Philip Renner is a worship leader who is known for his ministry in the Moscow Good News Church and throughout the former Soviet Union. His father, Rick Renner, is a well-known pastor and evangelist.

Visit PhilipRenner.com.

Philip Renner joined Dr. Jerry Johnston, VP of Innovation and Strategic Marketing for Houston Baptist University, to talk about the impossible and the possible in life and ministry.

“God does the impossible,” Renner says, referencing the work of spreading the Gospel in Russia and beyond. “Everything that has been done through the years – people have said it’s never been done before.”

The Renner family moved to Russia in 1992, and Philip and his parents and two brothers soon learned to love their new home. “God said to build a church in Moscow,” Renner says. “A lot of people would say, ‘It’s just impossible to own your own land and to get the permissions.

But we live by faith and not by sight and speak things that are not as though they are.”

In the years that the family has ministered, they’ve seen conversions and miracles. “It’s powerful what God is doing,” Renner says. “God is alive, moving, active and breaking barriers and limitations.”

Renner challenges people to seek God wholeheartedly. “Jeremiah 29:11 says, ‘My plans for you are good and not for evil.’ No matter what’s happening right now, no matter the evil that is happening around you – God is telling you His plans for you are good – so you have nothing to worry about. Later it says, ‘You have sought me and you have found me.’ If you just seek Jesus, you are going to find Him,” Renner says. “Open the Word, study the Word, cry out to God, and you will find him. Even more, He will find you. You will call and He will hear you. Wherever you are right now in your school, in your neighborhood, at your job, the world around you might be getting darker, but guess what, that just makes your faith brighter and stronger, and you can stand out with your morals, standards, with what you watch, don’t watch – your life can be a light. God’s got a good, good plan for you.”

Listen to the complete podcast on HBU.edu.