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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Daniel DeBardeleben

Dunamis

Dear God in heaven, thank you so much for this wonderful morning.

Thank you, God, for bringing all of us thus far in our lives.

Thank you, God, for your spirit that speaks.

I pray, God, that you would sing your spirit in this room, that you would speak through me, and that you would touch the hearts of your people, that you would encourage them, encourage them with my story.

Also, I pray, God, that you would inspire us to live a life of faith, A life of faith.

Sometimes we can't see what's before us, but sometimes he tells us to go forward.

So I pray, God, that as I share this story, that you would inspire us to live a life of faith.

So I wanted to start by just telling you guys a word, dunamis.

Does anybody know what the word dunamis means?

And if I could sum up my life in a few words, it would be the power of God.

God is very, very powerful, super powerful.

When he talks, when he decides to create something, he just says it and it happens.

So, this is a Bible verse that speaks to me.

It says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

That's a very powerful text because it has the word power in it.

And I just wanna give you guys just a glimpse of the power of God.

In Genesis chapter 1 verse 3 it says, And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And God said, in Genesis 1 verse 6, And it was so.

But 1 of the biggest challenges that I've always had in life is actually living my life like that was true.

Living my life like when God speaks, it happens.

And so, in Isaiah 48 verse 3, it says, I declared the former things long ago, and they went forth from my mouth, and I proclaimed them.

Suddenly, I acted, and they came to pass.

I was studying the Bible 1 day and I was reading in Revelation chapter 4 and it says that when God speaks, it sounds like water.

It sounds like waves tossing back and forth.

And I was asking myself, why does it sound like water when God speaks?

So I decided to start searching the Bible.

And in Revelation, well, in Ezekiel, it says, this is talking about when God speaks, it says, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of the host when they stood, they let down their wings.

In another place, Ezekiel says, and the sound of the cherubim's wings was heard even to the outer court as a voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh.

So when angels move their wings, it sounds like water, but when God speaks, it sounds like water.

And in another place in Revelation it says Revelation 4 verse 5 it says, and out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunders and voices.

So when God is talking you hear water and you also see lightning coming from his throne.

And then in Psalms 100, and I think it's 103, it says that angels heed the voice of God when he speaks.

And so when you put it all together, when God speaks it sounds like water because the angels are executing what he says.

It reminds me of when we're in our own clinic and the attending is talking and the residents are next to the computer and the attending is talking and you can just hear all this typing because when they speak, the orders are being done and that's how it is in heaven.

But it's really hard to believe when you're going through tough times, right?

This same power that God has is the same power that can change your life.

So I want to tell you my story, just a little bit of it.

But before I do, I want to give you guys a challenge.

The first challenge is to surrender, to seek God first.

The second 1 is to trust God, to build your life on Him.

The third 1 is to share this experience with others.

This is the experience of the gospel, and this is the experience of love, and this is my story in a nutshell.

So that's me, holding my little Pinocchio.

They're supposed to be here, but they're always late, so they might miss half of the sermon.

That's me and my brothers, Derek, David, Damian, and David.

Yes, My mom goes through all our names before she calls 1 of us.

And he was born in a situation where there wasn't a lot of resources.

And I think, we don't know a lot about the setting that he was born in, but mom couldn't handle him, so she gave him away.

And she gave him to a family in Alabama that took care of him.

And he started growing up, and he grew up not knowing where he came from.

He grew up to become a boy and he got involved in all kinds of stuff.

Some things weren't going right when they got married.

My dad, he got involved in drugs, particularly cocaine, and it had such a tight hold on him.

And because he was involved in smoking a lot of crack and he had a lot of friends and he would buy from them, we didn't have the money to support this kind of lifestyle.

And so frequently, they would send threats to us saying that he needs to pay back the money that he owed them And, but he continued to smoke crack.

And he continued to hang around the friends.

1 of his friends paid his way through college just by selling cocaine.

But my dad, he wasn't the 1 that was selling it, he was the 1 that was using it.

And we can, I don't know all the occasions, I was pretty young, but there's 1 particular occasion that I remember?

Well, was I3I think I was older than that, but I remember it distinctly.

My mom woke us up and she said, we got to get out of here.

And we looked out the window and I saw the garage was in flames.

Me and my 2 brothers, the youngest 1 wasn't born yet.

And I got to see the car that we used to drive, and I remember seeing it like explode, like it was like a lot of fire, and I remember seeing like 2 shadows of men walking in the fire.

When my mom was taking care of us, and my dad was, at the time, he was actually in California, and we didn't have the support that we needed.

My dad went to rehab and he decided to, after the experience with the fire, well actually it wasn't an experience with the fire.

It was another occasion when the guys came and threatened and they lashed our tires for our car.

And so he had left to go to rehab to get himself together in California.

But when he was there, that's when the fire happened.

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Dunamis

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