Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Over the last several weeks, we've been looking at the different ways we approach being able to see or experience God. God sightings.
We talked about how prayer, Bible study, the church are all instrumental in that. But last week we talked specifically about those circumstances where we see God at work, which I think is the thing that most. When they talk about, like I saw God do something, they're thinking about a particular circumstance, something that happened. And generally that's something that's like out of the ordinary, something. Something miraculous.
But last week we looked at how.
We looked at a story in the Bible where the people were amazed at when Jesus did miraculous things, as you would expect. But then we looked and saw how Jesus was amazed.
We looked to see when Jesus was amazed.
When did God. When did Jesus experience the kingdom of God, his kingdom, where he felt comfortable? When did he see the inbreaking of his Father in and around him? And it happened when the people of God were transformed or changed or motivated or moved to become something more like him.
People who are vessels to carry the image of God.
Last week I told a story about, in my family, how there was a miraculous moment where.
Where my brother was healed and it was transformative in our family.
This week I wanted my dad to come and share his testimony and kind of really see for him to be able to explain in his own words, I think, where God moved in him, how God showed up and how it was transformative in him and the changes that took place and how those changes took place. So Dad's going to come up here in a minute, but before he does, I just want to pray for him.
Father. God, we love you. Thank you for giving us this morning that we could come together and we could hear this testimony of your work in my dad's life.
God, we pray that you speak through him this morning or that he's able to just plainly articulate what this whole experience was like for him and how God brought him to the point that he is. That he is now. Lord, your servant.
We love you, Father. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Good morning.
Susan and I were raised in rural Georgia, down in the Deep south, and we went to church because that was what you did.
I had strong influence between my father and my grandfather. Godly men, and they always wanted the best for me and wanted me to be the best man I could be.
So we went to church quite a bit, as a matter of fact. Susie and I, 95%, well, maybe 60% of our dating was in the church.
And I stole my first kiss in the pastor's study.
She wasn't impressed.
But we got married in 69.
I joined the Air Force and I had training in Lackland Air Force Base and was gone for almost two months. Never went to church.
I came back, we got married and I left for Hawaii. That was my first assignment.
Tough place.
And I didn't really go to church there until Susan got there and we went to church there. And the first time I ever saw men in church in flip flops, that was quite an eye opener.
But it helped me realize that God served everybody.
After Hawaii, we moved to Dover, Delaware, and that's where things really started changing for me.
I was in the security police and I was a desk sergeant and I was also the confinement specialist for my shift.
One night, Two young men in the nuclear storage facility had been quick drawing each other and at shift change they had put their weapons, loaded them back up and decided to do one more and forgot they had life rounds.
1.
One died and one was critically injured.
A few months later, another young man got into a truck at relief time and forgot to safety his weapon and he killed himself.
That had quite an effect on me.
But I think the biggest thing that really got to me, Dover, Delaware is the mortuary for the south, for the East.
And all the dead come there to be distributed to their home territories.
And this was in 1971.
And as security police, it was our responsibility to make sure they were respected.
You got to realize this mortuary had probably 40 metal tables. It was a lot.
I remember the first time I went in there, there were probably five servicemen in there.
A couple of them looked like they were just asleep, but a couple of them had pretty bad battle wounds.
And.
That made me start questioning a lot the next time. There were about 20 of them.
They were all my age and I.
I felt a deep anger, but more than that, I felt guilt.
I don't know if you've ever been in the military, but there's a camaraderie there that it's kind of hard to explain.
And I started questioning things.
I don't think I was really questioning God so much, but questioning what I really knew about God.
I cross trained after that. I didn't want to be a security policeman anymore.
I trained as a physical therapy technician and our next assignment was California.
And by that time, I don't know if I was questioning God, but I was definitely questioning the church.
And I didn't go to church.
And I didn't go to church for probably six years.
My youngest son was born and about Two months before then I had a very rigorous.
A first aid course. And one of the parts of the course was infant resuscitation.
And the day this happened, Susie came in holding the baby and screaming.
He had blue lips.
He wasn't breathing.
So I automatically. Training kicked in and I started working on him.
And Susie was getting the car ready to go Holland for Clay to get in the car.
We got in the car, I was still breathing. For him, it felt like it was eternity.
Susie said it was probably only 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.
But I knew right then it.
That I wasn't going to be able to save that baby.
And that's what I pray. God, I will be yours forever if you say, by the way.
And that little baby let out a scream that was so precious.
And I just committed myself.
It didn't matter about the church.
It only mattered about Jesus.
And I needed to learn how to worship him and love him and be his disciple.
Susie was going to a church.
She's always been a steady rock in our family about appending church and being involved in that kind of stuff.
And that was the perfect church for me.
Right then they had just gone through a split and the church was hurting.
So you had a hurting man going to a hurting church.
The people there taught me how to love, even in hurt.
When I first got there, I wanted so much to get up and praise Jesus.
But every time I'd stand up and start to speak, I'd start bawling.
I don't mean just tears running down, I mean crying.
And I would apologize and sit down.
And this gracious older lady came up and put her hand on me and said, God's going to let you speak, but right now that's the testimony you need and it's worth everything.
So I was able to develop in that church because of that caring love they had.
They taught me how to minister to people.
They taught me how to love people in different circumstances.
I know one Sunday we went church early because there was always somebody throwing beer bottles in the church parking lot. So we would go clean them up.
And there's this guy just standing there who, as you could tell, he was not very well off.
So we took him and gave him breakfast and told him about Jesus.
We don't know what happened to him because he didn't come back to church.
But that was something I would have never done before then.
Also, I don't know if you know what a deacon is in a church.
It's from the first church that was ever going in Jerusalem, the Apostles were ministering, preaching, but they also had the duty of taking care of the widows and feeding the hungry and stuff like that.
So they made the office of the deacon to take care of that, to support them in ways that ministered to the church.
And this church ordained me as a deacon.
But to be a deacon in that church, you had to spend a year in study and you yoke fellered with another deacon. A yoke feller means that this person led you into faith.
He gave you instructions, he prayed with you, he held you accountable, all that kind of stuff. And I had to study a lot.
And then about five churches would get together and then they would have an ordination service. But first you had to answer for yourself, do a testimony and be able to articulate what you believe in Christ in a way that they could understand or someone who didn't even know Christ could understand.
And that's what I went through.
And I praise God for that church, because without it, I'm not sure what would have happened.
I knew I would have seek God, but I didn't know how well I would have been able to seek him and how I was able to seek Jesus.
The next church I went to was in Maryland.
That church taught me what prayer was really all about.
We would have service at night and then the real meeting would start in the parking lot where prayer was something that was just natural.
And the prayers were not canned prayers. They were prayers about hurting, they were prayers about loving. They were just prayers.
And that church taught me a lot because we had to study about all kinds of ministries and things like that. Had a continual witnessing program where we learned to trust the Holy Spirit as we talk to people, pray for the people we're going to be talking to.
And I had a whole bunch of churches after that, and each one of them taught me something.
And the whole time Susie and I were ministering to the youth.
That was a calling that I got in that first church.
And we did that for 15 years.
But one of the churches that changed me the most was in Germany.
Every church I'd been to since then was a Southern Baptist Church.
This was also started by the Southern Baptist, and it had a Southern Baptist teacher.
But the church was made up of military people. And they came from all walks of life, from all religious backgrounds, and we all worshiped God together.
And that helped me to understand something very, very special.
That it's not who you are, it's not how you were raised in the church. It's about who Jesus is and how you get along with Your brothers and sisters.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
That was one moment in my life where I'd always just backed out of the church.
I don't think I ever left Jesus, but I definitely left the church.
And that moment with my son helped me to realize that I don't only need Jesus, I need brothers and sisters for support, too.
And if I leave you with anything else, always remember that the church is just not a building. It's just not an organization.
It's living, breathing believers in Christ.
And we have a responsibility to each other.
Thank you.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: The Bible says we were made to bear the image of God. That's our.
That was why we were created. It was to be the image of God, the visible image of God here on earth. And when humans live into their calling, when we follow Christ and we bear his image, we are the site that got that. We are that God siding for the world. That's how God intended it. God intended that. His church demonstrates, lives out his kingdom here on earth.
And I think sometimes, sometimes we Christians can get to the point that we can think that I don't see God around me. I don't see other people talk about how they hear God or they see God, or they've experienced God, but I don't see God. I'm not experiencing God. And I think it's because we don't know what we're looking for.
We don't know where to find Him.
You find God in his people, in the people that are bearing his image.
When a person goes from being somehow broken for whatever reason, anything that's happened in your past to a person that has wholeness as a result of following Christ, you're seeing this miracle taking place in that person's life, and they're becoming a person. You're like, I could totally see Jesus operating there. If Jesus were that person. I could see Jesus doing the same thing that person just did.
That is where we are intended to look for and to see God at work.
And so I wanted dad to come up here because, you know, most of you know him. Small church, everybody, everybody, everybody kind of knows him. And it's not like just an idea with him.
He is this person that he became. Not like that moment that drove him back to the faith, I think was important for him. But I don't think that was the miracle. I think the miracle and I think where God showed up was in the transformation of his life.
And I can testify that my life and the person that I became isn't because of that. Moment where Shawn started breathing again, it was growing up in a household where a father and a mother were living every single day of the week in a way that corresponded to what they were talking about on Sunday. I grew up in a household where the kingdom of God was normal. Like, it just made sense. It was just all the things we talked about were the same things that we did in my life. And I got to be that person because I grew up in that world.
And so I would say that that is the thing that we look for and then we recognize the miracle. And this morning.
This morning I wanted to take some time and just receive communion. In receiving communion, we are receiving, like, literally, we are ingesting these elements that represent the body and the blood and the blood of Christ.
And in doing so, that physical.
The physical act of taking these elements in, we are remembering who he is. We're remembering who we really are as we're taking him into us. And we are saying, you are the one that nourishes me. You are the one that I am becoming as I take you in.
If you are a person who follows Christ, who has made a decision to follow Christ, you are welcome to participate in communion with us.
When I'm done reading the passage, take some time.
Pray yourself.
Just get to the point that you feel like you are ready to receive communion. Then you come down, come down front, take the bread and take the juice and go back to your seat and eat it. As you are reading the passage on the screen, is that good?
First Corinthians 11, 23, 26.
I pass on to you what I received from the Lord. Paul says, on the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it.
Then he broke it in pieces, and he said this.
This is my body which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup of wine after supper, and he said, this cup is the new covenant between God and his people. It's an agreement confirmed with my blood.
Do this to remember me as often as you drink it.
For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord's death until he comes again.
Let's pray.
Father God, as we take this time to receive you now to.
To take communion with our brothers and sisters, to receive communion with you. Lord God, I pray that we are fully present and aware of your indwelling inside of us, Lord, that you are transforming us and renewing us and always making us again what we were always intended to be. That is your image bearers.
Your man, your woman here on earth.
God, we are your people.
Father God, we pray that the world sees you in us.
We receive you now. Amen.
