to the satanic bookstore and I actually bought a Bible and a red fill tip pin because I wanted to underland everything in that Bible that God said. He's looking at me and you're like, you did what? You did what now? And I said, my mother's Bible and I did that. And I said, you know what happened to me? I said, I was in that book Genesis, that first one, and my red felt tip pen ran out of ink and I never got to the end of Genesis.
I said, I got the Bible, I can bring it in. Oh no, that's all right, you don't need to bring it in. But I literally ran out of ink because it would say, you know, and the Lord said, so I'd underline that. And I never got out of Genesis with that. But I did learn how to become a shaman, which is a whole crazy thing anyway. So then, Darryl goes, oh, well that's interesting. He says, so you'd be interested in studying about the Bible? And I said, well I would. And over the next couple weeks he comes in and he gives me a Thompson chain reference Bible with my name on it, you know, and gold on the front and everything.
And he presents me this Bible. I look at it and said, oh man, that's cool. Thank you, being a little guy. I don't know what to say about that. He says, if you take it, you have to promise me that you're going to read First John. And I said, great. Where do I find that? And he opened it up, and he showed me the table of contents. And it was on page 987 or whatever. And he said, read First John. I said, OK. So I go home. And my normal course of events during the week was we would work. And then on Friday afternoon, I would come home. I'd leave work early, come home, take a nap, get up, eat dinner. And then after dinner, I would leave.
And for Friday night, Saturday night, and a lot of Sunday night, I was out playing pool from San Diego to Santa Barbara. And then I'd come home. Now, Cale liked it because we worked together. And I wasn't out cheating on her or anything. I was out messing around with a bunch of no accounts playing pool. But that was what I did. And so he assigned me to read this text. So I said, well, I'd read this Bible stuff. I know about this TV channel, because we had this pool table in our house and we had a TV that I had that I could watch while I was doing it. So I'd turn on TBN and I'd watch these guys and they're all, you know, boom, show them the hub.
What is going on? What's the matter with these people? And I'd watch some of it and then I said, oh, I see, yeah, I guess they're Christians or something. So I'd come back and I'd ask them. I said, what about these guys on TV? I told you to read First John. Don't watch that channel. Don't do that. And I said, well, you got to explain to me what's going on there. He said, no, not right now. Don't watch that stuff. You need to read First John. So he bugged me for a couple days. So finally, I come home. I play pool. My deal was to have a couple drinks, shoot some balls, then I'd come into the bed and Gail and I would read.
Gail's reading the biography of Elvis. I got this brand new Bible. And I'm looking at it in 1 John and I kind of started. And I thought, that's boring. I said, Revelation. I'm going to read that. So I go to that one because I knew it was going to be smoke and mirrors and guns and war. And so I read it and I'm reading along. And I get to chapter 6 and I look over at Gail. And I said, if this stuff is true, we're really in trouble. And she goes, oh, get out of here with all that stuff. Quit reading that stupid book. And so I folded it up, next day I go to work. So Terrell goes, did you finally read First John? And I said, no, I read Revelation.
He goes, oh, don't read that. Very confusing. I said, it's not confusing. I said, if you're not part of God's army, and the whole thing comes down like that, you're going to be in a lot of trouble, because God's coming back and he's going to win. Well, you do get it. That is good, but I want you to read First John. So I come back and over the next couple days, and not sure of the time sequence, but Gale had to be somewhere, probably taking Morgan to some, I don't know, what was that crazy club that the girls did? I don't know, it's some stupid thing. And I was home alone and I start reading First John and I'm sitting in my bed and I read through the first part of the chapter, and I mean through First John and I get in the first part of it.
And you know, that was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen, and I'm going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I guess that's about Jesus. And then I'm going along. Father, Son, Jesus Christ, these things I'm writing that your joy may be complete. This message I've heard, yada, yada, yada, lighten him, it's no darkness, yeah, okay, I guess. If we say we have fellowship, yeah, while we work in darkness, then I'd take another drink and then look at it, do not practice the truth, But if we're walking a light, is he in a light? We have fellowship with one another. Oh yeah, I guess that's okay. Jesus' son cleanses us from all sin.
Oh yeah, I know that part. That's when I got baptized at nine, I know that part. And then we have, say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. What? We say we have no sin. Well, I knew that from nine years old, at this point I'm 37 years old, that I'd probably done a lot of these things that the Bible's going to call sin. So that kind of checked me up. But I just kept going on. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, oh, yeah, I know. I'm sorry. OK, that gets me out of that one. So then I go along, and then all of a sudden I'm in 1 John 2.1. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.
That verse, when I hit that, it just smoked me. I sat there, I reread it, and I thought, Oh my goodness, that's saying if I say I know him, which I've told all these people I know him, but does not keep his commandments, he's a liar. Well I knew I hadn't kept all the commandments, but I figured, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't do those. But I knew what it meant. I knew it meant a general, if I was walking the walk, the truth was not in him. And I realized, oh my goodness, I had been deceiving myself, thinking I had, quote, fire insurance. At that time, I didn't know what that term meant, but I, that's the way I was thinking about it.
And I got out of my bed, and I literally got on my knees next to my bed, and I put my head on the bed, and I said, God, if this stuff is true, help me to see it. I don't, I don't understand what's going on right now, but helped me to see it. Got back in the bed, Gail came home, hey what's up? I read this thing, it's okay, you know, yeah, yeah, read that Bible. And so I came back the next day, Darryl said, do you read 1 John? I said, well, yeah, but I got to 1 John 2 and I had some trouble with a verse. What verse stopped you? And I said, 1 John 2, 4. And he said, oh, that's interesting. He said, why would that trouble you? And I said, well, it They said, if I'm doing these things, then I'm not of him, and I'm pretty sure I've been doing those things.
But you don't understand, Daryl, I was a Christian. I got baptized in nine, walked the aisle, all that kind of stuff. And he goes, no problem. We can talk about this, we can discuss it. That was the start. At that point, I didn't realize it, but I became a different person. I stopped swearing, and Bo Gail and I could embarrass a lot of people with our language. And I just stopped and I didn't even know I stopped. But I did have this weird sensation I wanted to know was going on. And Darryl, being a really good discipler, knew just how to feed me enough stuff to cause me to discover it. He would never answer my question.
He would always go, oh, that's interesting. You should read this. Come back and tell me what you think. And it was always I was defending that I was saved. I had to be saved, of course I was saved, I got baptized, and if I wasn't saved, how can I get rebaptized? All of those questions came up. And out of that, my change, Yale will testify, I think I'm stating this correctly, is she always said that she wanted to see a miracle, and the miracle was my change. So in April, we're going over to Tucson, she's listening to some tapes, she gets saved. So I get saved in February, she gets saved in April, And by September, I'm taking seminary classes at Grace Seminary West over in the Brethren Church in Long Beach.
And during that time, just everything started opening up to me, and it just rocked my world. I didn't know what to think. But I had this great battle, especially during the summer. If I'm saved, once saved, always saved, I knew all those terms, how do I wrestle with this? And I finally came to the conclusion. There's no way I was saved. I mean, I was saved before the foundation of the earth. I came to learn later. But at that time, I did not make the right decision. So now we're at the point where talking to all of you. So why do we baptize kids that are five years old that can come up and make a testimony of faith?
We baptize them because we don't want to squelch that. When I was nine years old, I was making a true statement. But what did I need? I needed a disciple. I needed somebody to lead me along. That was my parents' job. My parents had come out of the decisionism of the Billy Graham Crusades and all the other things that built that Baptist, once saved, always saved, just make a decision, you'll be okay, thinking they never disciple my sister and I. So when I finally got this, I realized, oh my goodness, all I need was somebody to teach me. And when we baptize that child, we're saying we as a body wanna come alongside that child and raise them up in the nurture of the Lord, right?
And to understand those things. They have that inside feeling. They are one of his. But then we should disciple them so they don't go through the stupid waste of time that I had where I had to spend, you know, of what, 30 some years wandering around being an idiot, that you disciple them and they can then come along and understand and grow. And the joy of that is that you shouldn't, it's not that decision. I mean, MacArthur has a great thing. He says, I never ask when you made a decision. My question is, what did you do today? How did you act today? What do you feel today? Not what did you feel yesterday, but what do you feel today and how are you gonna be tomorrow?
Because what is going on is what God promises us in John 3, 1 John 3. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. So we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
We are being conformed into his image. And the greatest joy that I can see, now being able to sit at the table like Shawn says, and see my children's children is to see my children's children get it. They understand it at their level. And Kelly can understand it, Maggie can understand it, Calvin can understand it. That's huge. That's the successful disciple making. And if Daryl made me a disciple and I didn't replicate myself, that's really not a disciple. But if Daryl made me disciple, then I go and disciple somebody else that then can disciple somebody else. Now we're actually making disciples, right? That's the evangelism explosion.
That's the Christian life. And remember that God himself came and chose 12 guys, one of them from Satan, and out of that, he revolutionized the world. So anyway, all of this to say, all of this comes down to, I've got about five minutes, and I wanna kinda go through this kinda thing. So I get saved in 1984. From 1984, Gale gets saved in April, start seminary class in September. At that point, we're going to Long Beach Brethren, very conservative church.
Dick Mayhew, who is the past president of the seminary, or the master seminary and stuff, came down via pastor there. Yet, all kinds of connections with people there. Then we go to a place called Rolling Hills Covenant Church, It was a large church up in Rolling Hills. A lot of very well-to-do people. One of the guys had, he was a multimillionaire, and he wanted to start an apologetics institute. He starts inviting all kinds of people from all over the world to come and stay a week with him and his house, live in their beach house, and then we got to have lunch with them all the time. He had Sproul and Walter Martin, all the people from the Creation Institute, Ken Ham, all those kind of people.
So I got to meet all those people in this intense crush of things. But then, Rolling Hills Covenant Church was taken over by a guy named Gordon Kirk, who was the traveling pulpit fill from Biola. And one, during a period of time, he said, I'm not going to say sin from the pulpit any longer, because it offends people. And what I want to say is that if you have a problem, come and meet with our counselors. and I was one of the discipleship and evangelism people. We were the counselors, but he wouldn't say sin from the pulpit. So I went to him and I said, you can't say that. What are you talking about? You know, it's sin, you need to confront that.
No, no, no, that's gonna be your job. I don't wanna turn the people off. And we had at that point, we had 3,000 people coming, we'd have these Easter services out of the parking lot where all kinds of people would come. But it was all seeker-friendly stuff. So I called it a man-centered gospel at that time, Secret friendly hadn't even been invented. So we ended up resigning from that church after MacArthur had come down and talked to us, the leadership and I came to him and said, what do you do with a church that won't even say sin? He said, go back and find out how many of the elders want to change or whatever.
So it ended up that they didn't want to change. So we looked around for another church. We thought we'd settled on the church. The week before we were gonna get to be a member of that in Long Beach, the pastor ran off with his secretary. So we're like, what is going on? What are we gonna do? Friends of ours had driven up to Grace Community Church, was 15 minutes away on the freeway from where we were. And they said, ah, it's close, let's go up there. So we go up to Grace Community, and that's how we ended up at Grace Community in 1989. So after that, we go to Grace Community, we get raised up there, and then that's where we meet Shawn, and Morgan meets Shawn, and all that.
Then Shawn comes up to Grace Bible, comes to youth pastor, and all of that. And during the time that Shawn was a grace community, I discipled him and anybody that was in the ministry under me as an elder, I always discipled those people. And he said, some point we need to live together and have generational living and all of that. I said, yeah, that's cool, we should do that. And so anyway, he called, we came up, and that was the start of Grace Bible, and we were hoping to influence them, and then that blew up. and now we're here.
But all of this to say, it always boils down to life on life, and that the people leading you should be growing all the time and be involved with you. And when that's happening, you have this special thing where it's generationally, people are learning and all these things and being excited about them. And the youngest generation can teach the oldest generation and all of that is happening all along. And it only happens when it's life on life ministering and living together. And I think we really, in the people that are here that come at nighttime, they really understand that and they're really trying to make that happen.
And God will bless that this unendingly and bless it in ways that 30 years from now you can stand up and tell your story knowing that this person knew that person, that knew that person, that changed that, and then it circled back around this way and that way. It's just incredible the way that God works in these things. So that's why I was a liar when I read that verse. I knew it, and that changed me crazily.
And then I just asked God to show me, and he kept doing it and is continuing to show me. And it always amazes me as I got to these different levels at these different churches. Whenever I was talking with people that really wanted to grow, the excitement was just bubbling. It was great fun. But then when you would get with people that wanted to keep the status quo, it was always, oh, we don't want to mess that up. We're really doing good over here. We don't want to do that. And you realize they're not growing anymore. They have this system, and they dial it all in, and they don't want to mess with it. Well, that's not the way God works, because he is conforming us to his own son.
So therefore, we always are changing. And that's a good thing, because guess what? Tomorrow you wake up and you're gonna be closer to the image of Jesus if you wanna his, so you should be getting better. Now, I do like the illustration upwards and to the right. There will be those little slips, but you will be moving in the right direction and it'll be a joy and it just feeds off of the people you come in contact with and how they discover something, and then you can look at it and go, oh, that's something I should have done this way or that way. So, all of that to say, all of those people that I mentioned, the people that the generations before me, my parents, their parents, their parents before them, I don't know, I can't go that far back.
We came up with Gail's, some of them were in Japan as missionaries and stuff. It's kind of like Chuck's family where they, But it's always you and who you are discipling. And that's the key thing. So as we, in the school, the teachers are a form of disciplers, we're transferring information of the gospel influence, and it can be well outside the church doors and all of that. So my main message is I hope that all of you see and feel that, and I think most of you that you're here tonight, you're already doing that. You've experienced it, you know that. And so the message is keep on keeping on. But it's just stunning to me to see how a little body like this can have great influence and we don't know what's going to come out of what we're doing now.
And hopefully we're building stronger people that are away from decisionism and understanding that it's a continual process and a continual discipleship that will bring us to the next level to be those ministers that God needs. So thank you for this time. Let's pray and then we go home. Father, we thank you for what you've done and all of us in what you are doing and what you're going to do. And it is exciting to see how all the people in our congregation are growing. Those of us that are older, the younger, the middle, all of that, all of us. And how you do that and the way you arrange meetings and arrange people to be together, help us to continue in that and understand how to apply that and bring that into all the things we come in contact with.
Whether it be designing a new seal, making a better deal, creating a new product, giving somebody the gospel, All of those things are under your rule. Help us to be those people you would have us be. Help us to be strengthened. And the great thing about this is I know that's what you want and I know that what you've commanded us to do is to go into the world and make disciples. So we thank you for the blessing that you give us and help us to do that. And it's in your son's name, Jesus Christ we pray, amen.
