Joshua from Fort Collins, Colorado writes in to ask this, Pastor John, where did you get

your foundations for such a global vision of ministry and missions?

My father's prayers, as when I was a little boy, were laid in with the glory of God.

And I give thanks to my dad to this day, or thanks to God for him to this day.

His life was a witness to the nature of the universe as the fallen creation of God in desperate

need of rescue by the gospel.

In other words, I grew up in a home with big things going on.

The home was not about the latest TV show, it wasn't about the latest political shenanigans,

it was about the latest rescue from hell for heaven, for a glorious God who made the universe,

who exists for his glory.

And so I absorbed these things little.

And then comes, in my 20s, Jonathan Edwards book, the end for which God created the world.

Oh man, and that book just simply blew me away with the God-centeredness of God's purpose

in this universe.

So from creation on, bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth,

everyone who's called by my name, whom I created for my glory.

And then I began to see it everywhere, from eternity to the second coming.

Ephesians 1, 6, predestined to the praise of his glory.

The incarnation, John 12, Father, for this purpose I have come to this hour, glorify your name,

or the propitiation on the cross in Romans 3.

This is to demonstrate God's righteousness, or the giving of the Holy Spirit.

He will glorify me, Jesus said, or the living of the Christian life.

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