Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 13, 2018 | Expresso - Mary Meininger

Transcript

March 13, 2018 | Expresso - Mary Meininger · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you guys, but I'm really hot.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I did take a shower, but I think I need another one.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Woo! Sorry about that.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's my nerves.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are you good?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm good.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I think I just want to pray.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Will you bow your heads with me?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, you are my God.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will exalt you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I will praise you and thank you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: For you have done miraculous things, things that were planned so long ago.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But yet you have carried them out faithfully.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I pray, Lord, that you'll be with us as we open our minds, our ears, and our hearts to you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we want to thank you for Jesus Christ.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because He's the reason.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Lord, for His obedience to the cross, His sacrifice, His suffering for us.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, He saved us.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of ladies have come to Espresso.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'll need the microphone or not.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I times have a big voice.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Other times, uh not so much.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully tonight I'll have a big voice for you.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of ladies have come to Espresso.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it says, real women and real stories.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we love that because we are learning each time how God is working.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been learning that for a long time.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you came here tonight to hear a couple of testimonies, one of them being mine.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is not my testimony.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not my story.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is his story.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is all about, it's all about him.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you right now, he is the master orchestrator.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: He is the master planner.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: He is the master healer.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't he, Mom?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: He is.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: He's the great physician and he works all things together for good and for our glory.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Mama, don't you do that to me.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have plenty of Kleenexes up here.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: His grace is enough.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: His grace is sufficient.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: God's grace, love, and mercy is changing me and is changing each of us so that we may be refined.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, refined like gold.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know what that means, don't you?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Through the fire, through the fire.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Through the challenges, through the trials, through the sacrifice, through the suffering, through the hard times, so that we may become more like him, more like Jesus Christ.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to raise your hands if you're a mama.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Keep them up, keep them up.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Raise them if you're a grandmother.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Raise them if you're a daughter.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that's all of us, isn't it?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, keep that in your mind because I want you to take a little trip with me.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to imagine this.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is what my mom and I went through one night.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And again, remember, this is not my story, but it's God's.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was December 7th, 1983, and dusk was falling.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: My mom and I had had a wonderful afternoon together.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were shopping and we were getting ready for Christmas.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Christmas is the most incredible time of the year.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we did just we decided to split up and get back to our own cars so that I could get home and that she could go grocery shopping.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: As I was heading home, I felt a strong presence with me.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And a voice clearly saying, put on your safety belt.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of turned around.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, it's 1980s.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wears safety belts in the 1980s.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I hated that word, that voice.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then I turned on a road toward home.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was an old country road.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of those that are windy and narrow, lots of trees.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, darkness continued to fall, and as I approached a curve or a bend, a corner, and as I drove around that corner, my light flashed before my eyes.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was petrified, terrified, and then crash.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how do I do this?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: You saw you were there.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, there it is.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yes.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: In an instant my body was broken, fractured.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was bleeding.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Man, there was blood everywhere.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Coldness.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Coldness set in.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: My mind was reeling.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was I alive?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Was I breathing?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Would I survive?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Would someone help me?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Would somebody find me?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would somebody try to hurt me again?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's about three of them there.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what my car looked like.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: You okay?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think my mama had uh a harder time than I did.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's in the story, too.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on, it's coming.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you see, when I rounded the corner, there was another vehicle coming fast.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the officers had measured his skid mark tracks and discovered that the vehicle was speeding between 75 and 85 miles an hour on a road where the speed limit should have been 35.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: The driver was in my lane, and with nowhere for me to go, I was a young driver, 17.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Month shy of being 18.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there was nowhere for me to go but into the trees.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I tell you what, when you hit the trees, they don't move.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: My body took full brunt, full brunt of that car accident.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: You bet.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there was so much broken glass, shattered dreams in an instant, a snap.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: My life had changed.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: My brain, my body, my heart, all of these things had just experienced a near-death fatal car collision.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was losing blood fast.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Enters.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Enters God's divine intervention.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: God's protection.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was there.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you how.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my mama never drove that road because she was smarter than I was.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: She never drove that road because it was a windy road and it was a narrow road.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was a dangerous road.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, being 17, I had all that under control, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm gonna tell you what.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, she never drove that road.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I began to panic and I screamed.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I screamed for help.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Help me, somebody help me, please help me.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I could.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are you okay, sweetie?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is difficult because I could faintly hear somebody screaming over my screams.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was familiar.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was an angel, perhaps.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was better that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was my mama.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: She found me.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: God sent her.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: My mama found me.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she screamed over top of my scream.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: She says, I will help you.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am here.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she did help me.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a whole nother story.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have time for that one tonight.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: She was absolutely amazing.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: She actually had heels on, and she actually had to leave her car where my car is, and she put her headlights on my car so nobody else would hit me because I had kind of was down in a little ditch in that car where the trees were.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so she got out of her car and walked probably what a half mile down the road, mom?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You think?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: About a half mile?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: About a half mile down the road to try to find help.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we lived in the country.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't have cell phones back then.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sorry to bring all this back for mom.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: You okay, sweetie?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So she was an incredible help to me.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now I want us to recall Job, the lessons of Job.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because remember, none of this is about me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: None of this is about Mom.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is about something greater.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Job says in 42.5, I had heard rumors about you.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: This was my life.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had heard rumors about Jesus Christ.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was a Christian.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I sat in the pews.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I sang the songs.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had been baptized.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I had heard rumors of Jesus Christ.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: But this night, as Job says, but now my eyes have seen you.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: On that night of total brokenness, from head to toe, physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, total brokenness.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I continued to feel that presence.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was God's presence.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: His strong and comforting presence.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had seen him in miraculous, in a very miraculous way.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: His protection that night.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot even describe.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But he was there protecting me every bit of the way and protecting my mom.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: God sought me out that night.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was expecting me in the ER that night.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he was.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was expecting me there.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there were many wounds, but many wonders came.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: There I am.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's about two to three weeks after the car accident.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I looked, I looked pretty good right there.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's my mama.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: There we are.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, there we are.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So as I said, there were many wounds, but wonders did come.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there were characteristics of God that can only be revealed or seen through adversity.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: When we are in the midst of trials, God will reveal his characteristics.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Characteristics maybe that you never knew, or maybe that you never knew personally.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: You will experience his power, his strength, his comforting presence, his healing, his love, and every step you take through that trial.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, through the fire, through the calamity of a car crash.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: He healed me.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: He strengthened my faith.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: His power was felt as he mended me.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: He mended my body again, physically, spiritually, emotionally.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: In every way he mended me.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: He did that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mom and I, we witnessed it.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's another whole story as well, because I had many breaks from head to toe.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I had a big hole in my nose, lacerations on my head.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty much every part of my body was broken on my right side.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, mom and I witnessed it.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my largest break was my femur bone, but he healed that too, as you can see.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: He healed it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you why he would choose to heal me.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: There was another patient in the ICU with me when I was there.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: He also had a broken femur bone.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he died.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I am not special.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I am not better than anyone else.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am deeply flawed.
• 16:35
  unknown: Badly.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: But by the power of Almighty God and by the continued prayers of a blessedly beautiful believing mother.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why he chose to heal me.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm here today, and for those reasons alone, and God alone, that's where I stand.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Our God remains steadfast and strong.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Even when others fail, he remains.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: My minister in Kentucky, where I had my car accident, he would tell me, through the darkest rooms, you will develop the most gorgeous pictures.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And through the hottest deserts, you will discover the most beautiful flowers.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're flat on your back, there is nowhere else to look but up.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what I did.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: As God watched over my every step, he saved me again.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I ask you tonight, if you do not know this master healer, our Savior Jesus Christ, come to him now.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do not delay.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do not delay because I cannot stress this enough to you.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: You do not know what is right around the corner.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Come to him tonight, trust in him.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good night.