Amazed Series

Amazed: Part 1

Preached by Jimmy Seibert

8/24/2014

Well it is so great to have you guys here Antioch Family and especially I know there’s many new people here this morning. I am Jimmy Seibert and my wife and I, Laura, and our four kiddos and a group of friends started Antioch fifteen years ago. And it’s been an incredible journey of experiencing God’s love together and His transforming power. We have a little mantra that we use around here called “A passion for Jesus and His people in the Earth” and I often say that our prayer is this: that your time with us, whether it’s just today or for the next 20 years, that you fall more in love with Jesus because we’ve been together. Our prayer also is that you would connect to God’s purpose and plan for your life because you are not just a person floating around in this world, God has a purpose and a plan for you. He wants you to fall in love with Him and fall in love with His purpose and plan and live a life that is fruitful and full of joy and grace. And that’s our prayer for you here at Antioch in our time that we meet together.

Now, Um, this time of year is really a great time of remembrance for me because I remember coming to college myself just a few years ago…about thirty of them. In preparing to come to college, I had a couple goals, I was a new believer and so I did want to come and meet some new Christians and learn what it means to walk with Jesus, but I was also very committed to being cool. And so what I did was, I realized that cool people had cool cars. And I grew up middle class or kind of the bottom end of middle class so my parents were great to provide food and shelter and all that, but we just borrowed cars from our parents and we didn’t have our own cars and I was committed to coming to Baylor with a really cool car. And so what I did was I worked all summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year at Baylor and I worked over 70 hours a week I worked driving Blue Bell route trucks. And loading them in the morning and unloading them at night. I had a great time there, I actually got a kidney infection from eating a whole box of ice cream sandwiches. But, it was a great time. So during this time I’m thinking alright all this works worth it because I’m going to have enough money to buy a really cool car at the end. And what I had heard, at least back in the early 1980s is that if you had cash, you had negotiating power. You could go down to a car lot and you could negotiate the best deal possible especially if you had cash. So I come to the end of the summer and I set $1000 aside for kind of extra stuff for school and I had $2500. Now back in that day, I mean $2500 bucks in 1982, you could buy you a good car. Alright, so I had $2500 bucks and I lived in Beaumont, Texas, but I knew the place to buy a car was Silsby, Texas. It was just 30 miles North and was called the “Car Trading Capital of the World.” Or that’s what they called themselves. And so I go to Silsby, Texas, but before I do, I’m walking out the door and my dad asks the obvious question, “Do you want me to go with you?” “No, Dad, I don’t need you, I got this. I got this, I’m a workin’ man, I got my cash, I know how to do this.” And he said, “Now you’ve never done this before, you sure you wouldn’t like me to go with you? I’ve done this a lot.” And I said, “No Dad, I got it. I’m a man you know, get out of my hair, I got this.” And he said, “Ok, you’ve got it then.” So I go up to Silsby, Texas, and I see this really cool car. 1978 Audi Fox…I think I’ve got a picture of that right up there. Alright! Yes! 1982, I know you are looking at those shorts and you’re saying, “that is cool!” Alright! [laughing] The car behind it is what I’m trying to focus on here [more laughing]. That’s my cool car and I’m a cool guy. Take that picture down. Alright. So I go and I make my deal and I play hardball and we negotiate it out and I get my car for $2500 bucks. Now before we did the deal, I had to sign a paper that said there is no recourse on this. I mean if you sign off in cash, you can not bring it back, there are no returns, no problems, nothing. It’s a done deal. I got this, yes sir, so I sign off on it. I’m driving back, I get about fifteen miles down the road and I hear the transmission, “RRRRRRRRRING.” Now I had test drove it around the block, but not enough, obviously, and so I pull over on the side of the road and I’m, I feel something dripping and I get down on my hands and I realize, “that’s transmission fluid.” And then I get, I thought, well I’ll just make it home, so then I make it home and I get under the car and literally just buckets, buckets the whole transmission, just the fluid flows everywhere. And so, here I am, my dad’s standing there, “You got it, huh Bud?” And I said, “Dad what do I do?” and he said “well, I’ll try to call them” and I said, “he said there’s no returns no anything” and my dad’s not a very confrontational guy anyway and I hear him talking to the guy back and forth and he comes back about five, ten minutes later and he says, “Son it’s a done deal. You own this car.” And so it’s one week before school now. And so I’m thinking “Ok, well maybe I can get it fixed” and at least in those days the foreign transmissions cost a little more in those days than the US transmissions and it was $2250 for the transmission. Two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars by the way and my parents their whole deal was like look you are in charge here buddy. And so I had to borrow money from them and then sell the car to pay for it and I had $250 bucks in my pocket.