Редактор субтитров А. С'll give you a very important message. And I think that this is one of those messages that in my personal opinion is extremely important not only for me to share with you but also for the body of Christ considering the things that ministers and church people or Christians are going through. And I titled this exposing four things that almost destroyed me. Now I don't have a particular text because I could have gone to four or five scriptures and shared this with you a certain text but I want to show you a picture. If we have that picture and these are pictures pictures of our family and different relatives. Now I want to tell you something, say this with me. Bad things happen to good people. And this is a little story of our family history. My granddad's stone up in the upper left was almost killed in a coal mining accident at Bartley No. 1 when it exploded many years ago. My grandmother's first husband, grandmother is the second person of course from the left top row. Grandma Stone was married to author ball and author ball was killed in a honey accident when he tripped over a log and it killed him. He shot gun went off and she actually had a major nervous breakdown as a result of this but I'm telling you she was one of the sweetest persons that you've ever met in your entire life. My father Fred Stone, when he was born in West Virginia during the month of February in the winter, the midwife was delivered to him and wrapped him up in a blanket and walked out of the house saying this is my baby, this is my baby, and it was snowing and it was cold and And Dr. Hatfield was on a horse now coming up the hollow there as they call it. And they caught the midwife with my dad. Had she gone in the snow, she lived like a mile away. He would have froze to death and he would have died. So he was nearly kidnapped when he was born. Then my mother had a car accident when I was a little boy. I broke her jaw, broke her knee, her through the windshield, but in later life at age 40, she gave birth to Melanie, my sister. We received a call on that Sunday that she was bleeding severely in the hospital. She remembers going out of her body and looking up from the ceiling down at the doctor that was delivering the child and trying to stop the bleeding. The doctor cursed a little bit and one of the nurses dropped something on the floor. He was cursing her out. When Mama came out and told the doctor where she was and what she saw, he just looked at and said, well, I've heard of things like this. But it was in a, she could have died, actually, but God spared her. I was almost killed in a car accident in age three, a possible plane crash a year later. There's been about three times in our life where my life could have been taken, but God miraculously spared that. Pam, of course my precious wife, has had some things that have happened such as me leaving my slippers in the dark on the floor here, tripping over them, falling. And did you, you didn't break your rotor cuff? Did you break it? She broke her shoulder, she had cancer, it's caught at the early stage, it's breast cancer and thankfully they caught that. She's had knee replacement surgery, she's had shingles, she's had shingles after a half or two and a half years. And so we know, and then actually Pam had a miscarriage at age 39, some of you are familiar with that. So we've all been through these things. Pam's mom, who was my mother-in-law, was a really crazy woman. She was funny. She was funny to be around. She cleaned house. If she saw a speck of dirt, she's going to get something out and take it off the floor. She was a fantastic lady, but when her, she divorced Pam's daddy. She had an emotional breakdown. It had to get treatment for an emotional breakdown. Of course my cousin Lou Lou, a lot of you know the story about that. I was FaceTiming her about Amanda getting a car and two and a half hours later she was killed in Elkins West Virginia when a man ran a red light going 55 miles an hour in a truck carrying nine cows. And it just decimated the entire side of her car. And me don't have a pick they got a little picture of me over there a little me a little mini me over there when I was a little boy that's me that's me look how cute I was notice how I said that past tense so that was me as little boy living in Big Stone Gap Virginia and I have had numerous physical challenges as some of you have emotional challenges and things of this nature. Now let me say this in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, one of the wisest men to ever live with King Solomon and he said this there's a time of peace, a time of war. He said there's a time to love, there's a time of hate, there's a time of to live, there's a time to die, there's a time to speak and there is a time to be silent. Speaking everybody can do that but The hardest thing you'll ever do in your life is when you have something you feel like you want to say and God won't time to be silent. Speaking, everybody can do that, but the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life

is when you have something you feel like you want to say

and God won't let you say it. And it's called keeping silent in the midst of the trial. I may bring that out a little bit later on perhaps. In lives' challenges, and I want to talk to you for a moment about this, because there are several decisions you're going to make that important. of serving Christ as your number one decision.

The second greatest decision will be whom you marry.

You've got to marry the person that is in the will of God for your life or you could have problems down the road. The third decision that you're greatest to chill greatest decision is to have children. Children will change your life. People used to ask me, what did you do before you had children? She said sleep and. And so, and of course your children have grandchildren and that's such a wonderful thing. So there are certain things that are major decisions in your life. Now let's talk about this for a moment of life's biggest challenge. This is something I have learned through years of experience. When God wants to bless you personally, He brings somebody into your life.

He will bring a businessman.

He will bring a person that's knowledgeable in an area that you need.

He will bring a builder.

He will bring an individual that will volunteer,

that will be able to put the volunteers together.

When God wants to bless you,

He will place a person in your life

because it says in the Bible,

when you give, it's given back to you,

men, and that's men and women both give to your bosom. That means they simply are put in your life to give to you and to be a help to you. So if God wants to bless you, He sends a bow-ass to Ruth. Hmm? He sends a Joseph to Egypt to spare the family. He sends a Daniel to Babel and to prove that God exists. So when He wants to bless you, Now let's flip the coin around on the other end. If Satan wants to hinder you, he'll put a person in your life. Yeah. Ooh, he'll put a Judas in your life that will betray you. He will put a Demise in your life that you depend on that forsakes you for the world that Paul said, Demise has forsaken me, having loved this present world. And here's the thing that I have learned. If Satan cannot succeed by using a person, now pay very careful attention to this, but if Satan cannot succeed by using Judas or using a Demis or something of that nature, here's what happens, he will make work your bondage. He will make work become your bondage. Can I say it this way? If you're in ministry, and I heard ministers say this, they got so caught up with ministry, they had to be so busy in ministry that they forsooth their family not on purpose, but they had no time. Ministry became their mistress. Thank you, Brian, give me an amen. I can't get an amen out of this crowd. I'm trying to find some help up in this place. Tony Scott told me one time he said this, Perry said, I want you to remember, the devil cannot kill you. Because Satan does not have the keys of death. saying does not have the keys of hell. Death is controlled only by Christ. He has our appointment of when we're going. The devil can't kill you, but here's what he's said, but you can kill yourself. You can kill yourself by not taking care of yourself. You can kill yourself slowly by not eating properly. You can kill yourself slowly by having habits

that are tearing your liver and your lungs apart. So I want you to remember this. Jesus has the keys of death and hell. So I would never feel like, I think the devil's gonna kill me. Forget that mess, forget that. But you can do harm to yourself. And many times I'm gonna preach an old message right here. Let me make a statement, I'm not gonna preach it. Sometimes it ain't the devil it's you.

Yes, it is.

George Smarrer would say it this way.

It's you and your big mouth. So I wanna say something to you. And let's begin right here. Let's begin about 2019 to the year of 2021. 2019 to the year of 2021 was about a three, some places two and a half year period to three year period when the covid virus struck the entire world the entire world was basically shut down in the united states of america there were three hundred and uh... forty million people that live in the united states out of the three hundred and forty million people covid struck one hundred and eleven million individuals that's a1 million cases. Almost one-third of the United States was struck down to be individuals with the COVID virus. And there was a total of 1,289,487 deaths. They were a direct result to COVID. Now, when you're a person like me or you have that, they call it a AA personality, just going nonstop, you will discover that work becomes what you enjoy if it's something you do enjoy. And you overdo it. So here I am prior to COVID. This is a fact. My wife is on the front row. Charlie is in the back. I have staff members here that will verify what I'm saying. My entire life, when I tell people that I have over 170,000 hours of Bible study, I've had people write me and say that's impossible. They don't know my lifestyle. I can tell you that for seven years when I worked on that Bible, I literally put 16 hours a day of study.

So the point that I would forget to go to lunch. Pam can tell you, for years and years and years, when I come home, what did I come home with, honey? I came home with a laptop, she's nodding, what did I do? I sat in our little room there, our little, it's our room off the side of our bedroom, has two chairs, I would pull the table out and I would continue to work when I got home

from six o'clock after I ate till 12 midnight

and sometimes one o'clock in the morning for seven years. So when people look at me and they say, there's no way a human being has 120, 170,000 hours of either studying the Bible, studying the word reading books, you just don't know. We sat down and calculated it. And that's how we came up with that number

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