Dangerous Prayers (Week 1) - Search Me - Audio
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Welcome, I'm Pastor Tom, lead pastor here at Kaiser Bible Church. We are super glad you're with us. And we are starting a new series today called Dangerous Prayers. And I had a dangerous prayer in my life about little over 20 years ago, actually. I was living in Japan and everything was going right. Like my life was awesome. And I was going to come back to the States and I was going to go to seminary and grad school and I had all these big plans. And I remember before work, one morning I was out on, I had a two story house and I had like a little balcony and I was out on the balcony and I was like looking at it at my domain. And I was like, I just pray just foolishly, God, give me everything you want for me. Give me everything you want for me. And at the time I thought that was a prayer to like, oh, more of this awesomeness that I'm experiencing. And it wasn't too long after that that I first experienced obsessive compulsive disorder and the beginning of a long journey through mental illness. And it was looking back, it was looking back that I realized that God answered my prayer. And it was a dangerous one and it cost and it was also the best thing that ever happened to me. C.S. Lewis wrote this about God in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Lucy is learning about God as land and we get this little conversation between her and Mr. Beaver, as land as a lion, Mr. Beaver says, the lion, the great lion, ooh, said Susan, I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion safe, said Mr. Beaver, who said anything about safe? Of course he's not safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. I got a picture here about James Cash Penny. You may know him better as J.C. Penny, the young people here have never seen one of these. But for a long time in the United States of America, J.C. Penny's was like the premier department store. When I grew up, there was one at the Ligon Hills Mall that's been raised to the ground. But I didn't know anything about this guy, J.C. Penny. He lived to be 95 years old, he didn't pass until 1971, he was born in the 1800s, 1870s. And when J.C. Penny was a young man, his father was a Baptist preacher, and his father instilled in him at a very young age. When he was eight years old, his father said, you're a man now, you're responsible for buying your own clothes. And so at eight years old, J.C. Penny uneducated, went to start working for a little retail store, he worked there for years. By 1902, he had bought into a new store that was going to be built in in town. He was a young man around the age that this photo then colorized was taken. And the store was called the Golden Rule Store. It was based on the principal due unto others as you would have them due to you. J.C. Penny was a devout man, devout Christian, and he believed in what he was doing. He believed that if he gave people a fair deal, a fair shake, then all would be well. And he lived that way.
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Coast Bible Church, PastorTom Bennett, San Juan Capistrano, CA, www.coastbible.org