Deliverance

One of the zany experiments staged by the "Mythbusters" television show nearly turned into a suburban tragedy in Dublin, California when the crew fired a homemade cannon toward huge containers of water at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb disposal range.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m. There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all, only awakening because of plaster dust.

The ball wasn't done bouncing. It exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into the Gill family's beige Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.

That's where Jasbir Gill, who had pulled up 10 minutes earlier with his 13-year-old son, found the ball on the floorboards, with glass everywhere and an obliterated dashboard. "It's shocking - anything could have happened," Gill said after the van had been taken away as evidence, along with the cannonball.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy," said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff's Department. "You wouldn't think it was possible." He said the television crew was incredibly unlucky that the cannonball flew through Dublin, but "tremendously lucky that it didn't seriously injure or kill somebody."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Youl can use this to set up a sermon on the power of sin or hurtful words to inflict much more damage than we ever imagined. Just as the local police sergeant said, "Crazy, crazy, crazy. You wouldn't think it was possible." That's what we all say when we see the impact of our hurtful words or sins against others.

Ree is a single mom trying to navigate the rising cost of living, Ree has been feeling "stressed and upset" most days, with the battle only intensified by personal issues. Ree told Yahoo News Australia she was feeling anxious at the prospect of making ends meet before visiting her local Woolworths store.

However, two strangers' patience while she discarded several items at the checkout because she "couldn't afford" them truly made all the difference. She said, “The lady behind me asked the cashier to ring up everything I had put back because she was going to pay for them for me.”

After thanking the stranger and explaining that payment wasn't necessary, Ree was told the stranger was insistent on buying the discarded items for her. "I explained my situation to her and she said she knew how it felt to not be able to pay for things in the past."

In a time of emotional strife, the stranger's kind act has had a profound impact on Ree—one that she struggles to articulate. When asked what it meant to her, she simply replied with one word: "Everything. From the bottom of my heart thank you for making a truly awful situation so much easier in the moment. I walked out crying."

Possible Preaching Angle:

All of us are spiritually bankrupt with no way to pay our debt of sin. Jesus stepped up and fully paid the price for us (Eph. 1:7; 1 Pet. 2:24; 1 John 2:2).

A routine Tuesday morning in a remote mountain village turned into a harrowing ordeal as a cable car malfunction left eight passengers, including schoolchildren, suspended hundreds of feet in the air. Shortly after departure, two of the car’s supporting cables snapped, sparking a dramatic 12-hour rescue operation by the Pakistani military.

The rescuers faced immense challenges as they attempted to save the stranded passengers. With helicopters and zip lines, they launched a complicated plan to bring everyone to safety, while villagers watched in helpless suspense. As the rescue team battled the elements, those trapped inside battled their own fear and anxiety, exacerbated by the car’s movements and the gusts of wind from the helicopter rotors.

This particular cable car system is a vital lifeline for the isolated village of Pashto. It provides access to the schools and hospitals in the rugged terrain previously unavailable to residents of the poverty-stricken village. Since its construction five years ago, it has significantly improved the lives of villagers by providing a quick and affordable means of crossing the valley.

As the last passenger was rescued, relief and joy washed over the village, highlighting the importance of this lifeline for the community and the resilience of its residents in the face of adversity. The cause of the cable car failure remains unknown, prompting calls for safety inspections on all private mountain lifts.

Possible Preaching Angle:

These well-trained professional first responders who save lives are only a faint shadow of the work of a caring Savior who came to rescue us from death and bring us safely home.

When Heather Kopp arrived at rehab, she was a 40-something mom of two and a veteran of Christian publishing. She had never been in jail or on the streets, she’d simply let a nightly glass of wine turn into two, which turned into a bottle, which eventually led to additional mini bottles hidden and secretly chugged in the bathroom. Soon enough, every moment of her life revolved around her next chance to sneak away for a drink.

Karen’s story opens a window into the mind of a burgeoning alcoholic. But as she moved through her rehab and recovery phases into her struggle to understand God’s presence amid her alcoholism, she arrives at a universal truth: Substance abuse is a physical manifestation of a spiritual addiction to sin. And everyone, it turns out, is an addict.

But this isn’t a story of how addiction led Karen to God, or how God pulled her out of addiction. Instead, Karen’s story is one of confronting the nature of sin and understanding more fully the necessity and beauty of God’s grace.

Karen now reflects on her sobriety, “(People) think I just resist temptation over and over because I’m a good person or because I have all this willpower. Can you imagine? How do you explain to people that it’s not anything like that?” Recovery is a living example of the miracle of grace. When addiction removes the illusion of self-sufficiency, the addict must reach a point of surrender from which to accept grace without conditions, and to have confidence that God really is in control, no matter what.

Possible Preaching Angle

It’s tempting for the nonalcoholic to hear Karen’s story about alcoholism as a detached observer. We can marvel at the depths from which God can save a person from pursuits that bring only harm, pain, and grief—and thank him that we haven’t fallen as far. But Karen’s story reminds us that we are each living our own addiction story. And we can’t lose sight of the complete and total dependence on God’s sustaining grace that offers any hope of a way out. Whatever your addiction, God’s grace is the only hope for a way out.

Paul Ford writes in an article on Wired, what happened when he switched his weight loss meds and found a miracle cure. Decades of struggle with an insatiable desire for food, gone in an instant. But his reflection on the experience is less of an advertisement as it is a probing of human nature amid advances in pharmacology. He writes:

This is a technology that will reorder society. I have been the living embodiment of the deadly sin of gluttony, judged as greedy and weak since I was 10 years old — and now the sin is washed away. Baptism by injection. But I have no more virtue than I did a few months ago. I just prefer broccoli to gloopy chicken. Is this who I am?

How long is it before there’s an injection for your appetites, your vices? Maybe they’re not as visible as mine. Would you self-administer a weekly anti-avarice shot? Can Big Pharma cure your sloth, lust, wrath, envy, pride?

On this front, the parallels between Ford’s weight loss drug and every other drug are almost obvious (whether they be coffee, THC, or any fill-in-the-blank name brand). The alluring promise that frailty is simply a matter of chemistry. More interesting is what happens to Ford himself after the one signal pathway is silenced — his brain averts its gaze elsewhere:

Where before my brain had been screaming, screaming, at air-raid volume — there was sudden silence. It was confusing. […] “I urgently need, I thought … Something to fill the silence where food used to be. Every night for weeks I spent four, five hours twisting Moog knobs. Not making music. Just droning, looping, and beep-booping. I needed something to obsess over, to watch YouTube videos about. I needed something to fail at every night to feel normal.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The flesh is never satisfied and cannot be conquered by human will or science. Impeding one of the desires of the flesh simply ignites another. The church of big pharma might provide a kind of cure, but there is no panacea for human nature, except “the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Twelve-year-old Amelia Loverme hadn’t received any formalized training when she saw her twin brother Charlie in need of medical intervention. But she didn’t let that stop her from getting the job done.

Charlie said, “[I thought] I was going to die. It's just scary and you just don't know what's going to happen next and it's just really scary.” Amelia added, “It was just instinct, I didn't really know what to do, I just feel like I had to help him.”

And help him she did. The siblings were both in their lunch period at Leicester Middle School when Charlie began choking on a piece of mozzarella cheese. When other students in his immediate vicinity were too scared or confused to know what to do, Amelia leapt into action. Security footage caught her giving her brother a series of abdominal thrusts known as the Heimlich maneuver.

Jason Loverme, the twins’ father said, “Adults should talk to their kids about life-saving stuff like this. Whether you think it registers or not, they may tune it out but clearly something registered and she recalled it when she needed it.” Jason says a lack of training should never inhibit someone in the position of potentially giving life-saving help. “If you can help somebody and you can react regardless of if you're nervous or not, you should.”

For her quick thinking and heroism, Amelia was honored by the official school committee, and a public honor from a local law enforcement agency might be in the works.

Note: You can watch the video of Amelia saving her brother’s life here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Anyone can become God's vessel of deliverance; all it takes is willingness to see the need and act accordingly to the Spirit's leading.

During the late 18th century, Thomas Thetcher was a much-respected soldier by his fellow grenadiers in England. He was so revered that when he tragically died, his fellow soldiers commissioned a gravestone to memorialize his untimely demise. His death was not only untimely, but very bizarre, as it was not by sword, or gun, or cannon fire, but a drink that killed the soldier.

In a corner of the graveyard belonging to the Winchester Cathedral, Thetcher’s gravestone marks his final resting place. It also features this inscription:

In Memory of Thomas Thetcher a Grenadier in the North Reg. of Hants Militia, who died of a violent Fever contracted by drinking Small Beer when hot the 12 May 1764. Aged 26 Years.

Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,

Who caught his death by drinking cold small Beer,

Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall

And when ye’re hot drink Strong or none at all.

An Honest Soldier never is forgot

Whether he die by Musket or by Pot.

Many years later in 1918, an American soldier stationed in Winchester visited the cathedral and came across Thomas Thetcher’s grave. The soldier, Bill Wilson, was deeply affected by the inscription that even years after returning from the war, it may have saved his life.

Wilson became a successful businessman shortly after returning home, but within a few years his life was controlled by heavy drinking. His drinking was so detrimental to his health that it was believed the only way to save his life was to lock him away. Against all odds, Wilson along with a fellow group of alcoholics found a way to achieve and maintain sobriety. He eventually wrote a book about his experiences, a book that is world-renowned, Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson would go on to co-found Alcoholics Anonymous. He considered the gravestone to be a major influence on his own recovery.

Editor’s Note: There is debate among medical professionals as to the cause of Thetcher’s death. Some medical professionals have proposed that Thetcher’s death was the result of fainting when a cold liquid is consumed on an extremely hot day. Others say that it is most likely that he passed from cholera or typhoid from a contaminated beer. Regardless of the cause, his death inspired the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous which has saved thousands of lives worldwide.

Marshall Brandon was raised by an alcoholic father and a mother who was filled with rage. Once, when Marshall told his father that he had seen his mother kissing another man, his father deserted the family and Marshal was beaten bloody by his mother and locked in a closet. So began many beatings throughout his adolescence.

Then at age 17 he joined the Army. He longed for someplace to be somebody, and was eager for a life of peace and order. He had to wait until his 18th birthday before being sent to Vietnam and this resulted in Marshall being assigned to a new unit. He was scared, lonely, and sick with feelings of abandonment. He wondered how he would survive.

Within a week, a guy introduced Marshall to marijuana. That started his long journey with drugs. Marijuana eased his worries about making it home, so he smoked every day.

My anger was kindled when I saw my Black brothers being abused by the authorities. I turned my rage against white commanding officers and even had thoughts of killing one. After serving about a year in Vietnam, I returned home, and I brought my anger at white people with me.

But he was soon also enslaved to morphine and his addiction was so great that he began stealing it. A group he was with was arrested for armed robbery and Marshall was sentenced to 10–25 years at the Ohio State Reformatory. He wondered anew, “How will I survive this?”

He decided to never use drugs again so he joined recovery groups in prison. With mostly good behavior, he was released to go to college on a furlough program. However, drugs soon found him again and the habit came back with a vengeance.

Then he met Katika, the woman who would change his life. There were married and for two years he managed to hide his addiction from her until she discovered the truth. Katika encouraged him to go into rehab but Marshall never did. She said, “I love you too much to watch you destroy yourself,” and she announced she was leaving me. Marshal said, “Our separation devastated me. I remember asking God, ‘Do you really exist? Make yourself real to me.’”

He occasionally saw his wife and after six months he noticed something different about her—peace. She was patient and showed genuine concern. He asked her what was different. She said, “I got saved.” Katika invited him to church where he “heard about a man who loved me just as I was.”

In June of 1977, as I sat and listened to the preacher say, “Come as you are,” I stopped questioning whether I could ask Jesus to save me. I knew he would. I ran so fast from my seat I knocked some hats off nice ladies in the pews. I will never forget that moment I was set free! Upon my profession of faith in Jesus Christ, God delivered me from my drug addiction on the spot.

After my reconciliation to God, he began the process of reconciliation in my other relationships, starting with my wife. This year, we will celebrate 48 years of marriage. During that time, I’ve had the privilege of serving God as a pastor and an evangelist. From childhood abuse and gangs, to Vietnam and drugs, to armed robbery and prison—through it all, God loved and protected me. Isn’t he a wonderful Father?

Editor’s Note: Today Marshall Brandon is an elder and visiting pastor at Citizens Akron Church in Akron, Ohio.

Thomas A. Dorsey’s song “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” is one of the most beloved gospel songs of all time. The song’s power comes from profound personal tragedy. In August 1932, Dorsey, a Black band leader and accompanist, was on top of the world. He had recently been hired as director of the gospel chorus at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago, and he was about to become a father for the first time.

Dorsey was nervous about traveling to a gospel music convention so close to his wife’s due date, but she gave her blessing. While he was in St. Louis, Dorsey received word that there had been complications with Nettie’s childbirth. He raced back to Chicago, but both mother and child died.

The double funeral took place at Pilgrim Baptist Church. Dorsey later said, “I looked down that long aisle which led to the altar where my wife and baby lay in the same casket. My legs got weak, my knees would not work right, my eyes became blind with a flood of tears.” Dorsey fell into a deep depression. He questioned his faith and thought of giving up gospel music.

Dorsey’s friend and fellow chorus director Theodore Frye persuaded him to accept a dinner invitation. After dinner, Dorsey meandered over to the grand piano and began to play the hymn “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone,” with its lyric “There’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.” Dorsey began to play variations on the hymn’s melody, adding new lyrics. He called Frye over and began to sing, “Blessed Lord, take my hand.” Frye stopped him: “No man, no. Call him ‘precious Lord.’” Dorsey tried it again, replacing blessed with precious. “That does sound better!” he told Frye. “That’s it!”

Dorsey returned home and finished the song “in the next day or two.” Dorsey debuted “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” for the Pilgrim congregation at a Sunday worship service. The lyrics filled the sanctuary that morning: “Precious Lord, take my hand / Lead me on, let me stand / I am tired, I am weak / I am worn.” Dorsey was shocked to find congregants out of their seats and in the aisles, crying out in prayer. His song of deliverance from unbearable pain touched the heart of a congregation of Black Americans with testimonies of their own—of illness, death, poverty, or the daily indignities of discrimination.

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and snow covered mountains, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear arises that it might blow you and your party right over the cliff. But in the midst of it you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure, but the awesome might of the storm rages on and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.

At first, there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished. Only the life-threatening part. There remains the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.

God’s power is behind the unendurable cold of Arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, “Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night sky.”

Undercover narcotics officer Norm Wielsch was parked on a dark frontage road in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was about 9 p.m., and he was writing a suicide letter to his wife. Then he pulled out his gun as the most effective way to ensure a quick and painless death. Norm thought, I have investigated dozens of suicides. How had my life spiraled out of control to the point of wanting to commit it myself?

Norm had grown up in a middle-class family. One night, he went on a police ride-along. He loved it and knew he had found his calling. Norm writes,

Police protect the thin line between good and evil. They witness the worst that Satan has to offer. Few can endure the emotional stress and physical wear and tear, and after 10 years, PTSD had taken hold of me. Outwardly I appeared to have it all: marriage to my high-school sweetheart, two beautiful daughters, a great job, and a nice house. But inside I was a mess. My wife could take it no longer, and we divorced.

In 1998, I moved to a state police narcotics unit to work as an undercover agent. Soon after, I was diagnosed with a neurological disease called peripheral neuropathy, which was complicated by a degenerative muscular condition. After each of the 30 surgeries, doctors prescribed opioid pain medications. Before long, it was dozens a day and my physical and emotional condition was deteriorating. My second wife begged me to seek professional help, but I was too prideful.

In 2010, his daughter was diagnosed with liver tumors. Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving. This put Norm in a downward spiral of depression and so on that night he resolved to end his life. Norm writes, “Thankfully, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even so, the next few months were a nightmare.”

Then he made a destructive decision. A private investigator he’d illegally helped in the past by checking license plates and warrant details, needed money for bills. He asked if Norm could supply drugs seized during narcotics investigations. At first, Norm declined, but the PI threatened to reveal their illegal collaborations. So, Norm gave in, not knowing that federal investigators had already sniffed out the scheme. He was arrested the next day and bailed out a few days later.

This was my darkest hour. But God began his mighty work in my life one evening when the telephone rang. It was Pastor Jeff Kenney in Concord, California. I did not know Pastor Jeff, and I did not believe in God. Even so, he invited me to church but I declined. But my wife suggested that God was missing from our lives. She insisted we go to church the next Sunday and so we did.

During one Sunday sermon, Pastor Jeff asked the congregation to pray for my daughter’s healing. Shortly thereafter, we went to get the results from her latest biopsy. The doctor presented two scans: one showing the tumors, and another on which they had disappeared completely. He could not explain the results. It hit me like a ton of bricks. This was no coincidence—God had healed her! I finally believed there was a living God!

After pleading guilty to my charges, I was sentenced to 14 years in prison. There, I got a job in the chapel and earned a master’s degrees in theology and counseling. As I serve the remainder of my sentence, I’m working as an addiction counselor in a men’s residential facility, where I provide pastoral care as a credentialed chaplain. All the hardship, guilt, and pain changed me from the inside out. God may not heal my body in this life, but I know that I am healed—body and soul—for all eternity.

Heath Adamson shares the story of his deliverance from the occult and addiction in an article in CT magazine. Even as a child, the spiritual world was real to him because of his involvement with the occult. Heath remembers watching a chair slide across the floor and a candle floating off the coffee table. His experiences with the supernatural led him on an all-consuming quest for answers.

Then in eighth grade a female classmate sensed in her heart that God was whispering Heath’s name. The whisper said something to the effect of, “Pray for that young man. You are going to marry him one day.” They struck up a relationship, but when the school year ended, they went their separate ways. She attended church, but Heath had regular encounters with the demonic realm, became addicted to numerous drugs, looked like a human skeleton, and lived life in quiet desperation.

Heath then writes:

In my junior year of high school, I asked my physics partner about religion and he invited me to church. I actually went and one Sunday night, I lay in my bedroom thinking about who God was and what the truth could be. I felt like God himself had come into my room. I remember saying out loud, “Jesus, you are who you say you are.” Deep inside, I believed he loved me the way I was. God’s presence was so real that I could almost feel him breathing in my face.

I told my physics partner I would go back to church with him on a Wednesday night. I said, “Remember when the pastor asked if people wanted to ask Jesus to forgive them. Well, I think I need to do that.” At the end of the service, a volunteer pastor said a prayer and shared the gospel. I was the only one who responded. That night, when I embraced the grace of Jesus, my body was supernaturally and instantaneously healed. My substance addictions vanished.

The very next day, I discovered something incredible in the mailbox. Inside was a handwritten letter from the girl who dared to listen in eighth grade when God touched her heart. It just happened to land in the mailbox the day after I met God. After I married that amazing girl, I found her prayer journals. That’s when I discovered how God used the prayers of her and others, often whispered when no one was watching, to help soften my hardened heart.

Looking back at my salvation, I am the product of a girl who dared to believe when God whispered, an invitation to church, and the power of prayer. And most of all the Savior who stepped into my darkness and, instead of turning away in horror, showed me who he was and who I was created to be.

For 50 years, Toby Nigh had what he describes as the perfect life. He had a good job, a happy family, and if you had asked him, he would have told you that he was really lucky. Then his perfect life fell to pieces in 2018. One day at work he picked up a 30-pound machine and blew out the L4-L5 disc in his back. A surgery led to an infection, which required another surgery, and then another. He was left weak and in pain.

He battled ongoing infections for a year and a half, and in the midst of it all, he lost the job he’d had all his life. The pain, trauma, and anger were too much to bear. He found relief in methamphetamines. He said, “I wanted to bury the pain—the physical pain, the mental pain. I made a very bad decision.”

Things got worse for Toby in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic reached America. He said, “So when the pandemic hit, I’m thinking, If I get it, I die. I went in my basement, and I closed myself in, and my addiction became bigger and stronger.”

According to stats from the CDC, Toby wasn’t the only one who responded that way. Within a few months of the start of the pandemic, more than 40,000 Americans self-reported new or increased substance abuse. It seems people turned to drugs as a way of coping. That number is probably low. By the year’s end, the country saw a record 91,799 drug overdose deaths, up from 70,630 in 2019. In 2021, more than 100,000 died from an overdose.

Gary Blackard, CEO of a Christian drug and alcohol recovery program, has seen the pandemic’s impacts firsthand. He said, “One of the worst things you can do with someone who is struggling with addiction is isolating them. To put someone in isolation who is struggling that way certainly exacerbates the addiction and the struggles.”

Today by God’s grace Toby is free of his addiction. He served time in prison. He got off drugs. He developed a deeper relationship with God in a faith-centered recovery house. He always believed, he said, but it wasn’t personal before.

Think of yourself as living in an apartment house. You live there under a landlord who has made your life miserable. He charges you exorbitant rent. When you can’t pay, he loans you money at a fearful rate of interest to get you even further into his debt. He barges into your apartment at all hours of the day and night, wrecks and dirties the place up, then charges you extra for not maintaining the premises. Your life is miserable.

Then comes Someone who says, “I’ve taken over this apartment house. I’ve purchased it. You can live here as long as you like, free. The rent is paid up. I am going to be living here with you, in the manager’s apartment.” What a joy! You are saved! You are delivered out of the clutches of the old landlord!

But what happens? You hardly have time to rejoice in your new-found freedom, when a knock comes at the door. And there he is—the old landlord! Mean, glowering, and demanding as ever. He has come for the rent, he says. What do you do? Do you pay him? Of course you don’t! Do you go out and pop him on the nose? No—he’s bigger than you are! You confidently tell him, “You’ll have to take that up with the new Landlord.” He may bellow, threaten, wheedle, and cajole. You just quietly tell him, “Take it up with the new Landlord.” If he comes back a dozen times, with all sorts of threats and arguments, waving legal-looking documents in your face, you simply tell him yet once again, “Take it up with the new Landlord.” ln the end, he has to. He knows it, too. He just hopes that he can bluff and threaten and deceive you into doubting that the new Landlord will really take care of things.

Justin Wren shares his testimony as an MMA fighter who fought in a cage and fought drug addiction until he was found by Jesus.

Growing up, Justin faced severe bullying. Then at 13, he was diagnosed with clinical depression, and battled suicidal thoughts. However, he got involved in athletics, which started him on the trajectory to professional cage fighting.

After graduation, I moved to the Olympic Training Center. In a match with a world champion, I ended up in a bad position. He twisted my arm the wrong way and my arm snapped like a twig. I was in terrible pain and my elbow was broken. I began taking painkillers, and I was hooked immediately. I would go through a month’s supply of Oxycontin in a week.

After healing, Justin gained a spot in a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fight. But as his career skyrocketed, so did his addictions. He added cocaine and alcohol to his out-of-control narcotics addiction.

Justin’s life hit rock bottom when he was kicked off one of the world’s best fight teams for drug use. But his friend, Jeff, did not give up on him. Jeff invited him to a men’s retreat where Justin experienced real men sharing real stories about their struggles. He knew he needed what they had and he prayed:

“God, I’m a drunk and drug addict. I’m a liar and a cheater. God, I’ve hurt everybody. I don’t want to hurt anybody anymore. I desperately need you in my life.” As I prayed, I felt God lift me up. It felt like something finally released me. I was free. All the emotional chains of depression, all the bondage, just broke and fell away. At the same time, I felt God’s arms envelop me, the way a father bear-hugs his sons. In desperation, I prayed: “God, I’m yours. Is there anything you want me to do? I desire to do your will, not mine.”

Justin suddenly had a strange vision in which he saw people living in a cluster of twig-and-leaf huts with malnourished children. He didn’t know who these people were, but he knew he had to help them. He turned to Isaiah 58:6-12, about God’s heart for the poor and oppressed. The passage started a fire in his heart.

I shared my vision with my mentor, Caleb, and he immediately knew I was describing a Pygmy tribe in the Congo. He told me he was leading a group there and he encouraged me to go with him. I knew I couldn’t help them unless I understood them first, so I lived with them for a year. I slept in a twig-and-leaf hut, ate their food, and suffered from the same diseases.

Recently, after a five-year hiatus, I returned to the MMA cage with the goal of raising money for Fight for the Forgotten, the organization I founded to help serve the Pygmies. The drive to fight is still there, but I’m no longer fighting my inner demons. I’m fighting to fulfill God’s call on my life.

At a suburban factory for processing French fries, workers discovered something on the conveyor belt full of potatoes: a World War II-era grenade. Manager Roland Spitaels said, “It looked very much like a muddy potato originally. But the guys were really calm and collected and they reacted in an extremely professional manner.”

According to the manager, police were summoned to the scene, who in turn called an ordnance disposal team from the New Zealand Defense Force. The military bomb squad identified it as a Mills bomb, a common WWII grenade. Upon subjecting it to X-rays, however, they found it to be non-explosive, likely used as a training device.

The manager told local news that the incident was the first of its kind during the factory’s three decades of operation. He hopes that police will return the grenade, so that it can be displayed in a trophy room.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even something as simple as sorting potatoes in a factory can contain hidden danger. It’s not often apparent which situation life will throw at us. But by remaining calm and with the Spirit’s discernment we can be protected.

John Joseph shares his testimony of coming out of a life of drug abuse through the grace of God who gave him a new heart:

In high school, life revolved around sports and popularity. My life got further out of control with each passing year. The weekend parties of my freshman year became weeklong parties by my senior year, as casual drinking metastasized into alcoholism.

I began selling drugs and I (was) also introduced to cocaine. And cocaine stole my soul. Then I started selling cocaine. I became a monster—a liar and a thief. I used everyone and everything to serve myself. I didn’t care who I hurt.

I decided to make drastic changes, and I enlisted in the US Coast Guard. And although boot camp gave me some much-needed structure and discipline, it couldn’t change my heart. I fell back into the same way of living.

Then God put Art Thompson in my life. Art was a young kid who had just joined the Coast Guard. Art loved Jesus, and he loved me. He faithfully shared the gospel with me, always making a point to say, “Jesus loves you, bro.” He described how Jesus had changed his life. Art had a serious joy that I wanted in my own life. I just didn’t know how to get it.

In 2008, I was re-stationed (to California). And despite the change in scenery, the same problems with drinking and drugs followed me. But then I started attending church. The problem was that I still conceived of the gospel as a call to change myself through willpower. I stopped drinking and doing drugs and started exercising self-control. I had saved myself. And then the bottom fell out. While celebrating New Year’s Eve with some old friends, a round of casual drinking turned into an all-out binge. I was so drunk that I blacked out.

I drove home in a state of despair, convinced I could never truly change. Arriving back, I thought I would listen to a sermon to clear my mind. I had learned about a preacher named John Piper. Before long I found myself captivated. Piper’s preaching about God, sin, justice, and hell was unlike anything I’d ever heard. For the first time, I understood that I was guilty of more than doing “bad things”—I had sinned against God and deserved his judgment.

Two nights later, I listened to another Piper sermon, one on John 3:16. Depending on how we respond to it, he preached, we will either spend eternity with God in heaven or apart from him in hell. I distinctly remembering time slowing to a crawl as he said those words. I was replaying the last 10 years of my life: the lying, the drunkenness, the drug use—all my terrible sins against a holy God. I felt the crushing weight of it, and I knew I was going to hell. And then, I knew I wasn’t.

The burden of my sin fell off in an instant, replaced with the knowledge that Jesus was Lord and God had saved me. That moment led to an immediate and radical change, as God removed my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh. He had set me free from my sin.

Editor’s Note: Today John Joseph is lead pastor of Cheverly Baptist Church in Bladensburg, Maryland.

African Americans have held tight to their Bibles over the years. Amid cultural shifts in beliefs and reading habits, their demographic consistently outranks other racial groups for their reliance on the Word. In 2018 the American Bible Society (ABS) once again named African Americans “the most Bible engaged in the US.”

They are more likely to own a Bible—93 percent of African Americans do, versus 82 percent of Americans overall—and more than twice as likely to say Bible reading is crucial to their daily routine, according to the society’s State of the Bible report.

Mark Croston, national director of black church partnerships for LifeWay said, “Generally, African Americans are deeply spiritual people. In my generation, many of those that were not church attendees, or even Christian, still had a great respect for the Bible. Black people love to quote and tote the Bible.”

Former NFL player, Miles McPherson describes his bondage to cocaine and deliverance by Christ:

I was a defensive back playing for the San Diego Chargers and living the life I always wanted. As a rookie arriving at training camp, I was in awe of all the veteran players. I’ll never forget the day I walked into a hotel room occupied by six partying veterans. The pressure to get along, to fit in, was overwhelming. So when the guys pulled out cocaine and passed it around, I knew I had a decision to make: Take part or be left out.

The cocaine that I consumed that night took me by the lapels and forced me into submission. Soon enough, I was completely under its control. There I was, at the top of the sports world, playing on TV every Sunday and enjoying a nice contract. And yet, every chance I got, I drove myself down to the seediest neighborhoods of the city and paid good money to a dealer who sold me poison.

At the time, there were several guys on the team who were Christians, and they were very vocal about Jesus. One guy, in particular, was downright aggressive. One day, on a chartered flight back from a game, he got in my face. Staring me down, he asked, “If you were to die today, would you go to heaven? You know Jesus wants your heart. What are you going to do?” It freaked me out.

One night, one of my teammates drove me down to a ramshackle crack house. I encountered a shriveled-up skeleton of a soul in a dirty white tank top who was busy making a batch. He had given his life over to the drug, and it was killing him. I looked him up and down. I actually felt sorry for him—until I caught myself in the mirror. God said to me, What’s the difference between you and him?

Just then, my teammate entered the bathroom, and the cook handed him a crack pipe. He stood right in front of me, put that filthy thing in his mouth, and took a hit. I watched his eyes roll back in his head and his body go limp. I thought he was going to die. He asked me, “You want to try it?” I gulped, “Nah.” “You’re strong,” he said. I replied, “Not strong. Just scared.”

I began begging myself not to do it anymore. I was throwing away my dream, the best opportunity I ever could have hoped for. But no matter how furiously I pleaded with the man in the mirror, I just couldn’t stop. “Just one more day,” a voice from the dark side of my soul would say. “Just one more party.”

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. I began a cocaine binge in the evening, and when 5 a.m. rolled around, I still hadn’t gone to sleep. I was shackled by my habit and utterly helpless against it—I fully believed it would kill me. If anything was going to free me, it had to be mightier than my addiction. I recalled what my Christian teammates had said about the power of Jesus. And so I called out to Jesus to save me. Who else was going to do it?

When I got up off my knees, everything was different. I felt as if I had been delivered—that all the desire to use had fallen away. By God’s grace, from that point forward, I would never do drugs again.

Editor’s Note: Miles McPherson is the senior pastor of Rock Church in San Diego, CA.