SWYC 2010: Stand

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GYC Southwest

Wes Peppers

There IS a God in Heaven

It's a delight to be here with you, and this is not the typical Sabbath school I've been asked to share my personal testimony.

So it's always a delight for me to share what God has done in my life.

And even as I say those words, I almost well up with tears because my life is 1 that God, I believe He's done so many things for me, and in the last year especially He worked a miracle in my life, which I'm going to share with you.

You know, I was telling my wife this morning that when we first arrived here, we drove for 10 and a half hours to get here yesterday, and we were pretty exhausted, and I was pretty tired, and I came in and sat down under the tent, and just when the singing started, my heart just jumped because I could sense the Holy Spirit in this place.

And just the spirit of the leadership and the young people that are attending is just such a blessing for us to be here.

And even though I drove for 10 1 1 1 hours, I feel energized, amen?

And so I'm gonna be even more energized to share what Jesus has done in my life.

You know, each 1 of us have a testimony, no matter who we are, no matter what our background has been, no matter if we've been raised in the church or We left a life of drugs and alcohol.

And God has done great things in the lives of his people.

So before I share that story of mine with you, I pray that you'll just bow your heads with me as I ask God's blessing.

Father in heaven, this morning as we share, Lord, I have no business standing up here except that I tell the wondrous story of what you've done for me.

And Lord, I pray this morning that as I share your story, which is also my story, that hearts would be moved, Lord, and that our hearts and our minds would be drawn closer to you, Lord, and that we would not be the same people when we leave SWIC as when we came.

But through the testimony, through the songs, through the sermons, through the workshops this weekend, Lord, our lives would be radically transformed and that we would stand as a people ready to await you when you come in those clouds very, very soon.

Lord, this morning, move our hearts, send your Holy Spirit to God and lead us, we pray.

I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Jeremiah chapter 9, and as you're turning there I'm going to attempt to share with you a combination of my personal testimony, excuse me, my personal testimony and also the testimony of God healing me in the last year.

Last year I had cancer And I'm going to relate that story.

So normally I take about an hour, hour and 15 minutes for each, and I'm going to attempt both in the next 30 minutes.

So I'm going to have to leave a lot out, but you're going to pray for me, right?

I want to invite you to turn and read with me Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 23 and 24.

These 2 verses perfectly describe my life before I became a Seventh-day Adventist and after.

Thus says the Lord, verse 23, let not the wise man glory in his' what?

"'Nor let the mighty man glory in his, nor let the rich man glory in his, but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am who?

The Lord, exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these I delight, says the Lord.

My life revolves around those 2 passages because before I met Christ, my life revolved around verse 23.

I gloried in my wisdom, I gloried in my might, and I gloried in my riches, but since that time that I've accepted Christ, I've gloried in Him.

How many of you grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist?

Wow, it looks like the overwhelming majority.

I did not grow up in a Seventh-day Adventist home.

In fact, most of my family, none of my family, knew what a Seventh-day Adventist was.

When I grew up as a young person, I went to church sometimes with my grandparents, but that was about the extent.

And don't let my hair or lack of it deceive you.

I'm only 30 years old, though I look a little bit older because of my lack of hair.

But when I was growing up in school, I had a lot of hair.

So you can imagine, you can imagine the kind of treatment that I got from the other kids.

But 1 of the blessings I had was that I was always the largest kid in my class, and so they didn't get too close to me when they would say that.

Now, as I grew up, I want you to remember, I'm going to leave a lot of things out, I'm just going to hit the high points of my life, but as I grew up, I became heavily involved in sports and I played football as a matter of fact.

I went to public high school and played football there.

And, you know, when you think about a football player, typically what do you think about?

And that's typically what people think about when they think about somebody who played sports, but that was not the case with me.

In fact, I was 1 of the top students in my class.

So, if you look at those 2 parts of the text, the Bible said, let not the wise man glory in his what?

In his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might.

And all through high school I did those 2 things.

I became 1 of the best football players in the state of Alabama.

And going into my junior and senior year, I was basically the idol of the community.

All the younger classmen looked up to me, even the older classmen looked up to me.

The whole community saw this big star, this great football player.

No 1 had ever played college football from my high school before.

And everybody was looking at me as like the big shot on campus.

And everywhere I went in my community, everybody liked me.

Everything seemed to be going well for me.

But on the inside of my life, I was a different person altogether.

Even though I had everything at that point in my life that the world said I needed to be successful, yet I still felt empty and alone.

In 10th grade, I started going out with the older guys on the football team, and we would go out drinking together on the weekends.

Naturally, you want to go because you want to be liked, and that's what I did.

And so, I would start drinking with them on the weekends, and pretty soon, it became 1 or 2 nights a week.

And after some time, I got to where I became so addicted to alcohol that I was taking it to school with me in 10th grade and drinking it behind the teacher's back.

And very rapidly, within about 6 months of all that, I became known as the school alcoholic.

And it was a tragedy because all these people were looking at me to be the star and here I was letting everyone down.

Well, my football career was escalating and I had a good opportunity to play college football.

So my high school coach told me 1 evening, he said, look, if you don't stop all this stuff, he said, you're going to throw your entire future away.

You need to focus on football and do what's right.

And he said, and you're going to be successful.

If you don't, He said, you're going to be just like a bunch of these other losers out on the street.

And so, by my own strength, I put that stuff away for the next couple of years.

And my football, I continued to get bigger and I continued to get stronger.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I was bench pressing about 450 pounds, and I was squatting almost 700 pounds with my legs.

I ran a 4'8", 940, and again, I was 1 of the best football players around.

And so, 2 events in my high school years rapidly changed my life.

The first 1 had to do with, you guess it, football.

And the fourth game of my senior year, we were playing the biggest rival of the season, the team that we had beaten them the year before, but that was the first time in like 10 years we'd ever beaten them.

And so my coach calls me in the night of that game and he says, look, the college, the university that you want to play at is here to watch you tonight.

And if you do well, they're going to offer you a scholarship to come play football at their school.

The biggest rival of the year, the college I wanted to go to was there to watch me.

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There IS a God in Heaven

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