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DON’S LAST WILL AND TESTIMONY
GIVEN AT CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY CHURCH, SAN JOSE, CA JUNE 27, 2010
(The full sermon will be available soon via You-Tube and/or other streaming services)
Before I do that I want to make a few comments. Thank you for your love and support for Ruthanne and me as we face this battle with cancer. As most of you know I have been diagnosed with stage 2 Lung Cancer and the medical team’s prognoses is not encouraging. After much prayer and research we have decided to trust God for healing through the alternative medicine approach rather than surgery. We feel at peace with this decision.
As I prayed about what to share today the Lord has led me to personalize many of Paul’s writings to express what is on my heart. Through the years I have done this with Scriptures. In my devotional times, I will journal the Scriptures into personal prayers and declarations.
First I will express my personal feelings and convictions by using some of Paul’s writings from Philippians, starting with the first chapter verse 3.
“Every time I think of you I give thanks to my God.” So many of you have had such a significant part of my life. Time would not be sufficient for me to express to each of you who are here today, my heart-felt gratitude to God for bringing you into my life.
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. Even so you have done well to share with me in my present difficulty. We receive Christ’s strength to do everything that needs to be done. We have deeply appreciated the phone calls, emails, cards and other expressions of love.
Whenever I pray I make my request for all of you with joyful anticipation. As I pray for you I am full of faith that what God began in you a long time ago, He will complete. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind, in spite of what you may show me, I am convinced that God will keep after you and bring His work in you to a flourishing finish.
So it is right that I should feel at I do about all of you, for you have a very special place in my heart. You have been there for Ruthanne and I as we have faced our trials and you are here again as we face this challenge.
So this is my prayer for you: That your love will overflow more and more and that your will keep growing closer to God and in your knowledge and understanding.
I pray you will understand what matters the most to God, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns.
I know that as you pray for me, and the Spirit of Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance. I am confident that I am healed, it just a matter of convincing my body of this fact.
I trust that your lives will bring honor to Christ, whether we live or die. For me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. But if I live I can do more fruitful work for Christ. I am torn between two desires, I long to be with Christ, which is far better for me. BUT FOR YOUR SAKE IT IS BETTER I CONTINUE TO LIVE.
I am convinced that I will remain alive so I can continue to help all of you grow and experience the joy of your faith. Through the years God has blessed me to let the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit flow through me to touch many lives for His sake, and I praise him for it.
Above all you must live as citizens of Heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the good news about Christ. Don’t be intimidated in any way by your enemies. For you have been given not only the privilege of trusting Christ but also the privilege of suffering for Him. May God help us all to trust Him when suffering comes so we will bring glory to Him.
Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, and working together with one mind and purpose. I believe the Holy Spirit is breaking down dividing wall among God’s people. The prayer of Jesus, “that they may be one,” is being fulfilled today as God’s people are coming together like no other time in history so we can complete the great commission to God into all the world and preach the gospel.
Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others better than yourselves. Don’t look to your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. The more we know and love Jesus the more we know we are loved and accepted my Him. The more we allow God’s unconditional love to saturate us the more we are able to let that same unconditional love flow through us to touch the broken hearted and the disenfranchised.
You must have the same attitude that Jesus had. When He appeared In human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminals death on a cross. We must take up our cross daily and follow Him. God gave me prophetic picture, years ago, of people coming into my office on crosses, they hopped in and leaned against the wall, in pain and grieve. In my love and compassion, I saw myself taking the nails out and lowering them onto the carpet, cleaning their wounds, comforting, encouraging them. The Lord rebuked me and said, “Don you are prolonging the inevitable. They will be of no real use to me until the die and my resurrection life can flow through them.” Now I encourage the hurting to “hang on there, let death of self be complete so God’s resurrection power will flow through you.”
For God is working in you to give you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him. One of my mission statements is from I Cor. 2: 1-5. “As I come to you my brothers and sisters, declaring to the testimony of God, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom. My passion and desire is to present Christ and Him crucified. I come with much, weakness, timidity and trembling. I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit. I DID THIS SO YOU WOULD NOT TRUST IN HUMAN WISDOM BUT IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.”
We have received God’s spirit, (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.
Each of us did ( and are doing ) the work God gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Appollos watered it, BUT IT WAS GOD WHO MADE IT GROW. Through the years I have ministered partnership with so many who have sown into the lives of those to whom I am ministering. I get to make whatever contribution the Holy Spirits leads me. BUT IT IS GOD WHO DOES THE WORK.
“My determined purpose is that I may know Him ( that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His person more strongly and more clearly), and that I may in the same way come to know the power out-flowing from His resurrection which it exerts over believers. And that I may share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness, even to his death.” (Amplified)
“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to posses that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing; forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ, is calling us.”
“Let all of you who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. BUT WE MUST HOLD ON TO THE PROGRESS WE HAVE ALREADY MADE.”
We are citizens of heaven and we are eagerly waiting for Him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like His own, using the same power in which He will bring everything under His control.
Chapter 4:
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stay true to the Lord, I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my and the crown I receive for my work.
Always be full of the joy in the Lord. Don’t worry about anything, instead pray about everything.
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. Even so you have done well to share with me in my present difficulty. We receive Christ’s strength to do everything that needs to be done. We have deeply appreciated the phone calls, emails, cards and other expressions of love.
