Kimberly Miller

David W Ebel: Yeah. Welcome to the God Says Yes podcast. You are welcome. Welcome to another episode of God Says Yes. My name is David Ebel, and ⁓ I've been in ministry for over fifty years. And the focus of my of of my assignments in life have been reaching people who struggle. I don't mean it doesn't have to be lightning strikes, but they that life is difficult at times for all of us. And we want to we want to encourage those that are struggling to know that there's more to their life than what they're experiencing right now. You see, God created us to love. Even before we were a twinkle in somebody's eyes, he were we were created by him. And we're not supposed to be like each other on the outside, and I'm grateful as I look around this world that we're not. But from the inside out, as we give our hearts to Jesus and give him room, he begins to reshape us to be more like him. So eventually we look like the who we should have been all along. Not colored by the things of this world, but but beautifully transformed to to who he wants us to be. He's he you know, it doesn't matter what you've gone through. How we got there is is just how we got there. That's our history. But when we give our lives to Jesus, some of us when we give our lives back to Jesus, ⁓ then he can work in our lives and do beautiful things. You see, it doesn't matter how you got hurt. Some people are cheated, some are lied, some are cheat you know, stolen from, some people are betrayed, even some get hurt in church because the church is supposed to be the emergency room of the body of Christ. If you ever sat in an emergency room lobby, not everybody's happy to be there. Some of ⁓ are kicking and screaming. And sometimes when people come to church like that, they may not be kicking and screaming overtly, but they're spiritually not happy where they're at, and they end up splashing over their their misery on those that are trying to help them. And it hurts. On behalf of the church and the whole body of Christ, we apologize. That's not God's plan. That's man getting in God's way again. So we what we're hoping is that through this podcast we're going to be encouraging you to try again, to reach deeper, to just open up the heart a little bit and give your life to Jesus and see what he can do when you just give him room. That's the plan for this purpose in our podcast. I have with me ⁓ an a delightful sister in the Lord. Her name is Kim Miller, and Kim is a smart lady. God has done a beautiful work in her life. She's been d done a lot of amazing things, but mostly she's been loving people her whole life for the Lord. And I can't think of a greater d resume to say that I gave my heart to Jesus. I still g have my heart in Jesus. I've been trusting him with my life and here I am. I I would love to I would trade my my story for that story any day, but God gives you the story that He wants to guide. So we are who we are and we are where we we're placed. So Kim I'm just glad you're here. Welcome. Thank you so much. I am excited to be able to share with you all that God has put in my heart and and the way He has called my life. And it's a little different than than others, perhaps, but I am grateful for every step and I'm grateful for the divine connections. One of which I believe is being able to meet you, David. Amen. And we're grateful you're here. ⁓ th now what we're going to do is ask some questions. And ⁓ I'll ask a question and you answer it, then I'll ask the next one. And just take your time. We're we're not in a hurry. So let's let's start with who who were you before Jesus? Well, I was one of those people who was born in a family where scripture wasn't just taught, it was lived. So I had the privilege of being surrounded by the love of God, the knowledge of God, and the modeling of God's principles and commandments. So because of that exposure, because of the incredible way that my parents prayed for all of their children, and I'm the baby of six, and because of their absolute purpose that they embraced to make God real for their children, I was blessed to give my heart and my life to the Lord when I was five. But before that there there is something worth noting in that I am the baby of six, the closest sibling I have is seven years older than me, and my oldest brother was sixteen years older than me, and I in no way was planned by my parents, but in every way was planned by the creator of the universe. Amen. And when my mother was told that she was pregnant with me. It was about four months or more into the pregnancy, and she had had a pretty serious health ⁓ situation and was on blood thinners. And so the doctors were a hundred percent convinced that my mental capacity would be greatly reduced and that I would have a lot of challenges physically, mentally, and every other which way. And to make matters more interesting, I was a couple of months premature. And so my mother gave birth to me with about seven months and I was ⁓ also a complicated situation between the blood thinners she had been on and the heart condition and things that she had, which is why she was taken to blood thinners, she had two massive heart attacks during labor. And at each one of those junctures the doctor was asking her and my father to abort me because there was five other children that they needed to take care of. They were convinced that pretty much there was no way I was going to be healthy and what they quote unquote said normal. And they weren't sure that my mother could live through it if she continued to try to give birth to me. But my parents believed that that was in God's hands. And so they they said, you know, we're not going to do that. And they obviously prayed, and I'm sure they had a a plethora of people around them praying because that's who the people were that my parents hung with. And when I did appear in this world, my mom and dad, before they r kind of rushed her off to ICU, I mean I've heard this story a million times, it seems like My dad lifted me up to the sky in the that ceiling and dedicated me to the Lord. And they had always purposed in their heart to raise their children but for the Lord and to be servants of God, but they committed in their heart that day, on the second day of February in nineteen sixty five, that they would live their life. Making sure that I was fully equipped to do whatever the Lord was gonna ask me to do whenever he asked, and that that was going to be a dedicated purpose. And they lived up to the word. ⁓ they had their own Bible study method, they had their own Bible memory methods, and by the time I was in first grade, I was memorizing five verses a week. Wow. My other brothers and sisters also memorized. verses of the Bible, but they memorized to what my parents felt was what God was asking them to and what they felt their capacity was. And I do have a strong memory. And the Lord had given that to me. My parents figured it out and they cultivated it with everything they had. And so my dad used to joke as I got a little bit older and say to me that ⁓ I was his own Joan the Baptist instead of John the And so they you know I had things that other people could do that I couldn't do. They were not gonna allow that. Even a couple of things they would let my brothers and sisters do, I was sheltered. And my brothers and sisters sheltered me. And so I lived my whole life set apart. But not set apart in a way that I wasn't able to reach the world or understand things in the world, but in a way that I was going to be able to be used of God to reach those people. And I didn't always get that. So before age five, I don't have a story that I remember much, but I can repeat as I did how God from start to finish has had his hand upon me. Amen. Second question. What happened when you met Jesus? When I met Jesus, it's an interesting thing because you would think that you wouldn't remember a lot as a five year old. But it was in a Baptist church. I grew up in a Baptist church. And we had these things called revivals. And so they would be week long church services where like a visiting evangelist would come in and preach. And at this particular one They would sing this song and and and it would go through the days of the week and you were supposed to stand up on the day that you were saved. So like it happened on a Monday, and they would sing through it and you got saved on a Monday, you would stand up. And I wasn't saved. So I couldn't stand up. And so they had this thing, if you didn't remember or whatever, you could just stand up on Sunday. But I didn't feel like I could stand up on Sunday either. Because I wasn't saved. And that was the first night of the revival. On the second night of the revival, they sang the song again. And I think the first night it was a matter of I felt embarrassed that I couldn't stand up. By the second night, I felt like I was missing something. All these people had something. And they were so excited. On the third night they sang the song again. And by that time I was feeling conviction. Now I hadn't gone out and done amazing things that some people would call wrong, but it takes just as much blood to save me as it did the woman at the well or any other person because sin is sin. Come into this world a sinner. Amen. So that night when the man preached, I couldn't really catch on to what he was saying because all I could think of was I'd heard all week that if you didn't know the Lord and he came back you were going to go to hell. And I didn't want to go to hell. But that night he preached you couldn't give back to the Lord if you were not one of his children. And I wanted to give back because he had painted such a picture and my parents had all this time painted such a picture Of all the blessings that God had done. I knew a lot about him. And I knew that my parents loved him and it made a difference and there was joy even when there were storms in their lives. I knew that even at age five. So all the way home I was very quiet, and that's not normal my style. And when I got home and my parents, who every night would tuck us in the bed and go by each one, and they would divide up and pray, and it was that night, it was my dad. That was praying with me. And he sat down at the edge of my bed. And he said, Kimmy, he said, you know, is there anything you want to say? And I said, I I do. I I'm afraid if God comes while I'm asleep that I'm gonna go to hell. So my dad went, got my mom, and they said, because he didn't want her to miss it, I'm sure. And we had a long conversation about who God was and And why I felt that way and how I had come to this knowledge that I needed God as a savior and I needed to depend upon Him. And that night in my room I got saved. So the next night when we went to revival was a Thursday. And when they got to the Wednesday night, I jumped up to my seat. Like I didn't just stand up. I jumped up with my feet on the seat, which was a hundred percent no no to my pinna. But I didn't get in trouble that time because they knew the jubilation. And so in that in that particular church, you got to go up front and and you know and they shook your hand, the right hand of fellowship, and and I was so excited. And from that day on, the number of times I've been in churches in my area that has sung that song. There's just a joy that comes over in me. But my parents were waiting for that moment, but they weren't waiting for it to happen. They were cultivating it. And they just continued to do the same. And so from that moment on, when I got saved, even at such a young age, I've slipped all over that rock. I have, you know, had moments where I just was too much about me and not enough about him. I was incredibly gifted as a tennis player and I wanted my identity for the longest time in my teens to be that. I really actually dismissed the gifts that God had given me to be able to read a passage of scripture and expound upon it for five, ten, twenty minutes, however that didn't seem like an important thing. The fact that I could hit a cross-court forehand that would blaze by the best in the country seemed to be amazing to me. And I was getting to the point, not where I was forsaking God. I still was memorizing five verses a week. And I still was, you know, making time for him. But in my heart, David, he was second. And scripture's clear, you'll have no other gods before me. And in my own special way, I had made tennis a god. And God is gracious because I couldn't make the right decision. So I sustained an incredibly difficult injury for a tennis player. And it ended. my career as a you know trajectory probably for a professional tennis player. But God is so good I was still able to play through college and do well and all of that stuff. But the biggest thing about that, David, is that during the rehab and the recovery, which was 18 months, I destroyed my knee. and the nerve cord from the ankle to the knee. And during that time, all I could do was look up. 'Cause I was flat in the bed, it was in traction, it was a mess. And every night when my parents thought that I was asleep, they would come, and it's like kind of like a hospital bed, so it wasn't that wide, and they would come and they would grasp hands over my ankles, one on each side of the bed, and they would pray. I mean, they would bring all of heaven down. And during the first few months, it was annoying to me. Because I would be like, How can you be praying to God? He could have kept this from happening. And I would hear my dad say, you know, let her walk again. She's got great work to do for you. I'd hear my dad say, you know, take my knee, you know. I'd hear my mom say, you know, keep her heart tender. And that was not working at the time. But you know, I could hear her. And I would just lay as if I was asleep. By about month five, God got a hold of my heart. And I begin to see the love that God had bestowed upon me to lay me flat where I could really see what was important. Tennis wasn't wrong, and tennis wasn't a sin, and tennis isn't evil or bad. No. But I had made it all of those things because I did not manage it and put it in its proper place. And I had replaced God, the one true living God, in some ways with that, even though I was still doing on the outside, everyone would have thought the right thing. But God is gracious. He's a God of many chances, fat chances, slim chances, multiple chances. He's a God that will not give up on you as long as you are seeking Him. Amen. And he says that if you'll seek me with your whole heart you'll find me in Jeremiah twenty nine thirteen. My heart about eight months into this mess was no longer divided. I just wanted I still wanted to play, but I just wanted God to not remove from me his hand, his anointing, his favor. Mm-hmm. And I started to realize this time when I wasn't playing six and seven hours a week, I mean a day, I was able to read his word and study even more. And it was about eighteen months before I was on the court again, and no one thought I'd ever be on the court. But I played a wonderful college career. I went to a smaller school and I was a big fish in a small pond as opposed to some of the bigger schools that had ⁓ already offered me scholarships, but I could not hold those. But the greatest thing that happened was because I was saved when I was five, heavily rooted and grounded in the Word of God. So blessed to watch it the word lived out in front of me that when I made a misstep when I was your normal prideful seventeen year old girl. I had God so firmly in me that though he's a gentleman and I could overstep what he was saying, I could still hear him. I love you. I need to be number one. These are the things I want you to do. And because of that transformation when I was five. From a person that did not have Jesus living in them to a person that did house the Holy Spirit teaching, leading, and guiding. And despite the poor decisions I may have made for a little while, even though the rest of the world thought I was just fantastically doing the right thing, my heart wasn't in the right place. But because of God's grace and his many chances, and the fact that he doesn't look at our faults. He sees our needs and he looks at us knowing the potential we have. He not only forgave me, he lifted me out of that, he delivered me from that awful injury, and he chose to keep me in the alignment of his will for my life and allows me to be a person who gets to help others know him personally. Amen. I ⁓ when you were sharing about what runs your life, a s a slogan that I learned as a brand new baby Christian that I've used my whole life is what runs your life becomes your God. Whether it's worry or fear or television or sports or whatever anything that kicks God off the throne and puts something else in there controlling you is another God and that gets comes into the Ten Commandments. You can't have any other gods but me. And that is so true. And and and I think if you're not vigilant, like he tells us in First Peter five eight, because the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking him he may devour. If you're not watching for the Lor ⁓ for the devil, you can fall into that. Because there's pleasure in sin for a season and and no one walking beside of me would have ever imagined that God wasn't the most important thing to me. There is a thing you can fool man. Yes. I even could fool my parents. I was still churning out verses and Still going to church and still studying and and praise the Lord I was because all of that filled me with what he calls for from me when I am working for him. But I knew in my heart, I knew in my heart laying in that bed. I knew who I love the most. And he loves me too much, and he loves everyone individually too much to have your love divided. Amen. So now we've we've hit the that part. Now my fun part. What's happened to you since you've you met him? How's your life changed? He's never taken his hand off me. And one of the things I started praying when I was in first grade was I wanted to be the friend of God. I wanted him to say to me, like he said to Abraham, You're my friend. I didn't understand in first grade. one what it meant to be a friend period and certainly didn't fully understand what it meant to be the friend of God or honestly David I may have I may have reconsidered that prayer a little bit but I have prayed that my whole life and God has honored that in that He allows me to be his hands and feet He gives me His eyes And he allows me to do service for him for others with his love and his calling upon my life. And that's really what a ⁓ friend does. He says he's a friend that sticketh closer and a brother, and that's a person who's with you no matter what. And Jesus. Is with us no matter what, and nothing can separate us from the love of God, according to Romans 8:38 and 39. I didn't realize when I was praying it early on, but as I've grown in my relationship with the Lord, as I have opened up my life and allowed Him to have more of me, what I have seen is that. That same friendly characteristics, those characteristics of a true friend, one that loves no matter what, one that dispenses grace at all times, one that shows and demonstrates mercy, and one that has no limit to the sacrifice they'll do to help you. He has allowed me to walk in those same footsteps for other people. And his grace has always Been enough to equip me, as he says in Philippians 4, 13 and 19. He tells us that he'll give us the strength to do what he asks us to do and he'll supply what we need to get the job done. And though it was a daunting ask to be the friend of God, I'm still pursuing that same personal purpose and goal. And he's opening up opportunity after opportunity for me. To be able to give the love of Jesus that He so freely gives to me, to all that He puts in my path. He's still working on me, but I'm still working on that same goal. Can't beat that with a stick. That's wonderful. Amen. Now we we've we've covered the basics, but the question is. Now we're we're gonna talk to everybody. I'll I I see this as a conversation. There's you, me and a chair in the living room where our guest is sitting and and and watching us chat. what would you say to somebody who is struggling, no matter how they got to where they are, now we're at the spot spot where we're stuck. How how would you encourage someone to trust again? To let God help them be unstuck in and and try and trust? I would truly encourage them to change their focus. A lot of times, one of the tools the devil uses, and one of the most effective tools that he uses, is that he gets us looking inward at ourselves. And when you are stuck, it's generally because you're not happy with decisions you've made, mistakes that have come your way that you've chosen. Things you've done or things you haven't done, there's something about your life that you feel needs change so that you could have something you want because there's something missing. But you're looking at yourself and what you think you have done or could do or haven't done. And That is a recipe for disaster, regardless of who you are, because we are fleshly sinful people who won't get it right on our own, can't get it right on our own, and the devil is always going to be hounding you that you're not enough, you're bad, you've gone too far for God to forgive. And those are all straight lies. But as long as we're looking at ourselves and the things that we have or haven't done, we are stuck because that's a vicious circle that's just going to continue. Because we can't do things differently on our own. But if we change our focus and our trust and our faith in who we're relying on. And we don't rely upon ourselves, and we're not focused on what Kim Miller can do or what Jane Doe can do. If we are focused on what God can do, and He can do anything but lie, and He said that in me you will have life and have it more abundantly. But you have to choose Him and His ways. And He tells us that when we are saved. That he creates a new creature in Christ Jesus, that old things are passed away, and behold, all things are become new. And we're not who we used to be. And then he tells us in Romans 12:1 and 2 that by the renewing of our mind, so he affirms this: stop looking at yourself through the eyes of flesh. Amen. And through The lies of the devil, and instead focus upon who God is and the redeeming truth that he loves you just the way you are, and allow him to have all of you, don't you take the responsibility to clean yourself up, to fix yourself. That's beyond your call, your purpose, or ability. But when you say, Lord, save me, just like when Peter took his eyes off of God and looked around and saw the storm and let it have too much place in his life. When he began to use logic and says, I can't walk on water. Then he sinks. But immediately he says, Lord, save me. And the Lord picks him up, draws him to himself, and takes him to safety. My encouragement to someone who is stuck, to someone who feels like they've gone too far. is to stop for a moment, be still, as Psalm forty six ten says, and know that he is God. Just stop and take your focus away from yourself, your past, your mistakes, your fleshly desires, and put them squarely on him and allow him to be God. And he will Take care of the rest. And he'll go to the guttermost and save you to the uttermost. Amen. Now each interview we invite our guest to le give us a golden nugget, something that people could take home and mull over, pray over, meditate over, however they t they talk to God. ⁓ what would you share with us that we can take with us from this interview that would last longer than the the t it takes to watch it? That God wants to hear from you. He wants that conversation. And he tells us that in Revelation 3 20, where he says, Behold, he stands at the door and he knocks. If you'll open the door, he'll come in. He tells us that so many places. In Jeremiah 33, 3 he says, Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. People need to be heard. People need to be loved. And God is waiting for you to open the door and invite him in so he can do that very thing. Love you and hear you. Amen. You know, one of the most beautiful things about what you've shared is that God takes us where we are. Amen. We don't have to invent, reinvent, or try even harder. We don't have to stop doing anything or do even more of something. God doesn't want us to do it on our own strength. That's why we got the shape we're in. We needed someone that was bigger and more powerful and and can can rescue what we can't do. I think of a drowning man in the middle of a of a lake and you and and and he says, Save me, save me. So someone coming by in a boat throws him a big life preserver. And he he looks at it and says, That's pink. I don't I'm a guy, I don't touch pink. I'm rescuing him. Grab hold of it and I'll save you. No, no, but I w I don't want a pink one. Throw me another color, it'll come. That's how how unusual our choices are. We don't see what God sees. God's trying to rescue us, and it doesn't matter his whether it's pink, blue, or orange. He just wants to rescue us. We don't have to do anything. We don't have to choose anything. We don't have to act anyway. We just have to hold on with faith and let him draw us to him. Open our hearts so his Holy Spirit can come in and clean house. So we can get rid of the stuff that's that's killing us and replace it with things that'll bless us, give us hope and health and joy and peace, and and make our lives worth living. That's what God is trading us. He, you know, green bologna for prime rib. You can't get rid of it. You know, you can't you can live on the green baloney if that's all you've ever known. It seems okay. But as soon as you taste the good stuff, you never want to go back. And that's how it is with God. I was twenty before I found out that God's last name wasn't damn. I was raised completely without it. ⁓ and and when ⁓ a cousin of mine tried to share Jesus with me, and I said, What do you do for fun? He says, Well, we get together in fellowship. Fellowship? Yeah, that's where we spend time encouraging each other and sharing scripture and having fun. I said, What fun is in that? It's you know difficult for people to understand. It wasn't that long after that that I f that I finally hit my my crisis that was ⁓ the end of my life. And the first thing after I gave my heart to Jesus is I called my cousin and said, Now it makes sense. Everything you said is true. But someone has peeled the blinders off my eyes and I can see it and understand it now. He said, I I you know, David, you've always been very smart. I said, but I was also Pretty blind. I didn't get it. Now I do. Thank you for for risking it to tell me, even though I didn't understand it. You still told me because I needed to know how much God loves me. And you know Yeah, take it that to heart. I think sometimes people have heard the lies of the devil so much that they can't believe that God would love them. And so they have a hard time grasping that truth. But that's one of the things I truly love about the account in John chapter four with the woman at the well. Because Jesus puts himself in harm's way. And he waits. The God of the universe, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, is sitting at a well in noonday, waiting for this woman to come, and she's coming at that time because. The city, the culture, the people around her won't have anything to do with her, and she just doesn't want to be around them. You know, she wasn't one to fe to feel that shame. And he tells her everything she's done, not to condemn her, but to allow her to understand, I know all about you, and I'm still sitting here waiting on you. And once people can get that understanding that regardless of what they've done, Regardless of how far they have strayed, he's still waiting there for them to call on him. Exactly. And that's truly I I want people to understand. It's not me saying that, it's not you saying that, it's the word of God. And the example's so clear in John chapter four. So s stop. Letting the devil continue to cheat you of the abundant life God has for you. Amen. And allow yourself to see what He did for the woman at the well, He has to do for all of us. Amen. I am blessed. I was saved at five. I've not been perfect, but I've been spared many of the horrible, sinful ways that others have had to walk. But it took just as much blood. To save me, as it did the woman at the well. We categorize sin, God does not, and he covers it all. You know, ⁓ one of as I as we close this this segment, I I I want people to understand that it's it's not a performance issue. It never will be. We can't do enough, be enough, buy enough, perform enough. There's no way we can be enough for God to love us. So He just loves us. He doesn't it's not about us doing anything other than just trusting. All we have to do is take a r this crazy faith thing. And use the ⁓ he gave it to us. We were born with it in us. We just have to use that muscle that's really weak right now and exercise it enough to trust him. Give him six months to prove himself. Give him a chance to actually reveal himself. Live take open up your Bible. Go to go to the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And go to John. That's the book of love. And read it with with in and whisper this prayer, God, I don't understand this. But I want to read it in I want you to talk to me. Then when you're done with reading John, go back to Matthew and read those four books in order. That'll give you a great understanding of how much God loves you. No matter how what's been done to you or what you've done to people, no matter what, God loves you as you are. And He's got this great plan for your life. And I know I when someone told that to me, I thought they were on drugs. I really did. It made no sense at all. But once I I trusted and opened that door of my heart and said, Come on, show me. It made all the sense of the universe because now I could because I was new inside from the Spirit of God coming in, it made sense. The light went on. It it wasn't no any longer me being confused. It was me being informed. When my wife was my girlfriend, she'd write me a note and I would memorize every word. If I could if I lost the note, I didn't lose a thing. Because I loved her so much, I wanted to keep those words in me. When I fell in love with Jesus, his his Bible is my love letter. And if I love him more than I love my wife, and I do, I would much, you know, I want to hide his words inside of me. Because I never want to lose them. I don't want to be sidetracked from them. I don't want to be distracted. I w I want to know. And when you know it, you want to live it, you want to apply it. And that's what changes us forever. I'm not asking you to join the church. I'm not asking you to to be a this or a that or believe this way or that way. I'm inviting you, Kim and I are inviting you, to open up your heart. Even if you've tried it before and it failed, stretch that muscle of faith a little bit and give it another shot. Or give it your first big shot. Open that door. It may be scary because it's new to you. I live my life up here. When I asked Jesus in my heart, that was all new ground. It made no sense at all till I asked for it, and then it made sense forever. I mean, I've been I've been living for the Lord for over fifty-two years now. Fifty-three actually. In that period of time, has God betrayed me? No. Has He let me down? No. Have I had tough times? Absolutely. But he never leaves you or forsakes you. He's with you always. Good times and bad when there's no pain and when there's terrible pain. When everybody treats you badly and w or when everybody heaps joy on you. God is still there regardless because that's how much He loves you. And that's what we want for you. We want you to get beyond where you're at. Look at the b your past is your history. You don't get rid of your history. You just use it as a reference point for where you used to be. And you create a life in today and trust God to handle tomorrow. Amen. Yeah. You and I can do that. Kim and I can do that. And we want that for you so that the beautiful things of God can be yours. You'll figure God and you will figure out the address where you worship. God and you will figure out whether you stand up, sit down, kneel, or whether you dance, or whether you you raise your hand, or whether you don't dare ever raise your hand. Those things are window dressing to the important part. The important part is Jesus loves you. You get to know that, you get to experience it. You receive his love, he forgives you, and you start again, fresh. A brand new mind, a brand new heart, and a brand new mindset. And that's what we dream and pray about every day. Amen. So, ⁓ what I'd like to do is ⁓ I'm gonna pray as we close this session, and then I'm gonna invite all of you at home to write down that golden nugget. Take something out of this. You know, don't let it set for three or four days until life gets busy. The enemy of God is the enemy of God because one of the the beautiful angels that God created became vain. And he thought he was more powerful and beautiful than he was. And he ended up cr starting a re rebellion, and he and his those that believed with him ended up being Satan and his in his demons instead of ⁓ this beautiful angel in his in his followers. Their mission is not to just to kill you. It's to get your eyes off of Jesus so you won't trust him. To get to do whatever it takes to get you to look around this world, to listen to every other authority, to listen to everything or do everything, experience everything, except what God had planned for you. The greatest way he he thinks he can hurt God is to hurt us. The more we suffer, the better he enjoys it. And if you don't think you're spiritual warfare, be assured when you when you you see people who've given their heart to Jesus, that's when the war begins. Because that's when you're a threat to everything he's tried to do to destroy everything God loves. But give God a chance. Open up your heart. Give him some time. Let him be real to you. Find a church where th th what what they preach you can find in the Bible. Apply it to your life. And watch what God will do. So let's pray and ⁓ We'll we'll we'll just ⁓ then I'll do a closing and we'll we'll be done for this moment. Heavenly Father, we come in Jesus' name and we're so grateful. We're grateful that you created us to love. You've always loved us, that you've never stopped loving us, and you've got an amazing plan for each of our lives. It's not the same plan for everybody because we're all different. It's a personal salvation, a personal relationship. So God, you meet us where we are, just the way we are, with our good points and our failures and our our struggles in our past. And you personally love us. You personally forgive us. You personally accept us. You personally restore us. You personally heal us and guide us and direct us through your Holy Spirit. You have these amazing plans for our life. And God, we'd love that to be to be where each of our viewers and our listeners can experience that. Or if you've experienced it, but somehow you got sidetracked, that you come back and try it again, this time with e knowing God even better. Trust Him. Give him some time to work in your life. Learn that through the love letter of of God, his Bible, particularly the New Testament to start with. Lord, Lord, help them understand what the truth is. Help them to to fall in love with you like Kim and I have. We love you enough to not be bl blindly serving you, but to in in spite of being smart and scar in spite of being capable, we know that you're smarter and more capable than us. So we trust you for the things we cannot do. And we take the effort that we can do and we aim it to please you. We live our life to please you because you loved us first. Bless these hearts and these lives that are viewing. Meet them where they are. Love them the way they are. And when they're struggling, Lord, through your Holy Spirit, comfort them, love them and draw them to you so you could do that amazing work in their lives. Bless their lives and each who are watching. In Jesus' name. Together we're saying Amen. Amen. Amen. So the challenge always is seek after God, he will be found. You want to know him better? Seek Jesus. He said he was the way to God. Follow it. And if you do, you will know God better. You will seek him more, and your life will be changed forever. And that's our dream and our prayer. Seek after God. This has been the God Says Yes podcast with David Ebel. To connect with David, email him at GodsaysYesPodcast at gmail. You can get his latest book, When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes, at Amazon.com.