We recently celebrated sixty years here at Lakewood. My
parents started Lakewood on Mother's Day in 1959 with ninety people in
an old rundown feed store. They cleaned out the building, borrowed some
old wooden pews. It didn't look like much. But the Scripture says,
"Don't despise the day of small beginnings" (Zechariah 4:10). Don't get
discouraged because where you are is much smaller than what's in your
spirit. As a young man, my father knew he was going to pastor a church
of thousands, but you have to be faithful with the small before God will
trust you with more. That's a time of testing, a time of proving. Are
you going to slack off and think, "When it grows, I'll give it my all.
When I get some breaks, I'll be my best"? You have to be your best right
where you are. God is watching. He knows when you're in a feed store
and others are in nice buildings. Stay faithful. Your time is coming.
Sometimes when I pull up to our huge building on the freeway and see
all the people gathered to worship, I feel a tear running down my cheek.
It's because I remember where we came from. My mind flashes back to the
feed store, as a little boy sitting there with the ninety people and my
father in front ministering. When I realize where God has brought us,
how He's opened doors that we never dreamed would open, how He's taken
us further than we can imagine, I can't help but say, "Lord, thank You
for Your goodness. Thank You for taking us where we couldn't go on our
own." When you look back over your life, you'll see the faithfulness of
God, where He promoted you, protected you, healed you, favored you.
Don't take it for granted. It didn't happen by accident, it wasn't a
lucky break, that's the goodness of God.
As we celebrated sixty year, I can sum up how I felt in one phrase:
"to God be the glory." And we prayed, "Let God increase and let us
decrease. May we make His name famous. Let us shine brighter, let us
take new ground, let us affect the culture in greater ways. And we
commit to always giving God the glory. We remember how He led us through
the wilderness, how He supplied our needs when we didn't see how it
could happen, how He defeated giants that were much bigger, and how He
sustained us for sixty years. May generations to come still be telling
of God's goodness from our building. Let it be a continuous lighthouse
of hope."
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