Bonus Sermon Anonymous Series

Anonymous Bonus Sermon, by Pastor Rob Ketterling

All right, we are continuing the series, and this is the bonus sermon. And I'm going to just give you a little bit of what the other service got, and then we'll jump in and pick up on number nine of the list. But I didn't want you to miss this in the event that you don't go online and watch part one. But I know this campus, you'll do this, you will do it and you'll be obedient. But I just want to show a video that was shot in prison this last week. I actually went to preach at Lino Lakes prison, and I want to pastor you through this moment. I don't want you to miss this, okay?

Originally, in this series with Anonymous I was going to preach one of the weeks in prison, like right at the beginning of this series. And then last week or somewhere in the series we would just show that sermon to everyone, I would be gone that weekend and have a weekend off, whatever the case may be. But I would preach the whole sermon to the prisoners and then show it to all the campuses. It didn't work out. We couldn't get clearance in time. It just didn't work out. But it did work out for me to preach last Monday. And so as they were telling me, like, "Hey, we can't get in for the day you wanted. It won't work. You are not going to preach in the prison and then have a weekend off. So do you want to go on Monday still and preach to the prison?" I'm just giving you a glimpse of what my thought process was.

Just for a minute I was thinking, "Okay, Monday's my day off. I've been tired. I'll have just preached. I'll be at Faribault. I'll have just finished two back to back missions conventions, which I preached at one." I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm going to be tired. I won't get the weekend off. Here am I, send somebody else." Okay, that's what I'm thinking, okay? All right, does that bother you that your pastor is confessing this? Okay, because that's how I felt. So I'm human. Again, I'm just letting you have a glimpse of the way I'm thinking. And as I go to say that, like, "All right, that's okay, send Dave. You know, he does prison ministry. Send Gary. You know, send Topper. I mean just send somebody." Topper is like, oh, yeah.

As I'm about to do that, as I'm about to do that, the Holy Spirit goes just this quick, this is how quick it happened. The Holy Spirit goes, "Oh, really, really? So if you had the weekend off, you could preach to the prisoners? But because you can't have the weekend off, you've going to just let them. So Jesus said, 'When I was alone and in prison and he came and visited me,' and now you have an opportunity to visit prison, and you have never ever preached in a prison, now you're going to just pass and send Topper. That's the way you're going to do it. Really? So you're just going to be a pro Christian rather than just a Christian that is obedient?" That just happened in a millisecond.

And so immediately I said, "I'm going. I'm going. I know it's my day off. I know I'll be tired. I'm going, because I need to go preach to the least." And I'm telling you this because I love the video, and I thought it was amazing, and I didn't want you to think like your pastor was this super guy that, you know, never says no or anything, and you see all these videos.

I wanted to give you a glimpse behind the scenes, because here's what I know happens to you. You are tired. You work all day, and then you hear, like, oh, it's Lifegroup. And you go, "Ah, should we go? I've been working all day." And I know the battle you face, and I want you to know that I face the same battle as you. And we have to decide are we going to heed the promptings of the Holy Spirit and do what he said, or are we going to say we make the call and we are going to be selfish. So I just wanted to pastor you through that moment. And now can you enjoy this video, because it was just amazing being able to preach there at the prison. [Video played]

I want to thank God for the people that go to the prisons week in week out from our church; those 60 people in our Lifegroups and the people that do it when nobody is watching when the camera is not rolling and they are not in the spotlight. Can we say thank you to all those people that go and minister? Yes.