Thank y'all. Boy, I tell you, I remember years ago, Brother Tim Smith and I were going to church together. And I believe Brother Ralph may have been preaching up at Peace Haven. And so let's go up there and hear Brother Ralph. We did. We went up into Yadkinville. We went down this other road. We went down this other road. And I looked at it and the sign said Booger Swamp Road. I thought, he has brought me out here, and somebody's going to kill us. And you drive out there, and there was nothing. And then all of a sudden, there's this church building. And man, it was an oasis. And then, not many years after that, they built another ginormous building out there on Booger Swamp Road. And I remember coming home, Brother Johnny, one time we were coming home from Boone on 421 and I looked and I told myself and I said, I think that's Peace Haven. I mean you could see it from 421 all the way across there. Now you imagine out in the middle of nowhere in Yadkin County. It's not Los Angeles or Atlanta, this is Yadkin County. I'll tell you this. I think one year our choir went up there and sang. Brother Tim shared a video on Facebook the other day. Brother Ralph was preaching. He preached on the tsunami of sin. And I still remember it. And I watched that video of both him and I wept. Because we're missing, we're missing that kind of revival. That kind of conviction. I watched swarms of people going to the altar that night. I've heard many great preachers and singers and just had some of the best times of my life with Brother Bruce and Miss Cindy and Brother Ralph, Brother Tim. You know, it's good. As I mentioned, he preached our first revival almost 20 years ago. And I'm glad he's still sticking with the stuff. And he's been my friend and a pretty good golfer. I'm glad I heard stories before he had his accident how he would wear people out. So even after he had his accident, he still beat me. But I remember I told Miss Ellen on the way back to the church, he and I were playing golf one time at this real nice course, you know, and if you've ever been to those nice courses, they tend to frown on you driving the cart up close to the green. They usually have it marked off. Brother Bruce drove that cart right up on, I mean, where he could step out of that cart on the ground and said, Brother Bruce, do you not think we're gonna get in trouble? He said, I'm crippled, they're not gonna say nothing to me. But he's been my friend and been one of my heroes and I appreciate him. So he'll help us tonight, I know he will. And so you give him your attention. Thank you so much. He's told stories. He's told half-truths. I don't know how to follow that, but we'll do our best. Good evening, everybody. Good to see you. Booger Swamp Road were some of our great memories, highlights of our Christian experience with the Lord. And yes, we did just try to let the Lord have his way. And whatever that meant, there was a time when Tony Gordon Majesty was there, they got to singing, I'd put on a crown and walk around. And we had a, next thing I know, some of our crazy people, Every church has got a few crazy people. We had a few crazy people started making, you probably were there for that. And they started going round and round and round and round and round the place. We just would have a good time in the Lord. We weren't worried about our reputation, what somebody's gonna say about us. Just let God have His way. We've gotten away from that a little bit. So anyway, thank you, Pastor, for the opportunity to be here. Would you stand as we turn in God's Word tonight to the Gospel of Mark? The Gospel of Mark. Now, I'll try to preach fast. If you'll listen fast, we'll be home before the 10 o'clock news, I promise. I said you gotta listen fast. So let's pray the Lord will give us a great time together. I always hate to come along behind someone like Dr. Ralph Sexton, and I really wish he'd have let me come earlier in the week, and that way I wouldn't mess this thing up. I'm looking around me, I see flowers right there. I'm probably gonna knock them over before the night's over. I was out in Texas preaching at a church. It was right around Christmas time. I was trying to give my testimony a little bit and share how I called my mother and told her I'd got saved and called to preach on a Sunday morning, and I know she had been praying for me for a long time. And she dropped the phone, and I was trying to illustrate that. Well, I grabbed the baby Jesus out of the manger scene. And went, hello, mama. And you know they've never had me back since then. I think I offended some of those Baptist Catholics or something like that. But this is the gospel truth. I preach the church not far from here. And I tore something up one night. I can't remember what it was. Tore something up. The next night I walked in, literally everything on the platform was removed. I'm talking flowers, I'm talking microphones, a pulpit, everything, piano. I mean, they had hid it somewhere on the property, but it was all missing. There was nothing on the platform at all. So I don't know what people are afraid of. But my wife's with me tonight. I'm gonna try to behave myself. The gospel of Mark chapter 11. the Gospel of Mark chapter 11. I went to this church a few years ago. Well, I had this message I had been preaching, and I asked the fellow in our church, I was in Georgia at the time, I said, you got an old plow, you know, like you make rows with and stuff. I said, Jesus said, if we put our hand to the plow and look back, we're not fit for the kingdom. I said, I wanna preach on that. I said, I want something I can really use for an illustration. And so he said, yeah, I got what you need. Well, he brought me, you know what I'm talking about, one of them old hand things you used to make rows with in the garden. He brought that thing and I preached it at the church, I preached it at another place, and then I preached it at another place, and I thought, I'm getting high. Well, I carried that plow around several places. And one place I took it to, Pastor, they had just remodeled their church. And here I am down through the aisles, you know, with this plow. And it's got the plow on it, it's got the blade on it. And that whole church was scared to death of digging up their brand new carpet. And so the next year, believe it or not, they invited me back. But he said, you gotta put down a deposit before you come. And so I, you know, normally you get a love offering for preaching somewhere. I had to put down a $500 deposit just to get, just to preach there. So I'm gonna try to behave tonight. Mark chapter 11. Thank y'all for coming out on this Wednesday evening. And I know you've had some great preaching in this meeting. Men whom I respect and admire so very much. Your pastor's actually one of them. He's told stories about my golf game and all that. He could smack me around no matter, you name it, golf, hunt, you name it, he could whoop me, and that's the truth. He didn't tell it like it's really so, but I consider him a great friend, and I know he's been faithful through the years. You're fortunate to have, when you have a man that will give you this book, You gotta hold on to it. You gotta hold on to it. Have sense enough to hold on to it. Be good to it. Because they're just not everywhere anymore. Mark the 11th chapter, verse 22, Jesus entering, saith unto them, have faith in God. Have faith in God. Have faith. Have faith. Verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt, shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe, believe that those things which he hath said shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever He said, Father, thank you for the privilege to preach tonight. May you use the message to stir our hearts, do a mighty work here this evening. May we all leave in a little while, glad we came this way. And in eternity, God, may we look back with fond memories of the night we spent together. God, we'll thank you for all you do for us in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. You may be seated. Thank you for standing for a moment. I want to talk about the subject of faith tonight. And I know when we look at this verse, for example, have faith in God. Listen, there's no way in one message you can explore all of the wonderful truths about the subject of faith. It's too huge. It's from cover to cover in the Bible. But for just a few moments tonight, if you'll permit me, I want to talk about a particular kind of faith that I think the Lord might use to help you and help us together in these days that we're living. Now, just a few things. We all know that not only is faith a major subject, but we know, for example, that we're saved through faith, right? We're saved through faith. The scripture is plain about that. You can't get saved without believing the gospel. You have to believe. There has to be the element of faith. Romans 5-1, right? Most of us could quote that verse, right? Therefore being justified by what? Faith. We have peace with God. Being justified by faith so we know we can get saved apart from faith. We know we're saved by grace through faith. We're saved by grace through faith. One of us in here, I would assume, believes that you can work your way to heaven. You can't work your way to heaven at all. You must believe the gospel. That's how we get saved. Then we're to walk by faith, right? We're to walk by faith. As a Christian, we just live day by day believing God, trusting God. Romans 117 says the just shall live by faith. Y'all with me so far? We're gonna get a little Sunday school lesson in here and then we're gonna preach a little bit. So we know the just shall live by faith. In other words, Jesus, as he said here in our text, we move mountains by faith. We tackle the big stuff in our life by faith. We tackle the little stuff in our life by faith. We tackle the in-between stuff in our life by faith. Listen, we tackle the COVID stuff by faith. We just believe God, we trust God. I refused a couple of years ago in all this stuff. I just refused to cower in fear. I just, I'm not gonna do it. I just chose to live. I told the pastor, he's had it. I said, if you have an anointing from God, you don't get it. I don't think he liked that too much. I hope he'll have me back. We know without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it is impossible, impossible. To please God, you sit here tonight, you say, I want to please the Lord, Pastor. I want to please the Lord. I want to please the Lord with my life. Then you're going to please the Lord by faith, by faith. Could I just preach here for a second? Too much whining, bellyaching, complaining, Christians, and then they wonder why I don't get God to move on my behalf. Why can't I get God to move for me? Because he don't respond to whining and bellyaching and complaining, he responds to faith. He responds to faith. I have said this many times. Faith is the magnet that draws God into your situation. Faith is the magnet that draws God into your situation. Not your whining. Your faith. Your faith. So we know we can't get saved apart from faith. We know we're to live our life as a Christian by faith. We know that the Lord responds to our faith, that we can't please him apart from faith. All of that we know to be the case. And here Jesus is trying to teach a very foundational principle. Have faith in God. Have faith in God. Have faith in God. Let me ask this question tonight. What one thing do you need from God tonight if God were to say to you one thing I will grant to you tonight what would the one thing one thing be now once you think about this for just a second before you spout off something in your mind or in your spirit what one thing Would it be the salvation maybe of a loved one? That'd be a pretty good one thing. It might be a breakthrough in your marriage. It could be a breakthrough in your relationship between father and son. between mother and daughter. It could be a breakthrough financially tonight. That could be true for some of you. It could be a prodigal that you'd like to see come home this evening. It could be revival, for example. That would be the one thing that we would want to see from God. Look, I'm convinced that many times we ask the Lord for something, and then we walk away from it, we let go of it, and we don't ask, we're not determined enough in our faith. We're not, we are not in pursuit of that thing enough. And so God said, if you know more serious about it than that. I mean, when we get to the point, when we get to the point that we say, I mean, on our faces, we say, God, it's revival or I die. When we get to the point when our church are so hungry and so thirsty that nothing else will do but genuine heaven-sent Holy Ghost revival, you may be surprised what occurs. What one thing, just what one thing would you, if you could ask God for tonight and he might grant it, what would be that one thing? When I was a boy, we always had dogs at our house. My dad worked for the post office and seemed like he'd bring home another one every so often. You know, somebody had dropped a thing off. And so we had, I mean, bird dogs. We had crazy dogs of all kinds and breeds and stuff. And for a good long span in my boyhood, my childhood, we had a bulldog. To be accurate, we had a Boston Terrier. The Boston Terriers in the Bulldog family, their faces all smashed in, and I've always said that they're like a miniature Holstein cow, right? partly white, partly black. You never know exactly which part's gonna be white or black until they're born. So we had a Boston Terrier. But he was in the bulldog family. And any of you that know anything about bulldogs, they are tenacious. They're tenacious, and especially if you get them all jacked up and juiced up, you know what I'm saying? And so, we used to take an old sock, for example, and we could get it in front of that bulldog, and we could get him all juiced up, and we'd take that sock, and he'd grab onto it with his mouth, and as he grabbed onto that sock, That sock, he locked those jaws in on that thing and he would not let go of it. He just would not let go. Now, if we were pretty sure there were no adults nearby, we would take that bulldog and literally pick him up off the ground. And that dog would be hangin' there like you had strung a bass up out of the lake. He'd just be hangin' on, hangin' on. And if we were 100% there were no adults within a mile, we'd just start swingin' him around like this. That's a fact. And that dog would be locked onto that sock. I mean his hind legs would be stretched out one way and we're swinging him around, swinging him around. He would not let go of that sock. I have thought many, many times, if only we had the faith that would not let go of the heart of God. That's what I'm asking you tonight. Would you be willing to wrap your faith around the heart of God and not let go until God answers your prayer, until you saw the breakthrough come, until you saw the fires of revival ignited, until you saw the marriage relationship restored, until Could I give you a couple examples of some people who had a faith that would not let go? I think about the four friends who carried their paralytic friend to the house. You remember the story is in Mark chapter two. where they got to the house and there was so many people that they couldn't get in the door, so they didn't give up. They went all the way up to the roof, right? And they dig a hole in the roof. I just always amaze when I read this. I mean, I've got to think, what woman downstairs is freaking out? Going, this is my house! All this dirt! and my electrolux bag is full. They're digging a hole, and they let their friend down on the little pallet. You remember, and the Bible's very plain about this, Jesus seeing their faith. Seeing their faith. It's not demanded sick. He says, Jesus saw their faith, the four faithful friends. who would not be deterred. They had a faith that would not let go. They were not going home, not today. They were not gonna be denied. They were not going to the house. They were not gonna say, well, I guess Jesus is too busy. He's not gonna get to our friend today. They were not going home until they saw their friend healed. and delivered of his sin. So, the Bible says, when we get to the end of that story, the Bible said, the people said, we never seen anything on this fashion. Never seen anything like this. Why? Because somebody had, you might say, a bulldog feet. I think about the woman with the issue of blood in Mark chapter five, just a few pages over. She what? She believes that if she can just touch the hem of his garment. Now, she's been to the doctors. That hadn't helped her. She's been everywhere else. She's only lost all the money she's had, and she's no better. In fact, she's She's technically unclean. She's not even supposed to be in public with a blood issue, a blood flow, and yet she doesn't worry about all that. She works her way through the crowd. In her heart, she says, if I can just reach out and touch his garment, she said, I know, I know I shall be made whole. She's got her faith wrapped around the heart of Jesus and she's not turning loose. People probably saying, get out of here. Woman, what are you doing out here in public? Go home. Not this woman. She's got a faith that won't let go. What does Jesus say? Thy faith, thy faith. He called her daughter. What? She comes to the party unclean. Gentile. She leaves. Daughter. Thy faith, thy faith hath made thee whole. We go a little further than that in the Gospel of Mark. Right old blind Bartimaeus in Mark chapter 10. One of my favorite places in the whole Gospel of Mark. He's sitting beside the road begging. And he knows that Jesus is near. So what does he do? He begins to cry out, Jesus thou son of David, have mercy on me. Now, the people around him say, Bartimaeus, shh, hold your peace. I personally think they went, shut up! He don't care about you. You're just a blind beggar. But when he's told to hold his tongue, when he's told to hold his peace, when he's told to be still, he shouts a little louder. if I could get a few Baptists to stop being intimidated every time somebody hears them shout just a little bit. And so the last time they shouted, somebody said something about it, so they were intimidated enough, the next time they come to church, gonna be a little quiet mouth. Not Bartimaeus. He's got a bulldog faith. Oh, Bartimaeus, after they told him to be still, the Bible said he cried out all the more. Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy. Jesus stopped. Bring him over here. What do you want me to do for you? That's just why I'm asking you this question tonight. It's important. What one thing do you need from God tonight? Jesus said, what one thing would you want me to do for you in a minute? He says, that I might receive my sight. He started following Jesus down the road, didn't he? How do you think he started following Jesus down the road if he couldn't see? His sight was restored. And what was the vehicle? Faith. Faith. Faith. He believed Jesus could do it. And he got his sight restored. I don't mean to bore you tonight, but I think about that centurion. I think about that centurion that had the servant at home, right? And he was deathly sick. And they went and asked for Jesus, could he come? And the centurion just stops and says, no, look, you don't need to get to my house. You don't need to get to my house. You just speak the word. I got servants and slaves and soldiers under me. All I need to do is just give them an instruction and they do it. I'm a man of authority, I understand. All you need to do, Jesus, is speak the word. And I know my servant. That's a faith, that's a faith, that's a faith that's not gonna let go. I think of that woman with a daughter whose demon possessed is in Matthew chapter eight. And she comes to Jesus and requests that Jesus do something for her daughter who's full of devils. And the Bible says that Jesus answered her not a word. Now that's one of the most unusual passages in the New Testament to me. Jesus doesn't answer her a word. He doesn't say a thing. I'm just making preparations for when I get excited. He doesn't answer. Now most people would say, well, come on. He's not gonna do anything, you just will come on. He's not gonna do anything, not today. But she has a bulldog faith. She has a faith that's wrapped around the heart of Jesus and won't let go, right? And so what? The next thing you know, when Jesus says something about the crumbs and the lost of the sheep of Israel and all of that, and she says, yeah, but you know, and the dogs, they get the crumbs too. And Jesus says, I've not seen this kind of faith in all of Israel. There's only two times Jesus ever said somebody had great faith. Only twice. One was the centurion and one was this woman right here. And they're both Gentiles. Now do you think her daughter was delivered of the demonic spirit, you know the story. It was because of her faith. She was not gonna be denied. Jesus didn't answer her. She didn't take that as a no. She just kept worshiping at his feet. She was not going home, not today, until she got an answer. And I guess if there's one more, just throw by your memory, I think about the Old Testament in Genesis, is it chapter 32, where old Jacob, Jacob is wrestling. Jacob is wrestling with what most theologians call a theophany. a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. I don't know your position on that, Pastor, so I wouldn't want to undo anything that you've taught through the years. I believe it was the Lord. You may not take that position. If so, you can be wrong. That's all right. So Jacob's in his tent wrestling. He's wrestling. I know you love me, don't you? Yes, you do. He's got the Lord in a headlock. He's got the Lord in a headlock. And the Lord is saying, let me go. The daybreak's coming. You gotta let me go. And what does Jacob say? He says, I will not let you go. until you bless me. I will not let you go except you bless me. Now you gonna bless me or not? He says I'll bless you. So old Jacob gets his blessing. Old Jacob's got what we might call a bulldog faith. Jacob says, I'm not gonna turn loose of you, God, until you bless me. Now look, look, look. I came tonight to just say this. What one thing do you need from God tonight? What one thing is breaking your heart, tearing your life apart? What one thing, one thing would you want to say maybe at an altar one more time, one more time, God, I'm not gonna turn you loose about this until, until, See, I'm preaching tonight, and many of you have heard my testimony, but I'll go through it real quick. Like, I was lost in the nightclub world. I was in a rock band. I was headed in the wrong direction. And my mama, she's a godly woman, godly. Thank God for an old-fashioned godly mother. She was praying for me. I'd come home after two, three weeks on the road, and she'd say, Bruce, I love you. I just want you to know something. I'm gonna be praying for you. And I'd get in a hotel somewhere the rest of the week, and all I could hear in my head was, Bruce, I love you. Bruce, I'm gonna be praying for you. And that went through my brain over and over and over. I tried to run from it, couldn't get away from it. And then all of a sudden, on the second Sunday of October 1978, I heard an old-fashioned preacher man. He preached that gospel. He said, Jesus died for you. Jesus loved you. And Jesus will save you if you'll only trust him. I didn't know about the other three or four hundred in there, but I knew I was headed to hell and I needed a savior. I ran down the left side of that church auditorium, knelt down in God's mercy, washed my soul, and cleansed me of sin upon sin upon sin, and I got ready to get up and go back to my seat, and God put the stiff arm on me. God said, no, I'm not done with you yet. Called me to preach his word. Called me to preach his word. I got a double whammy. The same day he called me, same day, to salvation, he called me to preach. Well, I had to go home. I had to first of all go across the street and call my mama, right? Because I knew she'd been praying for me for years. So there's no baby Jesus laying here that I can call. So I had to use a, I had to use a, so let me tell you what happened. I had enough coins to go across the street from our little apartment and jump in the phone booth, and I did my testimony at a youth revival down in Myrtle Beach a couple years ago, and it just struck me that every child in here under the age of 30 has no clue what a phone booth even is. So I had to say, now, a phone booth, hey, kids, here, a phone booth was a thing about as tall as a casket. You had to go in there, put your money inside this little black box. You had to stick your finger in the hole. It went di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di. And finally, it would reach your number, and you'd make a call. And that's the way you made telephone calls. And they all just stared at me like, is he from another planet or what? Because the only thing they've ever known is something they hold in their hand. So I went across the street and I called my mother. I said, Mom, I just want to tell you something. I said, I went to church today. I said, I got saved, and God called me to preach. So all I heard was a bunch of clanging, like that. Dad come on the phone. He said, son, are you all right? Are you in jail? What's the matter? I said, no, dad, I'm not in jail. I went to church and I got saved and God called me to preach his word. All I could hear was mama through the house. Woo! Woo! My mama's not one of them shouting kind of women, but she was shouting that day. You know why she's shouting? because all those years when her faith was wrapped around the heart of God for her boy, she refused to let go until God answered her prayer. Woo! Thank you, Mama, for praying for the old boy. Most of you know, in May of 2002, I fell 30 feet trying to change the light bulb in our church sanctuary. I was up there trying to change the light bulb. Light bulb wasn't the kind you screw in. It was a 500 watt bulb, and you had to get up behind the thing and undo it. And so somehow or another, I got up on that cherry picker lift. I got up there and tried to get behind that thing and pull that thing, and somehow I lost my balance and fell and hit the concrete floor, broke my left pelvis in three places, broke my right arm in two. barely survived through ICU for two and a half weeks, finally got to the 11th floor of Baptist Hospital, stayed there for eight weeks. And some of you look at me right now and you'll say, you what? You broke your hip? You what? You seem like you're jumping around pretty good to me. That's because I had a whole bunch of people with some bulldog faith. They would not let go of God. My music minister at the time, he come, sat down on the bedside there with me at baptism. He said, preacher, I've been wanting to tell you this, but I wanted to wait till you were well enough to appreciate it. He said, the night you fell, he said, word began to spread that you had fell and they didn't know if you were going to live or die. They didn't know the severity of the situation. He said, but I wish you could have seen them. They started pouring through up there at that sanctuary. Women were kneeling over there where the blood was still fresh on the carpet. He said some were in the choir loft and some were in the pews, various places. He said they were praying, oh God, oh God, let our preacher live. Oh God, don't let our preacher die. He said, I wish you could have heard them. He said they had their faith wrapped around God's heart and they wasn't gonna let go till they were sure, God, you were gonna do a miracle. He said, I'm telling you. Now, some of you look at it and say, yeah, but you got a little hitch and you get along. Yeah, that might be true. I can't jump the piers like I used to, but bless God, I can still get up on them if I need to. And I'm telling you, life is still good. I'm still preaching. Still hooping and hollering. Carrying this whole gospel message. Because some people wouldn't let go of God. Had a bulldog faith. They had a faith that would not let go. That's the kind of faith I'm trying to teach you about tonight. What one thing, who plays the piano, you can come on. If you start toward the piano, they'll think the service is about over. Thank you. Some of you tonight, you have a need for healing in your body. Some of you had a need for a financial breakthrough. Some of you have a need for restoration in a relationship that Satan has tore apart. Some of you, it's a church problem. It needs to be resolved. Some of you, it's a dear friend, I mean a dear friend. As far as you know, if they died tonight, they'd go to hell. But you don't wanna see them go to hell, you wanna see them go to heaven. But you hadn't called out their name for a while. You maybe gave up a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago and you just figured, no, they're never gonna get saved because I prayed for them before and they hadn't got saved yet, so I guess they're not gonna get saved. But if you'll wrap your faith, around the heart of Jesus tonight. Like old Jacob, you'll say, Lord, I will not let you go about this until, until, until that breakthrough comes. Would you stand with me tonight with your heads bowed for just a moment? The invitation won't be long this evening. I don't normally Begging, begging, begging for people to come to the altar. If God's moved on your heart, if God spoke to your heart tonight, if God has moved in your soul, you just be the first to come on down. Don't wait for somebody else. You be the first to come. If you say I'm the only one on my pew that's coming, so what? Come on. This is gonna be the night that some of you develop a faith that won't let go until you see God move in this situation. The one thing, the one thing, I'm asking you to be specific tonight, the one thing We all have many needs. We all have various things that we pray about. I'm talking about the one thing, the one thing tonight, that would be on your heart more than anything else, more than anything else, this one thing. Like Obartimaeus, I want to see Or the woman with the issue of blood, I need healing. Or the four men with a sick friend who were not going home until, until they saw God do a miracle in the life of their friend. We're going to wait for you just another moment or two, and then I'm going to turn it back over to the pastor. We'll wait for you just a moment. Maybe tonight, the issue is revival, but you've kind of gotten soft about praying for it. Tonight, you'd say, Lord God, put it on my heart again. Put it on my heart again. Don't let me stop praying for revival for America. Revival for our county and our state. God can still do it. Maybe you're a mother tonight. Don't stop praying for your boy. Don't stop praying for your girl. They're not too far away from God. No, they're not. Pastor, you come. I love you.