-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Glory to God. Thank you for being here today.
00:42 Welcome to KJV Cafe. It’s good to be in the cafe today. I hope you’re doing well.
00:46 And hey, today I’m going to do something a little different. The Lord has laid it on my heart to give you my personal testimony. And this block of time, you know, I’m gonna say this, this block of time is probably not enough time to really say it all, what God’s done in my life.
01:01 I could spend my whole life preaching on that and never really fully explain it, how good God’s been to me. But I’m gonna try today. And our text verse is Proverbs 3:5-6. This is my life verse.
01:13 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Oh, I love Proverbs 3: 5- 6 for so many reasons.
01:26 3 is the perfect number of resurrection. 5, the number of grace. 6, the number of man.
01:34 When I was young, my mom gave me a little sailboat that had that scripture on there, a little sailboat. It almost looked like a trophy and had that scripture on there. And I’ll never forget that.
01:46 And also too, when I played football, my number was 56. I looked up to a kid who wore that number and I wanted to wear that number. And it’s just my life verse.
01:54 It’s so true that we have to trust God with all our heart because we can’t lean on our own understanding. And we have to acknowledge Him and let Him direct our paths. Because oftentimes, He’s gonna direct us so much different than we would have directed ourselves.
02:09 And He knows us because He created us. And so He knows us so much better than we know ourselves. And that can be tough to kind of chew on there because we think we know ourselves pretty good.
02:20 And we think we know exactly what we need, Amen. But we don’t. We don’t.
02:26 I used to hear a preacher, Preacher Mike wrote, the church we used to go to, Glory Bound Baptist, before the Lord called me to plant Heartland Community Baptist Church, he would always talk about how if it was up to him, he’d be up there in the Smoky Mountains all the time. And if he had the money and the resources, that’s what he’d do. He’d just be up there.
02:41 And I think that’s so true. If it was up to me, I’d be in the mountains or at the beach or something and wouldn’t be productive for God and wouldn’t be happy, wouldn’t have that joy of serving the Lord and wouldn’t have all that the Lord has blessed us with here. And that’s why we sometimes we don’t know.
02:56 We see that in the Bible through Abraham, going to the promised land of Canaan, and there’s a famine and he’s got to go to Egypt. And, you know, the Israelites thinking they were better off not going into invade because they’re worried that the Canaanites would defeat them. And there’s so many examples of that.
03:12 And I just want to share my testimony here for a little bit. I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, January 1st, 1980. I was a New Year’s baby, the first day of the first of the decade of 1980.
03:25 And I don’t remember much about that time. But I know that my parents fought a lot. And I remember screaming and yelling.
03:35 And our my parents were and I remember my brother and I were quite scared. I had a brother was a year and a half older than me. And I remember we would just look at each other, we had these little twin beds, and we would stare at each other as they fought and they fought and they fought.
03:47 And it wasn’t long before they split up. Amen. They, they got a divorce, and we went to go live with grandma.
03:58 And my dad would come and visit on the weekends, but it wasn’t the same. It was just totally devastating to me. Amen.
04:03 My mom would try her best, but she struggled with a lot of issues. And I remember she would have us lay she’d have me lay in her lap, and she’d read a picture Bible to me and show me pictures. And then she’d stop after a little bit and said, Now, Clark, tell me what it means.
04:14 And I was a mama’s boy, I was the youngest. And I would try to tell her what it meant. Amen.
04:20 And we just, we were close. But it was a really difficult time. My grandma was very much up in age, my mom developed a very severe mental condition, schizophrenia, and it got worse and worse.
04:30 But because she was living with her mom, she was kind of sheltered from the world. And she would, if you know anything about that disease, she would collect all these papers and all these things. And there was all these signs that she was very, very sick mentally.
04:42 But being a teenager, being a young person, and a teenager, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what was wrong. And so dad not being around, I lashed out, I was super bad. I was getting in trouble constantly.
04:55 And detention was my best friend. I had all kinds of problems. Amen.
05:00 Finally, when I was about 17 years old, 16, 17 years old, they intervened because my mom had gone to school with knives and said that someone in DC was coming to get us. And so they said, that’s enough. And they got the the actually the local pastor there was involved in it.
05:15 And some other people were involved in it. And they forcibly took her Amen, to a facility, which she never ended up leaving. She ended up going to a home for adults, but she never ended up leaving the facility.
05:24 I think it’s been 25 years or so. And she’s been in there and still struggling with that disease. And, and I was wild.
05:36 And I was wide open. And I was getting into this and getting into that. I had a problem with everybody.
05:41 And I was a big guy. And I was fighting all the time and having just so many problems. And it was amazing.
05:48 Literally, I was textbook case for jail. I mean, my guidance counselor said, I don’t even know if you would be able to go to college, but by Lord would see it fit. I was able to go to college, play some football for a year and then continue on then graduate.
06:03 And I can’t believe I did. Amen. And at that time, I was still living for myself.
06:07 But I knew there was more, because there was an emptiness in me that I just couldn’t figure out that emptiness. I couldn’t, I couldn’t put my finger on it. I remember very vividly being about a 1920 just staring out the window saying this can’t be life.
06:21 Life is so empty, you know, no matter what I thought I wanted or needed life is so empty. And so I went on about my life, living for myself. For many years, I went on try to chase intellectualism, went to graduate school and try to try to become smart.
06:38 And that didn’t work. Amen. And try to go into business and struggled in business.
06:43 And I got saved and turned around and went right back to living for the world. And at some point, in my early 30s, I had just given it to God and said, I’ve had enough. And the Lord changed my life completely.
06:55 I said, Lord, everything I have is yours. I gave it all to him. You know, he just changed my life.
07:01 He changed it. He gave me a wife and kids. He helped me to be a better person.
07:08 He just did everything. He knew I needed time. So he shepherded me along slowly, very slowly.
07:16 I was the video guy at church and then I was the deacon and then I was the youth preacher, you know, and then I was preaching a little bit on Sunday mornings once or twice. And then the Lord put in my heart a strong conviction to be preaching with the pastor there at the men’s home and the group homes and the nursing homes. And eventually the Lord allowed me to go and plant a church and then eventually have this radio ministry and it’s all God.
07:43 He gets all the glory. And he changed me so much from a wild young man. And he changed me into a person that loves family, that loves friends, that loves Him more than anything, that’s on fire for God.
08:01 I can truly say that today. I’m on fire for God. And I love God.
08:06 He’s been so good to me. It’s hard to even speak. And people turn this on and say, what’s this preacher crying for? But I’m just crying because the Lord, I’m shedding tears of joy because he’s been so good.
08:16 He’s been so good to me. I’ve got a beautiful wife. I got three kids.
08:20 I got one in heaven. Amen. And he’s been so good to me.
08:24 He has blessed me beyond measure. Amen. All those things I couldn’t do on my own.
08:28 God just went ahead and worked them out for me once I was obedient to him. And I just accepted him. And I can say that, you know, the Bible tells us that it’s by faith.
08:37 We’re justified by faith. And I can say that that’s true. It’s nothing that I did differently that life turned around.
08:43 It’s what God did. And all I did was believe that God could do it and would do it. Amen.
08:50 And the more that I just believed in God and just had faith, despite all the circumstances, despite all the wild craziness going on in my life, the more that I just believed God could do it, that God could take a sinner like me and change me. Amen. The more that he just went ahead and did it.
09:03 Amen. And he gets the glory. And isn’t that funny? If we just would believe on God, watch what He’ll do.
09:10 Again, if the Israelites would have just believed on God, watch what he would have done. Amen. David believed on God and David took down Goliath and lions and bears and all types of things.
09:18 Oh, how we need to believe on God today and have faith. We look at the war in Russia, our war in Ukraine with the Russians. We look at COVID.
09:28 We look at politics. We look at ourselves. We look at our households and we say, oh God, how will we do it? And God is asking us, begging us to just go ahead and believe Him.
09:36 Just go ahead and believe Him. And that’s what we must do. We just must believe on Jesus Christ.
09:43 We must believe that God has a plan. We must not quench the spirit. We must live in the spirit.
09:47 We must not accept sin. We must find sin unacceptable. We must not go and live for ourselves.
09:53 We must live for the Lord. In these last days, put it all on the line for God. Why would you not? If you believe he is who he says he is, and he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him as Hebrews 11:6 puts it, we need to be on fire for God and seek Him and live for Him.
10:11 We need to run like Paul exhorts us to, we need to run for that prize. We need to run that race. Amen.
10:16 And when it comes time that all things are done and all things are fulfilled, then we can rest in him. And then we can know that we really gave it all to him rather than looking back and saying, I wish, I wish, I wish, you know, the devil wants to get you yoked up with this world to get you confused and confounded and steal all your joy and kill all the good things in your life. And God wants to give you joy and give you peace and give you life more abundantly as Jesus puts it.
10:41 But what we need to do is understand that no matter where we came from, and I’m a textbook example of someone that should be in prison or dead. And I know people that, that are dead. Amen.
10:55 I can’t say I know anybody in prison right now, but I know people that are dead. I know people that have died from the lifestyle that I had been living. Amen.
11:00 And what we need to do is understand if God can change someone like me, someone like me that was living brutally in sin and despair and self pity and all those things. And if God can work a new heart in me, he can do it in you. He can do it in your nephew.
11:14 He could do it in your daughter. He can do it in your mom and your grandma. He can work a miracle in their lives.
11:19 If you’re willing to believe and trust him and to have faith, have faith today. That’s, that’s my testimony. Have faith.
11:27 Proverbs 3: 5-6 says have faith, trust in him. And what it says here is forsake your own ways. Trust the Lord with all your heart.
11:35 Lean not onto your own understanding. Don’t look to what logically makes sense to you. Look to what the truth is in God’s word and who he is and understand that he will richly bless you, that he will richly guide you, that, that, that unseen hand of God is very present, that God is alive today and he wants to do a great work within you and through you.
11:56 And see, when we do good things for God, it’s not us doing anything, but it’s God doing something through us. And all we have to do is be obedient. And as you’re obedient to God, it’s a fruitful cycle because you’ll see what God’s doing in your life and you’ll want to be more and more obedient.
12:12 But that takes patience and that takes faith and that takes humility and meekness because you’re, you may want to take the credit for something happening in your life that God’s doing and you have to give Him the glory. Amen. He’s not going to go second to anybody.
12:24 We have to put him first. He has to be preeminent. He has to be the one above all ones in our heart, our minds, our soul, in our lives.
12:32 And as we do that, he will work a great miracle in your life. He will do things that you can’t even explain. He’ll bring you places that you couldn’t even imagine.
12:42 And He’ll give you a piece that you can’t even describe. All because that’s who God is. And He desires us to give Him glory and He desires us to seek Him out.
12:54 And those two things go hand in hand. We give him glory and then we seek him out. We say, Lord, we want to give you more glory.
13:01 We want to give you more praise. That’s true worship. True worship is going and understanding who God is.
13:08 That is true worship. Saying, I desire to know you so badly, I’m going to read your word first thing in the morning. I’m going to read over it at night.
13:14 I’m going to pray throughout the day. But my desire is to know you. And that is a true worship.
13:20 If you love someone, you want to get to know them deeply. Do you love the Lord today? If you do, turn to him with all your heart. My little testimony here, I could have gone on much longer, but my little testimony here shows you that God can change somebody.
13:33 I would not tell you if it were not true. It is true. God changed me.
13:38 He can change you and he can change those around you if you let him and if you believe on him. And if you turn to him in faith and obedience at the hard times and the good times, he will work a miracle in your life. Praise God today.
13:50 Thank God today for his goodness. He is so good. He is so wonderful.
13:55 Give Him your burdens today. Cast them upon him for he careth for you. Amen.
13:59 Give Him every single burden you got today and He will take care of you. He will lead you. He will guide you.
14:04 He is all powerful, all knowing, and He is willing and able to make a huge difference in your life as He’s made in mine. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care.
14:13 God bless and Amen.