1 P a g e. Introduction

Transcription

1 Introduction Pastor Steve: I want to introduce to you one of my friends. This is Dusty Oglesby. Dusty is going, this morning, to share his story his story of deliverance that God has brought him through. We are going to press Pause on the Out Of Egypt series, our series through Exodus, this morning, and we ll come back to that next week. I m really looking forward to picking that up and jumping back into the Book of Exodus with you. Today I wanted us to just hear a little bit of Dusty s story. If you remember, back in the spring, we walked through the Book of Galatians together; that series was entitled Freedom Story. It just so happened that Dusty was part of an invitation to bring me to speak at a Christian school up in the Metroplex area. I was up there and he and I reconnected, and he told me his story of what God had delivered him through, and I said, Man we have got to hear your story at our church. We just couldn t make it work during the spring, but we could make it work this summer. I wanted us, as a church, to get to hear that, so today he is going to share that with you. He told me to tell you he has written it out because he said if he doesn t read it, he will talk for an hour. So he said he was going to try and communicate it as clearly as possible. I m really excited for us to hear that. Just so you know, Dusty and I went to college together at Hardin Simmons in Abilene and have been friends for some time. He currently works in real estate in Frisco, Texas. I just think that his story is important because it reminds us of the power of God s grace. No matter who you are or where you re at today, I want you to hear this truth: God can and will deliver you, if you choose to receive that grace. I hope that you will hear this story and remember that truth this morning. So let s give a welcome this morning to Dusty Oglesby. (Clapping) Dusty Oglesby: In Psalm 115:1, the psalmist writes, Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to You and Your Name be the glory because of Your love and Your faithfulness. The story I m sharing with you this morning is not about me or about my bride or about any righteous things that we have done. It is about Him and Him alone and about His love and His faithfulness. I stand here today because of that love and faithfulness and by His grace and by His mercy. As Steve said, I did write this out because, if I choose to just talk, we ll be here for a long time. First off, I want to thank you for allowing us the opportunity and honor to come and share the story of God s grace in our lives with you today. I am beyond humbled to be here with you. As Steve said, my name is Dusty Oglesby. I have a new life in Christ today and I m recovering from peoplepleasing, perfectionism, control, addiction to pornography, and a sexual addiction. I grew up in a very happy, healthy, loving Christian home one where I knew very well that my parents loved and valued myself and my brother. They were encouraging and present in every part of our lives, and there wasn t a single day, really, that went by that I doubted their love for me. My Dad was a Southern Baptist preacher in small-town west Texas, which is whole different testimony in itself. From the moment I was born, Church was a constant part of my life and my upbringing. Not only did I receive love and encouragement from my home every day, but I also felt very much loved and encouraged in the churches where I grew up. I was saved in one of those churches, at Calvary Baptist Church in Abilene, Texas, at the age of 13. I know and I remember like it was yesterday the moment that I knew that Christ died for me, that He called me by my name, and that His death and resurrection and His blood that He shed covered me. I know that on that day, in a moment and in an instant, He justified me and said, You are okay by Me. I know that He adopted me and said, I love you unconditionally and there s nothing that will ever separate you from My love. But to be very honest, that s where my faith and my learning and trust stopped. 1 P a g e

2 Even though I was told how valued I was and how loved I was on a daily basis from my parents and the people around us, I had this feeling inside of me that just said that I didn t measure up. As you can already tell, I m not the biggest fella that you ve ever seen. If you think that I m small today, you should have seen me growing up; I m a hoss compared to what I used to be. (Laughter) My size made me feel less than everyone else around me which led me to believe that I wasn t enough and I had to prove myself on every front. So from as early as I can remember, I began to find ways to bring attention to myself, either positive or negative, and I would use any means I could such as lying and manipulating or embellishing a story to make myself look better or sound better than it really was. I just never felt enough and I wanted everyone to think that I was. I also learned at an early age growing up as a preacher s kid, that everyone, or at least I thought everyone, was watching every move that I made. I was in the spotlight and I was expected to be different because I was a preacher s kid. I got very good at a very early age of performing in front of people and learned that the better I performed, the more attention I received, and the more attention that I received, the more I liked it and the more I felt better about me and the things that I struggled with. I wanted everyone to like me and affirm me, so I made it my goal to please everyone at any cost, be perfect and never make mistakes, and if I failed in any one of those areas, I learned how to lie and manipulate the situation to keep myself looking innocent and to keep it in my favor. As I mentioned earlier, my childhood was very happy but it was not perfect. I want to make it very clear today that I do not blame my parents nor the Church for any of my shortcomings or sin, but I did learn things as a child that I carried with me as I grew up and became an adult that only magnified the areas that I struggled with on my own. I remember as a kid my Dad having me get the mail before my Mom would come home and hide it in his closet. He would tell me there were things that Mom didn t need to see that might upset her, and so he was just going to look at it before he showed her. Being a kid, that made sense to me, and so I learned this behavior that it was okay to lie or hide things, as long as it meant you didn t hurt someone else or to try to keep from hurting someone else. I also felt as a kid that the learning that I understood was that God wanted me and desired for me to be happy. That was His goal for me. Not to say that He wants us to be miserable, but I took it that it was God s will for me to be happy every day of my life, in every situation, and the way I would know His will for me was based on the emotion of happiness. So basically I came to believe if I wasn t happy then something was wrong, and I needed to fix it or I needed to get out or do something different. The last major thing I learned as a kid was it was okay to make mistakes, but I learned that there was no reason to ever talk about them to anyone else or let anyone know. We didn t want anyone to think less or differently than the picture we put out. So basically as a child, my overall view of life was I wanted everyone to like me, that it was okay to lie and manipulate to get my way or keep someone from getting hurt, that I needed to be as perfect as I could be so that people would like me and affirm me, and if I made a mistake it was okay just don t tell anybody. And the ultimate goal of life is that we would be happy. At the age of 12 and 13, I had a few things that played major roles in my life. The first was I picked up a tennis racquet and figured out quickly that I was pretty good at it. All my life, being really small and having a brother that was older and bigger, I felt that I was always trying to match his footsteps, and I never could quite get there. So tennis was the first sport that I beat my brother at, and if you are a younger sibling, you 2 P a g e

3 understand that that feels really good. (Laughter) It was the only sport that it didn t matter how small I was. They weren t going to measure my height when I came in the door, so I made it my goal to become the best and my confidence started to grow quickly. The second major change was I gave my life to Christ. The combination of those two things gave me a new confidence that I hadn t had before. I fell in love with Christ, and I really started to desire to be like Him. However, my need for approval and perfection distorted what that looked like, and I thought that meant I had to follow Him perfectly. I thought that the day that I was saved, now I had to do right every day of my life. When I didn t, guilt and shame would step into my life and overtake my heart and overtake my mind. I remember, like it was yesterday as well, being at a buddy s house watching a movie and for the very first time in my life, I saw a sex scene on TV. It was my first exposure to anything sexual, and that day it grabbed ahold of me in a way that nothing ever had before. An addiction to pornography that eventually led to sexual addiction began that day, and it would wreak havoc in my life for the next 20 years. I found myself going from middle school into high school as a very different person than I had been growing up. I was no longer the little kid who felt inferior about my size to everyone around me, but I was now confident, well-liked, and affirmed by people. However, this began something new in me that was going to play out for the next 20 years as well. It began arrogance, pride, and being very well versed in lying and manipulation to get my way or make myself look good. My desire to be like Christ was still there, but it was trumped by the affirmation I received from everyone around me. I began to use even my relationship with Him for my own gain and for my own affirmation. I finally had what I wanted. Everyone seemed to like Dusty. I was the leader and go-to guy in my youth group at church. I was the top player on our varsity tennis team. I had friends, girlfriends, was confident, and I was happy. On the outside, everything looked great. It looked like I had everything together, but on the inside, the truth was I was a liar and a fake and a phony. While I walked around playing the part of the solid Christian leader who had it all together, I was doing everything short of having sex with girls, and I was struggling with pornography and acting that out with myself almost daily. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I had the attitude of the Pharisee in Luke 18 that prayed, God, I thank you that I m not like other people, robbers and evildoers and adulterers or even this tax collector. I thought at least I don t do things that other people do. I could do a lot worse. Leaving high school and going into college only made all these things that much more illuminated and magnified in my life. I received a scholarship to play tennis at a school in Colorado, so at the age of 18 I found myself living in my own apartment, driving a brand-new truck, and playing on a top-ranked tennis team. The only problem was, I was alone, I wasn t the best, and no one was there to affirm me. No one was there to make me feel better about me or myself; so out of fear, I bailed. I didn t want to have to recreate the world that I had so desperately tried to create in my hometown, trying to make everyone believe I was something that I really wasn t, so I dropped my scholarship and moved back home to Hardin Simmons in the town of Abilene where everyone was there to welcome me back, affirm me and coddle me, and no one tell me the truth. I played number one singles and doubles at Hardin Simmons. I was a leader on campus. I knew everyone. Everyone knew me. I majored in theology. I was a part-time youth minister at a church where people continued to affirm me, and I liked it and my ego continued to be fed. I could talk my way into or out of anything. I very rarely went to class and when I did, half of the time I cheated my through or manipulated my professors to work with me. At one time, I even had everyone believing in my world that I struggled with depression, and quite honestly, I was such a liar that I believed it myself. I had no one to call me out, no one to love me well, no one to hold me accountable in any way. I was king of my 3 P a g e

4 own world. Now that I was in college, not only did I continue to use girls physically, but addiction to pornography and acting that out was growing daily. I knew that my relationships were wrong. I knew that pornography was wrong. I knew that my heart was not right, but I justified it by priding myself that I had never had sex I had never gone too far. What is even crazier about this time in my life was that I was prideful, arrogant, a liar, a manipulator, and I had no clue. I was king of my own world and I was happy. That s the goal. Right? In the fall of 1998, I was asked to be the beaux for a sorority musical at Hardin Simmons. I thought, Fifty girls in one room and me. That sounded like a pretty good idea. So I walked into a room of fifty girls for our first rehearsal, but I remember only seeing one. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life, and I made it a point to find my way over to her. She introduced herself to me in the most beautiful country accent I had ever heard: Hi; my name is Brandi Burton. On May 20, 2000, Brandi Burton became my bride. I remember thinking in that moment, I will never, ever look at pornography again. I m going to be faithful to my wife. I don t need these things. I have everything I need in her. But I walked into my marriage, full of my secrets, full of my lies, full of my manipulation, full of my sin, and my wife had no idea. So I began to put my desperate need for affection and acceptance and affirmation on her and her alone. The next five years of our lives would prove to be extremely difficult. I thought Brandi would be everything that I needed. I put all of my hope in her. I thought she would affirm me at every turn, think that I was as wonderful as I thought I was, that we would never argue, that we would be able to have sex all the time, that we would be the model minister s family; we would buy a house, get a dog, have kids, and live happily ever after and I was wrong. I was not happy and neither was she. I was a full-time youth minister at a church in Abilene at this time. And while the ministry was growing and everyone thought that life for Dusty and Brandi was as pretty as it looked on the outside, on the inside our home was falling apart. My wife was screaming for my attention and love while I was screaming for her honor and respect, all the while doing nothing to receive that or deserve that and all the while only caring really what everyone else thought of me. When Brandi didn t give me what I felt like I needed, I would run deeper and deeper into the world of pornography where I could do whatever I wanted. I went as far as sneaking it into my office at the church, and I would even watch movies in the middle of the night while my wife slept in the next room. It was during this time that Brandi knew that something was not right, even though she couldn t put her finger on it. She saw my arrogance, she saw my pride, and she told me that she could not continue to live in the way that we were living, that she was going to move to Fort Worth, and that I needed to figure out how to get my life right. So by the grace of God, at that time I stopped doing everything that I was doing for a season. I resigned at the church. I never told anyone the truth of anything that was going on in my heart or my mind and we just left. I told Brandi that I wouldn t do anything in ministry for a year, and I would just focus on our marriage, and for the first time since I was a kid, I once again felt alone when we got to Fort Worth. I had no friends. I knew only Brandi and her family, so I really relied on Brandi, and I really began to make an effort. For a while, it was the best our marriage had ever been. I had a few months of freedom from my addictions; however, I eventually took a job in Dallas which meant I was driving about an hour to work and back. Being in the Metroplex allowed me to hide better, so I started taking pornography to another level because my flesh and our flesh is never ever satisfied. So I took my flesh to fantasy and I started frequenting strip clubs, massage parlors, on my way home from work. I would call and lie to Brandi and tell her that I was working late or there was bad traffic. I felt so guilty and full of shame that I would overly try with Brandi when I got home. She still had no idea what was going on. She was completely blind to everything I was doing. 4 P a g e

5 Trust me; this isn t the only thing I lied about in our marriage. If I could lie about it, I did whether it was money, or what I was doing outside of our home I was always lying. No one knew any of my secret sins absolutely no one, just me. I wish I could tell you that s as far as it went but it s not. My peoplepleasing, my need for approval, perfectionism, control, and addiction to pornography eventually led me down a road of full sexual addiction and paying for sex almost on a monthly basis. Somehow in the middle of all of this, Brandi said she was okay with me going back into ministry. I took this as a wake-up call and vowed to God that I would stop everything that I was doing. I can t tell you how many times I did that over the course of 20 years white-knuckle my way through my sin, manage it the best I could, and just do everything I could to try to stop. I was hired at this time as a Bible teacher at a Christian school in Fort Worth, and for another season things were great with Brandi and I. But it didn t take long for my wretched and wicked heart to become more focused on myself once again, than my wife, the Lord, or anyone else. My people-pleasing kicked into overdrive, and I became even more focused than ever on making sure that everyone affirmed me and that everyone liked Dusty, and I would do it at any cost. Once again, everyone seemed to like me and the picture was pretty, but at home my wife was fighting and clinging with everything that she had for hope for our marriage. Ministry and the recognition of others to fuel my ego were the only things I was concerned with. I remember telling Brandi on more than one occasion she was the only person in this world who didn t like me, thinking it was her problem. I was doing ministry, neglecting daily my relationship with the Lord; in fact, I really did not have one at all, and I fully was neglecting my relationship with my bride and in no way loving her as Christ called me to. This led to a promotion at my job which only increased my ego and arrogance and affirmed the selfish thoughts I already had about myself and my position. My addiction to pornography and sexual addiction continued to grow during this time to the point where I very rarely even felt guilty for what I did. I had everyone in my world manipulated to believe that I was who I said I was, and I constantly made my wife the bad guy to everyone around me so I could get them on my side. I honestly believed the lie that my wife was against me, that she didn t understand me or ministry, and that I had made a mistake in marrying her. I thought she was the problem. I was looking for an affair, and I was looking for a way out. One Sunday afternoon after Brandi and I had had an argument, I came home and she had put a set of my clothes on the back patio because it had got to the point where this was the only way she could even get my attention to understand that she was upset. So, I remember very well putting my clothes in my car and in all my pride, arrogance, and selfishness, I remember making the conscious decision, sitting on our driveway that day, that I was done. In May 2005, while my wife was at work, I packed up all my belongings at the house, I left, and I never set foot back in it again. I had everyone on my side, and I moved into an apartment by myself which made things worse. On the outside, I continued to paint the picture of a humble Christ follower who was a victim of someone else, while on the inside my wretched heart was running further and further from Christ and further and further from my wife. I started at this time to have a secret relationship with a student that I taught at the school I was at. My wife would come to my apartment every Sunday, and she would beg me to go to church with her. She would ask me to come home, and I would coldly and with no emotion tell her No. She later told me that she would come home every day after work, that she would lay on our bed and she would watch every car that went by, praying that the very next one might be me coming home. 5 P a g e

6 I was concerned only with feeding my ego and my flesh, and in September of 2005, the secret that I thought I had, the secret relationship, was revealed. I was fired from my job, and rightly so, and told to never contact anyone ever again. You would think that this would wake me up. You would think that it would make me understand where I was, but it didn t do anything but breed anger in my heart. Instead of seeing my own sin and repenting of it, I just ran further and further and deeper and deeper into the things that were killing me. I packed up all my stuff and once again moved back to Abilene where everyone would coddle me and affirm me. I continued in all of my lies, never telling a soul, including Brandi, the truth of my affair or the truth of anything else that I had done. I continued to manipulate and make Brandi the one in the wrong and put blame on her for my infidelity that if she was not the way she was, then I would not be the way that I was. I filed for divorce and on December 20, 2005, our divorce was final, citing irreconcilable differences. Brandi never wanted the divorce, and even up to the weeks and days before it was final, she still told me that she didn t care what I had done, that she loved me unconditionally, to just please come home and we would work through whatever it was. For the next two years, I wandered around continuing my lies, seeking to please everyone around me, finding every way I could to build myself up, increase my ego, blaming Brandi, blaming everyone else, and continuing on-and-off relationships with not only the girl I had the affair with but with others, and pornography and sexual addiction continued to grow and was a daily occurrence in my life. I was around people that loved and affirmed me, and they didn t even know who I was. As hard as I tried to maintain the picture on the outside, inside I was miserable. I hated myself. I felt disgusting. I was sick and I was dying. My lies and my life were unmanageable and they were out of control. By the grace of God, I took a job that relocated me to the Dallas area, and once again I found myself alone. One night, I sat in my apartment and after watching a pornographic movie and walking into my sin once again, I just fell apart. I broke. I laid on my floor and I screamed and I cried and I begged God to hear me. I didn t think about taking my own life at this time, but I wanted to die. The pain was just too great. I had just caused so much to myself and everyone around me. God put the name of my old college roommate on my heart, and all I could remember the last time I talked to him he was on staff at a church called Watermark. I looked him up and called him the next morning, and he and I met for lunch. For the first time, I began to start to sell someone the truth. He told me about a program which at the time was called Celebrate Recovery, and he was also the first person who turned to me and said, Dusty, reconciliation with your bride is not only possible but it s what God desires. I remember sitting there thinking, Did this guy listen to anything I just said to him? That night he met me at Celebrate Recovery. I walked in divorced, alone, angry, bitter, frustrated, addicted to sex, pornography and full of years and years of lies and secrets. In all of that, though, I still remember sitting there the first night thinking, I don t need to be in here. These people have real problems. (Laughter) We sang a few songs I didn t know because I hadn t darkened the door of a church in over two years. I heard a testimony that was great, but I thought, That doesn t really apply to me. Then we read Step 1: Realize I m not God. I admit that I m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is out of control and unmanageable. I didn t need to hear anything else. I knew that was exactly where I was. Step 1 was me. 6 P a g e

7 I went back the next week to open group, and I began to hear guys start to share their struggles. I literally couldn t believe that these guys were actually saying what they were saying. I thought to myself, There is no way on earth I will ever tell these people what I have done. That lasted one week. The very next week we walked in and they asked the question, How have you been a taker? I remember like it was yesterday, in that moment, that God broke me. I thought, All I ve done is take. I ve taken the heart of my wife and destroyed it. I ve taken my body and destroyed it. I ve destroyed every gift He has ever given me. For the first time in my life, I sat and I told 15 men that I did not know the truth of Dusty Oglesby. In that moment in that instant I felt freedom that I had never felt before in my life. James 5:16 tells us that Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Galatians 5:1 tells us that It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. In that moment, that night, He began to heal me and free me of years of lies and secrets. It was the day that I knew that new life was not only possible but that it had begun. Through Recovery, God revealed Himself to me and He revealed myself to me. Through working all the steps, I stopped blaming my bride. I stopped blaming the people around me. I drew the circle around myself, and I began to run to the Lord to fix everything inside of it. Working through my inventory and amends process has been and continues to be life-changing and very difficult. It has shown me my desperate need to own me and to run to Him. It s taught me to focus on my part and my part alone and what I need to change. I was able to sit down with Brandi during this time in my life and fully tell her the truth truth that she did not want to hear, but I knew that we had to expose the full truth of my past and of my sin. By the grace and mercy of my God and unbelievably Christ-like heart of my bride, she forgave me. That was just the beginning. We didn t just live happily ever after. There was a lot more to come. I was able to make amends to my Dad, to my Mom, to my brother, and to other people that I had held anger and resentment toward through the years. In the last six years since I went through Recovery, I will be the first to tell you that it has not been easy and it sure hasn t been pretty. I have had moments of relapse in these areas of struggles that have been very, very difficult for me and everyone around me. In November of 2009, I sat down with my mentor and college roommate who brought me to Celebrate Recovery, and I once again confessed my sexual sin to him. I will never forget what happened next. Wes Butler turned to me and said, I want you to remember that I love you for the next five minutes because it s not going to feel like it. He then proceeded to tell me that you are a liar, you re a cheater, you re a thief, you re an adulterer and a manipulator Stop showing up and telling me that you want to be a man of God and run after Him and then deliberately and blatantly just do whatever you want to. I got up so mad I couldn t see straight. I walked out, went to my truck, and by the time I got there, the Lord broke me into a million pieces and I heard Him say, That s the first man who has ever told you the truth. Wes Butler loved me that day. He didn t coddle me. He didn t try to make me feel better. He loved me enough to tell me the truth. From that moment of November 2009 until March of 2010, I experienced the most freedom I ever had in my life. I was diving into the Word of the Lord daily, reading His Scripture, running to Him at every moment of temptation, and walked in purity for those months. I was seeking to know Him, loving learning to know Him. However, on March 4, 2010, the world as I had known it for 32 years changed and would never be the same. My Mom called to tell me that my Dad had committed suicide. I thought I had already hit rock bottom. I thought the places my sin had led me, I thought my divorce, I thought all that pain was as bad as it would ever get, but on that day the bottom that I knew was there, totally gave way. I didn t even know that pain like that existed. I remember thinking, I feel like I can t breathe the same words my wife would tell me when I left her. 7 P a g e

8 I wish I could tell you that I ran to the Lord, but I didn t. I went into a place of bitterness and anger for the next eight months. I turned once again from God and ran back to the very secrets and lies that ruined me. I felt entitled to do whatever I wanted that no one would understand my pain. That my pain was greater; mine was worse, so I checked out and I ran. Even during this time, my bride showed up to my Dad s funeral, loved me, and I was mean and hateful toward her in my bitterness and anger. In these moments though, God never left me alone for a single second. He never stopped pursuing me. My buddy Wes continued to reach out to me. I wouldn t darken the door of Watermark or anywhere else, because I would walk in the door and I would feel like I couldn t breathe and I would have to leave. So Wes, once again, loved me well invited me on a Thursday morning to a Bible study at 6:30 and his words to me were, You either show up or I will come knock down your door and bring you. So I showed up a little nervous. But that day, I couldn t even say anything. So Wes and these guys that I didn t know loved me and said, We want you to go to Grief Share so that you can walk through your grief. I learned during these days that you don t just get over grief, and you can t stuff it and you can t go around it. You have to walk right through the middle of it. God spent the next three months of my life taking me back to the principles that I had learned and taking me back to the truth that I had learned in His Scripture in Celebrate Recovery and now in Grief Share. Matthew 5 tells us that Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. In those days, as I mourned, He comforted. So what does life look like today? Since the day I walked into Celebrate Recovery, over six years ago, I began praying for reconciliation with my wife. As you have heard full well, I did everything I possibly could to make sure that that was going to be a very small possibility. But thank God that Luke 18:27 is true when it says, What is impossible with men is possible with God. There was not a year that in one way or another God did not connect Brandi and I. We tried numerous times to make things work, but that s where we were wrong. WE were trying to make things work, and WE were trying to do it on our own. I hadn t seen my wife since right after my Dad s death. She had changed her phone number and her ; I had no way of contacting her. But in November of that year when God broke me and I ran back to Him, I began to pray that He would change her heart and bring her back to me, if that was His will. I committed at that time that I would either be single for the rest of my life or I would reconcile with my wife. In February of 2011, my phone rang, and it was Brandi calling to check on me, because she knew the next month was the one-year anniversary of my Dad s death. I hadn t spoken to her in almost a year. Brandi called and she asked me if I would meet her in Grapevine, Texas That she had something that she had to tell me. So we sat in a parking lot in Grapevine, Texas, and in a moment He restored us. Brandi was able to turn to me and tell me that she fully forgave me and that she had fought the Lord for six years that she knew reconciliation was right, that she knew that it was what He desired, and she that knew that was what the Gospel was. She turned to me and said, Dusty, I want you to know that I do not trust you but I do trust Him. Divorce is not an option, and No is not an option, and I am all-in. So on July 2 nd of 2011, I remarried my bride Brandi Burton Oglesby. Will you come up here babe? This is her will you give her a hand? (Clapping) There s a piece of paper in the Tarrant County courthouse that cites that we are divorced by irreconcilable differences, but we believe and we trust in the words on the pages written in Scripture that say that all things are reconciled by Christ and Christ alone. The Gospel covers all. By the grace of God, I have been 8 P a g e

9 free from the chains of my addictions now for over three years. In the six years we were divorced, my bride never changed her name; she s always been Brandi Oglesby. She never gave up, hoping in the Lord that He would change my heart and heal us. I am still a believer today that struggles, but today I struggle well and I struggle with hope. Today Brandi and I acknowledge that we are unable to love each other without Christ. We know that we re going to hurt each other, disappoint each other, and that neither of us will ever fill the void in our soul that only Christ can fill. We no longer look back, but we look forward today with anticipation to what He has called us to in Christ Jesus. We stand today and we believe that God will restore every year that the locusts have stolen in our lives. Our marriage today is not a laundry list of what the other person needs or wants. It is an understanding that our hope does not lie in each other but in a Savior who forgives, redeems, and restores. Hear me. Today we still struggle. I am still wretched. We argue. We hurt and the pain of our past will come forward sometimes, but instead of running into what we feel, we run to what we know, and what we know is that Christ restores and redeems all. If I could tell you one thing today, I would tell you this: That Jesus Christ is exactly who He says He is, and He does exactly what He promises He will do. He has not and He will not ever leave you or forsake you, not in your most disgusting sin and not in your most devastating moments. Scripture tells us in Romans 5:8 that While we were still sinners He died for us. He himself will restore us. So today we stand here knowing who Christ fully is, and we know who we are and we know who we re not. Today our prayer for us and for all of you is that we would cling to Romans 5:1-5 where Paul writes, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God, not only so but we also glory today in our suffering because we know that our suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and this hope does not disappoint. Thank you for letting us share this morning. (Clapping) Pastor Steve: That s the power of grace, and that s what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is. It s that no matter who you are and no matter what you ve done, God wants to reconcile with you. This morning as I was praying for our worship service, I read 2 Corinthians chapter 5. This is what I read in chapter 5, starting in verse 17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Now that s an important word new. It s not You re better You re brand new. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Broken relationships that are strewn about your life because of decisions that you have made can be repaired and reconciled. Your relationship with God that lies in tatters because you have sinned against Him and walked away from Him can be reconciled. All of the mess in your life can be repaired and restored, but it only comes from one place, and it s the message that Paul gives in 2 Corinthians: Only through Jesus Christ. Today, this is my hope for you. If there is one person here right now that says, I am stuck in this kind of place. I m a fake and I m a phoney and I lie and I manipulate people to get my way. Or maybe you say, You know, I m the sort of person that I m addicted or I m in a struggle. If that s you, then you too can 9 P a g e

10 have this reconciliation. I don t care what it is that s happening in your life. Jesus Christ wants to receive you, save you, and restore you right now, today. But this is the crazy thing about the Gospel: Jesus Christ has already purchased your forgiveness on the cross, but you must receive it. You have to receive it. So today, now, we re going to have a time to respond. This is the way that this is going to work. People are going to be here at the front to pray over you. If you are broken and in need struggling come forward and let us pray over you. If you say, You know what? I just need to say Yes to Jesus Christ. We want to pray for you too. So right now, today, this is your chance to say Yes. So, I want to pray over this congregation, and then we re going to give you a chance to respond. Everyone, please bow your heads for a moment. I want to ask this: If you are here today and you say, Steve, I m in a place of brokenness and of need being a fake or manipulating or addiction or whatever that is. Whatever you have a struggle with, and you know that you need the grace of Jesus applied to that, I want to pray for you. Would you just raise your hand so that I can see you and pray for you. I ve got hands coming up. Alright keep them up. Anybody else? There they are who else? Okay, you can put your hands down. If you re here today and you say, I need to say Yes to Jesus Christ today. I ve never done that. I ve been fighting it, and today s the day that I know I need to say Yes to Him. I want to pray for you. Would you raise your hand? There s one. Who else? There s another one right there. Who else? Okay; place your hands down. I want to pray right now. Father, for those who have raised their hands, they know they re broken and they know they re in need; God right now I pray that they would say Yes to You. God, only the grace of Jesus Christ has the power to rescue and to save. So God I pray right now that they would say Yes that they would come and receive what it is that You have given. Father, we pray this and we ask it, believing that You want to deliver. Give them courage to say Yes, and I pray this in the Name of Your Son Jesus Christ. Amen. 10 P a g e