Testimonies of Christian Joy and Thankfulness

Well good evening, it's good to see everybody. If I have not met you, if you were a visitor, my name is Chris Shepherd. I'm the pastor here and we're very very thankful that you are here. We want to welcome you to Grace Life Church anytime. We have worship services on Sunday mornings at 1030 and we have small groups. Some people call it Sunday school but we have small groups at Sunday nights at 6 o'clock and then we have Wednesday night services at 6 o'clock. Children's classes for all ages on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights and so if you're looking for a church home, we would encourage you, we would invite you to come visit with us.

It would be our privilege, our honor. This morning in our message we looked at what it means to be a joyful and thankful Christian. We looked at the fact that we are supposed to be thankful in all things, joyful in all things and I have had this on my mind really for the past couple of weeks. I want you to hear from certain individuals in our church that you know Grace Life folks and I want you to hear them give testimony about how they are joyful and how they are thankful about certain specific areas in their life and how you as the church have ministered to them.

So we have three testimonies from three men and I know that you'll be blessed and I look forward to what they're going to share. So I'm going to turn it over to Dylan. I could feel him standing behind me. Thank you brother. I would very much like to stand behind something. Yes. Hi, I'm Dylan Thurman. For those of you that don't know, my wife Kayla and I, we have three children and we've been a part of Grace Life for three or four years now. We both grew up in, by the way my wife Kayla is back there. I want to embarrass her for a second if you would raise your hand. Yeah, we have three kids.

We've been going here for three or four years now and it's been quite awesome. We both grew up in church. We've attended your typical Baptist church and maybe a charismatic church or two and maybe even a legalist church. As I and as I pondered about what I was asked to share tonight, I thought about what makes this church so much different from the others. I remember hearing the gospel growing up. I remember making a decision based off of what I heard in those churches yet it wasn't until we attended Grace Life that both my wife and myself discovered that we were lost. So how can this be?

When we first began visiting, we were invited by Kayla's brother Kyle who is in attendance also. The people here were so kind and you could tell they meant it. We were involved, well I mean we were invited over to homes and quickly got to know people through small group but it wasn't just people we were getting to know. We were getting to know God better through the preaching on Sunday mornings and teachings on Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. The Word of God was the focus that was made clear first and foremost and that's what made the difference in our lives and ultimately brought us both to a place of realizing our lostness.

For me specifically, I remember sitting in a small group with the older guys. I think I know Anthony was there, Rob was there, Keith, Tommy. It was a mixed class that night just by having stance and I remember I was for me specifically I was sitting in that small group with the older guys and just listened to how they spoke of God and how they spoke to each other and quickly realized the person I thought I was wasn't a real person at all. It was a shell of a person full of great ideas, full of a bunch of YouTube videos and but no I had no real way to apply any of that to my life.

I was quickly humbled by the genuine kindness of their own humility and also some brutal honesty from our pastor Chris who was very good at handing that out. But that's what I needed. That's what Kayla and I both needed was to have our old lost cell shown to us through the through the Word of God and then have the Word of God apply to our lives. The application of the Word is what we always lacked. I'm thankful for Grace Life because nothing takes precedent over the Word of God from the music we sing to the lessons we teach the children.

I'm thankful I don't have to worry about what my children will be hearing five, ten or fifteen years from now. I'm thankful for people like Kyle for inviting me and my wife. I'm thankful for all of the men that helped me when I was trying to work all this out and the women that were able to help Kayla. For the incredible amount of people always serving each other and always looking for places to serve, I'm thankful for our pastor and our elders who make sure the Word of God is put above everything else. Grace Life isn't perfect but you can quickly see that God is perfecting his church the longer you are here and that is my testimony.

I've been called a lot. I don't know that I've been called brutal like that. Dylan knows I love him. I'm a little brutal with him at times. To be honest with you sometimes I give him a hard time and I get home later and I think maybe I need to make sure he knows I'm not serious. So if I'm brutal it's brutal because I love you and I thank you Dylan. I appreciate you and Kayla. We love y'all. You know that and I know that your testimony spoke. Bless me. I've got one more and another. Come on up Evan and I'm gonna turn it over to Evan and let him share. Good evening everybody.

I've got some kind of horrible crud going on so my voice cracks or whatever. I'm sorry but ever since Brother Chris called me and said that I'd be sharing my testimony it's like instantly I got sick. It's fear yes. My name is Evan O'Leary. My wife is Devin O'Leary and we have a sweet one-year-old daughter named Allison. We have been married for almost four years and have been members of Grace Life Church of Brookhaven since March of 2022. I would like to share a little bit about some of the trials that we have faced and God's goodness through it all.

In the summer of 2022 we found out that Dev was pregnant with the first baby that we had lost due to miscarriage. We were heartbroken but found comfort in the Lord during that time. A few months later we found out that we were expecting Allie. At 20 weeks we went in for an anatomy scan to check Allie's development. During that scan we could tell by the ultrasound technicians face that something was not right. Our OB came in afterward and told us that there were a few anomalies that she couldn't properly diagnose and that it would require a higher a higher specialty.

She referred us to UMMC the next day to get more scans and try to find a diagnosis. The next morning we went to the hospital and the OB confirmed that our daughter was missing her radius bones, that there was only one kidney, and that there was a large mass on the base of her spine that could be anything. He told us that he believed that she had TAR syndrome and that it would require genetic testing to confirm. We found out later with genetics that it was in fact TAR syndrome. TAR stands for thrombocytopenia absent radius syndrome.

It is a rare genetic disorder which is characterized by the absence of the radius bones and a deficiency of platelets which aid in the clotting process. This syndrome can vary widely in its severity as far as the overall length of the arms and shortage of platelets. The odds of having TAR syndrome is around one in 250,000 people. To put that into perspective the odds that your child will have down syndrome is about one in one thousand people. Needless to say this was not something Devin and I had ever heard of and it was not something that was listed when Devin had her 16 week genetic test done.

We were advised that it would that we should plan for a c-section because the amount of pressure exerted on the head during a natural birth could result in a brain bleed due to her possible deficiency of platelets. Fast forward to May 8th of last year Allison was born at six pounds 15 ounces at UMMC and transferred to the NICU at Batson Children's Hospital right next door for observation. While she was in the NICU we were able to see the mass that was on her spine that was about the size of a muscadine.

During Devin's pregnancy we were under the impression that since the mass didn't have any veins or nerve endings it shouldn't be anything serious and that she would probably probably just need cosmetic surgery and have it removed. A few days later the doctor said they wanted to go ahead with the surgery to see what the mass was. They performed said surgery and sent it off to be tested. They found out it was a sacro coccidio teratoma that could be benign or malignant.

After we had been discharged from the NICU and got home we waited a few months and Allie got some blood tests that showed that her tumor was coming back pretty aggressively and that she would need chemotherapy. Allie went through four rounds of chemotherapy at Batson. After chemo she has had a major spine surgery to fix a tethered spinal cord. All in all so far Allison has had five surgeries. Thank the Lord the chemo worked and all the tests have shown that Allie is in remission and everything is showing that she is a happy healthy girl.

Now we are waiting for Allie to have corrective surgery on her arms hopefully next year that should help her functional capacities and ease the difficulty of her disability. During all this Devon and I faced a lot of anxiety, dread, fearfulness, loneliness, and sorrow. What are we supposed to do about all this? At the most fundamental level I have to start off with who Devon and I are. We are sinners before a holy God who deserve absolutely nothing in this life besides death and eternal judgment in hell.

This may seem like a weird direction but when you have that biblical truth as your understanding in life you are forced into an absolute position of thankfulness toward God for everything. Not only this but we are born-again believers who have been delivered from this judgment to God as our Father who cares for us and every trial and circumstance is sovereignly ordained to conform us to the image of Christ for our good and His glory. Some verses that really encouraged me through these trials. Romans 8 28 and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.

Psalm 16 1 through 2, "Keep me O God for I take refuge in you. O my soul you have said to Yahweh. You are my Lord I have no good without you." 1 Peter 1 3 through 7, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to obtain an inheritance an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading having been kept in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold which is perishable even though tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. A good quote that we recently discussed in small groups by Charles Spurgeon, "Remember this had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are divine love would have put you there." As far as the role that the church has played in our lives it is almost inexpressible.

We belong to a sound church with true believers who are filled with the Spirit and really love us. Y'all have been with us from the very beginning and I want to take this opportunity to say thank you so much for everything materially and spiritually. At every corner we had several people call us, text us, visit us, bring us meals, meet us in our car to pray with us and just love on us. That is how the church is supposed to be. We are to carry each other's burdens and the problems that we face are used to help others in the body with similar problems. The love of Christ that shines through y'all has been so encouraging to Devon and myself.

I would like to close with a few things that we have learned from the trials we have faced. Be constant in prayer, embrace the will of the Lord. God is infinitely wise and is doing a million different things that we can hardly grasp. The church is absolutely essential for Christian growth and maturity. God takes care of his children. God's sovereignty is such an amazing comfort. Be thankful in all circumstances. Be filled with the Spirit and be saturated with the Word of God preached and by yourself. Thank y'all. Thank You Evan. Kind of preached a little bit. I like that. Now you can see where I got about half my message this morning.

I got that from him. So it's amazing how these things kind of overlap. All right we've got one more. Anthony Bataglia, come on up after he finishes out. Just a few more comments and then then we'll each supper. So my name is Anthony Bataglia for those of you that don't know me. I stand in the hallway most of the times. No I'm kidding. I do want to talk about thankfulness for the church. I was saved 23, 4 years ago and I've been around a lot of churches and I've belonged to several churches.

And I want to talk about thankfulness for this particular church but I want to also highlight just the reason for that thankfulness and how my brain kind of works on a daily basis. I just want to read to you from Ephesians. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church at Ephesus which is one of the most faithful churches if not the most faithful church in the New Testament that we read of.

But he says in chapter 3 verse 8, "To me though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places." And that scripture has stuck with me over the last 20 years when I first became acquainted with it because as we go through our lives we take a lot of things for granted and the church is the worst thing that you can take for granted and a lot of times the closer you are to the church, myself included, you take it for granted.

You take for granted the things that you see and the things that are going on. But what Paul is saying right there if you grab hold of what he's saying is God's manifold wisdom, meaning the many layers of his wisdom is on display through a people, not just this people here but the church around the world, every church that is actually a true church around the world. God is doing something very specific.

In fact all of history revolves around what he is doing in those people and what he does is this I wasn't saved until I was 29 years old and I'm sad to say I lived a terrible life and I sinned against the Lord terribly in that time but he saved me through the work of the church and I want to tell you about a man that I met. I met him at work and he came in and he told me about his salvation and he said he was going to kill himself.

He was going to jump off the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge if you're familiar with that bridge that goes over the river on I-10 and he got up there to commit suicide and he looked down and he saw something shimmering in the lapping it wasn't really ways because the river but in the lapping of the river on the side he saw something shimmering gold and so he got down off of the bridge to find out what it was and it was a Bible and the edges were gold and it was laying there open to the gospel of John and he read the gospel of John and the Lord saved that man through that and that's through the work of the church you're not gonna say well as you say no it's through a river and it's through a Bible that just fell there on the river.

We don't know what happened how that Bible got there he doesn't know to this day how that Bible got there but what we do know is the world doesn't have a Bible without the work of the church and that's just one little little facet of history that the church God is working through people ordinary people like us every day that get together every week week in and week out and we come because the Lord has saved us first and foremost we've seen God show us our sin and both of those brothers alluded to the sin that we are shown that we've broken God's law time and time again over and over and you know I've met people over the last 24 years that actually believe they're not sinners well you know we all know that's impossible but if you're confused about that here today you just take any commandment you want to whether it's lying or stealing or anything like that and run through that in your life and see how many times you've committed sin against against the Lord and I'm sad to say I've broken all ten of the commandments in thought word or deed until I was 29 years old and then the Lord through the work of the church through the church people like you and people like me just blood-bought believers wanting to love people out in their community I heard the gospel and I heard portions of the gospel and then I saw the gospel in a in a drama and I heard the gospel alongside that drama and it wasn't the best presentation of the gospel but what I heard was this that I deserved hell just like was said by one of the brothers tonight and that if I had died in my sins at that moment I would have gone straight to hell and so I tell my kids and I've told the youth group here and I tell myself every day and this is to cultivate joyfulness and thankfulness if you start there and that sounds it may sound morbid to you but I promise you it's not if you start at hell and calibrate your life if you know what it means to calibrate your life start there in any situation that you've ever walked through if you think you have a bad time if you think you know people hate you or you think you know work is terrible or whatever the situation you you come across just start at hell and say this is what I actually deserve and I'll look at what I actually have if you're lost right now meaning you're not a part of the church you are not born again maybe those phrases you don't even understand him but this is what I'm saying if you have not encountered Jesus Christ and you have not confessed your sins to him if you have not cried out to him internally or externally for the salvation of your soul if you don't know that if you died right now that you would spend eternity in heaven then you need to become part of the church the church is in a building it doesn't have a sign on it necessarily that's just where we meet the church is every single person in the entirety of the world throughout all of history who has ever bowed the knee to Christ in what we call repentance and faith meaning they've turned from their sins and they have trusted Almighty God with their whole heart their whole soul and they have been born again they have been made a new creature from the inside out and they have been given eternal life as a gift that they cannot earn in fact all we have ever earned I'm sad to say all I've ever earned is death and hell that's all I've ever earned and that's what I deserve and if you're honest with yourself if you're here tonight and you've never been born again that's what you deserve we don't want you to go to hell God Almighty takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked the Bible tells us very clearly he wants you to be saved and so what cultivates thankfulness and a joyful heart in my life every day as I start there and I remind myself that 2,000 years ago the Son of God literally physically was born into a manger the Christmas story that we're gonna celebrate shortly he was born he lived a sinlessly perfect life not only did he not break the commandments you know we can go through life and not lie and not steal or not commit physical adultery but Jesus said things like if you've ever looked at a woman to lust for you've committed adultery in your heart already with that woman Jesus not only never did that but he always loved his neighbor perfectly and that is a far cry from just keeping the commandments he always said the right thing he didn't just shut his mouth not to lie but he always said what was needed for the moment and he always gave grace to everyone who heard him he was the perfect man God in the flesh and he suffered and he bled and he died and the entirety of the world knows that when he was hung on that cross that the world was changed forever and then he poured his life into the disciples that followed him and then on that day on the cross he gave up the ghost the Bible tells us he said father into your hands I commit my spirit and he died three days later he rose from the dead you know we celebrate Easter maybe we don't think about it that way but we celebrate the resurrected Christ and if that's not enough to absolutely seal your soul to heaven that this man defeated death he defeated the grave he defeated death and hell he defeated your sin if you will come to him in repentance and faith and so this is what gets me out of bed in the morning every morning is that I remind myself that just like Evan said I don't deserve anything but hell and so if you want to talk about Thanksgiving I tell my kids all the time the rest of life is just gravy on top of my salvation it's all gravy literally that if I were in hell none of this is possible but if the Lord just saved me and left me in a ditch somewhere here in life you know then so be it I could still be happy Paul was happy in jail but on top of that he pours out love he pours out blessing and he's coming back again one day to receive us to himself and we're all gonna be together those who have named the name of Christ who have bowed the knee to Christ who have repented of their sins we're gonna spend eternity together and that's what gives me joy and I don't express that joy enough especially at church and the thankful thankfulness enough but I can tell you for all the churches that I've ever encountered and all the churches that I have been blessed to be a part of in the worst one that was telling pastor Chris the other day in the worst ones there was still the blessing of the Lord because there were God's people there this happens to be a very good church we're we're blessed immensely and it overwhelms me I would tell Chris over the last several years this is a church that I've seen the most people saved in the last 24 years walking with the Lord I've seen more people in the last three years come to know the Lord than I have in all those churches combined and I'm not lying and my wife will testify to the fact that that is true it doesn't mean that we're perfect or we're doing something right but what it does mean is the love of God is on display very powerfully here and that the love of God as seen through each one of your lives and through the lives of everyone who comes through that door that names the name of Christ that's the most important thing that we love God and we love our neighbor as ourselves and so I want to leave you with what I'm thankful thankful for I'm thankful for the preaching of the Word of God I'm so thankful for it because it's so hard to come by there are a lot of preachers in America and in American churches but they do not handle the Word of God properly and we are so blessed to have men that handle the Word of God properly I'm so blessed for the hard work that is put into the songs that we sing if you heard the songs that we sing there's a philosophy anchored in truth goes by and it's you know the song shouldn't be sung if the message of the song can't be preached and that's true today what we have with the hard work Keith puts in and I don't express that enough to him and to Chris and I don't express to all the men that have poured into my lives and all the friends that I have come to know here I have brothers in Christ that I would not be friends with if we were lost we're just incompatible people but since the Lord saved us we're now compatible and I have beautiful friends that I count as family and so I'm thankful for this church if you're a visitor here you should be very thankful that the Lord crossed our paths not because we're something special but because he's everything and he's worthy to be praised honored and adored and I promise you that's what we do here and we strive to do that so God bless each and every one of you now this is what you heard you heard thankfulness and joy in salvation conversion to Christ coming to faith in Christ you heard thankfulness and joy for trial and difficulty thankfulness and joy in the church our church what God's blessed us with from three lives and three families now Anthony just talked about paths being crossed there's some paths that are crossed here tonight I remember Anthony when my path was crossed with people who shared the gospel with me the first time I heard the gospel personally was someone in my family who shared the gospel and they used the personal pronoun you you have a sin problem this is what's wrong with your life and I didn't like it but behind that Anthony was a church much like us and you're here and you're not here by accident that didn't happen in my life by coincidence nor Anthony's life nor Dylan's life nor Evans life when they came to faith in Christ your path is crossed with our path and we're here to tell you that if you don't know Christ if you've not come to saving faith you need to tonight express repentance and faith towards Christ for salvation God's got you here don't let this night pass you by please come to faith in Christ the other path that's crossed you some of you are not in good churches some of you may say pastor I'm a Christian but you're you're in bad churches sick churches now we don't have church figured out and we don't have God in the box but God has graced us and blessed us we have an acceptably healthy church we're growing I would encourage you don't let this path cross you and go on by come and visit us here at Grace Life Church but I'm gonna warn you you're gonna be mauled smothered by people who will love you who will engage your life who will visit you who will call you they'll want to know what's going on in your life they'll chase you down to love you another warning you're gonna hear the Word of God preached and taught we're gonna back up and teach the word preach the word Sunday night you're gonna hear small group lessons Wednesday night messages we're gonna teach your children the word and there are a whole lot of other things that we do as well but if you're here and you're looking for a church home please come visit us give us an opportunity and the privilege to minister to you and it could be that God's brought you here because this is the church where God wants you now this Thanksgiving is gonna be about a lot of things but ultimately it needs to be about thankfulness and joy joy and thankfulness not just for our salvation not just for trial not just for our church but in how good God has been to us I heard a lot of that tonight thank you man appreciate it