Seasons of Life
Bro. Bill Garfinkle Preached on 10/13/2026
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Summary
Bro. Bill Garfinkle shares a personal journey through the 'Seasons of Life,' illustrating how God's unchanging Word and healing power remain constant despite shifting cultures, aging, and physical trials.
Key points
- •Life is composed of inevitable seasons (spring, summer, fall, and winter) as established in Genesis 8:22 and Ecclesiastes 3:1.
- •While culture, habits, and technologies change, God's nature and the Plan of Salvation (Acts 2:38) remain constant and unchanging.
- •A 'teachable heart' is the hallmark of a man after God's own heart, characterized by running to God in repentance rather than making excuses for failure.
- •Every believer is called to a specific ministry, whether it be the five-fold ministry or the ministry of helps and administrations, and God can empower the fearful to lead.
- •Faith involves rejoicing in God's salvation and strength even when physical circumstances, health, or external resources fail.
Scripture
Perseverance
Spiritual Growth
Evangelism
Healing
Faith
Life application
Evaluate your current 'season' of life and identify one area where you have let changing culture or difficult circumstances overshadow God's unchanging promises. Commit to practicing 'the want to' by serving in a ministry of helps this week, regardless of your personal comfort level.
Reflection questions
- In which season of life (spring, summer, fall, or winter) do you currently find yourself, and how is God revealing Himself there?
- Brother Bill shared how his understanding of certain scriptures changed over time. Are there 'preconceived notions' you hold that might need to be re-examined through prayer and leadership?
- What does it mean to you to have 'the want to' in your spiritual walk, even when facing physical or emotional limitations?
- How can you better utilize the 'ministry of helps' to support your local church family?
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Full transcript
0:00great honor and pleasure tonight to introduce
0:00our speaker who is a pillar of
0:06this house, who is a man of
0:11faith and great wisdom. It's my pleasure
0:17to introduce Brother Bill Garfinkel. - All
0:23right, good. You can be seated. First,
0:29I want to give honor to Pastor
0:35and Sister Elms. Pastor, as Pastor always
0:41says, he guards this place.
0:52And it's a privilege and honor and a responsibility to be
0:58up here. And I hope to bring something to you that
1:04blesses you and encourages you. That last song we just sang,
1:09"I called on the Lord and He heard and He answered."
1:15And that just leads right into this lesson. This is kind
1:21of different. It's kind of a history and personalized. for
1:26months the three words have been going through my
1:32mind, "Seasons of Life." And then Pastor and Brother
1:38Ryan Trimble and others have been up here in
1:43the last several weeks and mentioned "Seasons of Life"
1:49in their message. I said, "Okay, okay, okay, I
1:54hear, I hear." And so I want to honor
2:00Pastor, Brother, Ethan Elms a few weeks ago, a couple weeks
2:06ago, his message just confirmed to me part of this. Brother Austin,
2:11when we had the men's gathering. Brother Sean on Sunday. It always
2:17seems like I'm either following Brother Ethan or Brother Sean, and I'm
2:23following both of them now. If you could bring up the first
2:28slide. This is called Seasons of Life.
2:35In Genesis 8, God said, "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold
2:41and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease." And
2:47so we can think of seasons of life. I've got pictures up there
2:53of spring and summer, fall and winter. We all are going through, are
2:58going to go through different seasons in our life. I don't care how
3:04old you are. how long you've been in the church,
3:10if you haven't received the Holy Ghost yet or not.
3:16You're in one of these seasons of life. Next slide.
3:21"To everything there's a season." In Ecclesiastes, the writer said,
3:27"To everything there's a season, a time for every purpose
3:32under heaven." And I'm going to have to turn over
3:38to read this. Over the years, culture changes, habit changes.
3:44Our understanding changes, but God does not change. The plan of salvation remains
3:50the same, Acts 2:38. Holy living, separation from the world remains. God's promises
3:56remain the same. The Bible is still God's inspired Word. And I want
4:02to go over some things that I have learned. You may already understand
4:08them from the beginning of your walk with God, but some things that
4:14I have found that I had to learn through living. next
4:20slide 1948 may 1948 yeah
4:25that's me four days four
4:30days after i was born
4:36you see that flag brother
4:41ethan was preaching about uriah
4:46and about david on may
4:5214th israel became a nation
4:57again And that's their flag. And the two blue lines represent
5:03the lines, if you go to Numbers and you start looking, and the prayer
5:09shawl that God told the Hebrew men that when they pray, they were to
5:15wear a shawl with fringes on it, and it would have blue and white
5:20on it. That's what the two lines represent. But in the middle, we call
5:26that the Star of David. We remember David. So...
5:33That's the beginning, my beginning. Next slide. I don't
5:38know how well you can see this, but this
5:44is something else. In 1964, we had groundbreaking for
5:49the 119th Street Church in Miami, and I made
5:55some circles around some pictures, some people in here.
6:00Up at the upper left-hand corner, Bob and...
6:06Bob Cagle and his wife, that's Sister Loretta Leonard's
6:11aunt and uncle. Next to them is Tommy and
6:17Phyllis Calloway. Tommy was an electrician and a firefighter.
6:23He's the one that taught me electrical work. Next
6:28to them, I cut it off, I'm sorry, but
6:34that is Brother and Sister Nevels. And in Brother
6:39Nevels' arms is Susan. She's a little there.
6:47Next to the right of that is myself. To the
6:53right of myself, the next circle, is Sister Wanda Johns,
6:58who is now Wanda Nevels. You know her as. Over
7:04to the right of that, right in this, right in
7:10the joint there, that little boy that's circled there is
7:16Pastor Darrell Johns, West Lithia Springs. church in
7:21Lithia Springs, Georgia. Down to the left is Larry
7:27Styron, used to be Sister Loretta's brother-in-law. He's the
7:33one that, he's been to church, he's a backslider,
7:39but he's been to church. He's in a wheelchair.
7:45He left his legs in Vietnam. And then to
7:51the right is Janice Lindenberger. I forgot her last
7:57name now, but Sister Loretta. Dawson, Sister
8:03Luanne's sister-in-law. In front is brother and sister W.H. Dunn,
8:09and next to Brother Dunn is Charles Duplessis, who was
8:14the son of the original pastor on 54th Street, and
8:20he later became the first or second pastor of the
8:25Homestead Church, the church that is now Cathedral of Pentecost
8:31South. He was a pastor back in the... early
8:3660s and then he went to Texas where he's
8:42he's retired now, but he's was pastoring in East,
8:48Texas Next slide. Oh, excuse me. Go back one.
8:54I forgot early band church band young lady on
9:00the left is the is the our church pianist
9:05daughter Janet horn now Janet Ward next to her
9:11is is the youngest John's girl. She is
9:17now Sister Denise Crabtree. Her husband pastors in Panama
9:22City. Used to be when the Rocas were there.
9:28It was their pastor. Next to that is Janice
9:33Lindenberger Dawson, again. Then Anita Stone and myself, Dorita
9:39Duplicy. Her mother is the one that won the
9:45stones to the Lord. Dorita is now pastor's wife
9:50in Metairie, Louisiana. And then Eddie Stone. So Eddie and
9:56I grew up together from age of, we were best
10:02friends from age five to age 35 when he passed
10:07away. Next slide now. 1967. I know this is, most
10:13of you weren't around then, but in June of 1967,
10:19There were six armies that were fixing to invade Israel.
10:25Six armies. And Israel decided before they were invaded to
10:31strike first. In six days, they destroyed the entire Egyptian
10:37air force. They destroyed all of their tanks. They stopped
10:42just at the border of going into Egypt. They destroyed
10:48the armies of of Lebanon and Jordan and Syria and
10:54Iraq. Oh, and the Saudis were there, but they didn't have
10:59very many people helping. Six days. But, not only did they
11:05win the war in six days, but they captured... Up until
11:11that time, Jerusalem was divided into three parts. There was the
11:17Jewish part, the Arab part, and the Christian part. And
11:23the last day of that war, they captured all
11:28of Jerusalem. The man on the lower right was
11:33General Mordecai Gore. He was the one that he
11:39was the first one to step to the what
11:44we call now the Wailing Wall or the Western
11:50Wall. He and all of those men were
11:56the first ones to go. The ones on the lower left were on
12:02that day. There's a picture of them back in 1967 and then a
12:08picture of them 40 years later going back to remember it. The man
12:14in the top two pictures with the eye patch was the... he lost
12:20his eye in the 1948 War of Liberation for Israel. and
12:25he was over the army during the 1967 war. In
12:31the bottom was the chief rabbi for the State of
12:36Israel blowing the shofar when he entered the Western Wall.
12:42Now, why do I bring that up? Next slide, please.
12:48During that time, there was something happening. There were preachers
12:54that were very upset and very disturbed. because they believed
12:59that they had read the scripture, Luke 21:24, which is there, "And they will
13:05fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all
13:11nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles
13:17are fulfilled." And they said, "What's happening?" We believed, believed, period. And there was
13:23a man preaching a revival. at our church during this six-day war?"
13:29And he said, "I've got to go back and study." He said,
13:34"I thought that the church would be gone before this happened." So
13:40here's an instance of, he had the Holy Ghost, still believed the
13:46Bible, but his thinking was incorrect. Here we are, that was 1967,
13:51here we are 60-some years later, the Lord still hasn't come, we're
13:57still looking, it could be any day, but We can't
14:02get, Jesus said, "No man knows the day or
14:08the hour." Also in 1967, I was best man
14:14in a wedding, and I met a girl. So
14:20that is, that wedding is Brother Marvin Dunn, Brother
14:25Dunn's son, and I was best man. Next to
14:31Sharon Dunn is Betty Dunn, who you all have
14:37never met, but I found out I
14:43guess last year was it? I found out last year her father was Brother
14:49Hale's first pastor. So it was very interesting. So, you know, I walked her
14:55down the aisle. That wasn't the girl though. That wasn't the girl. The picture
15:01on the right in color was the Dunn's 50th wedding anniversary and they redid
15:07their vows and the people there are the ones that were still alive from
15:12the wedding, from the wedding party on the left. So
15:18that was 50 years later. That was 2017. Okay,
15:24next slide. 1968. I moved to East Texas to
15:30go to college because of that girl. During that
15:36time, I spent the summer there. I was working
15:42for an air conditioning man and installing air conditioning
15:48and doing electrical work. And every day, we went
15:54to the same restaurant for lunch. And we always
16:00were served by this one waitress, young lady about, she's two or three years younger
16:05than me. Anyway, I won her to the Lord. She came to me one day
16:10and she was, I don't know what was going on in her life. I took
16:15her over to the pastor's house and we did a Bible study and she came
16:20to church on Sunday night and she got the Holy Ghost. And you know what
16:25she did? The first thing she did, she came up and hugged me.
16:31In 1967, men and women didn't hug. The
16:37pastor looked at me. The pastor at that
16:42time was that man that was standing by
16:47Brother Dunn in that groundbreaking, Brother Charlie Drew
16:53Pussy. He knew me from when I was
16:58a baby. He looked at me and said,
17:03what is going on? This girl hugging you
17:09today? That's changed, hasn't it? Okay. So again,
17:14here's something that It was a different
17:20culture. Now it's different. Change in the church.
17:25Next slide. Oh, same slide. I'm sorry. 1969,
17:31the draft. U.S. Army. One of the Ten
17:36Commandments is thou shalt not kill. What do
17:42we do? I was listed as what then
17:47they called a conscientious objector. So I went for
17:53basic training in San Antonio and they had modified basic training in the same
17:59place Brother Jerry Campitella later who just passed away, Bishop Campitella up in Daytona
18:05area. That's where he went and he started chapel service and it was because
18:11of him I met another girl. And that's
18:17the girl in the middle picture there. That's the
18:23girl I met in 1969. The girl from 1968,
18:29she's no longer living for God. So I met
18:35this girl. And on the right-hand side, right-hand side
18:40was a certificate when I finished basic training. I
18:46volunteered for a leadership preparation course. And... which was
18:52real nice so that gave me a pass so that every night that was
18:58two weeks of we got anywhere from one to five one to five hours
19:04of sleep at night the rest of the time we were polishing the floor
19:09polishing our boots you could you could see your face in the floor you
19:15could see your face on the boots and i slept on the floor because
19:21we had we had the the arcot every morning They would come in
19:26and you had two blankets, two wool blankets. Now we're in San Antonio
19:32in a wood barracks, no air conditioning. At 2 o'clock in the morning
19:38when I was in charge of guard duty, 2 o'clock in the morning
19:44was 98 degrees. We had wool blankets on our beds, on our cots.
19:50Every morning for those two weeks, they would come in and they would flip
19:56a quarter on there. If they didn't bounce, you got 10 push-ups. And they
20:02would bounce it on each blanket. One was over the pillow and one was
20:08over the sheets. If it didn't bounce, 10 push-ups. Didn't bounce on both of
20:14them, 20 push-ups. So I slept on the floor so I didn't have to
20:19make my bunk every morning. Lazy. Yes, I admit.
20:25After that, Fort Sam Houston, basic training, leadership training, then 12
20:31weeks of medical training to be a combat medic. And then
20:37they had another chance to volunteer, and that was orthopedic training.
20:43I said, "Aha, has to do with bones." So I took
20:48that, and that's when I became an orthopedic specialist. Back then,
20:54I don't know how it is today, I've never been to
21:00a doctor with a broken bone since I've been out of
21:06the Army, but back then the doctors would set the bones with the help of
21:12a specialist and then we would put the cast on. And if they were operating
21:18on them in the operating room, we were in the operating room with them. If
21:24they were in the, if we had somebody come in into the emergency room, they
21:30would, we would be in the emergency room with them. So we'd be in the
21:36emergency room, the clinic. Next slide, please. Okay. Picture on the left,
21:41that's the girl. And yes, I got married in uniform. The
21:47middle picture on the top was the hospital. This was Fort
21:53Gordon, Georgia. This was a hospital. If you were in the
21:59army and you were wounded in Vietnam and you were from
22:05Florida, Georgia, or South Carolina, or Tennessee, you came to this
22:10hospital. This hospital was built in World War II and it
22:16was all wood. Each room was heated
22:22during the winter, but the corridors were not heated. So if
22:28you were going to go from one building to another building,
22:33you would be going through a row of ice. Literally, the
22:39hallway would have ice on the ceiling and ice on the
22:45walls. So you hurried very quickly from room to room to
22:50the mess hall, or to other parts of the hospital. On
22:56the upper right, I think now, and I may be wrong, I
23:01could ask Brother Andrew, do the medics wear white now, or do
23:07they wear fatigues, don't they? Back then, the medics all wore white.
23:13So there was our, that was the orthopedic clinic at Fort Gordon,
23:18Georgia, and I am in the back, I believe. Yep, I'm in
23:24the back. So those were white. uh those were the medics
23:30and the bottom picture was another picture in the clinic where we
23:35would we we would have patients some would be vietnam veterans i
23:41mean would be injured in vietnam some would be spouses or children
23:47of of soldiers some would be women in the in the army
23:53and we were on call so Every couple of months we would be on
23:59call. This is before cell phones. This is before beepers. Well, I guess they did
24:04have beepers, but we didn't have beepers. So what we would, they would, we would
24:09have to tell them if we were on call, we would call the medical military
24:14police. They were at the other end, at one end of the hospital. We would
24:19tell them where we're going to be. I'm going to be at home.
24:25If I was going to the store, I'd have to say, "I will be back
24:29in an hour." There were times I would be at church and I would be
24:34up on the platform playing my horn and I'd see the usher come up, come
24:39walking up the aisle and he would motion for me to come off the platform
24:44and tell me I have a phone call and I've got to go to the
24:48emergency room because I was on call. And either they had just had a plane
24:53land with people from that had been injured in Vietnam
24:59coming back or there would be a car accident
25:05or something like that but have to leave church.
25:10Next slide please. That was 1970. In the summer
25:161970, here's another thing. 1970 after I got married,
25:21Brother Shurdy made me youth leader. At Halloween he
25:26said, "We're going to have a haunted house and
25:32you're in charge." We don't do haunted houses. Today
25:38We did then. And I talked to some of the people and they said,
25:44oh, no problem. One lady said, they got it. You know, the tents that
25:50they put at cemeteries when they're going to bury. We had a tent put
25:56up. They the funeral home gave us a casket to use. We had a
26:02lady in the church who wore a white gown and she sat. She she
26:07was in the casket. We had a real casket. six-foot skeleton in
26:13the hospital, you know, in the clinic so that we could look
26:19at all the bones. I took that and hung that up in
26:25the tent. I didn't ask permission. I'm an orthopedic specialist. I put
26:30casts on all day. On Friday night, my wife and I went
26:36to the clinic. It's closed. I wrapped myself in plaster of Paris.
26:42I was cut. She helped me cut that off. I
26:47went as the mummy. And that was 1970.
26:53Today, we might have trunk or treat, but
26:59we don't have haunted houses. So again, things
27:04have changed. 1972, the United Pentecostal Church had
27:10their general conference on Miami Beach. Back then,
27:16women wore beehive hairdos. And I've got a
27:22couple of pictures on the next slide.
27:28The mayor of Miami Beach was a millionaire. He drives up in
27:34his Rolls Royce, he walks into the Miami Beach Convention Center, he
27:40goes up to, it just happened again to be Brother Charles Du
27:45Plessis was there for the convention, he said, "I saw a lady
27:51walking in with this hairdo." I figured she just came from the
27:56beauty salon. "And then I saw walking up and down Collins Avenue,
28:02a whole bunch more women and they were all coming in i
28:08said what in the world they all went to the same beauty
28:14salon he said what's going on the mayor got a bible study
28:20right then and there the mayor of my beach then his phone
28:26rang and he had to leave but his phone is a little
28:32different again they didn't have cell phones next slide On
28:38the left, his cell phone is a briefcase. That was his
28:43phone. Only a few people had those because those were expensive.
28:49There's a couple of, I just pulled those, I don't know
28:55who that is, I just pulled those off the internet because
29:01I couldn't find it. I didn't have any pictures of ladies,
29:07Pentecostal ladies with beehives, but that was the beehive. They would,
29:13they would just, they would put, they would put things in
29:19their hair to, excuse me. Back then,
29:24In 1972, TV was a sin. Before that, years
29:30before that, radio was a sin. Today, I dare
29:36say you've got a radio, you've got a TV,
29:42you've got a cell phone, you've got internet. Today,
29:48some people are afraid of AI, or now it's
29:54SI. It's not the device, it's the use.
30:00Going back to King David, David said, "I will set no evil thing
30:06before my eyes." It's what you do with it. Again, things change. The
30:12last night of that conference, they moved from the Miami Beach Convention Center.
30:18I guess they only could get it for so long, and back then
30:23the convention, the conference was a week. So the last night, they went
30:29to the Deauville Hotel. We got there, my wife and
30:35I, and this man comes stumbling up to the platform.
30:40And he starts to speak, and his speech is slurred.
30:46What in the world? I was asking my wife, what
30:51is going on? Is this man, he's in a Pentecostal
30:57church? Is he drunk? No. This man was Alan Augs.
31:02He was a Louisiana pastor born with cerebral palsy.
31:08This man wasn't supposed to finish high school. He not only finished high school,
31:14he went to Bible school. And he preached a message called, "You gotta have
31:20the want to." This sermon was such that it was preached over and over
31:25by him in different places that he wrote a book. They took that message
31:31and made a book out of it. It's out of print. But it's
31:37powerful. If you can find it on YouTube, you need to listen to it. You've
31:42got to have the want to. He said, I had the want to. They said,
31:48I couldn't do it. I couldn't walk. I walked. They said, I couldn't ride a
31:53bike. I ride a bike. He said, I couldn't finish high school. I finished high
31:58school. He said, I couldn't go to college. I went to college. He said, I
32:04couldn't preach. I pastor a church. He said, "You gotta have
32:09the want to." And it's still the same today.
32:15A man with cerebral palsy who wasn't supposed to
32:21finish high school said, "You gotta have the want
32:26to." Next slide please. 1974. Still now, we've gone
32:32from spring to summer. A new chapter on the
32:37left hand side, Valentine's Day 1974. Windy.
32:45In the middle picture, November 1976,
32:51you have Wendy with a day-old
32:56Steven. On the right-hand side is
33:01Kevin on a horse. He's three
33:06months old, he's got chicken pox,
33:11and he's on a horse way
33:17out west in Texas. A new
33:22chapter. Next slide. And I can't
33:27read this one. 1996 to 2001
33:33we helped start a daughter work in Weston in 2001 that closed
33:39they sold the the property and and we decided that we only
33:44had one family there with us and and so and and they
33:50were moving so we decided it was time to find a new
33:56church home and that's when we came here and you know what
34:02best move ever new pastor
34:09from 2001 to 2022, plant operations director. The picture
34:15on the left was in 2003. We were doing
34:21a fundraiser, and we did a Passover dinner. It
34:27was called Christ and the Passover. And you'll see
34:33Brother and Sister Leonard there facing. You'll see Brother
34:39and Sister Schnitzer, Sister Schnitzer. uh sister melissa
34:45leonard's mother and stepfather i'm over on the right hand side doing the uh
34:51officiating at this and this was at the salamitas house and the the funny
34:56thing was we used we had a bunch of jewish boys doing the as
35:02servers we had leonard and joe salamita we had shane and jamie marcus and
35:08we had stephen and kevin garfinkel so we had six jewish guys the
35:14servers for the dinner picture on the
35:19right since we just celebrated pastors 60th
35:25birthday on his 40th birthday we were
35:30all supposed to dress up as hippies
35:35and and that was us at their
35:41birthday party their 40th pastors 40th birthday
35:46party next slide Ephesians 4 he gave
35:51himself as He gave himself some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists,
35:57some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the
36:02ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the
36:07unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect
36:12man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should
36:16no longer be children tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine
36:21by the trickery of man, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the
36:26truth in love, may grow up in all things into him who is the head,
36:30We still
36:36believe some
36:42things have
36:48changed. Some we've looked at some
36:53different things in culture in in the Pentecostal Church that have changed But
36:59the ministry the fivefold ministry the purpose of the church has not changed
37:05we still have apostles and prophets and the pastors and Evangelists and teachers
37:11and in first Corinthians 12 Paul said and God 28:1 and God
37:17has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers,
37:23after that miracles and gifts of healing, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues.
37:29So for many years, pastors had the LXM program, League of Extraordinary
37:34Ministers. And what I used to think of a minister as somebody
37:40who gets up and preaches. But what we found out is
37:46We're also called, there's ministries of helps and governments. I wasn't called
37:51to be a preacher, but I was called to be a help.
37:57I've worked on, over the last 60 years, I've worked on six,
38:03no, excuse me, 10 different churches in either helping in maintenance or
38:09helping build churches. Most of them in Florida, one in
38:15Georgia, one in Texas, two in Texas, one in Louisiana,
38:20the rest in Florida. So my thing that God had
38:26called me to was, first of all, being a help
38:31on the physical part. But then, and I said this
38:37a few months ago when I was teaching, in 10th
38:42grade, I took an F- I was an A student. I
38:48took an F in English because I would not get up in front of
38:54my peers in the 10th grade. We had a class of several hundred in
39:00our English class and it was either get up and give a speech or
39:05take an F. I said, "I'll take the F." And they said, "You're what?"
39:11I said, "No way I'm getting up and giving a speech." And yet, after
39:17the Army, that went away. During that time
39:22in the Army, I took that leadership program and God blessed me. And during
39:28that time when we were in medical training, I was the one out calling
39:34cadence when we were marching. I'm the one, you know, I'm not going to
39:40do it. I was going to do it. No, I'm not going to do
39:46it. I was calling out cadence when we're marching, when we're, even when we're
39:52running, calling cadence. After that, teaching Sunday school, public speaking
39:58i had to take public speaking in college when i my first semester
40:04before the army the teacher said she actually said to the class she
40:09said when we have the written part bill does well he gets straight
40:15a's when it comes to the to the speaking part she just shook
40:20her head when i took public speaking again after i got out of
40:26the army it was all a's god blessed me and gave me
40:32the took away that fear of being in front of somebody if
40:38God can do that for me that's what LXM can do for
40:44you some people are still some people are afraid to get up
40:50and speak in front of a group and God can use do
40:56that but you gotta have the want to next slide please there
41:02were times of as I said plant operations director we had a
41:08lot of a lot of work days. Upper left
41:13was putting down the sod at the new school. You see
41:19Sister Susan and Sister Kim and you have Brother Johnny and
41:25Sister Nikki and that was 2011. And then you see bottom
41:31left when we redid the platform here in 2011 that this
41:37platform for those of you who are new this platform used
41:43to go out to there. And there were two
41:49columns here and the baptistry was right there. And in
41:542021 that was redone. And then there's a couple of
42:00some other work days there, some other workers. I can't
42:06see because of that camera. Next slide. Pastor up on
42:11the ladder. The picture is crooked. It's not the ladder.
42:17He's not going to fall. I've been there. I've done
42:23that. Over on the bottom left. Hey, there's Brother Marco,
42:28Brother Austin and For those of you who don't
42:34know, that's Brother JD's younger brother. No? Is that?
42:40Okay, I'm sorry. Sister Donna's brother. Okay, I thought
42:45it was Tusing. That's Jovan. Okay. Sister Elms, Brother
42:51Lenworth. It looks like Scarlett. There's Sister Virus. Sister
42:57Kim working on the old platform where the columns
43:03in the back and the baptistry in the back.
43:08Cleaning. Next question. Next slide. There's Christmas. Lessons
43:14learned. One thing that I learned, I said back
43:20when I went in the army, "Thou shalt not
43:26kill." That was always something that was something else.
43:32"Thou shalt not kill." When I went to Fort
43:37Gordon, Georgia, and I went to that Pentecostal church
43:43there where we got married, there were two men
43:49there that were career army men. They had the
43:55Holy Ghost. I thought, "You can't be in the army and not be a
44:00kind of... You can't do that. That's not right." That didn't make sense to
44:06me. My best friend became a policeman and he tried to get me to
44:12leave Florida Power & Light and become a policeman too. And I said, "I
44:18don't know about carrying a gun." But then I came here and that was
44:24always one of those things that I'm obedient to my pastor. I
44:30don't understand it, but I'm obedient to my pastor. I came
44:36here and pastor said, "The original, God said, 'Thou shalt not
44:42commit murder.' That's different." Because the Bible did say that the
44:47government would have the power to kill and the right to
44:53kill, to take someone's life for crime. And there was the,
44:59in the Old Testament, there was a difference between killing and
45:05murdering. I said, Now I understand my understanding is open sometimes
45:11we maybe I'm the only one sometimes we have certain preconceived notions
45:16or ideas either from the way we were raised or or what
45:22we understand when we come into the church and We look at
45:28somebody and say I don't agree with the way they do or
45:33something or the way they act or something and And maybe
45:39it's not them in the wrong, but it's our idea, our opinion.
45:45And so that's why we have a leadership. That's why I read
45:51that about God giving us the five-fold ministry. We have to have
45:56a leader. I've told the story before. I used to work with
46:02a man at Florida Power and Light that said, "I'm a Christian."
46:08One day I walked into the building and And he's 50
46:13feet away from me, a bunch of people in there, I'm
46:19walking into the building, he sees me, he says, "He's coming!"
46:25I mean, everybody, "Who's coming?" He saw me and he said,
46:31"God's, Jesus is coming." I said, "Okay." He wanted everybody to
46:37know. I asked him, "What church do you go to?" "Oh,
46:43I don't go to church." "You don't go to church? Why
46:49not?" He never could give me an answer. I said,
46:54"You need to have a church. You need to go to
47:00church. You need to have leadership. You need to make sure
47:06that you're..." Oh, no, no, I don't do that. The Bible
47:12tells us we have got to have a leader. And I'm
47:18probably taking too long. I can't see the clock. Next slide.
47:24Fall or is it autumn? No, it's definitely fall. It's the
47:30fall of the season. 2007. A men's retreat. These
47:36are the men and boys from the church. You
47:41can see them on the left. There's a climbing
47:47wall. On the right, you see I slipped. I'm
47:53on the ground. Burst fracture, L1 vertebrae. Next slide.
47:59There they are gathered around me. When pastor said,
48:05"We're going to pray," you got the paramedic, you've
48:11got the EMT, you've got Bobby Johnson, the policeman, you've
48:17got Steven who just graduated, just started with the fire department, and the paramedic
48:23was there praying with them. And you see at the bottom left, they couldn't
48:29even bring the ambulance. We were so far out in the woods, they couldn't
48:34bring the ambulance. They had to load me up, put me on a backboard,
48:40put me in a pickup truck, drive the pickup truck to the ambulance, and
48:46then take me in the ambulance. The right hand side
48:52for three months I wore after surgery. I was
48:58unconscious for two days in the hospital in the
49:04ICU for 10 days, then spent 17 days in
49:10South in Hollywood at a rehab facility wearing that
49:16brace from hip to shoulders, learning to walk again.
49:22Next slide. In 2008, The UPC General
49:27Convention. Some of you have heard of Lee Stone King, great man
49:33of God, just passed away about two weeks ago. One night, and
49:39we weren't at that convention, we were watching it online, live stream.
49:45He got up and he told the story in 2003, he had
49:50preached a revival in Sydney, Australia. He was on
49:56his way back home. He was in the
50:02airport with the pastor. He walked into the
50:07airport and he had a massive heart attack
50:12and he fell down dead. They tried CPR.
50:18They tried defibrillator, everything. He bounced off of
50:23the floor from the defibrillator. When they got
50:29him to the hospital, His face was
50:34black and blue. His chest was bruised. He was dead for
50:4045 minutes. They were taking him to the morgue in the
50:45ambulance. He came to. God raised him from the dead. Nobody
50:51was praying for him. The pastor had called the church and
50:56they were praying for him, but there was nobody praying for
51:02him in the ambulance. 45 minutes. You think the paramedic in
51:07the ambulance was scared?
51:15They took him, instead of the morgue, they took him to
51:21the hospital. The doctors throughout the hospital and the nurses came
51:27in to see him. They said, "We don't know what happened.
51:33We don't understand. You were dead for 45 minutes." Said, "You
51:39must be favored by God." He told that story, he told
51:45that in that night of the UPCI convention. After
51:50my accident in May of 2007, and he's doing this in
51:56late September or October of 2008, I had vertigo. Now, as
52:02an FPL engineer, I'm looking at poles. I've got to do
52:07this. I can't. I would literally, for over a year after
52:13I went back to work, I would have to walk up,
52:19I would have to lean against the car and do this
52:25and hold on so I could look at the pole
52:30and then slowly bring my head back down and then hold
52:36on to the car until the vertigo went away. And that
52:41was for over a year. That night after we listened to
52:47that sermon and watched it on screen, my wife laid her
52:52hand on me and prayed for me. I haven't had vertigo
52:58since then. God still heals. Now, I'm still waiting.
53:04We sang that song tonight. I heard God. I called on
53:10God. He heard me, and He heals. Now, I'm still waiting
53:15on some of that. Since then, I've had numerous trips to
53:21the hospital. Medication. Doctors are my word. You know, they say
53:27they practice medicine. In my field, I can't practice. In the
53:33electrical field, people die.
53:38But medication, 2009, damage to my kidneys. 2025, fluid on
53:44my lungs, created double pneumonia. 18 days in the hospital,
53:503 months on oxygen, and 3 months regaining the ability
53:56to walk after 18 days laying flat on my back.
54:01This year, again, medication, fluid on the lungs, put me
54:07in the hospital. Now I'm going back for rehab. During
54:13that rehab, I had an attack of gout. I'm left-handed.
54:19I can't write. I can't use the mouse. But you
54:24know what? On Sunday, I've been coming up every Sunday
54:30to get prayed for. On Sunday, I got a touch.
54:36I'm able. I still can't grip a pencil, but I
54:42can move my fingers now. God still heals. I want
54:47to conclude with this. Psalm 37:25 David said I
54:53have been young and now I'm old yet I
54:59have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his descendants
55:05begging bread we talked about brother Ethan preached about
55:10David David was a man after God's own heart
55:16he talked about what God was giving what David
55:22did we look at David David was the eighth
55:28son of his family he was the Shepherd he was the one that
55:34when he went to see what his brothers were doing they said what
55:40are you doing? You've come just to see the battle you don't belong
55:45here you're just a kid and yet he killed killed a giant and
55:51God took him and made him king over Israel and now his star
55:57is on the Israeli flag acts 13 22
56:03after removing saul he made david their king god testified conserving him i
56:09have found david son of jesse a man after my own heart he
56:15will do everything i want him to do and yet he had a
56:21man killed he committed adultery he did things wrong and yet he's a
56:27man after god's own heart how can that be what it means he
56:32wasn't sin free David committed serious sins, but he had
56:38a teachable heart. Being after God's heart means running to
56:43God in honest, brokenhearted repentance rather than making excuses when
56:49confronted with failure. He didn't say, it's Bathsheba's fault. He
56:54said, I sinned. when nathan said you did it you
57:00did wrong you killed you took her you committed adultery you had this man
57:06killed he said you're right i did it you read the 51st psalm and
57:12he said god created me a clean heart he said i did it i
57:18have sinned it also means desiring god's will it describes someone whose core life
57:24is to align their desires with god and obey his leading And
57:30the last scripture I want to read is Habakkuk 3. And I have
57:36one last slide, I believe. Well, that may be the last slide. But
57:42it said, winter is coming. "Though the fig tree may not blossom," Habakkuk
57:483:17-19, "Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, though
57:53the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food, though the
57:59flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the
58:04stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of
58:10my salvation." The Lord God is my strength. He will make
58:16my feet like deer's feet. He will make me walk on
58:22my high hills. So, no matter what stage of life you're
58:28in, physically or spiritually, spring, summer, fall, the winter of your
58:34life, things may be going good, things may not be going
58:40good. You may be hurting. I was working on this. I'm hurting
58:46all day The healing is coming, but my arm still hurts from
58:51the gout but Habakkuk said though these things may not be going
58:57wrong and may be going wrong I will rejoice in the God
59:02of my salvation because what he will do he will hear and
59:08He will answer. He will make my feet like deer's feet
59:14or hind's feet and make me walk on high places. And
59:20God will do that. He's done that for me. He will
59:25do that for you. Thank you, Brother Bill. We can all
59:31stand. It's always a pleasure to hear Brother Bill speak, isn't
59:37it? I'm so thankful for him and Sister Pam. We're going
59:43to gather at the front and pray for a few minutes
59:48with each other. I'm thankful for seasons. I know some seasons we don't want
59:54to face, but I was speaking to a friend a few days ago talking about
60:00going through some valleys. And so I had to Google image what valleys look like.
60:06And there is some beauty in the valleys. So whatever season you're going through, whatever
60:12season you're facing at the moment, look around at the beauty. Because when God is
60:17with you, there is some beauty in everything. And whatever need you have
60:23here tonight, whatever you're facing this week already, bring it to this altar. And if
60:29you're having trouble breaking through, if you're having trouble trying to find that breakthrough to
60:34God, go pray with someone else. Because when you pray with someone else, something happens
60:40with that compassion, and it opens and it breaks something in you. So even tonight
60:46as we pray for a few minutes as we close, find someone to pray with.
60:52We're all in this together
60:57and we need each other.
61:02We're not islands and we're
61:07not isolated. So tonight as
61:13we close, find someone to
61:18pray with. I've lived stories
61:23that have proved you faithful.
61:28And I've seen miracles my
61:33mind can't comprehend. And there's
61:39clearly a way I can.
61:44Jesus is here. Jesus,
61:50it's you and me. I've been
61:56working for you since you could
62:01not believe. I've been living because
62:07of you. I've been working for
62:13you since you could not believe.
62:19I've been working for you since
62:25you could not believe.
62:32Oh I
62:36believe the
62:41world can
62:46die. Oh,
62:50the miracles
62:55are seen.
63:00Two girls
63:04and I
63:09believe. Oh,
63:14I know
63:18it.
63:21you're
63:27the
63:33one
63:39you're
63:45the
63:51one
63:57You're too good to not believe Too
64:03good to not believe Too good to
64:08not believe All the miracles we'll see
64:14You're too good to not believe Too
64:20good to not believe All the miracles
64:25we'll see don't you tell
64:30me he can't do it
64:36we've seen real life resurrection
64:41we've seen mental health restored
64:46don't you tell me he
64:51can't do it don't you
64:56tell me We see mental health restored.
65:02Don't you tell me he can't do it. Don't you
65:07tell me he can't do it. We'll see families reunited.
65:13We see prodigals returned. Don't you tell me he can't
65:19do it. Don't you tell me he can't do it.
65:26we see
65:31that it's
65:36fine don't
65:42you tell
65:47me
65:54you
66:04don't
66:14wonder
66:27Oh
67:02is
67:42With each love of souls and living If he not
67:48his mind is green Don't you tell me he can
67:54do it Don't you tell me he can do it
67:59He is the power of salvation Lord He's changing the
68:05world He's changing the world He's changing the world
68:11Don't
68:17you
68:22tell
68:27me