The God of Another Chance | Pastor Chris Gilkey

two things down, okay? The first one is, I'm an audience participation kind of a guy, okay? So I'm not here to talk to you, I'm here to talk with you. I'm here to be a vessel of God to speak into your heart. Amen? Second thing is, the number one question that gets asked of me, and I promise you, it's been asked of me since I was little, and it keeps getting, it was just asked of me this past week, and here's the number one question. You ready? What is wrong with you? And I have the same answer all the time. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure that out. Why am I telling you that? Because I'm gonna get a little bit wild today, and I'm gonna say some things that normally probably aren't said in church, and you're just gonna probably wonder for a second, what's wrong with this dude? And the question to that, and the answer back to you is, I don't know. So I know how to be myself. I know how to be, see, God didn't choose you to change who you are. He called you just as you are to help you be somebody to somebody else that needs a you in this world, right?

Jesus didn't tell his disciples to change everything about their personality. He just called them to follow him, and in the following, the morality changes, and the heart posture changes, but you gotta be yourself. Peter kept being Peter, right? He's foot-in-mouth Peter the whole entire time, and he took that all the way to the end. Like, you just gotta be yourself, and so only thing I know how to do is just be me, and you may like it, you may not, and then we'll find out what is done, but I'm gonna tell you a little bit of backstory, and I'm gonna tell you some principles that God has given me through that backstory that I have held onto, three really big principles that I've held onto that I believe is gonna help you today. It's gonna help you not just today, but in the days to come. See, I grew up in a highly, highly dysfunctional family. If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, just don't be embarrassed about it, raise your hand. If you grew up in a perfect family, you got that leave it to beaver stuff, raise your hand. It's okay if you do, it's great if you do. Couple of you guys had good homes, that's awesome. It's better to have that home than it is the dysfunctional home. What I know is every family has a level of dysfunction. My family, you know, there's like dysfunction, then there's like highly dysfunctional,

and then there's cray-cray dysfunctional. And my family was up in that stratosphere. My mother was married five times. Listen now, four children to birth, and I'm the only one out of one of the five marriages. So you get a picture, my mother was with a new man about every six months to every year. I moved 38 times before I graduated high school. I changed schools 28 times before I graduated high school. And so life was crazy. She was married or dating gangsters and bikers. And I mean, just, it was causing my head to spin. I mean, one day we'd have a biker, the next day she was with a hillbilly from West Virginia that was trying to teach me how to fish on the first day. And then the next month, all of a sudden, at one point she married this dude, this black dude. He was seven foot two, 300 pounds. He was Baby Shaq before Baby Shaq was Baby Shaq. And she married, watch this now, she fell in love with him while he was in prison. I still don't understand how that works, but somehow the day he got out of prison, they get married. He comes to the home and that's dad. And that became dad for me for about seven years out of my life. And then there was a next one and the next one and the next one. And this whole time in our home, it was the party central. It was drugs, alcohol.

I started smoking dope, drinking beer, shooting tobacco at eight years old. I just, I didn't understand that there was a different life other than the life I live. We had no kind of religion or faith. My mother was a non-practicing Catholic. She's an Italian lady. She's non-practicing Catholic. Anybody ever hear of a non-practicing Catholic? Can I tell you what a non-practicing, I'm a non-practicing NFL middle linebacker. That's what I am. I'm a, if you ain't practicing, you ain't playing, right? So that was her background, but she never went to church. I went to church twice in my whole life for funerals, Catholic church, walked into it, and wondered how I could steal all this gold and take it to the pawn shop to buy what I needed, right? And so just didn't get it, didn't understand it. And then my life was so bad. I mean, I'm telling you some real things today. Like sometimes beaten so severely, I couldn't go to school for weeks, could barely walk for days. Watched my sister raped on two occasions by two separate men my mother brought into the home. Like that's the upbringing I had. I grew up in a place called Youngstown, Ohio. It is the armpit of America according to USA Today.

It is in the top three of murder per capital, crime per capital, and poverty per capital of the nation every single year. And I was, I was either in the hood, and then when she'd marry a hillbilly or a date somebody, then we'd move to the wood. And I'm going to tell you what I found out, there ain't a whole lot of difference between the hood and the wood. A lot of bare feet people walking around, a lot of teeth missing, a lot of pregnant women. There's a lot of, a lot of similarities. And so in all that upbringing, I got this, this emptiness that just begins and then continues to expand and grow. And it felt like it was dead center in my chest. That there's got to be more to life than this. There's got to be a better life than this. And I was the youngest of the four and, and I watched my brothers in and out of jail and all that stuff. And, and that emptiness started to drive me and I figured, you know what, it is, I need to achieve. I need to be better than them and I need to do, I need to do better for myself. So I put a plan together from a young age that I'm going to, I'm going to earn a scholarship into college through sports and then I'm going to go into the Marines. My dad, who I barely knew at the time, he was a Marine as well, decorated war hero in Vietnam and, and I didn't know him much, but I knew his parents and I got to hear all the stories and I just, it got in my heart from when I was young, I'm going to be a Marine. And there's two things my dad told me. I met him three times before I turned 18 years old and, and when I was about 15 years old and he said, I'm going to give you two things, son. If you're going to be a Marine, then go on, go into the officer side of the branch. Don't go into the listed. You'll get paid better and get to tell people what to do versus getting paid worse and getting

told what to do. And second was, don't ever buy a brand new truck. Always buy a slightly used truck. And I'm thinking, this is your best you got, bro, like 15 years of my life. You've been gone and this is the best you got. And but they, there was some wisdom in it, right? And so all that said, you know, I'm, I'm looking, I got a plan. I'm good at sports. I'm accelerating all the way through and every achievement, I'm trying to fill that emptiness. I'm trying to, trying to fill that hole, trying to fill that void in my life and just kept going and going and going. And I was achieving and achieving. And I ended up wrestling and boxing and playing football and achieved high levels at, at all three of them was a Golden Gloves boxer champ and, and was a state champion runner up in, in wrestling. And, but it was all state wrestler and then football was really good for me and I was good at it. And, and by the time I got in my senior year, I had 27 scholarship offers on the table. Now for a kid coming from where I came from and the life I live, man, this is, this is a dream come true. And then my senior year, three months before graduation, we got a guest speaker coming in and we had a massive auditorium is probably about five to six times larger than this auditorium, big high school. And they brought our whole senior class together to, to have like a safe sex talk, you know? And this guy blows up a condom the size of a beach ball and I pop it up in the air in the middle of a safe sex talk and I, and I start that song, hip hop hooray. And I get the whole crowd playing volleyball with this prophylactic object and principal comes who's now the acting superintendent and, and he comes and he says, Chris Gilkey. And I was sitting kind of in the middle. I said, yes, sir.

He said, front and center. He was in the Navy and love, love, love some military terms. And so I had to, I had to, I had to wiggle through everybody and I get to him. I said, what can I do for you, Mr. Jones? And he said, you need to get to the office right now. I said, for what? He said, because I know you did that. I said, but did you see me do it? He said, no, I didn't see you do it, but I know you did it. I said, Mr. Jones, I'm going to tell you like I tell the police. If you didn't see me do it, I didn't do it. And if anybody needs to hear this guy's got to say, you know, it's me. So I'm gonna go sit back down. I went to go sit back down. He put his hands on me from behind. I turned around out of rage and I knocked a dude out. Stiff leg, I'm talking snot bubbled, eyes rolled in the back of his head, just knocked straight down. Whole place goes wild. I mean, it was like Arsenio Hall, whoo, whoo, whoo. I mean, everybody's just on their feet, but I'm, I'm not celebrating. I realized everything I had tried to work for my entire life to get to a place, I just destroyed in one second over a lion that I couldn't tame. And there was cops there because we had that kind of school and I got billy clubs in the back of the knee. The county jail was full, so they sent me to a regional prison. Now I may look like I'm built for prison, but I promise you, I am not. I spent five days in the clink and I wanted no part of it for the rest of my life. And on that fifth day, I stood before the judge and he said, said, what did I tell you the next time I saw you?

I said, you told me you're gonna throw the book at me. He said, well, get ready for the book. You're facing a seven-year minimum state penitentiary sentence. But somebody came in with a different plan, but I told him, you're too hard-headed. You probably need prison. I was like, who needs prison? Like, I'm 18 years old. I don't think I need prison at this point in my life. And then he said, well, they came in, but I sent them away because I didn't think you'd listen to it. I said, sir, can I speak? And he said, yes. I said, I don't know who that was, and I don't know what that plan was, but I say 100% yes right now if I don't have to go back in there. And he said, you really mean that? I said, yes. And they sent the bailiff out, and the bailiff comes walking back in with my dad and the entire Marine Corps recruiting station all in their dress blues. And they had put a plan together. Now I was not gonna go to Officer Candidate School, but now I'm gonna go in the listed, and then I had to make everything happen in a very certain way and graduate

and do well in all these things. And my sentence would be put in abeyance, which is like the cloud before the cloud was there. And if I completed all these different, I had to go to anger management. I do all this stuff. And if I get through all that and then graduate bootcamp, and then that sentence goes away like it never happened. I was like, okay, cool, this is something. I mean, this is like the best news ever. You're telling me I still get to be a Marine instead of going to prison? Like, I'll take that deal every day. And then I get in the Marine Corps, and man, I fall in love with the Marines. It filled that emptiness, not fully, not permanently, but it filled it a lot more than anything else had yet. But I kept chasing that achievement, that achievement. I was first in my graduating class of bootcamp. Then I was first in combat training. Then I was first in sniper school. Then I was first, I mean, just first, just first. And I kept chasing that first because I gotta get that. I gotta get that next. I gotta get that next. I gotta fill this emptiness. I gotta shut these voices out. I gotta silence all the, I hated silence. Anytime it was silent, I just heard so many voices that it was driving me freaking crazy half the time.

And in the middle of all this, I find out a girl that I'd been with one time, and she was pregnant now, and I didn't want my baby to grow up without a daddy like I grew up without a daddy. So I married this girl that I barely knew. I mean, I barely knew her. And I married her, and we started a life together. It's crazy. She comes from a crazy, abusive background. I'm coming from my background, and we're trying to figure out and navigate this work without God in the center. And it was near impossible. And then all of a sudden, fast forward, my daughter's born. She's now just turning six years old. And all of a sudden, when we're on base in the Marine Corps, she wants to go out and play basketball. We lived at the edge of a street, kind of like a cul-de-sac, and had a basketball hoop up there that me and my best buddy across the street shared together. And she wanted to go out and play basketball. And so I said, well, go ahead, honey. I was like, you know, helicopter dad. I was attack helicopter dad. I never let that girl out of my sight. And I let her out of my sight for two minutes as I put my shoes on.

And all of a sudden, she comes running, screaming bloody murder within a minute of being outside. And she's telling me that something hit her foot, something hit her foot. And I'm like, baby, something doesn't hit your foot. You hit your foot on something. Like, I'm so analytical, I'm an idiot. And she's just screaming, no, daddy, I went into the tall grass to get the basketball, and something hit my foot. And I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. And she's super dramatic about the whole situation. And I was kind of single dabbing at the time. And so I carried her into the house and washed her foot off. And what was crazy is, is what I'm about to tell you was on her foot. I've been trained to know how to identify like this. I could recite it to you out of the Marine Corps manual, that a venomous snake bite is two triangular puncture marks approximately two to three centimeters apart with a blood-like, fluid-like substance leaking out of it. And that's exactly what I was looking at, but I couldn't connect the dots that she had been bitten by a rattlesnake. So I take her to the hospital. Three days later, her foot and her calf look like a balloon, big blood blisters. I'm talking, I don't know if you've ever seen a rattlesnake bite, but it looks horrific. It looks like chemical warfare.

And so she's in the hospital this whole time. And I just start feeling like more helpless and more hopeless than I've ever felt. And I don't know how to navigate it. I don't know how to get a way out of it. And then each day she just got worse and worse and it just kept climbing and climbing. And that third day, the head surgeon from the military hospital came to me and he asked me a weird question. He said, hey, is Candace afraid of helicopters? I was like, I don't freaking know. I mean, she's never been on one. Well, what does that got to do with price of race in China? I was like, what's happening right now? And he said, well, we have to medevac her to the children's hospital, Eastern Carolina University's children's hospital to do the amputation. Her life's in danger. She's about to lose her life. So she must lose her life. Leg, somewhere probably from the knee down, we're hoping to save the thigh. And in that moment, I just felt at the absolute most rock bottom that my life has ever been. I've sworn by her to protect her, to guard her, to not let anything hurt her. And here this is, I can't do anything about it. And what was crazy is, is my brother, he's older but he's the middle one, used to be a drug dealer, now was running a drug and alcohol rehab center that was Christian based.

And I thought it was just a big ruse. I thought he had the greatest gambit going of all time. I'm like, I know what you're doing. You're getting all these drug addicts together so you can sell drugs real easy. Like, you're helping them go get jobs so they got money to buy the drugs. Like, you ain't fooling me, but it was legit. And he had gave me a word six days before that happened, that God was about to intervene in my life in a way that I would never, ever forget. That there was a danger coming in and that God wanted to rescue me from it. And I didn't believe it in that God stuff. I was kind of an agnostic. Didn't think all this just happened, but wasn't really sure how I can believe in a loving God. When I went through so much trauma and craziness growing up. And so now that word comes back in my head and I'm like, I didn't listen. Once again, Chris didn't listen. This could have been avoidable. This is my fault. This is on me. That's a lying, that poser, not the real lying, right? That poser just put it all on me and I felt so helpless, so hopeless. I go home, I call my brother up. I'm in my bathroom. They told me that they're medevacking her. I got about two hours before surgery. Go get packed and get up there and it's about an hour drive. And so I get in the bathroom. I call up my brother. I got one of those 1999 cordless telephones with the big antenna. I was pimping back then.

And I call him up and I tell him everything that's happened. And he said, Chris, God actually gave me that word for you in two parts, but told me to save the second part for when you called because you weren't going to listen to the first. I was like, all right, I'm listening. And he said, I don't know, I didn't know what this meant when I wrote it down, but here's when he calls, tell him if he surrenders to me, I'll take it away like it never happened. And I didn't do wow, I got ticked, I got super ticked. I got enraged, because how is that possible? That's impossible. She's about to have a leg amputated, there's no taking this back. And so I cussed him out, threw the phone against the wall as hard as I could, shattered it in a bunch of pieces. And I still don't know why I did this part, but I pounded on my chest like a gorilla in the mirror. And I yelled at a God that I really didn't believe in. And I'm like, if you got something to say, why don't you man up and come say it face to face? I wanted to walk out of my bathroom, I grabbed a hold of the doorknob, and it felt like 1,000 volts of electricity shot into my body. I was cleaned off of my feet, I landed about five to seven feet back on my hands and my knees, I've never been knocked down like that in my life. And I immediately went to stand up, and at the time, I was bench pressing 455, I was dead lifting 675, I was squatting 735, I wasn't small, right? And I'm trying to push up to get back up, and I feel someone's hand just come and rest on my back, and it is immovable. I'm talking so powerful, I couldn't move it a millimeter. And all of a sudden, I'm just giving it everything I got, and there's nothing happening, and it starts to break something inside of me.

I'm like, there's something better than me out there. There's something stronger than me out there. I don't know what this is, but this ain't right. And then all of a sudden, all this beautiful, I mean, I'm telling you, purest, whitest light you can imagine, started to pour into the room like waves from the ocean. And as every wave of light hit me, I never read the Bible in my life, never heard the Bible preached. But yet, I would later read it and see everything that God was doing in my life. I felt a love that was unconditional. With the next wave, I felt a peace that passes all human understanding. With the next wave, I felt a courage that was beyond human ability. Like all this stuff starts to happen, and this dude, I told you what I started doing at eight. Let me tell you one thing, I stopped doing at eight, and that was crying. My brothers taught me how to use these instead of how to do that, and that was my way out of everything, is I'm a fisted out of everything. So I didn't cry since I was eight years old. When my daughter was born, my eyeballs did sweat, but there is a difference. Sweating is just, stays here, okay? Nothing on here. And so I end up just breaking. I'm talking about that ugly cry. I don't know if you ever had an ugly cry. I had not had an ugly cry. Actually had had ones. I mean, it was a, you know, that kind of, that kind of cry you can't catch your breath. I got tears squirting out of my eyes, snot running out of my nose,

drool dripping out of my mouth, and I'm just, I'm breaking. And I don't even understand why. I don't understand exactly what's happening. But as I'm looking around, now there's no room left. There's no bathroom left. It's just bright white light. And in the midst of that light, steps a vision of Jesus. And I didn't see that milquetoast Jesus that religion likes to paint, that little white boy under the tree with blonde hair and blue eyes holding that little sheep. Like, no, I saw the Jesus in Revelation 19. His eyes were full of fire. He had crowns stacked upon his head. His feet were of bronze, and across his chest was written his name, which is the word of God. And when he spoke, it sounded like the thunder met the ocean and everything on the inside of me quivered in fear. And he said, you wanted me face to face, so here I am. And I was like, I take it back. I totally take it back. I'm sorry, Jesus. I take it back. And then what Jesus did in that bathroom was absolutely nothing short of miraculous. He said, you have denied me, and you have not wanted to believe in me your whole life

because all the trauma. But let me show you something. And then he just, kind of like a life flashing before your eyes moment where I saw my storyline quickly going. And instead of every moment of severe, severe trauma, of me being alone in that trauma, I saw Jesus holding me, keeping me until this day. And then he said to me, if you'll give me your life, I'll use your life to tell this story all over the world, and I'll heal your daughter. And I was like, that's a good deal. Like, I'd have made that deal without that deal. Like, I was already sold, but that's a really good deal. And so I took that deal. I got up to the hospital, got in the pre-op room. They've already sedated her, so she's high as a kite. She thinks she's flying backwards and stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I've been there, baby. I was like, it'll be all right, you know? She's got to wait it out. But I'm laying across her belly, stroking her hair. The surgeons take the bandages off of her leg, getting ready to prep her for surgery, and mad chaos breaks out. They just can't explain it. They put a sheet back over her foot, and they tell me they need some more time. They walk out in the hallway.

I run out in the hallway, and I said, gentlemen, I didn't know what's going on right now. And there was this white dude and this Asian dude, and found out later the white dude was an atheist, the Asian dude was a Hinduist. And I said, I didn't even know what's going on. They said, we don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know? They said, from the pictures, the faxes, the conversations from the military hospital, like, we knew we're amputating mid-thigh down at a minimum. We're just hoping to save part of it for a prosthetic. Okay, get on with it. And they said, there's nothing wrong. I said, what do you mean there's nothing wrong? They said, there's no swelling, there's no infection, there's no toxin, there's literally nothing wrong. It's like it never happened. Except one thing. This is crazy. Where they had surgically removed the original bite mark, had the biggest, they call it a blood vesicle, it lifts up every layer of the skin. It's like a massive blood blister. They had cut that off, man had cut that off. To try to alleviate the swelling. And that was the only area that wasn't healed. And I said, so I can take her home? They said, no, we need to do a skin graph, take some skin from her backside

and lay it over that in the morning so she doesn't get another infection. And I said, no, you're not gonna touch her. They said, what are you talking about? I said, I don't think you understand what I'm telling you. And I told them all about Jesus in the bathroom. Hey, look, you know when someone's looking at you like you ain't got it. You're like, what's wrong with you? Like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, I know you're looking at me like I'm crazy, but I have an answer that you don't. And they said, okay. And then, man, that Asian dude had the best comeback ever. He said, well, tell your Jesus he's got till 6.30 in the morning because that's what time surgery is. I was like, okay, I'll let him know. Some pressure, let's go. I go into the bathroom, into a room, literally, true story, I didn't know where to find Jesus. Like, yo, you in there? There is a throne, you know. I was like, where you at Jesus, I need you. He never came, no white light, no nothing. About midnight, I just feel this sense, this voice, this inner voice that I had never really heard before. Just say, rest, I've got her. I go to sleep in a room on a recliner, I wake up at 6 a.m. with that Hinduist doctor

holding her foot in his chest, rocking back and forth because he had told me the day before, if you're Jesus, do this in front of me, I'll believe in him. And I said, that's probably the only reason why he hadn't done it all yet, let's just see what happens in the morning. He's holding her foot in his chest, he's weeping like a child. I fly up off the chair, I don't know what's going on, I'm like, doc, is everything okay? And he shows me her foot and it's completely covered in skin, it's a regenerative miracle. And the only question that man had is, how do I get Jesus in my life? And so we got our knees down on the side of the bed, we start praying the sinner's prayer, and I didn't even know what the sinner's prayer was, just to be real honest with you. I just was kind of faking it until I made it because I just got saved the day before. And so I'm just telling him, I'm just figuring it out, it's like, wait, and then in walks the other doctor, and he's like, what is going on? And the Hinduist is like, just come look, just come look. And he shows him, he just starts bawling, he gets down on his knees. So I led a Hinduist and an atheist to Jesus within 12, well, 24 hours of me giving my life to Jesus. And then God calls me to get out of the Marine Corps

and to go into vocational ministry, and that was a big deal for me, because I wanted to, I planned to do 30 years minimum in the Marine Corps, I had high goals. I was chasing that thing, that thing, that thing. All of a sudden that thing was filled. And it was filled beyond comprehension, it was filled, I could tell, like, this isn't going anywhere. This is done, like, I'm not just filled, but I'm overflowing, I'm overflowing every single day, like, I don't need to chase that thing anymore. So it was easier to say yes to God in that moment, that I would get out, and then I ended up breaking my neck, and all kinds of crazy stuff happened, and ended up getting medically retired anyway, and it all worked out in God's plan. And then went from there to traveling the world preaching the gospel, led about 150,000 people to Jesus in the first few years across Africa, and Asia, and Europe, and God just doing what only God can do. I built three youth centers, one in Columbus, Ohio, another one in Youngstown, where I'm from, and then another one in St. Louis, Missouri, and we led 78,000 young people to Jesus in 10 years doing that, which is pretty awesome. And then we went down to where, honestly, I had no clue I'd ever be going. God had spoke to me. When I first got saved, when I was in the hospital, I got the only Bible that they had in the library,

it was a King James Bible, and I read the entire New Testament in two weeks, and I got it. I was like, this isn't complicated stuff. Religion's made this complicated. Jesus made this simple. I'm just gonna go with Jesus. And now I'm on fire for him, and doing all this great stuff God's doing through me, and I knew, since those two weeks of reading the New Testament, that God had called me to start a church. I just didn't know when, and I didn't know where. And I had three cities picked out, and all of them had beaches, and all of them had Marine Corps bases. They all had something I love and something I know. And then God called me to Austin, Texas, and I'm like, what the, what the, what the? Like, ain't no beach, ain't no Marine Corps base. And I grew up in a very eclectic background, as you heard. I went down to Austin the first time to do my recon for it, and it was like the whitest city I've ever seen in my life. I was like, man, what am I supposed to do with these white people? I don't know how to, I don't know how to talk to them. But God said, this is it, this is home, this is the rest of your life, this is one of the largest unreached cities in America, and I've called you to reach it. So we go down there, we plant the church, and things go extremely well.

Church explodes like you guys are, and things just keep going well, but at home, things are falling apart. I'm talking like severely falling apart. My wife at the time, my daughter's mother, she had what I didn't understand, and come to know then, it's, you know, hindsight 2020 now, but she would later be diagnosed with a very severe mental illness that she started experiencing years before we moved to Texas, and she started self-medicating and trying to numb the voices in her head, and now all of a sudden, she starts having overdoses. I didn't even know she was taking stuff. Like, let me just tell you this, there's no such thing as a perfect marriage, and I'm no perfect man. Like, that's just super clear. Everybody's gonna have to deal with it. how to own their mess in the middle of it. I should have known what was going on in my house, but I was too busy doing it for the Lord. Where the scripture says, I can't take care of the Lord's house if I can't take care of my own. But I was too busy and I let it go under the radar, didn't understand what was happening until it was too late. She had become a full addict. I'm talking hardcore addict, in and out of rehabs, then in and out of mental hospitals.

And me and my daughter's now grown. She's got a kid and a kid on the way. And one day her mom just had a complete mental break. I'm talking snap, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs moment. Police had to be called to her house. This is why I'm pastor in a church. Police had to be called to her house and they had to arrest her. They had to strap her into a gurney. I mean, she was threatening police and it was wild. It was like what I grew up in, but maybe a little bit even more like a horror story, plus what I grew up in. And in the midst of all this, I'm trying to figure out what in the world is happening, God, like I'm just trying to do what you called me to do. Why is all this happening? And I never really got into business of questioning God until this moment. And then it got a little bit worse because I tried to fight through it all. I was better or worse, sickness and in health, trial and triumph. I'm dedicated, I'm sticking, I'm staying. And in that, all of a sudden one day she decides she's gonna leave. She gets on an airplane and just disappears. I have no idea where she's at. She's cut myself and my daughter off of all communication. I don't know if she's alive or she's not alive for weeks.

I didn't understand what was happening. And then all of a sudden I get served divorce papers. And here I am, pastor in a church, dealing with all of this and all the shame that's about to come with it. And I had no idea how to get out of it. And I got so frustrated. It's the first time since salvation I've really been honestly frustrated at God. And I just asked God, why? Like I've given my life to you. I've given up everything I wanted for you. Like I can't fix this. Like I can't fix this. And then all of a sudden he just said, yeah, you're right, you can't. But I can. I can redeem it. I can rewrite it. But you've been in the way. I need you to get out of the way. I got out of the way and I can't explain to you what God has done in my life. I've never been healthier. I've never been happier. I've never been more in love with God. I've never been more. God gave me a second chance at marriage. And I told it like this, I told the church like this, hey, if I blow this one,

there's definitely something wrong with me. Y'all should not stick around for the third. You know what I'm saying? But our church stuck faithful through the first one. And I don't plan to have an extra. God gave me a caliente Latina, you know? She understands like there's just a lot of spice in our house, a lot of good things happening. But all this blew up seven years ago and now it's been seven years. So it blew up 14 years ago is when that story I told you about her having the overdoses and then in 2018 is when she left. And so I'm seven years on the other side of it. I can tell you three things that I've learned. And the subtitle or the title to the message, if you want one, see God isn't a God of a second chance. God is a God of another chance. See another chance can mean the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. Now you don't wanna test God, but at the same time, don't discount God. So the God of another chance, and this is the three principles that I would say I've learned through all of that is the first one is that God is better than good. See, we hear this God is good and he is good all the time and all the time he is good and that is true. But I have personally experienced in my life he's actually better than that.

He's better than what I can imagine. I mean, you think about Psalm 139, seven through eight, and it says this, David says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. But listen to this last part, even if I make my bed in hell, you are there. That's how good he is. is name someone else that's willing to go to hell with you so here's the principle most men come to God because they want an easier life but I'm gonna tell you that God's better than that God's better than an easier life see God isn't in this for an easier life God wants this goal for you he wants relationship he wants himself to be the gift in your life that solves all the emptiness that answers all the unanswered this is the God that we serve he's such a good God second Timothy says it like this this is a trustworthy saying if we die with him we will live with him if we suffer for him or endure hardships for him then we will reign with him but if we deny him he will deny us but even when we are unfaithful he remains faithful for he cannot deny who he is see God's goodness isn't proven by what he gives you it's proven by who he is to you that's the first lesson second lesson is his plan is better and he's got a plan for your life and it's much better than any plan that you can come up with in Proverbs it says we can make our plans but the Lord determines our steps you see the greatest moments of my life were not when God gave me what I wanted because I wanted a lot of different things that I never got it's when God interrupted what I thought I wanted and even at times when I thought it's what he wanted for my life that's when God interrupted those plans and all of a sudden turned something and out of nothing into something beyond what I could imagine that's how good he is and Romans 12 1 & 2 this is this is kind of how you get there how do I get to a place where I'm in that kind of

relationship with God well he says dear brothers in verse 1 & 2 I beseech you I urge you I I'm compelled to almost beg you by the mercies of God to present your bodies or that doesn't mean just your physical body that's your entirety your body soul your spirit your life basically presents your life as a living sacrifice to God make it acceptable and holy and pleasing this is your spiritual service of worship and then he goes and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may know the good acceptable and perfect will of God that's for your life so let me tell you let me just tell to you like this a Christian life it isn't adding Jesus to your life that's not the way this works it's not adding Jesus to your plan it's abandoning your plan for his see it's transformation comes when surrender comes when you realize you don't got what it takes that vulnerability that pastor T spoke of earlier victory cannot come without vulnerability I got to be vulnerable I got to be honest with myself I couldn't fix myself I couldn't fix my daughter's situation I couldn't fix my marriage or the mental illness that she was experienced I couldn't fix it and I had to abandon myself and just trust God through the process in those past seven years our church has exploded from about 1,800 to 8,000 we were given a 13 million dollar property debt-free we just built a brand new building that holds 3,800 people per service on the highway like in seven years more has happened in seven years we've led 65,000 people to Jesus already in Austin Texas like more has happened in those seven years than happened in all the years preceding it so the third one I want to leave you with and we're gonna wrap it up with this can I get a couple minutes of y'all gonna probably take a leak can I get just a few extra minutes. I want to be respectful of your time. But this is the big one. This one anchors the rest like the first ones that you can't do it without it. But this one's the one that that keeps you holding to the first two. And it is this, it's about keeping the right perspective. If you guys

heard, Pastor T today even preached some of the scripture that was written by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul. Well, before Paul was Paul, he was Saul. And who Saul was was he was the chief murderer of Christians. He was like me before Jesus, he didn't believe in Jesus didn't believe he was the way he was actually so angry Christians that he was hunting them and murdering them and bringing them back to Jerusalem and chains. And he he went and requested letters from the the church in Jerusalem, the not the church, but the the Sanhedrin and the all the religious, pious nonsense that he got these letters of approval to go to Damascus to arrest men, women and children that were followers of the way and bring them back in chains to Jerusalem to face death. And as he was approaching all of a sudden, he gets knocked off his donkey onto his donkey. And there's great light shown around him. I'm reading this story two weeks into salvation, like really about a week into it. And I'm like, that was me. Like, that's exactly what just happened to me. Holy shmoly. How's this possible? That has happened to a dude 2000 years ago. And the same thing just happened to me a week ago. And all this white lights coming down around him. And all of a sudden, the voice of Jesus comes. And he asked him a question. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul would say, but who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, the one whom you're persecuting. We're gonna pause there just for a moment. Here's where the couple minutes comes in. Told you I'm from Youngstown. Back in the day when I was growing up, they were no, they're notoriously known for robbing armored trucks. Now, I'm not saying I've robbed an armored truck. But somehow I know exactly how to do it. And I want to teach it to you. Hypothetically. Can I do that? So

every armored truck has three routes. It has a primary route, secondary route, and emergency route. If you want a chance to rob it, you can't take it on a primary too many police can't take an emergency because then the sirens gone off. Everybody knows it's trying to get robbed. You got to get it diverted onto its secondary route without it understanding and realizing that it's been diverted. Like it knows it's diverted, but it doesn't understand it's a setup, right? So hypothetically, you might want to like break a waterline in the street, get some good orange vests, some white hats, you know, go out there and redirect well before the trucks even coming through and, and they'll redirect it for you actually. And once you get redirected onto its alternative route, then you want to you want to lay out some spike strips, hypothetically, take the air out of its tires. And then you want to get a bigger truck like a dump truck or garbage truck. And you want to you want to blindside that sucker and pin it in you want to just T bone and get it pinned in. Hypothetically speaking. And then if you have a big imagination, then you can imagine doing something like this is you take C4 put it exactly three centimeters away from each hinge on the door. And you blow those doors off. But it's not done yet. Because the last thing you do is you got to get a settling torch hypothetically, make torches not great settling works better. And you want to cut a hole in that cage. Now listen, one question. What did that truck ever do to those thieves to deserve to be treated like that? See, the truck did nothing. The thieves don't give a rip about the truck. They care about what's inside the truck. And if you're going to be in this war, you have to understand your enemy. And Satan. Most people

say he was a worship leader of heaven before his fall. There's one scripture that could possibly allude that he was a musician. But here's what it clearly teaches in Scripture. He was a cherub. He was actually the chief of all cherubs. You got to understand what a cherub is. It's a guardian of the glory of God. That's why they're on the doors of heaven. They're on the the curtains in the sanctuary of the temple. They they're literally on the Ark of the Covenant. They're guarding glory of God. So his chief, he's the chief of the cherubs, whose job is to guard the glory. One day he decided he wanted that glory for himself. So he tried to come after that glory. So his throne won't be higher than the throne of God. And Jesus said it like this, there was no big war in heaven. He said, I saw Satan fall like a bolt of lightning. This fight was a fixed fight. It was over before it got started. God defeated Satan and cast him out. Why is that? What does that matter to us? What does that got to do with anything? It has everything to do with everything. Cause this is why when Jesus was on the cross and he gave up his spirit and the Bible says the earth was shook. The temple was cracked and the veil was torn into what is the significance of that? Well, the ark of the covenant lived in the Holy of Holies that was beyond that veil. In other words, the glory of God was found in a box behind the veil. Now the veil was torn into representing what Jesus would teach us all throughout the new scripture is that when we receive him, he is the glory of God. And now we have the glory of God living in us. So when that veil was torn, Jesus is letting you know the glory would no longer live in a box. The glory will live on the inside of each and every one of you. Cause his name is Jesus. Can you imagine Satan? Could you imagine an enemy that is so fierce? That is so tactical that he went after that same glory and got his tail whipped. And now he's watching God give a bunch of dysfunctional people like us that glory. What would your strategy be? So maybe today you feel like somebody has altered your route. You know, you're not on your primary route. You just become passive to stay on that secondary. Maybe today you're here and, and somebody has blindsided you. They, they came out of nowhere, maybe your best friend or your loved one or your wife or whatever, whoever it is. But you just feel

like I didn't see that coming. Maybe you're here today. It just feels like someone sucked the air out of you. Or maybe, maybe somebody's blown the doors off your life or someone's cutting a hole in your chest. Can I tell you the moral of this story? You are not the target. Listen to what Jesus said to Paul. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He didn't say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my believers? Why are you persecuting my followers? Why are you persecuting the followers of the way? He didn't say any of that. He said, why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus, the one whom you are persecuting. This is the revelation God gave me to get me out of the funk and the muck and the mire and get my feet back on steady ground and running is this is simple. I am not the target. You are not the target. We're just the truck carrying something far more valuable than the truck itself. And the devil himself hates it with everything he's got that us, that we have been chosen by God to carry the glory of God in this life and the life beyond. So what's his scheme? What's his strategy? He's either trying to rob you of it or keep you from it. But here's the good news. He doesn't have the authority without your permission. Jesus made you a promise that gave you something that no one can steal. No one can kill. No one can destroy. He's come to give you life and life abundantly. That's who Jesus is. I've been literally at the halfway mark of so many moments in my life. Right now I'm halfway from the divorce into the new afterlife of that moment. And I'm actually exactly at the halfway point of my salvation versus non-salvation years. I was unsaved 26 years. I've been saved 26 years. And I'm just believing. I feel like I'm just getting started. That God's got so much more for my life. He's got so much more for me to do. He's got so much more to do in me, but also through me and also for me. Like God's not done because God doesn't quit. And if there's one final piece I'll give you, it's just, it's simply, it's just that. Never give up. Keep moving forward. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it like this. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. I'm going to give you the Chris Gilkey version. Add a little Marine Corps into it. If you can't crawl, low crawl, baby.

But just keep moving forward. It's harder to hit a moving target than it is a still target. Don't let the devil have an easy target. Take this moment seriously. I can tell this man loves you. Every single thing he did today was serving. That's what a pastor does, by the way. A pastor isn't the leader of all men. He is the leader of all servants, because he serves. And he served you so wonderfully today, laying down such a foundation to give you the keys to unlock. That's what Jesus promised us we would have, keys to the kingdom that unlock all these things in our life. Take this serious. Take this time serious. Take this conference serious. But take the things that God has spoken into your heart serious. And you can take a look at two men that have stood up here and both said, we're jacked up. We know what we fixed, Jesse. God's not looking for perfection. He's looking for progression. God wants to rewrite your story. He doesn't want you to be able to rewrite your story, because you can't anyway. If you do, it just ends up becoming a horror story. But God wants to rewrite your story, make it into this beautiful love story of only God, only God, only God.

Amen. Can we give Jesus a big thank you for His Word today? Amen. Hey, heaven is celebrating, and we are celebrating with you. And we want to walk this journey together. So if you prayed that prayer, or you just want to know more about Jesus, follow the prompts that are on the screen right now. We are so proud of you. And honestly, God's vision for you is to see you live that better story, epic and eternal. We say it like this, to see you holy, healthy, happy and bring in heaven to earth. And if you're watching and you want to help others find Jesus like that, you can partner with us and together we can make that epic difference. Hey, giving details are coming up on the screen. And we just say, if God's blessed you, you can be a blessing to other people as well. And hey, if you're here in the South Florida area, we'd love to see you in person. Check out the description below for times and the location where you can come to a service. We would love to see you soon. This is History Makers Church, where friends truly become family. See you soon.