Real Talk

Power through Weakness

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Today w are going to be starting a new series called Real Talk. Over tHe next few weeks we will be hearing te testimonies of people. We are going to be hearing about their pain, their tears, the hard things that are hard to reconcile. There are some things that just leave you scratching your head as you are left picking up the pieces trying to figure out what the heck just happened here. Where was God in all of this. I lost a baby, how can that be God’s will. A young person diees, a marrriage falls apart, an unexpected pregnancy that ends in abortion. Where is God in all of this?

We tend to have canned stories in scriptures. We as Americans tend to think of everything as beginning, middle and end. I mean it has a beginning and it has an end. But it is filled with lives in between that didn’t get to see the end of the promise. There is pain, sin, mistakes, consequences blessing,,, but it doesn’t read like the Beauty in the Beast. There is real questions, real tensions, real hard stuff to try to understand, and while we just want to get to the end where prince charming gets the girl and they ride off into the sunset, the real question is what is God saying right now? In the nasty now and now, can he be found?

So over the next few weeks we are going to be hearing real life testimonies

But that is not how the Bible was written. Sometimes we need to give God space to say what he wants to say

Here is the premise for all the stories that you are going to hear over the next few weeks.

2 Corinthians 5:16–17 ESV

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

2 Cor 5:116-17

What I want to do is to take you on a journey, and todays journey will be my lifes story thus far, and what I would like to do is to stop off at parts and my story and allow me what hindsight is now able to show me about how God was working and moving even when I did not understand it. I have prayed that this would be new and fresh to some of you as many of you have heard bits and pieces of my testimony

I feel like my entire life has been one gigantic battle. It seems like every step of the way I have had the devil opposing me and trying to destroy me.

Things have gotten easier since becoming a man, because most of my tragedys took place when I was a kid.

I grew up around the Edom wheeler area most of my life. I had parents that were very young when they had me and most of the khaos stemmed from the decisions of my father. now as I share things today you need to understand that I am not mad at my dad or hold anything against him. He was a highly intelligent man that got ensnared into the darker side of life. his company has always been a band of theieves, murderers, drug addicts and violent men.

The earliewst childhood memory that I have, Gosh I guess that I was probably two or three, but it was my parents fighting and my dad hodling my mom over the sink with a knife up to here being. Again I know that we have kids in here and I promise that I wont go into to many details, but it is important that you understand the context of my story and the situation that I come out of, to understand the mercy and the goodness of God.

My fathers drug of choice seemed to be crack, and a mixture of that with nightlife, criminals and being one of the top dogfighters in the state of Texas led our family down a very broken path. By the time I was in the third and fourth grade, I had a full time job taking care of the 50 plus pitbulls that were stashed on chaines in the back of a field. Iwould get off of school, do my homework and head out to take care of these bull dogs. rakeing their chains, feeding them and watering. My dad would often leave the home for weeks at a time doing who knows what with who knows who fighting dogs and running the streets.

This caused high stress and anxiety to my mom because of the obvious marriage issues of unfaithfulness . And things got really bad my fifth and sixth grade yeae. We lived in a lilltle one bedroom trailer without electricity for several months. On top of this I was a bad amatic and with stress and fear, and living in the woods I was very sickly.

Didn’t really know anything about God, but you know there were times in my life when I know that God would be speaking to me and whisper that I was made for more. Like I had some kind of special calling on my life. That somehow God was going to use alll of the wreckage somehow

1 Corinthians 1:26–29 ESV

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

1 Corinthians 1:26

You know the things that He allows you to go through in your life. Those times of tremendous pain, and lack of hope, you don’t know how he might use those very broken things in your life later on. Do you know that there are many people that may have not been through the same types of things, still feel the same way. And God has called us to be Ambassadors for Christ. To go out into the fields of humanity and compel people to come in.

Well I got my first taste of a normal life when my parents divorced when I was in the seventh grade. My mom finally got enough courage to leave and took my brother and I and moved to Tyler.

First encounter with the demonic.

During this time I started to really be enticed by dark things. Statred listening to Marylynn Manson, and Bone thugs in Harmony. Started becoming enticed with occultic things like the Ouija board. And my soul started to darken. I found myself being fuled by hatred, to such a degree that it first felt like true power....

And one night, I was laying in my bed and a couple of demons approached me and tried to possess me. Freaked the living heck out of me. Still not into Christianity or anything, didn’t know anything about God. But I knoew that something dark and otherworldly was trying to posses me. Scared me so bad that I went into my moms bedroom and asked her if I could sleep on the floor next to her.

Warning of Halloween

This was the start to my experiences with the devils minions and I knew that I did not want to have anything to do with them.

You know right now we have a world that is again captured by the dark practices. and listen these things will destrooy our families and our legacies. I grew up like many in here did where Halloween was just an innocent holiday, where kids get to dress up and knock on doors for candy. But just because you are ignorant about something doesn’t mean that you are safe from it. If I play around with a loaded gun in ignorance doesn’t mean it wont go off and hurt or kill me. Almost did that by the way as a kid, playing around with a new 22 after I pointed it at my uncle and pulled the trigger, and then cocked it agian and pulled and it shot a bullet right past my head

Deuteronomy 18:9–14 ESV

9 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, 14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

Deut 18:9-

English Standard Version Chapter 18

9 “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, 14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this.

There is a strong practice of the occult here in the East Texas region, and listen demons and all the power of the enemy is real. This is the power behind the world of drugs, and behind the culture of self hatred and suicide. god has called us to be separate people. Not to follow the practices of the world. Because the danger is real. And this is gripping our kids

We are called to be different

Revelation 18:2–4 ESV

2 And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. 3 For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.” 4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;

Rev 18:2

A year later the Lord would use my praying Aunt Kathy to bring me into the Kingdom. I went to an old fashion revival and the Lord broke me and saved me. Every defiling thing I had coming at my soul was radically broken throguh Jesus. I remember what new life felt like for the first time. I remember the tremendous peace that ruled b=my heart after that day. I wish I coulld say that I became a faithful follower of jesus after that.... I wish I was more like some of our teens here that are seeking after Jesus with all their heart, Guys I am proud of you. i am proud of my son, and proud of the work that Pastor Jon and Brittany are doing with our teens.

But I didn’t in fact I sinned and left the Lord for a long time. The reason is thT jsut a few short months after that my mother, the only stable thing in my life at that time was killed by a drunk driver. But not before she first surrendered her life to Jesus.

WHAT WAS GOD DOING?

At that time I couldn’t see it. But through my mothers death God was bringing me to a place to where nonthing in this world could satisfy. nothing in this world could bring my mom back. and through my grief and pain God would cause a simple minded kid who was headed down a dark path to look at the things in life that mattered. To

Romans 8:28–29 ESV

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

You see even though my life was in shambles, and man wrote me off, God according to His plans, His purposes and His ways chose to shine the light of grace and walk with me through the most painbful experience that I could possibly imagine

After that my lief just got worse and worse. I started doing meth when I was 125 years old. I started . Got my girlfrien=d pregnant senior, full blown addict. Mad, angry. In the next year or two after high school I would wrack up a healthy wrap sheet. I was in a hole, couldnt see. i was deeply depressed, going through a divorce. Couldnt see my son. And was close to death. i was broke no family that I could really turn back too. My grandparents were in prison. Yes I said gradparents

Then i started going to church, but I was strung out stilll on drugs. And one night I had an encounter with Jesus and He removed drugs from my life.

When I was

PROPHETS PROPHECIED THAT I WAS GOING TO BE A PREACHER

SPIRITUAL WARFARE

HOW GOD LED ME TO TO DOWNTOWN THROUGH COMMUNITY SERVICE

THE FIRST DEMONIC SPIRIT THAT HELD ME DOWN

Ephesians 6:12 ESV

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

-FIRST TIME THAT i WAS INVITED TO SHARE MY TESTIMONY AT GALLOWAY

- CRISSY OUT IN THE PARKING LOT- ALL THE WAY FROM VAN

i WENT IN WITH ALL THE STRENGTH STRIPPED FROM ME

- PREACHER WANTED TO CENSOR MY TESTIMONY

THE TIMES WHEN I WAS HEARING THAT

THE POWER OF CHRIST IN ME

in my weakness that is when He is the strongest

2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Cor 12:

2 Corinthians 11:30 ESV

30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

2 Cor 11

Philippians 4:

Philippians 4:12–13 ESV

12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

OVERCOMING

Philippians 3:13 ESV

13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

Phillipians 3:13

Feel HIs hoplessness

2 Corinthians 5:14 ESV

14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;

Time when I was fighting for Gage

Time when we lost two babies back to back

Feel His abandonment

How

2 Corinthi