folks get started in a few minutes couple of minutes here everybody my name is Kamesh Pamaraju I'm a product manager with Dell today I'll be moderating a session with these esteemed guests who know all about OpenStack distributions so the goal today is for us to understand if how and why OpenStack distributions matter for OpenStack for its adoption for future innovation that's kind of the the key goal for today's today's session so with that what I'll do is sort of set the stage for some of the dimensions of distributions as I see them and have the panelists weigh in as we as we go forward here so what is a distribution is OpenStack project a distribution OpenStack project is a set of projects that our community developed but they are not a distribution because if you're a customer and you want a maintenance patch or a security fix or an update or just support plain old support you can go call any of those 400 developers you got to have one entity that you can call and say hey I have a problem fix this for me install deploy fix maintain patch those are all the things that matter when you are actually dealing with a real open stock deployment or an open stack production environment that's where distros come in so we've seen a lot of this in the Linux world there are lots of distributions we have Red Hat Sosa and Canonical here today who have been leaders in the Linux distribution world and now they're entering the the world of OpenStack distribution so so I just want to lay out a few dimensions so a distribution can be paid a commercial distribution and a non commercial distribution a distribution could be targeted towards enterprise users or just plain you know end users that are not enterprise a distribution could be not all the projects with an open stack it could be just some parts of open stack distribution could be some pieces of it replaced by the vendor with proprietary components and lots of different dimensions so we want to find out today from the panelists about what they're doing with their distributions Canonical has it has a had had distribution for a long time ever since long time right and then Sosa came up with their open stack distribution recently Red Hat has announced a preview of their distribution Dell has a point of view about distributions and in some ways companies like Piston, Cloud Scaling and we have Morph Labs here Nabula also can be thought of as distribution so we have Morph Labs here as well who can then provide their input or their point of view of what they think was a distribution so so with that sort of background I'm gonna quickly go through and have the panelists introduce themselves starting with Nick over there on that end and then I'll open up with some questions and it's an open interactive session so feel free to ask questions along the way so I'm Nick Barsett Ubuntu Cloud Product Manager Joseph George Director of Product Strategy at Dell similarly Dell's been involved in the open stack projects since day one and I'm actually quite a few familiar faces there in the crown Christopher Ado from Morph Labs I'm director of technology operations for the company and we sell a open stack appliance Perry Myers engineering manager for cloud infrastructure at Red Hat and we got involved with open stack about a year ago and are now just getting into the distribution for Red Hat. I'm Pete Chadwick from Sousa. As you can see we have some real practitioners in the field who have been involved with open stack for more than a year in some cases so let me kick this off by asking the first question why do distributions matter for open stack? Sure so I look at a distribution and I use this term loosely it's because open stack is certainly not a museum piece yet but a distribution is a little bit like a museum where you have a curator that decides which pieces and parts make the most sense just as Sousa and Red Hat have been delivering enterprise Linux for a long time there are differences between Sousa and Red Hat because we see different different things we're trying to solve so it's our responsibility to sort of look at the world of agree with everything you said there I'll also highlight that one of the things we do as distributions is make things more of a solution rather than just a piece of component parts right so you can think of the upstream open stack projects as you know building blocks and what we want to do is give something that's a little more turnkey for our customers and it's not just about providing additional software for example like crowbar but also about providing tuning performance working with vendors to do certification and also the amount of testing that we put into the distribution and then maintaining things as you go through the lifecycle because customers are not going to want to update you know every on the six-month cadence that we have with the upstream right now so being able to support something for an extended period of time and deal with things like security updates and so forth so my perspective is really I agree with those guys completely and the distribution should be a stable snapshot of a project and with open stack it's so active and and being developed so quickly and moving so quickly there's a real version of open stack is so which tags of each individual components are going into so for us there's it's really important and we use Ubuntu and we count on their repositories it's in some sense what you guys are doing more flabs it's not like a traditional distribution you're taking an existing distribution and then creating a specialized solution for your customers exactly which is which can be thought of as a solution right right I mean my solution exactly and it's our solution is meant to be consumed really as an appliance so we're on the hook for making sure that open stack works properly and in order for us to do that it's if we go at our own and try and roll our own build of open stack every single time and give us a really stable base on which to build everything else we offer on top Dell perspective obviously everybody on this stage is a partner of Dell's and our goal has always been to deliver solutions to customers and as you can imagine we have a wide variety of customers that we try to service on a number of different technologies and so we we feel that what distributions bring the tables out actually really critical for customers and their expectations of support validation etc when you look at what Dell has brought to brought to market the the Dell open stack powered cloud solution made up of an RA and Dell's crowbar software that we developed plus the you know software from various partners and then services on top of that you know we're we're designing a solution that customers can get drop in their environment start you know finding value off you know just recently announced today we announced a relationship with Morph labs in delivering their solution because as I mentioned what Morph is doing in this space Morph labs is doing the space is actually servicing a specific part of our customer segment as well so we view distributions as pretty critical to our customer base and what they find as important in a cloud solution add to everything that has been saved because I fully agree on everything but I think there is there is two fold the fold where we distribute something to people and when we do so we have to make choices open stack is a project which is the world of choice you start deploying open stack and then you already have oh am I going to use rabbit qubit or zero mq am I going to be using KVM Xen IPV etc etc so one of our role is to test a subset of this make choices for you to make your life more simple and then package it and deliver it in a way that you can consume it and deploy it as easily as possible but there is also another fold in it it's our involvement with the open stack community each of us here are here because not only do we consume up and stack but we we also help shape the future of open stack because we and sometimes building the solutions that the open stack community had not thought of to deliver the solution that our customer needs great thank you so so there's a there's an interesting set of thoughts about open stack being the Linux of the cloud and I think it was Martin Mikos who famously said at one of the conferences it's not gonna be Linux of the cloud it'll become the Unix of the cloud so in essence what he was saying was the danger is that open stack can become fragmented right everybody has their own flavor everybody starts flocking forking things off so I wanted to get some sense from the panelists today is open stack the Linux of the cloud or is it gonna become Unix of the cloud what are your thoughts customer that made wrong choices at the very beginning of open stack didn't understand the philosophy of open source and deployed open stack the wrong way apart from these guys I think nobody here are making the same mistake when we want something in open stack it either talks to the official API or it's inside of open stack developed with the community as a full project so the fragmentation is something that Martin Mikos may like because it helps him sell his solution but it doesn't exist so that happens only if somebody decides to fork open stack and create their own distribution and not go back and contribute back to the core right so what do you what are you guys seeing in that space well I just like to add one thing on there I mean there's the notion of core projects and I think we're all consistent with the idea of contributing back to the community and in fact working first with the community and pulling back into the the product right but there is going to be I think a little bit of divergence when we talk about things that layer on top of open stack like we've got different management solutions we've got different monitoring solutions and so forth and so you might see a little bit of fragmentation there and but at the same time there are I'm not saying that's a sorry bad thing but but there are other projects that are you know coming up in the works right things that are heading towards incubation and so I think there's opportunities for us to at least have the same core infrastructures for those things even if our UIs for example are different because that's kind of cosmetic as long as the as long as the foundation is healthy and and we keep having you know regular design summits like this and keeping the community together it won't fragment because it's it's one group of people like Nick said building it and you know there's it's a great foundation where the people who do want to do their own things like projects that communicate through the core API so there's the ability for people to kind of go off on their own and add feature sets but always going to be open stack I don't think if there's ever going to be some and I think just just to address sort of the fundamental question is distribution does not equal for a white space if you will so there's there's an opportunity for you to ask questions feel free I have one question which is you guys have distributions of your own can you spend quick one minute describing why your distribution is different why it's important what are you trying to do what problems are you trying to solve yeah go ahead please go absolutely it's not there is going to be there is the open stack API is already there it's made made to evolve but it's made so that your management solution can know that it has evolved there is versioning inside of the API the appropriate recomponent or a fork open stack you're going to be enhancing open stack the one thing I'll add is that just like with Linux and the base distributions we're talking about that diversity actually helps the ecosystem right so it's not a bad thing that there's you know Susan canonical and red hat all together because we're all independently helping and we're all helping to drive different facets of it other questions yes there are tools that make that relatively straightforward to deal what you say it is true today the way you describe an image that is running on top of open stack is the same exactly the same regardless of the distribution of open stack so that you're using the same API so you can very well run it somewhere else it will run the same way but there there is one difference though which is each distribution focuses on maybe a different set of hypervisors and there are image differences be going from one hypervisor to another and like you said there are tools that you can use to convert an image from one hypervisor to another so when you talk about you know workloads let's say you know it you have an application and maybe it only runs on rel doesn't happen around on susa that does you can take that same image even though it's a rel image and run it on top of susa's cloud there's no reason you can't do that so that's one way you can transition the workloads but again if you're going from one hypervisor to another there's a little bit of a manual step there but there are a lot of tools to help automate that so that that's what I wanted to get to my next section about so what is that rest so this you know susa let's start with you what how do you describe your distro open stack distro how is it different what's unique about it so I think first of all as we talked about at the beginning you know it's built upon open stack it's built upon open stack sx we've we make sure zen was supportable at the same levels KVM and sx so the red hat open stack distribution is I would say based pretty much vanilla from upstream so very similar what you're talking about you know we basically take the upstream releases package it harden it and go through fedora first so when you think about distributions you can kind of think about there's the and you mentioned this earlier there's the product distribution but then there's also free open source distributions and so we treat fedora as the upstream that we pull into both rel and into open stack what we've specifically done and again everything we do gets pushed up stream but we focused on things like KVM as the hypervisor making sure that works really well for us with our versions of KVM making sure it ties really well to Libvert to help support that and you know some of the other things we did had to do with like AMQ P messaging layer right originally rabid MQ was the only supported one so we pulled that out abstracted it and make QPID work so I mean there's a lot of other kind of smaller things that we did but fundamentally everything that we did was upstream pull it in and now what we're focusing on is making easier for use for the enterprise right so making it easier to deploy install and monitor you know our initial release is going to be pretty vanilla compared to upstream Folsom but as we mature things we'll add in those additional monitoring and deployment capabilities so are you guys focused on the enterprise particularly I mean both Susan Red Hat yeah or are you looking at telcos and service providers and such we consider those part of the enterprise so our distribution is fundamentally different because we are selling it to customers as an appliance so they don't need to know how to set up open stack they don't even need to know about the internals if they don't want to we're based on Ubuntu we we use puppet after after we deploy for all the configuration management but essentially what the customer gets is a running supported open stack environment that they can access through our UI which is one of the other big differentiating factors we're not using horizon we developed our own UI API so we gave back to the fog community in hopes of bringing more Ruby developers into the open stack fold and we fog API and our our UI talks to open stack through the fog API and customers have access to directly the open stack API so if they if they if they are you know fairly technically literate and they want to manage their open stack environment via the API they have full access to that and if they are just trying to get their feet wet in cloud we've really low you know give them a really easy use web interface to targeting a specific set of market segment or we're targeting specifically people who could use cloud okay who could use cloud yeah that's it you know if a marketing guy said that you would destroy him so yeah the Dell perspective is you know very unique in addition to the partner offering that we sell with with art the distribution and then we know we could get into the various colors of what the word distribution and packaging means but you know we deliver an acrobar ISO that we actually make available that includes right now with the Ubuntu bits that we deploy open stack on but again it to us it's a very similar thing right and we are focused right now in our solution on the Dell open stacks a more sophisticated user one that does want the flexibility and the power that comes with an open source type product but then as we look into other places and we start looking at getting into other markets it's gonna be and I'm gonna suggest that you start with Nick on the next question because you seem to be favoring that side of the line there yeah our specificity is that we are targeting users that needs to deploy open stack at very large scale is weird enough so that it can deploy the cloud and deploy on the cloud and this gives us a very nice way to make sure that we can automate all the testing to ensure that the upstream bits that we receive are always functioning on a continuous basis and we've invested in making these continuing continuous integration effort the quality and the enterprise readiness of our open stack distribute test also that we can still deploy on open stack with the same result measuring how that say there is another role that we think we have that is very important trust ecosystem trusted ecosystem because as good as we are is something where you're making sure that this right partner works correctly with you is something very important the same thing happened for storage maybe you want very fast IOPS maybe you want very cheap storage which partnership you go to this is what we work on this is what we want to qualify for you great segue into my next question which is one of the things I've been following open stack for the last two years and this time around I think we are at a crucial inflection point we're seeing a separate parallel user track which never existed before and we're also seeing lots of interests amongst users to start moving their workloads into quote-unquote production so my next question is around you know how what are you doing with your distributions or the way you're coming to market around enabling customers to move into quote-unquote production what does that mean for you his main concern going to production is not going to be the cloud itself the list of applications that he expects to be running on this cloud or the list of developers that he expects to a public cloud provider his expectation is how quickly can I be on my customers so going to production is a very subtle mix of needs what do we support how can it be implemented how can it be integrated with the existing backbone under it's the provider backbone for selling and billing stuff or it is the identity back therefore I don't think there is a generic case of going into production every time it's something a little bit specific that needs to take into account the DNA of the enterprise so so what about things like high availability and fault tolerance is that a requirement right so there's a base set of things that don't exist today there's no HA in core open stack but there is no there is nothing that prevents from building an HA open stack inside of open stack in fact there is there was two component that were causing massive edX this has recently been reduced to one so I mean the complexity of putting open stack in HA is something that a good sysadmin should be able to handle very easily that's like saying that Linux has no HA I mean there's components that provide HA and you integrate them with open stack so things like pacemaker for example could be used to do that and then you have to look at HA both from the the guest perspective and also from the underlying service perspective too so my question is related to distributions whether or not distributions themselves provide those kind of HA capabilities out of the box is that something you guys are thinking about this is something that we are more than thinking about this is something that we are the configuration option I mean that's what it comes down to HA for open stack is just configuration our goal is that with juju you deploy and you do juju adjunct and your HA just say my perspective on it is similar but you know we kind of treated more in a layered fashion so there's one aspect of HA and open stack is the fact that the services are all horizontally scalable right so if you want high availability you make sure you have low balancers you make sure you horizontally scale your services another aspect is the you know automated health check and restart of services and for that you know we have solutions that red hat red hat high availability software and you can pair those two together so we don't look at that as being part of the open stack distribution we look at that as being part of the overall solution so if you want that you get those two components you you know we'll have white papers that will show how to operate those together and that will provide this to us a driven type of thing yeah okay if I could just add to the original question I mean the customers that we see we're looking for exactly the same thing that they look for when they do a production deployment Linux because at the end of the day when you actually launch the workload it's running on on Slez with Xander KVM it's running on rel with Xander KVM the open stack is actually not part of the execution stack it's part of the management stack so customers are looking for certification on hardware they're looking for certified applications that they can migrate into the cloud and those are all things that are that are inherently part of enterprise Linux as well yeah and to add on on to that I think this is really good discussion when we when we take our perspective and kind of where Nick was going and these are that these are the exact conversations that we want to have with our customers that were actually our basis which is you know when you actually go from a proof-of-concept which you know there's certain infrastructure that you need in place there's certain expectations around the software that you're putting out I think that customers it's it's a that it's a stop at POC and then a lot of our customers are starting with POC's and buying POC units and so it's actually really an interesting evolution it it also ties back to where where open stack is right in its own evolution and as you know as you indicated this conference a great indicator of of where open stack is growing and as we start seeing more and more of these types of very strenuous requirements coming in I think we start finding our finding ourselves in a production environment up the floor for questions in a second I have one question one last question for the panel so in terms of where you see this going in the future so sort of a paint-of-visionary picture of where you see each of you guys see from a from your company perspective next three to five years where do you see open stack going where do you see your distributions going one minute so that's a great question and I can be sure that I will be wrong in my forward-looking statement but clearly I don't see any reason why there is less and less reason to run on straight bare metal I'm saying straight because you can therefore I think this this will really become our common kernel and we'll still be delivering the real and we'll still be delivering kernel inside but every operation that your IS will have to do except for maintaining the bare metal infrastructure to be virtualized by the way I think there's a great foreshadowing to the presidential debate tonight by the way giving us one minute this would be interesting to see what's going to happen yeah but essentially three to five years you know again to go back to something I said earlier you know the Dell customer base is varied and there's a unique set of needs that come with a bunch of different markets and where we were right where I see this going in three to five years and in the space that we that commission I are a part of we are also the team that's working on Hadoop solutions obviously what we're developing with crowbar we've developed an open source community so what we're seeing is I believe is more and more appetite and interest and adoption in open source in general and I think that will help drive where OpenStack is going to go put some bold statements out there but I'll be recorded by the way yeah I know that are gonna be recorded I gotta be shown right in next year and when we're all wrong yeah but I think what's what's gonna be happening is we're going to see more and more the enterprise start adopting a little bit more that being said there I believe there's going to be a market for existing cloud technologies as well I believe there's going to be market for all of these things OpenStack offers us a venue to kind of a new space that customers that have the needs that are that are met by OpenStack will be with what Nick said and I think OpenStack is going to become the de facto standard when it comes to delivering infrastructure as a service and like Nick was saying people will stop thinking so much about hardware there will still be people whose jobs it is to maintain that hardware but the end users are really not going to worry about the hardware is going to become more and more deeply extracted the abstracted the networking as well and I think OpenStack is going to be the technology that brings that to the people and kind of takes everything else out so there will be there will always be competitors and smaller smaller people doing the cloud stuff but I think OpenStack is going to become the kind of the go-to standard so I'll go on in a limb and make the statement that none of you guys want to make OpenStack will be the only cloud in five years we can all hope right now I'm sure that it'll take a little bit longer for that maybe six seven years so I agree fundamental with what you guys are saying and I like the analogy that you brought up earlier of OpenStack being like Linux and I think just like you know speaking specifically to Red Hat OpenStack you know initially we have a huge amount of churn we have a lot of features being added and just like we had with Red Hat Enterprise Linux over ten years ago the support model has evolved right so initially you have people that are on a very short support cadence and so I think three to five years from now what we're going to see is a stabilization and you know maturity of OpenStack based clouds so that you know customers can stay on something for a prolonged period of time so eventually you get to the point where you're actually thinking about hey I want to be on a particular release of OpenStack for five years now we need to take a look at today with Folsom does anyone think that you could be on Folsom five years from now probably not but we want to get to that point and that's what we're all driving towards so I think obviously I'm not going to say that in three to five years OpenStack is not going to be successful because so so I guess my my vision three to five years you're all if you're an enterprise and you're running have OpenStack set up and send off a workload to run a Hyper-V set off workload to run everything through that single pane of glass I mean that's and 70% of your workloads are going to be running a 30% that will still be running using existing verification management technologies to OpenStack become the the Linux of the cloud the question is who becomes the CPM of the cloud. Alright with that we'll open it up for the questions on the floor questions yes yeah go ahead so I think it's just like Linux today I mean you'll always be able to migrate if you're using a specific set of tools that's in one distribution and it's not a different distribution you're gonna have to you're gonna have to migrate at least to the tool set level but from an API level you should be fine. Yeah I would just say that the whole point of having a core OpenStack set of API is that that allows you to not have vendor lock-in at that level and if you have lock-in at the tools that's a different situation but I think that as long as we're all focused on working upstream first so if you're gonna work with you know Canonical to get a feature upstream it's going upstream and so therefore Red Hat will also benefit from that same feature. I know this oversimplifies OpenStack but a reasonable analogy is think about Apache if you're gonna run Apache on Red Hat or Apache on Ubuntu if you're running Apache 2.2 you're running Apache and and your HTML and CSS and everything behind that is is gonna be you can migrate it from one Apache under any distribution you want to the other. Yeah and I'll just briefly say right before I hand it over to Canonical here I think it's within our powers a community to help influence this as well right that's that's that's what's unique about what we're doing here in this in this moment is you know there are decisions that all the great partners on this stage are making but we as a community have a voice to actually let the so yeah I don't see any reason why when we are talking about the same version of OpenStack there shouldn't be a in fact I'm quite sure when these iPrevisors are going to be running different OS's and it's one or two persons answer that that'd be good. In production it's in the rounds of 50 and saying some of these numbers but yeah we have we actually have a variety of customers in all these different stages of the marketing team hasn't ever say a number. You can say any number. We work with a lot of service providers and so for the service providers they white label what what we build and support so they've also deployed it and if the if the heart of the question is how many people are using OpenStack it's it's the number is growing every day and it's I can't a full product out yet so we don't have customers in production but we are working with a handful of Lighthouse customers we're calling them to get them to production quickly so that when we do have a GA release of the Red Hat Open Stack product that they'll be ready to go out the door I'm also not in marketing so I'm not gonna throw a number out because my marketing guys will hit me over the head concept Lighthouse customer kinds of kinds of activities going on. We're just about out of time so thank you very much panel members for your contributions


Today we're in chapter 15 in the gospel of Luke. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through 10. So let's read verses 1 through 7, and we'll get into our study tonight. Luke chapter 15, beginning at verse one, reading to verse seven. Luke writes, then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying this man received sinners and eats with them. So I spoke this parable to them, saying what man of you having 100 sheep if he loses one of them does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. One of the things I was thinking of and by way of introduction, a little story. This really is something that emphasizes God's desire, this story, the stories that we're gonna be looking at. God's desire for people who are lost to be found.  He has a desire to reach out and to seek those who are lost. You see that from the very beginning? You see it in the book of Genesis when Adam falls. And you see that it is not Adam who is seeking out the Lord. It's not Adam that is searching for God at the fall. I would remind you that it is God who is seeking out Adam. Adam and his wife Eve actually are hiding themselves from the presence of God there in the Garden of Eden. They fashioned for themselves fig leaves and were hiding behind them their own works, if you will. When they heard the voice of the Lord God there in that garden. And the Bible tells us very clearly that Adam was called to by the Lord. For the word of God says that God called and said, Adam, where are you? And in that call, you see the heart of a father, a broken hearted father who has lost a child that is dear to him. That's the cry that you find in God. Right from the very beginning, Adam, where are you is not the voice of an arresting officer. Adam, where are you is the voice of a broken hearted father who has a child that has lost and he's calling out with a broken heart so that that child might be found. When my daughter Corrine, who is now 30 years old, when my daughter Corrine was about a year and a half Marie and I took her to the store, a store with us. And while we were there at the store we had placed her down for a moment so that I could look for something on one of the shelves and Marie and I looked together for something on one of the shelves and then I looked down for my baby and she was gone. It only takes a moment for a little baby to toddle off and she was gone and I have to tell you my heart was frozen in my chest and I had just an instant response and I began to just hunt through those aisles for this little one who wandered away from me and she was simply around the corner in another aisle there but I have to tell you for that instant, for that moment there was a tremendous fear in me and there was a cry in my heart and I began to call out for my baby and you know that's what God did when Adam wandered away. God was insane, oh you're wandering away, that's cool. I hope you fall over a cliff and break your neck it'll teach you a lesson. That's not what he was doing. What he was doing is he was crying out to him and you see that over and over and over again. The word of God reveals to us that it is God who calls to us and he does ask us where are you and I've always found it interesting since it was first pointed out to me how that when you read the Bible in the book of Genesis and you read not just the words but you read the punctuation how interesting it is to see that in chapters one and two you find a period here or a colon, a semicolon, a comma, whatever, you'll find punctuation but you never find a question mark in the first two chapters of the Bible. The first question that you find in scripture actually comes from the mouth of Satan himself when he asked the question of Eve, has God said? And I find it interesting to note that as he says that has God said, he's questioning God's love, God's compassion, God's keeping power, God's mercy, he's questioning God's word and he's doing so from the very beginning in the book of Genesis when he asked the question has God said? And the second question mark that you find is when God says, Adam where are you? The first question is Satan questioning God's word. The second question reflects on the fact that now that Adam has believed the lie where has that gotten you? And so the Bible makes it very clear to us that all have sin and fall short of the glory of God and we are lost in wandering aimlessly in this world and it's God who is the one who pursues us, it's God who seeks us out and the reason that God does that is because he loves us. It is God's desire to seek for, to find and then to restore those who have fallen and those who are lost. In Psalm 78 verse 37, speaking of Israel the psalmist says their heart was not steadfast with him nor were they faithful in his covenant but he being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them.  God's mercy and his compassion is revealed in the fact that he is long suffering and the Bible tells us in second Peter chapter three verse nine, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness but is long suffering to us word. Not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance and so God's word is very clear that he loves us and he's not willing to lose us and God's love, a love that seeks is most perfectly manifested in the ministry of Jesus Christ. You see Jesus is revealed in the New Testament as the one who seeks out the lost in order that he might find and in order that he might restore them. In Matthew 18 verse 11 Jesus said the son of man has come to save that which was lost and John in first John chapter four verses nine and 10 said this in this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him in this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins not that we first loved him and we love him because he first loved us and so God first loved us we were lost he sought us out and so what we have in this chapter is a picture of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ towards us. What we have is a parable that is given to us in three facets and we're gonna look tonight at the first two we're gonna be looking at the lost sheep and the lost coin and so what we have here in verses one and two is an audience notice the audience this is all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him there was something about the Lord Jesus Christ that did not cause people who were who obviously were sinners and had no relationship with God did not cause them to be concerned about being in his presence there was something about Jesus that is incredibly attractive something about the Lord when he actually is present that causes even those hardened individual to find him to find something about him attractive and that's what's taking place here you have what are called tax collectors and you have sinners and they are drawing near now to listen to him now this is an audience that is deemed unworthy by the religious Pharisees you see the Pharisees verse two are complaining the Pharisees and their lawyers the lawyers being experts in the law of Moses or religious law they're beginning to complain they're saying this man received sinners and eats with them and so this audience is unworthy at least to the Pharisees they would never hang around with these kinds of people because they were the undesirables they were the outcasts now these are tax collectors and sinners tax collectors they used to be hated now everybody loves them right tax collectors tax collectors during the time of Christ could buy what we would call a franchise a tax collecting franchise and it would entitle them to levy taxes on citizens as well as travelers and often tax collectors were extortioners and there were people who could be bribed easily over time many of these tax collectors had gained great wealth and were very hated by the people because the Jews hated the fact that they were being governed by Rome which they knew to be a pagan country and so a tax collector who was working for these pagans were considered traders as well as apostates because they were serving pagans and they were making money off of their own people and so taxes as they were being levied actually had a set standard but the tax collectors were capable of saying I'm gonna add a little bit of that for myself and so they would give to Rome the accepted tax but any profit they would keep for themselves and the Jewish people hated them because these tax gatherers were actually gaining on the people's misery and they hated them for that now sinners were simply people of poor reputations these were those who did not live according to the law of Moses and again Pharisees would normally have nothing to do with them remember in chapter five here in the gospel of Luke verses 29 and 30 how it said Levi which is another name for Matthew that Levi gave Jesus a great feast in his own house and there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them and their scribes and the Pharisees complained against his disciples saying why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners this is an ongoing problem they can't stand the fact that Jesus actually hangs around with sinners these were the people though who were gathering together to listen to and speak and there was something about Jesus that made them very comfortable there was something about him that made them feel that they could listen to him there was something about him that made them realize that he wouldn't turn them away and so they would come and they would eat with him undoubtedly would ask him questions and a variety of other things now the Pharisees in verse two the Pharisees and scribes complained saying this man received sinners now earlier I just read to you they had found fault with the disciples for eating with them but now they're taking issue with Jesus himself now notice how it says he received sinners and eats with them the word receive means to accept into companionship to not reject to receive means to accept warmly and lovingly Jesus is being attacked because he's a friend of sinners and the neat thing about him is he still is he still is a friend of sinners he still is available if he were not a friend of sinners then we wouldn't be saved today but he is a friend to us and he is somebody who is accessible to us and so as Jesus is watching the Pharisees and the scribes complaining and all saying that this is a man who welcomed sinners and even eats with them Jesus begins to minister to them and so it says in verse three he spoke this parable to them saying what man of you having a hundred sheep if he loses one of them does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it now I want you to notice something with me here I want you to see that what you have is Luke saying he spoke this parable to them now I want you to note that because what you have in chapter 15 is actually a series that some have counted as three parables you have the parable of the lost sheep the parable of the lost coin and then you have the parable of the lost son in reality I want you to notice something and I find it interesting I want you to notice how Luke said he spoke this parable to them now if he's speaking this parable that tells me that this is one parable but it has three facets to it three dimensions and so what you're gonna gain by looking at chapter 15 is actually an insight into Christ from three different angles today we're gonna look at the first two we're gonna look at the lost sheep and the lost coin but next time we get together we're gonna look at the parable of the lost son it's been called the parable of the lost son but in reality it's a parable of the lost sons because there are two sons that are spoken of in that particular portion of this parable but that's what we're looking at we're looking at one parable given in three sections and so each one of these sections is intended to reveal something about Jesus Christ to the Pharisees you see the Pharisees are complaining that he's a friend of sinners the Pharisees are complaining that he actually receives them that he's warm to them that he doesn't reject them they have a real problem with this and so Jesus has to teach them something about the love of God the God who searches and seeks until he finds the lost and that's what he's doing here so it gives an illustration relating to a man who had 100 sheep and so what you have here is 100 sheep and he loses one of them but what does he do? Well Jesus says he leaves the 99 in the wilderness and goes after the one that's lost so what we have here in the first picture is a picture of a good shepherd a good shepherd who seeks after lost sheep now every good shepherd would search exhaustively until he found the sheep that is lost and interestingly enough the Lord Jesus Christ is being portrayed here as that good shepherd which is something he refers to himself later on in the Gospel of John as being but he is a shepherd in Ezekiel in chapter 34 verses 11 and 12 Ezekiel writes this is what the Lord says I myself will search for my sheep and look after them as a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them so will I look after my sheep I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness so God portrays himself as a one who seeks and searches out the lost that's why Psalm 23 is so powerful when he says the Lord is my shepherd so there's a sense of relationship that the sheep and the shepherd have a shepherd and sheep relationship is one when the shepherd is a righteous or a good shepherd is one of devotion and concern from the shepherd's part towards the sheep and so this sheep here is lost now obviously the lost sheep is a picture of a lost sinner this is somebody who is following their own heart and as they've been following after their own heart they've wandered away they're not considering their course of life they're simply wandering through life now that's an adequate picture I think of people without the Lord if you take notes Ephesians chapter two verses one and two goes along with this because when Paul was writing to the Ephesians in chapter two verses one and two he said to them you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience when he says in which you once walked that word walked there in Ephesians chapter two is where we actually would translate it you walked aimlessly or without purpose another way to say it is how you meander through life you just went from one thing to another is the point that Paul was making and that's what Jesus is speaking about he's speaking about a sheep that just is wandering aimlessly through life no purpose, no direction moving from one thing to another trying this for a while then moving to that moving on, moving on, moving on never settling on anything and the further they wander the further away they are from the shepherd and before you know it they are hopelessly lost this is one of those little sheep that was part of a group that wandered off from the group and the shepherd who knows them by name looks over his flock and tends it and notices that one of them has wandered away so he knows that that sheep is in danger because sheep cannot do anything to protect themselves I mean when's the last time you went by a guy's fence and it said beware of sheep I mean sheep are not something that you're afraid of they cannot defend themselves in all and so this is a helpless little animal that is out there wandering around and so it's a picture of somebody who wanders through life growing more and more lost and in more and more danger it's like we were before we came to Christ that's the whole picture here didn't even know you were lost thinking you were having a great time trying some of this for a little while and it didn't satisfy drinking from this well for a little while and it didn't satisfy moving on, moving further, further away and deeper into sin to the point that you got like me probably very lost and very hardened to the things of the Lord and yet the Bible says that even though the sheep is wandering away that the good shepherd, this shepherd chases after him to rescue him and so this is one of those passages that reveals to us the love and tend to concern a shepherd has for the lost it's a picture of Jesus Christ and what he's doing here is he's illustrating this to the Pharisees and he's making a point he's saying you religious individuals of all people should have an understanding of how painful it is to be lost and separated from God of all people you ought to have a soft heart towards these people whom you refer to as tax collectors and sinners when in reality you're no better than they are you're just as lost as they are and if you really had a relationship with God you wouldn't object to me ministering to this person you would rejoice that I am you would be glad that somebody is caring for these people we have members of our fellowship right now who go into Ontario on a weekly basis and they go to that area that is called the tent city and they do ministry there they minister to the people there they bring them food they bring them clothing they gather them together for Bible studies and they give the word of God to them and they do that every week these people in our fellowship who have a heart for the lost they're doing the work of ministry amongst people that some complain about because they're there or not not to be and what you end up with is people like the Pharisees who get so upset because this is going on even Christians and not realizing that this is a group of people that give to us great opportunity to reach and to talk to them about the love of God and to encourage them and help them and to serve them which is what the church is supposed to be doing anyway isn't it that's what we've been called to do you see and so Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees and he's saying to them in this parable that he has come to seek and to save the lost and while you are so righteous he's saying to them and so separated you don't even have an understanding of what it means to reach into somebody's life and actually get dirtied up by it if you will in the sense of being there alongside of them and caring for them you don't understand it all so what is happening is he's portraying himself as the shepherd seeking for the lost undoubtedly as he's going through that wilderness he's calling out the sheep's name you see in John chapter 10 verse 3 Jesus speaking about sheep and shepherd and their relationship says that the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out he says in John 10, 27 my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me my sheep know my voice sheep actually get to know the voice of the shepherd because the shepherd when the sheep were born would oftentimes hold the sheep sometimes like just hovering over as the sheep was giving birth to her lamb and the shepherd very often would take that sheep that little sheep and would hold it and would bond with it would speak to that sheep and then the little sheep would begin to recognize his voice and he'd even name the sheep and he'd name it lamb chop no he'd name it barbecue no he'd name I'm just kidding of course but he might have I don't know but he would name that sheep and he would speak to that sheep and the sheep that little lamb would get to know the shepherd's voice and that's why that way when the shepherd would call like a dog would run to its master recognizing the voice that little sheep he could call the name and the sheep would come out of that flock and would come to the master would come to the shepherd and that's what he would do he would bond with his voice he would bond with his tenderness and his concern and all because very often when they were raising a sheep it was not for them to eat their meat it was so that they could harvest their wool and that's so that many of these became almost like if you will close to them in a way a family pet does but they're very dear they'd name them they'd care for them they'd love them and if one of them wandered away he'd be concerned enough to chase after them and that's exactly what Jesus is speaking about here and the little sheep would know his voice and so as it goes out he continues to search until as it says in verse four until he finds it in other words he doesn't give up and when he has found it he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing and so as he gathers this little sheep he places it on his shoulders because the sheep is exhausted and because the sheep needs to be carried away to safety now I find it interesting to note that the sheep is not looking for the shepherd and that's because the shepherd wasn't lost the shepherd is looking for the lost sheep and when he finds the lost sheep he gently comforts that sheep and carries it home sometimes when people give their testimony they'll say what their life was like and it can be very interesting to see how the Lord has worked in wonderful ways in their life to bring them to Christ but I find it interesting how so often I've heard people say and then I found the Lord fact is is the Lord wasn't lost you didn't find him it wasn't one of those cosmic hide-and-go-seek things where God says I'm hiding somewhere and you gotta find me no the Bible clearly portrays Jesus as the one who searches us out we're the one who's wandering away and it's Jesus who's coming after us and as he finds that little lost sheep he gently places it on his shoulders because that sheep is exhausted possibly injured and so he protects and cares for it and carries it home Isaiah 40 verse 11 says he will feed his flock like a shepherd he will gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young this gives us a picture of the seeking savior this gives us a picture of a shepherd who loves his sheep and once he's found that sheep notice verse six he calls together his friends and neighbors and he says to them rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost so he's filled with joy he wasn't concerned financially he's filled with joy because the sheep has been found in his safe and then he gives a party he gives a party because the sheep that was lost has now been found now the self-righteous Pharisees were not rejoicing that these lost people were coming to Jesus Christ when I first got saved ancient history 101 for you 37 years ago as a 20 year old long hair you know bushy sideburns round granny glasses you know tie-dyed t-shirt ripped Levi's before you bottom ripped ripped Levi's barefoot I would wear slacks and a dress shirt barefoot I never wore shoes to this day I wear shoes on Wednesdays and Sundays I have feet this wide it's amazing just never wore shoes I didn't like to wear shoes so I was always barefoot now I wear you know flip flops and that used to call them thongs but I won't say that anymore so flip flops can't say that that's true you get saved and people some Christians had a real problem because the church I went to allowed guitars and drums on the platform there and they were really upset over that and they would get angry and they would call my pastor Chuck Smith names and they just thought there's just no way there's no way that these hippies can actually be getting saved and they didn't believe our testimony and that's the truth they didn't believe us because we were not clean cut we were not clean cut at all we looked this I mean you get saved you know you come forward in an invitation and when we walked forward you know coming forward up the aisle didn't suddenly make us have shoes and suddenly our hair was being cut back further further further until we looked like a jock I mean that didn't happen and we came walking forward sometimes people who were just totally hung over because they had been partying the night before sometimes they had been loaded just before they got to church somebody had invited them they came the first time I went to Calvary Chapel I had a friend of mine say to me I want you to go to church with me and I kept saying I don't want to go with you to church he said I want you to go to church with me and I would argue with him and I'd say I don't want to go to your church and he said you got to come just at least one time you got to come to church with me and I said finally his name was Bill I said finally Bill okay one I'll go one time just to get you off my back I'll go with you one time he said great I'll be picking you up at such and such time 5.30 or whatever we have to go to Costa Mesa and this and that I went from my house across the street to a neighbor's house and while I was there I was drinking beer with them and while I was there I was smoking pot and I was sitting there getting loaded and drinking waiting to go to church the first time I went to Calvary Chapel I'd been smoking pot and I'd been drinking and I remember very well just going in with we used to call it with a buzz on I'd walked in and I was buzzed and I'm just going whoa you know and I'm sitting there with in a small church that was built to see two, three hundred people there were over five hundred kids in there and they were all up and down the aisles they were up on the platform I remember sitting on the left side of the church in the very back and it was so crowded that the person behind me would put they put their knees up so I could lean against them you know as I was sitting like that and I put my knees up and that's how we sat hippies didn't really care where you sat some of you old folk remember that we didn't care carpet no carpet doesn't matter to me and so as we're sitting I was loaded and I still remember and as I walked in they had these guys up there playing music and the first thing I remember about that as I walked in is I thought man you know this is different than what I'm used to I'm not used to hearing this I'm used to hearing something entirely different and it really caught me off guard and to see all of these young people they're 18, 19, 17, 21 all around my age to see all these young people was really kind of like revolutionary and then as I'm just there and they're playing this music I still remember one of the songs they sang which was at that time it was someone really loves you guess who you know that was a song that I was familiar with from being played on the radio during the 60s and all somebody and then they said in his name is Jesus and I remember that hearing that and I thought well that's kind of cool you know throw Jesus in there and I was not saved I just thought well that's creative that's cool it's not offensive to me I enjoyed it you know and then they give the invitation and then somebody asked me do you want to go forward and I at that point I said no no I'm already a Christian and there I was oh it's drinking and smoking pot and I'll tell you you know I was caught so off guard I mean I remember so well all these kids around me and I'm thinking this is weird you know I actually like it but because I thought that if I walked in there you know drinking and loaded I was sure they would kick me out of the church because the church that I used to go to they would definitely have kicked me out and so I figured that if I go in like this barefooted, long hair, buzzed I was sure that what was going to happen was somebody was going to walk me out and say don't come back again and I was going to be able to tell my friend who invited me see you're all a bunch of hypocrites you're all the same you guys just you know and I was waiting to do that you can't imagine what I felt like because I'm thinking they're going to see this hippie kid in their long hair and all of that when I saw the Bible study teacher his name was Lonnie he was freakier looking than I was and you can't imagine that how I looked at this freak and I said whoa you know I don't trust this place I like it I mean it was just too it was but that's what Jesus calls us to do you see now that was 37 years ago I'm 57 years old now I never want to forget what it was like at the age of 20 and that's why if you want to come in here with piercings up and down your face you set off middle detectors every time you walk through you know to get on a plane I don't really care I really really don't if you want to be tatted up and down all that's between you and the Lord I'm not going to make an issue over that you know we had a kid in our church who used to put he'd take eggs and he'd put them in his hair and then spike it out so it looked like a giant spider and you could see him from the back and his hair was like this long and it was just point after point you know and he wanted to freak us out and you can't freak me out you can't freak out a freak you know and I you know been there done that come on you know it doesn't do anything to me you know I wonder if it might hurt but other than that you see the Lord Jesus Christ is a fisherman and fishermen only clean the fish after they catch them and there's so many people who are trying to clean up fish you know Jesus cleans the fish up after he catches them and if and if he want if this person gets saved and they want to have their hair like that and they want to have those piercings that's between them and the Lord I don't get into those arguments I've had people who've who've asked me in the past you know pastor what about all those tattoos and aren't they demonic and this and that and I said man you know come on come on I have a friend of mine who's a pastor and he has a tattoo on his arm of a woman and he called me up and he said pastor he says you know because he's one of my sheep who's planted the church he said pastor he goes I just was thinking you know I'm trying to teach the word of God and I've got this naked woman on my arm what should I do I said draw a dress on her man I mean what else can you do put a dress on her I'm just serious I'm not kidding I can't put a dress on her man what else can you do let's not get let's not get trippy and weird let's not become self-righteous and you know what we have it you know we have it on occasion I have somebody who's new to the fellowship saying how come you know he got all the piercings and you know I asked them why ask me you know that's not something I'm concerned about you know because man looks at the outer appearance but the Lord looks at the heart and if this person who's all tatted up can speak to another kid who's all tatted up more power to him and if he can reach them for Jesus Christ bless God what am I supposed to say you know and get them all removed so you can be you know when I got saved there was a church this is the truth I could name the church I won't there was a church that had a barber on staff so when the hippies came forward they'd go forward to pray and they'd take them in the back and cut their hair off because everybody knows that Jesus had a crew cut and it just amazes me it amazes me how we turn people away because we just don't like how they look they just don't fit in to our idea of what a Christian is the self-righteous Pharisees were not rejoicing that these sinners were being saved and so Jesus speaks to them in John chapter 9 verses 40 and 41 Jesus said for judgment I have come into this world that those who do not see may see and that those who see may be made blind some of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words and said to him are we blind also Jesus said to them if you were blind you would have no sin but now you say we see therefore your sin remains you think you see when you don't and you are hardened in your blindness they would not rejoice that Jesus was actually bringing people like tax-gatherers and sinners into the kingdom of God he was the one who was gathering these sinners on his shoulders and rejoicing and inviting people to rejoice with him but they wouldn't and so he says in verse 7 I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance there is joy in heaven and God rejoices when the lost are found there is joy and he wants to share it and who is the one who wants to share the joy the owner of the sheep now there are 99 whom he refers to as just persons who he says need no repentance now these are not truly righteous people these are 99 self-righteous people these were the people that society respected but they were still lost these were the Pharisees these were the ones who are well who didn't know that they needed a physician because I've discovered something as a lost sinner who has been found I can now rejoice with the Lord when another lost sinner is found and I do rejoice that's why when we have invitations and people come forward to say I need to be right with God that's why we as a church will applaud we applaud because we're rejoicing because along with God we are glad to see people getting right with God and anybody who's been saved can rejoice when you see somebody else saved and so he speaks here concerning a lost sheep and then in verse 80 he speaks of a lost coin he says or what woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one coin does not light a lamp sweep the house search carefully till she finds it and when she has found it she calls her friends and neighbors together saying rejoice with me for I have found the piece which I lost likewise I say to you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents this is the second part of the parable of the woman and her lost coin he says this woman has 10 coins but notice she loses one instead of saying well I've got nine other coins she begins searching for the one that has been lost the reason why she does that is because its value to her is not necessarily monetary during this time married women had a headdress that was made of 10 silver coins that was linked by a silver chain and sometimes a woman would say for years to amass 10 coins her headdress was like her wedding ring and it could never be taken from her even to pay off a debt this headdress of 10 coins had tremendous value to her and so what we see here is how God values you the value that you have to him that he will search for you so in her dark home she lost her coin but she diligently searches for it and so this is a picture of Jesus searching for us until he finds us we're like a lost coin the longer that coin is lost it becomes covered with dust and it becomes useless as a matter of fact it is useless until it's found and the longer a coin is lost the less probability is there of it being found it's not real difficult to encourage a child to have faith in the Lord it really isn't that difficult you just everyday encourage them to pray and talk to them about Jesus and you impart to them to a receptive and innocent heart a realization of the God that had created that child it's not difficult to encourage a child to have a faith in God it really isn't but if that child is neglected and no encouragement to that child is given for that child to have a relationship with the Lord as they grow older they become harder and as they become harder and harder to the things of the Lord that as they grow older and older it becomes somewhat more and more miraculous if you will when they actually get saved it's been said there's no sinner like an old sinner and when people are hardened in sin they'll say well I used to believe but I don't anymore the longer a coin is lost the more dust accumulates it has no value and so what he does it shows the value he places on you by searching diligently for you because of the value he has placed on you until he finds you she even lights a lamp she sweeps the house she searches diligently until she finds it she's looking for something of value that has been lost and as a result when she finds it again there's great joy in verse nine it says when she found it she calls her friends and neighbors together saying rejoice with me I have found the peace which I lost this piece of great value to me that I cared about rejoice with me before I found it now I want you to see verse ten likewise I say to you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents I find this interesting and I want to point something out to you I want you to see how he says there is joy in the presence of the angels of God in other words there's joy in front of or before the angels of heaven who is rejoicing sometimes I have heard people say the angels are rejoicing well interestingly enough salvation is something that angels desire according to first Peter chapter one verse 12 angels desire to look into in other words they exert themselves to gain a better perspective of salvation and the holy angels are actually struck with astonishment at the plan of human redemption you see angels cannot be saved once they fall I've had people ask in the past can Satan repent and the answer is he doesn't can fallen angels repent the answer is they never do they remain fallen for eternity so those that remain unfallen the unfallen angels don't understand salvation they want to peer into it they don't understand the plan of redemption but they don't understand it because they don't partake in it God who initiates salvation is the one who rejoices because he's the one who searched diligently for the lost and rejoices when he finds and thus the angels will see God rejoicing over the lost who was found which means that God rejoiced when you were found and that the angels were witnesses of God's joy when you said yes to Jesus Christ now the angels in that they don't experience salvation don't have that personal experiential knowledge of that they're aware that God is the savior they're aware that God saves they're aware that God sent his son Jesus to save but they never experienced that so God who's the one who initiates salvation and pursues until he finds rejoices and so do we because we have been found also so we can rejoice along with the Lord God now in what Jesus is saying it's very simply God rejoices over the lost being saved but self-righteous and self-satisfied people never do the Bible tells us in Psalm 47.1 clap your hands all you people shout to God with the voice of triumph and when people are saved that's what we're doing we're praising God and we're shouting with the voice of triumph because God has conquered God has worked through he reached somebody who had wandered away and was dead in sin and in trespasses he reached this person who was a walking dead dead man walking if you will somebody who was alive yet not spiritually alive somebody who was what the Bible calls a sinner somebody who was not pursuing God somebody who was lost who had missed the mark but through the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit's activity when the message is preached and you heard the message in a personal way and you said that's me I'm a person like that sheep I've wandered away I don't have a relationship with God you mean God is pursuing me God is following after me God is looking for me you mean God will rejoice when he finds me and the answer is yes and when you say yes to Christ God forgive me a sinner I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God I believe he died on the cross for my sin I believe that he he was in a grave for three days and that you resurrected him I believe he ascended to heaven I believe that and I want to personally acknowledge that and when you do and you're born again when the Holy Spirit comes and dwells within you through faith in Christ and you are now a new creation old things pass away behold all things becoming new then we rejoice along with God who has saved you we didn't save you God saves you his word saves you his spirit drew you so ask yourself today if you're not a Christian or even if you're a backslidden or a Christian who is living a very carnal life ask yourself is this the best that life has to offer to you because right now for a person who doesn't know the Lord you may be complaining about how things are and you may be ready to vote for that person who's going to change everything for you but the bottom line is there's only one who can actually change you and that's the Lord Jesus Christ because he works from the inside and I thought I was a Christian I was raised by a mom who taught me that there is a God that there is a Bible by a mama who prayed who would pray for me who wanted me to go to catechism classes who encouraged me to have a faith in God and yet I didn't have that faith in God I was like you the lost a sheep wandering further and further and further away hurting and hurting and hurting others all along the way didn't even realize how bad off I was I was the blind who thought I could see and here comes the Lord slowly but surely pursuing until he finally with courts of love drew me to himself to the preaching of the gospel a message that says God loves the world so much that he gave his son now you could have told me all day long there is a hell I'm going to go there and my response at that time would have been and so are all of my friends so will parties so what I don't care I don't care that you say I'm going to hell and I did say that I don't care that you say I'm going to hell what does it matter to me who are you to tell me anything anyway you don't know me and I had this belligerent antagonistic angry attitude towards people don't tell me there's something wrong with me go look at yourself for a while the hypocrisy of this world that we're living in and you're coming and talking to me are you kidding me you know I haven't ever seen a real Christian in my life and you're telling me that you're one you know what it's fine for you but it's not fine for me that was my attitude but one day it finally all came to a head and finally one day I woke up to the reality of the fact that I was most miserable I had no joy I had nothing but guilt and I began to condemn myself for the things that I was doing and finally realized that I'm hurting my family hurting my mom hurting my dad that I'm hurting the girls that I'm dating that cared about me that I didn't care for and didn't treat right and it finally got to the point when I was going crazier and crazier and then almost dying of a drug and alcohol overdose that I finally said I'm lost I am absolutely lost now I might not have said I'm a sinner because I really didn't know what that meant but I did know what it means to be lost I was most definitely lost and during that time it's when I began to cry out to God and I started saying God you gotta help me God you gotta help me and I can still remember as a non-saved person and I wasn't a Christian I still remember that I started going through times where I was saying God I need your help God I need to change God I need your help I don't know what to do I went to see my parish priest I grew up in Norwalk I went to Santa Fe Springs to go to church I went to St. Pires the 10th church and one of my friends was telling me about Jesus and I went and spoke to my priest and I said I want to talk to you for a minute if I may I said one of my buddies is telling me that he's a Christian and that his life has changed I said and I'm a Catholic and I would just like to have some answers to give to him can you help me because I know the Catholic religion is the true religion but I don't know how to present it to somebody can you help me and I told him you know I haven't been living a good life I've been living away from God I do drugs I drink I steal I lie I'm an angry person but I need to I need truth can you help me I need truth and he said to me well I've tried the Oriental religions I tried Buddhism I tried Hinduism and I came back to Catholicism and so will you that was his answer to me I'll never forget it and I looked at him and he answered he said yeah you'll be okay and I walked out of that room at 20 years of age and I said to myself and this is the truth forgive me if it sounds judgmental but I thought to myself if this man knew truth he'd have given it to me if he knew what was true he'd have given it to me because I was asking him to and at the age of 20 I said he doesn't know what truth is and I went out and I went even further down and further down and further down until the shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep until the woman who finds lost coin finally caught up with me and grabbed me put me on his shoulders brought me back rejoicing and said let's party let's party and that's when I was 20 years old when I gave my heart to Jesus Christ and no looking back no turning back God has been faithful all along and he rejoices when he finds that one lost sinner he rejoiced over me and he'll rejoice over you