Here's my question for you. And I'm going to go back up to the place where it was described.
And can you give me that screen back? I want that one to come up.
Sicknesses, accidents, and death come from Satan, not God.
I want to ask you a question. And then I want us to rattle this around a bit.
Are we saying all accidents somehow are coming from the wrong flow?
Or are we saying it's not necessarily demonic?
I mean, bad stuff just happens. We're on an earth where stuff just happens.
Or are we saying some accidents are for God's glory?
You break your neck, you're paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life. That was for God's glory.
Are we saying that? What are we saying?
And why are we saying it?
So I'm going to give you why this is important before we discuss it.
The stance we take on this is the fruit we're going to eat in our life.
What I mean by that is this.
If we believe accidents are of the demonic, we will set our faith to have as few of them as possible.
If we believe accidents are neutral, we won't set our faith for anything because stuff happens.
I mean, it's not like we pray against it or pray for it. It's just like, I don't know, stuff happens.
If we believe that God actually uses accidents to glorify himself.
You know, the guy was working at the shop and he wasn't watching what he was doing and he cut his arm off.
Well, God's going to be glorified through that.
If we believe that, then that's what we're going to fade for.
It's going to, depending upon the stance we take, we're going to go for that.
Now the question is, what is a scriptural stance on accidents?
We'll just hold it to accidents. We'll stay away from sickness and other stuff.
Just hold it just to accidents.
For instance, let's use me.
This summer, on a trip with the grandchildren, we got rear-ended.
As a result, cost us $25,000 for a different vehicle.
Had a vehicle.
Eventually, we would have had to change it, but cost us $25,000 for a different vehicle.
My wife got whiplash, caused all kinds of problems there that we're believing for healing
and for total restoration, still not there.
Blessing?
Well, it's a neutral thing.
I mean, sometimes teenagers drive and they're not paying attention
and they're watching their phone and they run into things.
I mean, stuff happens.
Or...
No, that is under the flow of death and destruction.
Should have never happened.
2012.
Resurrection Sunday.
We're going to start working on this building in about a month.
We're playing football outside.
And I trip over a marker on the side of the road for snow.
Land on the cement, break my arm.
Which one is it?
Is Robert Young right?
Because he's dividing blessings and curses here.
That's where God permits curses, but he doesn't cause them.
That's in that flow.
Is Robert Young right on that?
Every accident does not come from God.
Somehow the demonic was involved.
See, writer, is he wrong?
And then if you're going to give your opinion,
you've got to be willing to defend it.
We got one jumping in right out of the gates.
Well, it says in the Bible, I don't remember exactly where,
but you will not even slip your foot on a rock, right?
Yep.
Okay, so I...
Psalms 91.
Yep, I think it could be a demonic attack.
Yep.
And to see, you know, and if he's going to use it to glorify,
you know, like, did you witness to any...
I know you witnessed to the accident.
I know you witnessed to that kid.
Well, that's bringing goods out of something bad.
Yeah, so, yeah, but I'm...
I'm just like, I will never hit a deer.
I'm standing on that.
And I used to drive this girl to work every morning
at six o'clock in the morning.
It's dark out and she would freak out because there'd be a deer
and I wouldn't even slow down
because I will not hit a deer.
And I'm standing on that and she started to believe me
after all the 20th time.
You know, I mean...
Speaking of deer, I'm with you.
Yeah, I will never hit one.
And I'm not saying it could never happen.
But if it does, it's not because of God.
Yeah, exactly.
And the stance I take every time I get in the car.
I declare what will happen and what won't.
I will not hit a deer.
I will not hit a possum.
Possums can take the bottom of your car out, man.
Like hitting a rock.
Especially at night.
Claim the stance.
Claim the position.
Now, if I'm inadvertently under the wrong flow,
I can say whatever I want to say and I still might hit a deer.
So there is a realm of you've got to stay obedient.
But so you're coming down on the side of if an accident takes place,
it's not middle ground.
It's not blessing.
Somehow the devil got an attack, a smack in on you.
Okay?
Who else got the mic?
Go for it.
What's the word say?
The devil is out to rob, steal and destroy.
So he's the author.
But I come with a whole bunch of testimonies.
Situations I've been in.
And the midst of the mass of the Holy Spirit comes in.
And it saved my life time and time again.
Or saved destruction completely.
So you're going to come down on the side that anything that's destruction to us is Satan is the core of that.
That's the wrong flow.
Somehow that has gotten active in our life.
Is that what you're saying?
I'm saying the word said he's the author.
And that's the way I look at it.
But at the same time, I agree with what's being said there.
On the wall, you mean?
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm going to stop with the bottom line is the word don't lie.
Okay.
And you got to go back to the word.
The word says Satan's out to rob, steal and destroy.
Kill you.
Set you up for murder and your number of things.
But when our love is for the Lord, time and time again, he'll save you in the midst of the mess.
Okay.
Now there may be, there's suffering you go through and stuff, but not complete.
Well, maybe suffering with cancer is God's will.
What is suffering then?
Cancer is from the enemy.
I told you, you're going to have to defend your spot.
If you're going to take a stance, you're going to have to defend it.
I'll give you my opinion.
My mother died of cancer.
And I don't, I strongly, I don't feel that lineage of her is coming on me.
And I denounced it.
There's never was any cancer on my father's side.
Yep.
Well, my mother died.
I don't know any other relatives on her side, but...
But you feel take a stand against it.
Yeah.
Good.
So let's move on.
Let's go to the mic to another person.
Suffering, scripturally, 1 Peter 4, 1, suffering is doing God's will, not ours.
That is true suffering.
Suffering under sickness or disease is not scriptural.
We've been bought out from underneath it.
But true suffering is to learn to obey.
You're up.
Sorry, just that.
Did I throw your thought off there?
You did.
I was going to say the same thing about how the enemy comes to kill,
steal, and destroy.
And Jesus came that we would have life and life abundant.
So if you could, there's like, there's no middle ground on that.
Okay. Anybody else want to weigh in on this?
Once you're done weighing in, I'm going to take it some other place
and you're going to have to fight your corner.
I'm trying to think.
Most examples of accidents in my experience
are a result of unwise decisions.
And I can think of either not listening or not asking
what you should be doing
or failure to follow common sense and wisdom.
If you're not going to maintain your car,
you can't blame the devil.
Well, yeah, you know, it's not in God's kingdom.
If you're not going to maintain your car
and then say that God caused you to break down.
If you're not going to fill your tank,
you can't say it's God's will that you ran out of gas.
And it's not just me.
It's if I'm hit by a drunk driver,
it might not be my choice,
but it was definitely there on wisdom.
I mean, the devil was involved in this somehow.
Now, and I'm not saying that I'm at the mercy
of what other people's choices are either.
I'm just saying that most if not all accidents
I can think of involve a bad choice
at some point on some party's behalf.
Okay, so let's pursue that.
Stay with the mic just a little bit.
Let's pursue that for a bit.
So teenagers are prime examples of this.
Adults can do the same thing,
but teens are still trying to get their feet underneath themselves
and they tend to make a lot of bad choices.
Why? From your experience, you've raised some teens.
From your experience, why did your teens make bad choices?
Same reason I did.
Lack of consideration, lack of training.
This flow or this flow, what you're describing?
That's the devil's flow.
Devil's flow. Lack of obedience to when Kevin said,
now it's icy this morning, slow down
and don't drive like you normally do.
And they go out and disobey the wisdom
and they end up in an accident.
This flow or this flow?
It was a bad choice.
It was a bad choice.
The choice was of this flow.
So it's still... how would you say?
Demons didn't shove their car into another car,
but their own sin put them in a position
to make the unwise bad choice.
I'm in 100% agreement with you.
But the reason many times we make those choices
is pride, disobedience, rebellion, arrogance.
Dad thinks it's slippery.
I can drive high one. I can control this car.
Pow. Where does all that thinking come from?
Right here. Right? Am I wrong?
Okay. Back there.
Okay.
Okay, so back to the scenario where they were hugging
and pray that this will be used for God's glory.
I'm sure we've all been there.
Yep, we have.
So what do you tell them?
That's the hard part.
What do you say without offending them?
That's why we're looking to you.
Yeah.
Here's what I've learned to do.
I won't acknowledge I'm going to do what they're asking me to do.
I'm not going to agree that this is a good thing.
I'll just say, well, let's pray.
And then I'll just pray the way I pray.
And however it lands, not my issue.
I'm not going to pray bad things.
I'm going to pray that
many times I will do this too.
I will stop if the person is coherent.
I'll say, what can you believe for?
What are you faithing for?
What are you believing for?
Because no matter what I pray,
if they're believing to die quickly,
chances are good they're going to get what they're believing for.
So let's surround that and make that as godly as we can.
We don't have to address the fact they're dying of cancer.
We can just address they want to die quickly.
They don't want to linger.
Okay, I can agree with you on that.
Because if I was you, I wouldn't want to linger either.
So I can agree with that.
And I'll just pray the way I pray.
It can be very difficult if you address the issue they brought up.
If the issue is unscriptural,
sometimes my experience is that's the wrong time to lock horns.
Avoid the issue.
Pray God's will.
Pray God's best in that situation.
But don't lock horns by looking at them and saying,
well, this is demonic.
I am not going to pray what you want me to pray.
I mean, you're just, she's going to blow.
I mean, that's all.
I mean, these people are sensitive now.
They're fragile. They're emotional.
You say something like that. She's going to blow.
But at the same token, I cannot come into agreement with,
well, we're going to pray and believe that this cancer is for God's glory.
Because now I'm opening myself up and my lineage up to something.
Because I just agreed to, and now by my words,
I'm going to confess something that is actually of this flow.
Well, I'll just ask forgiveness later.
There's a scripture on that that I found today.
I can look it up for you. I never saw it before.
And it's like, oh my God doesn't like that.
I never saw it before. I knew it from Thessalonians.
Second Thessalonians too. He talks about it a little bit.
But this one, he basically says, you do that.
I will see to it you suffer the curse you're doing that with.
So in other words, God will watch over this thing and
you just can't play with this flow and say,
well, I'll fix it later.
What makes you think God will fix it for you?
See, that's presumptuous faith.
It's like, well, I'll sin on Saturday night.
Sunday morning I'll go ask forgiveness and God will forgive me
and it'll all be good.
What makes you think God's going to forgive you?
Well, he forgives, don't he?
He forgives a sincere heart.
Yours ain't sincere just by that premeditated action.
You're not sincere.
What makes you think God's going to forgive you?
Well, he has to. He does not have to.
Well, when I ask forgiveness, God has to forgive me.
Garbage.
He don't have to.
He wants to.
He will, if the heart's sincere.
But if this is a game, there's no forgiveness for that.
Now I could go another direction on that.
I'm going to wait.
Somebody else, Rich, go ahead.
Yeah.
We have God's grace flowing down.
And we have the curse flowing down on this side.
Yep.
So is that where chastisement comes from?
Or is that a whole other different subject?
Chastisement, from my understanding,
is when we lose the ability to live in this flow,
we can't escape this flow.
Because the supernatural's not working for us
because we're under discipline from God.
We're being chastisement. We're under discipline.
Well, I prayed for my children five times.
Nothing happened.
Is that normal?
I mean, they're sick.
They're getting ready to go to the ER.
Well, I prayed for them five times. Nothing happened.
So is that normal?
A lot of Christians think it is.
So I guess God's not going to do anything.
We're going to back the horse up.
God already declared what should be happening when we're sick.
He already declared what His will is.
When it's not happening, something's wrong.
End of subject.
To make excuses for...
Well, sometimes God heals, sometimes He don't.
You're pathetic.
You're pathetic. That's religion.
God already said in His word.
If it's not happening, something's wrong.
Because we are not able to escape this flow.
Because the supernatural has stopped in our life.
That can happen because you're under discipline.
And the reason we get under discipline is we disobeyed.
And we continue to disobey.
So God disciplining us.
The biggest thing that's supposed to catch our attention
in God's discipline is the supernatural quits working in our life.
That is supposed to be a wake-up call.
For the American church, that's normal.
We don't even expect the supernatural to work.
In fact, there's lots of people who take that child to the doctor
and never pray.
Because they don't believe anything's going to happen.
So they could be totally out of the supernatural
and never know it because
they're not even trying to live in the blessing.
Because we make all kinds of excuses.
Because see, here's the problem that we develop.
So I'm going to jump there.
If anybody else wants to weigh in on some stuff, you can.
But I'm going to jump there.
When we say all bad things that happen
have somehow
a root from this flow.
And Kevin's question was perfect.
Because it can show how this flow can get going in our life.
It can be just plain pride.
It can be just plain disobedience.
It can be whatever.
You know, during the worship time, before service,
I said, or before the class, I was telling God,
whatever you want me to share, I'll share.
Give it to me. I have no preplanned examples I want to give.
So this is probably God.
So I'm going to share it.
And this is kind of a tender one.
Remember the night when I said my oldest son had a vision of the lineage.
And he saw, on my dad's side, he saw my...
it would be his great-great-grandparents,
his great-grandparents, his grandparents,
and Mary and I are not there yet.
So he saw that much.
Kind of like on a staircase coming down,
oldest to the youngest.
And he said the day in the vision, the Lord told him,
he said, the day will come.
Your parents will...
I always look for little things that make it go,
yeah, that was probably God.
He said, the day will come, your parents will be gathered to their people.
See, that's not American vernacular.
That's scriptural.
That's almost King James there.
They'll be gathered to their people and they'll take their line in the lineage.
It's that and the other.
So he saw that.
Well, something happened in that vision
that I don't fully understand.
That's why I don't readily share it.
And it's his story.
He could probably do a whole lot better job sharing it than I,
but it pertains right here and God just brought it to my mind.
It can be as easy as pride, okay?
My great grandfather,
who they say the pelts are actually more from the Jewish line
than the German line.
We always called ourselves German heritage, German lineage,
but we had an uncle who did a deep, deep study
and he got back as far as Prussia,
which was part of Russia.
Between Poland and Russia,
there was a little section of land that was called Prussia.
Phil was from there, wasn't he?
Somebody was from there.
I thought Phil told me his ancestors were from Prussia too.
Anyway, he says you can go back that far
and then you can't go any further
because Russia won't release any records.
They don't make anything public.
It's all secret.
He said, but the pelts came from an area in Prussia
where the Jews had run to to escape persecution and death.
So there was a settlement there
and that's where we trace our ancestry back to, okay?
So I say all that to say this,
my great grandfather's name.
No, think this through.
My great grandfather's name, last name pelts, is Jewish.
They say you go to Florida,
you find all kinds of Jews who are named pelts.
I haven't been there to figure this out,
but this man lived there and he said,
oh yeah, there's a lot of Jews in Florida
whose last name is pelts, okay?
So you got Jewish heritage.
My great grandfather's last name was pelts.
He was on that side of the family.
His first name was Christian.
Now you tell me,
somebody was not trying to make a statement there.
Why would you name your son Christian Jew?
Because we're coming out of Judaism
and we're serving Christ.
We recognized he's the Messiah, okay?
My great grandfather on that side,
obviously I didn't know him,
but from what I've heard,
he was Baptist in his religion
and he was very committed to God,
extremely committed to God, okay?
It was in 1905, I believe, was the year,
or is it 1895?
Might have been 1895.
I don't know.
He was back there somewhere.
He took his horses and wagon,
went to the field to bring hay home.
And he had the whole thing loaded.
He was riding on top of it.
He was trying to get home
before a thunderstorm came.
He got struck by lightning and killed.
Okay?
That threw the whole family upside down
because there was no government help.
There was no social services to step in.
So what they did at that time is
then of course the mother was alone.
She was farming.
She couldn't...
Many times they would marry someone else
just to live at that point.
It was a marriage of necessity.
Well, that hadn't happened.
She couldn't...
They had a whole bunch of children.
She couldn't keep them all.
So they farmed the children out
to different relatives.
That was normal.
Different relatives would say,
I'll step up and I'll raise these two
and that relative step up
and raise those two
and the whole family gets separated.
That separation caused a lot of bitterness
and problems in the family
that my grandparents' generation,
many of them struggled to live for God.
Some flat out just cursed God.
Well, nothing to do with God.
And they think it's because of what happened
and the bitterness they have towards God
because grandpa got killed.
Grandpa was a godly man.
We got split up.
Our lives never became normal again.
And as a result, everything went sideways.
So that's the story back to the vision.
So this is how I remember it.
Like I said, he could be more accurate with it.
But he saw this lineage
and it happened back in the modular.
I still remember the night it happened.
He was in a trance
and all of a sudden he starts wailing
in this trance.
Just wailing, grieving, wailing.
And it's like, wow, I wonder what that's about.
That went on for probably five minutes.
It was fairly long, four or five minutes.
Just wailing and then it came to an end.
So I'm curious.
So in time I asked.
I said, do you remember any of that?
Oh yeah, he remembered it all
and he could explain it all
and there's a bunch I don't even know about.
I said, what was the wailing about?
He said, well, I saw the lineup
and I know what God told me.
He said, and then I knew my great-great-grandfather.
I knew who he was.
I knew him by name.
It's like I knew everything.
He said he went into wailing and grief.
He said that transferred to me.
So I just let it happen.
And as he was wailing and grieving,
I'd expressed it in the physical realm.
And it was kind of a wailing
and a grief of repentance.
And when he was done,
great-grandfather told him.
He said, I have been waiting
and waiting and waiting to do that.
To be able to express in the realm it happened
my sincere regret and repentance.
He said, my wife told me,
don't get the hay.
I have a bad feeling.
Don't go.
Just stay here.
He said, but in my pride and arrogance,
I overruled her.
And I went and got the hay.
And my lineage has never been the same since.
Wow, that's heavy.
So getting in the road.
Well, lightning strikes people sometimes.
No, that was demonic.
He said, well, what was the open door?
His pride and arrogance.
Instead of stopping and saying, honey, let's pray.
If you're feeling this way,
maybe God will show me.
And if you just feel it strongly,
I'll just go with it.
I'll just skip it.
I'll just stay home.
The man would have stayed alive.
The family would have never been split up.
And he would have raised the whole works
to serve God.
Because that was his heart.
But his pride and arrogance got him over into this flow
in that particular action.
Not in all of life.
In that action.
He went and got hay.
And God was trying to say, don't do it.
Because there was a trap laid for him.
An attack was laid for him.
And he stepped right into it.
And he said, my pride and arrogance got me there.
And he said, I never had the chance
to express that to my God.
In the physical.
So there's a difference somehow between there and here.
He said, I never had the chance to express it.
He said, and he went on said some things about it
and so forth.
So I say all that to say this.
It can be as simple as a prideful decision
that can set us up.
Because what did Paul say?
We're not unaware of Satan's schemes.
Schemes means plans
designed to trap you.
He said, we're not unaware.
Well, how are we not unaware
by the spirit?
We have to follow the spirit.
His wife heard the voice of the spirit.
Out of his own pride and arrogance,
he refused to listen to her.
As a result, it killed him.
Well, was the devil just after him?
No.
He was after everybody.
He was after the whole lineage.
So the whole thing of
obeying and following
to stay in this flow is huge.
We can't play with this over here.
Because if we play with it,
you play with fire long enough,
you're going to get burnt.
We can't play with it.
And that is the basis of blessings and curses.
It's just that simple.
You step into the wrong area,
at the wrong time,
you're going to get burnt.
Sometimes burns are harder than others.
But,
to me,
and everybody's got to make up their own mind on this,
but to me,
I agree with him.
If something bad happens,
somehow somebody got in to mess us.
We stepped into a trap we were never supposed to be in,
because we did something
to get under that flow.
And we fell right into the enemy's trap.
To walk fully in God's blessing
is to walk like Jesus did.
There is no record.
Psalms 91,
God lifted him up in his hands
lest he dashes foot against the stone.
Jesus never stubbed his toe.
Because he was completely
in the flow of blessing.
He never hurt himself.
He never fell off a donkey.
There's no record.
He ever got injured in any way, shape or form,
because the end of John 14,
Satan had nothing in him.
He said, the prince of this world is coming for me,
but the world must learn that
I obey the Father. He has nothing in me.
That's why Jesus laid down his life.
He willingly said, come get me.
Because until he willingly gave his life,
he couldn't be touched.
That's why Paul said
that after the whole thing happened,
the devil and the whole kingdom of darkness
was just kicking themselves and beating themselves up.
Because Paul said, had they known,
that killing the prince of glory
was going to be their demise?
They'd left him alone.
But they didn't know.
So when he said, okay, here's my life.
I give it.
They jumped in and all kinds of demonic stuff
took place from influencing people
to get around Pilate,
to crucify him, crucify him,
call a curse on themselves
and their children.
Call a generational curse on themselves.
For Jesus, that whole thing was demonic.
When you go through the process,
some people have gone through the process,
you can find it online,
of all the things that were done against Jewish law
in Jesus' crucifixion.
They broke law after law after law after law
to get him killed.
That was demonic. That was not blessing.
That was this flow. Jesus was giving his life.
Satan couldn't take it, so he gave it.
Had they known,
that was going to happen,
they'd have left him alone, but they didn't know.
They took it as the opportunity to snuff him out.
And he rose from the dead.
And now he's conqueror, he's victor,
and he's offering that to everybody else.
Had they known that, they wouldn't have went there.
So we know that whole thing was demonic
because Paul said it was.
He said they'd have left him alone, had they known,
but they didn't know.
So Jesus, who was literally walking in blessing
with nothing ever going bad in his life,
gave himself over to complete annihilation
for us, paid the price.
Any other questions? Any other thoughts?
I have one here that was on YouTube also.
So we'll go there and we'll go here
and then I'll answer this one to make sure that we get...
and we can stay and go over them, but go ahead.
Okay, then.
When we went off the mountain in Colorado on the bike.
What happened?
Do you have any idea on that?
Because, okay, go for it, please.
I do.
Well, I have to... can I give a little bit of the story?
Okay, so Phil wanted to drive a motorcycle
and he bought a gold wing.
He bought a big bike and he had never driven
bikes much in his life.
And he went for a big one right away, which is fine,
but they handle different, you know,
they're harder to control because they're heavier.
Okay.
So he just had it a short period of time
and he wanted to go to the mountains for a drive.
Okay.
So he told me what it was.
They were driving mountain roads, you know,
like this, and it was raining.
Remember?
It was the roads were wet.
It was, yeah, it had rained.
It was wet, yep.
And he knew he was supposed to slow down.
He told me that.
He said, I knew inside I was supposed to slow down.
He said, but I was being stubborn
and I'm gonna, I'm cold.
So I'm gonna get there as fast as I can.
So they came around the corner
and if my memory is right, there was a rock
on the road or something that he swerved to dodge.
And going around the corner swerved to dodge it.
He lost the ability to stand the road
and they went over the edge.
So I had to drive up and see where they went over.
They were, this was, this was the mercy
and the grace of God.
And someday I'm gonna get to watch the video of this.
This will be funny.
So Bonnie's on the back, fills in the front.
They shoot over the edge.
There was no guardrail there.
They shoot over the edge.
They're going down.
He said, I saw boulders.
He said, and somehow I was avoiding them.
At the bottom, there was a big culvert
that went through underneath the road
and it was a deep creek ravine.
There's like 10 feet deep, maybe.
And I'm guessing 15 across,
because I went and looked at it.
And then it goes up the other side
and we're talking boulders, you know, like that.
And it goes up the other side
and there was a rail there, but there was an opening.
And he said, I went down.
I saw the ravine.
I thought I was dead.
I realized I'm going up the other side.
I saw the opening with my light.
So I just aimed for it and got back on the road.
That's what happened.
So they, they went down.
I'm guessing it was the ravine
was probably 40 feet below the road bed.
About.
So they went down,
jumped this, I'm guessing 15 feet wide,
maybe more, five feet's too much,
but they went right across that,
went up the other side
and everything was laced with these huge boulders.
I still don't see how he got,
because there was no straight path for that opening.
But he just said, I just aimed for it.
This whole thing was a flat out miracle.
It was a flat out miracle.
You both should have been dead at the bottom of that ravine.
Or in deep trouble.
Really hurt, okay?
Yep, God spared you.
Why did that happen?
His disobedience.
He slid over here
because he was being stubborn.
The Holy Spirit was saying, slow down.
The Holy Spirit knew what was coming.
The trap was set.
If you slow down, you won't have any problem.
And he said, I was cold.
I was cranky.
It was night. It was dark.
And he wanted to get where you were going
and get to the motel.
He said, I'm going to slow down.
I can handle it.
So stubbornness and pride
could have killed both of you.
Except you weren't done yet.
He wasn't done yet.
Things needed to be done yet.
God's grace, God's mercy.
This is an old...
Anybody know who Marvin Gorman is?
Anybody remember Marvin Gorman?
He was assembly of God minister
in New Orleans.
He had a big impact on my life.
He was one of the executive presbyters.
He was a bigwig, whatever.
Pastoring a church down there,
a megachurch.
He shares a story
of...
He was on his way home from church
and the traffic was thick.
He was in two lanes
and he said, I wasn't paying attention.
I was on the phone,
early cell phone thing.
I wasn't paying attention the way I should.
And the...
They were working on...
I believe he said a bridge
or something in front of me.
And they closed one lane
and forced everybody over.
He said, and I wasn't paying attention.
And all of a sudden, this car pulls over.
He said, I'm going 50 miles an hour
and there's nothing but a piece of the road
missing in front of me
with a guard on this side.
The thing standing up saying, don't go here.
He said, the only thing I had time to say
was, Jesus help me.
He said, and I blew through that rail.
Pieces were flying.
And he says, the next thing I know
is I'm blowing through another one
on the other side.
And I looked in my mirror
and watched one or two cars
drop in behind me.
And he said, God just floated me
right across that.
Um...
It's like...
I wonder if he wet himself.
You know, stuff like that,
once it hits you, what happened?
It's like, man.
But that was kind of the same thing there.
You know.
And then Phil told me, he said, once we got there,
you were only like three miles from Buena Vista.
Once you got there, he said,
and I realized what really happened.
He said, I couldn't stand up.
He was so weak from whatever.
He said, I got the bike on its stand.
He said, I couldn't stand up.
I had to sit down. I was so weak.
Um...
It's like, wow.
Back. Somebody's got the mic.
Go ahead.
So this conversation is a little close to home for me,
for us.
Just regarding 2011,
our 12-year-old son was killed in a car accident.
Our daughter was a driver.
So, I don't know.
I never felt like we blamed God.
I felt like Micah wasn't buckled in.
He knew to be buckled in.
He had been disciplined two weeks earlier
for not being buckled in.
So I just felt like it was his choice.
God gives us free will.
He made a choice.
And this is a result of that choice.
I didn't really feel like it was, um...
I don't know,
attacked from the enemy necessarily,
but I didn't blame God.
But going back to the beginning of this night,
you talked about, you mentioned the verse about
children, you know, about honoring your parents
and obeying your parents
so that these may go well
and you may live a long life.
And honestly, that's a struggle for me
because Micah was very
honoring of us as parents.
Like, he just wasn't rebellious.
He wasn't...
I mean, obviously, I don't know if you see both of them,
but he was a very obedient,
loved God.
I mean, in a statement of faith
that he had written a year earlier
that said he loves God with his whole heart
and that he knows that there's only one savior
and he knows where he's going when he dies.
So he had that depth of a relationship
with the Lord.
And so when you think about that promise,
that's a promise from God
that your days may go well and you have a long life.
And that's hard.
There's tension in that.
Right? Because
if he were this rebellious kid,
I mean, there are those kids out there
you tell them to sit down and they stand up
or you tell them to stand up and they sit down.
Don't eat that and they do.
I mean, you know, I've parented kids like that
in the foster care system.
I see them and he wasn't that.
And so, like,
that's hard to wrestle with that
because that promise is either
yes and amen or it isn't.
And, you know,
and is that, you know, so, okay,
that promise is true unless you,
you know, took your seatbelt on.
I mean, you may have a seatbelt off for 30 seconds.
We don't know, you know.
And it's silly legal,
you know, it didn't matter if it was 30 seconds
or the whole 10 minutes he was in the car.
But I think, you know,
this is something that we've had to wrestle with.
Yeah.
Because God could have reached over
and clicked his seatbelt.
And the other three kids lived through it
and with no injuries.
You know, he could have prompted,
but maybe he did prompt Micah 10 times
and Micah didn't listen. We don't know that.
But I think we've just found resolve.
We have peace about Micah's death.
Um,
just because I know that God
gives us a free choice.
And for whatever reason,
he didn't have a seatbelt on.
So I know we've just come to terms with that
from that standpoint, but the whole honoring your parents
that you're, you know, that part of that promise of God,
like you have to, like,
do I still believe that the rest of God's promises
are yes and amen?
I have to still believe that the rest of it is true.
Yep.
That's the tension.
Yep.
And that's the hard part
of coming
from the perspective of either
it's under God's flow
or it's under the devil's flow.
There's no in between. That's the hard part
because you run into situations
like this.
But yet to say
the accident
and the death
was the blessing of God?
Can't say that.
So if there is
no gray area in the middle
it had to be
something opened the door
for that to take place.
Could have been both.
Could have been either. Could have been both.
The other thing is
there was an accident.
That's what caused
the lack of seatbelt to show up.
Had there not been an accident, he could have
rode all the way to school without a seatbelt on.
That's what happened.
So there's that facet of it too.
And I'm glad you brought it up
because here's a good opportunity
to...
because the way you've resolved it in that
we know where he's at, life goes on
we're just going to live for God.
Period. We're going to settle it that way.
And it's a good example.
It's a wonderful example.
Because
if you can't do that
and you think you
opened the door up
somehow
well now you can get into condemnation
and blame yourself
and get depressed
and everything else.
You don't want to do that.
But at the same token
is it a blessing
or is it not a blessing?
And that's the hard part
of looking sincerely
at what's happening in our life.
These painful
kinds of things happen.
But if we don't
take the scriptural position
we end up where the church is
right now.
Because my guess is if we
would throw that situation
out to the average church person
and say do you think that was God or the devil?
They'd say neither.
They'd say the road was icy
I don't know stuff happens.
It just happened.
So there's a middle
ground where it's
neither evil nor
righteous. There's just a middle ground.
That's where
the church has come
to believe.
That's why we don't take
the stand we should.
That's why we're as powerless
and as pathetic as we are
as a church.
Because we've accepted
the middle ground as
okay.
In reality there's no middle ground.
But it's those kind of situations that make it really hard
because
how did
where was the door open that caused
our accident in August?
Where the guy rear-ended it? Why did he rear-end us?
Why were we there
at the perfect time?
If we'd have been 30 seconds later
he would have been behind somebody else.
If we'd have been 30 seconds
earlier he'd have been
behind somebody else.
Perfect time to get smacked.
That's a blessing in God.
No, it's not.
No, it's not. It cost us a bunch of money.
It cost Mary
some health issues she's been dealing with.
That's not God.
You can't convince me it's God.
Well, how did you get in
to that situation? I don't know.
We missed something though.
You say, well, that's too late now.
You can't change that. No, I can't.
But if I pay attention
I might change something in the future.
I can't just settle on,
well, that stuff happens.
Teenagers do that kind of stuff.
Something's going to happen again.
I have to back up and say, Holy Spirit,
this
was not you.
You have to settle on it. You can't even go,
Holy Spirit, if this wasn't you,
no, this was not you.
Now, yeah, good came out of it
and blah, blah, blah.
But that came out of it too.
You know, I just
played not in the mood to give 25 grand away
for no reason.
I mean,
that to me was not a blessing.
I got stolen from.
That was a curse.
So this was not you.
So where did he get in?
How did we slip over here?
And like I said, like with my great-grandfather,
it doesn't take a lot.
Somehow
we slipped over
and the trap was set and we fell right into it.
That's hard to admit.
You know, if nothing else,
it's just hard to admit and say,
we miss God.
It's so much more easy on our ego
and our pride
if we go the other route.
Well, it probably wasn't God, but stuff happens.
Bad things happen to good people,
and I'm a good person.
So bad things happen.
It's just recovering our own pride.
It's easier.
So it's hard.
I'm in agreement with you.
Difficult situations come up.
But you know what?
We're going to have more of those situations
if we don't take a stand.
It's hard. It's not easy.
Go ahead.
Well, I was just thinking about my own life
as you were talking about a lot of these things.
And
you remember
I called you and Mary
when I was going into Mayo.
I called you from Rochester
the night before my surgery.
And we didn't know if I'd ever walk again
basically if I was going to be...
We didn't know.
But you know what? I had such peace
because I opened a door
over 20 years ago.
Oh, wow.
I didn't do it intentional.
Yeah, we usually don't.
I was thrown over
about a 12 foot
drop by a drunken man.
But I landed on
sand.
So
I survived that obviously
but then the problem started.
But you know, I had to own that.
I mean I had to own it a while back
but now the enemy has come at me.
Basically right now
I'm pretty much a miracle
even though
I have the cane but I'm walking.
And I have bones missing. I have a gap.
I have muscles that are gone.
Now, you know what? To God be the glory
that he loved me so much.
So every single thing
as I look back
were things that I had to own
when I saw it.
I don't know if I didn't think that
God was serious.
I don't know if I thought I could kind of walk
a little bit here and a little bit there.
I mean I wasn't doing it intentionally
but now with hindsight.
And then I was thinking about the accident
that we had a year ago.
And
don't like red light runners and don't like
to get hit.
But I couldn't figure out
when we got out of the car
I said, well God's not done with this yet.
But can I say the one thing
you told me, hun?
Do I have permission?
He said to me
a while afterwards
he said, I'm sorry, Sally.
The Lord told me to go a different way tonight.
Oh.
And he said I didn't do it.
Now
I'm not trying to rat on you, honey.
I don't...
That's such a good example.
I mean what I thought
drats.
You know
but that obedience
and then I'm gonna rat on him
kind of a little bit again
because when he fell
and had this
dislocation and this bad break
I had told him
that morning
I said
don't go up on the ladder.
I said I'm concerned.
I said don't do it.
You know
and I'm not trying to sound
like a little white.
I get it. God will tell us.
He'll show us things to come.
That's scriptural.
So I just want to say that
I opened the door.
Not knowingly.
No, it's rarely we do it knowingly.
But it's very serious
and
at this point in time
where the body of Christ is
God is putting together
people.
We can't toy with this.
I mean I know you know that
but I have another question that goes back
when you were talking about
the tithing
and the different things
right away I started thinking about
Calvinism
versus Armenianism.
And I thought
when you are taught one way
and you have that belief system
and you are absolutely have blinders on
how much of the church is locked
into a belief system
that has come down through the tradition
and don't have any idea about
so much of this.
And you know it's interesting many times
when
you offer prayer
for someone who's in a financial
problem. You know I'm struggling here
we could lose the house. I can't get a job
whatever it is and they want prayer
if you ask the question
are you a tither?
They're not.
So they're under curse.
Which takes me to this. Let me answer this
and then we'll go to I think someone else had a question.
This came in online. Do you
have to give 10%
what if you don't make
that much that you can give
10%
Well that's the beauty about tithing.
Tithing was designed
for poor people.
That's why God said
test me
in this.
If you will tithe I will open the windows
of heaven.
This is Malachi 3. And I will pour you out
such a blessing you won't be able to contain it.
See tithing was meant
for poor people.
So to answer that question
what if you can't afford it? Well that could be true right now.
You know today
you may not be able to afford it. You might be
just barely hand to mouth.
Can you afford
a nickel a week?
Can you afford a dime?
Can you afford a dollar?
Start
right where you are
and plant that seed.
In Corinthians God gave a promise.
He said I will
give seed
to the sower.
Now if you know anything about farming
if you plant
one kernel of wheat
you are going to end up
with 20, 25.
Now if you plant
let's say you tithe on that 25
and you plant two or three kernels
now you are going to end up
with 50, 75 kernels
second crop.
So now if you tithe on that
and you plant
seven eight seeds
out of the 75, 80 kernels
now you are going to end up
within the hundreds.
That's how it works.
And it won't take long
if you start with a nickel
or a dime or a dollar
God will give you the seed
to sow.
He will give you a raise
He will give you a different job.
He will find a way
to give you the seed to sow.
Don't eat your seed.
Farmers
have to hold on to a certain
realm of seed so they can plant it
because if they eat the whole
crop
they got nothing to plant next year.
Don't eat your seed. Oh, we got
15 bucks left over. Don't eat your seed.
Plant more
and let the cycle start.
My answer to that is
if you can't afford it don't try doing it
because your faith won't be there to support it.
We have to mingle
faith with the promises.
What can you believe you can plant
and still live? Can you
plant a buck a week and live?
Then plant it and let's
believe God multiplies that.
It won't be long. You'll be able
to plant 5 bucks. Oh, I can plant
5 bucks now. I've got more income
than plant your 5 bucks.
And slowly you will work up
and the time will come you'll be giving your tithe
now you're in a position
to really
crop after crop after crop
to watch this thing multiply.
So don't get condemned. You don't have
the money to do it.
That's why tithing
was made is for you. So I'll talk
to the camera. It's made for
the person who can't afford it.
But don't feel like you have to go from
zero to a tenth right away
because your faith won't support that.
You already told that to me
when you said I can't afford to give 10%.
You don't believe you can do it. So
don't try doing it.
What can you believe for?
Start with that and do it
consistently believing
it will increase.
You will be amazed.
You will be amazed what God will do.
Just go there with him.
Let him prove himself. You'll be amazed.
Was there anybody else who had a question?
We're past time but we'll still answer questions.
I just had a question
in Psalm 139
16. It says,
your eyes saw my own unformed substance
in your book
all the days of my life were written
before they even took shape.
Is everybody guaranteed
like 80 years
or if they don't make it to 80 or 90
then are they living under a curse?
And I think
of like Micah died
when he was young.
Did he fulfill the years that God
had written in his book?
And so where's that?
That's a good question.
Again,
this is how I'm going to answer that
because we had that exact same question
come because we were living in Colorado
when the Columbine thing took place.
And I believe her name was Rachel.
The girl that...
Yep, Rachel Scott.
They found in her diary
and different things after the fact
she said
she knew
she wasn't going to become an old person.
She was on earth
to start something. She didn't know what it was.
But it was going to be
something that would help bring
many people to Christ.
But she knew she would not live a full life.
Okay, so was that a curse? No.
Jesus didn't live 80 years old.
Yep.
Steven
didn't live 80 years old.
There are...
I'm going to come down
on this side.
I am not the one
in charge of what you're supposed
to accomplish.
Some people accomplish it
in a short period of time.
They're here for a short period of time
to accomplish something. Like, for instance,
I don't remember the name of the movie
of the boy who
saved the bus
children from drowning.
It's in a movie.
They went off the road,
they went in the water, went upside down.
And he was able
to get them all out.
But in the process
he died.
And
somehow
I believe he had told his parents
or his mom. He said,
I just have the feeling I'm going
to die saving lives. That's why
I'm on this earth.
So who's to say, here you
got a kid in his teens
who gave his life
for others. Who's to say that wasn't God's
purpose? That was his whole purpose for being here.
That moment.
You can't say that. Well, that wasn't God.
How do you know? How do I
know?
So what I look
at is
number one,
everything
is between the person and God.
What I think really doesn't matter.
If it's
not me, if it's somebody else, it's between
them and God. When it comes right down to it, it's
not my issue. It's between them and God. They don't serve
me. They serve him.
Number two, what has God been
telling them?
Jesus knew he was going to die. Jesus
knew when he was going to die. He died at
33, they think 33 years old.
Well, he didn't live a long
full life. He sure did. He fulfilled
everything he was here for.
Perfect example.
I believe Stephen was the same thing.
Another perfect example.
The reason
Stephen went down,
the way he went down in my opinion,
was to plant
a seed in a man standing there named
Saul,
who later became Paul.
Because the
close of Stephen was
late at Saul's feet.
Saul was overseeing this.
And what happened with
Stephen, when the glory of God came on
him and his face shone, like that
of an angel, and he opened
up his eyes and saw into heaven and
said, I see Jesus standing
at the right hand of the Father.
And Saul,
who is this staunch
old hardliner,
is watching something happen in
front of him that he's never
heard of before. Don't
tell me the Holy Spirit didn't take that
and work on him.
He had questions
coming out of that experience
that led him
into
Saul, why are you persecuting me?
That question
made sense to Saul. Why did that
question, that was the first question Jesus said.
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
Why would that make sense to him?
Yeah.
Just go back to the Stephen thing.
Besides there was probably others.
The one we know of is Stephen.
Just go back and tie that into that situation.
Stephen, I personally
believe, died that way
to open the door
for the man who wrote 14 books
out of the New Testament.
So to go back to when you're praying
for somebody and you know
like you're brought into that situation,
I sometimes will just pray, God, I
just declare every day that you wrote
in their book they're going to live.
That's good.
And that's what I'm going to stand in faithful
because I don't even know God's ways
necessarily, but just every day
I'm going to agree with you what you wrote.
And you're setting your faith to that
and what they do with their faith
isn't your issue, but that way
yeah, no, I think that's great.
I'm going to stand on your word.
And if they leave today
and it was their day, well, so be it.
If it wasn't, well, not my issue.
I'm believing God.
Good. Anybody else got anything?
One in the back. We'll call this the last one.
Well, I'm kind of glad I'm last
because you answered a lot of questions,
but you know, you talking about
your tripping and your car accident
and this is all hypothetical
but a guy could wonder like
why are you up there then?
Because obviously you've got something going on.
But my feeling is
like you can fall
into it like car accidents.
I mean, somebody pulls out in front of you
and you curse them. You just open the door.
Yep. Just that instant.
You can repent for it,
but I mean, it happens. It can happen.
And the other thing is
kind of lost my train of thought here.
Lost my train of thought. Let me answer your question.
Excellent question. Really good question.
Obviously, I'm not perfect.
So what gives me the right to be up here?
This is not my choice.
I didn't choose to be up here.
And I wasn't criticizing. No, I get it.
But it's a good question and I want to apply it.
That's a really good question.
Because we tend to put people on pedestals
thinking they're without fault.
I'm human like everybody else.
I have areas in my life that aren't perfect yet.
I mean, I'll be the first one to admit that.
The reason...
Okay, so now let's take it off of me.
The reason I'm here
is because God called me to be a minister.
Which means I'm going to answer.
So I got to do what he asked me to do.
And I got to try to do it the best I can do it.
That is why I'm here.
So it's by his grace, his mercy.
He just follows through.
Let's go to the example that Sally gave.
What gives you the right
to be healed after you know
you messed it up?
Same thing gives me the right to be here.
God made a promise to you
2,000 years ago
that if by faith
you stand strong
He's going to heal you.
Has nothing to do with your value
or worth of because you're so good.
You're earning it.
You deserve to be healed Sally.
You're such a righteous lady.
Has nothing to do with that.
Has to do with
God made a promise to you.
That help answer the question?
No, I was just making a comment.
But it's really good because people think that way.
And the other thing I was going to say is
you got in that accident
I know people like you were talking about
you're in each things happen
then people are angry with God.
So is that Satan's little
let's see what we can do here
and then see if we can
turn people against God.
Boy, you let someone stay angry at God.
You talk about an open door.
You know, talk about
live in the wrong flow
stand there shaking your fist at God.
That's just like
the father of that flow.
What did he do?
Boy, yeah.
So that's it's not so much
Satan making them do that.
They're doing that.
They're angry with God there.
But boy
will he jump on their bandwagon
to help them do that
and give them every reason
and thought under the sun
why God is so mean and unfair
and not loving and
I hate you.
Oh, he'll just feed that.
Yeah, he'll just feed that
but he didn't make him do it.
It's
they're choosing to live over there
and it's going to bring curses into their life.
But they could with the same will
choose to come over here and ask for forgiveness
and repent and move over here
and move to blessings.
But you're going to have to let go of the anger.
You got a testimony yet on that?
Go ahead and give it to her.
We'll hear the testimony.
Turn the mic off. We'll wait for it to come back on.
When my baby died
I had prayed and prayed
that if it would be God's will
to heal her
then please heal her because we were going to a church
that that's how they prayed.
If it be your will, then later on I found out
that it was his will.
When he took her home
I was mad at God.
I screamed and I yelled at him
and I didn't curse
at him with cuss words
but I might as well have because I was so mad
at him and I had
a nervous breakdown that almost took my life
and
God orchestrated
a church in Aurora, Colorado
that were having a seminar
of ladies in Colorado
Springs in Colorado
with a speaker from Longmont, Colorado
and I lived in Johnstown, Colorado
it was like a diamond shape
and God said
he orchestrated that whole thing
so that I could be healed
of my anger
towards him.
And you found your healing in that?
I found my healing that very night
and for the first time in months
I laughed
and I hadn't laughed
since Robin died.
So God is merciful
even when you're angry at him.
Oh, yeah.
That's the heart of God.
Merciful, loving, forgiving.
Forgiving sin to
how does it say, to generations.
He'd just forgive it.
That's God. That's the God.
I know.
But yeah, see the wild part is
your anger got you in the wrong flow.
In that flow
there is no peace.
There's no rest.
Which wore you down physically
probably had some spiritual help.
Nervous breakdown. Nervous breakdown is not
a blessing of God.
There's just no way anybody's going to convince me
a nervous breakdown is a blessing.
It's flowing. It's been in the wrong
flow.
But God is so merciful, so gracious.
Even when we're wrong
He said it this way.
Even when we're faith less
He's faithful.
And He will do everything
He can to walk us back out. That's the God I know.
It's not the God who's
standing there with a club waiting for an opportunity
to curse us.
And that's what the church thinks. That's why they don't like to think about it.
It's like God's just
waiting for an opportunity to curse me. And as soon as I get out of the line
He's an angry God.
Now you don't know God.
That's the God I know.
The merciful, loving, forgiving
just the one we read about here
in Deuteronomy 30.
Even if you're living in a curse
if you will come back
to me
I will gather you
to myself and bless
you.
That's the character of God.