The Cause Within You – Find Your Cause

This message was delivered by Matthew Barnett from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral. It was aired during the Hour of Power program on Hong Kong's ATV World Channel on 9 October 2011.

I’m so privileged to be at this amazing church with your amazing pastor. I just love Sheila. She came to the Dream Center in LA and walked around the place and she just has such a passion for people, it’s contagious, it’s amazing. How many appreciate that heart to serve others and make a difference? Because influence is never truly influence until it’s been given away to the weakest person in our society. And I’m just privileged. We’re both pastors’ kids and we just want to love people and make a difference. And she came by and just blessed our socks off by getting in the trenches, loving people, making a difference. Thank you for allowing me to be here with you here today.

This morning I’m going to speak to you on the subject of finding the cause within you. Turn your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path.” I’m going to tell you how those twelve words – “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path” - have literally transformed my life.

Father, I pray that You will bless this word. I thank You, God, for a cause and a compelling mission that is upon this place and other places around the world. I pray that we will walk out of this building, Lord, and we will just start using whatever You’ve given us to change the world, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

At the age of twenty, my dad wanted to pastor a church in the inner city of Los Angeles. He asked ten different leaders to come and look at the building in the middle of the Rampart police division area of Los Angeles. Every single one of them were excited about planting a church with pastor Tommy Barnett in Los Angeles California until they saw a bunch of gang members trying to break in the back door. Then, every single one of them said, “I don’t feel led of the spirit to come and pastor this church.”

My dad couldn’t find a real pastor so he found me, a twenty-year-old kid, and he said, “Will you help come for a year to plant a church next to a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles?” I was twenty years of age, I was taking over a church that had about twenty plus members in the congregation, and there I was taking over from an eighty-two year old pastor. So, in one week, they went from the oldest pastor to the youngest pastor. My church went from eighteen down to two in the first six months. And get this: My dad’s church in Phoenix went from like two hundred to ten thousand in like five years. I can tell you how to reduce your church in the first six months.

I was so discouraged. I’m twenty years of age. I’m the only white kid in within five miles of any direction in my neighborhood. I was so skinny that when I stuck out my tongue I looked like a zipper. And, there I was in the middle of the neighborhood trying to pastor. I’ll never forget, when I was twenty years of age, one night and I looked out and nobody showed up in my building. Not even for the free buffet that we had after the service. I was so discouraged.

I went back to my apartment in downtown Los Angeles, got down on my knees, and cried for three hours. I said, “God, I’m the biggest failure in all the world. Maybe the anointing was on my grandfather and my father, and maybe I’m trying to do something I’m not really called to do.”

Right in the middle of my prayer, God spoke a word to me so profound. He said, “I want you to stop your crying right now. I want you to get up and I want you to go to Echo Park.” Now, for God to tell you to go to Echo Park in the middle of the night is a pretty bold word. I mean, they had recently found dead bodies and guns in the bottom of the Echo Park lake. I thought God was mad at me for being a big old baby and was just going to finish me off in a drive-by shooting; He knew somebody there who really could do the job.

I’ll never forget that park that night. As I was walking through the park, I saw helicopters looking for criminals, I saw young boys up against police cars being arrested, I saw homeless people everywhere in the park. That night, God spoke a word to me that forever changed my life. He said, “Tonight in this park, I want you to die to your dream of being a success and I want you to live the rest of your life building the dreams of others. Tonight, I want you to die to all the things that you think you should accomplish in ministry and I want you to spend the rest of your life serving your generation by the will of God. I want you to lay down your plans and I want you to pick up My cause.”

I said, “God, what is my cause?”

He said, “Every person that you see up against police cars being arrested tonight. I want you to live to a cause of serving your generation by the will of God.”

That night everything changed. I went back to my church. Back then I was the only pastor. I was the children’s pastor, I was the senior pastor, I was the worship pastor. I decided, in order to start my ministry, I’d move my desk outside of the church, onto the sidewalk. So, every day all the moms would walk by in the neighborhood and they’d be like, “Hola padre. Como estas, padre?” I’d be out there studying for my sermon. I had my phone. I had three bags of food that I started giving away from the money that I had.

That’s where the vision started - right there in the neighborhood. People would call the church and I would answer the phone and I would say, “Hello, L.A. Dream Center. May I help you?”

They would say things like, “Yes. Do you have a women’s ministry?’

I would answer, “Sure we do.” And I’d push the button and transfer the call. I would change my voice and make it sounded like we had a women’s ministry. How many here know when God gives you a dream, sometimes you’ve got to act like you’re there even before you even get there? Amen?

And there I was in the middle of the neighborhood outside on the sidewalk every single day where the ministry began. I’ll never forget when we established our first house in the neighborhood. We started taking in gang members and drug addicts that were getting saved. Two and then three, and before long we had sixteen homes in the neighborhood that were being filled with hurting people who were being transformed in the middle of that block. The church that went from eighteen to two trying to be a success went from two to six hundred in the next six months, not even thinking about the word “success” because the cause had gripped our hearts that was bigger than anything we could ever put on paper. The moment you surrender your life and what’s in your hand to serving your generation by the will of God, one day you wake up and God gives you dreams that you never knew that you had. I never tried drugs in my life and yet all of a sudden my whole staff was being filled with ex-gang members or ex-drug addicts that were getting saved.

One day I’m driving down the Hollywood freeway. I said, “God, I need a building, please. We need something. I looked to my right and saw the Queen of Angels Hospital just off the 101 freeway. I’ll never forget when I saw it; I pulled off to the side, and could see there was a sign that said “For Sale.” By this time, I’m twenty-two years of age. I walk on to the hospital campus where Brad Pitt and George Clooney were filming a movie. I walked up to Brad Pitt and I said, “Brad Pitt! Man, how are you doing?” He looked at me kind of funny because I was so bold in talking to him. He never experienced something like that in his life, this actor, you know.

At that time we were on TBN every single Friday night and he stopped and he said, “Wait a second. I know who you are. You’re Matthew Barnett. You’re that Dream Center guy on television every single Friday night.” No, he didn’t say that. I’m just messing with you. My bad. No, he didn’t do that. So I just continued walking beside him into the building. I said to others there, “I want to buy the building. How much is it?” I’m twenty-two years of age. They laughed. They kicked me out and wouldn’t even allow me to get a tour of the building. You may ask what I did next. Well, I found myself a back door when nobody was looking. I looked to my left, I looked to my right, and I snuck in the building. I gave myself a tour of the building, anyway. How many here know that when God gives you a dream you got to go gangster sometimes? I mean, you just got to do it, you know? That might be the first time that’s ever been said in the Crystal Cathedral!

As I’m walking through the building, a fifteen-story hospital, God began to speak to me. He said, “I want to give you this floor right here for people that are addicted in the middle of the night, who have nowhere to go. I want to give you this floor right here for runaway street kids. I want to give you this floor for people who are prostitutes. Instead of sending them to jail, they can come into the house of God and their lives will be transformed.”

I went to the top of the hospital. I saw downtown over here and Hollywood over here. And God spoke something so profound. He said, “Look. Twenty-four hours a day the pimps are working, twenty four hours a day the drug dealers are working, twenty-four hours a day the adult film industry is preying on young girls that are runaways. They are working. If they can work twenty-four hours a day, as well as a liquor stores, I want you to build a church that will be open twenty-four/seven, a church that will never sleep.”

I said, “What do You mean, God?”

He said, “It needs to be the kind of church that, if somebody needed a place to stay at two o’clock in the morning, somebody would be there to take them in and help them get their life back together.” And all of a sudden, I began to realize that the revelation that I received in the park was not the revelation to be a success; it was to be a blessing. I began to wake up and have a cause that I never even knew was in my heart. I never knew that that Sunday morning. I thought Sunday morning was going to be destination spot for the church. But I didn’t realize it would be a launching pad to what God can do Monday through Saturday in our neighborhood and community, just like Pastor Sheila has a heart to make this church a launching pad of compassion of service in the neighborhood.

And I’ll never forget; I was so excited. To make a long story short, the Catholic church gave us the hospital for $3.9 million dollars. It was a stunning miracle and now, today, there are seven hundred people living in a four hundred thousand square foot building whose lives are being impacted, who are coming off drugs. Trafficking victims are being rescued and they’re being helped and given a place to stay to get their lives back together again. I can tell you, it was never even a cause that I knew that I had. When you lose yourself to the needs of others by going out on Monday night and serving with the church and getting your life on track with what’s going on, you’re one inconvenient act of possibly finding the cause of a lifetime. God began to bless, and now there are hundreds of people living there today, seven hundred plus whose lives are being restored. We have formerly homeless teenagers there living in our building. And during the homeless epidemic of America, police started dropping off homeless families and more homeless families; I guess I have a cause for homeless families because the need was right before me.

I began to realize that the need is God’s cause. The need is God’s call. Suddenly, things begin to happen. One day, the judges began to send teenagers into the Dream Center. So now we have a home for minors, eleven to seventeen. Instead of them going to jail, the judge is pounding the gavel and telling teenagers, “You’re not going to jail,” and they’re sentencing them into the house of God where they’re being raised up, where they have a chance of making it instead of being lost in the juvenile hall system.

There was a day in my life when I thought ministry was everything that was built for me. But now I realize that, the quicker God gives me a blessing, the quicker I want to give it away to make room for more of His cause for my life. There used to be a day in my life I used to dream of preaching to thousands. I’d go to my dad’s church in Phoenix in a six thousand-seat building and I would practice preaching to thousands. But now whenever I preach I’m thinking just about the one.

Whenever I preach, I think about a man by the name of Barry. He was homeless at the age of forty-five because he lost his job as an engineer. He lost his wife. Something in his mind checked out. He decided he was going to retire and literally live under a bridge. For fifteen years, Barry lived under a bridge. And as Barry was living under this bridge, homeless, people had given up on him. This man, who gave up on society, became a symbol of the Los Angeles broken dream. One day, somebody who had a cause for Barry, said to him, “You know, Barry, there are two thousand hot meals a day being served at the Dream Center. Go on over there, get yourself a meal, and we’ll take care of you.” So Barry would leave the bridge, he would come up, he would get his food, and he would walk right back under the bridge again.

After a while, I got real spiritual, and I said to myself, “You know what, this guy’s using us. All he’s doing is getting food and going back under the bridge.” And God checked my spirit and spoke to me. He said, “Look, if you want to be a bridge of hope to the world, you’ve got to allow yourself to be walked on sometimes.” Amen? And Barry was walking right over us. He would get his food every day and leave.

However, one day Barry said, “I want to go into your rehab program.” I couldn’t believe it.

My dad had always taught me that when you can’t believe in a person’s dream, don't discourage him or her. When you don’t believe something, just smile and say, “Well, praise the Lord!” And to my shock and dismay, this man went through our program. He graduated from the program after fifteen years of living under a bridge, went back to college, and now he is a licensed minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Barry, right there, is preaching eighteen services a week to the homeless people in Los Angeles, California. He was under a bridge but his brokenness became his cause; his homelessness became his cause.

You can find your cause in any circumstance. Even if you’re at rock bottom, rock bottom can be your cause. Even if all you have are three food bags to start an outreach, that is the beginning of a great cause. It’s true, because God doesn’t give up on people when they hit rock bottom. He recreates people when they hit rock bottom. He recreates each of us when we hit a place in our life that feels like life is over. God can push the reset button in one second and change the dynamics of anything and give us a cause that we never knew that we had.

When Pastor Sheila visited, as we walked around and saw teenage girls and runaway street kids, she began to break at the plight as she began to share a similar passion in her heart for Orange County that is now starting to look more and more like Los Angeles every single day. And hearing the cause in her heart of reaching broken people allows me to understand that oftentimes we don’t even have to look very far for our cause.

People ask the question, “Pastor, how do I find my one great cause?” I tell them the answer is very simple - you don’t have to look for it. You spend your life giving away whatever you have and you’ll never have to look for your cause ever again because your cause will find you. The hurting people will find you. The homeless will find you. The broken will find you.

I never realized that forty-five percent of our staff would be ex-convicts and gang members. Forty-five percent of my staff members are all people that used to be on the streets, and now they’re on my staff. On our church staff, we have ex-drug addicts, murderers, pimps. And that’s just our pastoral staff. That’s not including all the other people we have leading what’s going on in the church. It’s a twenty-four seven ministry built towards reaching people for the glory of God.

The first day I came to L.A., there was a young boy that was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. His body lay on the steps of the church. I’m twenty years of age. I’m scared to death. I go into my midweek service. I explain to the church members I was the new pastor and I wanted to preach a sermon, but I told them, “Look, I can’t preach tonight because I can’t preach when there’s a boy that’s been killed on the steps of our church.”

They said, “Pastor you don’t understand something. We stick to ourselves and the gang members stick to themselves.”

I said, “Okay, but let’s just go over there and minister. Let’s just see what God might do.” I couldn’t get a volunteer to help me, but they gave me an offering, and I took thirty-eight dollars across the street. I went to an apartment next to a liquor store. I knocked on the door, the door flung open, and I was staring in the face of the biggest gang member I’d ever seen in my life. I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and I looked up at God and prayed silently, “God, I’ve always heard there’s a place called heaven. Save me a place because I’m coming home real soon.” This guy had so many tattoos on his left bicep that if he flexed it, the Old Testament could come out and the New Testament over here on his right side.

He looked at me and said, “What do you want, padre?” You’ll say, did you correct him, because you’re not a padre? No! When you’re that big, you can call me padre, bishop, rabbi, whatever you want to call me, just don’t kill me. He said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I’m here to pray for the mother.”

He said, “Make it quick.”

And I said, “No problem.” I walked on in there and the mother was weeping hysterically. I gave her the thirty-eight dollars and I said, “I want you to know, I’m the new pastor, and I love you. I’m going to be here for you every single day, and we’re not going to give up on you.”

She said, “Oh thank you, pastor.” She was so sweet. After I gave her the money, I’m heading towards the door. You know I’m not like David Wilkerson, the pastor of New York City, the cross and the switch blade? He used to talk to gang members like this: “If you chop me up, every piece of me will tell you that Jesus loves you.” Not me; I’m giving her the money and I’m out the door, you know?

I’m getting closer to the door when a hand grabs me by the arm and spins me around. Again, I’m staring in the face of this gang member. He said, “Padre, I want you to do something for me.”

I was thinking, “Brother, I’ll do anything you want me to do; I’ll rub your back, I’ll rub your feet, I’ll order you a beer next door, I’ll drink it with you. Just don’t kill me!” Oh, don’t look at me so spiritual. If you were in my situation you would have done whatever you had to do to stay alive at that point. He said, “I want you to pray for the family.” I didn’t know what to do. I’d just gotten out of Bible college, but Bible college doesn’t prepare you for Gang Ministry 101 and Drive-By 102. I mean that’s not in the Bible college curriculum.

So we got together in a circle, joined hands, and we started to pray. And I began to pray my memorized Bible college prayer, a prayer of need in time of comfort: “Oh Lord, I pray that You’ll bless this habitation with Your glorification and may Your manifestation be here during this presentation, oh God, of great sensation. I pray that You’ll bless the birds and the trees and the flowers and the leaves and my knees that are shaking for You.”

I’m like rhyming my prayer, you know like a rapper or something, and right there in the middle of my prayer, the Lord spoke a word to me. He said, “You’ll never get this many gang members in one place. I want you to pray like you really mean it.’”

Okay. So, I continued, “God I pray that peace will prevail in this neighborhood.” Nothing happened, so I prayed a little bolder. I said, “God I pray these young men would realize that they’re not as strong as they think they are and they need You.” And right when I said those words - ‘as strong as they think they are’ - my right hand got squeezed on one side and my left hand got squeezed on the other. I thought silently, ‘Oh God, he hates my prayer, I’m going down. But if I’m going down, I might as well get my name in the book of martyrs.’ I’m just going in, you know, and I begin to pray.

In the middle of my prayer, I asked them, “If you want to accept Christ, raise your hand.” I could feel my right hand being lifted in the air, and then my left hand was lifted in the air. I looked around and I said, “If you want to accept Jesus Christ, pray this prayer after me.” And a bunch of gang members in that room said the prayer and accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior on that sad but glorious day in Los Angeles.

And from that day on, I had the best bodyguards. My car never got broken into. I’d go across the street to the liquor store to get me a forty ounce coke, I’d walk in there, and the guy would say, “Hola padre. Como?”

I’d say, “I’m not the padre; I’m the pastor.”

He said, “You’re the padre and the padre gets all the free food and drinks that he wants.”

I said, “Did you say, ‘free food and drinks’?”

He said, “Yes I did.”

I said, “Bless you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!” Let’s not let titles get in the way of free food and drinks. Amen?

I walked outside to find that all my buddies had come by from Arizona. “Hey, what are you doing here, man? Oh I get it; you’re a two-year evangelist. You’re coming in there to do missionary work to prove that you can live without, you know, the big church you were from.”

I said, “No, no, no, this is my real church.”

They said, “No, it’s not. You can’t build a great church with graffiti on the wall.”

I said, “That’s not graffiti; that’s beautiful art.”

They said things like, “No, you can’t build a great church this way. You have no lobbies in your church and nobody will come to church without lobbies and coffee shops.”

I said, “I know we don’t have lobbies, but we got a liquor store across the street. You can get anything you want over there; you know what I’m talking about.”

I began to see crime drop 73% over a three-year period of time in that neighborhood. Hundreds of people earned the right to be heard by changing the atmosphere of the community.

Ladies and gentleman, we are living in a season of America where it’s time that the church shows the world what we are for more than what we are against. We are for solving the big problems of our society, we are for making a difference, and we are for changing the world.

You see, every great cause begins with one act of inconvenience. One act of using whatever you have in your hand and using it to serve. In the process, one day you’ll wake up and have a cause and a dream that is bigger than you, and a bunch of plans and ideas about reaching your community that you never knew that you had.

The greatest days of my life are when I go to my office. It takes me a long time to get there because I have to walk through eight floors of residential living. I see the young ladies that there that they say, “Hi pastor, how you doing?”

I say, “How you doing?”

And they say, “Good! Our arms are starting to heal, pastor, where we used to put in the heroin needle. I’ve never been clean for thirty-eight days that I can remember.”

And then I see the human trafficking victims, and the runaway street kids, I go up to the eighth floor and I open up the window and hear the sound of two hundred ex-convicts singing, “Give thanks with a grateful heart” in our one-year rehab program as they wake up the neighborhood like chapel bells in the community. And it brings me back to a day where a young man who thought that all I wanted to be was a success in the ministry. That man died in the park. And God said, “I don’t want you to be a great pastor; I want you to be a city janitor and walk through the streets of your city and picking up broken pieces and telling people that they can dream again.”

Father, today we pray a blessing upon this church, a blessing upon this congregation as they set out, Lord, to make the difference and impact as they are, as they continue the fight for people, Lord that frankly most people have given up on. I thank You for the cause of this church. I thank You that You have promised to protect any ministry that will defend the cause of the poor. And I pray that, from this day forward, Lord, as they continue to march into the most forgotten areas of Orange County and serve, and people all over the world that are watching, make that decision that the church will be the most powerful force of change. We will not draw back in recession and time of need, but we will take on the biggest cause and change the world one life at a time in Jesus’ name. Amen.

God bless you, church! Thank you for allowing me to share with you here today. God bless you. Thank you.