20yrs of God's Favor
Well good morning everybody! I’m so glad that you are all here with us to worship our God and King, Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. This month is a very special month for me, for two major reasons. The first is because on the 26th, Alicia and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage. The other is that 20 years ago this month the Lord set me free in a profound way and He has proven, time and again, just how faithful He is. So today, I want to memorialize the faithfulness of our God to me personally and I want you to think about how you can do the same in your own lives.I’m going to take a break from our study in Revelation so that I can give God the praise that He rightfully deserves for me being where I am at this moment in my life. For several of you, this will be old information, but I’m sure that you’ll discover some new things. For the rest of you, this is going to leave you in shock. However, what I hope we all walk away with today, is a depth of appreciation for Who God Is and what He is capable of doing when we trust Him.In the book of Joshua, the people of God are crossing the Jordan River and God what’s them to take 12 stones from the center of the river and carry them back to where they will camp for the night. The reason for this is found in Joshua 4:6-7.Joshua 4:6–7 NKJV
6 that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ 7 Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever.”
The stones that Joshua instructed the people to gather were to serve as a way to remember the faithfulness of God for the many years that He had delivered them from bondage, how He had preserved them as a nation, how He had chosen them as His very own and how He had proven His love for them through faithfulness time and again.We’ve all heard the axiom which says that “experience is the best teacher”. Experience is a key contributor to the formation of our memories.According to PsychologyToday.com,
Memory serves many purposes, from allowing us to revisit and learn from past experiences to storing knowledge about the world and how things work. More broadly, a major function of memory in humans and other animals is to help ensure that our behavior fits the present situation and that we can adjust it based on experience.[1]
So today, I want to share some of my own, personal experiences with you and how those experiences led me to surrendering my life to Jesus and how He has been faithful in my life over the past 20 years.
Lost In Darkness (Prov. 22:6)
Whenever I think about my faith journey a Bible verse that always comes to mind is Prov. 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” The NIV says, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” The word which the NKJV translates as train up, and the NIV translates as start is a word which means to dedicate/consecrate to [God] for a special purpose (Bakwish, Yaema & Gregory Daniel). But it also means to train or disciple (Prov. 22:6). [2]This is exactly what my mother had done for me. As a child, my mother made sure that my sisters and I were in church whenever possible. We attended Sunday school, VBS, we sang in the choir, memorized Bible verses and I even served as jr. deacon and usher. On top of that, she made sure that we had positive and character-building things to do after school, on the weekends, and summers. As a single mother, she had done everything imaginable to disciple me and start me off on the way I needed to go, but I had a different plan. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 reminds us of this truth,Proverbs 14:12 NKJV
12 There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.
The prophet Isaiah says that, Isaiah 53:6 NKJV
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Instead of listening to the instruction of my mother and following the path that she had started me off on, I made the decision to follow other people and to follow my heart. How many of you have ever been told or you’ve heard it said, “Let your heart be your guide?” That is terrible advice. Don’t ever advise people to follow their hearts. The prophet Jeremiah said that the “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). Following my heart led me down a dark and winding road of sin.At the age of 15 I started sneaking out of the house to go party with friends. Around that same time I started using drugs and alcohol. At the age of 17 I got arrested for stealing and after violating my probation I ended up in jail for a couple months. Before this happened, I had been expelled from high school. This experience made me realize that I should’ve taken my education more seriously. And this is where I can start to trace the guiding and sovereign hand of God on my life.The Word of God reminds us in Mt. 5:45 that “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” This is what theologians refer to as “common grace”. It is the grace of God poured out on us whether we believe in Him or not. The intention is that, by experiencing this grace from God, we will be led to Jesus where salvation can be applied to us.One day, while hanging out with my cousin, he was visited by a recruiter from Job Corps. The recruiter was talking him through what he needed to do before leaving for Job Corps, and that’s when my cousin said, “I changed my mine. I don’t want to go.” Without really thinking, I jumped in, “Can I take his place?” The recruiter says, sure, but you’ll have to get your parents’ permission. So, I told my mother. Well, sometime after that conversation I was arrested for probation violation and that’s when my mom spoke to the judge about me going to Job Corps. The judge told my mom that she would release me on the condition that I either join the military or go to Job Corps. I chose Job Corps.
Fools Rush In (Psalms 119:71)
I wish that I could tell you that things got better after I left home. I wish that I could tell you that I got smarter and made better decisions, but I didn’t. Things actually got worse. A lot worse.In the book of Proverbs 1, Wisdom says that because you hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, because you didn’t take my advice and listen to my instruction, you will eat the fruit of your own way and be filled with your own fancies (Prov. 1:28-31). The apostle Paul said it this way in Romans 1:24, 26, 28 that the Lord will give you up to your sinful desires. And that’s exactly what happened to me. And this is also true for anyone who chooses their own ways over the Lord’s ways.After leaving home, I started a new journey at Guthrie Job Corps Center. While at job corps I got my G.E.D. and a certification in C.A.D.D. This is also the place where I met my daughter’s mother.When I graduated from Job Corps, it was one of my proudest moments. However, graduating meant that I would have to move out and start my new life as an independent adult. Guthrie Job Corp had an arrangement with IBP in Emporia, Kansas and they helped me and others get jobs and find housing. Kansas is another place where I can see the hand of God reaching out to me.While living in Kansas, I spent all of my time working and partying. I also built up a pretty good reputation for getting into trouble and fighting regularly. I spent several nights in the county jail and every time that I was released I went right back to doing the same old things. Looking back though, I can see that the Lord was trying to get my attention. There were a few times that the thought came to me, “You need to go back to church.” Or one of the guys I would hang out with would suggest that we go to church, but I always had a reason not to go. While I was in county jail, after hearing my cellmate pray, I asked him to show me how to pray like he had prayed, but nothing ever came of that. I always fell back into my old ways.Well, eventually, my lifestyle caught up with me. I ended up losing a good paying job that I had and around that same time I reconnected with an old friend from Job Corps who was on the same downward spiral as I was. That relationship inspired me to move back to Edmond, Oklahoma where my daughter and her mother where living. But I had no plan and no money. No way of supporting myself, so again, instead of following the path that my mother had started me off on I took the advice of my friend and in order to get a little cash we began robbing people until a guy that he trusted ratted us out and we both ended up in prison for the next 5 years of our lives.And this is where things really get interesting. Oftentimes we look at our hard situations and think how unfair it is that we should have to suffer the way we do. Rarely, if ever, do we come to the place where we can view our terrible situation, our undesirable circumstances, as an extension of the gracious hand of God inviting us into a place of redemption and freedom. One of my life verses is Psalm 119:71 “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes.” There is a depth of knowledge about God that we can only gain while we are in the fire. Suffering has a way of awakening us to our desperate need for a Savior, and that’s exactly what happened to me about 2 months after my last arrest in 1998.
I See the Light (Exodus 33:13)
In Deuteronomy 4, Moses warned God’s people that when they entered the land God was giving to them and they would forsake the Lord that they would suffer greatly for their sins of rebelliousness and idolatry, but he also assured them that,Deuteronomy 4:30–31 NKJV30 When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice 31 (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.The Lord has also made a promise to each and every one of us here today, Romans 10:9 “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”I am a living witness to the faithfulness of God, that what He has promised He will indeed fulfill.About 2 months after being arrested for armed robbery a group of inmates invited me to their Bible study. I accepted the invitation, not because I thought that I needed Jesus; I accepted the invitation because I was bored, but little did I know that God was setting me up for the take down. At night, while I was in my cell, I would read the Bible and try to make sense of what I was reading just so that I didn’t look stupid in the group whenever they would ask my thoughts. What eventually happened is that, in those quiet moments of reading God’s Word, He began to show me who Jesus is and what He had done for me.The Apostle Paul said in Romans 5:8-10
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
After discovering this message of the Lord’s love for me I broke down in tears in front of all those guys and I surrendered my life to Jesus. Well, for the next five years I received an education in the grace of God like I have never known. God and I walked together through every peak and every valley imaginable behind those walls and razor wire. About one year before I was to be released from prison I came across Exodus 33:13 “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight.”” Earlier, God told Moses that he had indeed found favor with Him, and Moses replies with, “If I have found favor, give me more favor.” That verse became my constant prayer for the next 365 days. You see, I knew that I had changed, but I also knew that whenever I went to apply for a job or housing all that folks would see was my felony record. I can't even begin to tell you how many doors were slammed in my face. I needed someone to take a chance on the new me.At the end of my five years, I thought arrangements had been made by my case manager for me to return to Louisiana, but they had not and so, being released from prison after 5 years was bittersweet. I walked out of prison homeless on April 9th, 2003. That was 20 years ago this month. Again, I found myself with no plan and no way to support myself. I spent my first night of freedom at the City Rescue Mission. Here is where I began to see the favor of God on my life.The day after spending a night at the City Rescue Mission I went to see my new probation officer. I was at her office before anyone else. I helped her carry her things inside and then we began to talk. I told her that I was supposed to go back to Louisiana but things got messed up. I told her that I had tried to get into this men’s ministry for guys getting out of prison, but my case manager dropped the ball. She looked up at me and said that she would much rather have me stay at this ministry than spend another night at the City Rescue mission and she said, the director is a friend of mine, let me call him.So, she picks up the phone and calls David McBride (who is here today), he tells her to send me over. I hopped in a cab (this is before Uber) and went to meet David. We talked for about an hour or so and he accepted me into the ministry on the spot. David would eventually become like a father to me, and he helped disciple me as a follower of Christ and a man. Not only did David McBride become a father to me, but the entire Living Faith Ministry (LFM) became my family. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Psalm 68:6 God makes homes for the homeless, leads prisoners to freedom, but leaves rebels to rot in hell.I would not be where I am today without the Body of Christ at LFM pouring into me. God gave me favor with them and used them to give me a hope and a future that I hadn’t envisioned for myself. God gave me favor with a beautiful young blonde who 15 years ago accepted my proposal for marriage. God gave me favor with my C.A.D.D. instructors at Francis Tuttle who spoke up for me when my future in-laws had reservations about the guy their daughter was dating. God gave me favor with the late Ralph Lee Mason, founder of Sonic's largest franchisee group. Ralph and his wife Helen paid my full tuition at Mid-America Christian University where I graduated with honors and a Bachelor's of Science degree in Christian Ministry. God gave me favor with the leadership and congregation of Britton Christian Church who took a chance on me over 12years ago. Four years ago God gave me favor with the pardon and parole board as well as Gov. Kevin Stitt. The parole board told me that every entity signed off approving my pardon which they admitted was a very uncommon thing. A year later I faced a district judge who would be deciding whether or not to expunge my case. My attorney warned me that it’s highly unlikely that the judge would approve it because my crime was a violent crime, but he wanted to give it a shot anyways.I walked into that courtroom with my attorney and Stan Harrison. I took my seat on the stand and then it hit me,2 Corinthians 5:10 NKJV
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
There I was, me, my attorney, the state's attorney and the judge. Judge Prince (who I invited to join us today), listened to all that the state's attorney had to say rejecting my request for expungement. I was grilled about my past. Despite what my paper trail showed, the state's attorney accused me of being the same old person I was 22 years earlier. That I had not changed at all and the community should be made aware of people like me on the streets. My attorney, my advocate, presented a different side of who I am, arguing in favor of my expungement. This was a clear picture of the Gospel for me. In scripture, Satan is referred to as the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10). He tries to beat us down with all of the sinful things we did in the past. He tries to choke us with guilt and shame despite the fact that our sins have been nailed to the cross of Christ. Folks, 1 Jn. 2:1-2 reminds the children of God that,
1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Romans 8:1 NKJV
1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Co 5:17).After listening to both arguments, Judge Prince looked down at me and asked, “What church did you say you’re a pastor at?” I had no idea where he was going with that. I answered Judge Prince that I was a pastor at Britton Christian Church. He looked down at me and said, “I know people at that church.” I could’ve died right there. But then, he had compassion on me and granted me a full expungement of my criminal record.If anyone searches for my criminal record, they won’t find it! It’s been wiped away! That is exactly what our God will do for anyone who will trust in Jesus. Psalm 103:12 NKJV
12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Micah 7:18–19 NKJV
18 Who is a God like You, Pardoning iniquity And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in mercy. 19 He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea.
Call to Respond
Challenge: Write out your own testimony this week and pray about who to share that with by the end of the month.
BEFORE: Before you met Christ, what were some of your needs, what was lacking, or what was missing in your life? What methods for improving your life did you try that didn’t work?
HOW: What were the circumstances that caused you to consider following Jesus? What has become your favorite Bible verse and why? Share about how you trusted Christ and give a brief explanation of the gospel. John 3:16 is a great verse to use.
AFTER: Give an example of how God has met your needs—either physical or emotional—since you accepted Jesus. Share about what part of your relationship with God you’re most grateful for today.[3]
Works Cited
How Memory Works | Psychology Today
James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).