Sunday Morning Worship Service

man if you're glad to be here on the first sunday morning of 2022 why don't we praise the lord together oh we thank you jesus hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah jesus amen what an honor and a privilege it is to be in the house of the lord this morning we had a great time friday night uh in the house of the lord and we had a great move of god spirit man and we're here today looking forward to a great day in the holy ghost man there's not everywhere that you can go that you get blessed with wonderful apostolic leadership fantastic music and people that are engrossed in the kingdom and have a vision that reaches globally but you have that here and your ministry team and this pastoral leadership and aren't you thankful for your pastoral leadership today amen i give honor to them to bishop and sister mccool and pastor and sister mccool and pastor anthony and sister kelly mccool and my friend pastor nate and sister ashley whitley man i love and appreciate them i have gained about seven pounds since i've been here [Music] and it wasn't on pals i don't know if y'all were here friday night if you weren't you would have found out i really like pals and they don't have that in wilmington but i found some new favorites here with my friends and i am fat and happy but i'm hungry for the holy ghost and i want to i want to have a move of god's spirit today don't you i want to have a move of god's spirit today don't you amen i don't want it to be a normal sunday all right let's go to the book of second samuel chapter six amen i do give honor again to all the ministry here they took us on a tour yesterday of the church and what a beautiful campus you have here you have a fantastic church beautiful new complex here and then all the the upgrades and everything you're making the next door into your school you all are a beacon of hope in a dark world and i will tell you that not all churches are created equal and your church is one of the best and there are churches like mine and others that look up to the leadership here and look and see what's going on in hopes that maybe we can copy it because you all got it going on here amen let's go to the book of second samuel again chapter number six if we could stand in reverence for the reading of god's word i don't think i forgot anything hotel has been amazing the gift basket was incredible my kids are not here with us and um [Music] well it's good to have some time with my beautiful wife i'm glad my beautiful wife is with me amen we have two daughters we have a four-year-old vivian who's just like me we have a two-year-old crazy little girl that's just like her mother and then we have a little boy on the way yes praise god [Applause] one of the things that i found out being married to a woman and fathering two little women is that sometimes you just swim in a sea of estrogen don't fight the current put on your floaties and just frolic in the water but now i got a little guy to get in the boat with me and i'm excited about that amen just reading one portion of scripture here in second samuel chapter six verse number 16. the word of the lord says and as the ark of the lord came into the city of david michael saul's daughter looked through a window and saw king david leaping and dancing before the lord and she despised him in her heart she looked through a window and what she saw oh it made him made her despise him in her heart today i want to minister to you if i can by the help of the holy ghost [Music] from the shattered window of a wounded soul [Music] we've all been cut we've all been hurt we've all been damaged pills won't fix it the amber and once you get to the bottom of the amber alcohol bottle it won't touch it the only thing that will is the power of the holy ghost and that's what i want to minister to you today if you could let's put our bibles to our side and i want you to pray for me i'm still nervous friday night made it a little better i'm still pretty nervous but tonight i won't be i promise but let's get this one out of the way and let the lord move can we let's pray together lord we thank you for your great opportunity to be in this house lord we thank you god for all the worship and praise that's been put forth today that allowed your presence to meet us here god i pray over every heart every mind every soul of the people that are here this morning and those that are watching online i pray and believe in faith that your spirit will go before this word right now and it will plow up the fallow grounds of our hearts so that your word can plant a seed there lord we pray god over our minds that they'll be released this morning allowing your spirit to work upon us god will be careful to praise you and to glorify you for it all and everybody said in jesus name amen give somebody a high five tell them you're happy to see him before you're seated this morning amen from the shattered window of a wounded soul there was a story of a young girl that no one had seen that no one had heard that no one had touched until one day through a shattered glass some neighbors saw a small hand pull back a dirty rug as she peered through the shattered glass and just beyond the overgrown yard into the eyes of her neighbors who she had never seen before and the neighbors never seeing her they realized and knew that something was amiss they had only seen a man and a woman and two almost grown boys living in that home they had never seen a young girl a few months later the florida department of children and went out to check on this young girl and they would later call the police as the deputies would arrive they would walk up to the house they would see that everything is unkempt that everything is falling apart and as they would walk up they would see a woman sitting in her car leaning out of her car with her head between her legs sobbing as they walked up to check on her they would find that it is the officer of the child department of children that came to check on the florida department of children that came to check on this young girl she would say that she's never seen anything this bad the officers would walk up into an open door and they would find that the carpet and the walls were were riddled with fecal matter and they would find that old box springs and mattresses would slammed up against the door and and they would find as they stepped across the floor that what they thought was the wood cracking and creaking was actually the sound of cockroaches as they crushed them under their weight they would see two men two boys sitting on a chair and they would see a lady sitting on a sofa and they would ask where the young girl is the mother could just point down the hall the elder officer walked down the hall and as he would get to the end he would open to what looked like just a large closet he could see nothing but he could smell what had happened there there was about a four foot pile of dirty diapers sitting in a corner of a room and he felt something moving around at his feet and he didn't know what it was but all of a sudden two eyelids open and two beautiful brown eyes was staring up at this man five-year-old girl he asked her name she couldn't answer she couldn't nod he said that as he looked as she looked at him it was almost like she looked through him he picks up the girl he would note that she yelped like a little lamb put her on his shoulder searching for clothes none that were clean he took off his jacket and wrapped it around her walking out he carried this girl outside walked past the mother the mother screaming don't take my baby they would take her to the hospital they would get her checked out and this girl five years old could not speak we find that early on in life they say that the brain does 85 of its development before five years old and so much trauma and so much harm had been done to this little girl and we hear stories like this and surely all of us can look at our lives and say my goodness mine was not nearly as bad as that but as we look through our past we'll find moments that hurt us we'll find wounds that developed and cut were were cut real deep at the hands of those we loved and those we cared about and and trust me when i tell you i know that family wounds are the wounds that can hurt the most in just a moment i'll share my story sometimes i get in trouble for sharing too much if it makes you uncomfortable i'm sorry i'm going to share today as i went through my life i would find that my life was a normal childhood i grew up in a home with wonderful parents believing the apostolic truth and one preacher would say i had a drug problem i sure did have a drug problem my parents drugged me to church every service unless i could fake a fever just good enough growing up in that home you would think nothing was wrong with me wild childhood all of us have wild oats to sow at some point or another but then i would get to marry my beautiful wife and one day we would become pregnant with our first child that would be born vivian and and things begin to flood back into my mind of things that happened to me when i was a kid that i never remembered that came by way of a family member that said they loved and said they cared and as i looked back i began to have these flashbacks and i wondered surely there is no way that this took place in my life surely there's no way that this happened and i worked at a facility that was a medical facility there was a counselor on staff there and i pulled the old trick i said hey i got a friend it's dealing with some problems as i began to lay out my friend's problems she began to discuss i'm sure she saw right through me and she began to discuss how that the trigger of having a child and being pregnant could actually make things come back from your childhood i thought i had the perfect life i thought everything was okay but imagine being 28 years old thinking everything is perfect and then you remember the terrible things that happened to you when you were under the age of 10. the truth of the matter is is one in five girls are molested one in four or i'm sorry a little bit less than that for boys twenty percent people all across this world deal with wounds they deal with them in different ways they come out at different times there's different triggers that make you feel their impact and make you feel all that took place before but trust me if you live long enough you will live long enough to feel the hurt again and again we just came out of christmas it's supposed to be the most wonderful time of year but studies show us that it is actually the most anxious anxiety-inducing and depression-inducing time of the year because we look back over what we used to have and we look back over the parents and the friends and the family that said they would always be there but now they're not there anymore and we look back over our lives and we remember the wounds of parents that didn't care enough and friends that didn't love enough and spouses that said their love was beating us but let me tell you there is something better that waits on you than the wounds that you've dealt with all of your life and that something better is the power of the holy ghost [Applause] i thought i was the only one i feared that i would never be able to get my life back together at 28 well on my way to being a pastor i just got voted in last year everything was supposed to be okay but wounds problems and i thought i was the only one and then i look back in scripture and there's people so imperfect so broken so unworthy but the beauty of god is that it's a perfect being that allows the imperfect to show his power i look back and i found this story of michael this woman would be a woman who showed her love for david before he ever became a king many writers will commentate and give all these different reasons for why saul would want to give his daughter to be married to king david and none could ever really give us the true answer because none of us really know saul's intentions in that moment we can guess we can surmise but whatever the case he says i'll tell you what you can have her but i need a hundred foreskins from the philistines david goes out and he does what david does comes back with 200. he says okay she can be your wife he loves michael michael loves him everything's great but then this problem begins to ensue and deepen between david and saul i can't imagine being married to someone that is its odds with my father or my mother imagine the hurt that she would have experienced as the father that she loved tried to kill the husband that she loved i imagine that she felt some deep disdain for her father at some point or another and would have felt hurt as this great thing and as we read about it this great story goes there would be a time where she shows her love for david as saw as seeking to kill him what she does is she lowers him down a window to escape she puts a a small figurine in the bed and and tells saul's men that david is sick that he's not well to leave him alone and it comes out later that really david had escaped now imagine the husband that you pronounced your love for is now on the run we never read of a letter that was written we never read of a word that was given to this woman all we know is that her husband has left and then all of a sudden she's married off to another man to form an alliance and we know what happened saul he's killed and david wants his wife back makes an alliance he takes his wife back and begins to to work through the problems of the kingdom and we find him the story that we read today this woman that had been hurt watched the processional as david the one who valued the ark of god the one who the book of acts would record was the man after god's own heart he would lead this processional that was supposed to be a time of celebration it was supposed to be a time of jubilation as people would look out and see the coveted ark of god being led back into the city by their great king oh but michael all of the hurt welling up she would look out and she would see her her husband who was supposed to be a king who was supposed to be noble dancing and making what she felt was a fool of himself the hurt began to boil over he would come to her and she would begin to speak ill to him the bible says in that moment that she was stricken and would not be able to have children until she died you see there's something that happens with the wounds that we develop through life and through time is that as we are hurt something will take place and bitterness will begin to spring up the writer in the new testament would instruct us to to reach down and take bitterness by the hand and pluck it up at the root because he understood and he knew far too well what would happen because just as tenacious as a grain of mustard seed is that it will grow into a great tree so too will our bitterness it'll be something that will spring up in our lives and it'll change the way we view the world it'll change the way we view our leadership it'll change the way we view our pastor it'll change the way we view our loved ones and the way we view all of these relationships going on around us because i was hurt in marriage nobody should ever be married because i was hurt by a leader no one should ever be submitted to a leader and as bitterness begins to grow something happens that we do not expect just as with michael our bitterness will lead to our barrenness bitter will make you barren bitter will be so strong in your life that the life you had promised that you were going to live the things that you thought you were going to do the the accomplishments and goals that you set out with for god you'll find that none of them are birthed none of them come to pass because you've let bitterness take root in your life all because of hard things that have happened and bad things that have taken place and let me tell you today that there is no bad thing that will take place in your life that will come at the hand of a loving god except that we push him to that place let me tell you that there are bad things that happen to good people there was a woman in our church she loved god with all of her heart and one night her her son was murdered in wilmington north carolina on sunday she was in church with her hands lifted up let me tell you something if there's anything that can cause you to become bitter it could be your child being murdered but she had a choice to make on saturday because on sunday night he was killed but on saturday she had a choice to where she would turn she had a choice to what she would do with the rest of her life in that moment and instead of turning away from the one that created her she turned to him because let me tell you that there is only one thing that can heal the created being and that is the creator that created him in the first place let me tell you this morning that there is no wound too deep there is no hole too dark that his light can't reach to there is no problem so big that he cannot solve that when you look back over your life i'm inviting you this morning to look at the hurt to look at the pain to look at the problem to inspect it and to reach down and pluck it up by the root i don't want to be barren in a world that needs people that are fruitful i don't want to be barren in a world that needs people that are full of the holy ghost i don't want to be in darkness while people need a great and marvelous light to draw them out of it themselves let me tell you that your hurt can be a testimony for somebody else to step out of problems and circumstances and issues let me tell you that your life live for creator can be somebody else's lifeline in a moment where they're trying to make it through problems and circumstances don't let your hurt don't let your hurt turn into bitterness and your bitterness turn into barrenness i don't want to be a person that lives my life hurt i don't want to be a person that looks back and wonders what could have been i had a choice to make when i looked at my life i could give into it and i could be bitter but i would also be barren i began to think about a sermon i preached a long time ago it was a word god gave me before i ever knew all of those things were going to come up there was a japanese shogun he was leader of japan and he had this beautiful set of china that he would drink tea from it's one of his most prized possessions one day he would drop this teacup and it would shatter into pieces and he heard stories of artists in china that could fix things like this he sends a messenger wrapped up all the pieces of this cup and he goes and they say we can take care of it they begin to do their work and they wrap it up not even the messenger had seen at this point only the artists they bring it back to this japanese leader as he unfurls the napkin and he looks it was not what he expected you see our brokenness as we look out the shattered window of our soul it can cause us to view the world differently than it really is that glass with all of its cracks and all of its creases can cause me to see things that aren't really there sometimes i imagine people are coming after me but it's really the crack in my heart that makes me sensitive to those things sometimes i feel like someone's got it out for me but really it's just shattered glass from wounds as the shogun would open this up he would look at a teapot or tea cup he was expecting everything to be as it was before but what he found was what we call today kenzugi art and it's when the artist takes lacquer that is clear and gold dust and mixes it together and he begins to assemble the pieces of this cup together just as it was assembled before except where the cracks are is a line of gold many will say that consuege art is worth more after it's broken than before when it was whole you see you look at your hurt and you despise the things you've went through as we come to grip with those things and you have to come to grip with them it's kind of like repentance except we see our need for repentance there's no need to repent it's the same way for hurt except i see my need to be healed i might not ever be healed but what happens is those wounds that we think devalue us actually bring so much value to the kingdom of god and so much glory to the one that created you in the first place because just like a consuge artist will put those pieces back together with gold and lacquer and these lines of gold will be riddled throughout this cup so our lives will be in the hands of the one that fixes the hurt because you can see the crack that was there before but something shines through a little differently than it did before the creator healed me because as i looked out before and i looked through the wounds of my life and it jaded my vision now everything that was dim because of the cracks in my heart now oh they are shed of the blood the light and the love of god shed so much abroad in my heart that now i can see a little differently that the darkness that would creep in before when i would think back to hurts and problems and circumstances now no the darkness has been forced out by a marvelous and great light and let me tell you that as people see those wounds that are healed what they'll see is hope for them as the musicians come i pastor some of the most incredible people in the world what i love about the apostolic church is it's not full of perfect people there's so much brokenness there but there's so much healing i got to be honest i didn't know how today was going to turn out silence makes me nervous it does you know and i really want you to laugh but it's probably not the best time this is a pretty serious sermon but i didn't share my story with you so that you'd feel sorry for me because i'm not broken i'm healed i'm not hurting anymore [Applause] i'm not confused by the circumstance i'm not left with this daunting task of trying to fix it myself because there's a lot of trouble there when we take matters into our own hands but what i did is i realized as we stand to our feet and i'm closing [Music] i realized that my hurt [Music] it impacted how i interacted with others i found myself i you know pastoral transitions are never easy and if if you tell me someone who said they were [Music] i want to meet him [Music] and i found myself at odds with my father-in-law i wanted to kill him or move i was almost buying a house to where i could have pals every day then something happened and now on on this day i'll never forget it my wife probably remember it really well you know men down south we don't like to cry i can only remember my dad crying twice in my life one was when his sister passed away and the others when his father passed away but i found myself thinking what in the world am i going to do [Music] and my wife my children were listening to little baby bum i don't know if you've ever tried to parade a little baby bum but it's not the most soothing of things coco melon daniel tiger i knew i'd get somebody somewhere you got a kid or a grandkid and i went into my room and i laid down or i kneeled down at the foot of my bed and i began to pray god what is wrong with me and i will tell you that the holy ghost fell in a way that i have never experienced and i kept praying these words and i've never prayed them before in my life that i remember and i just kept saying god i am so broken god i am so broken [Music] god i'm just so broken and the holy ghost just began to fill my heart i began to speak with other tongues as the spirit gave the utterance and as i began to be full of the spirit it changed my entire outlook [Music] because i grew up on a pew and i didn't think i needed what i needed that day because i i sang and i i led worship and i had preached and i was going to be the pastor of the church i don't need this [Music] oh but then it began to just take over 30 minutes for free with god did what a year of counseling could have never done and i'm married to a counselor okay i live with one and i love it but i'll tell you that my wife why i love apostolic counselors is they know that there is a whole there's there's only so much that talking will do and then there's always going to come a need of the holy ghost so this is what i would ask you all are so great at responding and i would ask so that we all are comfortable i wonder if we could make our way to an altar this morning because i would never want to single anybody out god is a gentleman he don't want your story to be heard by everybody but if you'll talk to him about your story this morning i believe with all of my heart that the creator of the universe is getting ready to heal you why don't we lift our hands together all across this place they're getting ready to sing in just a minute but why don't we lift up our voice to a creator right now in the name of jesus god we pray over every heart and every mind that has been broken by trauma and wounds and past god we pray over every person that's experienced hurt no matter where it's came from lord and we pray right now that the power of the holy ghost will come into this place god let it begin to flow and let it begin to move upon each and every one of us come on that's it why don't you respond this morning to the moving of god's spirit