Have you ever heard Bruce don't know who he is? This is your first time with Bruce.
Oh, there's a fair number.
We got in contact with Bruce the first time when I saw his name in the Charisma magazine.
And God said ask him to come speak at the church. We were in the modular.
And I'm going, he'll never come.
He's a big wig. He's in the Charisma magazine.
And it's like, it just wouldn't let off of me. So I finally called him.
I said, hey, here's who I am. We're just a little church, new church.
Would you be interested in coming and speaking? And he jumped right on it.
He said, oh, I live in Wisconsin. He said, I'm not that far from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that was when he first came. That's when the relationship began and it's been going ever since.
I don't know if you have a five minute version of your testimony.
But if there's that many who have never heard, can you plug that in before your message?
And the only testimony that was at the University of Southern California did a study.
And it was the only one that all the atheists and history channel and everything could not disprove this was a miracle.
Because there was so much documentation.
So it's an honor to have you again, brother. Consider you a friend. Your wife, we're not.
No, just kidding. Please introduce your wife. We love her too. We love her for putting up with you, brother.
That's a fact. See, he does know me.
So my wife is back there in the corner. We're back, girl, people, if anybody can relate. Yeah.
Alright, Laurie's back there.
Yeah, and she does put up with a lot. That's the truth.
So five minute or quick testimony.
2006, I owned a business where I did onsite diesel repair. I was at a logging camp about an hour from our home.
A Peterbilt logging truck slipped off a jack. The other mechanic had jacked up the front axle.
He had removed the wheel. I was there for engine repair.
I was just about to leave. I'm laying underneath the truck. He gets in the truck. The jack slips out.
And it was 10 to 12,000 pounds of weight of the axle. That's not the weight of the truck, but the part that fell on me.
It fell across the middle of my body. I ended up one inch thick here, two inches thick here, thinner than my spine.
My L4, I don't have a belly button anymore, but where I used to, to the back, L4, L5,
vertebrae were spider cracked and D-shaped. So my spleen, pancreas, everything that you can imagine here was crushed, destroyed.
Five places that major arteries were completely severed. Doctors, what he was referencing was the
University Southern California study that was done over, this was done over a couple years.
This wasn't a quick thing. And they pulled from trauma centers around the world.
And from that, they say that I'm the only person, because my accident happened after that study was done.
So they take my accident and they compare it against the study. And from that, they say that,
and this was trauma centers, like I say, not just the United States, but other westernized nations.
They say that I'm the only person they can find in the whole world, who's ever lived after having major arteries severed in five places.
So a lady, I was dead, literally dead. I had out of body experience. Two month old, check this out, two month old baby Christian
showed up the scene of the accident and she prayed me back three times. She prayed me. I saw two huge angels
that were probably approximately eight feet tall based on a six foot tall guy that was there.
I never did get to heaven. I got in a tunnel and I kept getting prayed back by this persistent Christian.
I was not happy with at all.
So after God did all that, then in the hospital, you have to have a certain amount of small intestine to be able to live.
So I didn't have that amount. So I wasted away. I'm dying in the hospital. I lost 65 pounds.
If you saw me, 65 pounds, less than I am, I would look like somebody straight out of a concentration camp.
Every bone in my body you could see. God wakes up this guy across the United States, tells him to fly to Wisconsin
and pray for me. I was in our states. I got med flight into our state's biggest trauma center.
This guy did. He prayed for me. God did a creative miracle and gave me back, doctors say, approximately half of my intestines.
So 9 to 11 feet is what they say I have based on an average of 18 to 20 some feet small intestine.
And I had like this much. And all of a sudden I got 9 to 11 feet.
So it was the only, it is the only reason why I am alive or I would have died many, many years ago.
And God, I just go around and like a fellow just asked me, you know, like you ordained minister.
I'm like, no, I'm just a normal guy that this crazy thing happened to. And I'm just telling people about it.
That's really what is. That's really is. So it's, it's been a, we've seen God do some crazy, crazy things that make me just stand back and go, wow, God, you're so amazing.
Yeah. So again, thank you for having us here. Thank you for our days back. And that's kind of the short version of the testimony.
So I cover it, Vern. All right. So, you know, I love the way the Holy Spirit works and interacts everything together.
And he had no idea. I called him up yesterday, and I said, you know, it's God speaking anything you guys about the church before we're driving over and stuff.
Is there anything, any themes where he said, yeah, this is kind of theme. And I said, OK, God already gave me the message for this morning.
Last week, I already knew exactly what I was supposed to speak on. And then he gets up, I'm sure under the Holy Spirit and said what he said.
And literally it, you'll see by the end of this message how it absolutely completely plays together.
I mean, again, I just love how the Holy Spirit works. So if, if I had a title for today, I'm going to call it biblical praise and worship.
Biblical praise and worship. So we know, you know, let's, you know, Hebrews 412, it says the word of God is dead.
No, living and active. Living and active. That's what the word of God is. Living and active.
What's the word of God? We got it right here. Old Testament as well as New Testament. They're both together.
Old Testament, see, I don't, Christian say, oh, I don't read the Old Testament. Ah, wrong. Read the whole thing, right?
The whole thing, it all fits together. So Old Testament, this, I didn't come out with this, I'm copying.
Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, right? The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed.
The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed, right?
Old Testament always foretells the New Testament. True?
New Testament always fulfills the Old Testament, right? So just using an example.
It just happens to be the example that he used this morning. The sacrifice, the sacrifice of the perfect Passover lamb.
So in the Old Testament, they're sacrificing on Passover, right? They're doing these Passover sacrifices.
We got the temple sacrifices, all that stuff. That's a type and a foreshadow of who? Jesus, the perfect Passover lamb, right?
So that's those sacrifices, the Passover lamb. It's a type and foreshadow of Jesus.
And here it is. Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for us in our sins, right? It was a willing choice.
We know from the Garden of Gethsemane that he did not want to do it. Part of him didn't want to do it.
He fought and even asked if he could get out of it. He asked his father,
is there any way I can get out of this? Right? That's how bad he didn't want to do it.
But in the end, he decided to be submissive. Submit to the will, Lord. And he said,
not my will, but your will be done. He gave himself as that willing sacrifice.
It was a choice. It was an act of worship. What Jesus did was an act of worship.
And what Vern pointed out today from the scriptures is, he was called worthy.
And I picked this up as he was going through. What was the reason why he was called worthy?
One reason. Because he was slain. That was the reason why it says he was worthy.
Look it up. He was right at this morning. The reason why he was worthy was because he was slain.
Because he gave up his life. Because he did the sacrifice, right?
He did it. That's the reason why he was worthy.
So, there's this fancy pants word called hermeneutics.
And for a late term, all it means is Bible interpretation.
It's what theologians use that call...
We're going to study Bible hermeneutics.
It's just Bible interpretation. That's all the word is.
So one of the first rules, one of the major rules of serious real theologians is...
I'm sure you've probably heard of this, right?
It's called Law of First Mention.
Law of First Mention.
So, all it means is this.
So if you have a Bible dictionary, right?
Concordance where you can look up Old Testament, Hebrew, New Testament, Greek.
You can look them up, see what the original word was that we're reading English.
But look up the original in the Old Testament.
Look up that Hebrew word and look it all the way through.
It's just a Bible dictionary.
If you do that, here's what the Law of First Mention means.
It simply means that the first time a specific word is used in the Bible
because the words are used differently sometimes.
And that's why there'll be a couple different definitions of the word.
But the main one, the main definition is always going to be
the first time the word is used in the Bible.
It gives the meaning or true definition of the word for the other times it's used.
Law of First Mention.
Even if you get into numbers too.
It's all like literally the numerical numbers.
But anyway, Law of First Mention.
The first time a word is used in the Bible, that gives the definition of it.
That's the true definition of it.
And it doesn't matter if it's Hebrew or Greek, it's the same for both, right?
So Bible hermeneutics.
So the first, we talked about the name being biblical praise and worship.
The first use of the word worship.
The first time the word worship is used now.
Old Testament, Hebrew.
Genesis 22.5.
Abraham says, we will worship and then we'll come back.
So here's the story.
Abraham, you guys know, Abraham had been promised.
Him and his wife were promised a child.
But now they're going to pass the age of childbirth.
She's no longer cycling.
He's like, they're like 100 years old.
It's passed. It's not going to happen.
She laughs.
She's like, oh, that is never going to happen.
But at a certain time, God brings them this child that he said,
God made him all these promises.
None of these promises are any good because I don't have air.
My servant's going to get all this stuff that you're blessed me with.
And God's like, no, I'm going to give you a child.
You've got to wait.
Waiting time is hard, right?
So they made some mistakes that we're still dealing with today.
But despite that, at a certain time, Abraham gets the son.
The son is getting older.
He can talk.
He's carrying. He's able to carry stuff.
He's able to work.
He's able to do some stuff.
Whether it's a teenager, a hover oldie, whatever, something.
He's old enough to...
He knows what's going on.
And God tells him, all right, you know, Abraham, that son that I gave you,
that you've got everything riding on, man.
All your eggs are in this basket.
I want you to sacrifice him to me.
And he's like, what?
Yeah, I want you to sacrifice him to me.
We read the story.
He doesn't argue.
He doesn't say, yeah, but...
Ah, no, no.
He packs up the mules.
He gets his servants.
He gets the fire, the wood, all the stuff.
And then when he gets close to where he's going to do it,
he tells the servants, okay, you guys stay here.
Me and Isaac, we're going to go over there.
And this is what he says the first time the word worship.
We will worship.
And then we'll come back.
So God was testing Abraham to see if he would give up...
Listen, if he would give up, he would sacrifice that which was most valuable to him.
Highlighting the words most valuable.
Abraham passed the test.
But before he could do it, I mean, he's got...
I mean, the kid is on the altar.
He's got the knife.
He's about to plunge it into him.
But before he could do it, God stops him.
Provides a lamb caught in a thicket.
So according to the law of first mention,
God's view of worship
is when we willingly sacrifice that which is most valuable to us.
To confirm this, let's go to the New Testament for the Greek.
In the New Testament, the first time the word worship is used in Greek
is when the three wise men come to worship Jesus
by giving him their most valued possessions,
gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
So it doesn't matter.
It's Hebrew. It doesn't matter.
It's Greek.
The first time the word worship is mentioned,
both times it sets a precedent.
This is when you give up that which is most valuable to you.
This isn't a message for itching ears.
So again, we see the definition of the worship according to God
in the Bible.
Hebrew Greek is sacrificing that which is most valuable.
It comes out as a heart issue.
It's really, it's a heart.
What it is, it's a heart issue.
Now let's go to the word praise.
When we first see the mention of the word praise in the Hebrew,
it's Isaac, servant.
So the kid that was about to get sacrificed,
they say, go get a wife for him.
Abraham says, go get a wife for him,
but we don't need these people.
Go over here to do it.
And so the servant prays, he's like, okay, God,
how am I going to know if this girl comes out
and these circumstances happen,
then I'll know that she's the one for my master, right?
So the first time we see the word praise used in Hebrew
is during this happens and it lays out happens just the way
he had prayed that it would happen.
So he knows she's the one.
And it says that Isaac's servant is praising God
to the other people that are there,
that are people that are listening,
the girl's family and these people.
And he's praising God about,
and the reason why he's praising God
because of answered prayer.
We find this in Genesis 24.
So the first time praise is used
is he's speaking to other people
who may or may not believe the way that he does
and he's praising God about answered prayer.
So when we look at the first mention of praise
in the Greek in the New Testament,
we find it is the same thing.
It's when others see what God has done in us
that causes them to praise.
Matthew 5.16, first time he's used the Greek.
So biblical praise is when God is extolled,
celebrated, commended by us two others
in response to him answering prayer
or when God is extolled, celebrated by others
when they see him working in us.
Here's the problem.
When most Christians are asked
what is praise and worship,
the answer always comes back to
song, music, and church.
As we've seen from the Scripture,
that is not what God sees as biblical praise and worship.
That's not his definition of it.
And we use those words all the time
and we say it's a praise and worship service,
but what are we sacrificing?
Maybe our time, maybe some praise,
but literally is it that which is most valuable to us
or is that which it's pretty easy to just...
that was easy, right?
Let's be honest, it's much easier
to sing about giving it all to God
than actually doing it.
I cringe, I listen because I know me
and I know my flesh and it's fights against what God wants
and even the songs we sang last night at the thing
and it's like I read those verses like,
I don't know if I want to sing that verse out so loud
because I know there's something inside of me that,
God, am I really giving it all to you?
Right?
Feeling the blank from whatever your struggles are,
am I really giving it to you, God?
Just like it, you know, it's...
I'm gonna say it again.
It is much easier to sing about giving it all to God
than actually doing it.
Just like it's easier to praise God
when we're at church among other believers
or at school than it is at school
or on the job site and whatever else
doesn't agree with us
or doesn't believe the same way we do.
Jesus, as well as other faithful people in the Bible
gave us examples to show us what it looks like
to truly worship and praise God.
But it's not easy.
It has to do with a heart that's fully committed to Him.
You know, I could tell you, I've been at churches.
I'm kind of stoic, I'm kind of reserved,
I'm kind of laid back.
Sometimes the pastors will make us sit in the front.
I'd rather not, I'd rather sit in the back.
But I've been at churches
where during the praise and worship time
the pastor will be like,
hey, like, you need to dance a little bit.
You need to get into this, you know,
you need to like, come on, man.
The pastor's dancing, you know, for everybody to see.
He's like, come on, man.
You need to dance with me up here
so that people can see what it is, right?
And I've been to churches where the people
that are running the flags
or maybe doing the circles,
and I'm not saying any of this is wrong.
But they're elevated to a position
like those people are really spiritual.
They're like, they're like super spiritual
because they're, they're, you know,
doing whatever they're doing.
But I can also tell you that after 18 years of ministry,
I'm just going to be honest to tell you,
I've seen after 18 years of ministry
and going back to year after year after certain churches
that some of the most exuberant praisers,
oh, as having, I had 14 adulterous relationships
in every city I was.
But man, I was the guy dancing in the front.
I'm telling you, more than once.
More than once, more than once, more than once.
It's not one or two, a lot of times.
And I'm not saying that whoever is the most exuberant
is in sin, no, no.
I'm just saying that you can be exuberant.
You can be exuberant,
and it really has nothing to do with you
of sacrifice to any of the God.
That's just, you know, whatever.
So, man.
Summer of the accident, 2006.
All that summer, man, it was a season.
You know, we've got seasons with God,
and there's certain seasons where we're able to hear God better,
I believe.
You know, and I think we should be going to glory and glory,
but, you know, it might wax and wane, right?
True or false?
Maybe it's just me.
I wax sometimes, right?
And wane sometimes.
So, there's seasons.
And this season of 2006, I was hearing God so clear,
he knew what was coming.
He knew what was going to happen on November 6th.
I didn't.
16th, rather.
He knew.
I didn't.
And so, that whole summer, God kept saying to me this question,
will you die for the advancement of the kingdom?
Every time I'd hear it, I'd go like,
and I pretend, you ever have it, you know, like,
as a parent, you say to your child,
they're maybe sitting on the couch,
eating the bowls, cereal, playing a game,
whatever they're doing, you say,
hey, you want to take out the garbage,
you want to, you want to, maybe it's your spouse,
and you want to do this, you want to do that.
And they just pretend like they didn't hear you,
but you know darn well they heard you.
Right?
You know what I'm saying?
It's just human nature.
We just like, oh, I didn't hear that.
Every time God asked me, I mean, we would be in like,
see, God wants, he wants serious communication.
He has made it available.
A lot of Christians settle for monologue,
oh God, oh God, this, this,
they just walk away and never believe
he's going to speak back.
Yeah, that's not what God is available for us.
He's a God of dialogue.
So that means when you, when you're praying,
you should be expecting to hear him speak back to you.
You should be expecting him to speak to you
even when you're not praying,
and he just steps into your life and speaks.
Because that's who he is.
That's what he did.
Either Lord, you God, do not change.
Why would he do it here and not do it here?
Right?
It's who he is.
So during that summer,
I'm having conversations with God.
He's telling me to write this book about,
oh God talks to everybody.
You guys are just listening.
You're just not listening.
I'm talking on time.
You're just not listening.
He says, really make that the title.
God talks to everyday people.
Are you listening?
That was what he told me to make the title.
So, so he's, he's having these conversations
and he, and he would just say, hey,
all that summer, we die for advanced our kingdom.
And every time he did,
I played the kid that didn't hear him.
Because I didn't want to go there.
I don't want to think about it.
Man, it's too heavy.
And he just kept doing it.
And it wasn't con, you know,
it was like every couple of weeks it had come up,
it had come up, it had come up.
And I would just, I just go like mute.
And I was like, nope, don't know.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't want to think about it.
So at the end of the summer
and fall, I'm in the shower,
taking a shower and here's the thing.
There's no TV in my shower, no radio.
There's no kids.
There's no dog.
There's no wife.
There's no phone.
There is no distractions in the shower.
So if I want to be in there and pray to God,
sing to God, do whatever with God,
have communication with God,
nobody can, nobody can mess with that
because it's a perfect little intimate time with God.
So I'm in there and it's a great time to pray,
whatever.
I'm in there talking to God, praying.
And we are literally having a dialogue.
It's going back and forth.
And all of a sudden he says,
we died for the advance of the kingdom.
And I tried to do my thing.
Like I didn't hear him.
But we've been talking so close
and it was so good.
All of a sudden I just...
And he says, here's the thing.
He said,
I've given you all summer
to think about this.
You are not to get out of the shower
until you answer me.
That's exactly what the Holy Spirit said.
I'm like, oh, so we built our house.
We had six people in our house.
Four kids.
I put a big water heater in that sucker.
It wasn't big enough that day.
I didn't want to answer.
So you know the deal.
Keep turning it hotter, hotter, hotter, hotter
because you're using up the hot water.
And pretty soon I use up all the hot water.
It's all gone.
It's coming out pure cold.
So I turned the head away.
Because I'm turning into a human prune.
I turned the head away.
It's bouncing off the wall and hitting my legs
and I'm freezing.
I'm as far back as I can get,
but I can't get it far enough away.
So I'm in there and like getting water board
tortured with the cold water.
And he says, you're not to get out of the shower
until you've answered.
So I start, I say, okay.
You know what?
Let's talk about this a little bit before I answer that.
I said, God, what would that look like?
What would that look like?
We were just having this great conversation at dialogue.
Guess who goes silent now?
He doesn't say nothing.
I'm like, God, what would that look like?
Silence.
I started asking all these questions.
Silence.
And all of a sudden I hear,
I'm in charge of this conversation, not you.
Answer the question.
So I don't know if it was all my years of dealing drugs.
I don't know.
But I thought maybe I could make a deal with them.
So I go, Lord, all right.
All right.
I'll die from the answer kingdom on one condition.
And I know he's listening.
I said, I tried to play a trick on him.
I go, I'll die from the answer.
I'm on one condition.
Answer the kingdom.
You've got to send a replacement for me.
That I've had four little kids at this time.
You've got to send a replacement for me
that loves my wife more than I do
and loves my kids more than I do.
I'm like, nobody's going to do that, right?
I got him, right?
I got him.
Immediately, the Holy Spirit said one word.
Done.
And I went, I shut the shower off.
I remember getting out of the shower.
I'm going, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What did I just do?
I remember opening up the bathroom off our bedroom.
And here's our king size bed.
I remember looking at the bed and thinking,
some jerk is going to be in that bed with my wife.
And then I go into the closet
and all her stuff is on this side
and all my stuff was on this side.
And I'm thinking, some jerk's clothes
are going to be on my side of the closet.
But here it was.
Then I looked outside and my kids
were playing in the front yard.
And I remember saying, some kid,
some jerk is going to get to raise my kids.
And it's like, who do you tell this to?
That's not going to think you're
absolutely screaming crazy.
Like, I can't tell my wife.
Like, who am I going to tell?
So I had a pastor.
He used to be my senior pastor at my church
and he moved away.
So I called that guy up.
He's living in York.
I called him up and said,
Pastor Ryan, man, you got to listen to this.
God has been asking me all summer.
If I die from cancer, I wouldn't answer.
I wouldn't answer.
Finally I answered.
And I said, I'd do it.
And he said, done.
And I said, if he had sent a replacement
and then he said, done.
And Pastor Ryan's listening to me.
And he goes, well, it sounds like
you got tested like Abraham and Isaac.
You passed the test.
You said you'd do it.
I said, no, no, no.
He didn't say, here's a ram in the thicket.
He said, done.
That's a whole lot different, man.
And he goes, well, I hear fear in your voice.
And God doesn't...
God wouldn't rise of fear.
He goes, I don't know about this.
I don't know about this.
And I said, look, Ryan, make me a promise.
Make me a promise.
I think something bad is going to happen.
When it does, I want you to call my wife.
Call Lori.
Tell her, nobody...
You're the only one I'm telling this to.
If something bad happens, you call my wife.
And you tell her, we had this conversation
not to worry replacements on the way.
He breaks up laughing just like you guys did.
He's like, oh, that's crazy.
No, no, no.
I said, I'm serious.
Dude, listen, if something bad happens to me,
you pick up the phone, you call my wife.
We had this conversation.
This was one month before the accident.
Okay.
So a month later, the accident happens.
Well, let me back up.
He was worse.
Tuesday is the day I started working on that logging truck.
Tuesday, November 14th.
I worked on another job site somewhere else.
Then I took that truck apart and I got home.
I worked 12-hour days all the time.
That's what I did.
Six days a week, usually.
So anyway, I get home late.
My kids are already in bed.
Lori saved me and played a supper.
She heats it up on the microwave.
I've worked 12 hours.
I'm beat.
So I worked on heavy equipment.
It was heavy wrenches.
It was heavy parts.
At the end of a 12-hour day,
I'm physically exhausted.
Plus, I'm greasy and dirty.
I just want to get home,
eat supper, take a shower, and go to bed.
But my wife has been home all day
with four little kids.
What's she want to do, ladies?
She wants to talk.
I don't want to talk.
I just want to eat my supper,
take a shower, and go to bed.
I'm beat.
So I sit down at my spot on the table.
She heats up the plate of supper.
I'm eating it up.
And she gets into this crazy conversation with herself.
And she's saying, you know,
Pastor says...
Our pastor says, we should be in full-time ministry.
You got called in the ministry when you were young.
I called your name.
You know we're in disobedience right now.
We're in disobedience by not being in full-time ministry.
And she just kept going.
And I just ignored her.
I just ate my supper.
I didn't even look up.
I'm not going to give her any...
And I'm nothing.
I'm just like, I'm not even listening to this.
She's sitting right here at her spot.
And she keeps going and going and going.
And so, Mary folks, you're going to relate this.
You're going to know what I'm saying.
Your spouse has a magic way of pushing your buttons.
And they know just what to say
that'll get to you deep, right?
So she knew just what to say.
And she says, you're a hypocrite.
And I'm like, what?
Now she's got me.
I'm like, what?
She goes, I've been listening to you speaking at the small groups
in the Bible studies on it.
And you're saying, half faith in God, half faith in God,
half faith in God.
But the truth is, you don't have faith in God
because that's why you won't go into ministry
because you're worried about the money.
That's what it comes down to.
I don't know about you, but the...
Man, the thing I hate the worst,
if somebody pulls out the truth
when you're arguing with them.
All right?
So I did the only thing I felt I could do.
I tried to pull a power play.
I slammed my fist on the table as hard as I could
to plate jump.
And I said, shut up woman, leave me alone.
She stood up.
She put her finger on the end of my nose
like I was one of the four little kids.
And three times she repeated this.
Bruce Vanetta, what is it going to take
before you're obedient to God?
She said it three times.
She went in the bedroom and slammed the door.
Needless to say, there was no cuddling that night.
Two days later, the truck fell on me.
I died at the scene of the accident.
I was prayed back to life three times,
came back unwillingly all three times.
I spent over a year in the hospital
between in and out, in and out,
all the different operations, many, many operations.
I had to learn to read again.
I had to learn to walk again.
I had to learn to write again.
It was hell.
I was begging God to let me die in the hospital
so many times, so many times.
God, just let me die.
Just, no, I can't do this.
It hurts too much. Just let me die.
Just let me die.
So I found out. I found out.
So I knew what I'd said.
I knew what had happened.
I come out and I spend a little over a year.
My last, my accident happened in November.
The last operation was in December
of the following year, 2007.
And we started the ministry officially
while I was still in the hospital, January 1st, 2008.
And the first place I got to speak,
the very first place I got to speak
was a little bitty, bitty, small,
small rural country church of about 30 people,
little Lutheran church that my grandpa and grandma went to.
And it was the church that I had heard about Jesus
the only time I went to Sunday school as a kid.
One time I went to Sunday school
and they told the story about Jesus
and that's the only time.
And so God opened the door for me to speak at that place.
I couldn't even stand up.
They had me sitting down.
I mean, I was all stitched and stapled and whatever.
They had me sitting in the front.
And I just, they said,
tell the story about the angels and stuff, right?
And I told them, hey, look,
all summer long, God kept asking me
if I'd died for the advance of the kingdom.
And on October, I said, yes.
And a couple weeks later, the truck fell and I died.
Now God's got this awesome testimony
about sending angels, sending a lady,
praying back to life, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I go home and, you know,
I'm not feeling, you know,
not feeling the presence of God or anything.
I go home.
Now Monday morning comes.
I'm sitting at the table.
Lori's gone.
The kids are gone.
And I go to open my Bible and the Lord speaks to me.
And he said, don't ever misrepresent me again
like you did yesterday.
I'm like, God, what?
I told him exactly what happened.
Right.
I didn't say any lies.
I didn't exaggerate.
He's exactly said.
And he said it again.
Don't ever misrepresent me again
like you did yesterday.
And I said, Lord, how did I misrepresent?
What did I do?
And he said, you never understood the question.
I said, Lord, you asked me if I would die
from the hands of the kingdom.
I didn't want to say yes.
You asked me.
And when I said yes, the truck fell me
and I died.
And now you got this testimony.
And he said it again.
You didn't understand the question.
I said, Lord, I don't understand the question.
Tell me.
And he said, Bruce, when I asked you
if you'd die from the hands of the kingdom,
I was asking if you'd die every day.
To yourself.
To your will.
To your wants.
You love your business.
You love doing what you do.
You're good at it.
You love that.
I might have been asking you to lay it down.
Been asking you to go on a full-time ministry.
You were called when you were 18.
You're 36.
I'll let you go for another 18 years.
Yeah, I've blessed it, but it's done.
That season is done.
I didn't want the accident to happen, he said.
I knew what the enemy had planned.
I sent your wife.
She begged you.
I didn't tell you this.
This is what she said before she went in the bedroom.
Let's sell the business.
Don't go back to work tomorrow.
Let today be the last day.
Let today be the last day of this business.
And I pulled out my work.
I got three months of work lined up.
Literally, I got three months of work lined up.
These people are counting on me.
Let today be the last day.
Don't go back to work.
He said, that was me.
I was speaking through.
I didn't want the truck to fall on you.
You didn't have to have all these scars.
Those are scars of disobedience.
You didn't have to spend a year in the hospital.
You didn't have to lose everything.
You chose that.
Don't blame it on me.
Don't misrepresent me.
So, after the accident, we had 80-20 insurance.
80-20.
I spent over a year in the hospital.
My 20% was several hundred thousand dollars.
I was workaholic.
We had saved up money.
I had some cool investment things going.
We lost it all.
We lost, I mean, all my savings, all my stuff.
You spent a year in the hospital.
You had no workmen.
See, I thought it was bulletproof.
I was never going to get hurt.
Man, I raced motorcycles for 10 years.
I was state champ for a whole bunch of years, whatever.
I'm never going to get hurt.
I don't need workmen's comp, right?
So, yeah, I didn't have workmen's comp.
In fact, the month before the accident, I said to my wife,
let's cancel our health insurance.
It's a waste of money.
The kids never get sick.
We never get sick.
They don't have ear infections.
Nothing.
We're wasting, like, however much, hundreds of dollars a month.
Let's just cancel our health insurance.
Thank God she was smart enough to say,
no, no, no.
We're not going to cancel our health insurance.
So, my 20% was several hundred thousand dollars.
And I get out for, like, I'd have these operations,
and then I'd get out for a little while
and I'd be stuck at home.
And I had eight IVs, four in each arm,
because I had 10 medicines.
So then when they sent me home, it was reduced.
But I still had multiple IVs just to be able
to put all the medicine in me, right?
So they sent me home because my attitude was bad.
I was a bad patient.
And so the doctors, like, look, you can see me.
I can't hold still.
I'm walking around up here.
It's not because I'm wound up tight.
That's who I am.
And I'm telling the doctors, just let me out of this place.
I'm going crazy here.
You've got to let me out.
Give me one of those because I had a tube
and I couldn't eat.
They're feeding me intravenously.
I'm like, give me one of those bag things.
I just got to get out of here.
And they're like, no, no, no.
So then the doctors, like, look,
if I let you go home for a couple of weeks,
if I let you go home for three weeks
before the next operation,
will you come back with a better attitude?
Yeah, yeah, let me go home, find out.
Find out, let's see.
You know?
So we go home and I start going, oh my gosh.
The church, our church where my wife worked
and we went, they're bringing groceries.
Our money's gone.
And I still got a, I still got a mortgage
because we didn't, I mean, a house isn't paid for.
And it's like, I'm looking at all the money
and I'm just freaking out.
I'm going, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
What are we going to do?
So I get this great idea.
I've got a, I have broken vertebrae.
I am like ribs.
I mean, I'm messed up bad.
I'm weak.
I couldn't physically work.
And all these customers are just calling
when are you going to come back to work?
When are you going to come back?
We need you, we need you.
So I said, I mean, I worked for paper mills.
I worked for big businesses and stuff.
And there, I picked my customers.
If I didn't like somebody I'd never worked for them again.
And so I had a waiting list of customers
and they're like, when can you come back,
when you come back?
And I said, I'm so weak I can't.
And I had multiple curves.
I said, we don't care about your body.
We want your brain.
You come to work.
We'll pay you the, we'll pay the 75 bucks an hour.
We don't care.
Tell our guys what to do.
We just need your work, your brain.
You tell them what to do.
You sit there.
We'll still pay the money.
So I did, I'm like, okay.
So I started to go back to work.
I'm supposed to be on bed rest.
I've got IVs.
My back is broken.
I'm messed up.
I've lost all this weight.
I would put my work uniform on my IV.
Things are hanging out.
And Lord is like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
What are you doing?
Where are you going?
I said, I'm going to go to work.
She said, Nelly, you got to have my operation in three weeks.
You can't go back to work.
You're supposed to be on 100% bed rest.
I said, well, where's the money?
Because I'm from Lady.
I'd go to work.
And you know what?
In a month and a half.
So yeah, I got this, we like pushed off an operation.
And this month and a half,
I made more in that month and a half
than I did any other month and a half.
It was outrageous.
And so God, all this money comes in, right?
And so I started working for my dad
in a garage at 10 years old.
I started working for my dad in the garage
at 10 years old, 25 cents an hour is what he started paying me
as a 10-year-old.
And by the time I graduated high school,
I could overhaul a cat,
come as a Detroit engine as an 18-year-old
that 25 and 30-year-old guys couldn't.
But that's what I had been doing my whole life.
And so I got paid really well.
You know what I mean?
Everything, my job, and here's the thing.
And this is, I'm not going to take credit for this.
God had told me later I was only the Joseph blessing
and I just never made mistakes.
I didn't have comebacks.
When you work on an engine or something
and it breaks because of your fault,
it's called a comeback.
You got to fix it, you should fix it for free or whatever.
I didn't have comebacks.
And so that's why the customers wanted me
because I didn't have comebacks, right?
So I'm in this process of making all this money
and thinking, okay, this is going to work out.
And I finished this job up at a paper mill
and I'm driving home and this guy
from this huge cranberry marsh calls
and he's swearing at me.
Every F-bomb, I mean, he's just blowing me up.
He's going, I hope you got good insurance.
I'm like, what, man, what?
He says that engine that you just put that fuel pump on,
the fuel leaked into my cranberry bed
and wrecked the whole crop of cranberries.
We're talking over a million dollars.
I hope you got good insurance, mister.
And he's just letting me have it.
Man, he is running me up and down.
I'm like, it's never happened.
Like what?
Are you sure?
Yeah, I'm sure.
And he's just like, I got off the phone with it.
I'm like, whoa.
So that rocks my world.
The phone rings.
It's another customer.
He goes, you know that brand new John Deere,
that brand new John Deere you worked on?
It blew up as soon as we started it.
You left and as soon as we started it,
there's a hole in the block.
It's wrecked.
It can't even be rebuilt.
He needs to be completely replaced.
I hope you got insurance.
I hope you got good insurance.
I hang up.
The phone rings.
And it's the paper mill.
And they said, you know that air conditioning job
that you did?
The fan came off and went through the radiator
and destroyed the radiator, the air cooler,
above all these things.
It's thousands of dollars worth of damage.
I hope you got good insurance.
I come home.
I sit down in that seat,
my spot at the table like I said before, right?
And I'm literally crying.
I'm going, God, what?
What, what?
All three at once, my wife comes up.
She goes, what's going on?
I said, listen to this.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
All three.
I just got these calls, all three.
And were you, believe this?
My wife, she's not into itching ears either.
And I'm not even going to say the sentence that she said.
But she basically said,
I can't believe you're this dumb.
You're not supposed to be working.
This is not from God.
You're not supposed to be working.
You're supposed to be resting.
You're supposed to be going to ministry.
Did you learn nothing?
Like, what's wrong with you?
And she stomps away.
Well, I didn't want to hear her business.
So we live on this 40 acres
and our house is in the middle.
So I went all the way through the woods
to the back corner.
And the back corner of our woods,
the back of my 40 is a field
and this side is a field.
So my 40 is woods, but there's a field that way.
A farmer field that way
and there's a farm field this way.
And right in the corner,
there's this big pile of field rock.
So I just sat up on that big pile of field rock
and I remember it was super hot.
And there was no breeze at all.
And I'm like going, God, where are you?
Where are you?
And this cool breeze came in.
The presence of God came with it.
And this is how it would react
when I feel the presence of God.
I felt like, oh, thank you, you're here.
You're here, you're here.
Thank you, God, thank you.
What's going on?
What is this?
What's going on?
And he spoke.
He said, you've been underneath
a Joseph blessing your whole life.
What you've touched as a mechanic,
I've blessed just like I did for Joseph.
He said, today, I've removed the Joseph blessing.
If you want to continue to work,
this is what you get to look forward to.
You're no longer blessed in this way.
If you want to continue to work,
this is what you get to look forward to.
And so I'm trying to, you know,
I'm saying this, I'm saying that.
And I pull out my...
I had a pocket planner with all my work lined up.
And I pull it out and I said, God,
I've got all this work and it's all,
look at all this money.
And he said, this is what I want you to do.
He said, you go through that, all that work,
one by one, you call those people and you say,
I can't work for you, I'm working for God now.
And you hang up the phone and you call the next guy.
I can't work for you anymore
because I'm working for God now.
And he says, you just go right through
and you tell every person...
and tell them why, because if you work on your stuff,
it's not going to turn out good.
Because you're not blessed anymore.
So, I start looking through the list
and I'm like, some people are going to go,
okay, I get it.
And there's going to be some people are going to say,
what? Are you nuts?
The medicine messes you up.
What's wrong with you, right?
So, I start laughing and I'm like,
oh my goodness, this guy is going to get it.
This guy isn't, you know.
And he says, it's today, today it's done.
Joseph Blossig is done.
You can't do that anymore.
So, I, because I'm a deal maker,
I said, okay, God, I don't want to end like this.
It's been such, I mean, I've been doing this
since I've been 10.
It's worked, it's been really great.
Can I at least, will you at least
let me fix the three jobs?
Will you at least let me go back and take care
of the three things, those three calls I got today?
And I'll cancel all future work,
but can I take care of what went bad?
He said, yeah, yep.
The fuel pump at the cranberry marsh.
Faulty part was not my fault.
No insurance on me, insurance on Cummins.
Wasn't me.
They supplied the part.
They got sued, not me.
Next person.
The fan that came off
on the big Labir logs crane,
Faulty part, nothing I did.
The John Deere engine
that ran perfect until I adjusted the valves
and they started up and blew a big hole in the block.
Dropped the valve because of something else
had nothing to do with me.
Confirmed, I didn't adjust anything wrong,
it was all perfect.
It was this, it was God going...
That's what it was.
Okay, and guess what? Never had to file an insurance claim.
Got out of it? Done, right? So...
So, God...
So, all we have left for money, I had one investment left.
We were going to do this mini storage project.
We had started it, and it was going to net us a lot of money each year,
and it was like going to be my retirement.
This is going to... We don't have to do with it.
We just get the check in the mail every month,
and it's going to be a...
And so I've been working on that project for years.
It's about to transpire, and then the accident happens.
So I'm not able to do it, but I've got this commercial land
in a big city, in a big... in a close to a bigger city,
and it's going to be the thing, right?
So, this is what God says then. He goes,
you know, that last piece of money you have.
That last thing that you got to take care of your family.
I want you to sell that land
and give the money to build an orphanage.
And I'm like, okay, I'm sick.
You said I can't work.
I've got no work that's gone.
I've got no money coming. I get bills every month.
And you want me to sell the one thing,
the one thing I've got left
that I could sell for money, basically,
the big thing I've got left.
You want me to sell that and give it all away?
No. I won't do it.
I'm not going to do it. You can't...
I can't do that. God, I can't do that.
That's what I told him.
He knows it's in my heart.
I could say, yeah, I'll do that,
but not do it. He knows.
So I'm just like, God, I can't do it.
That's too much. You can't...
So, within a month...
It was in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Within a month, the General Motors plant
up and closed.
It's the biggest business in Janesville.
It was the biggest business in Janesville.
And all the surrounding, all the little businesses.
So when the Janesville plant closed,
guess what happened to commercial land value in Janesville?
It dropped in half.
My property was worth X amount,
and now it is exactly worth half the real yourselves.
It literally dropped in half.
And I'm crying about it. I'm complaining to God about it.
And you know what the Holy Spirit said?
This is exactly what he said.
That hurt, didn't it?
That's what he said to me. That hurt, didn't it?
Ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha.
So, he's like, are you going to listen now?
It's half what it's worth. Are you going to listen now?
I struggled. I struggled.
And finally, I'm like, fine, fine, whatever.
Okay, I'll do it.
So, we sell the land.
We gave the money away when we had none.
And I've got four little kids.
And I've got a wife. And I've got a house.
And I've got bills. And I'm too sick.
And I can't work to physically work.
And God won't let me go breathe the brain to work.
But then he says, sell this, right?
So, here's the deal.
Church, I would have rather gone to a worship and praise service
and sang a nice happy song and clapped.
You hear me?
That would have been so much easier.
And I could have called that praise and worship.
But that's not what God calls worship.
So, after getting involved with the orphanage, we build it.
We start trying to raise monthly money for the mommies,
to pay for the mommies, to take care of the kids.
And our oldest daughter was Lauren.
Lauren is Lauren. And she was 11 or 12 at the time.
And she'd been saving up all year money
for this thing called the MP3 player.
They don't make them anymore. I'm sure.
It's an old technology, right?
The cost of the MP3 player was about the same amount
as it was going to pay for a mommie for a whole month,
one of the mommies for a month.
It was the cost of this MP3 player.
She had saved up her money from babysitting.
I knew in doing whatever stuff she did,
she made this money and she was saving it
for this MP3 player.
And one day, she comes into my office
and she says with tears in her eyes,
and she's got this money.
She says, take it, dad. Take it.
I heard what you said about how much the mommies cost
for a month. Take it. This will pay for a mommie
for those little kids for a month.
And I knew how hard she worked,
and I didn't want to do it. I wasn't going to take her money.
I said, no, no. And the Lord spoke to me.
This is what he said.
Don't you dare rob her of this blessing
by not taking it.
So I took it,
and she was fighting.
She did not want to give it,
but the part that didn't want to give it
was just a little bit less the part that did.
And so she was like hands shaking when she put it on.
So I'm just going to say this.
Somebody found out about what she did.
This church.
Found out of what she did.
This church bought my child
a better MP3 player than she could have ever paid for.
This church did that. This church also gave
clothes, money for winter clothes
and things for my family.
This church did that.
And I have never forget it either.
True worship involves sacrifice.
So I've gotten rid of everything.
All I got left is my house and my Harley.
And here's the thing with my Harley.
It's no just regular Harley.
It's the one I got when I graduated high school.
I've had it for a long time at this point.
A long time. Many, many years.
I restored it. I made it absolutely perfect.
Perfect, perfect, perfect to the way it came from the factory.
And after 17 years I took it to the biggest national antique motorcycle show
in the United States, which means in the world.
And I won first place with it.
It was special.
God starts giving me dreams and he calls it an idol.
That's what he called it.
And he says, you know that idol that you got in the garage?
You know the one that you kept in the house for all those years?
Even when you had a garage? That one?
Okay, that one, I want you to sell that idol and start this ministry.
Because you started it with, but you got nothing.
Buy a ministry car, buy a computer, buy all the, you know,
everything to pay the lawyer to do the 5-1 see-through.
I want you to do that.
I fought, but I sold it.
Bought the car, paid for the 503 paperwork, bought the desk, the computer,
all the stuff that literally start the ministry of the nuts and bolts.
It took many years, but God allowed me to get another one again.
We were able to, we cut the wood on our land
and from the land, from the wood valley I was able to get another one.
So, earlier this year, I'm pretty sure when I was here in January and February
I mentioned this, but earlier this year I battled kidney stones.
Since the accident I've been battled with kidney stones.
And I was battling with a kidney stone.
And see, here's the kidney stones, it hurts if you pass,
so people think it's oh, it's when it goes through the tubing
and that's what hurts.
Yeah, that hurts.
That doesn't hurt near as much as when it plugs the kidney
and no urine can come out of your kidney.
And the kidney keeps producing urine, but it can't come out
so your kidney just keeps doing this.
And it's like a, like a Ziploc bag
and it just keeps getting tighter and tighter and tighter
and if you don't do something about it, it will burst.
You'll get gangrene and you'll die.
That's what will happen.
If you, if you're, if it's plugged off, if it goes to the point
and no urine can come out of that kidney, it will burst
and you'll die.
And if you could feel it ripping apart,
I mean that's where the real, real pain from a kidney stone is.
So I've got one of those going on.
I'm plugged off, it's hurting worse and worse and worse
and worse and worse.
And I woke up about midnight
and from that point until 3.20 a.m.
I just, I laid on the floor in the bathroom
and it's, and at 3.20 I wake up Lori and I said,
okay, get dressed. You got to take me to hospital.
I'm praying, I'm praying that God's not taking it away.
Whatever, you got to, I'm going to have to go to hospital.
I hate, hey, I've been in the hospital for more than a year.
I hate hospitals.
I never want to go to hospital.
I deal with these kidney stones.
I get stuck in the hospital.
Over and over and over.
I hate hospitals. I didn't want to go.
I didn't want to go.
And so I just, I fought it, I fought it, I fought it,
but now it's hurting so bad I just can't stand it.
And that's hurting so bad with me eating
delotted like it's candy.
Way more than, way more than what you should take.
Like way more.
And I can't make the pain go away, right?
So about 3.30, she's in the bathroom getting ready
and I blurt this out.
I go, God, I'm giving it 15 minutes.
I don't know where this came from.
It just came out of my mouth.
God, I'm giving it 15 minutes.
If I don't feel any better in 15 minutes,
we are going to the ER.
I can't not do this.
There's five minutes left.
About five minutes left.
So it's about 3.40.
And I'm in so much pain.
I'm fetal.
I'm in a fetal position.
I'm sweating.
It's like, it's bad, bad, bad pain, right?
And I hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit.
And this is what he says.
Can you worship me right now?
In the middle of pain.
Can you worship me?
Just a little?
I go, well, for me, if I'm in a real, real bind,
like, let's say I'm emotionally spinning out.
Let's say I'm listening to lies, whatever.
The only way that I can get into worshiping God,
I got one thing.
I love His creation, man.
I love rocks, and I love trees,
and I love rivers, and I love the way He
He is the one Creator.
He's the only Creator that makes things that recreate.
People, I mean, all of it, animals.
It's like, I can get into worshiping Him
when I think about His creation, how amazing it is,
and just how vast and beautiful and all that.
So I just start thinking about creation.
I think about spots in South Dakota I like,
and I'm thinking about all these things, right?
And I'm just like, okay, I can start praising Him
just a little bit.
And all of a sudden it becomes legit.
I'm actually literally praising Him.
I asked Lord what time it was.
3.44.
With one minute left, the pain lifted.
I told Him 15 minutes, that's 3.45.
At 3.44, the pain lifted.
So is God an 11th hour?
Is God an 11th hour God?
Or, or, is He just waiting on us
in our attitude, right?
Is it our attitude that makes Him the 11th hour God?
On Good Friday, Jesus shows us
what it looks like to truly praise and worship God.
It wasn't a song, it wasn't clapping, it wasn't dancing.
He chose to sacrifice that which was most valuable to Him.
His very life.
He's never going to have a wife.
He's never going to have kids.
He's never going to have an earthly future.
He did it to pay the price for my sin and for your sin.
His actions have caused millions of people
to praise Him.
The Bible says He's worthy because He was slain.
We praise Him because of His love and mercy and grace
that He poured out.
May He and I live our lives in such a way
that it causes others to legitimately worship
and praise God.
Not play church, not go through words
that we're not even meaning when we sing them,
but literally worship praise God.
We're supposed to emulate Him.
He's supposed to be the one that we're supposed to be like.
And I fall short daily.
Daily I fall short, but He's the example.
He's what we're supposed to try and be like.
What is that?
It's sacrifice.
It's giving up that which is most valuable.
It's not... I'm sorry, but praise and worship
is not singing the song in biblical terms.
We say that.
Every church will say that, but that's not what God says.
The true core meaning. Is it a layer of it?
Yeah, is it further down the list?
Yeah, but it's not the number one.
It's not the main.
We'll end with this.
Father, forgive us when we've chosen to play church.
Forgive us when we've not done the things you've asked.
Empower us by your Holy Spirit to be like Jesus.
And live our lives as an ongoing praise and worship service.
Amen.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you, God.
He had no idea what I spoke last Sunday.
It's the same message.
It's the same message I spoke last Sunday only.
He explained what it's like to live out the disobedience side.
So I'm sitting there going,
Wow!
No wonder you told me to say that this morning.
Because it goes hand in hand with what he was talking about.
So I'm going to have to say it again.
Because I said, wow, that goes hand in hand with what I said this morning.
And he said, yeah, you're going to go up and say it again.
Okay.
I can learn from other people's mistakes.
I'll, I'm in.
I'll go up and say it again.
So the people online never heard it.
Because it was during that time where we blacked them out.
You tell me, should I read the Scripture before I say it again?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Okay.
2 Timothy 4.
1 through 4.
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus.
Who is the judge?
Who is to judge the living and the dead?
And by His coming and His kingdom.
Verse 2, Paul is talking to Timothy.
Herald and preach the word.
Keep your sense of urgency.
Stand by, be at hand and ready.
Whether the opportunity seems to be favorable or unfavorable.
Boy, this verse makes so, has so much more meaning after what he just shared, doesn't it?
I'll just read that part again and plug it into his life and what he shared.
Herald and preach the word. You've been called to be a preacher.
Keep your sense of urgency.
18 years later, bad stuff happened because the urgency wasn't there.
Whether the opportunity seems favorable or unfavorable.
Well, for Bruce it was unfavorable and his fleshly way of thinking.
This isn't a good time to do that.
Whether it's convenient or inconvenient, whether it's welcome or unwelcome,
you as a preacher of the word are to show people in what way their lives are wrong.
Convince them, rebuking and correcting,
warning and urging and encouraging them,
being unflagging and inexhaustible in patience and teaching.
For the time is coming when people will not tolerate or endure sound and wholesome instruction.
And I'll say what I said before, what's the sound and wholesome instruction?
It's verse two.
Urgently tell them what they're doing wrong.
Rebuke, correct, warn, urge them and encourage them to do what's right.
That's the instruction.
He says the time is coming, people will not want to hear that kind of instruction,
but having ears itching for something pleasing and gratifying,
they will gather to themselves one teacher after another to a considerable number of teachers.
Chosen, they're choosing the people that satisfy their own liking
and they're choosing the people that foster the errors they hold.
They're not choosing the people that are telling them they're wrong.
Verse four, they're choosing the people who will turn aside from hearing the truth
and wander off into myths and man-made fictions. They just walk that out with them.
So the Lord had given me something for this morning
and it's like the churches in Revelation, five of the seven churches, Jesus rebuked for something.
Two of them he did not, five, seven he rebuked.
This isn't for the church, but it's for some people in the church.
And if you're watching by online, it might be for some people watching online.
And this is what he told me.
He said there's been disagreement between people.
So I'm thinking this is probably married couples.
It could be a person who shared something with a friend.
I don't know, he didn't say it was married couples.
But there's disagreement between people concerning the building project
and how much to give to that project.
There's disagreement there.
And one person is saying, no, that's too much to give.
Don't give that much. I don't agree with us giving that much.
No, don't do that.
Where the other person is going, this is what I feel God told us to say, to give.
This is what I feel we're supposed to give.
And then one person is saying, no, no, no.
This is what the Lord said, say.
So I quote now.
The Lord said, I rebuke you.
Let them obey me.
They asked me what they should give.
And I spoke to them.
You are speaking out of your own fear and selfishness.
Let me be God.
Not you.
End of quote.
It is a serious thing, especially.
Remember, we already studied this in the tithing series.
Both offerings and tithes God considers holy.
Both of them.
It is a serious thing when we start messing with stuff that God considers holy
and start saying, no, we're not going to do that.
After that message, the fear God should be on us going,
maybe I shouldn't say no.
Maybe I should just give him what he's asking for.
It's his anyway.
That's what he's trying to tell us.
So I'll just repeat it.
Somebody in the relationship is saying, no, don't give.
That's too much.
Don't give that much.
I don't agree with us giving that much.
And the Lord is saying to you, quote, I, the Lord is saying, I rebuke you.
Let them obey me.
They asked me what they should give and I spoke to them.
You, the person who's getting rebuked.
You are speaking out of your own fear and selfishness.
Let me be God, not you.
End of quote.
Bruce, I'm going to ask you and your wife both to come up here for a bit.
I'm going to heavy lead in prayer and there might be something that Lori wants to share.
I just have that sense.
She might have a piece of wisdom to throw in on this.
I hope everybody caught the thing about the mp3 player.
Right. You see how that's exactly.
I was saying, no, don't give that.
I was telling her don't give that.
I was the one that would be being rebuked in this situation.
Don't give that.
And God's like, no, don't you dare let her not give it because she's going to be your robber of a blessing.
And you, it just so happens that this is the church that blessed her with better.
Okay. See, I didn't even know.
She got an iPod instead of mp3, which none of that means anything to me, but whatever.
I know it meant a lot to her. Right.
It was a major upgrade.
Yeah.
So for those of you who were with us at that time, you remember the story.
Um, those of you who weren't with us, it was just one of those random things in what?
November, October, November, the Lord told Mary and I, he said,
take an offering and send it to Bruce.
I said, why?
No, he's, he's famous.
He travels all over the country.
He probably got money coming out of his ears.
And it just wouldn't let us go.
The Lord said, take an offering, send it to Bruce.
Some of you remember it.
So we took an offering, got it to him by Christmas.
He might not remember this, but they, we didn't buy them the iPod.
You guys did.
It wasn't just an offering.
There was specific things that you supplied the iPod or whatever it was for the kid.
So we actually sent one.
Yeah.
You remember that?
I had no idea that that's what she wanted.
I've got four kids.
How come only one got it?
No, I'm being serious.
Because she's the one that gave.
Because she's the one that, she's the one that was obedient
and did real praise and worship.
And God has provided for all our children,
their schooling and everything,
and has blessed them over the, over the top.
And so I wanted to stay with the business
so I could keep making a lot of money
and then I'll have money where I could saved up
and be able to send my kid to school.
I'd have a penny to send my kid to school.
God provided it. Supernaturally.
Our vehicles, everything.
We give, we give away, give away, give away.
And God just, you can't all give God.
You can't.
And you know what?
I mean, no disrespect.
Listen, there's going to be people that will watch this
and listen and go, that was self-serving.
Let's just be honest.
There's going to be people that listen to what you just said
and they go, that's self-serving.
He's twisting that.
And he's trying to self-serve on that.
Can I interrupt before you finish?
I told Mary this morning, I said,
this is what I feel God told me to say.
I said, should we live stream that or not?
She said, I don't think we should
because people will twist it.
They're going to twist it.
So that's why the first time through
we didn't live stream it.
But after you got done, it's like, well...
So self-serving, worried about my interest
or actually just trying to be obedient?
Right?
What is it?
So I'm going to ask either or both of you
to pray for us as a body, whoever wants to,
whoever wants to be on this prayer,
I'll just have them stand.
That we learn to be completely obedient
and submissive.
We learn what true worship is.
He needs to pray that, not me.
I'm serious.
So explain why.
What do you mean explain why?
She doesn't struggle with being obedient.
I do. She doesn't struggle with being submissive.
I do.
No, I meant as far as money.
Okay, so what she's saying is
we have literally...
This is not bragging.
We've...
Why was I not afraid when you got hurt
and worried about money?
Okay, so when we started our business,
the first month of our business,
it wasn't the first month,
because we had literally at the end of the month,
we had $27,000 or $27 worth of bills
that we need to pay,
and nobody paid me any money.
So I spent a bunch of parts
to build stuff for people,
but then nobody paid me,
and now they're trying to shut me off on parts.
We can't make the house payment,
we can't do nothing because none of the customers are paying,
and she's freaking out, I'm freaking out,
but then what happened?
And I said, you need to call these people.
You need to tell them to pay their bills
and it goes, I'm not gonna.
I said, well, dude,
we are gonna lose everything.
And I laid it down at God and I went, God,
like, we are going to lose everything.
We just built this brand new house.
Our kids are going to Christian school.
We're gonna lose it all.
Like, what the heck?
We are, you know,
and I prayed the prayer and I said, God,
you're in control.
You're in charge.
Like, what are we gonna do
today?
She gave it up.
She completely laid it at the foot of the altar
and next day she's like, you know what, God's got this.
She flipped completely.
And then I'm the one that, you know, I'm freaking out.
And she's like, no, God's got this.
And from that day, she's never turned back.
It's what Mary said in the prayer beforehand.
She stood on what God had given her
and she wasn't gonna let it be taken from her.
She was just gonna stand on that truth
and say, no, God is faithful.
And what happened was immediately...
All the checks came in.
She said, no, nothing.
And I said, Lord, I will never, ever
worry about money again
because you are my provider.
Period.
He's not the provider.
I'm not the provider.
He is the provider.
Period.
And you can't all give God.
We give away a car.
Somebody gives us a better car.
We give away a car.
Somebody gives us a better car.
Over and over and over.
I was on the floor crying to God about money.
I walked in, I go, dude, what's going on?
He goes, well, we had all these bills
and I just laughed.
I was like, man.
And then he goes, yeah, God's...
That was the piece of wisdom.
So you're nominated to pray.
Anybody who wants in on this prayer
and please let the Holy Spirit lead you.
It might go some direction
that I'm not even thinking.
Anybody who wants in on this prayer,
stand, please.
So Father God, we just thank you
that you're the provider of all things.
Creation, our lives, our jobs,
our families, whatever, everything.
You are the provider of all
and we can trust you with everything.
It is all yours.
None of it is ours.
And we just thank you that
you put that heart of generosity
and love and peace.
And we just pray that
whatever you want us to do
that we be obedient
because we know you've got it.
And if you want us to do something
let us just be obedient to you
to do your will, whatever it is,
whatever it is for our time,
our talents, possessions, whatever.
It's all yours.
And we just give it to you
and we just pray that we be obedient
whatever you call us to do,
you want us to do.
And however that looks.
In Jesus' name.