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This is The Gathering Surf City’s podcast for weekly messages.
The Gathering is a passionate worship community in Surf City, North Carolina that strives to Love God, Live Jesus, and Walk together in the Holy Spirit. We hope you enjoy worshipping and drawing closer to Jesus with us!
I've chosen for this morning.
We're not in Hebrews this morning.
We're not going.
See, they even took my little picture
off here this morning.
But we're in psalm 145.
I want to share with
you the passage.
And then we've got a couple things
I want to do this morning.
This is the last psalm of David that
we find in the book of psalms.
It's a collection of hymns
that David wrote,
psalm 138 through 145.
And I'm going to read the first
seven verses to you.
Here you go.
I exalt you,
my God the king,
and bless your name
forever and ever.
I will bless you every day.
I will praise your name
forever and ever.
The Lord is greatness highly praised.
His greatness is unsearchable.
One generation will declare your works
to the next and will proclaim your
mighty acts.
I will speak of your splendor and glorious
majesty and your wondrous
works. They will proclaim the power
of your all inspiring acts.
And I will declare your greatness.
They will give a testimony of your great
goodness and will joyfully sing
of your righteousness.
See, several years ago,
15 years ago almost now we
got to come to surf city.
God, we distinctly felt that God
was moving our family here.
And we're going to celebrate God this
morning and what God's done.
So.
Alrighty, I want you
to pray with me.
Father, we thank you and praise
you again for today,
the opportunity we have to
celebrate and worship,
but together,
because God,
we can celebrate and
worship anytime,
anywhere. We are.
And indeed,
I agree with those folks say I don't
have to go to church to be a
Christian. No,
you don't.
But the truth is,
God, you call us together as the
body for the encouragement and
accountability and worship together so
that we draw strength as the body
when we come together to
worship you and God.
That's what this psalm's about.
It's worship.
Praise God.
We gather to exalt your name.
We gather to bring you glory.
And so,
God, as we talk about some
things this morning,
God help us just to praise
you in them.
We pray it in Jesus name.
Amen. They say,
I love the gathering.
The gathering.
And I always use small letters,
small t and small g.
And that sort of messes with people
sometimes because the gathering is
not. We got a letter yesterday that
was addressed to the gathering
church. Y'all realize that's a
redundancy because the word,
the word,
the word church is the people.
And when the people gather,
that's the gathering.
And so I love the gathering.
And 15 years ago about this time,
actually, I got a phone call from.
From Marianne Lane.
And some of you will
remember Marianne.
She passed away recently.
She was the chairman of
the search committee.
How many of y'all know what that is?
Bunch of baptists in the room.
I see that.
All right.
Chairman of the search committee.
And she called me and said,
we have your resume and we'd like
to call your references.
And I said,
well, if they're on there,
then you can call them.
And so that began the conversation that
took about two and a half months.
Well, three months,
maybe. And then we moved here
in September of 2009.
But the word rebirth
was used back then,
that surf city Baptist church
needed a rebirth.
And I laughed.
I said,
well, we can do that.
But two things.
It's not going to look like you
think it's going to look,
and it's harder than
you think it is,
right? Because,
I mean,
a lot of times we'll put a whole lot
of faith in a pastor to sort of be
the catalyst for church growth or church
expansion and all that kind of
stuff. Well,
I'm the first one to admit
to you that I'm a clown.
And I know I'm a clown,
but God,
you know,
I'm about to celebrate
42 years in ministry,
and that's just because
God decided so,
all right.
And so I love it.
And so the gathering just has become
this thing that I'm just like,
yay. Do y'all know what was going
on in here yesterday?
Anybody know?
Yeah, they had a fashion
show yesterday,
and I am just amazed that they
didn't ask me to model.
But it was a fun time for
the ladies ministry,
and there was a devotional time,
and there was a time of fellowship
and a time of just loving on each
other and enjoying coming together
around that thing.
And if you had said
that 15 years ago,
we're going to have a fashion show
at Surf City Baptist Church,
first of all,
you'd have to walk on
top of the pews.
So things have changed.
We've seen God do some
incredible things,
and God has built this gathering,
this body of believers,
this gathering of saints,
this, you know,
all of this that we enjoy.
So I think through the events of the
years and we began years ago,
I.
We kind of hit upon this idea that the
two great commandments love God,
love your neighbor.
I said,
all right,
we're going to make those
our priorities.
We're loving God,
and we're going to live Jesus
in the community.
We're going to love our community.
So we began doing the
worship in the park.
Long before there was a crowd,
we'd go to the park,
and we'd hold worship down
there in the park,
and we'd feed people hot dogs and
stuff like that just to love the
community, because God told us that that
was one of the things they will
know. You are my disciples
if you love each other.
And then he told us to go out
and love one another.
That doesn't mean we agree with
everything that goes on there,
but we are called to love people.
And so that's one of the greatest things
that I enjoy about what the
gathering does,
is to love on people.
I can remember the first
ocean baptism.
It was a Wednesday night.
We had this crotchety old man.
His name was Thomas.
What was Thomas's last name?
Who remembers?
Head of the Boy scouts,
Thomas and Sarah.
I haven't talked to
them in years now,
but they were here for Boy scouts.
And Thomas,
he said,
well, he'd never been
baptized before.
He was an older gentleman.
He said,
if I'm getting baptized,
I'm getting baptized in the ocean.
And I was like,
okay, we can do that.
And so that Wednesday night,
we crossed the street,
went over there,
and I baptized Thomas and
his wife in the ocean.
That was the first time I'd ever
baptized anybody in the ocean.
We've baptized so many now,
I can't even count how many people
we've baptized in the ocean.
Now. See,
God's blessed.
God's done this.
I want to praise God this morning.
I want to sing his praises.
I exalt you,
my God,
the king,
and bless your name
forever and ever.
I want you to do something
this morning.
Everybody in the room.
Cause I'm gonna call on you.
I know enough names in the room
that I can call you by.
Write a hymn right now.
A hymn of praise.
Write it in your mouth.
Grab one of those cards
or one of those pens.
But I want to know what your psalm would
sound like if you were gonna
write a psalm of praise to God
for all that he's done.
Okay. What would your
psalm sound like?
What would you praise him for first?
How would you exalt him first?
What would be the first.
I'm gonna get Mark in just a minute,
but here you go.
What if somebody said,
what is the first words
of your praise of God?
What would they be?
All right.
You'd be thinking about that.
Because I not only remember
the first ocean baptism,
I remember the first time we took
a group to Camp Carraway.
Remember that,
Jennifer? It was me and Jennifer.
We were the only.
Were we the only chaperones
the first year.
All right.
We took 15.
About 15 people to Captain Carraway.
Mark, come on down here.
I want to tell y'all
about Mark Moore.
I was pastoring in Pisgah Forest,
North Carolina.
And you can tell Mark and I
are about the same age,
right? Oh,
wait a minute.
I'm gonna give you a mic,
Mark. All right,
here you go.
It's on.
All right,
there you go.
Same age.
Got it.
Same age,
right?
Got it.
All right.
No, actually,
I'm closer to Mark's dad's age.
His dad,
Stephen, was a pastor in Pisgah,
in Brevard,
actually, technically in Brevard.
And so I was friends with his dad,
and then I came down here.
But I had met Mark and
his brother Matthew,
and they had been around PiS
de Forest Baptist church.
That's when you used to do
backflips in the church.
No, that was a cartwheel.
Cartwheel, sorry.
Yeah.
Right. So I asked Mark this morning,
I said,
mark, I said,
what are the most important
things in your life?
I said,
because that's what I'm going to
interview about this morning.
All right.
Because I told him,
I said,
all right,
Mark, you know,
the most important things to you.
What were the first praise
you would offer?
So that's what I'm going to ask you.
What's the first praise you want
to offer this morning?
Mark? Thank God for his
goodness that his.
That our.
What happens in our life,
our circumstances.
His goodness never changed despite
our circumstances.
Okay. His goodness never changed
despite our circumstances.
Right? Cause anybody go
through rough times?
Of course.
God's still good.
God's still good.
All right.
What else would you praise God for?
My wife and family.
Those relationships are critical.
They're huge.
And I think that God uses my family
and uses our family to bring him
glory and share the love of
Jesus with other people,
by the way,
we live our life as a family.
All right.
Is your family involved in what
God's called you to do?
Yes. Are they?
Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes. Occasionally.
So what is that then?
What is.
What is it that God's
called you to do?
I think God has called me
to invest in people.
I think God has called me to and my
family to care about community.
And that community changes
from time to time,
I think,
about every week.
Yeah, right.
This is Mark Moore.
He is the director of Camp Carraway.
And so 2013.
Cause I knew.
Mark, why did you call
me the first time?
Why did I what?
Why did you call me the first time you
embarked on this trajectory for
Camp Caraway.
That was a long time ago.
2021. I honestly don't
remember I called.
The way I grew camp that year was
I felt like God told me to do it
through relationships.
And I called hundreds of churches.
I started with the people that I knew
and worked my way down into people
that I didn't know.
So I called hundreds of pastors and
children's pastors and people like
that, and most of them said,
I don't.
What?
What are you wanting me to do?
But a couple of them were like,
whoo. And there you go,
you know,
he said,
we're gonna do a co ed week at camp this
year because Camp Carraway was
always the RA camp royal
ambassador boys camp.
Mike, were you there?
He went to Ra camp.
Nice. See?
So. But he said,
we're going to.
He's closer to your age.
He is closer.
He said,
we're going to do a co
ed camp this year.
He said,
would you be interested
in bringing a group?
And I was like,
I don't know.
I mean,
you know,
in the early years,
Eli was the only kid here,
and so.
But we had about 15 that
signed up to go.
And so we went to camp care.
I'm not a camp guy.
Matter of fact,
you put me in the woods.
I'm looking for the cafeteria
or something.
Cause I'm not.
I don't hang out in the
woods a whole lot.
Alrighty. But anyway,
Mark was doing this and
it was an experiment.
Was it?
Sort of.
I mean,
we wanted it to work,
but we knew we had to have
a successful year.
We had to have people say,
we want to come back.
So we put it in the Lord's
hands and said,
lord, we're going to try
give it our all.
Because we did have a 40 plus year
history of being a boys only camp.
And there was a camp munda
vista at the time.
Across the road from us
was a girls only camp.
So we were like,
okay, is this what God wants us to
do or is this what we want to do?
So based on leadership,
teamwork, and a lot of prayer
and a lot of faith,
we're like,
we're going to do it.
We had 60 people and you
brought 15 of them.
We brought 15 of them.
And I actually got to chaperone part of
some other churches group because
it really was experimental in a way.
But, you know,
Mark, trusting God with vision
and that sort of thing.
And now,
what does co ed camp look like?
Now we have five and a half
weeks of over 200,
right?
Around 200 each each week.
And you don't come anymore
very often.
We try.
We try.
Okay.
I come from one afternoon
every week.
We scared him off that first year.
And God has used that.
God has blessed us with growing our staff
and our leadership team so that
I can kind of not do everything.
That's really cool.
That's awesome.
You've done that here.
And God is still.
It's the same gospel message
that happened so long ago.
It's the same gospel message that
we're living out through fun.
We're using fun to share the gospel.
We're using fun to connect
people together.
We're using fun to create
life change.
We're using fun to serve
on mission together.
Cool.
And we get to take over 100 kids.
Yes. July 15,
we're ready.
And they put things like hatchets
in the hands of children.
Or worse,
chaperones.
Or chaperones.
Bb guns.
It's a blast.
And so Mark gets to come down and
hang out with us every year,
at least one week a year.
We try to get to bring
his family down.
His family will be.
Are they going to be here at 925?
Yes, that's the plan.
His family will all be here at 925.
I told him,
I said,
I want to interview you.
I said,
so you need to be here early.
So he came early.
But Mark and I have been friends.
And I mean,
from that first phone call,
obviously we had a relationship through
his dad and his family.
And so we take 15 people.
We took 15 people that first year.
And, yeah,
it was a challenge.
But then the next year,
I think we took a few more.
And now it has grown to
what it is in 2024.
Wherever we are now,
and kids are signing up from
all over the community.
We need adults to go.
We need chaperones.
We need men and women.
We need men.
If you've got an available week,
Monday to Friday,
July 15 through the 19th,
that's not the way you say it.
What? Nobody has an available week
until they make it available?
Okay, thank you.
That's arm twisting.
No, no.
Just kidding.
No, it's prioritizing.
Right? Prioritizing.
That's what I asked him.
I said,
if you were gonna praise God,
what was the first thing you
would praise God for?
Folks, if you want to pour your life
into other lives and share and just
be the love of God to
a bunch of kids,
sign up.
You know,
if you can do it,
do it.
Alrighty. If you can give,
give.
Because we don't.
We don't want the cost to ever exclude
a kid from going to Camp Caraway.
Alrighty? So that's part
of the morning.
I'm just praising God because
of what God's done.
Cause if it were still
based on me going,
thank you.
Mark appreciated that.
All right.
He didn't know what I was gonna
do to him this morning.
So.
So he's calling all over
the state saying,
we're going to do something.
We're going to try something.
Camp care.
You know what?
We've got some things to celebrate.
What are some of the things you've decided
you need to celebrate this
morning? Hang on just a minute.
Since everything requires
a microphone,
people say,
oh, people can hear me.
Not on the Internet,
they can't.
Who wants to share one
line of their praise?
Hymn?
Okay, got two right
here on this side.
Makes it easy.
I think Jesus and I thank him that no
matter how low and how bad you are
and how much you get down in life,
that Jesus is right there.
If you just trust him,
if you just look towards him.
He pulls me out.
He pulled me out of the gutter,
folks. I mean,
he pulled me out of the gutter.
I had a great life.
I was a working alcoholic.
I never,
always kept a good job.
And then I got in the car wreck last
year and almost got killed.
I'm walking today without a cane.
And I'm Jesus.
Jesus. I think that's already a song.
Jesus, Jesus Lord to
me master savior,
prince of peace,
ruler of my heart today Jesus,
Jesus Lord to me.
How about that?
I like that,
Sherry. How about you,
Sherri? I just thank you,
Lord, for your forgiveness.
All right.
I needed it.
You don't want to sing too?
Somebody else want to share the first
line or so of their praise?
See, you thought I was going
to call you by name.
All right,
Mike. I always say to myself,
Jesus is my everything.
I mean,
without him,
I wouldn't even be here.
So that's my song.
There you go.
All right.
Somebody else.
It's your opportunity.
I bet sometimes when I'm preaching,
some of you go,
I just had that microphone.
Here it is.
Oh, I'm going close this time.
He's a God of reconciliation.
Reconciliation, yes.
I had a prodigal son return.
Prodigal daughter return.
Oh, very good.
All right.
Yeah. Someone else.
There we go.
Somebody else.
No. All right.
I do like a friend of mine used
to do at town council.
Going once,
going twice.
All right.
See, you know,
I did this once before in suggesting that
we write a psalm or a song or a
hymn of praise.
Because I believe that one of the things
God's given us for our own
emotional, spiritual
health is praise.
If you're having a bad day,
praise God.
Maybe you're not going to praise
him for the bad day,
but praise God in the bad day.
You see,
see, I've looked at David's life a number
of times through the years,
and David had some bad days.
You know,
David was chased by Saul.
Saul wanted his life.
David, David was a sinner.
Look at,
you know,
his psalm,
the prayer of forgiveness.
And I look at this and I'm
thinking psalm 145,
the last psalm of David,
the last hymn of David that we have in
the English Bible and as well as
the Hebrew Bible.
And look at what it says.
It's a celebration of
God's faithfulness.
Cause David's looking back,
or whenever he wrote this,
he's saying,
I exalt you,
my God,
the king.
David's the king.
But David acknowledges
God's kingship,
his rulership over his life.
And bless your name
forever and ever.
I will bless you every day.
I will praise your name
forever and ever.
The Lord is great and
is highly praised.
His greatness is unsearchable.
Man, I looked at that
word and I was like,
you know what?
We can talk about God's greatness,
but the truth is,
in our finite capacity
as human beings,
we don't even know the
greatness of God.
It's unsearchable.
We look around us and I
told somebody that,
you remember I said this last week.
I look at the world around us.
I look at trees and animals
and out on the beach,
I ran on the beach Friday morning and
just thinking about the ocean and
the creation.
And every time I walk
out to the beach,
I think about job and I think
when I'm running.
Cause I don't want my
shoes to get wet,
I run at the edge of the water because
that's where the ground's most
packed, you know,
it's solid.
So I'm not hurting myself as I run on
the beach right there and then I
think for 6 miles,
I think God told you to
stop right there.
So it says in job,
God told the ocean where to stop.
You see,
I guess that means that when
a hurricane comes,
he tells it to go ahead.
I remember asking the question,
once upon a time after I moved here,
I was asked what I felt about beetree
nourishment by one of our political
leaders. What do you think about the
beach renourishment program and the
new recommendation for taxation?
My answer was,
if the ocean wants this island,
the ocean will take this island.
I said,
besides, it's biblical.
The foolish man built
his house on the.
Our mayor at the time said,
but you see,
we look at what God has done and
we recognize the detail and the
intricacy of this creation.
And folks,
we cannot stop and consider the perfection
of the way the systems all
work together and deny
God's greatness.
His greatness is unsearchable.
And then verse four through seven goes
into one generation will declare
your works to the next.
How do we declare the works of
God to the next generation?
See, this is why I wanted
to interview Mark.
I want to send as many kids as we can
find to Camp Caraway because I want
to hear,
I want them to hear about
God's greatness.
At Camp Caraway,
they do crafts and they do classes and
they do classes that I don't want
to take.
They do a baking class.
They make cookies.
Now I'll eat them.
I want to cook them.
You know,
they've got this.
I don't know.
Anyway, they got all
kind of activities.
But more than that,
they have worship,
they have Bible study,
they have a missions time where they
learn about going around the world
and going other places to
tell people about Jesus.
How will this generation proclaim to
the next generation the works and
mighty acts of God?
Verse five says,
I will speak of your splendor and glorious
majesty and your wondrous
works. I'm challenged in that.
How many times a day do you just
simply speak the works of God?
What do you talk about most often?
What's your favorite?
All right,
grandparents, I'm about to be one,
right? How many times do you talk more
about your grandkids than you do
God? Look out.
Right. You see my point?
See, the point is that if God is the
greatness that we proclaim God to
be, then that will be
our conversation.
That will be our praise.
That will be the.
I exalt you,
my God,
the king.
I will speak of your splendor and glorious
majesty and your wondrous
works. They.
Now look,
David's changing to third person.
Now.
They will proclaim the power
of your all inspiring acts,
and I will declare your greatness.
See, we have an opportunity to
celebrate God's faithfulness,
your songs of praise.
If you wrote something in your mind,
I hope you'll write it down one
day and refer back to it.
What does your first
praise look like?
What does it look like when you speak
words of exaltation to God?
Because the last verse,
I think,
is the one.
We celebrate God's faithfulness.
We proclaim God's faithfulness.
I think we're called to share
God's faithfulness.
They will give a testimony
of your great goodness.
What was Mark's first praise?
That God is good no matter what.
They will give a testimony of your great
goodness and will joyfully sing
of your righteousness.
See, I look back and
I remember July 20,
1982.
I was sitting at camp meeting
where I was a counselor.
God called me to ministry
that night.
I didn't have a clue
what that meant.
I just knew I didn't want
to be a preacher.
I knew my preacher.
I didn't want to be like him.
But the point is,
is that I knew that God called me.
I've had the privilege of serving
in youth ministry and worship,
leadership and administration.
That's not the best thing.
Education Ministry,
I've served with senior.
I took.
I was part of taking 40,
40 senior adults to Greece.
And I've been a youth
pastor for 14 years.
That was about as challenging as being
a youth pastor to take senior
adults to Greece.
All right,
see, I look back over my life,
and, folks,
part of what I love as a pastor is being
able to stand up and tell you
just how good God's been.
God has been so good.
Doesn't mean everything's
been perfect.
Doesn't mean there haven't
been challenges,
you see?
And you guys are praying
for me right now.
Like, I can't imagine,
but it's the only thing
that keeps me moving.
So thank you.
God's good,
y'all.
God is so good.
And I will proclaim his great goodness
with every breath of my life.
I hope you will tell the people
around you of God's greatness,
his goodness.
Tell the people you run into about
what he's done in your life,
how he's accomplished great
and mighty acts.
See, David wrote that psalm.
I mean,
we're looking back thousands of years
to words that David put down for us
to sing and proclaim God's goodness
and God's faithfulness.
The gathering,
we're blessed.
I know some pastors.
We're blessed.
Let's enjoy God's blessing.
But more than that,
let's proclaim God's blessing
and faithfulness.
Okay? Do you know Jesus
this morning?
Thank you for singing for us,
Don. By the way,
if you don't know Jesus
this morning,
that's where it starts.
It starts with knowing Jesus.
It's a relationship.
So if you don't know Jesus,
we want to introduce you.
Maybe you want to be a part of what
God's doing here at the gathering.
You can do that,
too.
You just obey God this morning.
Let's stand as we sing.
No, I got to get the band up here,
don't I?
We got to pray first.
Y'all know I pray so they
can get in place.
No, I pray cause we're
supposed to pray.
Let's pray.
God, thank y'all for today.
And for God.
Thank you for your love for us.
Thank you that you have done
great and mighty things.
And thank you,
God, that this is not a regular orthodox
kind of presentation of your
word. God,
we want to stop and recognize and acknowledge
that you have indeed done
great things.
But more than that,
God, that you are great.
I remember that's one of the lines
my mom and daddy taught me.
God is good.
God is great.
Thank you,
God, that you loved us and you let us
be a part of what you're doing.
God, for the folks who
are in this room,
there's even one person here this
morning that doesn't know Jesus.
We want them to know Jesus.
We want them to know you.
We want them to be able to sing your
praises even in the midst of
difficulty. God,
we sing to you.
Thank you for your love.
God, help us to love you back.
And we pray it in Jesus name.
Amen.