#dcnsunday 10/29 with Pastor Don Leonard

Join us as Pastor Don leads us in week 6 of our sermon series "This is My Story."
and be sure to visit our website https://defiancenazarene.org/
& did you know you could give online? https://defiancenazarene.org/online-giving/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Well, today we get the honorand privilege. We plan this back in
January, Pastor Scott and I andwe plan this series this is my story,
and begin to pray about what Godwanted from this. And Pastor Don
was scheduled to preach on this date, and we told him over and over

(00:20):
to do what you will with thisstory. He doesn't like to go back
to his story because he likes tolive in the life and the freedom that
Christ has brought to him. ButI want you to know, Pastor Don,
you're one of my heroes and thefaith, and I so appreciate you

(00:41):
opening up today. May his namebe praised, and I love you.

(01:08):
Scott mutes it. I never mutethe button. Scott and Carol always muted
the button. I should have learnedafter twenty some years they mute the button.
But when you're old and you're setin your ways, you don't learn,
I guess. But anyway, Juniorchurch, you should probably leave today.

(01:32):
Especially I like to preface when Igive my testimony that sin is easy.
Anybody can sin, just depends onwhere you draw the line and how

(01:55):
far you'll go. But I foundthat usually if you start down a path,
the lines that you draw keep gettingerased, and you just keep going
farther. But a testimony from somebodywho has fallen into deep sin is not
what impresses me the most. Whatimpresses me the most is somebody who came

(02:19):
to Jesus when they were very youngand kept walking with them. The whole
world lies in sin, so sinningis comes natural to us. We were
born with a sinful nature. Iwas raised in West Toledo, the Savania

(02:40):
Jacklin Road area, born into afamily that already had four children. I
was the fifth. There will betwo more that would come after me.
From the time I was born,we were a part of the church.
I'm not sure exactly where my parentscame to the Lord. My dad was

(03:04):
raised Roman Catholic, my mother wasraised Presbyterian, but they were only Christians
in name and not by faith.And they lived in a neighborhood over Upton
and Central Avenue, and there wasa church over there was an Evangelical United

(03:27):
brother In church had a very dynamicpastor, kind of like the ones you've
got now, And they ended upgoing to a revival there and getting saved.
But that was before my time.I'm not even sure, I was
part of that house over on GiantStreet, but by the time I came

(03:47):
to an awareness, we were livingon Commonwealth Avenue and been in church my
entire life. I've probably went tochurch the first Sunday I was born into
the world, and we were thetype of people that were in church constantly.
My mom and dad sang in thechoir. My dad and mom were

(04:09):
on church boards. I think mydad was a Sunday school teacher on about
three different boards. So church wasmy entire life, and growing up in
that environment, of course, wasa good environment to grow up in.
I had no excuse for ending upwhere I ended up, But in the

(04:31):
process of time things began to change. So I'm just going to introduce you
a little bit that the wrong way. I think. There we go.
That's me. I was probably six, maybe seven. I was into sports.
Of course. In the neighborhood Igrew up in, we didn't have

(04:54):
any place to play. The yardswere pretty small, so we played street
sports, baseball in the street,played football in the street, and we
did get rough. My head hitthe black top. I don't care know
how many times. That's why Iam the way I am today and so

(05:15):
that was me, and I wasalready on a pretty bad course at that
time. That football i'm holding wassupposed to be a gift for both my
brother and I for Christmas, mybrothers three years older, but my mom
caught me going through the packages.The gift became his. But I was

(05:41):
the athlete, so I ended upwith wall. But anyway, moving right
along, and so as I said, I was born into a family with
seven kids. There we are.My oldest sister was born in thirty three.
It was eight years between her inthe next one and then three years

(06:04):
and then two years and then threeyears and the two that aren't there yet.
I was probably about two, maybethree at the most at that time.
My sister would come along when Iwas about four. My brother came
along when I was about eight.And so we went from nineteen thirty three

(06:25):
to nineteen fifty nine with children beingborn into the household. And because we
were so far apart, there wasvery little interaction between any of us,
although my one brother in law saidthey don't see each other much. They
don't talk to each other much.But if somebody's in trouble, bother the

(06:46):
mafia. So anyway, there waswhere was that one? And I wanted
to show that one, especially becauseterror is always picking on me that I'm
the hardest person to get a pictureof because my eyes are always close.
I'm always looking and talking to somebody, and it's just hard to get a
picture of me. But not tolet her out of her sight. This

(07:06):
comes natural to me, as you'llsee from the next one if you can
see it. So there I amback normal. The one with my eyes
open was just happened to be anabnormal moment in life. And there we
are as we're a little bit older. My older sister's already married. She
married an eub and evangelical United Methodistspastor. She was out of the house,

(07:31):
and there's the rest of us,and my sister now is with us,
but my little brother had not arrivedyet. And so this was probably
about the last year that I wassomeone that my parents really loved, because
things began to change drastically after that. As you can see all of us

(07:56):
there in this next picture. That'sall of the kids except the one that
is missing. And the one thatis missing I'll go back. She's the
one in the white sweater that's sittingnext to my mother when I was born,
she was about eight years old andshe started having severe headaches, and

(08:20):
for the first eight years of mylife she was very sick in and all
of the hospitals, be in schoolsometimes and be out of school and have
to work at home. Ended uphaving a surgery because they found a tumor
on her brain, and when shewas sixteen on New Year's Day. She

(08:43):
passed on New Year's Day in nineteensixty for a brain tumor. And so
there's my little sister with my bigsister of owne. She was probably about
fourteen or fifteen there two years beforeshe passed, and that was a year
that really started sending some things intomotion. And during that course of the

(09:05):
year after she had passed, itwas just a few months later my dad
was born into a family with himand his brother. His dad was an
alcoholic and had deserted the family.He was born in nineteen thirteen over on
the east side of Toledo, andhis mom died her best to raise the

(09:28):
both of them, but a lotof times she just couldn't afford it,
and so my dad and his brotherended up living in orphanages on and off
for most of their years. Asthey were growing up. My mom had
a family of thirteen kids, andshe was about in the middle and her
middle name was Hope because they werehoping she was the last, but it

(09:50):
didn't quite make it. And herdad was abusive and the kids would hide
under the beds when he'd come home. You know, it just wasn't a
good situation. But they ended upliving in Toledo. He moved here to
be a general foreman at Dana.Most of the brothers in that family worked

(10:11):
at Dana. My dad worked atDana, and a couple of the brother
in laws that we had married sistersworked at Dana. It was just,
you know, we said the mafia. They had their own little Dana mafia
going. But in the process ofall of that, there ended up being
five of them that stayed right inthe Toledo area of those thirteen, and
we did a lot of stuff together. We'd do Christmas together, rent halls

(10:35):
and all this kind of stuff.But everybody other than my parents were drinkers
and partiers and all of that stuff. In about three months after my sister
died, my cousin that lived inthe area was sixteen as well, and
her and a bunch of her friendswere out joy riding after school and ended

(10:58):
up getting hit by a train andkilled all of them. And so after
that took place, of course,my mom and dad are already devastated,
and they're still devastated. So wewould start to go out to their house
a lot and be with them.They lived on a small farm and raised
goats, and all the kids wereolder than I was that they had.

(11:22):
I looked up to the boys andthe family. They were my heroes.
You know. They would be ableto go out into the barn and play
with goats, and they would milkthe goats, and they would drink milk
right from the goats after they siftedit through, you know, get all
the stuff out of it, andboy, this is great. And so

(11:43):
one of the days that we wereout there, my brother came in to
get me and he said, hey, don we're going out to the barn.
Okay, So I get out there, and they all decided they were
going to teach us how to smoke. So I was in my ninth year
of life when I started to smoke. Unlike Bill Clinton, I did Inhale,

(12:03):
but but I didn't Inhale after thatfor a long time. That first
one was enough for a while becauseI probably turned every shade of green and
gray that you possibly could look.But I was cool and so I kept

(12:24):
smoking. By I was a pufferand not an inhaler for a while,
but anyway, then it wasn't longafter that. In June, my dad
had a massive heart attack, andin those days, the knowledge of the
heart wasn't the same as today.He spent two weeks in an oxygen tent,
fourteen days in an oxygen tent inthe hospital, and was off of

(12:48):
work for two months. My oldersister was already working, so her income
helped. And my mom was agreat cook. She learned how to do
that with thirteen brothers and sisters,and so she would bake cinnamon rolls.
Chris and Years are the only onesthat could come close to my mother's but

(13:13):
she would make cinnamon rolls, andI would go around the neighborhood to sell
these cinnamon roles to help us toget milk money and bread money, and
a nine year old kid becoming asalesperson. At that time, I was
already an introvert who was very shy, because during those first eight years of
my life, we had to livepretty quietly because of my sister and all

(13:37):
that she was going through, andso I would just we would just play
on our own and we'd play quietlyand if we were watching TV. When
we finally got TV, you know, it was one of those things with
the octagonal screens on it, andI was the designated antenna because somebody had

(13:58):
to stand there and turn in orderto get a picture. And you had
two channels until UHF came out andthen we got three. But in the
process of all of that, that'show I became a person who was very
quiet, introverted, didn't talk alot, and with all of you,

(14:20):
you know that I'm not the conversationalistsunless I'm teaching or preaching, and so
that's where all of that came from. And so I was a very shy,
inwardly turned child growing up. Butthrough the stuff that was going on,
my brother and I continued to smoke, and then I eventually began to

(14:41):
inhale and who I was in thefifth grade, the guys that I hung
around with in my neighborhood, wewere them mafia because we got into some
pretty bad stuff. And the airplaneglue was the big thing back in those
days. And so in fifth grade, I started in with the airplane glue
in the brown paper bag, andall of a sudden I had a voice,

(15:07):
because that shy, introverted person wasable to talk with people when I
was high, and so that wow, all of a sudden, I just
came out of myself for a moment. But we'd go back in when I
was sober. And then we starteddrinking, and by the time I was
in the seventh grade, we weredrinking cold forty five baught liquor every weekend

(15:31):
on Friday and Saturday, and goingoff to school. By the time I
was in high school, we weredrinking every morning before we went to school,
drinking all the time, and soI was full blown alcoholic by the
time I was a freshman in highschool. And when I was a freshman,
my brother was a senior. Hewent off to the military, came

(15:52):
home on leave and introduced me tomarijuana. And so sophomore year of high
school smoking dope, drinking and carryingon constantly and a constant problem in the
household and wanting to be on myown. It wasn't long before harder drugs
come in. Because you know sinwill always take you farther than you wanted

(16:18):
to go and keep you longer thanyou wanted to stay. And so by
the time I was a junior inhigh school, I was doing LSD and
all of these things. When Igraduated as a senior in nineteen sixty nine,
I shared with some stories with peoplemy entire high school, I was

(16:40):
a horrible student. The only thingI ever did was excel in shop classes
and I left the school and twoweeks later I was arrested the first time
and ended up going to court.Through all of that, getting probation,
and I was set to move toDayton to go to a tech school for

(17:06):
architectural drafting because I took word shop, metal shop, mechanical drawing, and
architecture in high school. Those arethe things that I like doing. But
I got down there and of course, with all of the freedom, I
began to use intervenious drugs and wasusing intervenious drugs from the time that I

(17:27):
was late eighteen early nineteen until Iwas twenty six twenty seven years of age.
And most people don't survive that longusing ivy drugs, so it was
a mess, and theyby know whatthat is that's a hoover. They might

(17:53):
know what that is. That's aHarley. Do anybody know the difference between
a hoover and a Harley. That'sthe position of the dirt bag. And
so there we are in our inour home. At this time, i'd

(18:14):
been laid off from work. Kathyand I were married. Our daughter was
going to turn one year old thatday, and we had moved to Pickwell,
Ohio because I was going to goto Hobart School of Welding. And
uhh. When we were going downto find a place to live, we
would go around all these places torent apartments, and we'd get there and
nobody would rent to us. Andso Kathy could look pretty nice if she

(18:45):
wanted to. And so I said, you go rent a place for us,
because nobody's going to rent to me. So she put on a dress,
fixed her hair different, and wentout. And first place she went
to, they run it to her. Guy probably thought, well, I

(19:07):
like her living there, anyway,we'll move beyond that. And so here
we are at our first, mydaughter's first birthday. We are dressed in
our best clothes. All of myjeans had patches because everything that I brought
in went to getting high, andthat's the way we live from the time

(19:33):
we were married. I was twentyyears old when I met her. She
looked like she was eighteen, soI thought she was okay till I realized
she had been a runaway and shewas only fifteen at the time, so
I should have been shot, andnearly was because her dad and her uncle
were going to kill me until shedid something drastic to keep them from coming

(19:56):
after me. So her mom anddad did not like me. Ashamed of
me, they didn't want me around, they didn't want to introduce me to
any of their friends. And becauseI had already had my haircut once there,
it used to be longer. Andso we're dressed in our best clothes.
I'm doing a bunch of nasty stuff. Our marriage is starting to tank.

(20:22):
I made it through school and wemoved back to Toledo, and our
neighbor that was on the bar thatI would go to, he had a
friend that came to the bar whowas higher up in jeep and ended up
getting hired into Jeep, which jeepmoney. All that did was enable me
to be able to buy more drugsand alcohol. So we were a mess.

(20:48):
And after about it would have probablybeen when Shannon was about four years
old. Our marriage was all butover. I was just a mess.
Kathy wanted to change her life.Around about a year before that, we
had a family get together. Mycousin came to the family to get together

(21:11):
for Christmas. He used to bea big partier in town. He was
a weightlifter. He was Mister Toledothree or four different times, and he
walked in as we're there. Hebegan to witness to my wife. She
was pretty well lit, and hestarted to ask her if she knew that
Jesus loved her and had a wonderfulplan for her life. And she sobered

(21:33):
up, began to cry and askedfor Jesus to come into her heart.
And he came to our house withhis pastor. They gave us the Roman
Road to Salvation. I wanted nothingto do with it. I was raised
in that stuff. I'd left itall behind. I shook my head yes,

(21:53):
just to get him out of thehouse, and they were gone.
She tried to follow through for acouple of months, but I just pulled
it right back into it. Andthen the next year it just got so
bad. I knew our marriage wasdone. I knew that I was a
mess. I started to probably havethe conviction in my heart. And the

(22:15):
thing that I want to get youto see and understand is you may have
somebody who's out there and you thinkthere's no hope. My dad and Mom
never stopped praying. And there area number of times that I should not
be here. I drove when Iwas so out of my mind. I

(22:36):
had no idea what I was doing. Kathy was driving one night where on
four seventy five I fell out ofthe vehicle. I was so drunk I
must have rolled good. I didn'teven have a scratch, can you believe
it? But we were a mess. We were gone, we were lost.
We couldn't be any farther, andso I would just start to cry

(23:03):
and I wouldn't know why. Andthe jeep there were some guys that were
Christians and they would have a Biblestudy during break time, and we all
made fun of him. The oneguy would stand at his machine and he'd

(23:26):
be having a Christian music in hisearphones and tapping his feet and clapping.
And I got to thinking, Iwouldn't mind being a Christian, but I
should woudn't want to be like that, And there was nineteen seventy nine.

(23:47):
It was July, the two weeksshut down that the automakers do. Kathy
and I were like ships passing inthe night, and we always worked because
I ended up in skilled trades asthe welder for all of the skilled trades,

(24:07):
and we always worked all the shutdownsto PM the machinery and get things
ready for new models and things.And as a welder, I didn't do
anything unless something was broke or theyneeded to build something. And so a
lot of time I would work awhole week and just walk around talking to
people that are week because if Iwas working, they were losing money and

(24:30):
so they would rather pay me notto work. And the first three days
of that shutdown I would go inso hungover and a mess that I'd get
some chairs from out in the shopbecause they're all out on the floor working
on the floor. They're not inthe shop unless they're coming to get apart,

(24:52):
put the chairs together, and Iwould sleep off the hangover until about
noon. And when nobody around ittalk to even when you're awake, he
begin to get so bored you're goingstir crazy So about the fourth day,
I started walking around and looking forsomething to read. And I had gone
through all the stuff that the guysin the factory have laying on their benches,

(25:15):
and I'm looking for something that I'mable to read, and walk past
where the Christians met and I,well, maybe they've got something over there,
and they had a bookshelf with books. I'm looking through these books and
I'm not reading that stuff, andI walked away. About two hours later,

(25:36):
I found myself back there at thatbookshelf, and at that time,
Gregory Pack was in a movie calledThe Omen. I remember that movie was
about the birth of the Antichrist.And on the shelf was this book called
After the Omen. Oh, I'vejust saw that movie. I'll read this.

(25:59):
It was by written by the peoplethat were involved with producing it.
Little did I know that it was. They were going to talk about the
prophecies of the Bible and the secondComing of Christ and how their movie The
Antichrist related all of that. ButI read it. But as I'm reading
it, a lot of the stuffthat I learned from my childhood started flooding
back in and literally it scared me. So I took it back and went

(26:26):
back there and looking to see somethingelse. And it was also about the
time of the Watergate crisis, andChuck Coulson had gone to prison, and
there on the book was Born Againby Chuck Coulson. So I took that
because Chuck Coulson was the name Irecognized, and I read that, and

(26:47):
it was a story of how hewas at the top of the heap and
then how everything fell apart and hewas at a place of desperation. Went
to a friend of his that wasthe CEO of Raytheon Corp. And he
went in. As he was talking, he said, there's something different about
you. And so he said,rather than tell you, I want you

(27:08):
to read this book, and hegave him the book Mere Christianity by C.
S. Lewis. And so Colsontalked about reading that and one night
being down by the Potomac as hewas reading and all of a sudden just
being overwhelmed and breaking into tears andcrying and asking God to forgive him and
transform him. And he talked abouthis new birth and then talked about how

(27:32):
he had went to prison, andwhile he was in prison, when he
was getting ready to get out,they said that well, you'll forget all
about us. No I won't.No, I won't. Well everybody says
that, but he started one ofthe biggest prison ministries in the world after
you had gotten out. So afterI finished that book, I went back
around I'm looking. In the meantime, I had dug out an old King
James version of the Bible that Ihad got back when I was a kid

(27:55):
and started reading that. And I'dbe at home reading that. If Cathy'd
come through the room, I didn'twant her to know what I was doing.
I would drop it behind the couch, you know. Just I was
just wasn't where I needed to be. And so I went back with that
book, and sure enough, there'sMere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

(28:18):
I've been reading through that. Andit was July fourth. We were
off. We were all set fora huge party. We had just bought
this house in June. The onlyreason I bought it. It had a
bar and a pool table in thebasement. That's all I was interested in.
Kathy can do with the rest shewants with it. And so we're

(28:41):
all set. We got the coolersare stacked, We've got all the stash
of things that are illegal with us, as well as all the alcohol we
needed. Jeep paid well, andI'm sitting at the kitchen table. She's
out setting up some things in theback. But I could not stop reading.
And I came to the part whereC. S. Lewis is explaining

(29:04):
the Trinity, and all of asudden, I could just see truth.
I don't know how to explain it. I looked up and I said,

(29:25):
God, I don't even know howto pray. And it's almost as if
he picked me up and put meon the ground because I was on my
knees. I didn't know how topray, and I just said, God,
I don't know what to do.And all of a sudden, I
was just flooded with this presence,overwhelming presence, the Holy Spirit filling me

(29:52):
and forgiving me. And although I'dlove to say that my life radically changed
at that point, it changed,but not yet enough. But everything became
different at that point. About ayear later, on Easter, it was

(30:18):
the Easter Eve. Easter was comingup in the morning. In the meantime,
Kathy and I were still a littlebit at odds, but she was
starting to go to church and Ihad already prayed, and I said,

(30:40):
Lord, I will do whatever youwant me to do, but I need
my wife. She was such aheavy drinker, and she worked in a
bar with a Mexican restaurant actually,but more of a bar than a restaurant.
And I came home from work oneday she said, I got saved.

(31:03):
What do you mean? She said, I drove home with Shannon after
work and I was so drunk Iblacked out. I have no idea how
I got home. She was twentytwo years old and already having blackouts from
alcohol. And so this Easter evening, all I'm all of a sudden filled

(31:27):
with this overwhelming presence and sensed travelingrapidly. And the next thing I can
remember is standing in the presence ofa voice. He said, I'm going

(31:55):
to use you to add people tothis book. Yeah, there was a
book there. And then it wasif all of a sudden, there was
a number of people, as ifGod was calling a whole lot of people
at the same time. And thenI feel myself traveling rapidly, and I'm

(32:22):
instantly awake. I'm scared, andthat presence that I felt that day that
I was saved came upon me andI thought I had my hanky with me,
I do I put it where Iwould find it. I put it

(32:44):
where I would find it, andit went away. And then a second
time it came back again and moreintense. Then a third time it came
and it was so intense I justrolled over and buried my face of a
pillow. I was scared to death. God said, get up and read.

(33:10):
So I got hop and I wentdownstairs, and I was I was
totally exhausted. And I started togo to the refrigerator to get something to
drink, and it was to pickup and read, and I said,
I can't, God, I'm toothirsty. And I went and got some
ores juice anyway, and I cameback and I read. I opened up

(33:34):
the scriptures. The scripture passage thatI came to I was talking about behold,
I come quickly. I'm coming soon. And the impression upon me was
he was calling me to preach atthat moment in time. And so everything
changed from that moment on. Ibegan to work it becoming a pastor.

(33:59):
I already been teaching a Bible study. I started teaching a Bible study after
work. Within about two months ofbeing saved and we would meet at the
house. It grew from about fiveor six people up to about twenty people
meeting at the house. Now theseare guys that I all went to drinking
with and they were all used tobeing in the bar. Because we worked

(34:22):
second shift. We'd leave jeep andgo to my house at midnight and we
would sit there and have Bible studiessometimes till three four o'clock in the morning,
and then they would all go ontheir way back home. But it
got so much that it was toughfor Kathy and Shannon to sleep. So
the church we were attending was whereMike Adams was preaching, so those of
you who know him, and hegave me a key and we would go

(34:45):
over to the church after work andwe would sit there sometimes four or five
six hours having a Bible study beforeI was called to preach. So they
were up to forty men that cameto the Lord. We had about fifteen
or twenty of them at ten ofthe church. It was just incredible.

(35:05):
But long story short, we triedto sell the house to go out to
the Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs. The house wouldn't sell, so I
doubted my call and was talking withsomebody that He said, well, haven't
you ever heard of home study?I said, what's home study? He

(35:28):
says, you don't have to goto Bible college. The Nazarenes have a
course of study where you can stayat home and you can go through the
course of study. You can takefour years of theology and Bible study and
you do it all at home.And basically it was home study. They'd
give you your textbook, your supplementalreading books, study guide, and you'd
be all on your own. Whenyou're ready, you'd call them and you'd

(35:51):
take your test. It would bea two hour closed book exam. That
was a lot of fun. Butanyway, ten years after I became a
Christian in July of seventy nine,Kathy and I are now at my ordination

(36:21):
a little different from there to there. Our daughter was raised in the church.
We went to church from that momenton I got saved. I was
in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night teaching Bible studies. Ended
up teaching the jor the senior highclass. Within about three months of being

(36:44):
saved, we were over at anolder lady in the church She was probably
at that time about seventy five.She was teaching the senior adult class and
she was talking and we were talkingabout Bible stuff, and I was answering
stuff faster than she was talking.So she went to the pastor says he
needs to be the teacher. I'mout. So that's how I got to
that place, and so we wereordained. I started pastoring my first church.

(37:12):
I was in nineteen eighty four.Nineteen eighty three I started the course
of study. Was still in thefirst year of course of study. Our
pastor had left. After the firstpastor, another one came in. He
was there about two years and heleft. We were down to about thirty

(37:32):
people. My first Wednesday night teachingas their pastor. We met downstairs in
the basement in a classroom, pulledthe dividing curtains together, had electric heater
on the floor to keep us warmbecause we had no money. But my
first year in home study without alocal just a local license, the district

(37:57):
superintendent came in. He says,I cannot find any who can come to
this church for what you'll pay.We're going to have to close the church.
And one of the older ladies onthe board said, what about him,
Well, he didn't know me fromAdam. And about that time he
started looking at me, and hekept looking at me, and he was
looking at my pocket. When Igot saved because of a little bit of

(38:21):
work that I had to do atthe job. Don't tell anybody at Jeep,
I dug out an old Gideon NewTestament that I had been given back
in about third grade. And itwas in my box of little stuff that
I carried from place to place.I probably moved twenty times, and I
would start carrying that in my pocket. It was winter, because he appointed

(38:46):
me and I started in February.He kept looking at my pocket. I
thought, just since he thinks Igot cigarettes in my pocket. So at
a proper time when things were goingwell, and pulled out my New Testament,
and you can see his eyes.I may be stupid, but I'm

(39:07):
not completely dumb. And so herewe are ten years later, I'm ordained.
It's nineteen eighty nine, now asthe year I was ordained. He
continued to pasture there. It wasa bivocational pastor. Kept working. Jeep
ended up merging with another inner citychurch. I quit Jeep and went from

(39:34):
eight nine hundred dollars a week totwo fifty a week, because if the
Lord calls you, do what hecalls you to do. And continued doing
that, started working at Cherry StreetMission as a counselor and as chaplain and
was there for seven years. Whenthe God, when God began to stir

(39:58):
in my heart he wanted me todo something else, and praying about it,
I called our district superintendent. Wewere ready to go on vacation.
I had already been there almost fourteenyears. He says that happens sometimes you
just needed a fresh look. Goon vacation. If it's not an upset
stomach, when you get back,give me a call. So I got

(40:21):
back and called him, if wefeel like it's time. So we came
out here to interview, and wethought, well, we've never interviewed anywhere.
We might as well go to Defianceand interview just to see what an
interviews like. We drove in andwe said this is it without even coming
inside, and you guys called meand here we are. And so twenty

(40:42):
five years later, going on twentysix, I've been the pastor here and
now I have two quisit pastors thatare over me, and I am still
thrilled to be serving Jesus after allof these years. Just to take anything
from this. No one is toofar gone to be saved. No one.

(41:12):
And God is a god of mercyand forgiveness. And when he says
he makes all things new, hemeans he has made you new. You
are not the same person, andso whatever you were in the past is
changed. And God can use anyone, including me, if you'll give them

(41:36):
your life. And so with that,