Dive In, Do Not Look Back

Dive In, Do Not Look Back

by Bill Godfrey

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I am the righteousness of God in Christ. Hallelujah. Let’s say it. Righteousness of God in Christ. I’m the righteousness of God in Christ. I am the righteousness of God in Christ. Praise the Lord. Sounds like it. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. As I was sitting there tonight, I had thought of several things I wanted to talk about and rejected some and thought of others, and I really wasn’t really sure the direction I was going. But something came to me in this that I’d like to emphasize in everything I do. I’m going to talk about pretty much the same things that I did. But, you know, I started talking about the fundamentals or the foundation of Christianity, and I think this is where we fall short. Tim brought this and got the message started on this, and the ideas in its simplicity, the idea of simple prayer, simple faith, things like this. And what I’d like to just put as an introduction to you, be thinking about like that, is that so often we do not believe the straight, simple gospel message. It’s so clear. It’s so simple. It’s there. And we want to spiritualize it. We want to make it say something it doesn’t say. We want to find a scripture that seems to refute that, and we can spiritualize or rip it out of context to get us off the hook from the scripture that’s so simple.

And God’s Word is always very, very positive. Even those things that appear to be negative have a positive application. And Paul always made the positive application. One illustration. You remember the expression or the phrase that’s been quoted a jillion times, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.” How many sermons have you heard on this? How many have heard a sermon on this? “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” And hope was the rest of the sermon on all the sins you did, wasn’t it? Like that. And then if you’ll go on and read what Paul said, that if you sow to the flesh, then you’re going to reap the things of the flesh, and it leads to death. If you sow to the Spirit, you’re going to reap in a beautiful harvest of the Spirit. Therefore, let us sow to the Spirit. That’s his application of it. And because remembering that when you do a kindness for people in the name of Jesus, you’re going to get a harvest from that. That’s what Paul’s trying to tell you. He’s not going to tell you, you know, do this and, you know, the negative. We always take the negative. It’s really funny.

But we really don’t simply believe the Scriptures. God’s Word says, just what you said a minute ago, you are the righteousness of God in Christ. That means you are righteous, right? But your heart’s telling you that you’re not righteous, right? Are you going to believe your heart or are you going to believe God’s Word? Okay. Let’s turn first to Matthew, the 18th chapter.

I’m going to read you a bunch of Scriptures first, and then we’ll get started here. Matthew 18:21. Now, this is this title in my little deal. They always put titles on some of these little passages. And this is called the Merciless Official.

Then Peter came up to Him and asked, “Lord, when my brother wrongs me, how often must I forgive him? Seven times?” “No,” Jesus replied, “not seven times. I say 70 times seven.” It’s 490 times all in one day. How about that? “That is why the reign of God may be said to be like a king who decided to settle accounts with his officials.” Now, you know this story. The man went out there and he found that he was short and owed him about some million dollars. But the guy pleaded, “Oh, Lord, forgive me of this debt.” And he did. And so the same guy that got his debt forgiven went out and found that one of his fellow servants owed him about $10. That’s what it all totals out when you do the mathematics on it with the things they had. And he wouldn’t forgive him and turned him over to the people, and they sold him for slavery to pay the debt. And then it says… Let’s see. And when the fellow servants, in chapter 30, verse 31, when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were badly shaken and went to their master to report the whole incident. His master sent for him and said, “You worthless wretch. I canceled your entire debt when you pleaded with me. Should you not have dealt mercifully with your fellow servant as I dealt with you?”

Then in anger, the master handed him over to the torturers until he paid back all that he owed. And this is the heavy scripture for the evening. “My heavenly Father will treat you in exactly the same way unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” Now, listen to the simple, straightforward word of God. My heavenly Father will turn you over to the torturers of whatever kind there are. As whatever is torturing you. Until you forgive from your heart your brother. This is a clear word of God. It’s a heavy word. Now we’re going to go uphill from there. I got the negative over. Let’s go to Luke 23.

I’m going to put all these together if I can. Matthew, Mark, Luke. He used to get the biggest kick out of Bob Mumford. He would say, “We’re going to Zechariah or someplace.” And then he’d say, “Matthew, Mark, Zechariah.” And we were looking for it. And this time it was Matthew, Mark, Luke. Luke 23. Luke 23.

The 34th verse is what I’ve got written down here. This is the way that Jesus forgave us. And you get the picture that He’s been rejected. And He’s been beaten. And He’s never done anything wrong. And He came to His own. And His own rejected Him. And we, His own, were involved in this too. In our own way. And then they nailed the nails into His hands. And while they were doing it, He said, “Father, forgive them. For they do not know what they’re doing.” And He forgave at the moment He forgave. What was going on. Now let’s turn to 1 John 1. The very first chapter of the epistle to John. Now that is way back after Hebrews. And then Peter, James. Or James, Peter, and John. And we’re just going to begin at the first verse. And read a portion of this.

This is what we proclaim to you: what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon, and our hands have touched. We speak the word of life. This life became visible. We have seen and bear witness to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was present to the Father and became visible to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you, and turn to you, so that you may share this life with us. This fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, our purpose in writing you is that our joy might be complete. Here then is the message we heard from Him and announced to you: that God is light. In Him there is no darkness. If we say we have fellowship with Him while continuing to walk in darkness, we are liars and do not act in truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in light, in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of His Son, Jesus, cleanses us from all sin. So if we are in the light and walk in the light, God’s blood, Jesus’ blood, cleanses us automatically. We don’t even have to do anything.

He just cleanses if we walk in the light as He is in the light. Next verse. If we say we are free of guilt of sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not found in us. If we say, “Oh no, we are not guilty.” But if we acknowledge our sin, He who is just can be trusted to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every wrong. See, all we have got to do is we just acknowledge our sin, and then He is just, and He cleanses us from sin. Now we are dealing with sin right now, and forgiveness of sin. In a little bit we are going to talk about getting rid of guilt, because guilt is the weight of the consequence of sin. That is what guilt is. If we say we have never sinned, we make Him a liar, and His words find no place.

Let’s see. Theologians argue things like that. You know, this was written just for those people, or something like that. But this is for the sins of the whole world. We have in the presence of a Father an intercessor who understands what we feel like, and lived, and suffered just as we do, and suffered temptation, and knows our weakness, and knows our frame, as the Bible says. And He stands and intercedes with the Father for us. And in case we sin, all we have to do is what? Acknowledge that sin. Right? And we are free. And everybody believes that. And they say they do. But they don’t believe it. That is what I am trying to say. We do not accept the simple word that God says to us in His Word. That is as straightforward as anything that I could ever tell you. Isn’t it? Now is that… There is no hard interpretation on that. Did or did not God say, all you have to do is acknowledge your sin, and He forgives it, and throws it. And the sea of forgetfulness, that is in another place in the Bible. And so it is as though it never happened. When I told you what God did to illustrate that to me about my guilt and sin…

Which was great. And it was horrible. It was. Someone misunderstood it and began to think it was like reincarnation. But this is what the Lord spoke to me. He said, “Your sin has about as much connection with you as though it happened and was done by two other guys who lived in China. And they’re already dead.” You know, I mean, that’s about as far away as I could think of anything. And it has no relationship to me. You see? And so He was showing me that my sin had been removed from me. One of the ways He illustrated His forgiveness to me, in terms that I could understand it, was when I was in the delirium tremens. This is a consequence of the sin of rebellion against God, and sin of drinking in that rebellion. I went into the delirium tremens. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a very, very strong hallucinatory stage. And it’s caused by a dehydration in the neurons of the brain. And it comes, the onset comes from 48 to 72 hours after you cease drinking alcohol. And you always see pictures of some guy, a stumbling drunk. They’re seeing pink elephants while he’s drinking. Well, it doesn’t happen that way. You take one drink, they go away. And it’s a dehydration of the neuron of the brain.

If it goes far enough, you get what they call a wet brain, or water on the brain. Water actually separates. Will never come back. And you stay in the permanent hallucinatory stage, with all these horrible animals coming to get you. And then they put you away in number five, up in… There’s a whole building full of people like this. That’s hell on earth. And it was really something. It was very frightening to see that. But anyway, I was in this stage for eight days. And during this time, God came to me. Because of my pragmatic mind, I couldn’t accept visions. I wasn’t very mystical before. And I couldn’t accept visions and see things like that. But now I was seeing all sorts of things. And so it wasn’t a bit unusual for God to come into my room and talk to me. You know, that was no problem at all. Because people who I knew couldn’t possibly be there came in and talked to me. And they were just as real as this audience. It’s a terrible thing. In one particular case, I went to sleep for about an hour and a half. I figured it out later in the hospital room. During this one and a half hour dream, I dreamed a dream that I woke up…

Found my clothes. Escaped from where I was. Found my car. Drove all the way back 500 miles home. Was reconciled with my wife. Slept. Spent the night. And entered the golf tournament. It was going to start the next day. I played four days in the golf tournament. At the end of the thing I had an argument, and with my family, and I said, “Well, to heck with you and the horse you rode in on.” Got back in my car. Drove back out to Roswell. Checked into a different motel. And then I went to sleep, and so to just regroup. And I woke up in the hospital and didn’t know how in the world I got there. And it was so real to me. The doctor came and said, “Where is your car?” I gave him the name of the second hotel, and they went down there, and I wasn’t there. I was still at the first one. I mean the car. But it was very real to me. And so anyway, in the midst of this, I had a vision. A real genuine vision. And it was as vivid as anything I ever saw. I was standing. The Lord was on my right hand side. And there was in front of me a river about as wide as from here…

To this first row. Right up there. Not very wide. You know, dive in, two or three strokes, and climb out the other bank. It had a small cut bank on either side, and it was a gentle meadow stream. It was so deep that I couldn’t wade it. I had to swim it. But it wasn’t a, you know, fast flowing, difficult river. And on the plain beyond, it was a beautiful plain, I could see the glowing lights of a city in the distance on the plain. And around my neck, with a great big rope, with a bow tie, was an anvil. I mean an anvil. This big around. This big huge thing. I could just barely hold it. And I was standing there. Now I was experiencing this. This was not something I was seeing. I mean I was standing there just like I’m standing. And Jesus was right here. If you see one of me. This was a very vivid hallucination. And He told me. He said, “I want you to dive in the river. Swim the river. Climb up on the other bank. And then I want you to walk. And don’t look back. And walk towards the city. Don’t look back to me, or anybody. Just walk and do that.” And I turned to Him.

And I said, “Lord, I can’t swim this river with this anvil.” “Oh,” He said. Just like that. And reached over, and it’s like a bow string, and just pulled it. And pow. The thing fell down. And He said, “That’s all of your guilt. That’s the weight of your guilt. And it’s no more.” And I stepped over the anvil. Dived in. Felt the water. It was cold. And climbed up the other side. And walked. And then the vision ended. Like that. And in that act, He did something inside of me, that I have no guilt anymore. I just don’t have it. It’s gone. He’s taken it from me. And I can read this and really know that. I can read, I know that all you got to do is acknowledge your sin, and He will take it away. That’s all there is to it. Now let’s turn to… One more illustration. John 20. This is the gospel of John. I’ll go back there. The 20th chapter.

This is not going to sound like it’s going together. But it is in a little bit. John 20, the 15th verse. No, no, no. That’s the next one. John 20:19 through 23. Let’s see. I wrote that down.

Yeah. He starts the thing out on the resurrection. He says, “On the evening of the first day of the week, even though the disciples had locked the doors of the place where they were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst before them. ‘Peace be to you,’ He said.” What He said was shalom. And that’s a fantastic Hebrew word. It means I give you my kingdom. All that I have is yours. I give you myself. That’s what the word shalom means. He said shalom. This is the same bunch that denied Him. Peter denied Him three times. Ran off and hid. The only one that stayed around was a little boy, John, and three women. You know, and all these men, big, brave men. “And I’ll never desert you. We’ll go and die with you,” Thomas said. All this sort of thing. And a bunch of bums. I’d have gone in there and said, “Fine, bunch of bums you are.” I mean, you know, when I needed you, where were you? You know. But He says to them, I give you myself. Shalom.

“And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side.” See, even this I forgive you. Shalom. “At the sight of the Lord, the disciples rejoiced. ‘Shalom,’ He said again.” Shalom. “As the Father sent me, so send I you.”

“Then He breathed on them.” And it says, it means really in the Greek, breathe into them. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them. If you hold them bound, they are bound.” And I’m going to paraphrase that as David du Plessis did. He said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost here and now.” That’s what it says in the Greek. “And forgive everybody everything.” That’s the Great Commission. Right. You got it? Praise the Lord. All right. Let’s flip on over. Just turn the page over to John 21. And now we’re going to see a little bit more about the forgiveness of Peter.

Do you remember what Peter said when they asked him, “You’re one of these Galileans,” or “You know Jesus,” or something? And he first said, “No, I’m not.” And about the second time he said, “No, I don’t know him.” And then the third time he cursed and he said, “I don’t know the man. I don’t even know him.” Anything else like that. And he got the punishment was that he didn’t know Jesus even when He came on the lake. Do you remember? Peter said, “Who is it?” He didn’t know Him. He really didn’t recognize Him. Other disciples may recognize Him and finally say, “It’s the Lord.” Peter didn’t know. And he denied Him three times. And because of this, he really didn’t know Him. He couldn’t recognize Him. Now the 15th verse, 21:15. “When they had eaten their meal, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?’” The Greek word there is agape. Do you agape? Do you love me unconditionally more than these? “Yes, Lord, you know that I phileo,” that I’m fond of You. That’s what it says in the Greek. I don’t know if you have ever heard this in there, but this is what it says. He says, in other words, Peter, do you love me?

He knew all the time what the answer was. And Peter, at least this time, he was honest. He said, “Lord, you know that I’m fond of you.” And Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Even though you’re just fond of me, Peter, I want you to feed my lambs. I’m going to commission you to feed my lambs. The second time He put this question, “Simon, son of John, do you agape? Do you love me? Really?” And Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I am fond of you.” He couldn’t say agape. I’m fond of you. He’d been honest. He says, “Tend my sheep.” Forgiveness for the second time. The third time, Jesus asked him, “Simon, son of John, are you fond of me?”

Peter was hurt because He asked him the third time, “Are you fond of me?” Do you love me? He said, “Fond.” So he said to the Lord, “You know everything. And you know well that I’m fond of you.” That’s as high as I can get. That’s all I am right now. I don’t have any other. That’s what he’s saying. And Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Peter’s saying to Him, I’m a failure, Lord. I can’t love you. I really don’t. I want to, but I can’t. Jesus, that’s all right. Feed my sheep. That’s forgiveness. And pretty soon, Peter did learn to love the Lord. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. And finally, at the end, He tells him a little prophecy. “I tell you solemnly, as a young man, you fastened your belt and went where you pleased. But when you are older, you will stretch out your hands, and another will tie you fast and carry you off against your will.” What He said indicated the sort of death by which Peter was to glorify God. When Jesus had finished speaking this, He said, “Follow me.” And then initial commission to go. Here we come. Follow me, Peter. You’re restored. A restoration. And even they’d done this. Now, the last scripture I have, we don’t have to go to.

Every one of you got it memorized. It’s Hebrews 13:8. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” He hasn’t changed. He’s still in the forgiveness business. Peter denied even knowing the Lord Jesus Christ three times in a situation that was just almost unthinkable and inexcusable. And Jesus forgave him and did it three times. You remember He said, “Tell my brethren and Peter that I’m going to Galilee.” Be sure and tell Peter because he probably won’t even come. You know, he just thought he had done… Do you know that if Judas, after betraying Him, had come back and come to Jesus again, Jesus would have forgiven him. But he didn’t. He went and hanged himself. And so he didn’t repent. But Peter did. Peter went out and wept bitterly. But he did. Now, God’s Word also says, and I didn’t look this scripture up, but I think you all know it’s in Jesus’ words. But He said, if you’re faithful in little things, we’ll give you something else to do, bigger things. And only if you’re faithful in little things is the application. So, in this area of forgiveness, we’re called upon to forgive our brothers of anything they’ve done.

And when we stand praying, Jesus said, forgive if you have ought against any. I mean, forgiveness is a real heavy word laid on us because if we don’t forgive, we’re not going to get anything from the Lord. And it’s a sin. But, now, we have sinned. We’ve all sinned and we know it. But do you know that every sin that you have just acknowledged, the fact that you’ve acknowledged it, even within yourself, Jesus Christ has forgiven you that sin. You have got to understand that. And so, is there anybody in here… And we’re not going to have a confession. I don’t want you to give any specific sins. Is there anybody in here who has sinned in ways that they don’t really feel the forgiveness of God? That you really… I’d like to see a show of hands of those that really have some burden and weight of guilt. Guilt is weight. Now, there’s some more honest ones coming up. They’ll get honest in a little bit. Don’t you put your hand back down. That girl in the back put her hand up and then it felt funny because nobody else was. It’s just you were one of the few honest ones there. Most people are carrying guilt. As doing counseling, anybody that does counseling will say the same thing.

The people come along and we talk and we go through the word. We tell them that you’re forgiven and everything. I heard a teaching on this, Bob Mumford, and he illustrated it the best. The guy says, “Oh, I know it.” And you know that Jesus forgave your sin. Read him 1 John 1:9. “I know it. I know it. But,” he said, “I killed him. I killed him. But,” he said, “I killed him.” See. He had the weight of guilt. And this weight of guilt will get down into your bones. It’ll cause you to be sick. It’ll do everything in the world. You can hide your guilt. And you see. Don’t hide your guilt. Expose it like that to God and say, “God, I still feel guilty. Help me,” like that. And I remember hearing an old boy in AA… Now, this is a big problem with alcoholics. God knows that we know what the weight of guilt is about as much as anybody. And when you go, it tickles me. Everybody is God’s little helper to remind this poor sick man that he needs to straighten up and fly right. And because of his family or whatever reason, you come around and point out the children and the family and all the things…

And all the good reasons which he already knows double over in spades, and half a dozen you don’t know, as to why he should. And he knows that better than you. And all he needs is a little bit more affirmation of his worthlessness to push him farther down. That’s what it amounts to. And we get a weight of guilt. Even after some of these old boys have been sober for 10 years, they still feel guilty. They really do. Now, I did some terrible things when I was an alcoholic, and I needed that kind of revelation from the Lord to get rid of that guilt. And I got rid of it. But this fellow stood up in front of the people and said what I’m going to say to you. He said, “If you believe in Jesus Christ and you believe that His blood was shed for you and you’ve accepted this grace in the name of Jesus Christ and you have claimed Him as your Savior and you’re trying and want to make Him the Lord of your life and you’re walking in that, you are not guilty. You’re not guilty. I said, you’re not guilty. I pronounce you free.” And I want you to hear that in your spirit. Inside of us is a little boy or a little girl that is hiding and scared to death and knows we need to be punished.

And so we get ourselves into all kinds of trouble trying to punish that little kid, because that little kid wants punishment. And I’m going to speak to Junior inside of you right now, and I’m going to say it again. You’re not guilty. In the name of Jesus Christ, I command that you believe that you’re not guilty. Listen to me, Junior, inside of all of you. You’re not guilty. That’s all there is to it. I set you free in the name of Jesus. He said, I had that power. I’m under the anointing of God right now. “Whose ever sins you remit, they’re remitted.” When I loose them, and I loose you from your sins. You don’t have any sins anymore. You’re not guilty. Do you understand that? Is there anybody here that still feels guilt? Do you? I mean, honest, be honest. Do you feel guilt now? Are you set free? How about you that raised your hand that felt this guilt? Do you feel free now? You need to feel free. I mean, feel it. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Because you’re not guilty. Absolutely, you’re not guilty.

Now, you got to forgive yourself too. There’s something in that. Do you know that that’s the hardest thing in the world to do, is forgive yourself? Now, I want you to say after me, I forgive myself. I forgive myself. I forgive myself for everything I’ve ever done.

And in the name of Jesus, I claim I’m not guilty. And I love me. And I love what Jesus has made out of me. And I accept myself. And I accept myself. Just as I am. Just as I am. Warts and all. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. There we are. Praise God. Let’s just give God a thank offering. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise God. Praise God.

Now, one other thing. I’m going to lead up to something here. This is about what I got that for once in my life. I got that forgiveness thing in pretty good shape. And I didn’t digress. Praise God. That’s a miracle within itself. Tim said that something was going to break through. I believe that Jim will be glad to hear this tape. That’s the first time I’ve ever been able to get through it without digressing. Now, there’s one other thing you got to do. You got to forgive God. Yeah. Has God ever done anything to you that you haven’t forgiven Him? Do you feel that God has allowed something to come into your life that you’re not too happy about? Dig deep in this and be honest with yourself. You ever been mad at God? All right. That means you haven’t forgiven Him. If you’re mad at Him, you see, I’m getting honest. Let’s get a little honest about this. We’re going to be faithful in little things. We’re going to start in little places here. Now, let’s forgive God. Why don’t we do that? You want to do that? Okay.

God, I forgive You. I trust You. I ask You to forgive me for being mad at You. I forgive You. But Lord, I really forgive You. And I love You. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Now, I had to… the reason I had to find that out is I had to forgive God for something that happened to me. Some of you are feeling this now. This is good. I want you to experience that. Because there is a release from that. There’s weight. And your shoulders will come back. And you’ll feel good on the inside. And while it’ll grow on you. Because you’ve done something. You’ve done some business with the Lord. And I think that this is going to work out beautifully. Now, I’m going to share something that’s going to be a little heavy. But it’s a triumph. And I want you to understand that, God, I’ve forgiven God. And God’s forgiven me. And we’ve got this all worked out. And I understand it real well.

But I told some in the prayer group and just, you know, I talk all around. You’ve figured this out by now. Everywhere you’re around me, you’re going to hear me talking. World’s champion. But I’m talking about Jesus. And that’s what He calls me to do.

Christianity is no good if it’s not… In other words, if you can’t believe God for hamburger and shoelaces, like Tim does, or shoe leather, it’s no good. I mean, if you’re just going to have it up in the theological realms and put it in the future, that we’re going to, you know… What I’m talking about is what good is it right now? What good does it do you now to be a Christian? We’re going to have in our walk in Christian life, we’re going to have problems. We always have problems. We’re going to have them whether we’re a Christian or not. We really are. Sometimes it appears that Christians have more problems than others. And to me, walking in the Word, walking in the Word of God in simple ways in the beginning, began to strengthen me so that… And my wife walked along with me so we could walk more and more in more and more things. And I remember back in my drinking days, I would call my wife and say, “What are we going to have for lunch today?” “Well, you know what we’re going to have, leftover whatever we had last night.” I mean, this is the way it goes in our household. And so I would get very huffy about that, and “You can’t feed me, you know, blah. I don’t want those blankety blank leftovers.”

And so I had used that as an excuse, the fact that I had to eat leftovers, to go out and buy a jug and get drunk. That would get me started. Just something that simple. Or something would upset me, like she wanted to go to a movie and I didn’t want to, and we’d fuss a little bit, and I’d say, “Are you going to go to the movie?” And she’d go, and then I’d go get a jug and get drunk, you know. It didn’t take much to get me set off, is what I’m trying to tell you. And it didn’t take much to get me upset and throw my whole life out of kilter. And then, after I was delivered and we came to the Lord and really began to walk in the Spirit, we discovered something in our liturgy. I heard it, I started listening literally to what the prayer book was saying. And this was long before I heard of Merlin Carothers. And in the liturgy, there’s a place that said, “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.” And then we respond and say, “It is meet and right so to do.” And the priest says in our name, turns around back to the altar and says, “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God, therefore with angels, but in all times and all places.”

And I thought, now let’s put this into practice. Why don’t we? We tried it in our prayer group. Everywhere we go, everything that happens to us, we’re going to say, “Thank you, Lord,” right there, and see what happens. Well, it got to be interesting. The, you know, like you say, you have three flats and motor falls out of the car and everything else, and you, “Thank You, Lord,” and you stub your toe and everything else. But He’s testing, do you see, if you will be obedient in the Word. And what He did is He, His prevenient grace went ahead of us, and He knew we were going to have these problems. And so He brought this to our attention and brought us up at this time. That’s Him doing it all the way. So that when I came to the problem, I could now relate it to Him and let Him redeem it. And I want you to understand that God did not bring those problems to me. Those problems were there, and they were coming. But He wanted to offer Him thanks for it so that He could then turn and redeem it. Because I was obedient to His word. You get the theory we’re working on. Now, this was a little thing. It wasn’t much.

So we went out to CFO, and because it was going to be a full camp, we elected to stay in one of the little bitty cabins way on out there, rather than go into the lodge, which was our privilege as a council ring member. And they hadn’t renovated those, and they’re still not very good any after they’ve been renovated. And they were horrible. Bugs all over the floor and everything else. And this little old bitty cabin way off, and only one light worked right in the center of the room, and that was it. And charge you three prices for it. Praise the Lord.

I’m going to have to get some forgiveness here myself, because they really rip us off it. But anyway, so, Judy, about 11:30. See, we just went in and set our bags down. And when, you know, we were busy on the council ring, you on the council ring will understand this very well. And so at 11:30, we finally get unhooked from everything, and we’re exhausted, and we get ready to go to bed. And I just went in and just flopped on the bed. Well, it just went down like a bowl, like this. And we have a bed about as hard as this floor. We’re used to a hard bed. And Judy was brushing her teeth in the bathroom, and I said, “Hallelujah.” And she came out just like this toothbrush, and said, “Is it that bad?”

I said, “Praise the Lord.” And she said, “I’m not even coming to bed.” Oh, we got used to it, but it got to be funny. It really was. And these problems would come up, and you’d grit your teeth and say, “Lord, I’m going to be obedient to Your word. And I’m going to thank You in the middle of this.” And then we began to see how He redeemed these situations. Now, remember, we began to grow then. And pretty soon, our children were having problems. I’m not going to go into all the details of the problems we had, but they seemed to get worse all the time. And then my oldest child at 18, just a month, let’s see, about two months after she was 18, on the 26th day of December, the day after Christmas, she ran off with a long-haired hippie-looking boy, and wearing buckskin, fringe and everything like that, and ran off to California in the coldest part of the winter, the coldest winter we’d had in 15 years in there. And here she goes, hitchhiking across the country without any resources and everything else, and left us a note, “Dear Mom and Dad, I’ve left the nest.” Well, we knelt down and through the tears, and a couple of neighbors came over and helped us pray.

And these lovely neighbors we have across the street are really something… Leneal and I are bridges. Well, they came over, or Leneal was over, and she helped us pray. And we prayed the Lord of the harvest. We said, “Thank You for this, Lord. You’re working in our daughter’s life. You have Your hand upon her. We give You thanks for this, that somehow we’re going to trust You. And we offer this situation to You in praise and thanks, and that You will redeem it. Send forth Your laborers into the harvest and reach that child.” Well, you should have heard the story when we heard it later on. Everywhere she went, Christians picked them up, and it just really wild. We got a letter. We didn’t know where they were. See, we got a letter two weeks later, and it’s from Watsonville, California. That’s way out on the north coast there. And it was from a woman, and she said, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey, God has His hand on your daughter.” Isn’t that marvelous? Now, they came back to school and got married, and that seemed like a happy ending to it. Unfortunately, three years later they got a divorce, and things are going. But that situation righted itself. Another interesting aside on this is at this moment…

See, she left on the 26th. On the 28th, my friend that I’d been working with so well, and I liked so well, died very suddenly. And he had just become a Christian. And I was trying to help him, and his name is David, and he died. And then I was to be in the pallbearer in the funeral. And then my father-in-law, three or four days later, he died. He was Judy’s stepfather. And then on the 6th of January, before I’d heard anything… Now, these two had died. Judy was up at Tulsa comforting her mother. And we were waiting anxiously to hear anything. He didn’t know where she was. It was storming all over the Rocky Mountains, and we had visions of him frozen in a snowbank. We wouldn’t see him until spring and all that. And I had to speak at the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship at Oklahoma City. And Don Locke was the president. He has that Locke plumbing company. He was the president of that. And so I’m sitting there thinking, you know, Satan’s talking to me all this time. “Boy, who are you to be talking to these people?” And this sort of thing, you know. “Your kid’s off doing this and all this, and you’re down in the bottom of the dumps and everything else.”

And I thought, no, I’m going to praise You. And something Jim Christian had said in a talk, said, when you give and you give, and you haven’t got anything else to live to give, and you reach down and you give again. Then, he said, then God blesses you for it. And Don, I thought, Don, what am I going to do when I stand up there? I can’t even talk. But I had gone there just in faith. And I was just in turmoil. And I remember Brick Bradford was there. Several people were there that I knew. And it was just, you know, all old home folks right there. And we’re going to see what I do. And they didn’t know nothing about this situation. I hadn’t told anybody about it except my neighbors. And Don said, “I want to introduce you to Bill Godfrey, the man that shows forth more joy of the Lord than anybody that I know.” Oh, isn’t that something? And I stood up and I felt about as joyful as a snake. I mean, it was just nothing. And I started out and I said within myself, “God, I am going to praise You and exhibit joy to them,” because that’s what He said, you know, and I’m doing. And I believe that was the most joyful experience I’ve ever had in my life.

It was utterly fantastic because I was obedient to God’s word and give, and give thanks and praise to me. Well, we kept going with this and growing and we… Then we could look back and see how God redeemed it, you see. Now we’re getting a little first fruit of this, so to speak. And we can understand. When you’re in the midst of the problem, you think nothing like this ever happened. But if you will give that to God, say, “God, I accept this as Your gift to me. You didn’t bring it upon me. But I’m going to let You make it a gift to me. You redeem it and change it and it’ll become a gift to me.” You see, that’s what you want to do. Now, I’m not… don’t misunderstand that I’m saying that God does these things. He redeems them. They just get done because of our sin in the world. Now, the next thing that happened, I had a fear. And I know that I prayed for God to deliver me from my fears. And He has a good sense of humor. And He knew this was going to happen. He knew why I had the fear. I guess He allowed the fear to be there. And so I would ask Him to deliver me from it.

I had a fear of a daughter getting pregnant. And my youngest daughter got pregnant when she was 15. She was delivered of a fine boy at eight days before her 16th birthday. That was an experience. And now you try to praise God for that. And here I am going around a Christian circle. My daughter is going to have an illegitimate child. What kind of Christian man are you? You can’t even rule your own household. And that’s what Satan’s telling me. And I confessed all this to God. And God said, “You’re not guilty. You’re not guilty. You go on. You do what I told you to do. You thank me and praise me for this. And I’ll redeem you.” So I thanked Him and praised Him. Judy and I did. This rebellious little child that we couldn’t even communicate with was transformed in this experience. The child was put up for adoption through an agency that’s a Christian agency with no federal money. And Peggy had the sense of giving that child to God. And the requirements on this, Reverend Robert Wise was the administrator of this. The requirements were that you had to be a born-again, spirit-filled Christian. That was the… He just wouldn’t consider anybody else’s prospective adoptive parents. And unless you were in full-time Christian service, you weren’t very high up on the list.

Well, anyway, our boy went to a couple in California. We don’t know them. It’s… And we probably never will. Who are in full-time Christian service and have been praying for eight years for a child. And God gave this child through my daughter’s body. And Peggy said, “God took my sin and ministered life and gave a child to a couple who couldn’t have them.” Said, “I never felt so worthy.” That’s a 16-year-old as she signed that paper. Can you imagine that? God can redeem anything. And that was a gift to us. This child is our love of our heart. She is so communicative and open with us. It’s just like there’s no gap whatsoever. We’re honest and straightforward and out. And it’s a relationship that is just very few people ever get with their children. It’s really marvelous. And the same with the oldest child. Now, can you imagine a rebellious daughter who wanted to run away from home at 18. Wanted nothing to do with mom and daddy. Might see in 10 years, I think the note said she was leaving the nest. You know, I mean really, Gonesville. That’s what it was. And that… She didn’t want to be a burden and blah. But it was… She was gone. That was it.

And she didn’t… She tried to run away, but she’s 13. And we caught her and kept her from doing it. At 18, I didn’t go after her because she could do it. Now, this child just couldn’t stand to be around us. And on May the 1st, because of her own wheedling and everything else and everything, she was allowed to accompany us on a trip to Israel. Can you imagine a 26-year-old going on a trip to Israel with mama and daddy and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it and being right with us and just enjoying the whole thing? That’s the way the relationship we have now with our… The oldest and our youngest daughter. Our middle daughter, Sarah, was kind of the good Nick. And she… Never really got into much of anything. She got a little bit rebellious and she tried some drugs and saw that was a bad scene. Just smoking a little pot and tried LSD one time, because all the kids were doing it, and saw that was a bad scene and quit it. She had a flashback and scared her to death. And we prayed her through this. But we got along pretty well with Sarah. And she had a lot of problems, but finally she was getting it together.

And she had found her a beau and they were gonna get married. And they were coming back a year ago. It’ll be two years now this coming November. They were coming back on Thanksgiving to tell us that they were gonna get married. And on the 13th day of November, and a year and a half ago, 1976, Sarah was killed in an automobile accident. And we had notified at three o’clock in the afternoon of this. And the boy was driving the car, and they skidded on an icy bridge, and were hit by a truck sideways and killed. Sarah was killed instantly.

So… Now… How good is it? Does this Christianity work? Do these principles work? They’ve been working before. Were they gonna work now? Now this is about as tough a thing as I ever got into in my life. I want you to know that was tough. And immediately, Satan says to me, “Are you gonna praise God now?” And I said immediately, “Lord God, I give You thanks in the midst of this situation.” That’s as high as I could get at that moment, through the tears. Judy said, “How can you thank God?” I said, “We have to thank God. And we’re going to praise Him, and we’re gonna do it through the tears.” And so she was right flat on the floor. And I picked her up, and we knelt together. And we said, “God, thank You for Sarah’s life. Thank You for the 23 years and 9 months we had with her. Thank You for this beautiful child.” And then finally we said, “Thank You, Lord, for taking her home to be with You.” Because she was with Him, and we knew this. And we cried, and we wept, and it hurt. And that’s when I told you early in the talk, I was gonna tell you about the soul and spirit. And as I tell you this, my soul weeps, but my spirit sings.

And at that moment, through in the bottom of my spirit, I could hear this little jingly song. It’s “Break forth into joy, O my soul. Break forth into joy, O my soul. In the presence of the Lord, there is joy forevermore. Break forth, break forth into joy, O my soul.” And you just sing it over and over. This was bubbling in there, and I was weeping. I was in agony. My muscles were so tense, I got bruised there. And I was drinking water. I was in shock. I just needed water and water and water. I couldn’t get enough water. And I had to get on the telephone and call people and tell people that my daughter Sarah had been killed. And I had to go through it. And I wept, and I cried. And I had three days of it. I really cut off. And then, well, really, in the midst of this was on Saturday afternoon. And I called my priest and I said, “We want to have a requiem communion in our home for Sarah. And we’re going to, the title and the theme of the mass is going to be Sarah’s Homecoming.” And so we called all of our kooky friends, Episcopalians and non-Episcopalians, and told them to come and get it on.

We’re going to have a celebration of Sarah’s Homecoming. And that was done in faith because I cried for every person I talked to. But I said, we’re going to do it. Well, at any rate, we got together at about seven o’clock Sunday evening, and everybody was there. And remember, the theme was the homecoming. And Mike was late. Typical. Bless his heart. He’s never on time. I think he was born a half hour late. But he was late, and that was God’s will too. And we were sitting waiting for him. And there was no way I could pick up that ukulele. I mean, you know, that was ridiculous. And my daughter was sitting next to me, Kathy.

And anyway, while I looked, I was just thinking to myself while we were waiting, this looks just like our prayer group on a big night when about 40 or 50 people are here. It looks just like our prayer group. And it was mostly our prayer group. And Kathy caught that too. And she said, “Daddy, would you sing Peace for me? I sing this peace, wonderful peace.” And it’s a thing that ministers peace to us in the prayer group a lot of times. And I said, “Okay, I’ll try it. Here we go.” And I got my ukulele. And I started, and I was able to sing it. And then we sang “Break Forth Into Joy.” And we began to sing. And we began to worship God. And God baptized us in love. I can’t describe it any other way. There was a supernatural happening of God’s Spirit falling and filling us with love in this thing. And we had our beautiful home, Requiem Communion for Sarah and everything. And we were just buoyed up and lifted up. See, the body of Christ came and gathered us up in this when we really needed it. That was the harvest. Remember I talked about that? We had helped people before. And boy, did they ever come and help us in the time of need.

It was really great. And God’s Word is true. And we were still doing this strictly on faith and obedience to God’s Word. I’ll tell you that. Because what I want to do is run, scream, and jump, and shout.

And agonize against… I was mad at God for a little while that Saturday afternoon. And I had to forgive Him for taking my daughter. I asked Him for a special sign. I said, “God, I’m mad at You for this. And I want a special sign from You that my little girl is all right.” You know, you protect him as a father all your life. And then now, you know, you can’t. No way. She’s gone. So, I don’t want this to be too heavy. This really… God has healed us of this. And so, anyway, why…

The… The theme, as I say, was the homecoming. And then, at this point, everybody left. And now, Judy, my wife, and me, and our daughter, Kathy, and Peggy are alone. And the fire is going in the fireplace. And I’d stretched out on the couch. And two of them are sitting there. And Judy was in a chair. And we were just zing. You know, after an experience like this, you’re just really deeply at peace. And so, Peggy spoke up and said, “Didn’t Sarah write something about a homecoming or coming home or something when she was in high school, in junior high or high?” So, we went searching through the house. Nothing else to do. And… Looked, and we found them in the anthologies. Now, the Ardmore High School is the Ardmore Tigers. And they have a little thing that said, “Quote the tiger.” You know, “Quote the tiger, quote the tiger.” And the kids would write these things. And I’m going to read you this. It’s what Sarah wrote when she was 15 years old. A little allegory. She wrote, these were all various different kinds of things. But this was an allegory that she wrote. And the title of it is The Homecoming. You think God doesn’t work and answer your prayers when you’re obedient to Him and get you a gift.

Now, listen to this. You’ll… this will blow your mind. This is Sarah writing this at age 15. This is back in 1969. And this is now ’76 that we’re reading this. I stood at the gate, gazing hungrily at the vast house, home. After 15 years, running up the steps, I spotted the welcome mat. I had known it would be there, yet it was different to see it, to know its message was for me. I pushed on the heavy door, reveling in the fact that I didn’t need to knock or introduce myself. As at all the poems I’d stopped on my journey. Who would greet me first? The door swung under my hand and Paul’s joyful face appeared. “Trish, I saw you coming up the walk. Oh, how I’ve missed you.” Holding him at arm’s length, I studied him closely. Pride welled up in me. My brother, 15 years, had not altered the radiant face that I loved. But then in this house, time seemed not to matter. Now all of them crowded around me, their love like a warm blanket on my heart, which was cold from all the indifference and hatred I’d lived with for so long. Now I knew why it was the custom to take the journey. It was to let sorrow cut deeper wells for this love to fill.

Now I was back with my people. I would never leave them again. We talked far into the night, exchanging bits of news, drinking deeply of each other’s company. All of my friends came from their rooms in the house to join us. This was the way to live. As a single family in a single house, everyone together. Why didn’t other men observe this? What was it they said? Oh yes, privacy. A useless thing for people who have nothing to hide. Suddenly, Paul’s laughter gave way to a more serious mood. “Trish, you haven’t been to see the head of the family yet. He’s the one who will officially let you back into the group. Of course, there’s almost no possibility of rejection. But still, it’s the custom.” My heart dropped to the lowest part of my anatomy. Almost no possibility of rejection. What if He said I couldn’t stay? Possible and highly probable, considering how I’d wandered idly on part of my journey. Maybe it would not be acceptable, and I could never live here again. Maybe. Fears jolted to me from my peace of mind. Every bad thing I’d ever done came to me now, taunting me. Remember? Remember? How could I forget? If only I could do it over. The next morning, unrefreshed from my night of worry, I grimly started up the road to see the head.

What would I find? Anxiously, I tiptoed into the front room of His mansion. I was met by a quiet young man, who told me His Father had requested Him to come and hear what I had to say. He was very sympathetic. I found myself pouring out my heart, and telling Him how my regrets were eating me. Of course, most of the journey was profitable. Only a few times, I did stray from my mission. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t. His voice was warm. He said, “I know I can speak for my Father. Your journey is acceptable. If only because you are truly sorry for your mistakes. That, in itself, shows how much you’ve learned.” It seemed as though a great weight was lifted from me. A love greater than I had ever conceived of swept over me in sunlit waves. I knew I would always live in this great fellowship. The Son extended His nail-scarred hand. “My child,” and here were the words I’d waited a lifetime to hear, “Welcome to my kingdom.” Sarah Godfrey, grade 10, 1969. Can you imagine God getting her to write that? Preserving it for us. I remember reading it, and I thought it was sweet and nice, and a nice little allegory, and that was all at the time, and I’d forgotten it entirely.

God preserved that. There is no way that that child really understood fully the depth of what she wrote. And when you read that again and again and see what’s in there, God is so precious, and He will redeem anything, won’t He? Praise God. And it all came by starting out on a little thing. Thanking God for a little frustration, and accepting it as a gift from Him. And a little bigger frustration, or another problem, and saying, “God, I’ll even accept that from You.” And finally, I accepted as a gift to me the death of my daughter. God didn’t do it, but I accepted as a gift, and He redeemed it. And I can’t tell you how much He’s redeemed that. And that is the most precious gift, because I was given an assurance that very few people get, I suppose. I know that Sarah is with Jesus. It really is something. We had a vision also.

Judy had part of it, and I had the other part of it. I saw the wreck scene in the middle of the night. And there, in the car, just before it hit like that, Jesus was in the backseat, it was a little Pinto. And He turned to Sarah. And I see at this point, when I got this, we had not seen her body. We had no idea of what any of the details of the wreck. She was killed in an automobile accident. That’s all we knew. And I saw the scene. They were going down, and they went up over a bridge. The car turned sideways, and skidded, started sideways. That’s really what happened. That’s what I saw in my vision. And in the backseat, Jesus was there, and He manifested Himself to Sarah, and she caught sight of Him. And she was in the seat, and she turned this way to Him. And He said, “Welcome to my kingdom.” How about that? That’s what God showed me, that He said. Now, she had turned and saw Him. Now, if you were in a car, and it starts to skid, where do you look? The car. Have you ever been in a skidding car? If you remember where you look, it’s where you’re going, don’t you?

You’re looking head-on to what you’re going to hit, right there. You don’t turn away from it, do you? All of her injuries were to the back, right here. Didn’t hurt her front or face or anything. Her head was crushed and all the things in the back. She had turned in the seat and was facing this way, and the thing happened. Now, I got that much of it. And I didn’t share this with Judy. And then Judy got all excited a little while later, the next day, and came in and said she had something to share with me. That Jesus had shown her that they were standing outside of the wreck then. And Jesus said, “Sarah, I want to show you what I’ve got for you, right here.” And He showed her what her life was going to be like now. And then said, “But if you want, I’ll let you go back. Like that. I’ll heal you. You’ll be perfectly whole. And there’ll be no injuries. But I’ll heal you. And you can go back.” And she looked up at Him and grinned. And this is what Judy saw. She says, “No way.” Praise the Lord. Isn’t that something? And so when we put that together with this thing and everything else, that’s about as great as you can get.

Now, another one more thing I’m going to share with you about this vision. That God, He continues to go on because I continue to thank Him for this. And I continue to thank Him for how He’s worked in our lives and brought us together and as a family. And one of our deepest spiritual friends, a Roman Catholic from Roswell, New Mexico, who knows nothing of the charismatic dimension, but she knows everything about Jesus. Boy, she is something else. She wrote us, Jeanne Kunkel was her name. And she wrote us, not a, I’m sorry about to hear about Sarah or anything else. She said, “I rejoice with you because our highest ambition for our children is that they be united with Jesus Christ.” And she said, “Sarah has achieved this. You should be proud.” Praise God. I mean, that is mature Christian deal. Well, this one woman came, the first woman we witnessed to in our church who received the baptism in our prayer group was named Fran Crow. And she at this point in time was now living in New Braunfels, Texas, seven and a half hours away on the turnpike. And at just, we finished reading this thing that I read to you and the doorbell rang just like that. And that was Fran Crow and her 15 year old son.

And somebody had phoned her down there and told her about it. I didn’t. And she had driven all the way up there and had no place to go or anything. She was going to go to the motel, she thought. And we kept her there at the house, of course. But she just walked in the door and just hugged us and said, “I had to be with you. God told me to come.” That’s something. And things like this happened all the way. Then, about a year later, we were in a festival of faith and these… Well, I should know, a festival weekend that we do. There’s another thing going on called a festival of faith. You might be confused. What we do in our ministry are more. And in this situation, in this side of the church, we usually sit over there. But then we’ll have the musicians over here. During the healing service, we play little soft hymns and things, little choruses. And I play them on a ukulele and usually get two or three of the kids that got the guitars to join me. Well, this time we had about five or six guitars. It was a large church. And it must have been seven or eight hundred people there. And Judy and Florence were sitting over here.

Judy, my wife, was sitting over here. And so we were playing away. And when the thing was over like that, she came to me and she said, “I heard Sarah’s voice tonight singing.” And Sarah had a very distinctive voice. There was no missing that voice, I’ll tell you. And she said, “I heard violins.” And right after the violins start playing, I said, “Honey, we don’t have any violins over there.” There weren’t any violins. She said, “But I heard the violins, you know.” And there was a violin playing. Who was playing the violin? Because right after the violin played, I was listening because it sounded so pretty. And then I heard Sarah singing. And see, all the people were singing. But she could hear Sarah singing. Somewhere in the congregation singing. So we didn’t know what to make of that. And then later on she heard the violins again. And we thought that was very unusual. And then finally, after a year, we were healed enough to go get into Sarah’s things and dispose of them. We just boxed them up and put them away and we couldn’t face it yet. That’s some of the process you have to go through of healing. So we got together and Sarah was a very meticulous little girl and she wrote down everything that she was going to do.

And she had a little pad, the last one that she’d written on the day before she died. It had things to do. Number one on that was take violin lessons. She was going to marry a violin player, so she was going to take violin. So we know that we don’t know whether they think with their harps up there, but I know there’s a violin player and a guitar player up there, where she played the guitar in heaven. Praise the Lord. I hope I haven’t laid this on you too heavily. I noticed some people weeping and that’s perfectly all right. And you weep for something you identify with. But God is great and He forgives us. And the main thing that I want you to understand in this, if you’re ever going to understand anything about forgiveness, you’ve got to start believing the straight, simple Word of God. And you’ve got to start walking in it in simple little things. Don’t do anything real big at first. Don’t go out and claim something big in faith. Try something real little bitty like that. And watch it work and let your faith grow. Isn’t that the way to do it, Tim? Start out in little things. And watch God cause that faith to grow. And practice it.

But look firmly at the Word, at what it says. Don’t try to rationalize it. People will say, “Well, in everything give thanks. That doesn’t mean you have to give thanks for everything.” Now I know that, brother, that’s all there is to it. It says in the situation you give the thanks to God like that. But then it says in another place, “and for all things give thanks.” You just didn’t read enough of the Bible. You see, God’s explicit about it. You give thanks for everything. The Word is simple. And if you mess around with it, you’re going to miss what God’s doing. But just take it simply and it will grow. And Christianity, that’s what Christianity is good for. Because, see, Sarah was going to die. God knew this. This was going to happen. And He knew it beforehand. He didn’t cause it to happen, but He knew it was going to happen. Did you know that He knew that before Sarah was even conceived? Right, that’s true. He didn’t cause it. And it wasn’t predestination, but He knew about it. And so in His infinite grace and mercy, He trained us and brought us to the point where we could overcome it. Because we’re pretty weak. And if it hadn’t been for Him, if I hadn’t known Jesus Christ the way I know Him, I would have killed myself.

I couldn’t have stood it. I could not have faced that. I would have gotten drunk first, and then I would have killed myself. That’s the right. That’s the truth. And I would have done it. I would have been successful. And that’s happened to a lot of people. But because of Jesus Christ, we were able to kneel down in between clenched teeth, still mad at God, like that, say, “God, we accept this as a gift, and we give You thanks and praise as an offering and sacrifice, because Your word says to do it.” That’s why we did it. And it worked. And I’m healed. And I thank you all for listening to all this thing, and I hope it helps you in some way. And I hope it helps you and starts you on the path to obeying God’s word. In the sixth or seventh chapter of John, Jesus says, “If you want to know if my teaching is right and correct and true, then first go and do the will of my Father, and then you shall know.” There’s a promise for you. Go do the will of His Father, which is to believe on Jesus Christ, as I told you before. You see, believe on Him, trust Him, cling to Him, obey His words.

“If you keep my commandments, then I’ll be with you,” like that. And that they’ll know you’re my disciples. And you’ll be full of love, and you will love one another. Praise the Lord. Thank You, Father. We praise You. We glorify You. We thank You for the gift of life that You’ve given all of us. We thank You for the gift of eternal life, which is ours as a gift, a free gift from You, which we all now possess by faith in Your Son, Jesus Christ. We know, Lord, that anything that happens in this earth to us is only for our perfection. And that we can do all things and overcome all things. And that also, Lord, that all things do work together for good to them that love the Lord. We know that from Romans 8:28, Lord. And we’ve experienced it. And we share this with our brothers and sisters.