The Lord your God went before
you and carried you as a man carries
his little boy. He carried you all the way to where you are now. And the people said, amen. For 39 years now, I have been proclaiming to you
that we are what we are by the grace of God. That it is not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but by his grace and mercy, we have been
converted. I am often asked, to what do
you attribute the success of Grace Gospel Fellowship? How is it the fastest growing
church in the city of Pontiac? I was asked that this week. There's
one reason and there is only one. And that is we give Him
all the glory and all the praise and all the honor. Amen. How often Israel had to be reminded
of that fact, that God was good to them, that they were where
they were. because of him and not of themselves. When you're reading the Old Testament,
especially the first four or five books, you will hear God
saying this to Israel, remember who brought you out of Egypt.
Don't forget who brought you out of Egypt. forget who brought you out of
Egyptian bondage. Don't forget that. And then he would remind Israel
in this way. In the book of Exodus, there's
a passage in chapter three and verse eight where God says this
to them, I am come down to deliver you. The message is the same
to you, that God came down to deliver you and me. And when we could not and would
not come to him, He came to us. That's the message of the Bible.
And I hope you're rejoicing in that today. And in your heart,
you are singing that old hymn. Oh, he came to me. He came to
me when I could not and would not come to him. He came to me. People often say, I found the
Lord. He was never lost. He found you. and brought you to himself. So
today, just a little reminder about who has saved us and brought
us to this place. In Exodus 7, and I love these,
if you'd like to turn over there in your Bibles, let's begin in
Exodus 6. Exodus 6, in verses six through
eight. Wherefore, I say unto the children
of Israel, Exodus 6, 6, I am the Lord. Do you know who the
Lord is? He's sovereign. He's all powerful,
omnipotent, omniscient, an ever-present God in time of trouble. I am
the Lord. We should remember that. Now
watch this. I love the shalls and wills of
God. Watch this. And I will bring you out from
under the burden of the Egyptians. Not I want to, not I'm trying
to, I'm going to. I will, a determinate will. I will rid you out of their bondage. I will redeem you with a stretched
out arm. Somebody said, I'm gonna make
it to heaven, but by the skin of my teeth. No, you're gonna
make it by the blood of Jesus Christ, if you make it at all. I will redeem you with a stretched
out arm, that is with a mighty arm. God didn't just barely save
you, He came to seek and to save that which was lost, and He did
it 2,000 years ago on the tree of the cross. He saved His people. His name shall be called Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. Verse 7, I will
take you to me for a people. and I will be to you a God, and
you shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth
you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will
bring you into the land concerning the which I promised." Oh, little
child of God, be assured of this. He who hath begun a good work
in you will perform it. He's taken you this far, and
he's going to take you all the way. I know you have warts and
so does your preacher. We all have warts, but God works
in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure and be encouraged
we win. We're more than conquerors through
Christ who loved us. And so it is God who makes the
difference. You are here today Believing
in the Lord Jesus Christ because God has made you to differ. You're
not different than anybody else with regard to your nature. You
are a sinner by nature, by choice, and by practice. There is no
difference unless God makes it. See, I came so close to going
to help, maybe in your eyes, but not in God's. He had his
eye on you. And God would remind that, the
Israelites of that. He said, remember when I brought
you out of Egypt? If you go just a few chapters
over, he says something like this. I'm the one that made you
to differ. Remember? I'm the one that brought
you out. And remember what I told you?
And by the way, we all need to see these little things and praise
God for them. He said, when you come out of
Egypt, a dog's not going to bark. Now, if you got several million
people, you've heard my story about my dog, Snowball. Snowball
would get run over at least once a week. because he would chase
car tires. We lived on a highway back when
I was a kid. Every car that came by, Snowball
would make a dead run to bite at those tires, and we'd find
him laying beside the road. He just could not learn to stop
it. It's natural for a dog to bark. You know, in the Old Testament,
God talks about preachers being dumb dogs that won't bark. I'm
always barking. I'm not a dumb dog. To the glory
of God, I'm barking. But God said, so that you know
how that I made you to differ, when you leave, a dog's not going
to bark. And when you see that dog running
beside the chariot wheels and not barking, you say, God made
us to differ. You and I have all kinds of reasons
to say I'm different, but not because of any works I've done,
but because of the grace of God. He made the difference in my
life. Deuteronomy, let's go over there
again. I want to read some scriptures to you from the sixth chapter
of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 6. And I hope that
the lesson today you will learn that we're different because
God has made a difference. And that you give him all the
glory and absolutely refuse to take any of it yourself. Today I was, or this past week,
I was being asked all kinds of questions about you, about your
success, many of you, with regard to drug addiction. And what do
you, I mean, the question is, and what do you attribute them
to being off of drugs to? Pastor, I said, to the glory
of God, to the goodness of God, to the grace of God. Look at Deuteronomy 6, 6. And
these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart,
and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt
talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, when thou walkest
by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Take those kids and tell them,
It wasn't mommy and daddy hunting. It was the grace of God. I was
in the crack house. I was shooting up. I was here.
I was there. I was a long way off, but God
came to me and he's the reason I don't use anymore. And I want
you to know it. My child, I want you to know
it. I want you to clearly understand that God made a difference in
my life. Otherwise, honey, you'd still
be sleeping in the backseat of my car without any hope. But God brought me to Grace Centers
and Grace Gospel where I heard the gospel. You ought to say
amen louder than that. Verse seven says, thou shalt
teach them diligently. Make it a point. Read your kids'
Bible stories. Tell them about your conversion.
Tell them who did it and how it took place and how you were
brought to Christ. Verse eight says, and thou shalt
bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be as frontlets
between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the post
of thy house and on thy gates. What's he talking about here?
He's talking about things that say, praise God, thank you, Lord,
hallelujah. That's what he's talking about.
To God be the glory. Don't make any bones about it.
And it shall be when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee
into the land, which he swear unto thy fathers, to Abraham,
to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities,
which thou buildest not. You didn't build them, God gave
them to you. And houses full of all good things,
which thou fillest not, and wells dig. which thou diggest not,
and vineyards and olive trees which thou plantest not, when
thou shalt have eaten and be full. Then beware lest thou forget
the Lord which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage. Don't forget. Hallelujah, for God's grace,
sovereign grace, electing grace, predestinating grace, predetermining
grace. God has brought you all this
way. Ah, how happy the little child
of God should be. Verse 13 says, thou shalt fear
the Lord thy God and serve him and shalt swear by his name.
Skip down to verse 20. and when thy son asketh thee
in time to come, saying, what means the testimonies and the
statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God hath commanded
you? Then shalt thou say unto thy
son, we were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought
us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and the Lord showed signs
and wonders. Isn't that something? See, you
and I here at Grace Gospel, we're no different than those Israelites
were. We were down in the crack house,
down in Egyptian bondage, out there in this world. We were
lost whether we were rich or poor, whether we were using drugs
or we were a millionaire. Lost! And God came to us. and the Lord showed signs and
wonders. Oh, this church has been so blessed 39 years. I can think of lots of bad things
and we have our warts, but I can think of more signs and wonders
that God has done here than any place I know of, and I've been
preaching a good long time now. i see signs and wonders and verse
23 says and he brought us out from thins that he might bring
us in he brought us out that he might bring us in and and
we're coming in too we're coming in lord i'm getting happy on my
insides here just And the Lord commanded us, verse 24, to do
all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always
that he might preserve us alive as it is at this day. Just think about it. You and
I should have been dead a long time ago, sleeping in our grave.
And here you are in the house of God, a former saloon, you're
sitting in the house of God, with the people of God and you're
gonna have Kentucky Fried Chicken downstairs in a little bit and
banana pudding, hallelujah. I know some of you haven't learned
yet over at Grace Centers, you need to learn this. I'm pretty
straight talker, not another hot dog. We're not having turkey again. Have you forgotten when you were
out there in that vacant house? Have you forgotten? Have you
forgotten when you were in the dumpster? See, what ought to happen to
all of those of you who are over there now when you walk in there
and see those hot dogs. Praise God and mustard too. We get to eat today. Hallelujah. Yeah. Look at chapter 7 of Deuteronomy. And when the Lord thy God shall
bring thee into the land, whether thou goest to possess it, and
hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Gragasites,
and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites,
and the Jebusites, and all those otherites, And when the Lord God shall deliver
them before they thou shalt smite them. In other words, it's God
who gave you the victory. Just turn over one page there
in Deuteronomy 7, 6. For thou art a holy people unto
the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that
are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love
upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than
any people, for you were the fewest of all people, but because
the Lord loved you. And because he would keep his
oath, which he had sworn unto your fathers, he brought you
out with a mighty hand. the blessed doctrine that God
chose you before the foundation of the world, predestinated you
unto salvation, sent His only begotten Son into the world to
pay your sin debt, to keep the law for you, to represent you,
and washed you white as snow. There's therefore now no condemnation
to those that are in Christ Jesus. and he gave you a new heart and
a new start. Thank God. Thank God. Look at chapter eight, verse
seven. For the Lord thy God bringeth
thee into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains,
and depths, and spring out of valleys, and hills, a land of
wheat, and barley, and vines, and figs, and trees, and palm
granites, a land of oil, olive, and honey. Wow, how God has blessed
us. Look at verse 11. Chapter 8 of
Deuteronomy, beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God. There it is again, don't forget. We have two memorial services
here, one is baptism, which is a type of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, so we don't forget. The water doesn't save us, the
ceremony act of baptism doesn't save us, but it says this, remember
he died in your stead. Remember he was buried, and remember
the third day up from the grave he arose. Remember he ascended
back into heaven to make intercession for you, all you lawbreakers. In our flesh dwells no good thing,
but we have an attorney that has never lost a case, who is
our mediator between us and God. Don't forget. lest when thou hast eaten, verse
12, and are full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein,
and when thy herbs and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and
thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied,
then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy
God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from
Egyptian bondage. Don't forget. Can we sing it together? Thank
you, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for giving to
me. Thy great salvation. Now you know why Dwayne leads
the singing and not me. But didn't you have a heart to
just break out in song? Thank you, Lord. Amen. Say, well, Pastor, I don't think
I would ever do that. Go over to, to forget, go over
to Exodus 15. I was reading this last night
and thinking, oh, that is, that is so us. I'm sorry. Is it Exodus 15? Anyway, it was
one month. Oh yeah, there it is. Verse 24. And the people murmured
against Moses saying, what shall we drink? They already started
murmuring. They murmured and over and over
they murmured. One month, I want you to think
about it, one month, after marching out of Egypt and the Red Sea
opening up on either side. That's 30 days. They've been
out of Egypt 30 days and they began to murmur. And they said something like
this, would to God we were back in the crack house. No, I mean,
would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord. Back in Egypt,
would to God we were shooting up. I don't know about, there's
so many rules here. You'd be surprised what I hear
all week long. It's only by the grace of God.
Yes, murmuring. I know some of you back there
right now, you're thinking, he must have heard what I said.
I did. I did. how grateful and thankful you
ought to be that when mom and dad had given up, when you'd
been to all the rehabs, 15, 16, 17, you're now almost 30 years
old, but you're still alive, and there's only one place in
the state of Michigan that will take you long-term. I hear it's
in downtown Pontiac, and they welcomed me with open arms. they have an eight million dollar
budget and all I have to do is just go there there and they'll
welcome me they'll take me in It's not only the drug addict
who's not grateful. I meet very rich people who have
so much to be thankful for and just complain, complain. I wanna
be somewhere in a real church where people are thanking God
all the time, just praising God. And isn't it something how the
Lord keeps you in spite of you, in spite of all your murmuring?
Verse 4 of chapter 16 says, then the Lord, they'd been murmuring
30 days past the Red Sea experience, then the Lord unto Moses, behold,
I will rain bread from heaven for you. Why? He ought to have
smacked us dead. You know, the Lord, it's a good
thing I'm not the Lord. because I get tired and upset
sometimes, and maybe a little self-righteous too. I'd just
smack. I'd squash you like a bug. You
don't like our hot dogs? Then go back where you were.
That's not a good way to feel, but I've often thought that.
Hey, I went before the judge and got you out of prison. Go
back and see the judge. I know some of you are really
gonna talk about me now. You're really gonna talk about
me now. How ungrateful they were. Now, I'm gonna give you just
a little history and then we'll have our dinner. In 1978, I was
perfectly fine in Danville, Kentucky. I just built our dream house. I had a herd of Angus cattle. I was living on a farm. I had
a barn. And five acres of tobacco. I'm
just being real today now. And a little Baptist church down
there that loved me and I loved them. and they all had great
cooks in the church. And then Bob Locke calls, who's
a longtime friend, his wife Angie is here, Bob's with the Lord, called and said, there's a little
group of us meeting up here, wonder if you'd come up and preach
for us one Sunday. And I thought, and I even said, Yeah, one Sunday. I'll come up
one Sunday. I have to get somebody down here.
I'll come up one Sunday. And then they kept asking me
to come up. And I was saying, you know, you
need to look for somebody else. I'm really not interested in
going anywhere. So we were building a new church
building in Danville. And I was the bulldozer guy. Actually, I was digging the basement
on a bulldozer, one of our members owned. And it wasn't very good. I didn't dig the basement very
good. But anyway, I remembered these things last night, and
I can remember how we got the basement dug. And we were right
in the, Forming of that building stage we got the walls up and
a tornado came through and blew it all down Well that didn't make me really
happy And I kept I kept driving up
here I had a little yellow Volkswagen I I was driving back one Sunday
night, about 3 a.m. in the morning, I was at Georgetown,
I remember this, just outside of Georgetown, 10 miles from
Lexington, about 30 miles from home, and I blew the motor up
at 3 a.m. I remember running along I-75
at 3 a.m. At that time, I was running and
in a little better shape than I am now and thinking in myself,
what's with this? Good things ought to happen when
you're, you know, doing what you can, feeling a little self-righteous. But at any rate, the longer I
came, the more I began to know I'm a goner. I'm gonna be out
of here, I'm gonna be leaving this. In fact, it got where I
couldn't wait till the weekends came and I drove those eight
hours up here to preach on Sunday morning to 16 people. I just
fell in love up here. And so in 1979, Pam and the girls
and I moved to Michigan. 1981, 82, 83, 84, I saw God began
to do things. In 1985, I was put on the mission
board across the street and I wasn't looking for that, but all the
while God had already set this up. If you read my text, you'll
see God's always out front. God doesn't lead from behind,
he's always out front. See, he already had this whole
thing set up. You're not here today by accident. 39 years ago, God had already
predetermined you to be here today, to hear the gospel, the
good news, the glad tidings. So I got on the mission board,
Pontiac Rescue Mission, as it was called back then, and I saw
this, I saw this very clearly. All we're doing over here, first
of all, we had, I'm on that thing now, but I'm gonna say it anyway,
pretty legalistic group over there on the board, and we were
beating up male alcoholics primarily, alcoholic men. We were a feeding
trough for addicts. come in, you get some food, we
give you a few clothes, if you need some clothes, then you can
go back out when you draw your welfare check and do the same
thing and come back in about two weeks and we'll give you
a bed and a shower and food, hot dogs by the way, and you
can... And we just did that over and
over and over again. Pretty soon, I began to cause
trouble on the board. I began to say to them, all we're
doing is keeping drug addicts alive. That's all we're doing.
And I'm telling you, honey, if your life just consists of breathing
oxygen, breathing in and out and using, you don't have a life.
You really don't have a life. So at any rate, I began to push
the board a little bit about starting a program, life skills
program with the gospel at the heart of it. And I said to them,
we need a church to come alongside where these folks have their
own pastor and they're in God's house every Sunday and they're
hearing the gospel preached to them and perhaps God in sovereign
grace will regenerate them and do something on the insides of
them. So the board wasn't real happy
with that. And so I decided I was gonna start my own rescue mission
with a church. And then they said, okay, okay,
okay. In fact, we'd like for you to
be the CEO of this one. We lost our CEO over there and
they made me CEO. I thought that was so weird really
at that time. But God had planned that back
when I was down on the farm with Angus cattle. And of course, God has been so
in these 39 years. Weird and awful things happen,
but God is in charge, and He works all things for our good
and His glory. Don't ever think because something
bad's happening in your life that God's gone fishing. He's
right there. And great things can come out
of bad things happening, and God did that. Well, let me just
tell you of a few of God's miracles. We formed the men of grace. Well,
we had men and women of grace. That didn't work out too good. And we were traveling all over
the country, but we formed the Men of Grace. Men of Grace have
brought in probably more money than any fundraising activity
we had. Not only money, but Men of Grace
got churches all over the country to start supporting us and helping
us. I'll tell you this. The vice
president of Pepsi was going to come over there to the center,
and we had that little men of grace group, and we had our own
van with 100,000 miles on it. We were going everywhere, preaching
all over the country. And they heard that the vice
president of Pepsi was coming. And so they said, Pastor, we
got a jingle together. And when he comes, we're going
to sing it for him. We might go on TV and do Pepsi
commercials. I didn't say anything, but I
didn't think that was going to happen. Anyway, he came, we showed
him through, they did their little Pepsi commercial. And he said,
you know, the people out in New York do that. I don't really
have any power over that. Our advertising firm does that.
But I'll tell you what, I'll give you $10,000 to make your
own CD. Pepsi will. And Pepsi gave us
$10,000. Well, we made our first CD. and sold over $500,000 worth
of that CD. $500,000. Pepsi bought $60,000
worth of those CDs and gave them all to their employees as a Christmas
gift. That's true. Now I'm going somewhere with
this because it's already 13 after. I have a list of miracles
I was gonna tell you about. But anyway, this coming Tuesday, Pepsi's coming to town to honor
Grace Centers of Hope. Now when I say Pepsi's coming
to town, I'm talking about a private jet from New York. From New York. with the president, the vice
president, the financial person of Pepsi. They're all flying
in here for a very special presentation downstairs. We're gonna have
at 2.30 on Tuesday. There's gonna be a presentation
downstairs in this building. Isn't that something? Somebody said, well, You know,
two years ago, they came in and saw Grace Centers and gave $20,000. Well, it'd be nice if it was
$100,000. I don't know, and the reason
I'm telling you that is because you don't know, God is doing
something here. I do know that. And I know there's
a reason he's doing it here, because we don't take any of
the praise. We don't take any, and aren't we a motley crew?
You got a Kentucky hillbilly preacher who screams and yells, and God just keeps blessing and
blessing. I could tell you all kinds of
stories. I was thinking about, you know, we bought the church
building up the street, which is our women and children's building.
We raised a million 40,000 quarters. We hadn't much more got that
building than they said, there's structural damage to this building.
The roof has to come off. Oh, it was gonna cost $100,000.
Somebody came in and took the old roof off. And for two weeks,
with the old roof off, we had four walls, and it rained every
day for two weeks. And then they put the roof on.
And you say, well, what's such a miracle about that? Well, it
didn't cost us anything. God did all that, corrected that. You know, God was back there
when that little girl brought 15 quarters. When I said on WMUZ,
you know, if we had a million quarters, we could pay cash for
this building. And Susie brought her piggy bank
in with 15 quarters. The next morning I got on WMUZ
and said, well, Susie brought in 15 quarters. We need 995,085
more. And we've got that million quarters
in 13 months. We raised 1,040,000 quarters
and paid cash for that building. God knew that way back 14, 15
years ago. We got the building and the city
said, no, you can't put women and children in there. We're
not going to give you a variance. And 14 years later, God gave
us $5 million and we got women and children in there. That's
what I'm talking about. You know, President Bush came
and Vice President Cheney came to Pontiac and Shannon and I
introduced them. At that time she was Miss Michigan.
And we were trying to get the variants for the women and children's
shelter and the city didn't The city didn't like me introducing
President Bush and Cheney, and they didn't like us having a
Women and Children's Center here too. We were enlarging our borders. And so they raided the mission.
We're the first faith-based rescue mission ever to be raided at
4 a.m. in the morning by the SWAT team. And they took 34 of you out of
here. At 3 a.m., by 4 o'clock the next
day, you were all back. And they tried to booger bear
you by, if you come back to Pontiac, we'll raid this place again.
We'll come back and get you. And so I said to them, let's
just go turn ourselves in. So 200 of us marched up Saginaw
Street with every TV channel in the state of Michigan on us. And I'm screaming, this is crazy,
for them to have raided the center. They had police officers here
every week, because we don't want it to be a hideout, right?
We want people getting their life back. And so they would
check our records and look at pictures at some of you, and
they still raided us, because they didn't like us. And it looked
like we were going to, it didn't look good. I don't want to go
through it again, but here's the miracle. So I'm meeting with
the development team and I'm saying something like this. We
had just changed, I mean, just changed the name to Grace Centers
of Hope. And everybody on the development
team was saying, how are we gonna get the name change out there?
How are we gonna get it out there? And God said, well, I'm going
to send, the mayor's going to raid the place. I'm gonna have
the mayor raid and the captain of the police force, and they're
going to make a big deal about you selling drugs over there.
But what's going to happen is the President of the United States
is going to call, the Secretary of HUD is going to call, and
you're going to be on the headlines for at least two to three weeks.
And everybody is going to know that it's not Pontiac Rescue
Mission, but Grace Centers of Hope. Well, I could tell you so many
awesome stories of what God has done in 39 years. And God's not
through with miracles. We're just getting going here.
Our God is going to do so many greater things. All right, let's
stand together and praise Him. Joe, you can come here, and if
you ladies want to go down and get that banana pudding ready
for us. All right, pastor, we want to
do something special. We know your birthday is coming up. Let's say happy
birthday to pastor, happy birthday. And also it's the birthday of
the church. So today we're going to do happy birthday and we want
all of y'all to give the shout back for us, okay. Here we go. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. It's your birthday. Happy birthday to you. A happy birthday to you. A happy birthday to you.