Thank you. Love you. Love you so much. [applause] Thank you. Wow. Can you hear me? Okay. Is this microphone on? Yeah, it's okay. All right. I speak loud if not. Thank you. Good morning, Abundant Life. It's such a joy to be here. I'm going to get to our shell in a second, but I want to honor the elders, the deacons in this church. I have so many warm memories. But these brothers and then also some of the wives and the and the sisters here have had a tremendous impact in my life. So thank you Ariel, thank you Keith, Rocky, Zeke, Jason, the memory of Carlton, Carlton and I became elders at the same time. Sister Valerie, sister Monique, Sister Kimrell, your singing was amazing. I have a special place my junior Tagata I have tremendous memories of all of you. Ariel is right. I had finished graduate school in 1997. I had lived in the Bay Area prior to that. Wonderful church that also helped me during those first few years in the early 90s was Spencer Bible Church. Many of you may have had some time there. Great respect for the elders there like Steve Zeisler and Brian Morgan. But I came back after two years in graduate school on the east coast and came back in 97. many of my friends who had were going to the previous church had moved on or they were somewhere else and my brother said there's this incredible church that meets in kind of this hole in the wall place in O'Brien that you need to check out and there's this incredible pastor but you got to come early because you can't find a seat. Okay. And if you came I don't know if I think it was the 11:30 service. It's impossible. You had to come in early. It felt like a club that you're getting into that you had to get in early. But I fell in love with Abundant Life in 1999. Shortly thereafter, I introduced my dad to pastor Paul. We had lunch together. And I'll never forget that lunch. It was at CPK in Paloto that since then has closed down. But I remember that CPK. It's one of my favorite favorite places in Palo Alto. And we had a great lunch. my brother, Pastor Paul, my dad, and I gave Pastor Paul one of my dad's books. Now, he didn't notice it was his book, but he looked at the book and he asked my dad, "Do you know the person who wrote this book?" He said, "It's me." So later on that same week, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, I get a call from Pastor Paul and said, "Hey, would your dad mind preaching at Abundant Life because I'm out of town this weekend?" It was just and my dad said yes. And that became a friend began a friendship between Pastor Paul, the elders here, and my dad. And as you know many of my Zach's messages have been on YouTube and I think there's a hundred of them that are with this abundant life sign on it. Plus that's the impact this church has had on the world. And my dad sends his regards. He'll come here. He's now living more off in the United States. And he has he and I have tremendous love for this church. All of us. All of us punans do. I remember one of my first me the first messages my dad said. Now remember we grew up in India and many of the churches there including the church I grew up in they're quieter people. Okay. So he comes here and said man this is lively. They all say amen 100 times [laughter] and they clap and I think it brought the energy out of my dad too. So thank you for that. We worship in different ways. It doesn't matter. But thankfully we all speak the same language, English. When we pray together, we're praying to the same Jesus. So it doesn't matter what tradition we grew up in. Some might be a little bit more clively. Pastor Paul used to say, you know, Zach Pun, he's more like a fireside chat. But but it doesn't matter. and whatever way we're grateful and through as the church been through many ups and downs abundant life the thing that I've respected about this church is its faithfulness when we get to heaven the only thing that God's going to ask us is not what's your bank account where do you go to school where your title he's going to ask us were you good and faithful good and faithful welcome to the heaven good and faithful saint And that's my testimony of my fellowship with the saints here. They've been good and faithful. And let me particularly call out brother Ael. I call him my brother from another mother. I think when we get to heaven, we're all going to have the last same last name. Okay, you drop your last names. You're all going to be son of God. Brother of Jesus. That's the last name. So we're going to fight over that. Sanjay Fune or Arshel Punin. Okay? Whatever the last name is, we're going to be brothers. And that's how I've looked with I've hit everything he has said. We've traveled together many places. And I love that brother deeply. He has been one of my favorite brothers in this church. And I I'm grateful for your faithfulness over how many years? 30 years plus. Praise God for that. Can we give him a hand for his faithfulness? I'm so grateful for that fellowship and for many others here. Is Sister Hill in the audience? Sister Hill. Oh, I think she's here. Thank you, sister. Can we give her a hand? [applause] I think I'm going to be walking with a cane. And she's still gonna be walking with her feet. She's I think in her 90s, but when I first got here, she would walk around and pray for every seat. Walk around. You just do the loop. So, I don't know if she's still doing that, Sister Hill, but that was my memory in O'Brien, in Legghorn. And so if you're sitting in a seat here, Sister Hills prayed for you. And that's the faithfulness that I really I respect in this church. And these are the pillars. These are the saints who when we get to heaven, we'll all have redeemed bodies. We'll all be like our 20s and 30s again. Full head of hair, all that stuff, you know, all that stuff. Our muscles will be So if you're having some kind of body ailment, we'll be perfect in heaven. We'll all be young again. And but we will watch these saints. And that's what I want to talk to you about a little bit today. In Psalm 101, it says, "We will make the I will make the godly my heroes." If you're young, if you're a young teenager here or 20some, you have a hero. Growing up, it might have been Michael Jordan or Kobe or LeBron. Usually, it's sports heroes or movie stars. Imagine if you could make the godlier heroes, Brother Archel, Sister Hill, many folks like that. We'll talk about many of them. Then we'll talk about Daniel. To me, Daniel's one of the great heroes. And I want to make this especially relevant to those who are working professionals because there's not many examples. A lot of the examples in the New Testament are examples like Jesus and the disciples. They left their jobs. They were fishermen. There aren't people who are working in tech jobs. The Silicon Valley is full of tech jobs or other kind of jobs. and you ask yourself, who can I go to in the Bible or who can I look at in the workplace that are examples of people who were able to balance faith and work together? Daniel, Joseph, there are a few of those. So, I've got a few slides here also, I think, that are up. If we can I don't have a clicker, but I'm going to just basically hopefully if you can put up the slides here. I think the first one is a you know, a picture. We get to the first slide. Here is a picture of Joseph. And I want to walk through a few of these sort of case studies in the Bible. How many of you here in the room are in your 20s? Okay, there's a few of you. Okay, great. Thank you. Let's celebrate them. Can we give them a hand? Love 20s. I came to the Silicon Valley when I was in my 20s. Wonderful age. I wish I could go back to my 20s. It's a great age. Do you know what Joseph was doing his 20s? He was in jail. He was in jail for almost his entire time. Imagine you 20. Everyone tell you tells you when you finish college in your 20s, your life is in front of you. And because he was faithful and this comment I'm going to make over and over again there are people who stand for conviction when everybody around them is compromising. Conviction and compromise. Two C's. Never forget that. And you get to build that spiritual muscle. My boys are in their teenage years and they want to lift weights. Okay, in your 20s, you're probably not still that stage where you're developing your physical muscle, but you get to develop your spiritual muscle in your teens and your 20s. And often those things that continue as we get older, our muscles start to atrophy. Okay, you can build your spiritual muscle. Here's an example what he was doing that that Paul talks about. Flee youthful lust. Part of his wife was pursuing him and he fled. It's a good spiritual muscle to learn young men in your 20s. There are many men who don't conquer that and I think it's an important one that we can all the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. And for his faithfulness, he was thrown in prison and then he thought somebody was going to remember him. You know the story of the the baker and the butler. They forgot about him. And then God would had him had a plan for his life. The plan for his life was that he'd become the number two person in Egypt, not just for that celebrity status. It was ultimately to bring his family back of Canaan into Egypt and save them all from dying. That was the real purpose. And God saved that generation. You know, the rest of all that happened. If there wasn't a Joseph, there wouldn't be a nation of Israel that sort of followed through after that. So, if you're in your 20s, young man, young girl, God's got a plan for your life. Stay faithful. Let's go to the next picture. Here's a picture of of Job. Can we go to the next slide? [snorts] Here's a picture of Job. Job was actually the f if you look at the the the time the chronological aspect of the Bible. He was the first person well before even you know some of the other characters of the Bible in Genesis. So Job's technically the first book. And it starts in the story of Job of a conversation going on between God and Satan. Okay? And God tells Satan, "Have you seen this man, Job? There's no one like him on earth. Imagine if God was talking to Satan about you. Have you seen that person next? Put your name in there. Have you seen that sister? Put your name in there. There's no one like them on earth." And Satan says, "Yeah, that's because you've given him sheltered living and he's got all this." So God says, "Well, test him." Okay. And then as we know in Job 2, everything that could happen that's a calamity happened. You know, he had a whole bunch of flock oxen and so on and so forth. In those days, the size of your flock was probably the size of your number of cars or acreage or whatever have you. That was the formula. All of that was gone. And then one by one, all his children also died. And the only thing he was left with was his wife. And even his wife said, "You should curse God and die." Imagine that all of what you had and even the dearest person you love sort of turns on you and he says there as this picture says naked I've come to this earth naked I'll return God has given God has taken away blessed be the name of the lord and then he journeys through many many aspects in the next few chapters with friends who are so-called friends not really and then he comes back to saying god I want to and God gives him back a lot of blessing. But Job's an incredible example of someone who was faithful and and one of conviction in the midst of fact where many people around him were compromising. Let's go to the next picture. I think I have a picture now of of of Daniel. Can we go to the next slide? And before we get to this slide, which is a beautiful picture of Daniel and his three friends. If you if you study the the story of Daniel and in the first chapter of Daniel, he is a teenager again. coming out of slavery into Babylon and he and his three friends are put with the a lot of the other slaves and are you know kind of in this sort of training program. Think of it like going to the Marines or getting enlisted early in life in those teenage years and they're offered wine and meat and they say I don't want the wine and meat. I'd rather have vegetables and water. It says, and if you read the story in Daniel 1, now it's not, you know, not that there's something wrong with eating meat or wine. They had a conviction that that meat and wine was offered to idols and they wanted to instead not do that. Okay? Doesn't mean that all of us should be vegetarian all of a sudden. The fact is they stood for God for conviction for whatever that is. And it says at the end of Daniel 1, they performed so well in the test, they were 10 times smarter than all of the other peers of theirs, including some of their own folks who'd come out of Israel. And to me, I've prayed that prayer not that I would be, you know, we're all working in the workplace. I prayed, Lord, help me be 10 times more productive. Do you know there's a lot of people who at work waste their time social media whatever have you know and imagine that if you're in the workplace any of you who are working whether you're 20 30 40 50 or 60 and God gives you enormous amount of productivity that what someone else takes 10 hours to do you could do in one hour. I'm here to tell you the God of Daniel is still here today in the 21st century. Pray for that prayer because a lot of what we need when we get a tough assignment from our boss is that divine insight that and that sort of brawn that that productivity that suddenly allows us to get things done and it's a miracle. Now one of these productivity enhancers that we live with today is AI. Okay, that can enormously help you. And I'd encourage you, I wanted to say a few words about that that could help you just the same way if today if you met somebody who had been frozen for the last 20 or 30 years and they were driving from place A to place B and they brought out this Rand McNal map that was 300 pages and a long atlas, what would you tell them? Google map. Hey, where have you been? There's this thing called Google map. [laughter] It's like, oh, I've been frozen. And I didn't know this exists. Now, it didn't take a lot of you a lot. I mean, it maybe initially when it came out, we were all intimidated. What's it going to say? What's it going to do? It's going to take us the wrong place. But over multiple decades, we all got comfortable with Google Maps. Don't be intimidated. There are things that I'm going to tell you not to do with AI. And I'm going to tell you that as you think of search and map and things of those kinds, it's a very productive tool that can make you do your job faster and enhance it, embrace it. And many of you who have phones, you can start using them for and and as a Christian, there's nothing inappropriate about asking it. I was preparing a presentation that would normally have taken me 10 hours, I thought, in the past, to get it done. and the modern AI tools whether it's Anthropic or OpenAI or Google were able to help me get that in one hour. So for each of your workplace every company is is going to allow you the ability to use those tools in some fashion inside the company. It's going to be just like Google maps and so on so forth. And in your consumer life you're going to be there's nothing that is anti-Christian about using it. Now, I wouldn't go to Gemini or Chat GPT and ask it the meaning of life, right? Or exactly or how do I get saved that you go to the word of God. But I will tell you there's often as I've gotten older, one of the things that fades is my memory. I forget people's names. I forget a scripture reference. AI is great at that. Where does it say? I was looking up this morning. Where does it say we all should be a sweet aroma of Christ? It would have taken me forever to even find it in my phone with the concordance. The concordance was great. AI will give that to you immediately. 2 Corinthians 2:15, I think, is worse. So, use it even in the context of your Bible work and the work that you're doing the church to help you be more productive. It's a valuable tool, but understand its boundaries. It's just like fire. Fire is useful. Should we throw away fire? No. Use it to keep yourself warm. But it can also burn down a building. So I'm just going to say that about because many people have asked me as a Christian, how do you use AI in the context of productivity? Just a short aside as I talked about Daniel 1. Now in Daniel 2, before I get to this picture, there's another great example of the faith of God the faith in God by Daniel and his friends proving itself and amazingly powerful. Imagine you were given an assignment by your boss. I'm trying to make much of this relevant to those of you working professionals. And the assignment is the following. Okay? All of us get very tough assignments from our boss. Things that often take us a long time or we get stressed about it. But here's the assignment I'm going to give you. The boss comes to you and says, "I had a dream yesterday. I can't remember my dream. You have 24 hours to help me figure out my dream. And if you don't remember, can cannot solve in 24 hours, you'll be killed. Any of you got an assignment like that? Never. That was Daniel 2. That was Daniel 2. Go read the book. It's exactly what he was assigned well before he became the number two person in under Nebuchadnezzar. So, he goes and he gets on his knees and prays with his three friends. That's the only thing you do. How do you solve that puzzle? And in the middle of the night, God revealed the dream to him. He goes to the king, not just tells him the dream, tells him the interpretation of the dream. The king is so impressed, makes him the number two person in Babylon. So, I'm here to tell you the God of of Daniel is here today. I've never been given a sign in my 30 years in my tech industry. That's that. Okay, figure this out or you're going to be killed tomorrow. But I've had many other ones that I've said, Lord, I'm I'm stuck here. What do I do? And if you're an engineer coding or if you're a person in any other part of a tech company or in any other job and you're given an assignment that you find difficult, go to the Lord in prayer and he can the God and say, "Lord, the God of Daniel that revealed that dream or made this person 10 times smarter, more productive. I need your help today." He's not going to leave you ashamed. Then you get to this picture, which is beautiful. Daniel's not in this picture. So maybe he was on a business trip, but he had inspired his three friends so much to have that faith in God that when Nebuchadnezzar made the statue that had everybody and that was it was a trap by many of the people who were you'll have if you're a Christian and the Lord's blessing you, you'll have enemies. You'll have people who are jealous of you and there are people who are jealous of him. They came up with this sort of trap which is at the time of the trumpet sound all of you must bow down to this huge idol and there's many many such traps that will exist today I don't want to walk through all of them and there'll be people who seek to trap you should do this or you should do this why didn't you go to that event and you stood up for conviction and you feel persecuted that's exactly what happened here they did not bow down to the big statue and that's an example of anything today where you stand for convictions. I'm not going to do that as a Christian. And the the the king was so incensed, he got the fire seven times harder that even the people who threw them into the fire were killed as they threw them in. But as they stood in that fire, it says the son of God, Jesus came into the midst. There was four people in that circle. But read that. It's amazing. I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters, when you go to a trial, even it's one like this, Jesus will be in that circle with you. Yes, he will be with you. Amen to that. You can you can clap. That's true. And it says at the end of that story, a beautiful picture that's I reminded, okay, they were they were tied in in knots, okay, in in in rope. It says at the end of that that story, their ropes that tied them were burned, yet the hair on their hand did not smell of fire. Now you think about hair and rope. They're the same material. It's fiber. How is it possible that the ropes could burn, but there wasn't even the smell of fire on their on their skin? That's the miracle the Lord can do. He will release you of all these things, but you won't be touched. That's what I prayed. Lord, release me of all these things that are shackling me. these people who are persecuting me in the workplace, but you're not going to be touched right now. Let me tell you, there were people who were burned at the stake. The first century Christians, they stood in the fire and God took them to heaven. The point isn't there might come a time when we're persecuted, the point of death for our faith. But whether the Lord brings Jesus and saves us into the middle of that or takes us to heaven, the more important thing is that we were faithful. I think for some of us it might be better off in heaven than down here. So whatever the Lord has planned for you so far there hasn't been persecution so severe in the United States that if you stand up for God you're going to go to you're going to be burned to death. But the first century Christians were let's go to the next picture. This is a picture of of of Daniel I think in his 70s. There's no evidence that Daniel had a family that he was married. Maybe he did but there is no evidence in the book of Daniel that he did. But here he is in the 70s. It's a beautiful painting that my dad actually gave me many years ago. I have it in my office. So a picture now Daniel he was actually the number two for three different kings. Nebuchadnezzar, Belt, Shaza, and Darius. It's almost like someone being the chief of staff or the cabinet secretary in three different administrations. I don't know maybe Obama, Biden, Trump. Think like that. I It's usually usually people stay with one and they leave. But Daniel was so respected by three different kings. One toppled the other and they said, "I still want Daniel." The next topple the other, "I still want Daniel." That's the faithfulness this man had. So now he's in his 70s. And people are still conspiring against him. Okay? And he stands true to God. He prays in a public spot. They come up with this little design that says, "If anybody prays, they'll be persecuted." They know they were trying to trap him. And he got trapped. And he's thrown in the den of lions. And the king's so sad that he does this. can't can't sleep all night. Come the night comes the next morning and Daniel's there. The mouth is you can look at those lions. They look like little kittens or little dogs, right? That is the what God will do to your enemies. Put them in a place where their mouth is shut. You can walk with confidence. You can rise up with wings like eagles and God can save you. Now again, the first century Christians were killed by the lions. So is that that same God? Yes, I believe it's the same God. But I when I go into persecution, I say, "Lord, there were people who were more faithful than me that some of them survived, some of them didn't. I want to be faithful to you." There's a few other photos I have here. Let's bring them up one at a time very quickly. Those were thousands of years ago, but if you look at the next one, can we get the next slide? George Mueller, beautiful example of a a man of God in the late 1800s who was faithful, took care of many orphans. And one day he was praying and there was no food. There was no food. There was no milk for the orphans. And he prayed in faith. And said, "Lord, bless this food. Here we pray." There was no food. And I'm sure the orphans are like, "What are you praying for? There's no food on our table." He said, "Amen." The doorbell rang and a baker was driving into town and his car broke down and said, "Hey, listen. I can't take the bread into town. Figured that if I can't get because my cars broke down. Figured you'd need the bread." Few minutes later, someone who's delivering milk also broke down. He had his bread and his milk. God is faithful. God is faithful. You pray with nothing and the Lord says, "I'll fill you." He's not going to give you ice cream. He'll give you milk. He may not give you a steak dinner. He'll give you bread. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all you need. Not all you want, all you need. That's all I pray. Lord, all I need. If you get the ice cream and steak, that's okay. That's a blessed day, but I'm not going to expect that. Okay, let's go to the next slide. Here's another good example. Chariots of Fire. If you've watched that movie, George Little didn't live very long. 42 years old. Any of you are older than 42? He died of brain cancer. But those of you who are athletes, if you know the peak age in which you can be athletic and run and run the fastest is those teenage years and early 20s. He was the fastest man on earth slated to win the 100minute gold medal in the Paris Olympics. But a few months before the Olympics started, they discovered a small problem. The British team figured out that the heats for the 100 meters were on Sunday. And he had a conviction that he was not going to run on Sunday. and he was going to go to church on Sunday. It doesn't mean that that has to be your conviction, but that was his conviction. Again, think about Daniel and his three friends. It's not that they had to be vegetarian. They had a conviction. This meat was offered before idols. I'm not going to do it. That was his conviction. And he goes to the coach
And the coach says, 'You could go to church on a Saturday. Why do you care about like this? This is so important. This is probably the only event that you will have at this critical age of your life where you can win 100 meters and you're the fastest man on the earth. This is not like some small high school race. This is the Olympics.' He stood true to conviction. So he misses the heats and everyone, this is the whole story of that Olympics. The fact that this man is not willing to be, you know, Eric Liddell is not willing to run the 100 meter heats. Well, in preparation for that, because he knew that was not going to happen, he started to train for the 400 meters which was not his natural race. Well, the story goes when he gets to the finals of the 400 meters, this person, an American athlete, was so struck by his conviction, comes to the 400 meter final and at the starting blocks gives him a small piece of paper and on that paper is this verse, 1st Samuel 2:30 which says, 'Those who honor God, I will honor.' Okay, it's a verse that I have kept through my entire life as a little bit, these promises of God are like checks, okay, that you can cash or you could just store in your drawer. Imagine you had all these checks in a worldly sense now that were each written for like $10,000 or $100,000 and you didn't know about, stuffed in your drawer and your debt, but someone says, 'Hey, did you know in your drawer were all these checks you never cashed?' You'd be like, 'Why didn't someone tell me that?' These promises of God are worth millions of dollars, much more than any dollars. 'Those who honor God, I will honor.' It's a two-way. Lord, I'm honoring you. Honor me. He went on to win the 400 meters. But that's not the point of the story. He went on to be a missionary, serve God. That was his last Olympics. He died, persecuted in China. Amazing, amazing man of God. But that promise, 'Those who honor God, I will honor' is something those of you in the workplace can say, 'Lord, I'm honoring you here. I'm taking a stand for you. Honor me in whatever fashion, even if I'm feeling persecuted.' Let's go to the next one. Next picture if we can. All of you know the Minister of Defense. Didn't live long. Just like Eric Liddell, another incredible athlete, Reggie White. What I loved about him, because I grew up in the 90s admiring Reggie White, loved his conviction, his witness, but he, I mean, he stood up in a way that even in the NFL he was probably a little persecuted, but he stood up for God with conviction again and that inspired many other athletes around him, many other Christians. And if you have a place, especially if God's given you a higher place in where you can, you're visible, you have an opportunity to be an incredible witness. Let's go to the final picture I think I have. Can you go to the next photo? Not just men, sisters, women can also be. Amy Carmichael was an amazing woman in the late 80s, early 90s that founded many orphanages in India. Many, many orphans were blessed by her ministry. She was a very timid young girl who didn't even know she could leave her environment. But God gave her boldness in her 20s. She lived in India and many of those orphans are now incredible women of God. The impact she had in India was amazing in my home country which I'm very grateful for. So brother and sister, God could use you in any fashion whether you're in the workplace or you're not.
Now, many years ago when I started my career, started to grow, I wrote down 10 values. It's sort of my top 10 list and I want to share them with you as a way that I would say that these have been my goals. None of them I would say I'm perfect on but they challenge me and I would leave them with you especially those who are working as things that could inspire you. So let's dive into a few of them very quickly. I'll try to cover that in the interest of time. Let's go to the first value. Can we bring the first slide up? Okay, very good. I'll run through them very quickly. Number one, can we all say this together? My life is like vapor and I'm a citizen in heaven. You know, when I first came to this country, before I became an American citizen, like some 20 years later, I was a foreigner here. I was an international student. I came here on a scholarship. Very similar to the type of experience an American might have when they enlist or they go in the armed services on a war to someplace in the Middle East. You know, you're there for a small period of time and then you come back. That's the way we need to think about our life on this earth. It's like vapor. Our true citizenship is not here. It's in heaven. So we don't live with a sense that our identity is here and we're looking for the next big thing that we can achieve. We're asking ourselves, what happens today, Sunday, if the Lord takes you tomorrow, Monday, are you ready? Or is that important project at work that you have to go finish or accomplish or that next big goal that you're trying to achieve? The more important thing I would ask each of you if the Lord were to take you tomorrow is have you forgiven everybody on this earth. One of the most deadly verses that convicts me is what Jesus said, if you haven't forgiven somebody, I can't forgive you.
