{"id":51142,"date":"1999-09-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-09-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/world-is-mine\/"},"modified":"1999-09-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1999-09-01T00:00:00","slug":"world-is-mine","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/world-is-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Is Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was coming back from Ridgecrest a few years ago, and there had been three thousand students or so. They show up everywhere&#8211;for a whole week. Finally you&#39;re on the plane, and you think, &quot;O Lord, thank you that I&#39;m moving away from this place.&quot; And because the Bible is the last desperate defense, you pull it up around your face. When you have your Bible around your face, everybody will leave you alone. It&#39;s a frightening specter. Even the stewardess won&#39;t ask you if you want peanuts. I said to the Lord, &quot;Lord, please, I just want to be alone for two or three hours before I get back to Omaha.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>I became aware of a young man crying in the seat beside me. He looked like a student, 19 or 20 years of age, and again I said, &quot;Lord, he&#39;s not mine. My sinners are all on the ground in Omaha.&quot; He kept crying, and finally I put down my Bible and I said, &quot;Son, I don&#39;t know what the matter is, but if there&#39;s anything I can help you with, I&#39;d like to.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>He told me that his mother and his father and his little sister had all three been killed in a car accident in Asheville, North Carolina, the day before on vacation. Suddenly, my heart grew very still and silent. Then I felt the pain, or tried to. I turned to him and said, &quot;I don&#39;t know what you must be feeling. I can&#39;t imagine this, but I know Someone who understands it perfectly.&quot; I took the Bible behind which I&#39;d been hiding and shared with him about Jesus Christ and was able to lead him to Christ in the air.<\/p>\n\n<p>But it was not my last act. I got off the plane there, and I called someone I knew and asked him to meet him at the plane where he was going to be landing. He needed help that day.<\/p>\n\n<p>You see, the world is mine. I can&#39;t brush off somebody because I happen to sit by him and don&#39;t know him. Yes, &quot;Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.&quot; If he is a servant, then we are servants.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[4606,4607,4950,4953,5265,5268,5293],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,382],"class_list":["post-51142","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-pastors-role","tax_ctp_tags-pastoral-calling","tax_ctp_tags-servant","tax_ctp_tags-service","tax_ctp_tags-weakness","tax_ctp_tags-weariness","tax_ctp_tags-work"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The World Is Mine - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/world-is-mine\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The World Is Mine - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was coming back from Ridgecrest a few years ago, and there had been three thousand students or so. 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