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Wow. This is the hardest recording I've ever done, and I've done a lot of recordings. Not for this particular podcast, but just recordings in general And I've been trying to record this first episode of my podcast, Journaling My Walk With Christ For the past 30 to 40 minutes, maybe longer I've used... I've had to change them, sorry, several devices. All that, all devices that I have used previously, mind you, from my iPhone to a USB mic, to a now this mic here, to a cordless mic to now this, um, mic I'm using now This is crazy. I'll record it, and then when I go to listen to the playback, nothing is there. Or I record it and when I go to listen to it, static. I re- record and then, what is the last thing? I was recording it, like now, and then all of a sudden I hear a playback from a previous recording. I'm like, "What?" I have never had such resistance to record something ever, which tells me I'm on the right track So why am I recording? Well, I'm recording because I've had enough, folks. And you may ask me, "Had enough of what? What exactly are we had enough of?" Well I have had enough of living a life that is not in line with what I believe the scripture says I'm a Christian And you may say, "What does the Bible say how you should live and what are you talking about?" You know we have that old cliche, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes always almost leveled to the ground. Well, folks, that is not the way we are supposed to be living our life. If we are Christians, and we say we are, that word itself meant To live like Christ, to be like Christ. And from what I have read in the Word of God, there was nowhere in the Bible that He was sometimes up, sometimes down, somehow, sometime. Even when He was going to the cross. No. He knew He was going. He didn't wanna go there. But look at the dignity and the way He did it. He just did it, not sobbing, "Why me?" Okay. Yes, He said in the garden, "If it is possible, Father, let this cup pass me." Yeah. But He was not doing the whole why me, like, I don't know why I'm going through this type thing that we do, feeling sorry for ourself, wondering if God has something against us why this thing didn't work out. That is not the life we're supposed to live. That is not the life I wanna live. Nah. I- I'm not doing it anymore So I started to really seek God in all sincerity because If I'm gonna be honest with you, if I'm gonna be honest with myself I started this journey when I was in my teenager s- teenage years. And oh, by the way, I have no plans on editing any of this, so whatever mess-up you hear me make, yeah, that's gonna be in. I don't have no time for that. This isn't no type of pos- podcast where I'm trying to get promoters or... I am journaling. This is gonna be a honest report of what I'm going through. So you... Yeah, some days you may get a long ramble or whatever, and then there might be some other days where it's short. This is gonna be a documentary because I want to document what my journey is from where I am now to hopefully be walking in faith. The kind of faith where I could be thrown in the lion's den, and don't worry about the lions eating me, or being thrown in a fiery furnace, and don't worry about getting burned. I could say things like, "God is able to save me, but if He don't, aight, aight." Hey, I don't know about you, but I want that type of faith. I want that type of faith. I want when I tell people, "Hey, I'm gonna say a prayer for you," that they know me saying a prayer for them means something is gonna change. Not no cliché like, "I'm gonna pray for you," and you knowing nothing gonna happen because you ain't got no power in your prayers. Nah, I'm not doing that anymore. I have no intention on living my life like that I want power in my words. I want power in my life I want when I, somebody is sick and they ask me to come pray for them, that I know that something is gonna happen, that they're gonna be healed. And you are gonna say to me, "Oh, LaFrance, not every time you pray for somebody they get healed." Show me a time in the Bible that Jesus prayed for someone and they didn't get healed. I will wait And I know you're gonna say, "But we are not Jesus." You just said you're a Christian, you're like Him. What are you talking about? The Bible said the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. You know why the Word became flesh? To show us that we can live this life just like Him. But you can't live it when you're thinking like that. Nah. And that's the problem. We have this mediocre way of thinking that we are not supposed to have the power of Christ. We're supposed to. He, Jesus Himself said, "All power has been given unto me and give I to you." That whatever you bind in he-, on earth shall be bind in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So what are we talking about here, people? You know what we are talking about? A bunch of people who are too scared To live the life like Christ said we are supposed to live, a life of victory. Jesus... Look here, Peter said that we are conquerors Because he has overcome the world, that means we have I wanna live that life. I wanna do what needs to be done, and I am going to journal it. Now, if you wanna watch, I mean, you are here for, for, for the scene, let's go for it. If you don't wanna see me, hey, I might crash and burn. I know how everything in media now is watching people fail and rooting for people to lose a job. Okay, hang around for, for me. But I'm telling you now, I am seeking to walk step by step, and I am going to journal out loud, not in secret This walk I'm walking with Christ 'Cause I'm tired. I don't know about you I can't have a form of godliness. The Bible talks about having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof Be so happy to go to church and just listen to the pastor preach, listen to the praise songs, maybe get Some deliverance on something that we asked the Lord, some answers, sorry. Some prayers that we prayed Because we, and if we don't get the right answer or the answer that we are hoping or whatever, we like to just throw it off and say, "Well, God knows that I probably didn't need that right now." Geez. Jesus said, and this is how I know all of this stuff that we've been feeding ourselves is a bunch of hooey. Jesus said, "What father, if his child, son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or asks him for fish, he'll give him serpents?" He said, "If you who are evil," and this is Jesus saying now about, uh, the Father. He said, "You, if you know, you who were created from the dirt, you who are God's creation, if you know better than this," He said, "What do you think of your Heavenly Father?" Come on. If you, your child comes to you for something or if somebody you care about comes to you for something and you have it in your power to grant them, why wouldn't you? If you have it in your power So why do you think that if God has something in His power, and all things are in God's power, to do something for you and you need it, why would He withhold it from you? The wo- even the Word of God say if He give His only begotten Son for you, what good thing would He withhold from you? The things that we use to justify when we don't get our prayers answered is hogwash And we do it, I don't know, I don't know who taught us this, but we need to be untaught this. This needs to stop immediately. Well, you know what? If it doesn't stop immediately for you, it's gonna stop immediately for me 'cause I ain't doing it no more. I, I, I refuse to go through my life living it like Like, I don't know what God is gonna do in my, in my favor or what he's gonna do for me. He might answer me. He might give me something. He might come to my rescue, and he might... That is not somebody who you could rely on when you ain't sure. Are you serious? Look, the Bible says in Hebrews that without faith you cannot please God And then we are admonished to live by faith Now, how can I have faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, if I am gonna be unsure, I'm not sure that God is gonna listen? How can I please him when I am wavering in-- I'm wavering, sorry, or wavered on whether or not God is gonna come to my rescue? Whoa. Whoa. How can he be pleased in that type of attitude? I can't have that attitude. I have to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I go to God, God is gonna take care of this situation for me. Imagine if Moses went in-- went to Pharaoh, "Okay, God told me to go. Ah, cast down. I wonder if I cast down the stick, if this happen. I mean, no, I cast down the s- the staff because if I cast the staff and this don't happen, I don't..." What if he was wishy-washy? You think the children of Israel would have been out of Egypt? But he knew that if God said it in his word, if God tell him to do something, then God is gonna back up his word. And guess what? God said himself, "My words will never return to me void, but it will go out and establish what I say." So therefore, if he say, "If I say something, it shall be so." So guess what, dudes? Guess what, dudettes? All that crutch would we were using back in the day As an excuse why we don't have what we don't have in our life because we blaming on God knows? Yeah, we don't have that no more, eh? Yeah, we doing away with that. That's a crutch we are eliminating today. At least I'm doing it. I don't know about you, but I'm telling you what I'm doing. I'm eliminating that. We ain't doing that no more. I'm not doing that no more. So from here on out, your girl, yeah, I gotta take a different approach. I, I can't do it anymore. If I'm gonna serve God, I gotta serve Him in spirit and in truth I've lived a life where I had one foot in and one foot out. I've lived that life I've tr- I've, I've, I've pretend and I don't, I don't want to pretend anymore I've started going to God in the evening. When I say evening, nighttime. I wouldn't even say evening, nighttime. Ending my day at 11:00, that whole hour, most of the time, the whole hour into the AM, which is a new day. Because the Word of God says the evening and the morning are the first day. That's how you time day, but we tend to time day with the morning and the evening. That's not a day. It's actually evening and morning. We always like to do things contrary to God Word. Hey, well, this is just me. I'm not telling you to do that, but I find solace at night. I'm a night person, so I'm up anyway, and I said it one day. I said, "Hey, I'm up. Instead of me trying to go to sleep and pretend that I'm sleepy, let me go read the Word of God." That's how it started, you know I started getting up in the morning, I mean, in the nighttime, and because I couldn't sleep, I said, "Hey, let me just read the Bible one time." And then I started reading the Bible, and yeah, that's where we are. So that's what I'm gonna do from now on. And it's been good because I've read the Word, and then I go to my app, my app that I have created. I created a Bible assistance app to help me with my studies. That's another thing for another day. I know you guys, ooh, are so scared of AI, but It helps me to break down because there's some Hebrew words, there's some words that I know means different than in English than it did back when it was written. So I use the AI to give me that Hebrew Greek translation so I could better understand the word and what it means and how it applies. Because I know sometimes we take the scripture out of context, and how I'm reading it is not really what the writer, the author intended it to be, and what the word of-- what the spirit of God intended me to get out of it And I must say that is-- that practice, that routine has brought me to this moment in time where I am recording this Journal And I'm gonna do it every day. Will I post every day? I don't know. Probably And it's all it's gonna be is what revelation I got from my time with God and how I apply it because I am not just gonna be a hearer of the word. Who knew? I'm going to be a doer of the word also Ah, if you got this far, sorry, by the way, my name is LaFrance. LaFrance Williams. I wasn't gonna say it, but LaFrance Williams And I'm on this journey. I'm an architect engineer. I live in the Bahamas. Beautiful place. If you've never been to the Bahamas, come and give us a visit. It's beautiful. Um, just send me an email and I'll be more than happy to tell you of the places you could go and see while you're here. That would save you money, and it wouldn't be so expensive. See, most people don't know that when you're traveling, the reason why it tends to be expensive, because you go to the, the, the place designated for the tourists. Trust me, I mean, yes, living in the Bahamas can be expensive 'cause I've... Well, I've lived here all my life, but I've also traveled. But we know the tricks and trades to get, to have fun on a budget or to just have fun without paying those prices that they have for the tourists. Unfortunately, that's the way it is in business and marketing. Yeah. So if you are coming to the Bahamas, drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to tell you where to go and hang out. But I'm in the Bahamas. And like I said, I'm an engineer and architect. I have elderly parents that I take care of I have my own business, which is going through... 'Cause in the construction business, you go through your high points and low points But I had some other challenges in my life and I'm about to embark on something I've never done before. I'm a- I'm about to develop my very, my very own subdivision. So instead of being a, the architect and engineer, I'm actually going to be the, a developer on this one, which is one of the reasons why I said, let me step out of the budget, out, out of the pocket that I normally do in faith. But that's not the reason why I wanted to step out of, out on faith I've been having personal, some personal issues Where I thought that I was living the life that God wanted me to live But the fruits that I was supposed to see, I wasn't seeing. And it's nothing like when you read the word of God and it shows you that you are not where you say you supposed to be Because as, as an architect, no, as an engineer When you put in certain functions, that's a great thing I love about being an engineer, formulas work. As long as you put in the right information, the right input, the output is supposed to be predictable. I love that But when I looked at the word of God and I knowed... I said, "I thought the inputs I were putting in was supposed to give me this." And when the Bible says that you're supposed to know them by their fruits, and I realized that I, hmm, my fruits were not lining up And one day I was reading John chapter 15 about staying on the vine. Look here, you want some revelation for your tail? Read, woo, read John chapter 15, and if you are really honest, that'll give you an eye-opener. That would make you be like, "Whoa, I'm not where I'm supposed to be." Because an apple tree does not force itself to produce apples. No tree forces itself to produce its fruit. The fruit just comes because of the, of, of, of, of it being a, that type of tree. It produces what is in, in itself And what I got from that John 15 is that Jesus was saying, "If you stay on the vine, what is gonna come out of you is gonna be what is in me." And whoa, when I read that, and I really read it, and it read that, when that word just, if you stay on that vine and you abide in me, I'm like, mm. You will produce much fruit And when I, when, and when that... You, you have no idea what it's like to be slapped by the word of God in your face, letting you know you, you, you ain't where you thought you were supposed to be Jesus said, "Abide in me and I in you. And as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me." He said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in, I in him, bears much fruit. Without me you can do nothing." Look here, when I read that, I was like, "Oh, hold on." I started to look at my life, and I was like, "You know what? God, you're right. My life, my life is not, not producing... It doesn't look like the fruits that is someone who is aligned with you. This is not good And that's when I realized I messed up And that is the reason why I'm here Because I want my life to look like I spend time with Jesus I wanted to manifest him You know that Joseph was in slavery? If you go back and you read it, I, I hate doing this. I think it's Exodus 26. No, not Exodus. Uh, Genesis 26, I think. Anyway, I, uh, but I'll find it. And if you go back and you look at Joseph's life, do you know That people could have looked at Joseph and tell that he, that God was with him. Even when he was Even when Joseph was in Bondage People could have t- people could tell that God was with him And That is amazing You talking about a man who's in Slavery, was sold into slavery, and yet you still could tell that God was with you? I'm, I'm gonna look for, I'm gonna look for it. Let me see Let's see. Okay, I think it's... Yeah, it's Genesis 29 And it says that now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, commander of the guard and Egyptian, brought, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there The Lord was with Joseph, and he was successful, was a successful man. He was in the house of his master, the Egyptian, and his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. Now check that out. And that is... Sorry, let me give you where that was. That was Genesis 39, and I started reading from verse one and ended, uh, at verse three. Joseph was in slavery, and God was with him. You see what I mean when people give us, when we use that hooey, hooey sometimes up, sometimes... Even in your bad situation, God is, is still supposed to be manifested in you. People still supposed to be able to look at you and see that God hands on you. Meaning that even in a bad situation, you still got the best end of that deal You understand now what that means? If all two of us end up, if me and someone else end up on, on a food line Begging, which will not happen. But let's just say it does. At the end of the day, I can get the better play Because he was in slavery and the Bible call him a su- successful man. What? What? What are we talking? Folks Let's stop this. Let's stop finding excuses for our failures, for our failures, not God, ours. Okay? You wanna know what God people is supposed to be like, read the Bible. Yes, we're gonna go through trials and tribulation. The Bible said many are the afflictions of the righteous, but it does s- also say that the Lord is able to deliver us of them all Come on, what are you Anyway, so I'm documenting this journey, and you're gonna watch your girl go through all of this, 'cause I plan on going through all of this. I am going to be upfront on everything I'm gonna let you know what I'm praying for and why, and what I'm building the faith on, and what my situation is so that it may relate to you so that you could see Okay? And who knows? We'll probably help each other walk this walk together. I'll be back here probably tomorrow saying the same thing. You be good, you be safe, and please know that God is for you. He wants us to live a victorious life So until tomorrow, be safe. God bless you and keep you. Hold your head up Until then