SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us on the CCW podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you connect with us on social media to stay up to date on ministries and events happening at CCW.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you're encouraged, inspired, and motivated by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To find out how to connect with us, keep listening after the message ends.
SPEAKER_01: We have so much talent.
SPEAKER_01: You would not, I mean, I'm blown away.
SPEAKER_01: Caleb Torres, who he didn't tell you this, he just went down to Mission Service and we needed a singer, so he decided to do it.
SPEAKER_01: Last year he played the drums.
SPEAKER_01: And if we had the whole worship team was from here.
SPEAKER_01: And if you didn't know that on Sunday, July the 5th, we have so much talent.
SPEAKER_01: Don't sit on the sidelines with your talent.
SPEAKER_01: God has a use for you.
SPEAKER_01: Today we come to faithfulness in the fruits of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Study love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
SPEAKER_01: I think I got all of those.
SPEAKER_01: It took me a long time, and the one that I always didn't say was faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: So here I am preaching faithfulness today.
SPEAKER_01: You can turn in your Bible to 2 Samuel chapter 19.
SPEAKER_01: We are going to reference that some today.
SPEAKER_01: The notes look a little different.
SPEAKER_01: It's not three points with two subpoints.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't get that together for you.
SPEAKER_01: My apologies in advance.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you guys were doing Thursday before last on July 17th in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: But as for me, I was here at the church, kind of recovering from the mission trip.
SPEAKER_01: We had basketball camp coming that afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: We had the Randolph adoption gonna happen that afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: And I was upstairs in my office and I was reading through and writing and making notes and trying to figure out what I was gonna preach when I got a word from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And that came in the form of an email.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, when I prepare a sermon, it's not easy.
SPEAKER_01: Usually I get at least like a month.
SPEAKER_01: And I get to read and I get to write and I get to polish and edit and cut and figure out exactly how I want it to sound.
SPEAKER_01: But I preached five nights in Mobile.
SPEAKER_01: And while that was a tremendous blessing, it is not what I'm used to.
SPEAKER_01: And so on July 17th, I was scrambling to figure out something to tell you guys today.
SPEAKER_01: Because five nights is more than I preached all of 2024.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm praying and thinking and reading and Googling, trying to figure out what God needed me to say about faithfulness on that morning.
SPEAKER_01: And I was making extensive notes about 2 Samuel chapter 9 and about King David and about how faithful he was to his promise that he made to his friend Jonathan.
SPEAKER_01: Way back years before, when Saul was trying to kill David, Jonathan and him concocted a plan where Jonathan Saul's son would let David know if he was in danger.
SPEAKER_01: And then they meet, and Jonathan tells David this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, May the Lord be between you and me and between your descendants and my descendants.
SPEAKER_01: And then all these years later, when Jonathan and Saul are dead, we find King David in 2 Samuel chapter 9 looking around for somebody he can be kind to.
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole sermon about looking around for somebody you can be kind to, but we're on faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: Kindness was last week.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm here, and the kids, I think they say, I was cooking.
SPEAKER_01: I was cooking in my prep, and I was getting notes together, and my kids are like, no, that's not the right connotation.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I had this 2 Samuel chapter 9, and I was working on this other thing, and around about 10.34 or so, I took a break to look at my email, and in my email, I have an email from my faithful wife.
SPEAKER_01: I don't ever get emails from her.
SPEAKER_01: Every now and then I get a text.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes she calls, I usually don't answer, but email is a strange way to communicate.
SPEAKER_01: So there's an email from my wife, and it is a copy of last week's CCW Weekly with a note that says, just FYI.
SPEAKER_01: Rick is preaching on Mephibosheth.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Samuel chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: The guy who David showed kindness to, as you know, if you were here last week.
SPEAKER_01: And so this email, God tells me, no, you're not going to preach on Mephibosheth.
SPEAKER_01: And I just got to tell you, sometimes when the Lord speaks, it's like, oh man, I got to go back to the drawing board.
SPEAKER_01: So I did, and I started thinking about it, and really, King David, he was good and kind to Mephibosheth, and that is a great example of his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: He kept his promise to Jonathan.
SPEAKER_01: He did what he said he would do.
SPEAKER_01: And King David was a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_01: He's the anointed king.
SPEAKER_01: He killed Goliath.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't kill King Saul, even though he had opportunities, and Saul was actively trying to kill him.
SPEAKER_01: King David said something, I will not make a sacrifice to the Lord that cost me nothing.
SPEAKER_01: As far as biblical heroes go, man, this guy, top-notch.
SPEAKER_01: And his faithfulness to Mephibosheth, a glowing example.
SPEAKER_01: He kept his promise for no reason at all, except it was the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine keeping your promise for no reason at all, except it's the right thing to do?
SPEAKER_01: That's almost like unheard of these days.
SPEAKER_01: We try to figure out how much it's going to cost us to get out of our promises.
SPEAKER_01: Not keeping them because it's the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: King David was so faithful in 2 Samuel chapter 9, but if you literally turn the page in your Bible to chapter 11, it was the spring when the kings go out to battle.
SPEAKER_01: And David did not go out to battle.
SPEAKER_01: And then he found himself on his roof.
SPEAKER_01: And then he saw Bathsheba, who was the wife of Uriah, which is one of his faithful soldiers, who was out to battle, where David probably should have been.
SPEAKER_01: And then David called Bathsheba, and next thing you know, she's pregnant.
SPEAKER_01: And so he calls Uriah home to try to get him to go down and see his wife, so that Uriah will think the baby's his.
SPEAKER_01: But Uriah, who is the faithful one in this story, is so faithful that he sleeps out on the porch and won't go down to see his wife.
SPEAKER_01: And so the next day, David gets him drunk and tries to get him to go see his wife.
SPEAKER_01: And Uriah still won't.
SPEAKER_01: And so then finally, David sends Uriah back to the battlefield, holding a note, which Uriah was so faithful he did not read, that ordered his execution.
SPEAKER_01: So King David, who was so faithful to Jonathan and so kind and good to Mephibosheth, right after he wasn't faithful at all.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible tells us that the thing he did displeased the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: There aren't too many blanks today, but the first one on your notes is this man's faithfulness is faulty.
SPEAKER_01: We're imperfect.
SPEAKER_01: We're burdened by this curse of sin and by our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And believers, we're saved by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, we have this fruit of faithfulness inside of us.
SPEAKER_01: It's growing, but it's far from perfect.
SPEAKER_01: It's faulty.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it can be hard to grasp how faithfulness can be faulty.
SPEAKER_01: Because faithfulness, by definition, is like not faulty.
SPEAKER_01: I looked up the definition of it, and faithfulness means unfailing, consistent practice of loyalty despite extenuating circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: That's a mouthful.
SPEAKER_01: I'll say it again.
SPEAKER_01: Unfailing, consistent practice of loyalty despite extenuating circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Firm adherence to promises is another way to put it.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Holy Spirit in us helps this fruit of faithfulness grow, of keeping our promises, but the faithfulness gets choked out.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, we see the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23.
SPEAKER_01: But before you get to that, you've got these works of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And the works of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit are both inside of us and they're battling.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes contention and jealousy, selfish ambition and envy just work against our faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: And so at best, we're faithfulness sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: And does that mean we're even faithful at all?
SPEAKER_01: As broken, fallen men.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, I'm more faithful today than I was yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: And hopefully I'll be more faithful tomorrow than I was today, but not always.
SPEAKER_01: So I take all of this and I come with the only conclusion I can, and that is I want you to know you can't put your hope in the faithfulness of men.
SPEAKER_01: Even the best men.
SPEAKER_01: Even top-notch men like King David, Pastor Rick, your favorite Bible author or commentator.
SPEAKER_01: And certainly not me.
SPEAKER_01: I can try, but listen, guys, if you give me enough time, I will let you down.
SPEAKER_01: Some circumstance is gonna come up, which could be as simple as I'm too tired, or I changed my mind, or I got a better offer, or it's not the best for my family.
SPEAKER_01: And my flesh will root up, and I won't adhere to my promises.
SPEAKER_01: I keep on striving to be faithful and to be consistent, a good promise keeper, but don't rest your hope on me.
SPEAKER_01: Because my faithfulness is faulty.
SPEAKER_01: This faithfulness is a strange fruit.
SPEAKER_01: The reason it's a strange fruit is because it requires longevity.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you what I mean.
SPEAKER_01: I can be joyful in the morning for a couple hours, sometimes even like half a day.
SPEAKER_01: I can be good and kind in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I can be gentle, but not when I'm sleepy, and even less when I'm hungry.
SPEAKER_01: I can be patient 15 or 20 minutes unless I'm on 280 and need to be somewhere, and I can keep myself in control when the situation calls for it.
SPEAKER_01: But for an extended period of time, consistent love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.
SPEAKER_01: I'm on a fall.
SPEAKER_01: But we strive, and faithfulness really is the fruit that shows how mature the other fruits are.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Like how often you do the fruit is how faithful you are, and that shows how much your fruit is blossoming.
SPEAKER_01: So we strive to be faithful, but we will fail.
SPEAKER_01: Don't put your hope in my faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: But enough about the bad, because I've got good news for you today.
SPEAKER_01: Blank number two is this God's faithfulness is flawless.
SPEAKER_01: But it can be very hard to see how God's faithfulness is flawless because my faithfulness is faulty.
SPEAKER_01: But hear me if you hear one thing today.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us over and over again that He will do what He says.
SPEAKER_01: And if you find a promise in that book somehow, someway, someday it's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of promises in there.
SPEAKER_01: According to my internet research, somewhere between three and eight thousand.
SPEAKER_01: I set out to count them, but I kind of ran short of time.
SPEAKER_01: So let's just say there are thousands of promises in the Bible, and if you find one, God is faithful and it will come true.
SPEAKER_01: He will do what he says.
SPEAKER_01: He's unfailingly consistent and loyal despite circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: He will adhere to his promises no matter what the world throws at you, no matter who lets you down, no matter what may come, God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: He's not gonna slip up, he won't double book, he's not gonna overcommit or be too tired or have a better opportunity.
SPEAKER_01: Come along that will keep him from keeping his promises to you.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us this God is not a man that he should lie or change his mind.
SPEAKER_01: Has he not said it and will he not do it?
SPEAKER_01: Has he not spoken it and will he not fulfill it?
SPEAKER_01: Numbers 23, 19.
SPEAKER_01: Lamentations 2322 says this Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed.
SPEAKER_01: His compassions fail not, they're new every morning.
SPEAKER_01: Great is your faithfulness, the Lord is my portion, says my soul.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I hope in him.
SPEAKER_01: In him, not in a situation, not in a circumstance, not in a person.
SPEAKER_01: My hope is in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a few more promises, because you may need one today.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful to forgive.
SPEAKER_01: If we confess our sins, he's faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_01: He's faithful to be with us.
SPEAKER_01: In Hebrews 13, 5, he says, I will never leave you or forsake you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Lo, I'm with you always, even to the very end of the age, in Matthew chapter 28.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful to guard and establish us against the evil one.
SPEAKER_01: He's faithful to strengthen us and help us and uphold us with his righteous hand, Isaiah 41, 10 tells us.
SPEAKER_01: Psalms 32 says, God is faithful to instruct us and teach us in the way we should go.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful to guard our hearts and minds, Philippians tells us.
SPEAKER_01: If we pray and give thanks to Him and tell Him our requests, Philippians 4, 6 through 7 tells us that God will give us peace and guard our hearts and minds.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just any peace, it's a peace that you can't even understand.
SPEAKER_01: It don't even make sense.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, Matthew 11, 28.
SPEAKER_01: God gives weak to the power and strength to the weary.
SPEAKER_01: He gives wisdom to those who ask.
SPEAKER_01: James 1, 5.
SPEAKER_01: Believer here today, I want you to know God has started a good work in you, and he will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 1, 6 tells me that.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're righteous, the Bible says that he hears the righteous who cry out and deliver them from all their troubles, Psalm 34, 17.
SPEAKER_01: He has a plan for you to prosper you and to give you hope in a future.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 29, 11.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know Jesus today, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, Romans 10, 9 tells me you will be saved, and I believe that promise.
SPEAKER_01: And that same Jesus who died on the cross and rose again for our sins in John 14, he says that he's gone to prepare a place for us and that he will come back in one day where he is, we will be with him also.
SPEAKER_01: I believe in the promises of God.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, your mercy is in the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
SPEAKER_01: And I stand here today and tell you that Romans 8.28 says, And we know that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord, to those who are called according to his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Not everything is good.
SPEAKER_01: There are some things that are horrible.
SPEAKER_01: There are some things that I don't even want to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: But God is still faithful.
SPEAKER_01: And the same God who made all those wonderful promises I just told you, told us in John 16, 33.
SPEAKER_01: Be of good cheer.
SPEAKER_01: I've overcome the world, Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: But in this world you will have tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: That's a promise, and God is faithful, and he keeps his promises.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe one of the hardest things for me to understand is to figure out how the bad thing works out for good.
SPEAKER_01: How God has a plan to prosper me.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I just can't rationalize that.
SPEAKER_01: But all of your problems will not be immediately solved if you accept Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I just look and it is hard to fathom how an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God could let some of this stuff happen.
SPEAKER_01: When the tragedy strikes, when they were much too young, when they didn't deserve it, when the results aren't good, and it's a kid, when you lose your job and you're on the way home to tell your wife, but you get a flat tire, and then it starts raining, when there's no explanation and it doesn't make sense, and the pressure's building up, and it feels like the whole world is against me, and I just can't take the pain anymore.
SPEAKER_01: How am I supposed to take you seriously when you tell me God is faithful?
SPEAKER_01: Because it sure doesn't seem like that right now.
SPEAKER_01: And if an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God could let this happen, I'm not so sure what I think about that.
SPEAKER_01: These are real thoughts, guys, real emotions, real statements, and not statements that are made by lost people.
SPEAKER_01: My faithfulness is faulty and broken, and it can be really hard to understand with my broken self how God can have a flawless faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: And when people start to question God's faithfulness, a lot of times they decide I'm gonna quit being faithful to God.
SPEAKER_01: So what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: How can you help someone remain faithful?
SPEAKER_01: How can you convince someone that God is faithful, especially when the situation is bad?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously we have a church answer, and that church answer is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus can, but how do we make that down on the ground a little more?
SPEAKER_01: And I think number three is share your story.
SPEAKER_01: Share your story about how Jesus has been faithful to you.
SPEAKER_01: And I can't be faithful in everything, but I can be faithful to share my story.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 89, verse 1 tells us this I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, and with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.
SPEAKER_01: Point number three, share your story about Jesus and how he has been faithful to you.
SPEAKER_01: How God is faithful.
SPEAKER_01: I bet if you think about it, you have a story.
SPEAKER_01: Do you share it?
SPEAKER_01: The funny thing about having a story is this you tell it a few times and it gets to be kind of like old to you.
SPEAKER_01: Like that's nothing new.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's heard it.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to hear the same old story again and again and again.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I believe sometimes the devil will use that thought process to shut us up, to keep us from taking seriously, Psalm 89.1.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in fact, last Thursday, or Thursday before last, July the 17th, as I was writing these notes about Mephibosheth, the other thing that I was kind of 50-50 on is should I tell my story?
SPEAKER_01: And I was struggling because I've told this story many times before, and I've gotten used to it.
SPEAKER_01: It's not news to me anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you have heard it.
SPEAKER_01: And then via email, God said, No, Mephibosheth.
SPEAKER_01: Tell your story.
SPEAKER_01: And then last week, after church, when Pastor Rick preached, we were standing right over here and I was talking to some people and we were having a conversation, and it became evident that some people need to hear my story.
SPEAKER_01: So much so that I looked at Amanda and said, I gotta tell the story.
SPEAKER_01: And she shook her head and said, Yeah, you gotta tell your story.
SPEAKER_01: And so now that it's all built up, please bear with me for just a few moments while I do my best to make known the faithfulness of the Lord in hopes that it might help even just one person today who is struggling to believe that God can really be faithful.
SPEAKER_01: My parents got divorced when I was three years old.
SPEAKER_01: They had been married for 20 years.
SPEAKER_01: And my dad got married again a couple of months later to a woman that he met in the jail.
SPEAKER_01: Now, he was a sergeant with the Sheriff's Department, and she worked with him in the jail, so it's not that.
SPEAKER_01: But they did get married.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta watch that stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So from the age of three, I did the every other weekend, four weeks in the summer.
SPEAKER_01: Dad gets you at three o'clock on Christmas, bring you home at three o'clock on New Year's Day, all that.
SPEAKER_01: And Sunday afternoons are still kind of tough for me.
SPEAKER_01: They're kind of gloomy because that's when that transition happened.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what this story is about.
SPEAKER_01: So I lived with my mom, and we had some tough years as she rebuilt her life and tried to figure it all out.
SPEAKER_01: And she wanted the best for me, and one of the things she was able to do, she sent me to private Christian elementary school at All Saints Episcopal Day School.
SPEAKER_01: I went to Episcopalian school and Southern Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_01: It all seemed to work out.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: So I went to All Saints Episcopal for five years, and then I went to Central Park Christian School in sixth and seventh grade, and me and mom were home together a lot, and it was hard.
SPEAKER_01: Man, there were some tough days and there were some tough nights and there were some tears.
SPEAKER_01: It was hard.
SPEAKER_01: So my mom eventually got remarried.
SPEAKER_01: So I had mom and stepdad, and I had dad and stepmom.
SPEAKER_01: And when I got to be about 12 years old, I became really involved with my friends in the neighborhood over at my mom's house.
SPEAKER_01: We played sports, we rode bikes, we rode skateboards, little motorcycles, BB guns.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody had a real gun once.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't do that.
SPEAKER_01: We went off in the woods.
SPEAKER_01: About 12, we started going to youth group.
SPEAKER_01: The girls started hanging around some.
SPEAKER_01: It was the good life in my neighborhood, which is a little place out past Insleley and Wylam called McDonald's Chapel.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in the early 1990s, which is when this was, McDonald's Chapel was rough and it was getting rougher, but we didn't know, we just lived there.
SPEAKER_01: And all of my friends went to minor junior high school.
SPEAKER_01: And I heard all these stories about minor junior high school, and it was like Disney World to a private school kid.
SPEAKER_01: Like it was the most magical place on earth.
SPEAKER_01: All these things that were rolling in about minor junior high school.
SPEAKER_01: And so I finished seventh grade over at Central Park, and my mom was kind of done with the private school thing, and she put me in these tests to see if I could get in the college accelerated program.
SPEAKER_01: And I snuck in.
SPEAKER_01: And so that got me in public school at Pittman Middle School, which is in Hewytown, Alabama.
SPEAKER_01: And if you know anything about minor in Hewytown, especially back in those days, like I was going to school with the enemy of all of my friends in the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: And so I go from private school where I got 20 kids in my class, eighth grade, which is a hard year anyway, into this public school, like a thousand-something kids, at the place where all of my friends don't like.
SPEAKER_01: And it was horrible.
SPEAKER_01: I would see them on weekends and see them in the afternoon after practice and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01: There were six of us, and we were pretty tight, and they were playing ball at Minor, and I was stuck over at Pittman.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the meantime, I start drifting away from my dad because if I had to miss the school day, I wasn't going to miss the nights and weekends.
SPEAKER_01: So I started making excuses and skipping visits.
SPEAKER_01: And I think in January of my eighth grade year, I didn't see my dad a time.
SPEAKER_01: Before I knew what FOMO was, I had it, right?
SPEAKER_01: So after Christmas of eighth grade, my mom started seeing like how tight I was getting with the friends.
SPEAKER_01: And she had never really said that I could go to minor.
SPEAKER_01: But she finally broke and said, Next fall, I'm going to let you go start ninth grade at minor with your friends.
SPEAKER_01: Here I come.
SPEAKER_01: I was going to be a purple tiger on the football team.
SPEAKER_01: I was going to do all that.
SPEAKER_01: I just had to finish out the spring at Pittman.
SPEAKER_01: Now, a little bit about 1992, just a trip down memory lane, the styles were much different then.
SPEAKER_01: Levi's blue jeans came out with these things.
SPEAKER_01: I think they're still around, button your fly.
SPEAKER_01: That's very tricky in an emergency situation, but everybody had button fly pants on, and we had shirts that said button your fly.
SPEAKER_01: Lots of bright neon colors as the 80s start fading out before the grunge started in the 90s.
SPEAKER_01: So we had a lot of turquoise and purple and pink.
SPEAKER_01: And the guys were like tight rolling their pants.
SPEAKER_01: You remember this?
SPEAKER_01: You like fold your cuff over and you roll it up, you look kind of like a pirate.
SPEAKER_01: Braided belts.
SPEAKER_01: I saw one of these on the internet the other day.
SPEAKER_01: These braided belts, you can get it too long where you can wrap it around and it hangs down your leg.
SPEAKER_01: Strange things.
SPEAKER_01: We had these woven hoodie things that look like your grandma's throw rug.
SPEAKER_01: They sold them in the middle of the galleria.
SPEAKER_01: They were called Bajas.
SPEAKER_01: I had me a Baja.
SPEAKER_01: But the craziest thing, like, we started wearing rich old man pants.
SPEAKER_01: And they were called duckhead pants.
SPEAKER_01: And they had a little duck on the back of them.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody had to have some of these things.
SPEAKER_01: And you needed to have a shirt with the duck on it, too.
SPEAKER_01: I looked them up, these things are like a hundred bucks.
SPEAKER_01: It's like yachting pants.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like the Afcos were.
SPEAKER_01: Like, why is anybody wear fishing shorts?
SPEAKER_01: We wore duckhead pants.
SPEAKER_01: So we come around, and it is the last Wednesday in February of 1992.
SPEAKER_01: February the 26th, to be at Zach.
SPEAKER_01: And in Alabama, you know how the February weather is.
SPEAKER_01: You'll have a nice spring day.
SPEAKER_01: And then a couple days or hours later, it can be freezing.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we had had a nice weekend, 75 degrees or so, and I had a pair of purple duckhead pants, shorts.
SPEAKER_01: And I knew that my mother would not let me wear these to church youth group on that night.
SPEAKER_01: But I had this plan that morning.
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna wear my purple duck heads, and I had a turquoise button your fly shirt with purple writing, and I had black Nike air shoes with purple and turquoise trim.
SPEAKER_01: Couple of sprays of Dracar Noir, except we were country, so we called it Dracar.
SPEAKER_01: And I still do, and I still have some and I'm wearing it today.
SPEAKER_01: But I had a problem that day that mom would not let me get out of the house in shorts in the cold.
SPEAKER_01: So I was going to come home with my stepdad because she had a dentist appointment.
SPEAKER_01: And I was gonna go to my friend's house, and we were gonna go to church, and then I would get home about 8:30 or 9 o'clock, deal with it then, ask forgiveness, not permission.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of kid that I was.
SPEAKER_01: So I head out that morning in my Baja because it's cold.
SPEAKER_01: Tell mom I love you.
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
SPEAKER_01: She's in the driveway, get in the car with my stepdad.
SPEAKER_01: He takes me over to Pittman.
SPEAKER_01: She's going to work.
SPEAKER_01: We listen to Paul Harvey every morning, now page two.
SPEAKER_01: There was this girl at Pittman, and her name was Angela, and I'm not going to give any more details than that because I preached at mission serve and I said a name of a kid from fifth grade.
SPEAKER_01: And before I got done, a guy said, You want his phone number to call him?
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I haven't seen this guy in 35 years.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a girl named Angela, and she was pretty cute.
SPEAKER_01: She was sweet and pleasant.
SPEAKER_01: I think she played volleyball.
SPEAKER_01: We had a couple of classes together, and I kind of liked her.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm in seventh period that afternoon, playing basketball in the gym, and Angela comes in and she's got a note for me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, back in the day, notes are the primary form of communication between young men and young women.
SPEAKER_01: And the girls can make them smell good, and they could fold them into hearts, and they could lock them somehow where you couldn't get them on them.
SPEAKER_01: They did all kind of stuff with these notes.
SPEAKER_01: And so Angela has a note for me, and my heart skips a beat.
SPEAKER_01: But the note just said, go down to the office, which was okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because at least I got to talk to Angela on the way there.
SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't a bad kid, but I did have friends who were on the fringe.
SPEAKER_01: And so I started thinking, what do they know?
SPEAKER_01: What can they prove?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm walking down, it's on the other end of the school, the office is, and I get in the office, and my stepdad's there, and my basketball coach from the Little League, who is a preacher.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, what in the world?
SPEAKER_01: They didn't say anything.
SPEAKER_01: And they check me out, and on the sidewalk of Pittman Middle School, under the awning, February 26, 1992, just after 2 o'clock in the afternoon, they told me that my mom had a massive heart attack.
SPEAKER_01: And she was gone forever.
SPEAKER_01: And I was 13 years old, and my world crumbled.
SPEAKER_01: And we drove over to my grandmother's house in one of these cold, misty rains, and we all just were sitting there waiting on my mom to come in and say it's all gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_01: But she didn't come in.
SPEAKER_01: Over the next few months, I had to leave my neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: I had to leave my friends.
SPEAKER_01: I had to go move in with my dad, who I hadn't seen hardly at all, and my stepmom.
SPEAKER_01: And my dad still let me go to church with my friends, but there was no more running the streets of McDonald's chapel because what I didn't know is that he was an investigator for my neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: And he knew things.
SPEAKER_01: And under no circumstance was I gonna go to minor junior high school.
SPEAKER_01: So I had to go over to the college prep thing, and it was stupid hard.
SPEAKER_01: But I adjusted to a new normal, and I didn't know a word traumatized back then, and there was no talk of any therapy.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, therapy was for crazy people.
SPEAKER_01: If you just got knocked around a little bit, you needed to man up and be tough.
SPEAKER_01: Figure it out.
SPEAKER_01: And so I just lived and I tried to figure it out.
SPEAKER_01: And my dad and my stepmom, they did the best they could, but I mean there was just this sea of darkness.
SPEAKER_01: And I can remember at 13 years old looking at that verse, Romans 8.28, and we know all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and call it according to his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: And I would just stare at that.
SPEAKER_01: And I would say, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: One year turned to two, and two years turned to three.
SPEAKER_01: I got to be a junior.
SPEAKER_01: The clouds kind of started lifting a little bit, but before I even knew the word for it, I was depressed.
SPEAKER_01: And I came out of it, I got a driver's license and new friends, a new job, and the college prep thing, I got that figured out somehow, somehow, and I was headed towards college.
SPEAKER_01: My dad, he loved me, but we got on each other's nerves.
SPEAKER_01: I had a plan to move to college, and he wasn't so sure.
SPEAKER_01: And it got so tense between us that when I actually moved in, he didn't even go to prevent a problem.
SPEAKER_01: I still saw some of the guys from the old neighborhood here and there, and I kept up with them, chatter and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01: And I, as a as a senior in high school, uh, my one of my best friends had moved out to the country.
SPEAKER_01: His mom knew the neighborhood was getting tough, and she moved him away.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm getting ready to go to college in the spring of my senior year.
SPEAKER_01: My buddy comes in and tells me he's got a baby on the way in Mississippi.
SPEAKER_01: There's another guy who graduated a year before us.
SPEAKER_01: He was in jail when I graduated high school.
SPEAKER_01: There's another guy who started selling drugs.
SPEAKER_01: My freshman year in college, I got a call that one of my friends died in a wreck, 20 years old.
SPEAKER_01: Went to his funeral.
SPEAKER_01: Sophomore year, another call.
SPEAKER_01: A 19-year-old kid, another wreck.
SPEAKER_01: I'm finishing college going for a master's degree, and the guys from the old neighborhood are dealing with addictions and felonies and court and prison.
SPEAKER_01: It's like they were stuck.
SPEAKER_01: And I started thinking about that horrible day, February 26, 1992, when the world that I wanted was ripped away.
SPEAKER_01: And when God started doing a new thing in me.
SPEAKER_01: And somewhere in my early 20s, I came to the realization that that storm I went through at 13 years old, man, it directed me away from some tornadoes and hurricanes that were right there on the horizon.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to me here today.
SPEAKER_01: God is faithful, He is a promise keeper.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know about you, but as for me, I know that all things work together for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: I know it.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that God had a plan for me on that day.
SPEAKER_01: He had a plan for me to meet Amanda five years later at a little grocery store.
SPEAKER_01: And he had a plan for Ella to be behind me playing the keys today.
SPEAKER_01: And he had a plan for Luke to be here, and he had a plan for me to be speaking here with you.
SPEAKER_01: And on February 26, 1992, my mother quit being a part of the plan.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we were making a different plan.
SPEAKER_01: A plan that in hindsight I wouldn't have wanted.
SPEAKER_01: And so I can stand here before you today and tell you, 33 years later, February 26, 1992, the hardest day of my life, I consider a great blessing.
SPEAKER_01: That tragic circumstance that didn't make sense.
SPEAKER_01: It worked for good for me.
SPEAKER_01: And God, He is good.
SPEAKER_01: He is faithful, unfailingly consistent.
SPEAKER_01: He will keep his promises somehow, some way, in due time.
SPEAKER_00: We're excited you joined us for today's message.
SPEAKER_00: Our heart is to connect with others in our community, to grow with one another, and build a bigger kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: If you accepted Jesus today, we want to hear about it.
SPEAKER_00: Take a moment and check us at CCW Connect to 94000.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you again for joining us on the CCW Podcast.