Restoration 2019:  Brokenness

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Restoration Ministry

2019:  Evening and Sabbath Meetings

Dean Cullinane

Father of the Fatherless

When God’s Not Around

God’s Quiver

God’s Dirty Underpants

The Seeds of Babylon

The Privilege of Prayer

The Second Milers

Samson and the Holy Spirit

The Darkest Hour

How to Walk on Water

Father in heaven, Lord we have so much to be grateful for.

To come before you in your presence, to have this opportunity to delight in your creation, to delight in the rest from that creation.

Father that we can spend this time with you, that we can worship you, that we have the Scriptures, that we can sing and praise your name, Lord.

These are privileges that none of us deserve.

But Father, you have entrusted us with the gospel.

You've entrusted us with this sacred message that the entire world needs to hear.

And so, Father, we pray as we begin this restoration series that, Father, you would Fill us with your Holy Spirit like we've never been filled before.

We have not come here for yesterday's blessings.

We have not come here just to relive old experiences.

We want to feel the presence of Your Spirit in our hearts.

We want to go forth in faith, Lord, knowing that heaven is behind us.

Father, I personally ask that Your Spirit would use me this evening.

Father, You told us in the book of Revelation chapter 12 verse 11 that they overcame Him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.

And so as I share what You have done in my brief experience with You, Lord, I just pray that you would take your word, you would send it forth to do that which it would and that it would not return unto you void.

This Lord is our prayer in Jesus name, amen.

For those of you that aren't aware, if there is a remnant of my accent remaining, then the majority of what you can hear is probably from the United Kingdom.

I was born in the small little country next to it called the Republic of Ireland.

I was born on the West Coast and I moved to the United Kingdom when I was 8 years old.

This was in the year 1999, which means that I'm 27 now.

I feel like age is already grasping me by the neck and I seek to overcome it, though I know it's essentially a losing battle.

But at the age of 8, myself, my brother, my younger brother, and my mom, we moved from Galway Island to London.

And the reason why we moved was because there was a family led by a particular man who had made death threats to my family, especially to my mother.

And at first we didn't take them seriously, but then later on we had no choice but to take them seriously.

I remember 1 time when I was really young, this rather imposing gentleman just kind of stormed into my house and physically abused my mother.

I think I was 7 at the time and I remember the next day my mom just coming to me and saying we're leaving, we're like we're leaving everything behind and I was like well what about my toys you know I'd built up such a collection in the past 3 or 4 years.

And we got on a boat, not a paddle boat or a row boat, but a cruise if you would, and we headed to London.

And that's where I spent all of the years from that point up until the age of maybe 24.

And that is where most of the experiences that I will share with you this evening stem from.

And I wanna share first a verse from Jeremiah 29 11.

You know the verse, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of, okay, maybe you don't know it, thoughts of peace and not of evil, and to give you an expected end.

I attended church faithfully every Sunday.

My grandparents were rather militant in that we lived a literal stone's throw away from the Catholic Church in the area.

It was a big, 1 of those big, I wouldn't say it was a cathedral, but it was a strange set up.

The pulpit was in the middle and everyone kind of sat around it.

I guess it made good ways for the whole communion thing.

But that was really the extent of my religious experience by the age of 13.

I went to church because my parents or my mom decided that I had to, because my grandma decided that I had to, because my grandfather decided that I had to.

And if we didn't go, then there'd be trouble, especially if my brother or I kicked up a fuss and decided that we didn't want to go and eat paper, you know, for church.

We just did this not how we wanted to spend our Sunday mornings and there would always be repercussions for those minor outbursts.

So, around about the age of 13 I had convinced my mum that we needed to stop doing this.

We'd moved from the motherland as it were and look, I remember in a very logical way saying, mum why do we still go to church?

And she was like, well, because we're Catholic.

And I was like, oh, is that all Catholics do?

And she was like, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Maybe we don't, maybe we just stop that now because I don't know if you've realized, but we don't live with grandma and grandpa anymore.

And so they're not really gonna know, but here's the thing, I kid you not, for the 5 years from when we left Ireland to that point, my grandma would call every Sunday.

She would call every Sunday at lunchtime just to ask, did you go to church today?

It's like, put the phone down and, oh, how are you?

How's your new life that you started overnight?

And But as long as you're going to church on Sunday, you should be fine.

So I convinced my mom that time that we should stop going.

Church had just become a game, a literal game in fact, because I used to go there with my video games because it was the only way that my mother could convince me to actually stay and remain quiet was if I had my Game Boy Advance.

Little Game Boy Advance just catching Pokemon, You know, the irony of catching ghost demons in the church.

So, I convinced my mum that we should stop going.

And she was like, but what are we gonna do when grandma calls?

And I was like, yeah, you know, maybe we don't pick up.

She's like, well, how often are we gonna be able to do that before she, she only calls on Sundays, or are we just, are we just killing the relationship right here?

And I had this, now I can't say I was a believer in God, But I had this thought at least in my mind that if God is real, at least at the age of 13, that it doesn't really matter.

The only thing that God is concerned about is Where am I on Sunday morning?

Yes, there's billions of people on the earth, but God obviously has other things to do, but Sunday morning, he has a keen eye.

Sunday morning, he wants to know, are you where you should be?

My own religious experience pretty much stopped there.

I went through school, I took my exams at the age of 16 because fortunately for us school stops at 16 years old in England, unless you want to continue it, but 16 is your 18.

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Series

2019: Evening and Sabbath Meetings

Father of the Fatherless

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

To Have and to Hold on

Holding On - Part 5

1h 13m

Testimonies

Abortion Recovery Testimony

36m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God is Faithful

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Maintaining Life Balance

23m

The Book of James

The Book of James: Love & the Law

58m

Responding To God’s Call To Serve

1h 20m

When Kings Fail

45m

Disappointed but Not Discouraged

32m

That Woman: Resurrecting the Three Angels

50m

Level 2 Home & Market Gardeners

Stepping into Hoophouse Growing – Should You Do it? Part 2

33m

Kingdom of Gentleness

59m

2019: Motivations of Bible Characters (Noon Meetings)

Charge That to My Account

33m

Sound Doctrine