I could start my story in several different places.
I could start when I was 8 years old
and thought I had become a Christian.
I could start when I was in high school or college
and had to continuously persuade myself
that I was a Christian,
but I think the best way to start my story
is in a small hospital room in Lexington, Kentucky
where we didn't know
if my dad was going to make it or not.
Things didn't look good.
He had been sick so much
prior to that moment.
There were days where we thought that was the end.
There were days that we thought
he was going to be better
and everything would be fine...
until he finally passed away.
When you stay for a long time in a hospital room
and you're not the one that's sick,
there's a lot of waiting.
There's a lot of wondering
what's going to happen next.
There's a lot of conversation that happens
between you and the people that are with you.
One of the topics that came up
when I was talking with my mom
was about dad's last sermon.
At the time, we didn't know
it was going to be his last sermon,
but mom talked about how powerful it was.
And she actually even said it was one of the best sermons she's ever heard.
Dad had been sick a lot before that day
and I think at the time,
he was even having to sit when he was preaching.
And he just didn't have much strength left in him.
But the way my mom put it,
it was like... it was a miracle
just how much power he had
when he began to preach.
In his voice you can hear strength.
You can hear the passion
flowing through him.
And this was a man who was just weak from sickness
and was hours I think from going to the hospital
because he was so sick.
Dad always uploaded his sermons
onto Sermon Audio
where people around the world
could listen to his sermons and learn from them.
And we learned that obviously
the last sermon hadn't been uploaded
to Sermon Audio.
I was going to do that.
I was in the hospital room.
I had an Internet connection and everything.
I got the file for it.
I listened to a couple of seconds of it
and realized that the recording was off.
There was some kind of setting on the recording
that just made it sound kind of strange
like there were no breaths in between.
And so, I kind of got frustrated with it.
Thought about uploading it,
then decided no,
I'm just going to save it
and not worry about it.
So, I just put it on my desktop somewhere
and didn't even think about it
for several weeks after that.
Something that will stick with me forever
is seeing how my father
handled himself in the hospital
in the worst of times.
My brother put it best
when he was speaking at his funeral.
I think he said that dad finished his race sprinting.
And there's no better way to describe that.
I remember the nurses were putting in IV's,
central lines, things like that,
and dad would barely wince.
But one time, he looked up at one of the nurses
who was trying to do a procedure
that he couldn't be asleep for,
and he just looked at him and said,
"You know, I was about your age when God saved me."
And he's going through this painful,
traumatic situation,
and one person after another,
after another, after another,
he's telling them how God saved him.
I had seen my dad witness to people all the time,
but not to this ferocity;
not to this degree.
He knew I needed to hear that too.
And he was witnessing to me
as much as he was witnessing
to those people in the hospital.
On April 29th, 2016, my dad passed away.
Over the next few days
just pounded with grief
mixed with conviction,
mixed with desperate feeling
and need to be saved,
a need for redemption,
all mixed in together,
I was in prayer more then than I think
I ever had been previously.
Just asking God to show me a way.
Show me something.
Show me how.
I understood what it meant to be saved.
I understood what it meant to be a Christian.
I understood the "process," if you will,
but I didn't understand how to get there.
I didn't understand what did it mean
to truly have faith.
Yeah, I believe in Jesus.
I believe in all the things that He's done.
I get it.
I don't understand at what point do I have faith
and I'm saved?
At what point does that happen to me?
When does that transformation happen?
I have the belief, right?
I'm saved.
But I knew I wasn't, so what was I missing?
So what I prayed for, I prayed for an answer.
I prayed: God, I need an answer.
I need You to show me
what am I missing?
What am I not seeing that my father saw?
That other people I know have seen?
They believed.
They have faith.
They're confident in their salvation.
Where is my confidence?
Where is my salvation?
My father for his funeral
wanted the Gospel to be preached.
That's what he had always said
I think to my mom.
My brother spoke.
Michael Durham spoke.
Rob Pelkey spoke.
And then Paul Washer spoke.
I kind of thought in my head,
well, okay, there is this group of men
who know God, who are about to preach.
As the lineup went, it would be
Paul Washer who would simply
preach the Gospel to the crowd
that was there for dad's funeral.
Many people have been saved under his teaching.
This whole funeral - I need to listen up.
I need to really pay attention
because God, I'm asking You
to show me how to have faith.
If I don't get it from this,
then I'm not going to get it.
The preachers spoke.
They sat down, spoke, sat down.
Spoke.
We dismissed.
And the Gospel was preached
and it was preached well.
What was said needed to be said,
but I still didn't get it.
I still didn't understand what I needed.
For the next week, my wife and I
stayed at my mom's house.
One afternoon, I was alone in my dad's office.
And I was just going through some of his stuff,
some of his pictures from mission trips,
his journals.
Then I remembered I had the file of that sermon
and I thought, well, you know,
the recording was kind of messed up.
I don't know what setting it was on.
I don't know why it was messed up.
But I never really did listen to the sermon.
And mom said it was his greatest.
It was his last one.
I should just give it a listen
and see if it's worth putting up
on Sermon Audio.
So I played it.
She was right.
There were several things in the sermon
that jumped out at me immediately.
Things I had heard before,
but never heard.
I heard.
My ears heard it,
but I didn't truly hear it
until that moment.
Michael Morrow:
There's a lot of people that believe
Jesus was the Son of God.
There are a lot of people who believe
that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.
There's a lot of people
who believe that Jesus came into the world
to save sinners
who have never personally trusted Him
as their Savior.
Jason: And then, the one thing he said
that really just tipped me over the edge
that was exactly what I needed to hear
to finally realize
what I needed for my salvation.
Michael Morrow: There is a time
when your heart quits trying to get to God
and rests on the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Jason: I had never rested.
I had never just given myself to Him,
never given my full trust.
That's what trust is. It's resting
in His finished work.
And I prayed. I said, "Jesus, I rest in You.
I rest in Your finished work
in dying on the cross for my sins,
in raising from the dead.
I rest in that.
You have given me life."
What's crazy is I've heard this a million times.
Dad has preached this a million times.
I've heard people's testimonies a million times
that it's not anything that I do.
I know it's not a prayer that I pray.
I know that it's not anything that I can do.
That Christ does it for me.
Resting is letting Christ take over,
letting Him take control.
Because if you're trying to control it,
you're not resting.
And that is the moment when my heart changed.
I'm thankful that God used my dad
to preach to me.
Not only did he preach to me
in the hospital room;
not only did he preach to me
throughout my whole life,
but he preached to me
in his final sermon
maybe before he even knew I would ever hear it.
And God used that to help open my eyes
to what I needed.
Michael Morrow:
I'll tell you what the blessing of God is:
being in the will of God walking with Him,
hearing His voice,
staying in fellowship with Him,
knowing His Word,
loving Him,
seeing miracles wrought
because He's doing it through your life
and in your life
for His own glory,
where only He can get glory
out of your life.
That is the life of faith.
And it might mean that you don't have anything.
Guys, this world is not what it's about.
This is not where your fulfillment is.
Here we live by faith,
not by sight.
Then, we'll see Him as He is
and we'll be like Him.
And then it will be by sight.