0:00 I just pray and believe that the Lord will this year fill me with his love, that I would know his love in a way that I never have before. And to think of what it says in Isaiah, he says that my love is far greater than a mother's too. And you know, when your child's inconsolable in the 0:23 night, to know that he's our comforter and we are continually there before him. And to think of the love of Jesus as well in John 11, where he weeps over Lazarus. And when you think of those who are spiritually sick in your life or maybe dead in sin, I mean, to 0:41 see my own need, first of all, and to know that the Lord weeps over me and he weeps over those who you care for and and to hear him say that if you believe you will see my glory. And I believe that that the Lord will that I would see his love in my own life and also 1:00 in the lives of those who I feel helpless about. And it goes on to say where he says, you know, unbind them and let them go. And that's what I want to hear the Lord say to me that that he wants to see me unbound and set me free in so many areas. And I can think of when I look 1:21 back in my own life where people have when I was paralyzed with sin that there were his God's people who lowered me to Jesus and he looked at their faith and he healed me. And I want to have the same faith for those who I feel helpless about. And I believe that the 1:37 the Lord will reveal his love to me in a way that I never have before. Thank you. Good morning. It's been a while, huh? First off, I'm just so grateful for brothers and sisters for sharing what they shared. Brilliant, Bobby. Rock Tumblr. Marriage. Brilliant. So true. And for 2:03 Jeremy, Day of Salvation, you know, it's like, man, it's like a beautiful email from Sandeep too, as far as, you know, not looking back at yesterday or last week and starting afresh today and saying, this is the day where I want to honor you, Lord. And I pray that being here honors him and honors 2:18 you guys. So first off, I hope I can do this under four minutes. But the first thing I wanted to say was my deep gratitude for this body and also asking for forgiveness for being quite distant this last year and not knowing how to really accept this body and really kind of get to know you. And I really 2:35 desire that for this year. And that's part of the reason I'm getting up today in faith to say, I want this. I really want this. And so often the enemy will steal that from my heart. I'm so grateful to my elders for putting up with me sometimes and just seeing the fruit in their lives is a beautiful 2:53 thing. And it's really captured my heart. So I'm so grateful to Jeremy, Sandeep, Bobby. Thank you for being so loyal and so faithful. The thing I want to share right now is just recognizing it's actually Matthew 6:19 and 20 about how do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy 3:14 and but store up treasures in heaven where moth and rust will not destroy. It was so evident, yes, they had a very clear reminder of how so many things in this world have dominion over me. And I was, I have a new phone here. And I hate technology. And my computer crashed this last couple of weeks lost all 3:36 my hard drive, lost all my music, everything. I just got rid of my CDs about two months ago, so I got rid of all my CDs, had all my music on my hard drive, my hard drive crashed, my music is gone. And it was a deep pang in my heart. It was like, oh my gosh, there's certain songs I just can't get back. There's certain songs I love that 3:52 They're gone. They're done. And it was so clear, my relationship to music and my relationship with God, how much more I've identified with music over God. My intimacy has often been with music over my father and the body. And now certain music that I was holding onto is gone. 4:09 What if my father decided to leave? Could I replace him with something of this world? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So what if you father decided to leave? Could I replace you with something? No. So father, help me to grieve the loss of materialism and see with new eyes the importance of walking with you daily in the spirit and having close communion with you. 4:28 And that this will be more than enough, way more than enough. I am seeing more and more the importance of you being everything. I continue to store up treasures here on earth where Martha and Rose destroy. But I stand here today saying less and less and less of that, more and more of your spirit. 4:45 It's been a, it's been a breakthrough too, as far as I know I shared about James and the power of prayer, effective prayer. And that has been a beautiful thing too, just spending the mornings talking to my dad and really bearing my heart with him and asking him if he could ask me, 4:57 and asking him for, for grace and knowing his grace and knowing his forgiveness and really seeing him increase my faith. So I'm so grateful. And, um, and I, like I said, I'm grateful to you guys too. And look forward to this year being a year where I have much more hope and much more connection with a lot of you who I don't even know. 5:15 And I, I really, um, look forward to that. So thank you. Good morning. Um, I, I wanted to say thank you to the children because, um, your sharing has given me, um, encouragement to share too. So you're never too young to be an encouragement. So thank you children. 5:39 Um, so being up here, it's, um, me having childlike faith and there's, you know, sometimes we can be intimidated by not knowing how to share or how to articulate. Anyways, I wanted to read from, um, Psalms 116, 5 through 14. Um, gracious is the Lord and righteous. 6:02 Yes. Our God is compassionate. The Lord preserves the simple and I consider myself simple. I was brought low and he saved me. Return to your rest. Oh, my soul for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have rescued my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. 6:26 I shall walk before the Lord in the, in, in the land of the living. I believed when I said I am greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm, all men are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits towards me? I shall lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. 6:50 I shall pay my vows to the Lord. Oh, may it be in the presence of all his people. And, um, Andy and I didn't share what we were going to share, but, um, it's interesting. There's how the Holy Spirit, uh, causes a theme. 7:08 So mine, I'm, I, I'm here before my family. And, um, I say, I want to join in and be a part of this family. I must admit I've been inconsistent. And for that I asked for the prayers of my brothers and sisters. I want the chains of distrust and fear of intimacy, intimacy to be broken. 7:28 I'm tired of keeping distant. So I bring my struggle into the light so that it will be disarmed. And I am believing God for that. I'm so grateful to the father for placing me in such a faithful and loving body where I can grow and truly die to my old self. 7:46 I especially want to thank the elders for being the fruitful men of faith that they are because it has inspired me to run. And I always say this, and some of the sisters have heard me say this, this is Olympic caliber, spiritual athletes. 8:04 I mean, if you want to train and get to your highest heights in athletics, you got to train with people that really know how to get down. And this family and these brothers, these elders, Olympic caliber, spiritual athletes. 8:21 Thank you. Praise God. I thank God for the chance to be back. And I want to thank all of you for your prayers as well on our behalf. And I wanted to use this time just to testify about what God's been doing in our lives, in my life. 8:38 And for those of you who don't know, my dad has been battling cancer for the past six years. It came back in 2016. He was battling it all of this year and he passed away last month on the 13th of December. And I'm grateful for the way God planned all of it. 8:57 And, you know, and the way God prepared me before I went back home. I went back home on November 12th, which was one month before he passed away. And it's amazing to see how God had prepared me from what was shared at church, from what people shared to me individually, 9:14 to what God was speaking to me in my own personal time. And one of the strongest rocks was what we've been hearing today about God's love. And to be rooted and grounded in God's love, knowing that God loves me beyond what I can understand. 9:28 And that God is sovereign over all things, that he controls all circumstances. And so in his infinite wisdom, in his immense love for me, he's planned out every day of my life. And nothing happens in my life that catches God by surprise. 9:42 I don't think I was imagining this today morning. I can't imagine God sitting up in heaven and seeing my dad come up and go, wait, what, Matthew, you're up here already? I didn't think you'd come up so fast. But God knew the exact days of my dad's life. 9:55 He knew how long my dad had to live and when he would go up to be with the Lord. And I'm grateful for the way God led that. And, you know, I realize I can say a lot of Christian phrases and it might not make sense unless I give an example. 10:11 But so I wanted to distill it down to, I think, when my father passed away, the minutes when he passed away. And give that as an example for how God has been leading us. The prayer that I had in my heart was that God would give us rest in his presence. 10:27 You know, come to me, those who are wearing heavy laden, I will give you rest. That God would give us joy, even through these hard times. Because in the presence of, in his presence is fullness of joy and peace, his peace that passes understanding. 10:41 And all of these three things I think God gave to us through this period. I went home on November 12th, my dad passed away on December 13th. That whole one month I was staying with him in the hospital. My mom and I were with him, ministering to him. 10:56 The reason I went home was because the cancer had spread to my dad's brain and he had lost his ability to communicate well. And he had kind of become like a child in an adult's body. And so there was a lot of challenges with ministering to him. 11:10 Each day was a novel adventure in, you know, in kind of what words he would use, how he would deal with us. And it was just dealing, you know, just resting on God and trusting in his strength to get through it. And, you know, we had heard in this church about the need to fast and pray before we get into difficult situations. 11:31 And God had done that in my life too the week before I went home. I don't think I've prayed as honestly as I have in my entire life as I have prayed in that week. And God gave me brothers to pray with that I could, you know, kneel down and pray together with. 11:45 And God strengthened me, gave me the grace that I needed for that whole month. Because when you're in the hospital taking care of someone who's sick, that's not the time to fast and pray. The preparation happens before that happens, before you go through that situation. 11:57 And so even that, you know, what we heard from this church strengthened me and gave me the grace that I needed. But distilling it down to the moment Sapa passed away. He didn't suffer much at all. It was only two days of difficulty breathing before he went to sleep. 12:13 But the morning he passed away on a Tuesday. On that morning his breathing was very difficult and he was kind of sweating just from the effort of breathing. But he was sedated this whole time. So we don't, we think he didn't feel that discomfort. 12:27 But so his, the way he went, he passed away was his breathing just slowed down. And literally as you would see someone go to sleep, he just went to rest. And that in itself was such a comfort to us. Cause because it had spread to his mind, the doctors had told us there's a good chance he might seize and die while seizing while having seizures. 12:49 And that would have been very painful to watch. But, but he, he went to rest just falling asleep. And as this happened, all of us was around him. We have three children and my sister, my elder sister's married. So her husband was also there. 13:02 So all five of us were around Appa as he, as he left his body. And it truly was the peace of God that, that passes understanding that came over us. We heard about how praising, you know, casts out complaining. And it was praising God at the time that my father went to sleep. 13:22 And I'd like, I like to think of it that, you know, my father transitioned from this earth to heaven and up in heaven, everyone's praising God. And while he went up there, we're down here and we are praising God too, along with him. 13:32 And as soon as he, we realized that he had preached his last week, there were tears. There was crying, but we started praying. And in our prayers was word of thanks, words of thanks for a life that was lived for God. Words of thanks for what we had seen, the principles that we had seen in his life, where he had truly given up everything for God's sake. 13:54 And had seen God supply all his needs for himself and for his family. And we were, you know, all of us prayed one after the other. And all of our prayers were prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of, of praise as my dad's body lay in the bed in front of us. 14:09 And we, we were singing this, this Malayalam song. For those who know Malayalam, it's a song. Uh, Logenyan in Autumn to get you. It's that the translation for the, it loses its poetic beauty when I translate it. But it's basically that I finished my run on this earth that I'm going up to, I'm on my way up to heaven. 14:28 I'm flying up to heaven into the presence of my Lord. And an angel of armies are standing me, standing up to welcome me home. And I'm going to be singing hallelujahs to my Lord in white garments. And we were singing the song as soon as Appa passed away. 14:41 And you know, all of us crying and singing the song. And as we sang the song, we kept praying. And then after that, we started singing songs of praise. Uh, the song, Jesus, we enthroned you. We proclaim your King standing here in the midst of us. 14:55 We raise you up with our praise. And that, that song really gave me so much peace that even as we grieve the loss of my father, as he laid in that bed, Jesus was with us as we praised him, as we lifted our voices up and we praised him. 15:08 He was there in that room grieving with us and comforting us. And you know, the songs of Thanksgiving were sang up and different members from our church came. And for the next two hours or so, we were just standing around praising God. 15:22 Uh, you know, reading verses from the scriptures, uh, as they took the ECG test to show that his heart was flat lined. And you, you know, you see the, the lines from the ECG, uh, machine. We were still praising God that there was, you know, a life well lived. 15:36 And, um, it's, it's hard to explain in words what we went through. And I think I've tried my best, but it's, it was a peace of God that passes all understanding. And with all that happened after that, you know, the complications of taking a body from one country to another and burying him there. 15:52 And being a, having a ceremony that would honor God in front of our neighbors and our unconverted relatives. Uh, meeting with our family members who are all Catholic and trying to comfort them with the comfort that God gave us. 16:05 Uh, you know, taking care of the family with my sisters and my, my mom and with all that had to be done. It was just beautiful to see the way God planned all of it. Um, even with the way of, you know, with my younger sister, she's only 17, but, you know, God planned it in such a way that she's supposed to be in high school right now, but she's a year ahead of where she should be. 16:25 And because of that, she's now in college and you know, the next three, four years are set for her. Uh, and so those are the things that I see that God had planned way ahead of time. He didn't plan now that she would be in college, but when she was in school, he planned that she would be in college right now. 16:38 Um, and all these things, these small, small things that I could, we could see God's presence, God's planning ahead of us. And, uh, that gives me so much joy. It gives me so much comfort that, you know, that God's watching over us and, and in love planning ahead each things in our lives. 16:54 And, uh, this, the thought that encouraged me and, and, and my share with my family as well, um, was it God had made a perfect plan for our lives. He had not just for my dad, but for my mom and my, my sisters. And for me, he planned each of our lives individually. 17:12 He didn't, uh, he didn't plan my dad's life and say, okay, well, he'll have a wife and he'll have children and kind of plan our lives around him. But he planned our lives individually. And in his perfect plan for my life, it, it was right that my father left this earth on, in my 24th year, it was right for my younger sister to lose her father in her 17th year. 17:31 And in that's not God's second best plan for my life. It's not God's, you know, backup plan for my life, but because I'm living my life, trying to do what God wants me to do. This is the perfect plan for my life. And in his immense wisdom, which I don't have and his immense love for me, which I don't fully understand his plan that I go through these circumstances. 17:55 And I don't see how it might be for my good right now, but with faith, I can see that all of this will work out for my good. And that I can see looking back maybe on this earth or maybe in eternity, how this worked out for my good. 18:09 And so I want to end with that, that I'm immensely grateful for, as Bobby was saying, for the church and for the ways God led me leading up to this and the way God's been guiding me and my family, my mom and sisters and my brother-in-law and our church back home in Doha as well. 18:27 And after this, God's given us all immense peace, even the folks in our church in Doha, my dad was the founding elder of that church there. He was the teaching elder there. And so he played a strong role in guiding the church. 18:41 And even once he's gone, it's amazing to see how that church is going on in these past few weeks. There isn't a sense of doubting God. There isn't a spirit of complaining or murmuring, but there is a spirit of hope. I think for all of them seeing Appa when he was in the hospital, to see his attitude and to see his faith really encouraged them as well. 19:02 And so there's, they're all running hard after God as well. And I'm grateful for what I've been hearing from this church. And I was just writing down some things that, you know, that I heard in this church just a week before I went back home. 19:15 In our men's meeting, we were talking about facing death with courage and hitting it out of the parks. And he was talking about, you know, death being the last enemy and how we face that. And I think that prepared us a lot, our family to face death. 19:28 We had talked about as a family, how we would, because a few days before my dad passed away, it was clear that he was heading in that direction. And we were in a world that where patients come, cancer patients come mostly to die. 19:44 It's called the palliative care where there's no more treatment. So patients come in, they die and they leave. And so we had heard death all around us. We had heard wailings. We had heard mothers cry. We had heard children cry. 19:55 We had heard patients scream. And as we heard all of this, and we realized that we were heading in that direction, we encouraged each other that we should, as it says in 1 Thessalonians 4, that we should not grieve as those without hope, that we don't grieve as those without hope, that we have our hope in God. 20:14 And so I think God gave us the strength for that. I believe it. I've seen it. We heard about preparing ourselves by fasting and praying before we get into trials in times of plenty where we prepare ourselves for the difficult times ahead. 20:28 And I saw how God did that miraculously for me too, before I left. And the reminder that God loves me, even as we walk through the valleys of death, that God loves me and his perfect plan. He orchestrates every day of my life. 20:42 And that in his immense love, he's planned for me even better than I can. And the last thing I'd like to say is in 2015, 2015 was a very good year for me personally in my life. I passed my PhD qualification exams. My sister got engaged to get married. 20:59 Towards the end of the year, I got a free car. I don't know if people ever get that. But all of these good things happened. And I remember 2015, the Thanksgiving season, I look back at my life. I was in this really nice hotel because of a conference. 21:13 And I was just looking back and saying, God, what have I done to deserve this? And I shared this at church here as well. That, you know, there are people better than me, people smarter than me, people holier than me, who have lives, who don't have what I had in 2015. 21:29 And God was immensely, you know, physically blessed me so much that year. And when I shared at church, I shared that there could be two ways forward. One, God could give me even more. Or like Job, he could take away something. 21:41 And, you know, in either way, I want to see God as my good. I want to see God as the thing that I hold on to. And 2016 proved to be a year of taking away. I was at Stanford for maybe two months out of the year. So I kind of lost things at work. 21:57 I lost my dad. And, you know, it was a year of trial and pain and depending on God a lot. But even through that, I think I've grown closer to God than ever. I think more than ever, God is the good that I hold on to. More than ever, I'm grounded in the fact that God loves me, that his plans for my life are perfect. 22:17 And that whatever 2017 holds for me, that if I live my life in abandonment to what God has for me, if I choose to make myself a zero and have God be everything, anything that happens in 2017 will be for my good. Then it will work out perfectly in God's way. 22:36 So I want to thank you all. Thank you all so much for your prayers on my behalf, for my family. As I said, God's been giving us a lot of peace and comfort. And I believe that's largely due to the prayers that all of you are giving up on our behalf. 22:50 Praise God.
