Make Yourself at Home!

So am I saved, pastor? I don’t know. Read the book. Pray a simple little prayer.

How do I know if I’m saved, pastor? Do you love him? Do you love the Lord Jesus of this book? If you love him, then that’s a beautiful signal. Because if you love him, then your whole life is bent toward him. And the wonderful thing is this, the big rule is this.

Jesus said, you can do anything you want. Really, pastor? Oh, yeah. Paul said, however, all things are okay, but not everything is expedient.

Can I do this? Yeah, you can do that. But is it expedient? Is it the right thing to do? I can do anything that I want, if I want to serve him. If I love him with all my heart, then I can do anything that I want, because I want to please him.

And if you want to please him, and you love him with all your heart, that’s called freedom. We don’t party like everybody else does. Why? Because we don’t want to.

I’m on a run here. Are we okay? Pastor, get preaching. I think I am.

I was asked a question once. I was working with my old buddy that I had led to the Lord. He had a job at a service station, and it had a restaurant.

All night, he worked all night. So, I was there helping him at two o’clock in the morning. I’m flipping burgers for the middle of the nighters, right? And George calls out, Dave, there’s a car outside.

Would you go out and check on it? So, I went out, and here’s a guy. He’s vomited all over himself. His bladder let go, and he’s putting it upside down in a car.

He’s as drunk as a skunk with two stripes. And it was only a couple of months later, somebody said, do you party? Do you get drunk? I know. I said, no, I don’t.

They said, you don’t know what you’re missing. I said, oh, I know what I’m missing, and I can do without it. Glory to Jesus.

You better say amen. I’ve got a joke, okay? Don’t get offended. Don’t get offended.

Somebody said, what’s it like to pastor a bunch of seniors? I said, well, the one thing I’m pretty sure. I said, I think on Sunday mornings, at least, they look sleep deprived. It’s a joke.

It’s a joke. I guess not. Okay.

I’ve got a whole string of them. I’ve got a whole string of them, what it’s like to pastor seniors. I am one.

I’m close to being the oldest person in the room. I can get away with murder. I won’t murder anybody.

Get preaching, David. You’re digging a hole too deep. A few weeks ago, I started a message, and I entitled it, Make Yourself at Home.

I could go on with that title and say, make yourself at home, but what do you mean by that? And I commenced a message out of the book of Deuteronomy chapter 33, and then I got very, very immersed in a story where I went through a very difficult time, and I shared with you very, very transparently that morning of a challenge that I went through and how God helped me through it, and he really did help me through it. So today, I want to actually go back to the text of where I was a few weeks ago and get back into make yourself at home, but what do you mean by that? So in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 33, Moses is on his last leg. He’s pretty well finished, and this is his literally his last sermon, his last message to all the families who are the sons and daughters of Jacob known as Israel.

You remember, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. So how long has Israel been around? A long time, and Moses was leading the people toward the promised land, but he was not allowed to go into the promised land, and that’s not the focus of the service. He was not allowed to go in, and so the Lord’s spirit is upon him, and Moses is truly a prophet.

He’s known as a prophet. We speak of Jeremiah and Isaiah, and we speak of them, Ezekiel and Daniel. Moses was an authentic prophet, and this is the last thing he did.

He did not preach a sermon in his last address to these people. There were probably at that time three million people following him. That sounds preposterous, but that is a number that’s considered conservative.

It’s based on how many years that the children of Jacob of Israel lived in Egypt, confined by the Egyptians, and then how they were set free, and there’s just so much evidence that there was a lot of people. How could he speak to so many millions of people? I can’t answer that. I can’t answer that, but he managed to do so, and if anything, he had the chiefs of the families known as tribes.

If nothing else, he would have had them sort of like in the front row, so to speak, so that they in turn could call their tribe together, their family together, and they could pass on. This is what Moses, in case you missed it, this is what Moses told us about our family and our tribe. He literally prophesies over each of the tribes, and we’re not going to read the 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy.

You can read that in your own time, but I’ll just read the last one. It says in verse 26, and to Asher, the tribe of Asher, this is what Moses said, Asher is most blessed of sons. Let him be favored by his brothers.

Let him dip his foot in oil. Your sandals shall be iron and bronze. As your days, so shall your strength be.

So that’s his concluding message. That’s his concluding prophetic word, with this exception. He paused, I believe, and now he’s not speaking to Asher.

He’s again addressing all 12 tribes, and these are his words now, the umbrella over all of them, and he’s basically saying, don’t forget, they’re about to face people that are going to be antagonistic. The land is that we know now as Israel was occupied by Canaanites. They had conquered it, and they were not going to take this sitting down, and so each one of them had their own little tin god, and back in those days, all of those countries had their gods.

I was reading again this week about how Jacob is taking his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and leaving them and going to try and anticipating having to face Esau, and it says those two women who were his wives stole Laban, and you’ve got to trace back who Laban is. He’s a relative of Jacob, going back some, and so it says that these girls stole, took their daddy’s gods, and put them in their packs for their journey, and then Laban goes to talk to his gods, honor his little tin gods, and he can’t find them, and he says, that rascal Jacob, he’s taken them, and so he pursues them. It took him a couple of days to catch up.

He says, you stole my gods, so you see there were these concepts where everybody had their little god, and these two girls, these women that Jacob married, they were idolaters. They had their little gods. They took their little gods along with them.

This is the gods of my daddy. I need this kind of protection, so everybody took their god. So here’s Moses prophesying over these tribes and saying, we’re all, because of our historical times, and because we were with the Egyptians, we had little gods we brought with us from, remember the golden calf? That was a reflection of what they had learned from the Egyptians.

Continuously they were pursuing other little gods, because you see the little gods that they could take care of. They could look at them. They could play with them.

They could manufacture extra little copies of them, kind of like a four-leaf clover, kind of like a rabbit’s foot. Have you seen a three-footed rabbit running around this town? Somebody is lucky, and so they would have all of these little treasures that they would rely on, and so all of these little gods, there’s thousands, there’s millions of gods, and here’s Moses, and he says to these people, there’s no god like your god. When armies come out to tear you apart, they’ll come carrying their gods.

Don’t you worry about those gods, because there’s no god like your god. Then he goes on to describe your god, our god. There’s no god like your god, the god of Jeshurun.

That word we’re not familiar with. It’s a term of endearment, the god of Jeshurun. He says, he rides the heavens to help you, and I went at some length when I spoke this a few weeks ago about the fact that it seems like a theological challenge that God is going to run on a chariot in the heavens to get to us, but we know from Scripture it is a clear theological truth.

He’s everywhere. So if he’s everywhere, why does the Scripture say he will ride the heavens to get to where you are if he’s already here? Lo, I’m with you always, even to the ends of the earth. I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you. Those are promises that we have. But there are times when we feel like, where are you? Or in my case, as I rendered to you a few weeks ago, and I can’t go down that path again.

I can become very emotional. I was so distraught. I was in such a turbulence.

I was in the midst of a tsunami. I was drowning. I was dying, and I screamed with all my might, where were you? Where were you? Why didn’t you stop this? So we have a biblical truth here.

He’s omnipresent. He’s omnipotent, all-powerful. He’s omniscient.

He’s all-knowledge. But he is omnipresent, and the psalmist knew this better than I. He said, where can I go to escape from your presence? He didn’t want to escape from God’s presence. He was reminding himself, when you’re in that place, when you cry out, where are you? Don’t forget, if you find yourself in the bowels of Haiti, he’s there.

On your bed of affliction, he’s there. People fear apparently dying alone. I had a son-in-law who begged my daughter, when I die, you have to be there.

Don’t you leave me alone. A Christian, but he was scared to death to die alone. Don’t you be afraid to die, because you’re not alone.

We’re all facing that, aren’t we? I’m, I don’t know if you, I think about it every day. Soon and very soon, one way or another, I’m going. I’m gonna go.

I was at a funeral yesterday. Dave, how you doing? I said, well, I got more doctors than friends now. I’m speaking honestly.

I don’t want their sympathy. I’m going through a rough time by times. I got friends out on the west coast.

I called them. They’re watching us right now. I said, how you doing? He said, fine.

That’s his comment. I’m fine. He’s not fine, but he doesn’t want sympathy.

He doesn’t want to say, oh, you poor guy. He says, I don’t live with fear. I don’t live what appears to be potentially the inevitable.

I don’t live there, because my buddy out west and his dear wife, both suffering from the same trial, do not live in fear. Because as they are in the bed of affliction, maybe a mortal one. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I do not fear what is in those shadows, because I know you’re with me.

So Moses is prophesying, if ever you doubt, so why does he say he rides in the heavens to help you? I believe it’s because of our infirmity. It’s because of the moments that I had, I keep on going over here, that you would identify, that when I was in desperate trouble, and I thought that he wasn’t there. Well, you couldn’t have been here, otherwise you wouldn’t have let this happen.

That’s how your brain goes. I was in total shock. I needed a big pill.

Where were you? And Moses said, if you ever feel like Dave Forrest, call, and he’ll ride in the heavens to get to you. Why do you need to be encouraged to know he’ll ride in the heavens to get to you? Because you just made up your mind. Because of your circumstances, he must not be here.

He was there. Do you remember a song years ago? It’s an old one now. He was there all the time.

When he was on the cross, I was on his mind. You won’t lose your way if you know him, and you won’t lose your way if you know what this book says. Dear God, I hope you’re reading the Bible every day.

If you’re not, it’s no wonder you’re in trouble, Bunky. This will save your soul. This is divine truth.

David, are you worried about Iran? I’m worried about the people of Iran. I’m not worried about me. And you got all of these, you know, there are people upset because Trump’s going to try and save them, but in trying to save them, he’s going to cause a third world war.

What do you think about that, David? I said, I don’t care, because I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day. Is there war coming? Of course there is. Are you worried? Why would I worry? Hey, have you read the truth? At the end, we win.

We can’t lose. He rides in the heavens to help you and to fortify it and come down on it again, like the wording now is he doubled down. You know, you’ve heard that word, right? Well, he doubled down on that.

Here’s a double down. He rides in the heavens to help you, and in his excellency, he’s coming on the clouds. So now we have God above us, right? He rides in the heavens to help us, because we were worried he wasn’t here at all.

Well, he was here, but I was confused. So he says, if you get confused, remember, I’ll ride the heavens to get to you. So he’s above me, but he’s below me.

On Christ the solid rock I stand. David, why do you like the old hymns? Because they’re full of this. On Christ the solid rock I stand.

All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand. So he’s above me, but he’s below me.

He’s beneath me. He’s there. Then he goes on in his prophetic word.

Don’t forget this. The eternal God. That’s rich.

Eternal God. Hey, Muhammad, how old is your God? Well, they thought him up about the year 700. 700 years after Jesus rose from the dead, the Quran appeared.

How old is our God? He’s called the Ancient of Days. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending. Your God was not created in a nice little thing that you make candles in or you make pottery.

When I was in India, this shouldn’t trouble anybody. I hope it doesn’t. When I was in India, I sat and I watched so much going on.

There were so many gods there. You can order gods there. You can order gods.

You can order them. And so, I talked to an old gent. He said, I remember, he said, before Christ came into our life, I was there preaching a crusade.

In the daytime, I was preaching in a Bible college in a town called, a city called Coimbatore. And I said, talk to me, old man. What was it like years ago? He said, I can remember wagons going down the street, wooden wagons, wooden wheels, and an oxen would be pulled and this guy would be calling out.

And I don’t know what the wording would be, but basically it would be, gods, gods, get your, I got brand new gods. They’re still warm, just out of the oven. Selling a loaf of bread.

I’ll take one. Oh, my mother-in-law’s here. I’ll buy one for her and cheer her up.

You could just buy a god. And he told me the story of a friend of his who was a god maker. I love it.

And he said, he got saved. I said, and what was the outcome? He saddled, he said, he pulled out his oxen, cleaned off his shelves and put all of the gods that he had made in his cart. And as he’s going through the streets of the city of Coimbatore, he’s smashing the gods on the road.

And somebody called, you can’t do that. And he said, I made them, I can break them. Don’t forget, your God is the eternal God.

I watched, I don’t watch TV, I watch YouTube. And sometimes that’s not even a good place anymore. Who do you trust? But it was, it was scientists.

And they were talking about a couple of satellites that were launched in, in the early, I think it was the early seventies. And they, they launched this, they launched this rocket and they sent out two satellites. One was to go and check out, I think it was Saturn and one other planet.

And the other one was kind of like to go on further. And they, and they, they made these things at the time with what they thought was a life expectancy. They thought they’d go for about maybe two or three years and report back about Saturn, what’s going on, how’s everybody there.

And, but they said, it’s amazing. The dumb things are still working. We’re still getting messages back.

We thought that they would just turn into dust a long time. No, they’re still working. And it says, we’re finding out things that we never knew.

Now we know that what we had taught in universities years ago about the universe, that was horse feathers. We were totally wrong. We were totally, totally wrong because these little satellites are out there somewhere millions of miles away.

I guess that’s kind of like watching a Saskatchewan farmer whose dog runs away and the land is so flat. You can watch that dog for days, pretty boring country, nice wheat fields, but boy, it’s flat. These satellites.

And when you look at what the satellites are looking at, the number of stars out there, because we’re looking at it from such a distance, it’s just a maze. It’s just, it’s like, it looks like the stars are just a great big jello that they’re just solid. They’re not solid.

They’re millions of miles apart. But to our eye, so-called through this mechanical business, it’s a miraculous business. We’re so far back that the stars are actually sort of like, you know, about distance.

Things can come together. How many stars out there? Don’t worry about how many millions of stars, honey. It’s how many galaxies are out there.

It goes on and on and on and on. And I sat there last night and I wept as I watched it. How big is God? How big and wide has vast domain to try to tell my lips could only start.

He’s big enough to rule the mighty universe, yet small enough to live within my heart. He’s the eternal God. Any scientist who denies God has been either smoking or drinking something he should have stayed away from.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. That’s the problem the scientist has. They know it can’t be created and they know it can’t be destroyed.

So, when did it begin and how did it begin? We don’t know. But you definitely came from a pollywog in the Pacific Ocean. We know that.

He rides in the heavens. He’s eternal. And the verse to me is incredible.

The eternal God is your refuge. Refuge. Is there an enemy coming? He’s your fortress.

Have you got company coming? He’s your palace. There’s enough rooms for all of them to stay overnight. He says, I want to be your home.

The eternal God is your refuge. And if ever you wander away from him, you’ve wandered away from home. And that’s not a nice place to be, away from home.

My youngest daughter who lives in Edmonton, smarter than all of us, she retired at 52. She’s living the dream. She’s a sweetheart.

I love her. And Sherry, if you’re watching, I love you too. I love you both beyond words can tell you.

So, my little Melanie ran off to Bible college with her brother the same day. He applied for a college out west. The paper came.

And David got the paper, fill this out and send it in. Same college you went to, I think, in Edmonton. And so, he got the papers and he’s going to fill it out tonight or tomorrow.

And he got a little tardy in filling it out. And then he says to his mom, a paper came for me. I left it on the table.

She said, oh, I saw it a couple of days ago. Where’d it go? April says, I don’t know. And so, Melanie gets off the school bus.

She comes in. Anybody see this paper? And she says, oh, I saw it. And he said, where is it? She said, well, I filled it out.

What’d you do with it? Well, I put a stamp on it. Did I tell you I’m going to go to Bible college? My son was outraged. He had to order another application.

So, the two of them went together to Edmonton. And she never came back. So, she’s living out there now.

So, when they left home, they took whatever they needed. I took a bicycle for each of them. I borrowed somebody’s caravan.

I took all their stuff out, dropped them in an apartment building right across the road from the college. Set them all up. It was a hard thing to do.

And so, she left behind her little puppy dog called Sandy. Cute little dog. And so, here April and I were in this beautiful ranch style home with a backyard, with a swimming pool.

Neither one of us were interested in the pool. We now lived in a house. We didn’t know what to do with it.

So, we started thinking about changing. We’re going to downsize. We’re going to do something.

And then a couple came to visit us from Labrador City. Stayed in our home for a few days. And they had a couple of kids with them.

And they played with the little dog Sandy. April said to me, little Sandy’s missing Mimi. Why don’t we give her to these kids? They can make a happy home.

You want to take our dog? Yes. They took Sandy with them. And then we sold that house.

We got rid of all of the furniture. And then David wanted to live the dream. So, he bought a 40-foot motor home with a CB radio breaker breaker.

And I’m on the road because I’m getting invitations. Preach, preach, preach, preach. So, we’re on our way out to British Columbia where I’ve got a whole series of meetings to preach.

And we went on the south side through the United States. And we had a cell phone. First cell phone ever.

Cost me $6,000 for the phone and about $100 a minute to use it. And the phone’s ringing. I said to April, I’m driving the bus, you know.

Answer the phone. Well, you go ahead. She says, oh, honey, it’s Melanie.

I said, oh, that’s wonderful. Say hi to Melanie. Daddy says, hi.

I’m going to give you the conversation. She says she wants to know where are we. I don’t know what to tell her.

I said, well, we’re in South Dakota near a place called Bismarck. Daddy says we’re in South Dakota in a place near Bismarck. And little Melanie, who’s got a little bit of an edge on her voice says, so is that on the same planet I’m on? April says, I think she’s on a mission to give us what for.

So, here’s what I learned. It was costing me every minute like it was pricey. But here’s what I learned.

You did what? You got rid of my bed. You got rid of my desk. And you did what with my dog? You gave away my… She hasn’t forgiven me.

Do you know how many years ago that is? That’s 40 years. She hasn’t forgiven me for giving away Sandy, her dog. I said, you weren’t coming back.

You couldn’t. You gave away my dog. And then she asked the question that hit me like a clap of thunder.

If I want to go home, do I go to a place in South Dakota? Mom asked him, where do I go home? If I want to go home, where do I go? And I felt like a pile of poop. I felt terrible. I thought, what have I done? She had no plans of ever coming back and she never did.

If I want to see her, I got to go there. To this day, seeking forgiveness for giving away Sandy dog. But that was a thunderclap.

I got rid of home. Home. What is home? God says, I want to be home.

I want to be your place of refuge. Home is where you belong. God says, I want you to know that you belong with me.

I want you to feel comfortable with me. There have been some people who have come to this church and they got uncomfortable. You know what was troubling them? It’s called the presence.

They’re uncomfortable with the presence of God. There’s a fellow who will be unnamed. He came here for a few weeks.

He went nuts when he saw the pastor move up here. I dropped on my knees and lift up my hands. He was looking for the exit door.

He thought, okay, I’ve heard about these people. It drove them nuts. It drove them nuts that some of you were weeping and lifting your hands like this.

He thought they’re all cuckoo. But it was more than that. The presence of God is almost tangible.

Did you sense the presence of the Lord this morning? And if you were uncomfortable, something’s wrong. Not with this, but with you. He said, I want you to feel comfortable in my presence.

These very people, just a few years before this moment, said to Moses, tell God not to talk to us. He makes us nervous. They were uncomfortable with his presence.

God said, I want you to feel at home with me. When you’re at home, you can go into the cupboards in the kitchen and not apologize. You can clean out that candy dish.

Nobody’s going to ask you about it. You bought the candies. Take your shoes off or leave them on.

It’s your house. When I go in somebody’s house, I take off my shoes. I was trained to do that.

Why? It’s not my house. So, I was preaching a conference of pastors in British Columbia. I was picked up by this fellow by the name of Brown.

He took me to his house. We walked in the door. I’m carrying my luggage.

He says, all of you remember Dave. He preached at the last conference. He’s here.

He’s staying with us. She said, I knew you were coming, Dave. I’m so happy you’re here.

She says to him, uh, take brother David down the hall, show him his, his, his bedroom. And as I’m going, she says, and you get your own bathroom too. And I’ll be like, yeah, my own bathroom.

She says, David, well, you’re here. I don’t want you to feel nervous about make yourself at home. I used to hear that all the time.

I stayed in homes. All I preferred homes than to hotels. I always wanted, I lived on the road.

You know that I was never home, home, home, home. I lived on the road. That was my calling.

Make yourself at home. I heard it all the time. This is my unique experience up in Prince George, British Columbia in the home of the Browns.

Make yourself at home. Well, I had just flown in from Africa, changed planes and flew to Edmonton, changed planes. I, I flew in.

So I’m all a space cadet because I’m, I’m, I’m yesterday in Europe. And the day before that, I’m in Kenya. So like, I’m all, you know, the sleep’s all mixed up three o’clock in the morning.

I wake up Boeing it’s winter time. I can’t go outside and start wandering around. I’m thinking, I wonder if there’s a Horton’s nearby.

I need a coffee. Make yourself at home. Good idea.

Wait a minute. I feel some pressure. I go into my bathroom, make yourself at home.

There’s a problem. You see, when I was a child, we only had one bathroom and it was right outside my mom and dad’s bedroom. And the rule in our house was if you have to tinkle in the night, you do not flush.

Please don’t wake up the whole house. You can flush in the morning. So there I am in the bathroom and here was the question to flush or not to flush.

Now, if I do flush and I’ve wakened up the whole house. If I don’t flush, what if Mrs. Brown goes in that bathroom to check and she says, where was this guy raised? He doesn’t even know how to flush. Make yourself at home.

I don’t feel like I’m at home. This gets worse. Coffee.

I go in the kitchen. Well, here we are. Well, where’s the coffee? Where, where, where’s the coffee? Where’s I can’t find the coffee.

Where is it? And I start looking. Make yourself at home. Open up this cupboard door.

Coffee’s probably up here. No, here’s this little rig and it’s got all these letters in it. And one says visa.

Make yourself at home. It’s a visa statement. I wonder how they spend their money.

Oh, close the door. That’s not your home. I started going through the cupboards and I got desperately nervous.

If she comes out and she looks and she says, well, I didn’t mean like, what are you doing here? I was really fearful that I’d get caught looking for the coffee. I finally looked in the dumbest place ever, but I had checked everything else. I opened the freezer over the top part of the refrigerator.

Nabob, what woman in her right mind hides the coffee in the freezer and says, make yourself at home. How many hide your coffee in the freezer? Ah, filters, filters. There’s no filters.

I remembered something. I’d, I’d never seen this before in my bathroom. The toilet roll was pink.

So I go down and I take some toilet paper and I make myself a little filter for my coffee. Make yourself at home. That’s quite a statement.

Make yourself at home, Dave. Just, just make yourself at home. The Lord says, my home is your home.

And the big deal is not about his house. The big deal is about being comfortable in his presence. And the Psalmist said, take anything you want from me, but please, I beg you don’t take away from me your presence.

I need your presence. They can torture me. They can threaten me.

But if I have your presence, I can be sustained. How much more can God offer you? You’re right in the heavens. He’s above you.

He wants to be, he wants you to be surrounded by him. He wants you that if you start to wander away from your walk with him, he wants you to get desperately nervous and say, I’m not comfortable away from home. I need to get home, home.

The eternal God wants to be your refuge, your home. And to me that it’s complete. I, Lord, these things that you have said through Moses, it’s complete, but he adds one more thing.

He says, and oh, by the way, with all of that, there’s one more underneath you. I’m riding on the heavens over you. I’m around you, but underneath you are my arms.

Beneath you are the everlasting arms. I’m above you. I’m surrounding you, but underneath you are the everlasting arms.

Why do I need his arms? That girl that lives out West in Edmonton, there’s a part of the story I cannot tell you, but we were separated for about eight years because of her first husband. I can’t go into detail. He forbid her to have any relationship with us.

And there was a reason for that, that nobody understands. It doesn’t matter. The Lord took him.

I’m not happy about that, but she called me. She called me. We lived in Niagara Falls.

She phoned me and she’s crying on the phone, crying convulsively. I’ve been keeping you something from your daddy. I’ve been keeping something from you.

I said, what’s that? I know how you feel about divorce, daddy. I know, I know, I know. I’m afraid to tell you this.

I said, spit it out, baby. What is it? What is it? I left him and she’s crying, crying, crying. She says, daddy, I know that’s going to be a disappointment, but she said, I couldn’t take another minute of it.

I couldn’t sleep. She said, he went nuke. He went crazy.

He’s always threatening to take his own life. I’m going to kill myself. If you don’t do this, I’m going to kill myself.

Always threatening to kill myself. She said, I couldn’t sleep. She says, I was losing my way at work.

My bosses were wondering about me, but she says, daddy, I can’t sleep for this guy. So I’ve left him. Are you disappointed in me? I said, no, I love you with all my heart.

The following morning, I was on an Air Canada flight. I hadn’t seen her for eight years. Hadn’t heard her voice for all that time.

I went to a, you’re going to be impressed. I went to Costco. They sell flowers pretty cheap.

Oh, I could have afforded to go to regular florist, but I mean, here’s Costco right here. So I bought her like, I printed her cleaned off the shelf. I bought roses.

And then I went to some store and I bought some kind of a vase. It wasn’t an expensive vase. And I chucked all these flowers in there.

I had rented a car and I went to the building where she worked on the seventh or eighth floor. So I walked through and I’m carrying this big vase and I’m so excited. Larry, my baby girl needs me.

She has no idea that I’m here. None. But a guard stopped me.

Hey, where are you going there, buddy? I said, I got to make a delivery somewhere upstairs. Maybe you can give me some direction. I got to find my daughter.

He said, I don’t know who you’re looking for, but you’re not going to succeed in that today. I said, you’re talking to your dad. You got to be bigger than you are right now.

Like, you’re not stopping me. He said, I’m stopping you, whatever it takes. He said, if she’s your daughter, you’ll appreciate this.

I’m here to protect her. I don’t know who you are. Why would I let you go up there? You could be a terrorist.

You’re not going. I said, I came all the way from Toronto, Canada. I brought my daughter a flower.

I have to see her. He said, sorry. And then I got this brilliant stroke.

I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you ever get deliveries? Like somebody comes in? Yeah. I said, and does somebody have to sign for it? He said, you really are her dad, aren’t you? I said, sir, I’m on a mission today.

I have to deliver these flowers to Mrs. Melanie Ball. I know I can’t go in, but I have to have her signature, sir. He said, I hear you clear.

He gets on the phone, Mrs. Ball, you’ve got a delivery and you have to sign for it. All of a sudden I saw this elevator. It was a glass thing, right? And I saw it coming down.

I was so excited. She came off the elevator. She’s not very tall.

She’s like her mom. She’s got to have hymn books to see over the rest of the crowd. Step up.

So she’s coming. She can’t see me. And I’m making sure she can’t see me.

I’m holding the roses up in front of my face, but I’m looking through them, see. And all of a sudden I put the roses down because she’s right there. And she shrieked.

These are the words that came up. That’s, she yelled, that’s my dad. And she ran and she threw her arms around me and she clung to me like a cat that was scared.

She held on, daddy, daddy. This is a girl who was 50 years of age. Daddy, daddy, daddy, I love you, daddy.

You came, you came, you came. She had called to say, I’m afraid to call you to tell you about my marriage breakup. She’s worried about how I respond.

The fact that I showed up with roses told her, come to papa. He wants you to be comfortable with him. If you’re living a life that’s not accurate and you’re not walking the line, don’t avoid him, but run for him.

His arms are like this. Fast story, fast, fast. Talk fast, David.

I shouldn’t do this because my time’s gone. David, we like it when you go on. No, you don’t.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So my, my young son is this big and I’m supposed to be looking after him. It’s a sultry afternoon.

April’s gone shopping. I put him to bed for his afternoon nap. I go to sleep.

When I wake up, he’s missing. I went berserk looking for him because he’s gone out the back door. The back gate is unhinged and he’s gone.

It’s a hot day. I run out. There’s nobody anywhere.

Everybody’s in the house or in the shade somewhere. There’s nobody on the street. Where’d my kid go? I got in my car and I’m asking people along the street, which way should I go? Did he go that way? Did he go there? Where did he go? Where did he go? Where did he go? This kid doesn’t know.

Like he’s a little wee guy, but I remember he’d been wearing a shirt that said, I’m the boss. And I found these two girls on Queensdale in Hamilton. I stopped and I yelled.

I said, have you seen a tiny little boy? And the one said, is he wearing a blue shirt that says, I’m the boss? She said, I thought that was so cute. I said, where is he? She said, he went down that street. So I’m okay.

I’m on the trail. I run down that street. The next street is a busy street.

And as I look down that way, I see the blue shirt. I turned my car. And as I’m going that way, there’s another car coming and not just a blue shirt, but there’s two boys with a much bigger than him.

And they’ve each got a whole of a hand and they’re swaying his little body like this. And they’ve taken him out onto the pavement. And as that car’s coming, they threw him into the path of the car.

But the driver was very keen. Stopped the car. Now I’m on the scene.

I jump out of my car and he, the other driver, seeing that I’m on the spot, he drove off. Two boys, new enough to get out of the way. And my son is laying on the pavement and he’s screaming.

He is beside himself. These boys are trying to do him harm. And he had seen the car coming and he’s just in total, total disarray.

His arms and his hands are going and he’s screaming. And as I dropped on my knees to hang on to him, he’s fighting my touch because he doesn’t know I’m not the boys. And I finally had to just absolutely smother him and get a hold of him.

And I got my mouth to his ear and I said, Davey, Davey, Davey, it’s your daddy. And he stopped. Daddy, daddy.

And then he didn’t stop. Daddy, daddy. And he’s trying to tell me, but he’s crying so bad I can’t make it out.

I lost my way. I couldn’t find my way home, daddy. I didn’t know which way.

I was lost. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Got in the car.

And now what do I do with my son, who’s almost delirious with fear? Take him to the park. He loves the swing. No.

Where do I take him? Home. Why? Because that’s where he’s safe. The boys can’t get in the house.

Home is where he’ll be safe. How did I get him there? When I got him in the car, we didn’t have the laws like we have now. I held him with my left arm and drove with my right.

He was safe in my arms. Underneath are the everlasting arms. There’ll come a moment in your life when you want to run to daddy, but because of your challenge, where were you? You want to run for home, but you’ve lost your way.

You’re confused. You’re disappointed. And the old adage is, look up.

Moses said, look down. Because underneath you, Larry, are the everlasting. And the invitation this morning, Ed, is are you in trouble? Sit down in his arms, the everlasting arms.

I need help by Linda and Siegfried. Would you come and help me?