Just Talkin' about Current Events

When headlines feel like they’re written to scare you, where do you place your weight? We pull up chairs around the table and talk with total honesty about war, uncertainty, and the spiritual whiplash so many people are feeling right now. Our anchor stays the same: God is still on the throne, and we can’t build our peace on a political party, a president, or “everything going well.” If your mind has been racing, we’re here to help you steady it with Scripture, prayer, and a faith that can take a hit.

From there we go deeper than surface-level comfort. We talk about repentance as a daily posture, and we compare the modern American church to the Book of Acts church, the believers who lived through real pressure and still carried mercy, patience, and power. We unpack why suffering shaped Paul, why persecution scattered the early church and spread the gospel, and why God’s “potter’s wheel” process can feel intense while it’s forming a usable vessel. If you’re hungry for revival, we challenge the urge to manufacture God’s presence with hype, lights, or fog machines, and we share stories of the Spirit moving in ways no one could fake.

We also connect current events with a bigger biblical worldview: God working through history, the surprising growth of the church in Iran, and praying for the peace of Jerusalem as more than the absence of war. The conversation ends with practical encouragement for anyone living in fear, whether you’re in a conflict zone or just overwhelmed at home: faith over fear, hands lifted, gratitude in hard places, and trust that your test can become a testimony. Subscribe for more, share this with someone who needs steadiness today, and leave a review telling us what part hit home most. (*Recorded 3/4/2026)

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Faith Gets Tested

SPEAKER_05 0:13

Hey y'all, welcome to Simple Discellership Unfiltered. I'm your host, Sister Diana. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey today. Can we be real? Being a Christian is not always easy. But you are not alone. So grab me a drink. Grab me a snack. Let's open the word and see what Jesus has to say today. Hey, welcome to Simple Disciple Ship and Filter. This is Sister Diana. I pray you're all are doing good today. We've got the whole crowd here. Mine is Sister Helen, right? Y'all say good morning. Good morning. Alright. To my left, I have Brother Ernie. Hello, hello. Sister Ann. Hello. Sister Patty. Hello. Sister Audia. Good morning. Sister Tammy. Hello. Sister Sandy.

SPEAKER_04 1:02

Hello.

SPEAKER_05 1:03

And Sister Joyce. Hello. Hey, yeah, we're just missing Sister Helen, right? Okay. All right. So we're all here around the table. Lots of stuff going on. We have to just say something really quick about how everybody believes the world is in turmoil. And you know, but God is still on the throne. You know what I'm saying? And and you know, I'm I'm grateful that we have the president that we do who is going to take matters into the what needs to be mattered. And you know, and so I mean it's it doesn't seem that scary to me because I feel like I'm like really feeling pretty patriotic. I mean, I'm feeling like we're representing well, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

I I for me, from my perspective, the biggest thing. Yes, but the biggest thing is that no matter what happens in this world, no matter who is the president, no matter who is the unique individual. We can say that, yeah. No matter who who it is, they only come into power and make decisions that cause the world to rotate towards the return of Jesus Christ. So it it is it's it's horrible for the people who are drawn in against their will. It really is. And they got to have our prayers and and and support. But instead of deciding that I like or dislike those people in politics, which of course I do, I have to decide Jesus is in control and I can't put my faith in a party.

SPEAKER_05 2:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

I can't do it. Even if I like the action, yeah, has nothing to do with it. If God is not reigning supreme of my faith is in a political party, a politician, or myself, yeah, I'm gonna be disappointed.

SPEAKER_05 3:07

That's right. That's right. You know, and that's the thing that, you know, we have to understand that nothing good comes from anything when everything is just going good. I mean, because unfortunately, people just don't serve the Lord as much when everything's rolling and going and all good. But you let a little strife come in, a little war, a little whatever, and all of a sudden, earthquake.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

I've been through some huge earthquakes.

SPEAKER_05 3:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

And let an earthquake come, and suddenly people I know at the time who didn't mention God were saying, God is talking to us. What is he saying? Hand me another beer. Right.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

What's he saying?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Because this group and this crowd doesn't talk about God. Right. Right. But this was it, this was February 9th, 1971, and the San Fernando Mountains moved four foot to the north.

SPEAKER_05 4:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

And we lived right across uh from the base of the mountain range, and you could you could see the landmarks had all shifted four foot. It was stunning. Wow. And and when you see the the black top rolling at you like an ocean wave, everybody believes. Yeah. They believe in something. Yeah.

unknown 4:23

You know.

SPEAKER_05 4:23

You don't even believe in a higher power, but if it's there, I'm touching it. Yeah. If it's there, I'm going for whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yeah, and we we do need to be always in prayer. I know that these people have been spreading terror, in particular, not the not the Iranian people, but the regime. The regime has been funding terror everywhere. So my feeling is the sooner this is over, the better. But I don't know how soon Jesus is coming, and I got children and grandchildren, and now a great grandchild coming. So we have to believe that we were born for such a time as this.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Even when we don't like it.

SPEAKER_05 5:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Yeah.

Israel Updates And End Times Hope

SPEAKER_05 5:15

No, because like we say, it's going to happen. What's in scripture is going to happen. There's not anything that's been written that was supposed to happen at a certain time that didn't happen. I mean, it happened, you know, so God hasn't changed his mind. We're still going toward revelation, right? And so it's it's all going there. I did we did hear from our gods that we had in Israel messaged yesterday, finally. And uh they're they're both well, they're just in shelters uh with their families and and they're going back and forth out of shelters. They said, you know, it's pretty scary for them. But this is, and this is something that one of the ladies he said, but this has been our way of life for as long as I can remember.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

They've lived under it.

SPEAKER_05 5:59

Yeah. She said, it this isn't anything new to us. This is what we deal with on a daily basis that somebody is gonna try to bomb us.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

We are so spoiled in the USA. We are. Yeah, and um I I've got discussion with with mama lately about two visions I had regarding Jerusalem. And one of them scared me.

SPEAKER_05 6:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

And and I don't mean that I lost faith in God. I mean the thought of us having to go through certain things is never pleasant.

SPEAKER_05 6:33

No.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

But you know, we we're not even going through what the book of Acts Church went through here in the USA.

SPEAKER_05 6:40

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

You know, we we do have some pushback and we do have some issues, but they're not throwing us in jail. No. No. And we've had a few instances of those pro-lifers being put in jail and businessmen being point put in jail because they wouldn't do certain things. Right. But it's been a few instances. Now for the people that happened to, it's huge.

SPEAKER_05 7:03

Right.

Repentance And The Cost Of Acts

SPEAKER_02 7:04

But say overall, right. What the church in the USA Now you opened up a can of worms. What the church in the USA is gonna have to do is find herself with a genuine spirit of repentance, continually seeking the Lord, because without his help, without his spirit to keep us under conviction, and I don't mean guilt-ridden, but understanding there are things we're gonna have to change, attitudes we're gonna have to change. We we have to we have to become that church. You know, we read last last week one of the things we we read, or the first half of uh first part of Acts chapter 9, is out when when the Lord told Ananias, you're gonna go pray for Saul anyway, and you have to understand, he's gonna learn. He says, Go your way, for he is a chosen vessel unto me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake. Everybody wants that ministry. How many times do you want to be shipwrecked? How many times do you want to be beaten with whips, beaten with rods, incarcerated in perils of robbers left naked and destitute on the road for dead?

SPEAKER_05 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

And able to get up and say, I have learned to count myself blessed in whatsoever state I am in. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

But when you say, Well, how why did Paul get to write so much of the New Testament? Well, if you look what Paul went through, he got to do it. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

I mean Well, all of the disciples except for John understood immense persecution and struggle and strain. So when we call ourselves the the church from the book of Acts, I I think what we need to do is say we're striving to be that church, but recognize that church went to war.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

But you know, yeah. We're under some stuff. We tried to boil over him in oil.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

Yeah, and there was a persecution there. He got to die of old age, but he had a so who is the who are we? We're we're we're striving to be the church in the book of Acts. But really, the USA can't live forever without the church here, without going through the struggle that some of the third world churches have gone through.

SPEAKER_05 9:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

It's not that I'm eager to see it. But we have to pray, Lord, give us a kind of attitude because if it's our generation, we had to believe then we were born for such a time as this.

SPEAKER_05 10:12

Yeah. But you know, I think but I think that our mindset has to change too in that if we truly want to see the signs, the wonders, and the miracles, there's some other things that go with that too. You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's why they had the ability to do those things, not only because they had the Holy Spirit and the, you know, then they had them inside of them to do with it, but but they that the struggle is what made them who they were.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

I mean To maintain a testimony for Christ and a spirit of patience and mercy and compassion when they're flogging you, when they're beating you, when they're starving you. That that's really what we have to do. It's not like I'm looking forward to all of that.

SPEAKER_06 11:07

No.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

But if we run into that, we must believe we were born for such a time as this, and that God is gonna get us through it. We have to believe that, or else might as well shoot yourself. Well, let's don't do that. Get it over with. Yeah, but bullets are expensive, so you may not want to choose that first.

SPEAKER_05 11:34

That's true. That's true. But the if our mindset is whatever I'm going through, there's a purpose at the end of it. And I can go through it a lot better than just saying, why am I doing that?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

There's a purpose, period, for everything that happens in our lives. And when we don't like what happens, a lot of times when when I've been under stress, the scripture would come to me, the the Lord would drop it in my heart. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord. And I'm thinking, well, where is a good man? Yeah. That's mine idea. You know, but the truth is, that's how God molds us in making us.

SPEAKER_05 12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

We're on the potter's wheel, right?

SPEAKER_05 12:15

You know, I personally think I meant my quote already. But I mean sometimes you know, I sometimes remind the Lord, remember then when I went through Is it necessary?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

I was in the car wreck. I was almost gone. Yeah. Surely there's nothing else to go through. But uh, there's been a lot since the statement that Paul makes in Galatians to the Galatian church, I travail for you in prayer till Christ be formed in you. Formed. If you ever watch the potter forming the clay, you will see. You know, so he gets the clay and it's dry and it's almost like a brick and it's hard.

SPEAKER_05 13:05

Where does it claim the clay come from? It comes from the earth. That's what I want you talk about. Okay, so then where does it come from?

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Deposits in the earth.

SPEAKER_05 13:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 13:16

So it's just it's just natural. Natural stuff.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

So he pounds the clay, he scrapes the clay, he gets it to powder. And that's a violent process.

SPEAKER_05 13:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

That's a physical process. Then he waters it. Then when he finally gets it in a big lump, he gets that wheel spinning and he holds up the clay as high as he can, and when he sends it down on the wheel, he sends it with force. It hits the wheel with force, and then it's spinning. If you're the clay, do you really want to spin like that? No, but you want the Lord to make you that vessel. And clay cannot become the vessel. And if we learn anything from the book of Acts, the church cannot become the vessel without being shaped by God. So God is the author. Look, they were all in Acts, right? In in Jerusalem, and feeding one another and carrying on, and then suddenly they're dispersed everywhere because they became too comfortable in Acts, and the gospel wasn't going to Samaria, to Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_05 14:28

Yeah, we were just becoming nucleus instead of right there.

Worship We Cannot Manufacture

SPEAKER_02 14:32

But when persecution came, they scattered, and then the gospel went everywhere, and Philip had the most fabulous evangelistic campaign in Samaria. Wow. So trauma as much as we don't like it, stress as much as we want to avoid it. The church in the book of Acts was acquainted with it, but the church in the USA is acquainted with gospel bands and strobe lights. Yeah. And I'm not saying it's wrong to be modern, but I'm saying those things don't equate a move of God. They're just tools.

SPEAKER_05 15:12

Can I tell you what the one of the things that aggravates me the most about going to like concerts and stuff now? Because it's supposed to be praise and worship, right? And but then they turned on these fog machines. And I'm like, why don't you just wait and see if the Lord shows up? You know, why why he gotta try to produce the fog, you know?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

We have seen the Shekinah glow.

SPEAKER_05 15:36

Yes, me too.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

And we didn't need a machine.

SPEAKER_05 15:39

With no machine. That's my point.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

We didn't need fancy lights. You know, I first time I saw it, I was in Vietnam. And we're sitting in, we made ourselves a makeshift room. Yeah. And we're sitting in there praying, Jeff and I. And I looked up and the Spirit of the Lord was moving, and there was a fog coming down about two or three feet from the ceiling, filling the little place where we were at. And I had yet to study and learn what is the Shekinah glory.

SPEAKER_05 16:11

Mama, what have you what have you experienced in that?

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Well, we were at a church in Big Spring. Yeah, tell it. And we were starting our prayer meeting. We our church started at four o'clock in the afternoon, but we started praying at one o'clock. Two two o'clock. And then two, then three, and then then church started.

SPEAKER_06 16:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

And we were worshiping, the children were worshiping, and then all of a sudden, starting from the back of the church, everybody hit it was just like a wave. Like a wave. Just hitting the floor. Children, and then it became very quiet. And then at this side of the balcony a light.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then just enveloped the whole probably probably a third of us in the church, maybe a fourth or a third, saw it. It started like a small cloud in the corner, and it just grew and it swept over the church, and people started being slain in the spirit.

SPEAKER_05 17:23

And when we woke up, it was 12 30. 12 30. Yep. Yep. That's what happens.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Time just goes and you're you're just I I I know that you people around the world will say, I've seen this, I've seen that, and and that's all great. But what what's really important is and not dwarfing that because we want more of that. But the most important thing is what happens when we leave that.

SPEAKER_05 17:52

That's what I'm trying to say is I think we try so much to manufacture the presence of God that I think we've then we've we've missed what it takes to do that.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

I mean You can't manipulate God.

SPEAKER_05 18:07

You know, turn the lights out, let's play this song, play this song, play this song. And I mean my thing is just worship. I mean, just worship and pray and worship and just you realize that is an attempt to manipulate God? It is, and that's my point is I think that we've we've gotten so in tune to we've got to make the setting right. We've got to make it just like this, it's gotta be just like this in order for him to show up. And it's not even like that. It's just like you could just walk in and just start praying.

SPEAKER_06 18:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

There was, um I'm sorry Pastor Mark's not here today. There was a season when he was the youth leader just a few years ago where the move of God came in so powerful through that youth department that the youth tapped him and said, Can we have our own prayer meetings on Monday night?

SPEAKER_05 19:03

Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

And the parents would bring them at seven and at nine and nine thirty and ten o'clock, parents would be getting upset because the youth were still in there seeking God. Wow. And there there are waves almost like the surf coming in. If you look at history, how God moves at certain times, it's almost like a spiritual tide. Lord, we want to be aware of we can't manipulate that.

SPEAKER_06 19:35

Yeah.

Revival In Iran And God’s Timing

SPEAKER_02 19:35

You can't make the tide come in. We can't do that. What we can do is be ready for it and yield to it and understand the tide. So, you know, this is a time for us, instead of panicking about what's going on in the world. It doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention, doesn't mean you shouldn't vote. But instead of panicking and giving all of our energy to that, we need to be sensing the move of God's spirit.

SPEAKER_05 20:07

Yeah, because when you hear that there's revival in Iran right now. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Yeah, thrilled my heart. I heard that testimony that the fastest growing church on the planet is in Iran. Yeah. I was, oh, oh, that is a that is a Book of Acts situation. Yeah. That is it.

SPEAKER_05 20:24

Yeah, so they're having these big moves of the Lord. People are being saved by the thousands. And and but the thing is, is there that the church was there already.

SPEAKER_06 20:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

Going through the persecution while that regime was in power.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

They were entitled.

SPEAKER_05 20:40

And so I mean, now they're reaping the reward of that. You know what I'm saying? So I mean, it's like it's just amazing to see how God works in these times and in these seasons and these settings.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

You know, it's just as wicked as Nebuchadnezzar was. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

God used it.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

The decisions he made served the purposes of God overall. Right. As wicked as we could say, and these conquerors, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, you know, the Roman Caesars, we can talk about what they did to the world, the Assyrian empires, but they all had a place in getting the world ready for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem.

SPEAKER_05 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

And for the disciples. The gospel, because of Alexander the Great, the whole world, that side of the world, majority of them, maybe 90%, spoke Greek.

SPEAKER_05 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

So now the gospel could go out in Greek. It couldn't travel the world in Hebrew or Aramaic, but it could in Greek. The Romans cleaned up the piracy in the Mediterranean Sea so that they could execute their wars and built highways for their armies to travel on. They thought. Yeah. But the apostles used them to spread the gospel all over Asia, Africa, and the USA. Right. Or in Europe. And eventually it came to the USA. But my my point is it can be stressful for us right now. If we forget God is still in control.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Because we we've been recently studying Esther and Perm. And when you start looking at what's going on and how so many things right now that are happening are just like back in Esther's day, it's, I mean, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

The history of Israel, when you read scripture, is cyclical. And when you read the book of Judges, it's super duper mojo diddly whopper blessed. Oh man, they're in captivity because they gone into idolatry and they'll never come back again. And then, oh, they find repentance and they're up on the mountain and they got a new judge. You know, things are going great, but this guy, you know, he gets old or she gets old and then back down again into idolatry. And it's like a roller coaster. You keep coming around back to the same place. Look, it's great that they're a nation right now. I don't know. I'm I don't know. I don't claim to know a lot about the future. My my ministry as a prophet has been quite different. It's been more insight into a moment, into people's personal lives sometimes, into pulling us into prayer, specific prayer style. But I do know this. Everything that's in the Word of God is going to come to pass.

SPEAKER_05 24:03

It is.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

And whatever you don't understand, you better understand. God is in control. Yeah. You gotta have faith that God is in control, even when you don't like it.

SPEAKER_05 24:16

Yeah. I mean, I love this the study of eschatology. That's just one of my things. And man, you just when you start, when you start reading, we did a we did the study on Perm for Sunday school on Sunday, and and just, you know, the blood moons, and you had your the celestial things that happen, and how God is just talking through all of that. And you know, it's the third blood moon in the in three years, and it's happened for three years in a row on Perm. What are the odds of that? And it just when they're all different dates. So it's like it's just it amazes me because Genesis tells us that God talks to us through, you know, speaks to us some through the moon, the stars, and the the planets, you know. So we we know that. But I think it's just amazing how he shows us that. It's like this is gonna happen, and you see it, and you see a sign of that. And it's like, God, you're so awesome that you don't just talk to us, you know, to us, but you show us yourself, your awesomeness, you know. And so it's just exciting to to study. And and I'm excited for the people of Iran.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

I pray that they they, you know, right now it's it's they get the freedom that they want. Yeah. When I s when I saw clips of of uh Iranians in the USA and in other countries filling the streets with their flags and you know, and they took their burkas off and they were just like you know, it's just terrific, but we're blessed right now in this sense. There is an abundance of prophecy coming forth. So we're so blessed to have so much prophecy in spiritual. There's like so much though. What are what are we doing with it? Right. We we then have to have discernment so that whatever comes forth, if it's not encouraging us, we're rejecting it.

SPEAKER_05 26:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Okay, and and but if a prophet rises up, or a dozen of them rise up next week and say, There's coming turmoil to the USA like we have never seen. It starts next Tuesday. The church cannot go into panic mode. Right. The church has to say, steps of a good man are order of the Lord. All things work together for good to them that love God. Not all things feel good, not all things are good, not all things look good, but God works all things together for the good of his people. And so that salvation will be poured out.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

And I it. And I think I need to stop.

SPEAKER_05 27:07

No, we're just we're talking. We're just we're talking. We're gonna do another thing on X. Oh, because yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

I just I was just I say that what when we're talking about permanent stuff. The parallels to me were like, oh my gosh. To me, they were just, I mean, it it blew my mind the parallels between Esther's time and this time, and how you know, how relatable it's just like I I just wanted people, I just wanted to go out and go, get your Bible, look at this. Now, look at the news. How can you not say God's hand is in this?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

You know, when when Solomon ascended to the throne, you if if you didn't know anything about God or Jewish history, and then you saw Solomon ascend to the throne, you would assume that the following kings would just be building the building the empire and the empire. But I think there was only about three or four kings in in Judah who really sought the Lord.

SPEAKER_05 28:22

And we know it happens to Solomon, too.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

I I think we need to understand God made promises to Abraham that have to be fulfilled. We may not understand all of those things, but God does.

SPEAKER_05 28:33

Yeah, He does.

Jerusalem’s True Peace Is Jesus

SPEAKER_02 28:34

And He's going to make sure everything happens like it's supposed to happen. But what when I'm praying for the peace of Jerusalem, I don't mean just the absence of war. I don't want war anywhere, and it's easy for me to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the peace of Mexico City, especially when you're a man. And the peace of Canada and the peace of D.C. It's easy for me to do that because they all need it. Yeah. But the true peace that will come to Israel is the Prince of Peace. And there, I understand that they're having. Bishop Weams from the Rock Church was talking to me one day about reports that he'd received of how that among Messianic Jews the growth of the Christian faith is just snowballing.

SPEAKER_05 29:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

That's the peace of Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_05 29:27

That is the peace.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

When Jews understand the Jewish Messiah was actually the Messiah for the whole world, Jews were used as a vehicle. Abraham and his lineage were used as a vehicle to bring the Christ into the world. So what? So that all the families of the earth could be blessed in Abraham's seed. And so I know there's a lot of talk about political, you know, they're a democracy and they're this type of government. No, you know, like any other people, I want them to have peace. But it's more important that they have Yeshua.

SPEAKER_05 30:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

You know, if we're not living a life that says to them, our Messiah is you. Yeah. He really is, and he's your Messiah.

SPEAKER_05 30:29

Yeah, I think that that's what is irritates me the most about people who are so anti Israel and anti-Jewish and all this is because Jesus is a Jew. I mean, he's not gonna change from not being Jew, you know what I'm saying? Uh right?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

I mean, so they were even way too much Jewish, I mean, the Israeli flag in Iran the other day when they were celebrating.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Yeah. We're we're gonna see some things in this life. Some of it's gonna seem like turmoil, some of it's gonna run through your heart like a sword. In order to be able to embrace the environment, we're gonna have to be trusting that Jesus is in control, whether we like what's happening or not.

Sheltered America And Real-World Danger

SPEAKER_05 31:16

Yeah. I mean, I think just to me, it's amazing, you know, because if we think of what's the worst that we've ever been through in our lifetime around this table, I'm just gonna ask, and just as as a bunch of Americans sitting around this table, because a lot of people listen to us in other countries, okay? So what would you say is the worst thing you've ever endured? I know you've been in Vietnam, that has to be the most horrendous thing.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

But actually, I actually God was really with me there. I I did go through some few scary times, but because I was in Saigon and moving the mail, I wasn't out in the bush. Okay. We had the occasional rocket attack and and sniper fire. But those guys out in the bush, out in the country, it was nothing occasional.

SPEAKER_05 32:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

They were they were living through it.

SPEAKER_05 32:09

We had a family friend that was one of the tunnel rats, and because he was a real tiny little guy. Oh, that's it. And man, he just he could he couldn't even talk about it. No, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

You know, I when when we got ready to go to Myanmar uh many years ago, I I I went with uh a man of God from India, though he's an American citizen now. We were at a place called Inlay. And when you go to these countries, you just can't go and evangelize. That's against the law. You go as a tourist. As a tourist. You gotta abide by all their rules. That doesn't mean that that God won't make a way. But it it it it actually, I wondered how are we gonna do this? But the people there knew exactly what to do so that we would not be in violation of law. But we left Inlay and were headed back to Yangon, and we were like an hour on the bus, and we stopped at at a bus station there, and we got off the bus, and the radio said the state that we just left, rebel fighting had just broken out.

SPEAKER_05 33:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

We got out of there evidently just minutes. We didn't know it was behind us. We had no clue till till the news came. There are people who live under this every day.

SPEAKER_05 33:38

Every day.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

They live under this every day. I mean, you you said you have the book Unseen Hands. You need to read it.

SPEAKER_05 33:49

You tell me about it.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

You need to read it. There was other books we read, written by missionaries, and and what they went through in South America. Not far from us, Bishop James Baker, who was raised in Brazil, the child of missionaries in Brazil, could tell you some stories about how things were rolling there. We read about missionaries to Colombia. We had their we've lost too many books. When you loan books out, sometimes they don't come back.

SPEAKER_04 34:22

I get that. I was in Haiti when Papa Doc and Baby Doc were over the regimes there. And you you walk down the street and there's people with machine guns and large machetes, and we we walked in groups. We didn't go out at night by ourselves. Then we went to Dominican Republic, and the same thing, we got off the plane, and and the people inside the airport was with carrying machine guns and stuff. We went to Qatar. Was it Qatar?

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Qatar, yes, at Hamad International Airport. When when we went through the airport, that's the first time I saw an abundance of burkas and stuff like that. But the airport security walking around with all these machine guns, and you're not seeing one every you know, 50 yards. You're seeing one every 15, 20 yards.

SPEAKER_05 35:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

And and they were, you know, I don't know if they're on height and alert like that now, but they were then.

SPEAKER_05 35:30

Oh, I'm sure they are. And right now they probably are.

SPEAKER_02 35:32

But my point is, and I and I I saw the biggest women in the whole world. They look like they could have been linebackers for the Callus Cowboys, like Ed Tutall Jones with broader shoulders. And they were wearing those burkas and things covered from head to and I looked at them and I thought, that ain't no woman. But nobody knows it's not a woman because if you lift up that gown, one of those guards are gonna shoot you. Right. But I said to me, there's no way that's a woman. Yeah unless it's an Amazon.

SPEAKER_05 36:08

You know, I mean Which is possible.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

But my my thing is we're so sheltered here in the USA, or we we take vacations, you know. Uh people go to Puerto Varta and Cozumel and think they're experiencing Mexico. They think this is Mexico, we're having a great time, you know. They go to Rio de Janeiro, right? Sao Paulo and think this is great. They're not going to the interiors of these countries to where people are living quite differently than we are.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

Yeah. The things in the United States are not that way.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

We we are it is well, I don't want to get I I love the USA, but we're praying. When when we have our daily prayer, we ask God. We want to hear the president say, I repent. We want to hear the president say, I've been baptized in Jesus' name. We want to hear the president say, I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Not just him, his family, the cabinet, the administration. We need that throughout Congress. And we've been telling the Lord. We've never had a president to come out and say, I've been baptized in Jesus' name and I spoke in tongues when the Holy Ghost came. We had that.

SPEAKER_05 37:37

Right. It's coming. It's coming.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

So we we pray that we pray that all the time because everyone who's ever seemed like everyone who's ever run for president in the USA has leaned into it trying to make like we have the same kind of faith as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Really? Do you? Because we're not seeing it. Okay, so we're voting best we can, but neither party can claim that we've had a president like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

SPEAKER_05 38:07

We ain't seen it. What's that flag with the green, evergreen that uh Dutch Sheets has that was Washington's flag? We had one at the at the building.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah, we have it.

SPEAKER_05 38:20

I can't remember the name of it.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

I've been praying, Lord, you know, just once could we have we know that the world has to turn so that people will understand that you're in control. But wouldn't it be great, Lord, if just once can we have this because we know hell has enlarged its mouth to receive.

SPEAKER_05 38:45

Which wasn't even designated for it.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

It wasn't, it was designated for the devil and his angels. But I'd in in in my little mind, I think, oh God, what a testimony that would be. Maybe they'd get assassinated for that. Maybe they would, but not before they left a testimony. Yeah. Till it was spoken. Till it. I think this thing about Paul, when he says how many times he was robbed.

SPEAKER_06 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

And then there were times he was fasting, there were times he was just hungry, he ran out of money. He was a man born wealthy. Yeah. He was in peril of robbers, of murderers, of assassins. But he said, I've learned to be content in whatsoever state I'm in. And he wasn't talking about the difference between Mississippi and Massachusetts. No, yeah. He was talking about the many stages of sufferings and deprivation that he who grew up wealthy and knew what wealth was all about had to adjust his life to and maintain faith in Christ.

SPEAKER_05 40:02

Yeah, because he says, I know what it's like to abound and to be able to be abased.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

You know, what what do we know? And so lately, I I would say probably for the last four or five months, there's been a change in in our daily devotion to where the the Spirit of God moves so much more intensely. I I don't know how many times a week that we're overcome with the Spirit of God. And I'm so grateful that God is not just the God of conferences. Yeah, He's God in my home.

SPEAKER_05 40:40

Me too.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Because I need him in my neighborhood. I I need him when I'm driving down.

SPEAKER_05 40:50

I'm just gonna tell you, we do a we we don't do as many conferences as we used to, but but when we go, it he ain't always there. You know what I'm trying to say? His name gets called a whole lot.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

You know, we talk about Jesus, but I'm saying there's just not a whole lot of uh we've been to some of the most fantastic conferences where God really moved. And the the um I guess the thing that bothers me is that many times Pentecostals, charismatics, too many times they think God doesn't move until you're shouting and speaking in tongues.

SPEAKER_05 41:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Now that I I love to worship that way, but Paul said, I will pray in the spirit and I will pray with my understanding. There's gotta be a time when the Spirit of God is provoking prayer in us that, oh, we know that's God. And this this is what we should be praying for. Yeah, you know, I don't know how many times I've said to mama or she said to me, we need to pray for somebody right now. Name the name. Yeah, name the name. Isn't God that kind of God? Yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah. Our God is not a dead God, he's not deaf mute, he's not on the sidelines.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

You know, and I as as a minister, I would rather step into the batter's box and strike out or get hit by a pitch than not get in the game and just remain in the dugout.

SPEAKER_05 42:35

Well, you know, it isn't that something that we talked about maybe before. If you look at the stats of the great home run hitters like Babe Ruth, he had as many strikeouts as he had home runs, but you're not gonna remember the strikeouts.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

I read a little clip on a Facebook reel. Michael Jordan was talking about, you know, oh yeah, I made all these championship shots.

SPEAKER_05 42:58

G-O-A-T of the basketball.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

But he said, but then when he said how many he missed.

SPEAKER_05 43:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

But then how did you get the one? He just never gave up. The will to compete. We're in a war. What is the will to engage? You know, in Noah's day, right? There were many men of renown. It'll be in the end times like it. Do you know how many athletes are worshipped?

SPEAKER_05 43:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Men of renown. They get medals for scoring points or being defense uh stars or whatever, whatever their particular field is. The government, the government, the president say, I'm gonna give you the hockey team. We're gonna give you a medal. We're gonna do okay. We're we're look, this guy had great discipline. Not saying he didn't, not saying he didn't strive. But as in the days of Noah. Yeah. People were married, giving in marriage, buying, selling. There were many men of great renown. Men are being worshipped. Fan is a short word for fanatic. I enjoy watching baseball, especially, baseball and football. But I ain't beaten nobody up. Because they root for the we we were at a Rangers game years ago. The nicest lady was in line with us. And we we it was a great game. It was a walk-off win against the Yankees. We love to watch them lose. But there was a lady in line with us, and we were talking, waiting to get in. We got there early. We we used to go and sit there. We we never left early. We stay until the ninth inning, 10th, whatever. We paid for that seat. But she's talking, she said, yes, this is gonna be a great game. Yeah, we're gonna play the Yankees. And suddenly she developed the most foul, filthy mouth and anger and rage about these Yankees. And I thought, ooh, I'm glad I ain't a Yankee. This language got on the red, white, and blue. We're not supposed to be moved like that by entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Yeah. It was the Houston Astros.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

It was the Houston Astros that she was so angry about. Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

She popped the corn.

SPEAKER_05 45:33

Yeah, sounds like it.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

And and and and we've, you know, there was a poor guy that was a Giants fan that was beat to death outside of Dodger Stadium. Just this year. Well, a couple of years ago, but you know, they're fighting every year now in the stands.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Cowboys got shot over a game.

Abraham, Isaac, And The Deep Well

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yeah. So what what I'm saying is our emotional energy has got to be just as great for God. Me and Mama was talking about this. In our daily devotion, we happen to come across Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. Right. Okay. So Abraham was told, take your son, your only son, Isaac.

SPEAKER_05 46:20

We watched it on Super Book yesterday with the kids.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

All right. So here's the deal. And he went right away. Yeah. But what kind of turmoil was in his heart as he walked in obedience to the voice of the Lord? How heavy were his feet. Yeah. As he's walking up the side of the mountain. And he before he goes up there, he looks at the crew that went with him. And he says, Y'all wait here. My son and I, we're going to go worship. And we will return. All the while, knowing what he was going to do. And when Isaac asked him, We got wood, we got fire, where's the sacrifice? Abraham said, The Lord.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

We'll provide.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Himself. A sacrifice. But what gets me is you go to church and they read that, that's like, oh yeah, he's going to Walmart. And uh he's he there'll be a blue light sale at Kmart. He'll show up. You know, he's going to Macy's, got his credit card, he'll be back. No. This was not that. Yeah. He was looking at the son who equated his life and talking like that. And Isaac, rabbinic teachers say he was from 26 to 35 years old.

SPEAKER_05 47:48

That's what I taught the girls. And I was like, you know, it's not like he had a little kid, bound him up, put him up there. No, no, no. He Isaac had to lay himself up there on the wood.

SPEAKER_02 47:59

He carried the wood.

SPEAKER_05 48:00

He was it. And he had to lay himself up there.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

I mean, it was This wasn't no 16-year-old kid like I was. Yeah. This this was God 24 to 35, 36 years old. He had to yield to his father's will. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:15

So he could have beat him up. I mean, he could have just knocked him out because he's old, he's over.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

I know. My dad always had game on me. I never thought I could rise up again.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

You know though, I it it's to me the first time I heard, well, I didn't get it the first time I heard it, but after I've seen it in the years, I think the fact that Isaac climbed up there showed you how willingly Jesus went to the cross.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

And it showed you the strength of Abraham's commitment, no matter his emotional turmoil. No matter what his carnal nature said to him, because he was a father and a husband. He didn't want to go back home and look at Sarah and say, I killed our boy, but God asked me to do it. Right. Sure. I don't want to tell mama nothing like that. So I'm thinking about the time we live in and that the the person God is asking us to be, the people he's asking us to be, and the individual he's asking me to be. And I I find myself often, God, I'll I'll never make it if you don't help me.

unknown 49:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:37

And in that, aren't you saying if I need to be on the potter's wheel?

SPEAKER_02 49:42

I have to accept it.

SPEAKER_05 49:44

I have to accept it. And I can say, okay, you know. There are things even though I'm looking good to myself, I don't think you need to cut off nothing else, but you know, if you need to trim a little here, trim a little there, go ahead, you know. Um, but sometimes it comes out to so much more than that.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

And we tell you how God prepares you for these things.

SPEAKER_05 50:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

1976.

SPEAKER_05 50:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

I had a vision. It was a dream. I saw myself walking up a hill. It is a picture of the Jack and Jill book. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a payload. I went up there. There was the little well with the gable roof and and the winch and the bucket and the rope. And on my way up, I picked up some rocks, and I had been praying because we'd had our second son, and I was thinking, in my lifetime, I thought, when we got engaged, I thought, this is the first time I really known love. Now you think it before. But maturity causes you to realize that was infatuation. This is love. Then when Timothy was born, I thought, oh no, no. Now I know. Before I didn't know. And when Anthony was born, and it happened to me again, and I said, I'm not understanding what's growing in me. Okay? So I'm praying, God show me how deep is this love. So I dropped these rocks into the well, and I understood in the dream God was showing me the depth of love.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Because you couldn't see where they went. No.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

I couldn't see, and I they never splashed. So the vision goes away. So I'm all excited. Me and Mama's better than Romeo and Juliet, you know.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

But but I'm not gonna kill myself. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

But here's the deal. God began to deal with me the next day about a husband supposed to love his wife like Christ loves the church. So then I saw, oh no, this is actually how deep the love of Christ is for the church. I mean, I can learn a lesson from it, but the visions really, it's not just about us, it's about Christ and the church. I don't share that with anyone.

SPEAKER_05 52:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:08

Eighteen years later, in the crisis of our life. God knocks on the door that we see every now and then on a Saturday afternoon instead of during church. And we and he's he's still alive, Joe Washburn. Yes. He's down in the Temple, Texas area. God told me to stop.

SPEAKER_04 52:33

We weren't on the Indian resurrection.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

We're going to have some fellowship. So we had some iced tea and some fellowship. And then I'm walking him out to his truck and he says, God made me stop because I have to pray for you. We hadn't told him anything about our struggle. He don't know. He comes through once every six or eight weeks on a truck. Karen Wilson's. He he lays hands on me and he starts praying. And we're the highway is 666, isn't it is the number of the highway. They've changed that. They've changed that number. They've changed that number since then. But they called it Slaughter Highway because of the livestock coming out on it and people hitting it, and because of the number of drunks that would stumble out there and get hit. So we're standing there on the side of the highway, and he puts his hand on me and he raises my he what's the name of that little church they pastor now?

SPEAKER_04 53:28

It's Brush Harbor something.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

Yeah, it's a brush harbor church. Oh. At any rate, he lays one hand on my shoulder and he sticks his other hand up, and suddenly he starts having an apostolic fit on this highway. And I'm watching the road. And he's shaking and he's speaking in tongues, and he's whoa, whoa, whoa. And I'm oh oh Jesus, keep your hand on him, you know. Keep your hand on us. Yeah. And I'm nervous. And he finally quits and he says, God told me to tell you something. I said, okay, Joe. He said, I'm not crazy. I said, okay. He said, really? God told me to tell you something. I said, okay. He said, I'm not crazy. I said, okay. And we go through this like three or four times. He said, I don't know if this means anything to you, but but God told me to tell you, son, the well is deep. 18 years later, in the crisis of our ministry, this man stops on the highway, knocks on my door, says he's gonna pray for us, says he's can you know, and I I I want God to be able to stop me when I'm driving down the road. Wow. So that I can go knock on somebody's door and be able to tell them God sent me.

SPEAKER_05 55:06

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Look, we're out of time. Oh gosh. We're always out of time. We're already we're already talked an hour. So we're out of time.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

We'll have to do this next time.

SPEAKER_05 55:17

Well, we didn't introduce it. We were gonna do it, so the Lord knew already. So but you know what's so good is we want to just question the the encouragement that we want to leave people with today is this no matter what's going on, God is still in control, He He has a plan, and all we need to do is just stay linked to Him because you know He's He's not brought us this far that He's gonna leave us.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

The turmoil of the world does not upset God's equilibrium, does not change, and it should not upset the church's equilibrium. Yeah, it should not upset us as individual, our equilibrium. Yeah, our spiritual equilibrium has to remain on point. On point, yeah, amen.

SPEAKER_05 56:04

All right, y'all. Thank you so much for joining us around the table today. Thank you, ladies. Thank y'all over there. Thank you. All right. So anyway, we hope we encourage you today that you know if it feels like the world is just out of control. It is, but God is still in control of everything.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

The world is out of control, but God ain't gonna always be out of control.

SPEAKER_05 56:24

Amen. You know, it's always a crisis after a crisis after a crisis. But, you know, we need we, you know, I just I just want you to say, uh, you know, Sister Patty, I'm gonna ask you to to to just lean into the mic. We're gonna have people that that they're sincerely in fear. They're in fear of what's going on, they don't know what to do, they don't know how to to move forward from this because they're just, you know, yeah. And so what would you tell them if they're if they're in Iran or if they're in Israel or if they're in a country, Qatar, or wherever where they're actually being bombed and and all of this, or even if they're in the United States and they're just feeling afraid of what's going on, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_04 57:16

You need to look up because your salvation is coming down. Hold on to because it's faith over fear. And you gotta hold on to your faith. I know that it may be scary, but God's in control. He's got your life in the palm of his hand, and he's gonna take care of you. It may not look like he's going to, but he is. Whatever is going on is God's will, and everything give thanks because this is the will of God. And that's my my hated favorite scripture.

SPEAKER_05 57:56

It is, it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:58

And everything give thanks because this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. And and just lift up your voice, lift up your hands, and thank God that you are here for a reason. Yeah, Jesus' name. Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

This test will eventually be a testimony.

SPEAKER_05 58:20

Yeah, it will. It will. All right, we're gonna end with go show some love show some compassion. Give mercy and go be Jesus today. Hey SDU family, if you have enjoyed this podcast today, would you please like, follow, and share our podcast link? And we would love to hear your feedback and your podcast topic suggestions. To do that, simply go to our website at www.m3mi.org, scroll to the more tab, and select contact us. Also, if STU has been a blessing to you, you can also go to our website and select sow a seed. There are several ways that you can give, whether it's Zelph, Venmo, Cash App, or if there's an address to send a check or money order. All your gifts are tax deductible, and we thank you so much for sowing your seed with us. I want you to remember this. A wise person once said that a person has given you their time, they've given you their most precious gift because they can never ever get it back. Thank you for sharing this day with me. We love you, we'll see you soon.