Now Aaron, most of you are familiar with him for the about the last two months. Aaron has been working uh in the church as a home base for this O sales ministry. He’ll give us a a quick update on that and uh what’s happening with with him and Dennis who are the full-time workers with O Salesales. And so and if you see Aaron around wondering, you know, who he is, what’s going on, he he comes to he comes to church here about once a month. He goes to another C3 at church, I think. But uh we’re hoping to get him to come here more often, but that’s another story. But um he um anyway, Aaron has a background with street ministry and uh and has a passion and a heart for it and uh we’ll see that and hear that this morning. So thank you. Thanks. I’ll use the podium. Okay, there you go. It’s handy to put my water. Big thing big thing I need to make sure is I have my timer. Yeah. Excuse me. There we go. Stop. Reset. Yeah. So, this is the first time that um my wife Wanda and I have been able to to join you brothers and sisters in in worship since God brought us together as uh partners in his mission to bring um to reflect his hope to our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness. So, this is really good. Thanks. thanks for having me here and hope it’s uh one of many many times that we can get together like this. And uh so I just want to be clear that um my examples today are um are in the context of the street outreach mission. But I hope from our time together this morning that you’ll be encouraged in or even affirmed in the ministry that you feel that um you get a sense that God is calling you to uh so that you will indeed as uh Paul writes in in second Timothy so that you will indeed fulfill your your ministry and because we all have a ministry. We’re all being called to to a ministry of some sort. We’re all being called to um work with the poor, the uh the poor in in um relationship, the poor, people who are impoverished financially as well. But we’re all called to some kind of ministry and that can mean all kinds of things outside of homelessness for sure. So, as many of you folks know, and I got Jimmy legs, so I’m going to walk around sometimes. So, yeah, as as uh our brother Ian just introduced me. So, I’m with the street outreach mission. We focus here in Old Strath, Kona. So, we’ve been God called me to start this ministry about 5 and a half years ago. Before that, I worked for a little while at the Mustard Seed at the neighbor center when it’s a local drop in when it was across the street from the um from uh the high school, Strathona High School. So there’s myself, I’m a full-time missionary. Uh so I work Tuesday to Saturday and then I have a fellow missionary, a colleague and a friend, Dennis, and he’s Monday to Friday. So we go during the day, boots on the ground, walking around and uh connecting relationally with our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness. So we don’t carry around a backpack. We don’t hand out sandwiches and gloves and shoes and these types of things. Praise God. We live in a very very blessed province and there’s no shortage of those things. But what God put on my heart years ago with there was a shortage of actual um people going out on the street and meeting our our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness where they’re at physically, emotionally, spiritually, all these things, right? So that’s what we do. We connect with people relationally and uh and we let God um bring us in relationship and see where he takes us. We reflect God’s goodness and his hope to the men and women in old Strath Kona who are otherwise struggling with hopelessness. So we do have a we do have a supply of some things here at the church like jeans and some coats and this type of thing. We very rarely if almost never get asked for anything in a physical sense. Um and I I get a sense that uh yeah, God’s protecting the purposes of his mission of his street mission. But uh by this time we have really good friendships with most of our neighbors in the who are living on the streets in this neighborhood and they know what we do and not do. And praise God, we have the mustard seed in in the neighborhood. And and you know, they you know, they also come alongside relationally, but they focus a lot on on um providing those kinds of um resources that we don’t. So without them, we couldn’t God couldn’t do well, I mean, he’s God, so he could do anything. We we wouldn’t be as effective. We wouldn’t be able to focus on what we’re being called to do. So, I want to start off today in Isaiah 58. There should be a slide there and uh well, I’ll get going here on it. So, Isaiah 58, Isaiah the 8th century BC prophet and uh the book in the Old Testament and Isaiah 58 particularly in the ESV version uh I want to focus on. Is it not the Is this not the fast that I choose? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and not to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and particularly here, and bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh, then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, “Here I am.” If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noon day. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong. And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Let’s uh dissect some of those things that we just uh shared together. So, we’re called to share our bread, to share our homes, to share our resources, but we’re also called to do a lot more than that. We’re called to pour ourselves out, aren’t we? So, when we pour ourselves out, so we’re not supposed to just spend our money, but we’re also to spend ourselves. So when we pour ourselves out, that hints that we’re supposed to have a posture of vulnerability, our own vulnerability, as in I’m pouring myself out to you. When God’s bringing us to those people he’s calling us to serve and pour ourselves out, it gives a sense of there’s a a continuousness of it. So it it seems to suggest that social justice isn’t an isolated occurrence, but it’s supposed to be a way of life for God’s people. So when we pour ourselves out, when we’re vulnerable, I call it we’re going into mutually vulnerable relationships. And that’s what Dennis and I and the volunteers that join us, we try to do. We keep try to keep that posture all the time that there’s something that Jesus also has something for us as we’re pouring ourselves out. Because if you notice what we just read together, he says when we pour ourselves out, he will satisfy our desire in and our scorched places and it’ll make our bones strong. So what we do when we go out the street, when we have an interaction with someone, we always try to afterwards ask the Holy Spirit what Jesus was at work in that interaction where Jesus is at work in that other person and specifically where is Jesus at in our own life because it it’s great to step in in Jesus’s light because he reflects some things that he wants to heal. in our life but without condemnation. Right? These are good things. And what that does by having that continuous posture, it keeps us in an even playing field with our neighbors on the street who are experiencing homelessness so we don’t run in danger of of positioning ourselves here and they’re down here. See there there can there’s a real there there in in this kind of ministry in many ministry ministries we have all the power we have the power to answer the door at the church to let someone in to give someone to to give someone a ride to do we in a true sense we have all the power in this relationship and we have to be careful that we don’t lord that power over the people that we’re being called to serve. We have to be very sensitive to that because then we can’t get into these real relationships, mutually vulnerable relationships as we say. And it’s then it’s then that we become like a spring of water. So in John 7:38, he who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. And in John 4, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give them shall never thirst, but the water that I will give them will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. And from quench uh from a website called quench.org, or so what is living water? Living water can be understood in various ways but the clearest way is that living water is a symbol for salvation and a true knowledge of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. God provides us with everything we need and is the living water that continues to always give to us. So because of these mutually vulnerable relationships, trusting relationships, friendships, we find that people, our neighbors who are exper experiencing homelessness, people start to express because we’re having these mutually the these trusting real friendships. People start to express a desire to us to change their circumstances. And then that journey happens and we help people um access addiction services. We help people get into detox. We we help people get into treatment centers for addiction and mental health issues. We journey with people as they move from brokenness to wholeness. And in that journey, we are also moved from brokenness to wholeness. We’re also built into the image of Christ slowly and slowly and slowly sometimes with growth spurts for sure. Whose waters never fail. I like that last part in John in uh Isaiah 58. And then you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters don’t fail. Such confidence. Eh, that is a lot of confidence there. So, why don’t our waters always fail? Well, number one, because we’re on a mutually vulnerable relationship with them, with our people that we’re uh being called to serve, our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness, and in those trusting real relationships, it’s the perfect model. And there’s another reason why those waters never fail. I’m going to share and and and Paul tells us why our waters will never fail. And I’m going to share that with you towards the end of our time together today. So, I like how um we’re called to share our home to the homeless poor. I like how he says that and that can be a radical idea for many and it was at first for me as well when I felt that God putting on our heart when Wanda felt that God was putting on our heart that we should be inviting our neighbors on the street into our home for supper to live with us. We felt that that isn’t that risky? Well, yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of risk. there’s a risk walking across the street. And um the thing about the mission field is the mission field does include our home, but our home is also our heart, isn’t it? So we have to be people of invitation. We have to be a we have to have a desire to allow people into our own heart. not just our mind and our body and going through the motions, but to expose our heart and connect on a heart level with those people who we’re being called to serve. The heart is a command center of our body, of our being, of our essence. But let’s face it, our home, our physical home, and everything that we have, it doesn’t it’s not really our home, is it? I mean, that’s God’s home he gave to us. like everything else on earth and in the heavens and in our position and our possession rather that home we call home it’s God’s home we’re just stewards of it and he wants us to use it for goodness for good purposes. So yeah indeed this street mission it’s a ministry of invitation and it’s an invitation to what? Well, it’s an invitation to enter into a relationship with people in the way that God wants us to. So, I’m not saying this to be falsely humble. This is totally true. I barely know what I’m doing out there. It’s true. like from day to day, from hour to hour, from person to person. Even the same person as the hour before I don’t know what to do, but Holy Spirit guides me, guides Dennis and our volunteers, he knows what he wants us to do. And we’re so dependent on the Holy Spirit to lead. And we’re not presumptuous. We try not to be presumptuous of how we should be ministering to a certain person at a certain time. Circumstances can change in 24 hours, in just a few hours in a in a person’s life. I know I change a lot sometimes in 24 hours. I know I’m not the same guy when I leave for uh in the morning as I come home sometimes. So, we rely on the Holy Spirit. We rely on our own. We also have to to to recognize what our gifts are, what our spiritual gifts are and how God is calling us to use those gifts and our experiences. So, we need a lot of discernment which leads me to another uh scripture that I want to share that’s very important that that is so in so powerful and so useful in any ministry. In Matthew 10, Matthew 10:16, Jesus says to the twel apostles, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. Some churches, some people, some Christians do one and not the other. Shrew to snakes but without the love or lots of loves and not shrew to snakes, lots of gullibility or they don’t do both or they get it mixed up. So it’s something very very powerful to walk out knowing in a heart and to practice. It does take practice from gotquestions.org. Most people don’t mind having their character compared to a dove’s purity and innocence. But some people recoil at the image of a serpent, no matter what the context. They can never see a snake in a good light, even when used by Jesus as a teaching tool. We cannot attach the evil actions of Satan as the serpent with the serpent itself because animals are not moral entities. The creature itself cannot perform sin and shrewdness shrewdness is an asset not a defect. This is a quality that Jesus told his disciples to model. Jesus invokes the common proverbial view of serpents and doves. So the serpent was subtle or crafty or shrewd in Genesis 3:1. The dove on the other hand was thought of as innocent and harmless. And doves were listed by the way among the clean animals. And we and um in Leviticus. Uh they were you it specifies that they were used as sacrifices. And to this very day, even in our culture, doves are used as symbols of peace and snakes are thought of as sneaky. Right? But Jesus was not suggesting that we stoop to deception, but that we should model some of the serpent’s famous shrewdness in a positive way. Because wisdom, wisdom does not equal dishonesty and innocence does not equal gullibility. We should strive to be gentle without being pushovers. We must be sacrificial without being taken advantage of. We are aware of the unscrupulous tactics used by the enemy, but we must take the high road. So, the expression used nowadays, and you’ve heard me say it a few times this morning, um, in justice and mercy speak, is that we refer to people who are homeless as our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness. And it sounds like a mouthful, but that’s the, um, that that’s how we speak. But I would challenge that a little bit in the sense that what how I see uh how what I call people who I’m being called to minister, I call them friends for one thing, but if I was having to put a label, I would say a more accurate descriptor is our neighbors. Our neighbors who are struggling with hopelessness. Hopelessness. Because the way I see it, not having a home or being unhoused, that implies the solution to their circumstance is a lack of a secure doicile. And if that were the case, then we wouldn’t have any homelessness. Cuz I don’t know anyone in Canada that was born on the street. And anyone who spent more than a month or even a week living on the streets of Edmonton, they know what resources there are and how to access them. So when we talk about being when I talk about being as when Jesus talked about being as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves, that’s not just to make sure that the person that we’re connecting with isn’t to pull one over. It’s also we need to also understand what’s truly going on. We have to be seers of the unseen. So when we meet with someone and they’re asking us for something, they might genuinely think that that’s what they want. But we have to see, okay, what do they really need though? What’s really going to help them? And we can’t lord power as we talked about, but we have to say, okay, what’s going on here? What’s the big picture here? So, in the uh at the at the doorways throughout the church, um a few weeks ago, I put a list of resources that are in Old South um Old South in uh Old Strath Kona. Those resource are are for you folks when someone’s coming to the door who’s experiencing homelessness. But mostly, I’ll be honest with you, I put that there for your confidence to be our start our partnership. I can tell you 95% of the time, anyone who’s coming to the door already knows what resources there are in Edmonton. Like I said, anyone who spent more than a week or two on the streets, they know when the neighbor center’s open. They know what’s available at the neighbor center. They know what’s available to OSYS. They know all these things. So when they’re coming to the door and asking for these things, they’re coming for a different reason. When we have a friend call us and say, “Hey, do can we get and we say, “Hey, Betty, how you doing?” “Oh, good, good.” “Well, I don’t know. Can we get together for lunch?” Bettyy’s not really asking us to get together for lunch. We don’t start going through, “Oh, Betty, geez, she must be hungry. That’s why she wants lunch.” Well, what do we got here? some cans of tuna, some pasta. Oh, I even got a $10 gift card. Yeah, that’ll help Betty. Betty is not asking for that. There’s something going on in Betty’s life that she wants to talk about. And so we because we’re friends with Betty, we know that. And so we want to connect with Betty and we get together with our friend who’s calling us for lunch with a heart posture that we’re going to reflect God’s we’re going to listen and we’re going to reflect God’s goodness and his love and his hope to our friends who’s connected. So it’s the same thing that the people are coming to these doors. They’re not gonna come and expose themselves and say, “I feel lonely and hopeless and I have so much shame and guilt. I don’t know what to do. Can we sit down and talk?” Maybe, but most of the time that’s not going to be what’s happening. They’re going to be starting a conversation. Um, do you have any coffee or water? Do you know where I can get food? You know, God’s not God’s not bringing the men and women to the to to to knocks by accident. He didn’t bring us answering the door to that person. That’s not happening. God’s not distracted over here and and there’s um Phil, the local homeless guy, coming to Knox Church to the door and and us answering by accident. No, God’s got it completely planned out. And he wants us to enter into some kind of dialogue, some kind of listening of with the person that comes to the door. It’s a great opportunity. This is I can tell you it’s such an adventure. And God, he doesn’t have plans to hurt us or harm us. He He doesn’t want us to be overloaded by the burdens of a of a of a relationship so that we’re lying in a fetal position on the floor. He He’s doing it to build us up as as well. And um entering into heartconnected ministry, it’s such an adventure and so much fun and never a dull moment. And we have to see it that way in Matthew 6. And this is uh Matthew 6:31-33. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” And in his book, The Sermon on the Mount, R. Kent Hughes writes that if we are anxious about these things, we will be just like the secular world. Hughes goes on to write, “The characteristic tendency of those without Christ is to be bound by the horizons of the earth. Everything is crammed into the visible.” Seeking his righteousness involves making his righteousness attractive in all areas of life, personal, family, and material. Unbelievers anxiety also rests on a misunderstanding of God’s character. They naturally think of God as far removed from the complexities of life and ignorant of their struggles. Brothers and sisters, our vulnerable population, our neighbors who are experiencing hopelessness. They need to know that they are known by our God. They are wanted and fully loved. And people can’t know that if they’re freezing to death and starving to death for sure. But those things, those material things, those resources don’t bring the hope of Jesus and reflect God’s love. Only we can do that. Only we can do that when we connect with those that God who God is calling us to serve. 19th century preacher Charles Simeon provides a wonderful comment on the serpent. I want to go back to the serpent and dove imagery. He provides a wonderful comment on that imagery. Now the wisdom of the one and the harmlessness of the other are very desirable to be combined in the Christian character because it is by such a union only that the Christian will be enabled to cope successfully with his powerful enemies. And we know who the our enemies are, right? Who is our enemy? It’s not our flesh and blood. It’s the evil one. So we have a problem in Alberta. We have a good thing. But something that I feel that Satan has hijacked. We live in a extremely blessed province. We have a huge safety net here. We got lots of oil and gas money, lots of taxes from that. We live like kings and there’s a lot of things that we can provide for people. We have this massive box of, if you will, band-aids. And when we see people struggling, when we see people who are homeless and living on the street, we pull another band-aid out. and we opened up another shelter. And we opened up uh another bunch of beds for people to sleep in. We opened up um um safe injection sites. And we need more. We just pull another band-aid out. And this box of band-aids is a good thing. Like I said, people cannot receive hope if they’ve frozen to death or they’ve ODed or they’ve died of starvation. Of course not. But it doesn’t end there. This box of band-aids can be hijacked by the evil one and and allowed us to often just think that that’s the end all and be all. It’s seemingly good, but we have to be a shrewd as of serpents here. Okay. Does it does our job does our calling end with that? And it doesn’t because it doesn’t address the root of the issue of the homelessness and that homelessness in my strong opinion again is the hopelessness. So on the street when Dennis and I connect with someone, we never ask, “Oh, what brought you to homelessness?” We ask, “What’s keeping you in homelessness? What’s keeping you there?” And then as we hear the stories and as we get to know the person more and truths start to come out, inevitably the answer comes down to hopelessness. And the hopelessness is what causes the addiction, what fuels the the mental health issues, and what’s keeps people in a place of shame and guilt and what keeps people from knowing the true character of God. So, remember earlier I said I talked about how our our spring will never fail. And I said I’d come back to something um near the end. So in in Corinthians 1, Paul writes, “I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it’s been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this next line is powerful, brothers and sisters. And this is the secret. Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance and assurance here confidence or certainty in one’s abilities of sharing his glory. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom God has given us. We want to present them to God perfect in their relationship to Christ. That’s why I work and struggle so hard depending on Christ’s mighty power that works within me. We have that insurance. I I know Pastor Doug uh earlier this year and last time I was here about a year ago, I I shared a a cleansing prayer that we say at the end of every shift. And part of that cleansing prayer, the very beginning is we thank God for the privilege of ministering to to and it’s a blank for whatever ministry a blank to our homeless neighbors. I release both our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness and the responsibility for their personal healing to you, God. It’s the perfect model. All we have to do is give time to listen and to obey. Their burden, their their their their responsibility of of them being free from addiction and mental health and getting off the street and and living uh a more healthy lifestyle. That’s not on us. God has a role for us. Yes. And we need to obey that. But it’s a privilege. and God loves them more more than we ever could. That takes the heat off of us. And that’s what makes ministering any kind of stepping out in mission such an adventure. When we be careful and we don’t allow our ego and pride to get in the way. When we step outside our comfort zone and come alongside people who we’re being called to serve, we can have that insure assurance that people will know God’s glory because Christ is in us and it’s coming out and God’s glory is coming into that other person’s heart from our heart because we want people to have what we have, don’t we? We want people to have reconciliation with our creator. We want people to live out their lives knowing at a heart level that God does understand us. He wants us. He’s chosen us. And most of all, he loves us fully. And not because what we do and don’t or don’t do, but because we’re his beloved creation and we’re created in his image. There’s so many women out there who are experiencing hopelessness, who are tremendously burdened by shame and guilt, who have had multiple births, multiple babies who have been born still or with FAS or who they’ve given to an auntie or a cousin or who’ve been taken away by the province and they are tremendously burdened by the shame and the guilt and they don’t see themselves as God sees them and they need to know that God loves them and he has he wants to reveal their beauty to them. And I guarantee you that who if whoever was born after the first two people on earth did something they weren’t supposed to do after the fall, which is everyone here. We’re all equipped. We all have brokenness. We all have muck on our shoes. We’re all troubled people living in a troubled world. We’re all equipped. And this is the secret. Christ lives in you.