I am Jeff Thompson, I'm a firefighter, I am confident, I am brave, I am an overcoming,

I am a father, I am a son, I am a brother, I am Jeff Thompson, I am salt and light.

Welcome to day, could I get all of you to say influence? All of our churches,

all of our network churches, everybody just say, say influence. Several years ago I was doing a funeral

and there was a guy who was in the funeral, I didn't know he was there, but he's a very well-known

business person in my community. He was also quite honestly very well-known for the very hard

and visible party life, he was very wild, and evidently the funeral touched him spiritually,

and a couple weeks later he called my office and he said, I don't go to your church and I'm not a

religious guy, but I have some questions and I was wondering if Craig would meet with me,

I was sure to be happy to, so we went out in the middle of the day to a restaurant,

and this restaurant was so full that they said, would you mind if we would see you in the bar?

And he said, no, we'd be happy to sit in the bar. And so I walked in,

Pastor Craig, with a very well-known sinner into the bar, and I may be overly sensitive,

but it seemed like I could just feel people kind of staring going, is that Pastor Craig in a bar

with a well-known sinner? I just kind of felt that, and I just kind of reset my mind to remember

that Jesus was often criticized for eating with sinners and tax collectors, and the Pharisees

just couldn't stand that, and I just reminded myself of what Scripture said, Jesus said that it's

not the healthy who need a doctor, but it's the sick. He said, I didn't come to call the righteous

to repentance, but I called to call sinners to repentance, and so I just settled in,

totally engaged in a conversation with this guy, and was able to make significant spiritual

progress moving this guy much closer to Christ. The interesting thing is, though, by the time I made

it back to my office, literally less than a 20-minute drive, we had had, believe it or not,

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