The beautiful thing about this series is that God is telling us what he thinks about our lives.

I got a text a few days ago. I was on the other side of the world and while you were awake, I was asleep.

And so the person that sent me the text didn't know I was on the other side of the world, so they didn't know I was asleep.

So they thought they were just texting me in the middle of the day. But it was in the middle of the night.

My phone was vibrating on this glass top table beside the bed and I wasn't sleeping all that great because I was supposed to be awake, although I was trying to be asleep.

And so I reach over, normally, you know, you just like, I'll leave it, you know, because I'm half asleep.

But I took it, looked at it, and it was a text from a friend of mine, obviously here in Atlanta.

And the text simply said, Prince is dead.

And I know that I get, well, that's funny. The Prince is really dead. And his family, you know, had a hard weekend in the process of that.

And when you're a cultural icon, people kind of treat your death in different ways. But he really did die. His friends, his family, people who worked alongside him.

They're grieving with the greatest pain of all pain right now. And I know this not because I saw it on the news or on my Twitter feed.

I know it because I get a text in the middle of the night, Prince is dead. But the rest of the text said this. It said, that leaves me, you, Madonna, and Ellen.

So the text was from Andy Stanley, who, he and I are the same age as Prince Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Ellen. The fearsome six, you know.

And so that's kind of like been a running thing in our life story. We all kind of are in the same zone.

And Michael's gone now, Prince is gone. And so he's texting me in the middle of my night to let me know it's down to me, him, Madonna, and Ellen.

And no kidding. You know, not like preacher spirituality, just what really happened. I put the phone down and I had this thought. Not like, you know, I had meditated for two hours before I got to bed. And I was so in the spirit, of course, I would have this thought. It's just the first thought that came to my mind.

I thought there is going to be a day, hopefully not today, but there will be a day when someone else's phone vibrates, either in the middle of the night or the middle of the day, most likely to time they're not expecting. They will pick up the phone or whatever technology is around at that time. They will look at the message and the message will say, Louis is dead.

That's the thought I had in the middle of the night. I thought, you know what, one of these days the phone is going to vibrate, somebody is going to pick it up. And the message on it is going to say, Louis is dead.

And it's not that I'm morbid, I'm not morbid, I'm not afraid of dying. And death isn't like a big, big, dark thing out on the radar for me. I don't want to die today, but it doesn't really matter. Whenever God wants that to happen, I'm fine with that.

So it wasn't like some morbidity, it was more reality. And it's more reality if you put your name in the text, there's going to be a text, somebody's phone is going to vibrate, and the message is going to be whatever your name is, they're dead.

And it's probably going to be at a time that you weren't expecting. And in that moment, I put the phone back down and now I'm awake and I wasn't really sleeping all that well to start with. And now of course I'm on my phone, trying to get news about what happened to Prince because I don't know.

And I'm just sitting there thinking, man, death, it's coming and it's problem. It's a problem because when you're dead, there's nobody on earth who can help you.

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