Comments on: Shocking?

By: Alison

Alison — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:45:07 +0000

A little late in responding on this one, but a big thanks for highlighting this sermon! My husband and I followed your link and fell in love with Paul Washer’s preaching immediately. You rarely get to hear preaching and teaching like this today in most corners of America, I’m afraid. We’ve since downloaded the sermon a few times over and handed it off to family members working within their church ministries as well as handing it off to our own church’s youth pastor. God’s timing apparently is perfect yet again as this sermon arrived on the scene at our house and the Holy Spirit moved to convict us to get doing something through the message just in time before a youth event at our nephew’s church and just before our church’s youth trip to FL. Amazing how God is ALWAYS at work - even in the little things.

Thanks again.

By: Erika

Erika — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:19:06 +0000

The message by Washer was wonderful. Thank you, thank you for posting this.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 00:52:47 +0000

Thanks so much for providing the link to that message, Amy! I just finished listening to it and it’s amazing…what I believe, but never could articulate as well as he did. I hope you don’t mind me “copying” you and posting with the link on my blog too!

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:14:58 +0000

Sure Amy. It was about ten years ago and my husband and I had been married for only a few months. Paul had come to stay with our pastor for about a week and give a series of messages. We had been very involved in a non-denominational Bible camp (actually, it’s where we met). The camp director and his wife felt that they would be leaving in a year or two as they were being led into other ministry. They offered to disciple my husband and I with the plan that we would eventually take over running the camp. We had been talking with our pastor about it regularly and to be honest he was uncomfortable with the idea and disappointed that we might leave. We were leading the youth group at the church and our pastor was actively mentoring my husband and giving him opportunities to preach.

Our pastor had mentioned what our plans were to Paul and he wanted to meet with us. We met with Paul at our pastor’s house and I can never thank him enough for taking the time to talk with us. To our great surprise, he actually urged us to *not* pursue working at the camp. We were very young, newly married, and though we had both been Christians since childhood we had attended churches that were lacking in Biblical instruction. Also, because this camp was non-denominational it was not under the oversight of any church and there were often conflicts due to a board made up of people from all sorts of church backgrounds from extremely charismatic to very conservative. Paul encouraged us to stay at our church and continue to be taught and mentored by our pastor (who was and is a very gifted teacher). I can remember shedding a few tears, but also feeling a bit relieved.

I am so glad that we followed his advice! Less than six months later the camp director moved on. If we had been there we would have been left to run the camp on our own with very little training or grounding in Biblical teaching. We sat under the incredible teaching and mentoring of our pastor for almost five years. No words can ever express how valuable that was.

The last time we saw Paul was just after our first child was born, almost six years ago. He came to speak to our couples group and I spent most of the time in a back room with my shrieking newborn My husband and I have been incredibly blessed and influenced by Paul’s preaching and writing. It’s great to see his messages available on the internet! Since we first met the Washers Heartcry has expanded beyond Peru to other countries. The Heartcry newsletter is full of the most wonderful testimonies.

Sorry this is so long Amy If you have any other questions just fire away.

By: Amy Scott

Amy Scott — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 16:44:27 +0000

Amy,

If you ever have a moment and the inclination, I’m curious about the advice he gave you on the subject.

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 14:57:12 +0000

I’m so excited to have you link to a message by Paul Washer! A former pastor of mine is a close friend of Paul and his wife Charo. They came to our church several times to teach and Paul once gave my husband and I some very wise counsel when we were newlyweds considering entering full time ministry. We’ve also had the priviledge of sharing a few meals with the Washers and listening to their amazing stories of treks through the jungles of Peru to reach isolated groups with the gospel. I *very* highly recommend their monthly newsletter Heartcry.

By: tonya

tonya — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 02:41:49 +0000

Whoa!

That was awesome! My 8yo and 7yo voluntarily listened to the whole thing with me! That guy has a heart for the things of God! Thanks for putting that up.

By: MicheleinNZ

MicheleinNZ — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 01:56:02 +0000

Amy, thanks for being bold enough to not beat around the bush. I’ve just listened to the message you linked to and it really resonated with me. I was raised in the denomination to whom he was speaking and as I was growing up I was taught those ’spiritual’ words and could quote those scriptures that backed up the doctrine that I was taught (which I don’t believe is wrong, by the way). As I’ve grown older, gone through university, moved overseas and encountered Christians of many different varieties, I continue to come back to the Bible and say “What does the Bible really say?” It’s challenging to live against the flow of the culture (NZ isn’t really that much different from the US in this regard). Not only live against the culture, but be willing to die for the sake of Christ. Whoa, I’m getting kind of deep here during naptime. I could go on and on, but I won’t. Anyway, thanks.