Good Ground, Good News | Special Guest Larry Stockstill

We kick off our new series, Good Ground | Good News, sharing why God prospers people for purpose, not excess, and how a posture of open hands changes families, cities, and nations. Stories of revival, provision, and healing point to a good Father who meets real needs and invites bold faith.

• Abundance as assignment not accumulation
• John 10:10 and Psalm 23 on superabundance
• Almolonga’s transformation from crime to productivity
• Seven reasons God wants believers to prosper
• Sowing and reaping through generosity and mission
• Creation’s built-in pattern of plenty
• Abraham’s blessing applied to modern life
• Personal healing testimony from hospice to health

Transcript

Welcome, Fasting, And Joyful Opener

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Rock Family Sermon of the Week. For more information about our church, please visit the RockFamily. Now to join us for a message from our special guest speaker.

Vision: Good Ground, Good Seed, Good News

Why Abundance Matters More Than Money

John 10:10 And Superabundance

Almolonga: Revival And Economic Renewal

Seven Reasons God Prospers People

God The Good Father And Shepherd

The Gift Of Jesus And All Things

Wilderness Provision And Creation’s Plenty

Sowing, Reaping, And Boat-Sinking Blessings

Abraham’s Blessing And Right Thinking

A Miracle Story: From Hospice To Healing

Invitation: Forgiveness And New Life

Prayer, Surrender, And Blessing For 2026

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Let's give Jesus praise. Isn't he wonderful? Glory to God. Glory to God. Thank you, Lord. All right, all right, all right. Uh turn around and tell somebody this is gonna be a great day today. Come on, tell them. And I need my little in-air thing, if you could boost this up a good bit. Thank you. Uh wow, what an introduction. I mean, uh, yeah. I can't wait to hear myself after that introduction. Thank you, Scott. Wow, and look at this school. Look at what the Lord has done putting you guys in this beautiful school, and it's just amazing. I'm glad to have my wife in May, will be 50 years we've been married. She's with me today. Let's give her a hand. And uh also my son James and Janae, my fifth child. We have six children. We're not just pro-life, we're prolific as well. We have 20 grandchildren. Everybody say, help him, Lord. So we just uh are really, really excited to be with you and can't wait to get back to Baton Rouge. Man, it's cold up here for us. But um, I'm glad that the fast is over, Pastor Scott. I was recalling when you said that my first fast was three days. I really thought I was gonna die. You you know what I'm talking about? I mean, I didn't know, but in the third day, I was ready to break the fast, and I was in Walmart, and uh it was about lunchtime, and and uh I heard a voice over the speaker, the loudspeaker, said, uh, shoppers, we have hot biscuits in the garden department. And when I heard that, I told Melanie, that's it. I'm breaking the fast right now. I love a hot biscuit. Come on, shake your right hand if you feel the anointing about that. A little butter, a little honey. So I just said, It's it, it's over. I gotta break it. I went to the garden department. I said, uh, I looked around, I said, but where are the biscuits? The hot biscuits? She said, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, Well, you just announced it over the loudspeaker. Oh, the lady said, I didn't say hot biscuits, I said hibiscus. Let he that hath ears to hear hear what the Lord says to the churches. And so anyway, I just I just want to say though, I could sense so much of the presence of God here because of these days of prayer and fasting that you've been doing these 21 days, and uh it's gonna pay off. You're gonna see down through the months of this year, March, October, all the way through the year, you're gonna see breakthroughs that right now you don't have any idea, but you will see it when it happens, you'll see that happened because of the 21 days of seeking the Lord together. Well, Pastor Scott called me and asked me if I would come uh start this series about uh good ground, good seed, and good news. And I thought, man, that I I would love to do that. I'd love nothing more. Because in our church, you know, we've seen the Lord bless our church financially through the years giving to missions. In fact, when Melanie and I finished our 28 years there pastoring, they totaled the amount that had been given to missions in that 28 years that the people of Bethany had given$63 million to missions. That's right. And only the Lord can do that, but he has to prosper his people in order for that to happen. And I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that, you know, nobody's coming to our rescue financially. It only the Lord blessing us as people. How many of you are candidate to be blessed? Come on, raise up your hand. That's right, because you know, somebody said legacy is not what is uh done to you, legacy is what happens through you. And God has great plans ahead of you. I left when I was on the front row thinking about going to a dentist office one time, and uh he was a Christian dentist. I laid back in the chair. I had lost a crown when I was in Mexico. I'm crowned with many crowns. I don't know about you, but I lost one, and and he was fitting me for a replacement, and I was thinking about it, you know, what it would cost and all that, about$500. And so he came back in. He said, Hey man, I checked your insurance and I've got good news for you. And I had made a very big seed for me down in Mexico when I was there. He said, Um, your insurance is gonna pay half of this, so you only have to pay$250 instead of$500. So it saved me$250 for right there, just on a crown. And I looked over at the wall and there was a sign. I know he's a Christian dentist because it had Psalm 81 and verse 2. It said, Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. Oh, thank you, Lord. So I'm gonna teach you this morning how to open your mouth wide and let the Lord fill it. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for this wonderful day. It's the day you made, you helped us all to get here and to be quiet before you in your presence. And now, Lord, as we teach your word, I just thank you. People are being healed, people are being set free, saved, and Lord, they're being enlarged as Jabez prayed, enlarge my territory. Bless me indeed. In Jesus' name. And everybody said, Amen and amen. I want to just talk to you a little bit today about abundance. I want you to change your thinking and get it in your mind that God actually wants to bless you, not just for you, but as I said, through you. And that abundance is a mentality. Uh I was privileged to be with David Green this week, who owns Hobby Lobby. And uh I was at the table with him at a supper, and we had a lot of interaction time. I've met him before, but this I got to ask him questions. As you know, Hobby Lobby made$8 billion last year, and he told me this year they're on they're going to be on track to make$9 billion. And uh he told us that they have now given that company officially over to the Lord as a trust, a nonprofit, and they're living on 1% of the profit, his family, which, of course, that's that's 90 million. How many of you know you live on that? I mean, it's sacrificial, but not really, you know. Could you handle that? But David is such a humble man that he prays over the floor plan, the model floor plan there in Oklahoma City every Saturday. He said he prays in the Holy Spirit over the floor plan, and the Spirit shows him where to move the umbrellas, what you know, what price they should be, and they make those decisions, send them out on uh Saturday, and they make the changes on Sunday because they're closed. And that's another big thing he talked about is that it was the biggest business decision he ever made was to close on Sunday. And because that much of their income came from that, but God has just roared financially into them, and they they meet every month to figure out how to give away five hundred million dollars a year to missions. Come on now, somebody five hundred million dollars a year that that him and his three children sit around and just figure out what to do. How many of you would love to have that opportunity to give away 500 million? Well, see, he's no different from us. David is just a precious man, he's 84 and spry as a cat. He just really loves the Lord. But I was just thinking of how blessed we are in America to be able to affect the world. And poverty is a terrible thing. I've been in many countries of the world, I've seen poverty firsthand, and people living in cardboard houses. Imagine in temperatures like this today, living in a cardboard home and just barely a tent, hardly. And I've seen it, I've seen the devastation of it, and now I researched it and discovered that 25,000 people a day starve to death around the world. Now, today, 25,000 people will die because they don't have one more meal. And that is my in my judgment, that is not God, that is the enemy at work right there. That 25,000 people just need one more meal, and that's by the way, nine million people a year starve to death. So I know that the enemy is killing people with poverty. And if you think it's cool to have poverty or that it's spiritual to have poverty, just just you're gonna have to get that out of your mind now. That's not God, because if you take it all the way to the extremity of poverty, you see that people starve. Nine million of them a year. It's actually a killer. But God created the world to provide for us, and that there would actually be no lack whatsoever. And I'm gonna explain a little bit about that through this message. We're gonna get your minds really thinking on the fact that yeah, God doesn't need me to be blessed, he needs me to have abundance because there's so much need in the world. And that solution of abundance is an economic blessing on a family, a business, or a nation. He didn't intend people to starve to death. And I want to give you John 10.10 as a text today, and that is Jesus said, the great shepherd of the sheep, the thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come, and he said, I'm the good shepherd in that passage, that you might have life and have it in, and this is a Greek word that more abundantly it says in the King James, but it's really superabundantly. I have come that you might have life and that you might have it in superabundance. Years ago, I saw a video of a little town in Guatemala called Almalongo. And it's a town of about 20,000 people, very poverty stricken, high crime rate, high alcoholism. You could walk down the streets in the daytime, and drunks would be sleeping up and down the streets. They had so much crime, they had to build four jails just to hold the incarcerated people up out of 20,000. And all they were doing was building more jails. And it was so criminally riddled, and then their agriculture should have been good, but it was pathetic. And I have the figures on what their productivity was. They shipped out one truck of vegetables every week out of all the farmlands and the mountains around them, which was should be very prosperous. But the Lord raised up a church there, a lady was healed, and when she was healed, the word spread, people began to get saved. They were doing a prayer meeting, that little church was doing a Saturday prayer meeting every Saturday, praying and fasting for God to break the yoke over Alma Longa. And when that lady was healed, people began flooding into that little congregation. Well, over the period of the next 10 or 12 years, 40 churches were raised up in that town. So many people got saved that they would have meetings of the town, gospel meetings, and in the streets would be 18,000 of the people praising God and rejoicing. Come on, somebody. But what happened next was beyond belief. The vegetables began to grow to gigantic proportions. I've seen cucumbers and squash that you cannot believe the size. A carrot as big as from your tip of your hand to your elbow, a carrot. Massive, massive harvest. Instead of one truckload a week that went out from there, 40 truckloads a week of vegetables began to be exported. In fact, many of them to the U.S. They called it the grocery store of the U.S., Little Alma Longo, because they raised so much vegetation. But the great thing was they interviewed the jailer and they said, What are you doing today? He said, Nothing. They said, What do you mean, nothing? He said, all four of our jails have closed for lack of inmates. We have no crime in our city. Can you imagine if they closed the jail in Huntsville? Said, Well, send all the judges home like they did in the Welsh Revival. They gave all the judges white gloves because they had no cases to try. That's what revival can do in a city. Come on, somebody. But it prospered them. And I saw fleets of Mercedes-Benz trucks that had been bought by the prophets of all of those vegetables that had been exported to the United States. What I'm saying is that God has the power to bless. There's salvation, there's healing, and there's abundance when the kingdom of God takes over. Now that's what I'm talking about today. And I'm going to give you, if you've got something to write with, I'm going to give you seven reasons God wants you to prosper. Instead of poverty, which the enemy always brings, it's not holy, it's not great. It results in death in many, many nations. God wants to channel through you the blessing to the world. And I was a missionary in Africa two years with Melanie. I've seen it, I've lived there. I pushed an old Jeep more than I drove it, believe me. And so I got a heart for this. And I want to see this church become just an amazing center of financial blessing to the world. Let me tell you, uh, you know, this city has been named the number one city in the United States. I believe U.S. News and World Report to live in Huntsville. It's the number one city. And the Space Force is coming here, and so much is happening financially for this city, it might as well slosh over on you a little bit. Amen. Let me give these to you quickly principles of abundance. Number one is that God is a good father. And I'm reading from Matthew 7, 11. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give what kind of things? Good things to those who ask him. Now, you know, uh, having 20 grandchildren, I've I've been able to give them Christmas presents this last Christmas. You've never seen 20 grandchildren tear into presents like that. I mean, it was hair, teeth, and eyeballs. It was crazy. And but Melanie and I enjoyed that so much, seeing our children, our grandchildren tearing open those presents. Nothing rejoices the heart of a parent like their children having the right clothing for school, or a nice backpack, or some shoes, or all of those playing sports and their little uniforms. And that it just the delight of my heart to do that. And God says that heart came from me. I'm the Father, it says, of whom all fatherhood derives its name. God the Father is a caregiver, a protector, a lover, a provider for his family. And we need to change our mentality about that. He's not El Chepo, he's El Shadei. Big difference. I think of the prodigal son's father. You know, when he came back after his little hiatus of sin, came over the hill, his father ran and grabbed him and told the servant, slay the fatted calf, let's have a party, bring the ring, the shoes, the robe. I want to put the very best on my son. He was covered with slop from head to toe, feeding pigs. And the Lord's, the father said, Clean him up, robe him, give him that ring, that that ring of authority, put shoes on his feet. This is the Father. He wants to bless people who have been under the servitude of the devil and under the oppression of the devil, and he wants to release them from debt. Let me tell you, debt can kill people. It has the potential to drive them absolutely crazy, their marriages to break up. So the Lord is saying, why don't you get your life right and then I can begin to bless you? The second reason, if you want to write these down, is that God is a good shepherd. Psalm 23. He's a good shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. And one translation says, I have all I need, or I do not lack. Because the Lord is telling all of you, even in those towns, those cities, wherever you are, that He does not want you to have lack or need. He is my shepherd, I shall not want. He continues by saying, He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies, anoints my head with oil, and my cup, what do you remember what it says, my cup runs over. And that means it it pours out, goes down the table, runs off the side of the table, onto the floor, and everywhere. It's an abundant condition that you've gone into. The Lord is your shepherd. And then it ends with surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. We're sheep in the Lord's pasture. I think about the 5,000 men when Jesus, they were hungry. Three days they'd been with the Lord and he wanted to feed them food. He said to his disciples, What do you have? They said, Five loaves, two fish. Little guy here's got some in his lunchbox. And the Lord blessed them and they began to multiply. Now look at God now. People are hungry, people are perishing, but as a shepherd, he felt a compassion for their financial needs, their physical needs, and he prayed a blessing. And they began to bless and give, and as they gave, it multiplied not only to feed, it was tons of food, tons. But then they he said, pick up the fragments, and it was twelve large baskets in Greek that they picked up, and they had such an excess. Are you seeing the God is not slim, he's not barely getting there. He's not, he he provides like Peter when he said, put your nets on the right side of the boat. He pulled the net. They couldn't even get it all in his boat. They had to get another boat and fill it, and it says, Both boats were sinking with the amount of fish. Now your mind is seeing that Jesus, when he provides, he told Peter, you need to pay your taxes. Just go catch a fish. There's going to be a gold coin in his mouth. Go pay our taxes. How many of you would love that to happen April 15th for you? How many of you say, but the Lord doesn't do things like that? No, the Lord did things like that. It's just our minds have been so conditioned that the Lord is not a good shepherd when actually he's a wonderful shepherd. And then I want to give you number three is the gift of Jesus. The real, the one of the greatest reasons I believe in God's abundance is because God so loved the world that he gave his only son. I have a picture that we just made in December of our 34. There's 34 of us in our little tribe. Hallelujah. And I pray over that group every day. I have that picture. But I was thinking about which one would I select to give for the life of the world? Well, I couldn't think of one that I could part with. Twenty, ten girls and ten boys for grandchildren. They're beautiful. I got four of them here in the nursery somewhere under the bowels of this church building. But you know what? I couldn't select little Sienna or Ellis or any of that. I couldn't select them to say, God, you can have this one to pay for the sins of the world. But God the Father only had one. Only had one. And he said to Jesus, I'm going to need to sacrifice you. Abraham raised the knife, but he never buried it into the chest of his son. God did. And then Romans says it this way: He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us how many things? All things. I was sitting in a classroom at ORU as a student, and my professor was talking about a tribe up in Tibet that lives, I think he said 18 or 20,000 feet up in the mountains, very high. In fact, there's no roads to that tribe. They just subsist with small amounts of agriculture that they can do. No one has ever brought the gospel to them. There's no way to get up there without a military helicopter. It's the only way. But as you know, those things can cost 3 million, 5 million, who knows? More. So Christians don't have the money to get a military helicopter, so the tribe doesn't know anything about the gospel. And he was telling us that in the classroom. My mind was wandering, but all of a sudden it seemed like I kind of stepped into a little fog. And I saw Jesus on the cross. He was crying out to God for help. Father, where are you? Why have you forsaken me? And I could hear him. And the Lord spoke to me. He said, Do you hear him screaming for me to rescue him? Do you hear that? He said, I had to turn my back for those six hours, listening to him call on me. Where are you? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The psalmist said he said on the cross. And he said, If I did that for my son so that he could pay the price for every human being to be saved, why would I not give you a little money to buy a military helicopter and go tell some people that he can? If it's only money that is need is needed, why would I give my son but not give you the funds? And from that moment forward, Pastor Scott, I realize whatever I need to get the gospel to anyone, God will provide that because of his son. You believe that? I remember one time I wrote Reinhardt Bonkey and I said, Brother Bonkey, we would love to pay for one of those crusades in Africa where you have a million people saved in one of those crusades, and how much does it cost? And he answered me back that would be a million dollars. And I remember reading the email, I thought he would say a hundred thousand, but a million, and I thought to myself, man, even God doesn't have that much money. Seriously. And I and I got thinking about it, and I got thinking, a million people get saved at those meetings. Wonder if God would give me a million dollars for a million souls. And then I just remember saying, Lord, I'm open. If you'll do it, I'll give it to Brother Bonkey. So I shared that with the church. And I said, if you cough and a million dollars falls out of your pocket, we'll give it for that crusade. And everybody laughed, except a young man on the back row, and he raised his hand. He said, Lord, if you give that to me, I'll give it to that crusade. And within two weeks, his company approached him, they were a venture capital company, to raise a hundred million in capital in the United States and said, if you can raise a hundred million, we'll give you any bonus you want. After that prayer he prayed two weeks earlier, he said, I know what I want. I want a million-dollar bonus. They said, for what? He said, for a Reinhard Bonkey Crusade. They said, Well, whatever parts your hair, man, I mean, we'll give it to you. If you raise a hundred million. Well, a year later, he tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and he said, Brother Larry, I got the money. I said, What money? He said, the million dollars for the Bonkey Crusade. My eyes got big. He handed me the check. Come on, somebody. I said, make it out to me, bro. No, not really. But we flew to West Palm Beach, found Brother Bonky in a place where he was speaking, and I got him on the side, but I knew him well. And I said, Here's the check for the crusade that I told you we want to pay for. And his eyes got big because he was sitting in the parking lot that day with his assistant, and they needed a million dollars for the next month's crusade, or they were gonna have to cancel it that day. And we put that million dollars in his hand, and and I got to go to the crusade. Nine blind people were healed in one night. I mean, I saw it. And in that, in that five nights, 1.1 million souls filled out a decision card and gave their heart to Christ because of a bonus. Come on, you can clap better than that. That's pretty good. All glory to God, all glory to God. And you see, you're starting to get it. If we would just ask more, he would give more. If our heart was to do what he wants to be done, the fourth reason is superabundance, is in the wilderness crossing. Have you thought about God commanding that verse in Psalm 78? He commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven. Wow. And he rained down on them manna to eat, gave them the grain of heaven. Man ate of the bread of the angels, and he sent them food in abundance. Abundance. Not only food, but water. He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them what kind of drink? Abundant drink. Like the ocean depths. Someone, an engineer, has figured out how much it would take to feed three million people every day and give them water with all their livestock. It would take a train 300 cars long, full of manna, every single day. And it would take boxcars of water that would stretch from Huntsville almost to Los Angeles, California, full of water just to have to hydrate the whole body of people and their livestock. We're talking about one day. 300 cars of manna, a train 1,800 miles long of water, just to take care of them one day. And they were out there for 40 years. Talking about abundance. So if you just look at that alone, you should say, well, God hadn't launched the recipe for manna. Elijah was out there and a raven brought him barbecue from somebody's grill somewhere every day. Have mercy. The Lord, I'm stretching your mind. Don't ever think that the Lord can't supply and can't provide abundance. Number five, the fifth reason, is the abundance in creation. Think about that one. When God made the heavens and the earth, it says He put fish in the ocean and said multiply. He put birds in the sky and said multiply. Do you know they found one school of fish? And I wrote this down, one school of Atlantic herring that was four billion fish. They did them amount the size of the school, it was four billion herring in one school. Now, why are all those here? We don't need four billion fish in one little one school. Well, God's not concerned about supply chain issues. If you look at creation, how about birds? He said birds multiply. They found one passenger pigeon flock in southern Ontario that was a mile wide and 300 miles long. Three and a half billion birds. And people said we're going to starve to death. They say, well, we can't afford more people to be born on earth. You know, we're running out of food, we're running out of all the resources. Oh, really? The latest, you know, Elon Musk, he's a pretty good data analyst, and Elon has tabulated that Earth can supply the needs of 30 billion people, not 8 billion. When God made this earth, I'm telling you, He made plenty. And people said, Well, we need to go to Mars. We got to get out of here. All the resources are running out. Now you can go to Mars if you want to. Live in a spacesuit, live underground, that's what they're saying, and all that stuff. In fact, they put out an ad for people that wanted to register to go on the first trip to Mars. The only thing is it's one way. And 750,000 people signed up to go one way to Mars. In fact, I nominated a few people to go on heaven. Anyone know somebody you'd like to see them head to Mars one way? But that's ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous to think that we've got to escape Earth in its scarcity. Unbelievable. The bison in the 1800s numbered 60 million. You could feel the ground shake hours before they got there. And the caribou in Alaska, 500,000 in one tribe. Springbok in South Africa, 22 and a half million. Springbok running around on the prairies for heaven's sake. Nobody can even kill all those people, all those things and eat them. But see, it's abundance. Let me go to number six. Abundance in sowing and reaping. Now, Pastor Scott is going to preach from 2 Corinthians 9, and I'm not going to steal his thunder, but I want to just give you one verse. It says, Moreover, God is able to make every grace superabound to you, so that you, having always an all-sufficiency, all sufficiency in all things, may superabound to every good work. God wants to use you as a channel of superabundance, like Peter. You know, he asked Peter, could he use his boat? Why? Because the people were pressing him so much that he was at the water's edge, and they were they were just thousands of them trying to get to him. And so he asked Peter, can I use your boat? And he got in the boat and put out a little bit from the shore and preached from the boat. In other words, he used Peter's business for the kingdom. And then when he finished, he said, push on out further into the deep and let down your nets. And that's when they caught those boat sinking harvests. Peter sowed his boat as a seed. And look what the Lord did with that seed. And I've watched it through my life and as a pastor for so many years, that every time our missions giving went up as a church, our income would go up by quadruple. So, in other words, if when we were giving$400,000 a year to missions, we went up to$500,000 and our income went up by$400,000 more that year. And then we did that every year until we were given almost$4 million a year to missions. And the Lord was just blessing us and blessing us every time we sowed a seed. There's something so powerful about seed, and I'm not going to get into that anymore, but let me give you the last one. Abundance comes from the blessing of Abraham. The blessing of Abraham. Genesis 13, 2. Abram, it doesn't just say he was rich, it says he was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. Now I don't notice that Abram, of course, he didn't have air conditioning, so he wasn't as rich as I am. Come on now. Abram was not cursed, but he was blessed. And we read in verse 14 of Galatians 3 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. Now these seven reasons are about finances. And you can take them or leave them. You know, say, well, I like number one, but I don't care so much for number four, but whatever. Take as many as you can, but get your thinking right. But I'm gonna talk to you right now as I close about a blessing that money can't buy. I've been preaching now 56 years. I'm 72 years old. And I started preaching at 16. Started pastoring at 30. Started pastoring pastors at 58. And when I turned the church over to my son at 58, that month my doctor said, I had a routine physical, and he said, You have too much blood. Um normal hemoglobin is 14 or 15. Mine was 60. He said, We're gonna have to start drawing blood off of you. You have a condition, polycythemia vera. I said, Is it fatal? He said, Oh no, we just take blood off of you every month, or we'll give you pills that'll control it. Kind of a mild chemotherapy. So I said, Okay. And I went like that for um 11 years, traveling all five continents every week every year. But in 22, September of 22, I did a routine bone marrow, which I did about every year, and he called me at my home. I remember where I was standing in my home when he said, Larry, I don't like what I see in this biopsy. This disease has turned aggressive. That's all he said. I knew what he was talking about. He said, This can turn into leukemia or anything because right now you're not making too much blood. You're not making hardly any blood, you're extremely anemic. And I discovered in a few months I was losing weight, I weighed 190, I dropped down to 143. I mean, I was in bad, bad shape. Put me in the hospital, began to give me blood, and by the summer of 23, I started getting blood twice a week, sometimes three times a week, all day, eight hours. Couldn't, it it couldn't, it hardly moved the needle. My hemoglobin had gone from 60 to 3.5, and as I said, between 14 and 16, it's normal. I would get all that eight hours of blood and it would jump it up to five or five and a half. And by Friday, it was all gone back down to 3.5. I was not making any blood. That was my low fibrosis. My bone marrow was scarred, and I was not making any blood. And in November of 2023, about seven months, I didn't preach for seven months. I didn't fly, my blood was so low, if I got over 5,000 feet, I could die. And he got me in his office and he said, Larry, I don't know how to tell you this, but I think at this point you need to call hospice. Because we've done everything we can do. This is a very aggressive disease, there's no cure. You're not creating your own blood, and so we can't keep giving you blood. He didn't say they're wasting it, but that's what he was saying. And I said, Okay, but the only problem is I'm not planning on dying, I'm planning on living. That's right. And I said, I want to train a hundred thousand pastors, and I want to help all my 20 grandchildren marry the right person. That's gonna take me about 25 more years. He smiled. He said, All right, I'll give you blood for one more month, but that's gonna be the end. He was just trying to be kind. And on the way home, I looked at Mel and I said, Did you hear what he said? She said, I did. God bless her, she never wavered. I said, We're gonna be able to tell people in the years to come that he said that to me. Because within a month, the Lord started turning it around. And I'll tell you how it happened because I'm in Huntsville. My son James was moving here to Huntsville three years ago, or in 2023, and the Lord told me to come with him to move. Now I was on a walker for about five months, so it was ludicrous to think that I could get in a truck and come up here and help him move. I couldn't go anywhere without a walker. And not only that, but it just with my condition, there's just no way. And the Lord told me the lepers were sent to the priest, and as they were going, they were healed. He said, I want you to go with him. And I'm gonna heal you. So I had nothing to lose. I'm not telling you to do that. I was in the condition. And I asked James, could I go? And he called his brothers and all. You know, Dad wants to go to Huntsville. What do I do? What if he dies in the truck? They were planning my funeral. And I said, Thanks a lot for all the faith, brothers. But I was going. And I left the walker behind. I was helped out to the truck. Got up in this big U-Haul, three or four steps up, came here to Huntsville, over toward Athens. And we pulled into a place and I was feeling better. By the next morning, a pastor here in town told me, bro, Larry, you look healed. I said, Oh, I'm great. I look like a refugee from a concentration camp, is what I look like. And by that afternoon, I decided I felt so good. I'd get up in the trailer and get some boxes and help and put them in the garage. When I got back to Baton Rouge, my son Jonathan said, Dad, you look so good. I think you could preach this Sunday. I said, I believe I will. And preached my first sermon in seven months. I kept getting blood for a couple of more months, but my blood count was rising. One day I walked in, the nurse came out after my routine blood work before getting transfusions, and she said, We don't understand this, but you're over seven today. That's the cutoff point. You can go home today. I said, Did I hear you right? And since then, I have not been back for two. In February, it'll be two years, I have not had a blood transfusion. Giving God the glory. And I've regained about 43 pounds and enjoyed every minute of it, I have to tell you, down in Louisiana. And not, I'm not on a walker, I am a walker. We walk a mile and a half in the mornings, speed walking. It's the Lord. So last two weeks ago, I went to Lima, Peru, first international flight, and preached to about 75 or 80 pastors in this big church of 40,000 people. Pastors University. I did the first module with them, and then I preached on Sunday. A Colosseum of 18,000 seats, and they had two services with 9,000 in each one. Many were saved. And then I asked the terminally ill to come forward, and I got to lay hands on about 200 people who had terminal conditions. You're looking at a miracle right here. I don't know if you knew that. See, you said, Well, you've been preaching okay. I said, I am. I'm perfect. So I went to the doctor two weeks ago. He checked my blood. It was 14.9. I'm in the normal range. Come on, somebody ought to give God the glory and the praise. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Come on, give the Lord a great shout. Praise his wonderful name Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles. Just remain standing. Everybody stand up. Just stand up. Other campuses, you guys go ahead and stand up too. What am I saying? He's a good God. That's what this whole message has been about. He's gonna pour out his blessings. I was on my knees today and praying and dancing around the living room there at James's house. Look, if he healed me of like Lazarus coming back from the dead, I'm never gonna let him hear the end of it. I want you to just take a moment. If you're in this service, and there's an emptiness inside you. But you did get out in the cold and calm. Because there's a hunger inside you. Let's call it hunger. Not for food. It's for reality, forgiveness. And I don't know if you're a man, a woman, a young person. But the Lord loves you. He done love me any more than he loves you. He'll do anything for you that you'll let him do for you. But he can't chase you down and make you do anything. Jesus died on the cross. The just for the unjust, that you and I might be forgiven. God gave his only son. We just preached to thee about that. And he's ready to forgive you. Say, well, I've done too much. Not for him. The Bible says when he forgives you, he remembers it no more. From this service forward, if you get right with God, God will never remember the sin of your past ever, ever again. What a what an offer. And it's really up to you if you want his blessing. Like Alma Longo, that little city. He'll bless your finances, he'll bless your physical body like he did me. Close your eyes with me so everybody's private. Nobody looking around. Of the bleachers here on the floor, there in the three campuses. I wonder who it is in the services. And there may be many of you that would say, That's me. I need forgiveness. Pastor, would you include me in that prayer you just talked about? That forgiveness prayer. I want to get right with God. I want to have a new start and a new year. I'm going to look from left to right here because I can't see in every direction at once. God's already showing me some people that need Him in this room. But if that's you and you would say, Pastor, include me in that prayer. No one else is looking. Here's what I want you to do. Without hesitation, I want you to slip up your hand, hold it up high, and say, and pray for me. There, there, there, there, there. I'm telling you, yeah, there's one man that I saw myself. The Lord said, He's going to get right with you. And he's got his hand raised all across this room. Thank you, Lord. You can put your hands down now. Here's what I want to do. I want to go old school just a little bit here. If you're in this service and you raise your hand, would you let me lay my hand on you and pray with you and for you? Because I want you to go all in. I don't want you to just say, well, I think I got right. No, I want you to go all in. This is that moment. Could I invite you that raise your hands in the next 30 seconds, just slip past your neighbors into the aisles, and I want you to walk right up here and form a line across the front of the church. I don't know how long it'll be, but it may go all the way around the stage. All of you that are raising your hands and did slip past your neighbors, say, excuse me, pardon me. Someone can come with you if you want. But you just get out of your seat right now. That's right. The man the Lord showed me is on his way to this altar right now. He raised his hand. Look at him coming. Look at him coming. Look at him coming. I'm telling you, they are coming up every aisle. Come on, let's give them a great hand clap. They're still coming down the stairs and all the way from the back over here. Here comes two or three more people coming down these stairs. I'm talking about a good God wants to save you, forgive you, heal you, bless you, but he can't move you. You got to move yourself. Thank you, Lord. Let me tell you something. Huntsville is on the edge of revival. This church is on the edge of revival. So many people getting saved in this service. My goodness. My goodness. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. At all of our campuses, if you came forward, would you just put your hand over your heart? Anybody can do that, but just put your hand right here over your heart. You know, that's where sin is. It's not just in your body or in your mind, it's in your heart. And the Lord is going to forgive you right now. I'm going to lead you in a prayer. That's not to prompt you, but it's so that you don't have to think about it and you can say it out of your mouth. The Bible says if you'll believe in your heart that Christ raised from the dead and will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you'll be saved. That's all you've got to do. I see a lot of grown men standing down here. Man, how their families are going to change. Let's pray that prayer. Thank you, Lord. Say it out loud. Say, Heavenly Father, you are a good God. You gave your only Son that I might be forgiven. And I ask you now, let Jesus come into my heart and sit on the throne of my heart. And I say, devil, you've had me long enough. I say, get out of my life, out of my family, out of my finances, and out of my body, and I receive the free gift, salvation, the Holy Spirit, healing for my body, blessing for my finances. I receive you, Lord, and I will serve you. This is a new day for me, a new life. I praise you, Lord. Now, would you do this for me? Would you just take your hands like you're surrendering, like somebody says, stick them up? Just lift them, turn them over and just lift them to the Lord. And like a funnel, I ask your blessings to pour out on them, Lord. Everybody can do this right now in the building. Lord, let your blessings come upon this church. Let your blessings come upon Scott and Britt and Rusty and Lisa and all of the leadership of this great church and every campus there in Madison and Fayetteville and Smith Lake. Lord, just let your blessings, blessings, blessings in 2026. Lord, like those millions of birds that just fly around in the sky, you've given us the need supplied in our businesses, in our families. And Father God, we praise you. We're going to be a blessing to others. If you'll bless us, we're going to be a blessing to others. And we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Can we clap our hands and give God some praise?

Closing And Ways To Stay Connected

SPEAKER_00 55:39

We hope and pray. This message was encouraging and impactful. Join us live on our website or Facebook on Sundays at 9 and 11 a.m. You can stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at The Rock Family. Have a Jesus filled week.