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Transcript

I Am 175 Pounds Of Denseness Sometimes · Deep Waters

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, this is Ken, your podcast preacher.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to my podcast, Deep Waters.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Applied Strength Ministry, where we believe working together on our strengths is the effect of working out the will and calling of God in and through our lives.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's open up in prayer.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just as he chose you and him before the foundation of the world, that you should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined you to adoption as a son or daughter by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will which he purposed to himself, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made you accepted and beloved.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: In him ye have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound towards you in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to you the mystery of his will, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ask that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of the mystery of him.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, to the deepest knowledge of him, that you are willing and able to receive, that the eyes of your understanding would be opened wider, and that you would be enlightened to who he is, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in you, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power towards you who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, that he would grant that you would be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, and into your spirit and heart, consistently walking in the spirit so that you would be able to stand against the appetites of the flesh, the corrupted spirit of this world, the devil and his demons, and any in all fleshly desires and temptations.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that your love may abound more and more in all discernment, that you may approve the things that are extra, that you may be real about your Christianity, and unoffendable until the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, which are by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit to the glory and praise of God.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will, all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, strengthen with all might according to his glorious power, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints who walk by the Spirit and in the light.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that your hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and unity, and that you would attain to all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, both of the Father and of Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which has been given to each of my listeners by Christ Jesus, that you would be enriched in everything by him, in all utterance and all knowledge, so that you do not come short in obtaining or operating in your calling and purpose, nor in using any spiritual gifts or talents to perform mighty miracle signs and wonders, and that we would do the greater works of Jesus yet to be accomplished, that we would be found eagerly waiting for the continued revelation of our Lord Jesus, who will confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the near coming of the day of our Lord.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now therefore, my sisters and brothers in Christ, when things get tough, think about whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, and whatever things are of a good report.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: If there is any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things alone.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that in these very end of end time days that you would let your love be without hypocrisy.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Show people your faith by your works and service and love.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hate and loathe what is evil, cling to what is good and righteous, be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, and honor giving preference to one another, not lagging in diligence, fervent and fully engulfed in spiritual fire, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, walking in the peace of God, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints, that is each other, and that you would be given the hospitality.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: May the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like minded towards one another according to Christ Jesus, that we learn to be of one mind, in one accord, striving to get along no matter what disagreements we may encounter, operating completely and fully in love, always striving for the working out of God's specific will for each of our lives, while working in partnership with each other within the church and the Holy Spirit, as He manifests as miracle signs of wonders through the daily activities of our ministry and kingdom work, and while we also go out preaching the gospel in word and deed.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let us love and serve one another, our enemy, and those who wouldn't expect us to do so, considering each person better than ourselves.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Find up any words or thoughts that are contrary to the love of God or which would set you back in your Christian walk.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Guard your hearts from anything that would hinder the growth of your character.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Never forget that you can do all things in Christ.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And always remember this means all things.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now step out in faith today and walk with God, and with each other, being assured that nothing will separate you from Him as long as you abide in Him.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Call those things that don't exist as though they do.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the faith of God of which we have, created the universe by the Raman and Logos Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: All you need for this life is invisible until you apply your faith to receive it, but make sure you make your request known to God without fear, doubt, and unbelief.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Always remember that he that is in you is greater than he that is in the world.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Be more than a conqueror today, submitting to the will of God in everything.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Never forget that you can do all things through Christ who will strengthen you this very day.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let each of us express uncompromising love towards one another in humility while maintaining a teachable spirit, seeking to grow no matter how much it challenges our current thinking.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that God will give you the revelation within this message that He intends you to receive with the understanding.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory in majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray amen.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: The title of this message is I am a hundred and seventy five pounds of denseness sometimes.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a testimony of God's faithfulness in spite of my spiritual denseness.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I will explain what that means within this message, but I actually think that you will see it without me having to shed any light on those moments.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I was working for government round about three years before I retired, I wrote on a little sticky note one hundred seventy five.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ah yes, it had to do with my weight, but I wasn't going to let anyone know that.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: After all, I had traffic flow in and out of my office most days.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was in prayer to God asking him to help me to get to a healthy weight.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now maybe it's too early in this message to bring this up, but up it comes anyways.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: What I have learned in my dealings with God is that when I ask him for freedom from stuff like losing weight or for more money so that I can get out of debt, I usually expect that the one who spoke all things into being in six short days can of course just instantaneously speak the weight off of me in an instant, or drop cash from one stranger's bank account into mine.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, what I have found that he does is he looks for the source of the problem and begins his work right there.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is usually where the pain, trials, and testings begin.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not for God, of course, but it might be for us to really see if it is the weight or debt that is our actual problem, or if it's something more sinister like our out of control eating habits, drinking habits, or Amazon spending habits, which is where the root of the whole mess might lie.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think in hope that this shorty testimony will help to bear some of that out.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now at that time I prayed from deliverance from the two hundred forty pounds.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I did not speculate on any of the habits that I had that led me to this weight.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: In truth, I didn't pray more than just a few times throughout the decade that that prayer had initially started.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was hoping that this thing would be brought under new management.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: He nonetheless and regardless, I thought that I had the faith for it, and that one day it just might happen.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, passing time has a way of testing you if you are really faithful and if you really believe that you can do all things in Christ.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I retired and was very near the two hundred and forty marks still.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember looking at this little sticky note and pondering on the fact that I was still a beast of a man who would look like an alien in tight teens.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I thought nothing more of the fact of that prayer, and I threw away the little sticky note that had that one hundred seventy five pounds written all over it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of my at that time, eating habits reassured me that I would never see this weight again, and poof the rest of my faith was gone.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: During the early days of my retirement, I had habits in place such as drinking and smoking cigars, which by the way was encouraged by the church that I was attending.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But don't worry, God shut its doors after fourteen years of incredible ministry.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: As a leader, you can't leave people into sin and think that you won't get a God response.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh well, you can, but like Moses, you will be judged even if it means shutting down a system that was designed to be a blessing to the community.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it was a hundred percent my fault for allowing myself to be talked into such ridiculousness.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: No one but me.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, back to me.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one night I was smoking a cigar and it was rather moist.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of you that don't know what that means, it means that it usually releases a lot more nicotine than a properly dried cigar.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And but for me, I wasn't aware of what that nicotine would do to my heart that very night.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: I went to bed with my heart beating so fast that I couldn't actually count the beats, and if I tried to take my blood pressure, I knew that the machine would just go into error.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what side of my body I slept on, my heart was beating so fast and hard that I could feel it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought for sure that this was it, and that I wouldn't survive the night.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I remember asking God if there was any way that he could still use me in ministry somehow in some way, that he would and could do so, as my time looked to be coming to an end.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: My prayer continued, if not God, then you can take me home.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or aren't you glad he doesn't answer all of our prayers?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I also told him that I was done smoking cigars and that I would stop drinking, with his help, of course.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Before we move on with the story, I want to point out why I was frustrated with God not magically melting sixty five pounds off my body.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: The statement about the cigars and drinking cannot be classified as a heartfelt repentant prayer.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: It really was a statement, and but in an instant I lost the appetite to do either one of those things anymore.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And but also for good measure, God took away my appetite for other things that the alcohol would invite into my life space.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: This was about a fifty five year struggle.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So now you can see some of the ways God works.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like magic trick, meaning it is an instantaneously deliverance while our other prayers are on a long haul freeway.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So through some time and dietary changes, I dropped to about two hundred and twenty pounds, totally unaware that I was heading towards my prayer that God will one day get me down to one hundred and seventy five pounds.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: The sticky note was long in the landfill buried under the castaway prayers of humanity.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that was a little over the top dramatic, but I, being an emotional being, do have thoughts just like that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had a problem which considering the power of my addiction was like trying to dig a hole in the sand at the beach, because this is where the sand is, while the tide is coming in, hoping that the hole will remain long into the morning.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was still very much in love with sugar, in fact, so much so that you could say that I was in an unhealthy relationship.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: If there was a Jerry Springer type show for people who were addicted to sugar, my story would have made the cut and his ratings would have gone through the roof.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It went something like this.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: As God worked on my diet, I began to have appetites for salads, so I'd have a salad for lunch and maybe a can of sardines as well.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: My staff appreciated the sardines more than you might know.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then someone would bring in a masterfully large box or two of donuts, of which, for those with self control, extras were always expected, so I'd often go back for seconds, and every so often for thirds.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, don't judge me, I was eating a salad for lunch, you know, to offset the up to four to five hundred calories per edible delight.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: This means on my three day donut rate, I was consuming enough calories to sustain me all day.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: This, by the way, is what it looks like to be in bondage, or as stated before, in a bad relationship with an unhealthy habit.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when I stopped drinking, which added to my day about another five to six hundred very unnecessary calories, it also cut out a lot of sugar.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it was too late.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Diabetes came knocking on my door.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: My blood sugar levels were around five hundred and forty for over a month, and my A1C was at fourteen.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And for those that don't know what A1C normal is, it's around four.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of this was happening before I even found out I even had diabetes.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would like to blame it on the fact that because I never had diabetes, I didn't know that I actually had it.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But really, it was just me doing what I normally do, which is waiting until I'm almost dead before I seek help.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the nurse had left a message on our phone regarding my blood test results, and I remember this because it was quite funny, but she stated, although I'm not a doctor, and if it were me, I would go to the emergency room right now.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Me in my typical fashion decided to wait to see if I would get better.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: About an hour later, my wife as she was walking by me, said, Hey, you don't look so good.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me take your blood pressure.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: She took my blood pressure, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy five over thirty.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can't really remember what the numbers were, but it was insanely low for me.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: She called my doctor again and told the assistant where my blood pressure was, to which she replied with some concern in her voice, although I'm not a doctor, and if it were me, with both the sugar levels and the blood pressure readings, I would go to the emergency room right now.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I could hear the urgency in her voice over the phone and thought that it was probably a good idea.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: When I got there and they ran the blood test, this is when they discovered that my numbers were around five hundred and forty and my blood pressure was very low.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think only those who ever had diabetes would know how close I was to being in a diabetic coma.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it is possible that I already was, considering how long it took me to make the decision to go get help.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, during a month of waiting to get better, I had dropped another twenty five pounds, and in this typical fashion my prayer asking God to drop me to one hundred seventy five had escaped my thoughts, and I had given it no further concern or attention.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we just expect God to perform a magic trick when we pray, and that things will just happen.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Poof, terra, and in a few seconds our prayers would be answered.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And but now to be honest, some of my prayers are answered in exactly that way.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it would take me to mature spiritually speaking to understand that God's ways are not our ways.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, his word says that his ways are higher than our ways.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we cannot see the value in our prayers taking some time to be answered.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: The instantaneously answered prayers, I think God may simply have answered it that way, as a parent would allow their child to stay up later than they should, or to have dessert right before bed.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: It must have something to do with our eyes and the way we approach God or our parents.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah fifty five eight through nine for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this losing weight and adjusting my lifestyle prayer was coming true, but not in the ways that I thought it would come true.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually completely out of my scope of mind.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw it coming.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So after I found out that I had diabetes, I remember praying and asking God to remove the appetite for sugar in my life.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: This, by the way, was a sixty year addiction.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now watch this.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: He did so by using diabetes to wake me up to the dangers of my unhealthy diet and relationship with sugar.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it prompted me to pray in fear and trembling.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I hated needles, and the idea that my diet would now have to seriously change created a strange trauma.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that I had not the power or self control to bring about those necessary changes, but in watching so many struggles with what would be a death sentence for many, in part, because they too had not the power to abstain from the very foods that were intent on killing them, I became very overwhelmed that I was now in real trouble.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: When I asked God to help me, ten seconds after I prayed that little prayer, I stood up, and like the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment and knew that she had been healed, I knew in my very spirit that I was delivered from all sugar and foods that turned into sugars.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: The evidence is that more than a year later I am still walking in that freedom and doing so without the least bit of struggle.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The result in that season was that my weight had dropped down to about two hundred to two hundred and five pounds.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I never gave the way past prayer any thought, but now I do remember having this thought, which is that I hoped I would be able to keep the weight off that I did lose long term.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was tired of being a dietary yo-yo.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Weight up, weight down, weight up, weight down, weight up, wait down.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I have some friends out there.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to around February 2026.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: One day I noticed my heart was beating a lot faster than it should have.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, I could feel it when I laid on my left side.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: But and but you might not be surprised.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I still wasn't spiritually mature enough to get to the point where I would go and seek help right away.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I decided that I would give God a moment to heal me like magic, as he had done with so many other sicknesses and diseases throughout my life.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I no longer have gout, gastrosophageal reflux disease, also known as GERD.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: This deals with a level of heartburn beyond acetic acid that would spew out of a dragon's throat with a burning and all consuming fire.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Migraines no more, arthritis gone, diabetes gone, and at this time high blood pressure as well.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So considering that I was free from these things, I considered that I had the faith and the scriptures to support my idea that God would slow down my heart so that it would behave as he designed it to.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians states that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, telling believers to stand firm and not to accept a yoke of slavery.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: John eight thirty six quotes Jesus saying, So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Luke four eighteen records Jesus reading a prophecy about his mission, stating he went to set the oppressed free.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Romans eight one through two explains that through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit, has set you free from the law of sin and death.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Mark eleven, twenty two through twenty four.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus answered and said to them, Have faith in God, for assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be removed and be cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you received them, and you will have them.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: You see how those things can support my waiting to see if God will heal me.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Approximately four months later, with an increase of severe chest pains and other serious anomalies, I decided to call the ambulance, with some slight pressure from some really good friends I met at church, and therefore once again found myself in the hospital.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: The diagnosis was not what I expected considering where I thought that my faith was and considering the fact that I had those scriptures to support my waiting on God for his miraculous healing.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the past I've had two atrial fib heart surgeries, so I expected that they would simply cardiovert my heart, shock it into proper behavior, and that it would get right back in shape and I'd be on my way.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: But this was not the case.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: They told me that I had heart failure as well as atrial fib, or more precisely, atrial flutter.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless whether it's a fib or flutter, the solution is the same, which is to shock my heart, which basically stops it and then restarts it.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: They, however, couldn't bring the immediate solution because the risk of a blood clot having been developed in that four months of waiting was very high, and I wasn't on any medication.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: This means that the shock would have to wait another month while the blood thinners worked.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there were risks in waiting, but if God had intended that I die, I wouldn't be writing this testimony right now.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: My eight days in the hospital required fasting for a good part of the time so that they could try and figure out how to do the procedure since I was no longer on any medication.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was eight days of trying to figure out a workaround without any success.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is, while I was there, I was able to talk to a lot of people about God, including patients and nursing style.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: That made my stay a lot more enjoyable.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's probe my memory for any semblances of a prayer that I may have made a decade earlier, which was to get to at or below one hundred and seventy five pounds.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the forced fasting, my weight dropped down to one hundred and seventy two pounds.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bam, I shouted to everyone that my prayers for weight loss had been answered after a decade of interceding for myself on both of my knees in the snow the entire time.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: No way.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I still hadn't seen the connection.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: What decade long prayers have you prayed that God is intending on answering?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation for your spouse or kids?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: How about your neighbors?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: What about the pesky sicknesses or diseases?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: How about that diabetes that you keep feeding sugar to?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's time to resurrect those prayers, and like me, you may have forgotten that you had even prayed.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew seven, seven through eight says to ask, seek and knock, and it will be given to you because everyone who asks receives.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Mark eleven twenty four says, Whatever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive it and you will have it.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think I thought about the prayer I prayed very near to a decade ago?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, I hadn't even given it one thought.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of my focus was on how I was going to recover from the secondary effects of waiting too long to get to the hospital.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: The second diagnosis was that I was in heart failure.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now this is not as bad as it sounds, but it is still pretty easy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bad.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at how the condition is defined so that you get a more accurate presentation than if I were to try and explain it in a Paradisean hillbilly language.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: When your ejection fraction, that is EF, is too low, it is called a low ejection fraction, often linked to heart failure with reduced ejection fraction or systolic heart failure.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: This means your heart's main pumping chamber does not squeeze hard enough to push out a normal amount of blood.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's try to understand that.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your normal range is 55 to 70% of blood being pumped out with each beat.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mildly reduced would be 41 to 49%.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Low reduced is 40% or less.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Common signs of low EF.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Extreme tired or fatigue.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had this.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Shortness of breath during rest or light activity.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had this even in my sleep.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Swelling in the legs, ankles, or feet.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not so much.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Rapid or irregular heartbeat.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had this.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: My EF, by the way, was 14.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I am right now as I type this message in this phase of my life.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I still have faith even though I will be going through surgery in September, unless God's ways regarding my heart change, and we experience the magic of instantaneous healing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: My current activities include writing, reading, and recording my podcast.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and eating, feeding the dog, deer, squirrels, and birds.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know you might think, well, what else does an older person do in spite of a heart condition?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, but walking around places might be healthy, along with a few other things.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Look, it feels like when I wake up, I do so with about a half a day's worth of gas, and then suddenly I run out.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not complaining, just stating the facts.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So today is august fifth, twenty twenty six, and as I was reading the first chapter in a book titled The Presence of God written by RT Kendall, which is that it was all about God's presence being with us twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year, whether we feel him or not.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: This was a type of new revelation for me.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think it might be for others as well.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: You see, everyone wants a revival or another great awakening as the presence of God is extremely tangible and weighty, but he is no less effective or absent from us in the times where sometimes we feel as if he has left the universe, maybe to go check on the aliens living on Mars.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: He is omnipresent with us all of the time, through thick and thin, no matter what we may be going through, no matter whether or not we feel him or not.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Read the book of Proverbs and tell me King David didn't also wonder at times if God was still with him.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: But anyways, God was really speaking to me as I was reading through the first chapter of the book.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I started to think about all of the in between times where I thought that God was absent from my life, and started to hypothetically erase any thoughts that would suggest that he wasn't present with me.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: As I closed the book to try to get a few more hours of sleep, I also started thinking about all the things that he has done for me in my reckless life.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then my weight popped into my mind.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: What I was really thinking about was how I was able to sustain that weight after all of that stuff had gone on.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Never in my life was I ever able to actually sustain a specific weight with as much ease as I am able to do it today.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then it hit me God had actually used all of those things, the good, the bad, the ugly, disgust and dismissage, and probably so much more, and regardless of myself being irresponsible in certain behaviors, to bring me to just under a hundred and seventy five pounds.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: In spite of the facts of Scripture, like the following, sometimes God chooses for us to learn and to desire a pulling up of the root of whatever is causing us so much trouble.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah fifty three five says, By his stripes we are healed, looking forward to the suffering of Jesus.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: The operative word is our, which is right now, even before we get sick or take on some sort of disease.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back at what Jesus did on the cross.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Having been is a finality of our present healing.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let us not forget that God has a purpose, and sometimes it is just that inasmuch as we are created in the image and likeness of God, we still do not totally think and act like him.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah fifty five eight for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: We can see that in this next scripture that God has a wisdom that we do not always tap into Romans eight twenty eight, and we all know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: The operative word is all.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: He sees beyond what limits us to behave like him.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: We get distracted in the uncomfortableness and pain of whatever is ailing us, but not God.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: He sees opportunity in our frailness and will allow it to take place if we let him.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm sure after hearing this story that you might not be so inspired to ask God for certain things in your life, expecting that a lot of things might look like they're going wrong.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in fact, God is using all things to the good of those who love him.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when you consider praying for things, and I would recommend you do so, be it being free from sickness and or disease, asking for financial help, asking for an increase in spiritual maturity, whatever it is for you, don't be afraid to ask.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is important because even though I had life and death situations at least a couple of times in these events that I've listed in this message, death could not take a hold in me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: God protected me even from the more serious consequences that my own really poor decisions had brought about.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is beyond mind blowing is the fact that while he keeps me alive as I'm running through the mucky mire of life, it was his every intention that I would get down to one hundred seventy five pounds.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even though at some point in this process I had given up on seeing the manifestation of what I had thought was a ridiculous request, well, that is until he answered my long forgotten prayer.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now I see the beauty of losing sixty five pounds so that I could be healthier was really secondary to the process of God.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: The primary stuff was a change in behavior, a change in habits.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's no point in losing the weight magically, only to leave the bad habit in place.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever was causing me to eat all that sugar had to go first in order so that once I lost the weight, I could keep it off.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's how God's world works.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when you go through dietary programs on earth, if they don't deal with your spiritualness through Jesus Christ, it will be very difficult for you to keep the weight off.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know this because my life is full of attempts at trying to maintain a healthy relationship with my weight.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And no matter how hard I tried or how much I beat myself up or how many new clothes I had to buy, because I was just growing and growing and growing, I couldn't bring about that change.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to the things that are causing you distress in life.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: It might be God trying to answer one of your prayers, and he will use that distress to bring about the right change in your behaviors.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because in truth, our behaviors have to change before we can maintain the miracle that God wants to bring into our life.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is my heart getting better in spite of the fact that I am now just hovering just under one hundred and seventy five pounds?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, not right at this moment.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: But because God's timing does not necessarily line up with our timing, I'm sure things will be okay, as long as I am still needed by him on this earth to complete his will for my life.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what I am saying, I guess, is that it was never really about the weight, but more about learning how God thinks, acts, and behaves in the world of humanity, which doesn't have the patience nor the intelligence to act like we are children of God.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see how I put that on the world?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of just making this feared out and unbelief about me?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes indeedy, maybe I'm really just speaking to me as I bring this message to a close.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: As you can tell by this little testimony, I'm not really hyper spiritual, just a little slow to ask others for help, or to pay attention to them when they are trying to help me.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know by faith one day God will complete his work in me, and now that I understand a bit more about how he chooses to work at times, I can embrace a long suffering impatience with an open heart and with open arms.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we can get away from asking him why or how, then maybe we can be a little bit closer to maintaining our growing faith than these questions might allow.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, thanks for listening, and I'll be leaving you with this last scripture, which is mind-blowing, as I think we all have a little bit of Jacob or Israel in us, depending on what we're going through.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 28, 16 through 17.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, we have God living inside of us, so he doesn't go anywhere at any time.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what we do, the Lord is surely always in your space.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's close in prayer.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before your God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now may the God of peace, the one in whom we call wonderful, Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, may He Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: To our Lord of Lords and our King of Kings, to our high and lifted up great high priest, who has, once and for all, paid the price, that you might see and hear God.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: May He hear and respond to our prayers.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: To our God we stand and pray as He too always lives to make intercession for you while seated at the right hand of the Father.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: May the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever, amen.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well that's it for today.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Remember it's not what you find wrong or disagree with regarding these messages, but what you can take away from them.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Together we can do more to impact the kingdom than if we work alone.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's flip the script and still kill and destroy the works of the enemy and create space for a lot of light to shine through into people's lives.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Plan a seed and click on the like and subscribe button, repost on your social media platform, and help us to make this title.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Link this message out or teach from it in your Bible study your life or still beat.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, even in your church.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can be assured to have someone called a teeth, and though imperfect, you have the word of God to use to test everything I say.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's build this ministry together.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks and see you next time at Deep Flocks.